Prospects for Non-Vioent Resistance by Palesinians.

The truth of the matter is long periods of non-violence have been tried before by the Palestinians, and they were met with business as usual from the Israeli side: settlement expansions and what essentially amounts to ethnic cleansing or demographic manipulation in areas like Jerusalem. Take the West Bank for example in the past few years, especially since the split with Hamas in Gaza. The end result? Hamas was rewarded with full Israeli withdrawal and Abbas' people keep getting humiliated and the West Bank continues to be swallowed up by Israel.

Whether you agree with what the Palestinians are doing or not, the one thing that has been proven over time is that Israel will do what Israel wants to do, regardless of what method the Palestinians take in resisting Israeli occupation of their lands. If the end result is the same, why not force the enemy to share in your misery?

This is the logic behind violent resistance, and not just in Palestine but also in other protracted conflicts around the world. In stalemates, the objective becomes to seek revenge and cause the other side as much misery and death as is achievable.

I really think nothing less than a third party strong arming both sides into a settlement will ever work there. We are talking a Yugoslavian solution here, with peacemakers dictating the peace. I think physical separation is a necessary first step here.

 

I don't know man. Show me 1 year where the Palestinians were intentionally not violent.

I'm not saying they don't exist (the Gandhis,etc.) but I'm saying they are the exception.

A key thing to remember is that most Palestinians don't just want the settlements to stop. They want their entire country back. So half a country is a mediocre solution in their eyes - therefore the motivation to make it work is not 100% there.

This is where they get caught into evil cycles as well. This is where the one evil guy gathers everyone up and tells them that if they don't attack Israel, then their coutnry will dissapear. They're essentially saying there are only two outcomes: fight or dissapear. What do you think the kids are going to do? Do you know how many orphans there are over there and how much pressure that creates?

It's a tough task. Peaceful resistance IS the way to go at the moment. Whether that's realistic or not is another thing. Who is going to be listening with Israel controlling the media that comes out of Palestinian territories?

The chokehold on what goes in and out makes this a bigger mess than it should be. Looking at these stats the other day, I realized that as long as we can't see what's happening perfectly, it won't matter to us what really is happening.

 

Uh... I hate to have to point out the glaringly obvious logical fallacy, but the original King and Gandhi were killed and imprisoned respectively. Since their respective movements managed, I don't think that is the limiting factor.

I saw a sign from a school in Lebanon. They had named themselves as the "Class of the martyr Michael Jackson":

<img src="http://humanprovince.files.wordpress.com/2009/07/ndu-zouk-michael-jackson.jpg" width="50%" height="50%">

From what I understand, in Lebanon a "culture of martyrs" exists across all bounds among Christians and Muslims and Communists and Secular Democrats. The closest analog I can think of is the Japanese in WWII. Certainly, in Lebanon it isn't at that level of wacky. But sort of as a guide, the Bushido code in Japan was clearly very counter-productive when applied to a modern setting.

 

King's assassination was committed by a fanatic and not the gouvernment.

can you imagine the uproar if the CIA or FBI had killed him? America probably would've been split into two different nations.

 

For awhile, a significant minority believed that that was exactly what happened. Some of the hardcore conspiracy nuts still cling to the belief that it was an FBI plot.

 

I remember when I was at UT we had this guest speaker from Jerusalem come in. I don't remember all the specifics, but he was a Palestinian guy who discussed how his NGO that taught people how to non-violently resist Israel's illegal occupation of Palestine was shut down by the Zionist regime and he was thrown in jail.

You're right, you don't know. The first Palestinian Intifidah from 1987-1993 was a chiefly non-violent resistance movement. That's 6 years. What was the result? A brutal Israeli crackdown that killed over a 1,000 Palestinians. Why do you think the Palestinians resorted mainly to armed resistance during the second Intifidah? Non-violent resistance was attempted and it failed.

 

My bad, I stand corrected. Was there really no violence in Palestine during those 6 years?

 

I don't doubt that there are many Palestinians who believe and have attempted non-violent resistance. For whatever reason none of them have been able to unite the Palestinian factions in the way that Ghandi was able to with India. I don't know if this is due to the success of the Israeli crackdown, the fractious nature of the Palestinians or the lack of world media attention on such leaders. I suspect all three.

Also to follow up on Ottomaton's point keep in mind that while Ghandi and King led nonviolent movements those movements were met by a lot of violence. We know about what happened in Selma and Birmingham along with the killing of freedom riders and other civil rights leaders in the South but in India the British massacred peaceful Indian protestors and routinely beat and arrested leaders of the movement.

As many leaders of nonviolent movements have noted takes more will than a violent movement as for quite awhile the response to it will be violence. The power of it comes from not responding to the inevitable violent response but continuing on with the nonviolent movment.