The brief // by Ben FrankelPalestinian non-violent resistance will challenge Israel
In the last twenty years, the Palestinians launched two violent campaigns — intifadas — against Israeli occupation; both intifadas — the first in 1988, the second in 2000 — were forcefully suppressed by Israel; a Palestinian scholar, now teaching in the United States, has long advocated a peaceful, Gandh-like resistance as a better way for the Palestinians to achieve their national goals; he argued that the indiscriminate killing of Israeli civilians was not only a moral stain on the Palestinian national movement — it is also counter-productive, because it gave Israel reasons to respond with overwhelming force and continue to portray the Palestinians as unwilling to be partners in peace; the Palestinian leadership ignored him in the past, but appears to be listening to him now; Israel is anxious
In July 1988 Israel refused to allow Mubarak Awad to stay in the West Bank, and forced him to go back to the United States (he had an American citizenship). It may sound strange, but Awad — who now lives in Maryland and teaches at the American University in Washington, D.C.— was an early advocate of peaceful, Gandhi-like Palestinian resistance to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
He was adamantly opposed to Palestinian terrorism of any kind. He believed that the indiscriminate killing of Israeli civilians was not only a moral stain on the Palestinian national movement — it was also counter-productive, because it gave Israel reasons to respond with overwhelming force and continue to portray the Palestinians as unwilling to be partners in peace.
Yassir Arafat and other Palestinian leaders did not listen to Awad, and instead continued their violent campaign against Israeli civilians, culminating in the second intifada which broke out in 2000.
The Arab Spring has made Awad’s prescription not only relevant again — it has validated his approach. Unarmed masses in Tunisia and Egypt toppled authoritarian regimes, while the Syrian regime, trying to stave off a similar fate, has resorted to whole-sale violence to suppress similar expression of public unrest in Syria.
Awad believes that a non-violent resistance — and only non-violent resistance — would put unbearable pressure on Israel to reach an agreement with the Palestinians. First, Israel is not Syria or Libya, and despite the presence of extremist elements in the Israeli society and body politics, most Israelis adhere to Western liberal values, and would not tolerate violent suppression of unarmed civilians were they to rise, peacefully, against continued Israeli occupation.
Second, support for Israel is already eroding in the West, and non-violent Palestinian resistance to occupation will hasten that erosion. Israel would not want to lose the support of the United States and Western European countries — nor can it afford to lose this support.
The Palestinians are going to the UN in September, asking for the organization to recognize a Palestinian state in the 1967 borders, and accept the state as a member of the UN. Short of a U.S. veto, the measure will carry.
On the ground, in the West Bank and Gaza, not much will change in the day-to-day life on the Palestinians, regardless of what the UN does or does not do. The question for the Palestinian leadership is whether, this time, they will allow — or even encourage, as Arafat did in 1988 and 2000 — the outbreak of a third intifada, or will the current leadership do something different: listen to Awad and follow his advice.
For Israel, a third intifada, with its violence and rockets and suicide bombing, will be more painful but easier to deal with. A non-violent, peaceful resistance will make life much tougher for Israel, and force it into making decisions which otherwise it would not make.
We are only three months way.
Ben Frankel is editor of the Homeland Security NewsWire
