A terrible and tragic drama is
playing out across Israel/Palestine. It is a dance of death, with Israelis and
Palestinians engaged, each in their own way, in destructive violence.
اضافة اعلان
The US media have focused on the 14 Israelis killed
in recent weeks. But Palestinians have disproportionately been the victims of
violence, with more than 70 killed in the past few months and many more wounded
as Israeli forces conducted night raids into Palestinian villages and responded
to protestors with live fire. During this same time, hundreds of Palestinians
have been arrested and detained, many without charges.
One could rattle off the Israeli provocations — from
land theft and seizures of Palestinian homes to nightly acts of violence by
Israeli settlers — or the Palestinian stabbings or shootings of Israelis at bus
stops or check points. But whatever the provocations or intentions, nothing
good will come from this violence. Nothing ever does.
If we should have learned anything from this
conflict, it is that just as Palestinian violence has not ended the Israeli
occupation or its repression, more Israeli repression or violence will not end
the Palestinians’ resistance to the occupation. If anything, the violence has
produced the opposite.
During the past several decades, the occupation has
intensified, and Israeli politics have become so hardline that it is impossible
to even imagine a governing coalition that would be inclined to act with
justice toward Palestinians. At the same time, the brutality and
acquisitiveness of the occupation has hardened Palestinian attitudes,
strengthened extremist currents, and driven some to carry out violent acts of
desperation.
Compounding this tragic dance of death are those who
cheer the violence or seek to justify it. During this past bloody week, some
Arab commentators praised the spate of Palestinian attacks on Israelis calling
them “heroic acts of resistance”, gloating that the killings had caused the
Israelis to cower in fear.
Supporters of Israel, on the other hand, applauded
the repression, urging more forceful measures to “crack down” on Palestinians.
Some called for more mass arrests or intensified settlement development,
arguing that only tougher measures would put an end to the violence.
Both views are dead wrong.
But it continues, with no lessons learned and the
behavior of both sides playing into the fears of the other, setting the stage
for yet another round of anger, revenge, and violence.
During the second intifada, I warned that because
violence was a dead end (literally), a new strategy was needed — a strategy
that defines a goal and then develops a series of tactics that will lead to
that goal. I understood that Palestinian anger was real and justified. But
revenge is not a strategy. It might make some feel momentary satisfaction, but
history has demonstrated that because the occupier has a monopoly on force,
when it responds, it does so disproportionately, taking hundreds of lives for
each one lost.
Violence begets more violence. One Palestinian
leader noted to me: “When we use stones, they shoot us. When we use guns, they
bring heavy weapons. And when we fire rockets, they bomb us with jets.”
The lesson: when the tactics used do not advance
your goal, they do not constitute a strategy.
Revenge is not a strategy, but neither is complaining about injustice or passing toothless resolutions. Israel will not change by itself, nor will the US or the UN. Therefore, Palestinians must identify what they can change and lay out a path to produce that change. That is the definition of a strategy.
Back then, I also noted that the Palestinian
leadership had no discernable strategy either. Calls for a new UN resolution
would never provide a solution because the US, for reasons of domestic
politics, would block it. Relying on the
EU was also pointless because the EU was weak and indecisive and had proven
itself incapable of acting independently. The Russians, Chinese, and the
“non-aligned” might be counted on to pass resolutions denouncing the
occupation, but because they had no interest in a direct confrontation with the
US, their resolutions were not worth the paper they were printed on. And
appeals to international law or “legitimacy” were hollow since there was no
enforcement mechanism in place.
Revenge is not a strategy, but neither is complaining
about injustice or passing toothless resolutions. Israel will not change by
itself, nor will the US or the UN. Therefore, Palestinians must identify what
they can change and lay out a path to produce that change. That is the
definition of a strategy.
Martin Luther King once observed that when
confronting a more powerful foe, one must never play into their strength.
Instead use “jiu-jitsu” by turning their power into a weakness.
What I proposed then and propose again is a mass
non-violent resistance campaign. Imagine the power of a peaceful march of tens
of thousands of unarmed, non-rock throwing Palestinians converging on Jerusalem
saying: “Let my people pray.” Or marching from the refugee camps saying: “Let
my people go home.”
Palestinians tried such an approach in the past, for
example, at Al Aqsa in July 2017. And instances of non-violent resistance are
in evidence across Palestine on a weekly basis. What is needed is to grow and
sustain such an effort, making it the new definition of Palestinian resistance.
It will require the combined support of the Palestinian leadership acting to
project this new strategy and imposing the necessary discipline to control any
counter-productive violence.
Consider how it would play out. The Israelis will
attempt to provoke violence. They may shoot demonstrators and make more
arrests. But if the non-violence continues, it will put them in a bind that
neither their military might, nor their hasbara campaigns will be able to
conquer. They will not be able to claim victimhood. And they will not be able
to defeat an empowered Palestinian constituency. Such a campaign will have a
transformative impact on Israeli and US politics. That is the strength of
non-violence. It turns the tables, making the powerful weak and the oppressed
stronger.
It will no doubt be hard to do. But it should be
tried because what has been done to date is not working and a new approach is
desperately needed.
The
writer is president of the Arab American Institute.
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