Particularly since the Second Intifada, the demand or recommendation, that Palestinians embrace non-violence as a way of securing their basic rights has been heard a number of times from Western commentators and politicians. Yet such an appeal can be crucially flawed. Firstly, it ignores the rich history of Palestinian non-violent civil disobedience, from commercial strikes under the British Mandate to the Popular Committees against the Wall in 2009.
Secondly, it highlights the double-standard whereby Israel’s right to armed self-defence is considered a natural law (and publicly affirmed), while Palestinian violence is considered illegitimate. Thirdly and finally, this kind of recommendation ignores the fact that Israel’s policies towards the Palestinians are shaped by the core apartheid aims of land control and domination; it does not matter if the Palestinians are firing Kalashnikovs or lying down in front of bulldozers.
Mary King’s book, A Quiet Revolution: The First Palestinian Intifada and Nonviolent Resistance (with an introduction by President Jimmy Carter), is an excellent resource and history of Palestinian non-violence, with a particular focus on the way in which Palestinian communities challenged the occupation during the uprising of the late 1980s. This is the book’s greatest strength, along with the chronicling of Palestinian non-violent resistance to Zionist colonisation and British rule during the Mandate period. This is a largely unknown, and poorly understood dimension of Palestinian history, and A Quiet Revolution is worth reading for these accounts alone.
King first narrates how Palestinians under British rule began to organise themselves and express political dissent through strikes, demonstrations, non-cooperation, and other similar measures. One can spot the parallels between the British crackdown and subsequent Israeli policies designed to repress Palestinian opposition: the Mandate authorities resorted to “collective fines”, “mass arrests” and “demolishing homes”. In June 1936, a Palestinian strike was declared illegal and 400 leaders of strike committees were imprisoned by the British.
The story of Palestinian resistance during the Mandate is weaved into the larger geopolitical developments, and it is striking to note how the Zionist political project in Palestine was deliberately undemocratic. Lord Balfour, in a 1919 memorandum, wrote how “in Palestine we do not propose even to go through the form of consulting the wishes of the present inhabitants of the country”. This kind of attitude is in stark contrast to the popular organising and local committees’ characteristic of historic Palestinian resistance.
King’s account of the First Intifada is even more detailed, albeit with a specific focus on those identified as key individuals and groupings involved in coordinating and inspiring the kind of civil disobedience and non-violent resistance typical of the first 2-3 years of the uprising. There is also an interesting account of the mobilisation of Palestinian civil society that had occurred through the 1970s and ‘80s that laid the foundations for the First Intifada.
We also get a sense of how Israel responded to this kind of uprising with what one Israeli journalist cited by King called “naked terrorisation” of the Palestinian people. Demonstrators were shot, and Palestinians’ limbs were deliberately broken in beatings by soldiers. By the beginning of the third year of the First Intifada, 750 Palestinians were dead, compared to 42 Israelis – a ratio of almost 18:1.
The Israeli occupation authorities also tried to suppress the activities of the hundreds of ‘popular committees’ that Palestinians across the Occupied Territories created at a grassroots level to coordinate localised civil disobedience. King notes that in one month alone in 1988, Israel disrupted 37 committees just in Gaza. Beit Sahour, a village that became famous for its defiance of the occupation, boasted 36 committees for a population of a mere 12,000.
In describing how Israel issued deportation orders against 25 leaders of these popular committees, King quotes two Israeli journalists who pointed out the “paradox of Israel’s quickness to deport anyone who showed signs of genuine leadership” while complaining that “there were no Palestinians of stature with whom to negotiate”.
Apart from the account of events in the First Intifada, King also analyses the kind of thinking that was shaping the civil disobedience. For the author, the Intifada’s significance was in how it “constituted for the Palestinians a major shift in organization, thinking, leadership, and purpose”. Specifically, the key activists in the Occupied Territories “sought to redefine the dogma of the guerrilla cadres and to transform ideologies and recruitment mythologies of armed struggle by the few into forms of struggle that relied on the many”.
More on this in a moment, but another key aspect of the First Intifada philosophy was a “realisation” that to some extent, in their own words, the Palestinians “chose to accept occupation”, and their while their “compliance...upheld [the occupation]”, they also “possessed the power to refuse to submit to it”.
Something else that becomes clear is that the support for non-violent resistance amongst the Palestinian people on the ground and even its key advocates during the First Intifada was primarily based on strategic concerns, rather than a moral or spiritual framework (though of course that may have influenced some individuals). In terms of promoting non-violent resistance, the emphasis was on its strategic merits in comparison to armed struggle.
While King clearly empathises with this defence of non-violent resistance, she also acknowledges that the bloody repression of such expressions of dissent can push people towards adopting a violent response. As she notes, “neither the British nor the Zionists responded to the expression of Palestinian grievances when they employed non-violent methods, thus reinforcing the alternative”.
Overall though, it is clear that King wishes to dispel the misconception that non-violent resistance is somehow passive: it is, she and her sources point out, one type of action, and a sharp contrast to inaction. In light of Israel’s continued vast military supremacy and consolidated control of the Occupied Territories (as was seen in the Gaza massacres in January), the argument that mass, popular non-violent struggle has greater strategic value than the activities of the armed resistance factions carries some weight.
The book’s main problem comes when King turns from historical documentation of Palestinian civil struggle to contemporary political prognosis and recommendations in the ‘Epilogue’. King writes that “any effort to forge a lasting compromise over land between the Israelis and Palestinians depends on the evolution of new political thinking on both sides”.
This can sound like the ‘false balance’ that urges both occupier and occupied to make ‘concessions’, which is odd, given that King goes on to point out the “hugely lopsided power relationship”; it may be a misplaced optimism or downplaying of just how unwilling Israel’s political and military leadership is to acknowledge core individual and collective Palestinian rights.
King finishes by calling for “Palestinian statehood”, and affirms this as the way for Israel to gain “acceptance” in the Middle East. Yet earlier, she also points out the difference between the anti-colonial models of resistance in Algeria and South Africa, with the latter emphasising equal rights rather than seeking the removal of the settlers. An anti-apartheid struggle both in Palestine and internationally, which harnesses the power of non-violent resistance and popular action and calls for equality for all peoples in the land, is surely the logical extension of the tradition King faithfully narrates.