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News from the Region

A Report from the Celebrating Nonviolent Resistance Conference

Bethlehem, Palestine, December 27-30, 2005

Noah Merrill serves as Program Coordinator for AFSC’s work in Southeastern New England

In the mainstream Western media, the concept of a nonviolent Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation is invisible. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is constantly painted as intractable by definition, with both sides locked into a violent struggle with no winners. Palestinians particularly are painted as irrational, violent by nature, prone to corruption, and unwilling to compromise. Whenever a glimmer of hope is offered, it is due to Israeli action or, as was the case with the death of Yasser Arafat, Palestinian misfortune, and not in any way due to the agency or initiative of Palestinians. For this reason, it is unsurprising that few observers have seen the faces of hope presented by the Palestinian nonviolent resisters and their allies in the Israeli and international solidarity movements.   

As a representative of the American Friends Service Committee’s Middle East Task Force, I traveled to Palestine in late December 2005 to attend the international conference “Celebrating Nonviolent Resistance”, held at Terra Sancta College in Bethlehem, Palestine, behind Israel’s Separation Wall. The conference was co-sponsored by the Palestinian-led NGOs Holy Land Trust and Nonviolence International, and endorsed by dozens of international NGOs and faith-based organizations dedicated to promoting a just solution to the conflict.

For four days, hunkered down in the damp 40-degree winter of the Palestinian desert, hundreds of internationals joined Palestinian and Israeli nonviolent activists in the Occupied Palestinian Territories to speak, listen, and strategize for a peace built on justice. It should be noted that the conference sought to consider nonviolent resistance movements globally, with a particular emphasis on the Palestinian experience of struggle, thereby facilitating a sharing of learnings from different locations while giving the resistance and successes of the Palestinian movement center stage. Next year and in future years, the conference will be held in another region of the world in which people are engaged in nonviolent struggle against injustice.

While the sharing and experience of the conference was exceptionally rich, several significant themes emerged from the conference and associated events. First, the depth and significance of the “Palestinian School” of nonviolence, both historically and currently; second, current issues and challenges facing this movement; and third, the opportunities for constructive engagement by international allies of the Palestinian people, especially in North America and Europe.

The Palestinian School of Nonviolence

Throughout the conference analysts and practitioners of nonviolent struggle elaborated on the profoundly nonviolent tenor of the most widespread and foundational of Palestinian resistance actions: sumud, an Arabic word meaning “steadfastness”. One speaker affirmed that the simple act of survival under military and economic occupation is an act of resistance, and that Palestinian society as a whole had proven itself exceptionally resilient in this struggle, contrary to the expectations of policymakers in Israel who expected them to emigrate en masse as the Occupation continued. This continued presence in spite of the most repressively violent and demeaning practices, he said, reaffirms their undeniable claim to their homeland, proving, in the words of one activist, that “they may be the hammer, but we are the flowers.”   

Ayed Morrar, coordinator for the popular committees against the Wall in the Ramallah region of the West Bank, spoke powerfully of the struggles, the courage, and the growth in legitimacy of nonviolent civil resistance in the struggle to prevent the annexation of Palestinian land by the Separation Wall.

Palestinians, Israelis and internationals protesting the Seperation Wall in Budrus. Photo: International Solidarity Movement

Morrar described his efforts to gain support for active civil resistance to the Wall in the town of Budrus, a community that would have been cut in half by the path of the Wall. At first, he said, there was little support within the town leadership, and people mocked his idealism in the face of what was considered a foregone conclusion: the annexation of over half the town’s farmland in the name of Israeli “security”. They even refused to provide him with support in creating signs for use in the actions of the upcoming campaign. In response to this challenge, Morrar, echoing the phrase so familiar in Latino movements of resistance, settled on the slogan: “We Can Do It!”

Morrar recognized that there were martyrs in the struggle against the Wall in Budrus, nonviolent activists were wounded and killed. But as the struggle concluded, the Israeli Wall had been re-routed, forced back to Israel’s internationally recognized borders by the strength of the popular committees. A politician who had earlier mocked Morrar was convinced: he paid for the mass printing of signs to be used in the expansion of similar campaigns in communities being devastated by the Wall’s advance. The signs read: “We Can Do It!”

Current Issues and Challenges

As in all vibrant, living movements, significant differences in perspective exist within the communities engaged in promoting and implementing nonviolent resistance. Theoretical and strategic work is being done along diverse lines both internationally and throughout Palestine and Israel. Significantly, this conference provided an important opportunity for exchange and building understandings between different generations, between grassroots activists and members of the NGO community, and between Palestinians and international allies. The participation and solidarity of Jewish Israeli activists was particularly important, as it helped underscore the difference, in some cases, between the policies of the Israeli government and the opinions of Israeli Jews themselves.

Coordinators of the Popular Committees Against the Wall spoke repeatedly in discussions on strategy and tactics about the “laboratory of nonviolent resistance”, a place which “creates innovation and growth through real-world experience”. While the young, already battle-hardened leaders were eager for exchanges of experience with allies (such as members of the International Solidarity Movement [ISM], with whom they work closely), they stressed the importance of indigenous Palestinian leadership and emphasized the value of the wisdom that arises from practice on the ground. They regretted the impacts of what they called “activism colonialism”—the influence of international activists and NGOs imposing their own agendas and analyses on Palestinians, a tendency they saw as denying not only the deep roots of nonviolent struggle in their communities, but also the crucial dimension of their agency as actors in control of their own movement, in solidarity with international and Israeli allies. Recognizing and taking steps to change this troubling trend was one of their chief goals for the conference.    

At the same time, the valuable role of international groups such as the ISM and the North American Christian Peacemaker Teams were acknowledged. Through accompaniment, human rights documentation, and maintaining a presence in solidarity with Palestinians in the Occupied Territories, these groups and numerous others have helped provide essential space for the growth and strengthening of Palestinian nonviolent leadership, and have insulated them to some extent from the more brutal dimensions of IDF and Israeli police repression, at least for a time.

Time for Action and Solidarity

From my experience at the conference it is clear that international solidarity is an essential requirement of supporting nonviolent resistance in Palestine and Israel. The ever-present occupation forces and the startling growth of illegal settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories demonstrate the overwhelming international economic and military support received by the Israeli government and settler movements. In order to even the balance, international civil society actors must bring pressure to bear on their governments to withdraw support for the occupation. In addition, those international observers who decry violent resistance have a moral obligation to support nonviolent alternatives for justice and liberation from a brutal occupation. It is only through the action of the international community that space can be made to allow Palestinians and Israelis to work together to build a peace based on international law, human rights, and the fundamental worth and dignity of every person.

Noah Merrill serves as Program Coordinator for AFSC’s work in Southeastern New England. He can be reached at nmerrill@afsc.org.

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