... an escalation of nonviolence

Amos Gvirtz

The current bloody strugglebetween Israel and the Palestinians has continued for abouttwo years. The many hundreds of victims on both sides, and the evengreater number of injured, are merely the most conspicuous part of the terri-ble suffering that the war has brought.
No-one knows whether either side willeventually achieve its aims in the struggle. But we do know that the cost is terrible.Witnessing the appalling suffering and its appalling cost, we need to ask ourselves ifit is possible to find another way. If the leaders are unable to arrive at a peaceagreement, and a struggle is unavoidable, is it not at least possible to find a differentway of conducting the struggle?
If we take a look at history, we will seethat there are indeed other ways it is possible to conduct a struggle. MahatmaGandhi led the movement to liberate India from the British using purely non-violent means. Martin Luther King also adhered to nonviolent methods when heled Black Americans in the struggle for civil rights. Further back, we can find theQuakers who, in settling the state of Pennsylvania, did so with the agreementof the Native Americans, and while maintaining peaceful relations with them. An influential experimentNonviolence is not new to the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. In thePalestinian national movement ideas of non-violent action were raised at varioustimes. The most interesting experiment for introducing nonviolence as a practicalaction in the Palestinian struggle against the Israeli occupation was made by Dr.Mubarak Awad in the 1980s. This experiment had a lot of influence on the earlystages of the first intifada.
Actions such as the display of the Pales-tinian flag, the declaring of independence in villages, the boycott of Israeli goodsand growing of food to replace Israeli produce, self-determination of opening andclosing times for shops, and the tax revolt in Beit Sahour, are just a few of the nonviolent actions conducted during the firstintifada. Still, for Israelis--and apparently for the rest of the world--the throwing ofstones came to be seen as the central action of the intifada. The stone pho-tographed better than all the other actions and thus made these less visible. Reverse escalationOn the Israeli side, the "Peace Alliance" worked during the early stages of the con-flict. This organisation, which was later joined by various others, tried to preventthe conflict from developing into a war. They called for agreements based on com-promise, which would enable the two peoples to live in peace with one-another.It goes without saying that the peace movement has remained active in recentyears and has grown to include many groups. Throughout the entire duration of the conflict, and especially during the current intifada, we can observe a pattern of esca-lation of violence, which repeats itself again and again. One side harms theother, which then revenges the injury caused. The first side in turn revenges itsown injury even more strongly. The question, therefore, is whether it might be pos-sible to create a reverse escalation: instead of creating an escalation of violence, creat-ing an escalation of nonviolence. Before making such a proposal let us look a littleat the rationale for nonviolence.

Freedom from fear

In a nonviolent struggle, there is the attempt to change the deeds of the oppo-nent without injuring their existence. It enables the opponent ample time to change their ways. While violence workson the principle of creating fear in one's opponent, nonviolence is based on freeingone's opponent from fear. In a conflict like ours there are various forms of nonvi-olence suitable to the situation of each side in the conflict. For Palestinians whoare trying to rid themselves of the Israeli occupation, there is the option of activenonviolence. This was implemented in India's struggle of liberation fromBritain, in the struggle of Blacks for civil rights in the USA, and in many other lesswell-known cases. Israelis too have a nonviolent option, which I term preventivenon-violence--something which was employed by the Quakers when establish-ing Pennsylvania with the agreement of Native Americans. Alternatives to violenceIn a conflict like ours, besides the two sides who are struggling against eachother, there is also a role for a third party who has no enemy in the conflict, andwho can thus intervene in an attempt to make peace between them. The role of athird party with no enemy in the conflict is familiar to us from the use of UN forcesin patrolling a ceasefire between warring factions. Similarly, when the USA bro-kered the peace negotiations between Israel and Egypt, it succeeded due to itsposition as a third party with no enemy in the conflict.In the absence of a state-level decision to adopt nonviolence, we may ask whatopposition movements may do. Even in the midst of today's violent strugglebetween our peoples there are groups of Palestinians who are trying to maintain anonviolent struggle. A prime example is the Palestinian Centre for Rapproche-ment in Beit Sahour. It initiates nonviolent actions against the occupation andthus demonstrates that there is an alternative to a violent struggle. It is assistedby volunteers from abroad who serve as a third party with no enemy in the conflict.These volunteers can nonviolently protect Palestinian activists from Israeli soldiers.There are other Palestinian organisations who inculcate nonviolent education. Their aim is to prepare the Palestinianpeople to accept a nonviolent method of struggle. Preventive nonviolenceOn the Israeli side one can say that the principal demands of the Israeli peacemovement on the government belong to the field of preventive nonviolence. Whenwe call on the government to halt the expropriation of land, the destruction ofhouses, the building of settlements, and exhort it to end the occupation, etc, weare demanding that it will cease to conduct actions that both necessitate violenceand awaken violence in the other side.
The question is what we can do in termsof preventive nonviolence when the government does not respond to our demands?War resisters who refuse to serve as a military tool in the hands of the state (or anyother organisation--and incidentally not just in Israel but in any other place), areperforming an act of preventive nonviolence. Those who refuse service in theoccupied territories are similarly performing an action of preventive nonviolence.Israelis who boycott the produce of settlements in the Occupied Territories are per-forming an act of preventive nonviolence. Thus also Israelis who refuse to work inthe Territories, to tour there, or refuse any cooperation with the occupation, performacts of preventive nonviolence.
During the first intifada we saw howthe presence of journalists and tourists would reduce violence by soldiers con-fronting Palestinian protesters. On the same principle, North American Christianpeace activists moved to Hebron to observe and intervene in matters of humanrights, acting as a third party with no enemy in the conflict. During all the yearsof the current intifada people from North America and Europe have acted asobservers and intervened in matters of human rights, thus fulfilling the role of athird party with no enemy in the conflict.

Active nonviolence

Nonviolence enables Israeli-Palestinian cooperation. Whereas Israelis cannot sup-port the violent struggle against their country even if they see the legitimacy ofPalestinian claims, they can take part in a nonviolent struggle against Israel's unjust actions in the Territories. One can cite asexamples the work of the Israeli Committee against Housing Demolitions in help-ing to rebuild destroyed houses, and the work of the Ta'ayush organisation (seep24) in sending food convoys to villages and towns under closure. These activities,in which Israelis and Palestinians often take part together, are instances of activenonviolence. Since the presence of Israelis helps to shield Palestinians from violenceby Israeli soldiers, they are also fulfilling the role of a third party with no enemy inthe conflict.
The intention here is that each sidewill encourage the other to reduce its tendency to resort to violence, and to turn tononviolence as a means of struggle. Instead of encouraging hatred and thelust for revenge, let us encourage goodwill and trust between the two sides, andmove towards a just and long-lasting peace for the good of both our peoplesand the entire region.

Amos Gvirtz is founder of Israelis and Palestinians for Nonviolence.
Israelis and Palestinians for Nonviolence (+9 952 3261; amos@p-i-for-nonviolence.org; http://www.p-i-for-nonviolence.org/