RE: Rule change?

[Lawrence DeBivort]

The ‘curfew’ is really a lock-down. It is lifted exceptionally, and keeps Palestinians in their houses for most of the time. Lifts are arranged so that Palestinian farmers do not have time to get their products to market, and so the Palestinians have to buy their goods from Israeli vendors who are not under the lock-down/curfew restrictions.   The Druze of the Golan Heights demonstrated in the early ‘80s the potential success of non-violent resistance to Israeli occupation. Their primary issue was that of identity. The Israeli authorities sought to require the Druze to accept Israeli identity cards. Determined to maintain their Syrian nationality, the Druze refused, en masse, by refusing to accept the cards, though their Syrian cards were seized and destroyed by the Israeli occupation troops. This was quite a courageous act, as identity cards were made essential for everything from travel to work, social services, property transactions, etc. Eventually, and with growing support from civilian groups within Israel itself, the Israelis abandoned their identity card laws.  There were also several instances when Israeli troops in the Golan themselves refused to carry out some of the more repressive restrictions that were imposed on the local population.  Druze resisters took to offering passing Israeli troops tea and cookies, and deliberately avoided harassing or cursing the troops.   It has seemed to me that non-violent resistance was a viable strategy for the Palestinians, and indeed there have been many instances of this; but it lost out to the anger that now fuels the Palestinian terror-based resistance.  It is interesting to speculate how things might have turned out had non-violent resistance prevailed.  Certainly, the casualties would have been far fewer, and the level of mutual animosity that has emerged would be lower and more tractable.   The Druze are a small and tightly-knit group. The Palestinians are a much larger population, and much less-cohesive; Christians and Muslims, West Bankers and Gazans, exile and resident Palestinians, farmers and urban educated, etc – all these differences have meant that Palestinian views on resistance to Israel have been varied.   In the US, the anti-racist civil rights movement in the south embraced non-violent resistance as the only strategy that could work; the leading civil rights organizations agreed on the strategy together, and ensured that all civil rights workers were trained in the tactics of non-violence and understood its moral and strategic purposes.  It is hard to see how a comparably broad non-violent centralized strategy could have been adopted among all Palestinians. But I think the hope is still there for small groups to launch non-violent resistance.   One of the keys to non-violence is working is that the media pay attention to what is being done.  Gandhi in India was able to garner this attention through his own charisma and ability to weave compelling symbols into the mix. The US civil rights movement had its white college kids from the north who spread the word back home about what was going on in the south, eventually compelling the US federal government to step in, in favor of the civil rights of southern blacks.  The Druze had little international attention in their efforts to withstand Israeli occupation, BUT they did win over segments of the Israeli population itself, and that proved at least for a while sufficient.   Might segments of the Israeli population (and army) now be able to generate a comparable sympathy for Palestinian non-violent resisters, were they to emerge?   Best regards, Lawry     -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Ed Weick Sent: Monday, September 30, 2002 1:16 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Rule change?   Could a curfew to which nobody paid any attention become a war to which nobody came?   Ed Ed Weick 577 Melbourne Ave. Ottawa, ON, K2A 1W7 Canada Phone (613) 728 4630 Fax     (613)  728 9382   A new intifada is born Increasing numbers of Palestinians are turning to non-violent protests, says DAOUD KUTTAB. But will they be effective? By DAOUD KUTTAB Monday, September 30, 2002 – Page A15, Globe and Mail The time was almost midnight, on Sept. 20, when a number of satellite television stations interrupted their regular programming to announce that Israeli soldiers had warned Palestinians living near Yasser Arafat's headquarters in Ramallah that the building would be blown up in 15 minutes if those inside it didn't come out. Within those tense minutes, the streets of Ramallah filled with ordinary Palestinians. Marchers, often led by women, increased in number as people trapped in their homes for days on end decided to shake off the injustice that had befallen them. Many demonstrated more in defence of their national honour than in support of Mr. Arafat. The popular uprising that began in the Ramallah neighbourhood of Umm al Sharit quickly spread to Nablus, Tulkarem, Gaza and Bethlehem. The next day, women and men came out with pots and pans and beat on their household utensils as a sign of anger and protest. The following day, a candlelight vigil was held as a way to break what people considered a repressive curfew. In 1987, Palestinians introduced the term intifada into the international lexicon, when thousands of youths armed with nothing more than stones rose up against Israeli guns and tanks. In the fall of 2000, when rioting broke out following the visit of Ariel Sharon to the area around the al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, many called those protests the al Aqsa, or second, intifada. Now, with what happened the evening of Sept. 20 in Ramallah, I believe we are witnessing the birth of the third intifada. Since that night, schools in many West Bank cities have remained open, defiant of Israeli curfews. Some areas are organizing popular schools. Some of the more affluent schools are sending homework to their students via e-mail. Curfew days have become high traffic days on the Internet as most people are doing their office or school work from their homes. A major culture is being written up, recorded, photographed and spread on cyberspace about life under curfew. What happened late that Friday night was not without warning. A week earlier, the representatives of the Palestinian people did something unprecedented in Arab politics: They forced a government appointed by Mr. Arafat to resign rather than be shamed by a confidence vote. At about the same time, a public opinion survey, commissioned by the Search for Common Ground, found that a majority of Palestinians supported the idea of non-violent resistance. Hence the peaceful protests that started 10 days ago. In the two previous intifadas, those who favoured more violent confrontation soon came to dominate the protests. Such acts are not only contrary to the spirit of non-violence, they also endanger those involved, quickly limiting the possibility that large numbers of ordinary Palestinians might participate. For a long time, many international critics of the Palestinians have been asking why we don't use non-violent methods to effect change. They argue that if Palestinians do that, a major change will take place in Israeli and international public opinion that will eventually be translated in political terms. Many of us have doubts about that, seeing that the Sharon government is only interested in a Palestinian population that raises the white flag of surrender. When Palestinians in Ramallah carried out their plans to hold a candlelight vigil on Wednesday night, the Israeli army, which had said it would lift Thursday's curfew, reversed its position and reimposed the curfew. Some people obeyed the renewed order; most didn't. Schools in particular have decided that they will no longer call off their teaching duties according to Israeli army dictates. What is worrisome, however, is that the Israeli and international press have ignored or belittled the non-violent nature of what happened in Palestine last week. It seems that the long-awaited change in Israeli and U.S. public opinion will not happen soon, as both peoples continue to be bombarded by news that fulfills the aspirations of those wishing to end the conflict in a violent way. Daoud Kuttab is director of the Institute of Modern Media at Al-Quds University in Ramallah. [EMAIL PROTECTED]