The history of the struggle of the Palestinian people includes a rich and meaningful embrace of nonviolent tactics. This occurred most notably during the first intifada (beginning in 1987) but also before and after this event.

The nonviolent struggle began in 1902, when Palestinians first demonstrated against the take-over of land by early Zionist settlers. In 1936, Palestinians (under the Arab Higher Committee) organized an industrial strike against the British Mandate. This event occurred within the larger resistance movement known as the Arab Revolt. The purpose of the strike, which lasted about seven months, was to call for an independent Jerusalem. It began in Jaffa and Nabuls. The strike, which also included the refusal to pay taxes, was met with British repression. The Arab Revolt is generally considered to have occurred in two phases, the first of which consisted of organized labor strikes, but the second including armed resistance.

Forty years later, the first intifada—translated either as “uprising” or “shaking off”— began December 9, 1987 as a response to a deadly collision between an Israeli military truck and a truck of Palestinian workers, and instances of harsh repression against growing protest and demonstration. The United National Leadership of the Uprising (UNLU) was founded in 1988 as a coalition of leaders from the West Bank and Gaza, and comprised of members from Fatah, PFLP, DFLP, and PCP, who directed the activities of the uprising (Rubenberg, 210). Especially for the initial years, the first intifada was notably nonviolent in nature, “it is worth underscoring the largely nonviolent character of this intifada. Stone-throwing demonstrations and individual armed attacks against selective Israeli targets notwithstanding, the intifada was consciously and deliberately envisioned as an organized and universal unarmed civilian struggle against the Israeli Occupation” (Dajani in Zunes 57-59). Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, including men and women as well as young and old and people from various occupations and socioeconomic levels joined in the resistance. Nonviolent activities included boycotting Israeli instructions (especially civil administration in the West Bank and Gaza Strip) civil disobedience in the form of ignoring curfew and other orders from the Israeli army, an economic boycott in terms of refusing to work in the settlements and refusing to pay taxes, and protest activities like demonstrations (Salem in Boer and Jaap, 190) in addition to “nonviolent demonstrations, sit-ins, marches, displaying the Palestinian flag, and mock-funerals” (Dajani, 69).

The mass nonviolent movement during the first intifada relied on the grassroots networks and popular committees that had already been established in the 1970s. These committees and networks—in fields like agriculture, women’s issues, and health care— had formed as a response to the restrictive environment of the occupation (Dajani in Zunes, 55)
Israel responded to the uprising by outlawing popular committees, holding tax raids, establishing curfews and severe travel restrictions, and arresting and deporting leaders (Dajani in Zunes, 58).

In the 1980s Palestinians took action against Israelis from the Nature Preservation Society who were uprooting olive trees. Palestinians were encouraged to boycott Israeli fruit companies and plant their own gardens, as well. These events are often known as the Qataneh protests, named after the village just north of Jerusalem.

Beit Sahour, a small town adjacent to Bethlehem, was an especially important center of nonviolent resistance during the first intifada. Along with boycotting Israeli products, illegally flying the Palestinian flag, ignoring military orders, destroying Israeli ID cards, and educating children in underground schools, the people of Beit Sahour pushed for self-reliance that included backyard gardening and secret dairy farms. More notoriously, Beit Sahour is known for organizing a tax revolt in 1989. Individuals withheld taxes, and several hundred small businesses (including olive wood factories and car repair shops) refused to pay the value-added tax to Israel (Grace, 101). The Israeli army responded harshly to this nonviolent resistance; about 40 people were arrested and belongings were confiscated to cover the debts of the residents. The value of the money—both cash and from bank accounts—and property taken is estimated between 1.5 and 7.5 million dollars and the amount seized was not related to the amount of taxes owed (Grace, 99, 102). Beit Sahour was declared a “closed military zone” and during the 42 day siege of the town no telephone or electricity service, food supplies, or journalists were allowed to enter. The town was also under a 24-hour curfew and approved residents could only leave the village for work or school during the day (Grace, 100). The UN Security Council debated a resolution condemning the siege and seizure of property. The United States vetoed the resolution.

The efficacy of the first intifada is a matter of discussion. While the first intifada did not succeed in ending the occupation, it did inconvenience Israel (the army, the state) and some of the repression techniques, most notably Rabin’s infamous “break the bones” policy, negatively affected public opinion within Israel. More importantly, mass movements of nonviolent resistance (such as the first intifada) expose the power and dignity of the Palestinian people, both to themselves and to the international community. The strict repression of the resisters of the first intifada is evidence of the power potential of ordinary people. The arrests and deportations show that Israeli authorities perceived nonviolent resistance to be a significant threat to their hegemony.

The period between the intifadas is a quieter period for nonviolent activism because of the focus on the Oslo Accords (also known as the Declaration of Principles). The accords were signed in 1993 by American President Bill Clinton, PLO chairman Yasser Afafat, Mahmoud Abbas for the PLO, Israeli Prime Minsiter Yitzhak Rabin and foreign minister Shimon Peres.

The second intifada, in comparison to the first, relied on violent means. There were elements of nonviolence in the second intifada, however. A number of direct action campaigns, boycotts, and civil disobedience were organized on a local level. These activities occurred mainly in response to the expansion of the wall built by Israeli authorities. These nonviolent protests generally took the form of weekly gatherings and demonstrations on Friday (following the Friday prayer). Many villages in the West Bank were active in this regard. Other nonviolent actions included blocking the uprooting of olive trees and organizing boycotts against Israeli products (Norman, 3-5).

Some think the violent nature of the second intifada was a disgruntled reaction to the lack of ‘successes’ of the first. The first intifada included massive participation in nonviolent demonstrations, strikes, boycotts, etc., but the situation for Palestinians did not improve. While the first intifada was orchestrated to gain the attention and respect of the international community, the second was largely an internal response to the continuing oppressions of the occupation. While it is fair to make comparisons between the incidences of nonviolence in the first and second intifadas, it is also important to note the cases of nonviolence during the second intifada that did occur and consider these events in the context of the political climate at the time. During the first intifada, the PLO leadership was illegal, which resulted in the formation of the umbrella organization Unified National Command of the Uprising. Fatah’s umbrella organization was called the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). The Palestinian Authority was focusing on normalization and stability during the period of the second intifada. (Kuttab, D., 2001)

In this period there was also a shift in the organizing of nonviolent resistance: from political parties and popular committees to nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). It is also important to realize that Israel’s response to the violence of the second intifada made life (and nonviolent resistance) much more difficult for Palestinians; new checkpoints, the continuing construction of the wall, and increased security measures made large-scale resistance almost impossible. Therefore, nonviolent activism in this time was primarily advocacy-based, or symbolic (Norman, 9).

Today, many individuals and organizations are working to nonviolently combat the continued occupation of Palestine. Weekly demonstrations against settlements, the wall, and land confiscation in Al Ma’sara and Bi’lin (among many others) continue despite the attempts—in the form of barbed wire, tear gas, or ridicule—to make them go away. In these weekly demonstrations Palestinians are actively disproving the false notion that violent rebellion is the only way to fight against the occupation. Gene Sharp writes, “if the population widely believes that the real power in politics derives from violence, that it ‘comes out of the barrel of a gun,’ then whoever has the most and biggest guns will find it much easier to control the population” (Sharp, 26). This point is especially salient in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict because the division between the rulers and the ruled is so distinct, and clearly corresponds to military capabilities. If power were only understood to be the kind of power that comes from uniforms and large weapons, then the Palestinian people would truly be powerless. However, nonviolence explains power in a different way. While the Palestinian people will likely never be able to match the military capabilities of the state of Israel, they are matching and surpassing it in terms of the resilience and creativity of their nonviolent resistance.

WORKS CITED

Dajani, S. R. (1995). Eyes without a country: Searching for a Palestinian strategy of liberation. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
——— (1999). Nonviolent resistance in the occupied territories: a critical reevaluation. In Nonviolent social movements: a geographical perspective, eds. Zunes, S. et al., 53-74.

Grace, Anne. (1990). The Tax Resistance at Bayt Sahur. Journal of Palestine Studies, 19(2), 99-107.

Kuttab, D. (2001). The Two Intifadas: Differing Shades of Resistance. Information Brief, 66 for The Jerusalem Fund, available at http://www.thejerusalemfund.org/ht/display/ContentDetails/i/2120

Norman, J. M. , 2009 "The Activist and the Olive Tree: Reframing Nonviolent Resistance in the Second Intifada" Paper presented at the annual meeting of the ISA's 50th ANNUAL CONVENTION "EXPLORING THE PAST, ANTICIPATING THE FUTURE", New York Marriott Marquis, NEW YORK CITY, NY, USA Online <PDF>. 2009-05-22 from http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p310647_index.html

Rubenberg, C. (2001). Patriarchy and resistance in the West Bank. Boulder: The Lynne Rienner Publishers.