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Washington Report, April 2006, pages 67-68 Waging Peace Nonviolent Resistance Conference Held in Bethlehem
PEACE activist Jim Vitarello, who attended the International Conference on Nonviolence in Bethlehem, spoke Feb. 5 at the Peace Cafe held at the Bus Boys and Poets restaurant in Washington, DC. According to the conference organizers, about 460 participants attended the Dec. 27-30, 2005 event, including 250 Palestinians, 35 to 40 Israelis and 176 internationals. “Nonviolent resistance has been practiced in every corner of Palestine for many years,” Salan Ta’mari, Palestinian Authority (PA) governor of the Bethlehem District, told the attendees at the conference’s opening dinner. The media rarely reports these acts of resistance, Ta’mari went on to note, so the West is unaware of such actions. According to Dr. Mustafa Barghouti of the Palestinian National Initiative, Palestinians conducted a nonviolent mass popular struggle in the 1920s and continued doing so during the 1936 Palestinian strike, but were violently suppressed by the British, who ruled the region at the time. The media’s failure to cover acts of nonviolent resistance, Barghouti told the group, means their presentation of the struggle solely as a conflict between the Israel Defense Forces and Islamic militants is a profound contradiction with what is really happening between the Palestinians and the Israelis. Mubarak Awad, founder and director of Nonviolence International, suggested a nonviolent plan in which the Palestinian refugee camps in Jordan, Syria and Lebanon would be burned, with the refugees marching toward Israel and demanding their legal right of return. According to Vitarello, Awad sees Palestinian youth as far more determined to secure their rights than they were even 10 years ago, and the international community as more supportive of the Palestinian nonviolent struggle. In Awad’s opinion, the Palestinians must take charge of their own destiny and have a plan of action to serve as their own road map for the next 10 years. Vitarello told the audience of a workshop he attended on “Nonviolence within Palestinian Society,” conducted by Palestinian nonviolence activist Zoughbi Zoughbi. Discussing the many challenges facing the Palestinian nonviolent movement, Zoughbi acknowledged the perception that Hezbollah threw the IDF out of Lebanon and that Hamas forced the Israelis to dismantle their settlements in Gaza. Israel’s separation of Palestinian communities from one another makes it very difficult to discuss strategies and develop consensus concerning nonviolent tactics, he noted. If Israeli nonviolent groups want to make a difference, Zoughbi argued, they need to focus on transforming Israeli society to become less violent, and not worry about changing Palestinian society. During his talk, Vitarello continued, retired Harvard professor of nonviolent theory Gene Sharp stated that history has shown that the tools of liberation were not violence. “Violence is counterproductive,” he stated. “It is what our enemies want us to use.” Noting that the Nazis and Communists planted agents among nonviolent demonstrators, inciting them to use violence against their oppressors, Sharp said that the IDF has used this same strategy recently in the Palestinian village of Bil’in, where the local population has been employing nonviolent actions to resist the building of Israel’s annexation wall through their farmland. Israeli undercover agents threw stones at IDF soldiers in order to provoke a violent confrontation, Sharp said. Vitarello said he was very impressed by Jeff Halper of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, who advised the attendees that any nonviolent actions or strategic planning must be based on six factors. First, any activities to be undertaken must be grounded in reality. Second, all activities must be connected to the larger goal of ending the occupation. Third, the development of a strategy is critical. Fourth, the relationship and trust between the Palestinian leadership and people have been delegitmatized and must be repaired. Fifth, the Palestinian infrastructure has been destroyed and must also be repaired. Finally, Halper said, the focus should be on human rights and international law, all within the framework of a progressive agenda. The conference’s last speaker, Vitarello said, was Prof. Mohammed Abu-Nimer of the American University in Washington, DC, who stressed that discipline and patience are the keys to successful nonviolent resistance. However, Abu-Nimer cautioned, there is a large gap between these ideals and the reality within the Arab world, due to several external and internal factors. For one, he said, colonialism and Zionism have oppressed the Arab people for a long time. Another factor is the Arab world’s economic dependence on other nations. Within the Arab world, Abu-Nimer continued, a system of technocracy and loyalty has replaced accountability and professionalism, and corruption is pervasive throughout the region. A heavily male-dominated society prevents women from participating in positions of leadership, he noted, and, he added, while self-examination and critical reflections are key to building a nonviolent movement, little of this is occurring in the Arab world. Abu-Nimer went on to cite several myths about nonviolence within the Arab world, such as that nonviolence is a tool of cooperation with those in power, that violence eventually can end any conflict, that nonviolence is too slow and too costly, and that occupation is brutal and thus defies a nonviolent approach. —Jamal Najjab |
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