Resistance against Israeli Occupation in Palestine. — 01. What Strategy ?

1. Resistance to Israeli occupation in
Palestine: what strategy ?
Étienne Godinot - 01.05.2018

2. Precisions
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3. Moïse Maïmonide Baruch Spinoza Franz Kafka Sigmund Freud Henri Bergson
Spain Nederland Bohème Austria France
The huge fertility of the Jewish community
The Jewish community has given the world great spiritual men and women, scientists,
inventors, psychologists, sociologists, pedagogues, writers and artists.
Albert Einstein Marc Chagall Primo Levi Janusz Korczak Moshe Feldenkrais Georges Moustaki
Germany Biélorussia Italia Polska Ukrain Greece

4. The Jews persecuted throughout history…
Throughout their history, the Jewish people suffered unjust
persecutions (accused of spreading the Black Plague, discriminations,
evictions, expropriations, torture, executions) by the Catholic Church
starting in the 4th Century, and namely during the crusades and the Spanish
Inquisition; by the Muslims, the Orthodox, nationalists (Russian pogroms in
1880-1920 : 60 000 dead, in Lithuania, Syria, etc.), and by the communists.
Hate and folly hit their paroxysm during the Holocaust (“catastrophe”
in Hebrew) that took place during the Second World War : the Nazi regime
massively exterminated 6 million Jews (representing 2/3 of European Jews
and circa 40% of Jews worldwide).

5. The Zionist movement
To protect themselves from the persecutions and freely live
their faith, Jewish communities worldwide had the idea and decided to
regroup on the land where their religion was born.
Zionism is a political ideology grounded on a Jewish national
sentiment, described as nationalist by some, as emancipatory by
others, and that advocates for a territory or State populated by Jews
on the Land of Israel (Eretz Israel).
Its main theorist is an Austro-Hungarian writer and journalist,
Theodor Herzl (photo 1), who publishes in 1896 Der Judeenstaat (The
Jewish State). On its ideological and institutional level, Zionism intends
to give the Jews back their status, lost since Antiquity and Hasmonean
and Herodian kingdoms, the status of a people and a territory,
although originally, Zionism is secular. Contrary to a Jewish State,
Herzl dreams of a State where Jews could live in harmony with non-
Jews.
After the Holocaust, the Zionist movement is of course
legitimised and reinforced, to definitively protect Jews from
persecutions.

6. The creation of the State of Israel in 1948 and the Nakba
In November 1947, the UN suggests a partition plan of Palestine
between a Jewish State (on 55% of the territory) and an Arab State;
Jerusalem becomes a corpus separatum under international
administration. The partition plan is welcomes by the Jewish Agency, but
rejected by Palestinian Arabs, Arab States, and right-wing Zionists. The
British, who abstained from the vote, announce that they will not
collaborate in its establishment.
The next day, violence starts, opposing paramilitary forces from both
sides, which results in numerous civilian victims. The State of Israel is
proclaimed on 14 May 1948. The Arab League declares the state of war,
with Transjordan, Egypt, Syria and Iraq supporting it. Il a few months,
Israeli forces take the advantage and occupy West-Jerusalem.
The war has huge demographic consequences : close to 750 000
Palestinian Arabs are chased or flee Israel and find refuge in the West
Bank, Transjordan and Lebanon. It is the Nakba, catastrophe in Arab.
In the following years, approximately 600 000 European and Arab Jews
establish themselves in Israel.

7. A long time persecuted who has become persecutor ?
How is it possible that the State and majority of Israelis
(75% Jewish) can treat the Palestinian people with so much
contempt and inhumanity ?
Israelis have taken over most of Palestine’s territory :
- first, upon the creation of the Israeli State in 1948, which
did not respect the plan drawn up by the UN in November
1947 ( the Nakba : Arabic for “catastrophe”)
- later, during the 6 day war in 1967*.
* Egypt loses Gaza and the Sinai Peninsula, Syria is amputed on the
Golan and Jordan loses the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

8. Land grabbing, economic stifling, discrimination
Israel continues to evict Palestinians from their land, to create Israeli colonies in the
West Bank (cf. maps below), to confine them in ghettos and behind walls, to deprive
them of water, freedom of movement, imposes maritime blockades on Gaza and treat
East Jerusalem Palestinian inhabitants as second zone citizens.

9. For too long, Palestinians choose violence
Palestinian leaders were for a long time fascinated by examples of
armed conflict such as recommended by Che Guevarra or in cases of
colonisation, such as Algeria or Vietnam.
(without realising that the end of the Algerian and Vietnam wars were less
provoked by military Algerian and Vietnamese victory rather than more the
result of French and American popular indignation against these two “dirty
wars”).
Armed struggle took the form of a classic war, but in obviously less
favourable conditions for Arabs and Palestinians in an arid country: the Six
Day War in June 1987 (photo 1) was a total disaster for Arab armies
(Egypt, Jordan, Syria).
Violence also took the abject form of terrorism: on 5th September
1972, members of the Israeli Olympic team were taken hostage and
assassinated by members of the Palestinian organisation “Black
September” (photo 2), which durably shatters the credibility of the
Palestinian cause.

10. For too long, Palestinians choose violence
Palestinian violence also manifests itself in:
- Attacks against Israelis (which were the first reason behind the
decision to build the security wall, the latter allowing the
isolation of villages and reduction of Palestinian territory)
- Rocket attacks (photo 1) from Gaza (useless, they inevitably
result in Israeli bombings on Gaza)
- And more recently, knife attacks against Israelis
Photos:
- 5th July: suicide bombing against a bus in Meggido, 17 killed, including
13 soldiers
- Qassam rocket launcher
- Incitement to knife attacks on a wall in Palestine

11. The nonviolent attitude of the Palestinian people
Outside these dramatic and totally unproductive outbreaks, we
must underline the absence of hatred and the globally nonviolent
attitude of the Palestinian people, for instance during the second
Intifada.
Of course it still took place and there were, are and will always be
Palestinian extremists who negate the Holocaust, who refuse the right
to exists to the Israeli people, who commit suicide-bombings and
launch rockets.
But international visitors are struck by the patience and hope of a
people that has been despised for so long, by these mothers who ask
their sons not to throw stones at Israeli soldiers, by these peasants
who replant olive trees that were pulled out by Israeli colonisers under
military watch, who rebuild their destroyed houses, and by those old
wise men who state “There is enough room for two people”.

12. Changing strategies
As written by Bernard Ravenel (photo 1) in his book (photo
2), “the Palestinian national movement thought it necessary and
possible to obtain liberation through a sustained armed struggle,
and received the support of the Arab world in particular. It lost, at
the price of huge human and material destructions.
An intact will to resist led it to draw the lessons from its
political and military failures and to engage in a popular nonviolent
resistance, admired throughout the dominated world and which
paved the way for the Arab spring. Essentially choosing the
patient but painful way of mass civil disobedience, nowadays
represented by Marwan Barghouti (photo 3), the Palestinian
Mandela still imprisoned, this resistance should allow the
Palestinian people to hope to be freed by the Israeli military
occupation, condemned by the almost entirety of the international
community”.

13. Disturbing nonviolence…
Palestinian nonviolence worries the hardest Israelis, who do not
hesitate to deport Palestinian nonviolent leaders (e.g. Mubarak Awad
in 1988).
The assassination by Israel, on 22nd March 2004, of Hamas
spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin (photo above), who had just
spoken in favour of a compromise with Israel, probably had the
underlying objective of multiplying the number of Palestinian deadly
kamikaze operations, which would justify the military occpuation.
Israeli historian Zeev Sternhell (photo below), holds that Israeli
secret services supported the creation of Hamas, pro-armed struggle,
to overthrow the authority of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation,
open to dialogue.

14. Refusing violence…
including throwing stones
In front of one of the most powerful and trained armies in the
world, Palestinian rebellion has, for the last 60 years, both failed
and been a mistake.
Nonviolence implies not only refusing committing attacks and
using of weapons (be they rockets sent on Israel by Hezbollah or
bombings), but also refusing the throw stones.
This “tension releaser” – understandable, namely for young
people – is a sign of resistance. But it also a danger for the police
and army men aimed at. It can only reinforce the victims’ and Israeli
population’s adherence to the security-driven governmental politics.
It gives Israel the justification to violently repress and enclose in
ghettos.

15. Another strategy,
but also another state of mind
The hope for Palestinians, but also for Israelis and for the
peaceful coexistence of both people, is today clearly affirmed in the
Palestinian people’s massive and generalised choice to use a
nonviolent strategy, both defensive and offensive.
The new orientation of this struggle could also inspire other
people and social categories that throughout the world, suffer
injustice and violence.
But a nonviolent strategy implies training and practice.
More than that, it implies a new state of mind : we do not fight
against people, but against an oppressive system. We do not have
enemies to kill, but adversaries with whom we will have to negotiate
and cohabitate.
Photos:
- The Salt Marche led by Gandhi in 1930
- The Montgomery bus boycott led by Martin Luther King in 1955

16. Big nonviolent campaigns ?
What to do then?
Palestinians will find the answer, together with their Israeli and
international allies who oppose the occupation and apartheid.
We could imagine regular campaigns of civil disobedience (a
day every 3 or 6 months), bringing together Palestinians from the
West bank and Gaza, Bedouins from Negev : for instance, the
attempts by thousands of trained demonstrators to cross check-
points.

17. Big nonviolent campaigns?
Such campaigns, articulated with the BDS campaign
(Boycott, Disinvest, Sanction), could be powerfully supported
by the press and Palestinian and Israeli diaspora throughout
the world.
It would contribute to “rebalancing the trays” and make a
negotiation possible, thanks to both parties being at equal
level.
See www.irnc.org, the following slides :
What is nonviolence?
Means and steps to a nonviolent campaign
Civil disobedience strategies, etc.
Photos:
- The Delano-Sacramento March (United Farm Workers, Cesar Chavez, 1966)
- Demonstrations against the Berlin wall (1989) following the nonviolent uprising of
Eastern Europeans
- The JanSatyagraha march led by Ekta Parishad in 2012

18. Blood brothers ?
The following slides will present figures of the
resistance to Israeli occupation of Palestine, who also seek
ways to achieve durable peace between these two Semite
people.
* For linguists, Semites are speakers of Semitic languages, an
extension of the Afro-Asian family, principally resident on the Middle
East, North Africa and the African Horn.
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