Sami Awad

by Sami Awad

The Palestinian nonviolent movement is as old as the Palestinian liberation movement itself. As far back as the 1930s, Palestinians engaged in nonviolent protests and demonstrations against the British Mandate authorities. This form of protest peaked with the breakout of the 1987 intifada. That uprising, which was for the most part nonviolent in nature, brought immediate international recognition to the Palestinian people, forced Israeli society to recognize Palestinians as a "people" and to recognize their legitimate leadership, and finally led to a peace process. The failure of that peace process, known as the Oslo peace process was not due to the means that led to the negotiating table, on the contrary; it was largely due to the lack of continued mobilization and support by the Palestinian leadership of the popular Palestinian nonviolent resistance movement. Nonviolent resistance should have continued as a means to balance the imbalance at the negotiating table, viewed by the Palestinian leadership as the only way of attaining the legitimate rights of the Palestinians.

The failure of the peace process led to the breakout of the second intifada in 2000. Again, Palestinians initially engaged in nonviolent forms of resistance, but the Israeli military response to these protests was more brutal and forceful than at any time before during the occupation. This convinced some groups within the Palestinian community that only the use of arms and suicide attacks to balance out the pain being heaped upon Palestinians would be effective in making the occupation as costly as possible to the Israeli public. This, however, combined with the lack of a clear strategy and a clear vision to mobilize the Palestinian population in nonviolent forms of resistance, emboldened the Israeli government to take full advantage of the change in the rules of engagement after September 11, 2001 and attempt to de-legitimize the entire Palestinian liberation movement, linking its goals with the means used to achieve them. The Palestinian armed resistance, labeled as "terrorism" by Israel, was portrayed as the goal of the Palestinian liberation movement rather than a means, justified or otherwise.

from: Sami Awad

The silence of the United States government and the governments of the world to the Israeli atrocities taking place against the Palestinian civilians in the West Bank cities continues to be the green light needed for the Israeli government to terrorize, destroy and kill the Palestinian people. When the United Nations' Security Council passes a resolution demanding that a country take immediate action, then every pressure is imposed on that country to abide by this resolution (economic, political and even military). When will Israel be pressured to abide with UN resolutions recently passed-with the support of the US-demanding Israel's immediate withdrawal from the West Bank cities? Imagine if this resolution was passed on a country like Iraq or Syria, what would the US be doing then? Even if Israel was a democracy, as it claims, the world should not accept this as an excuse to allow it to continue its undemocratic, inhumane and immoral actions against the Palestinians. Let, then, every country in the world claim "democracy" and receive international justification to terrorize and kill its enemies in cold blood.