Current Events
The Power of Non-Violence
by MUSTAFA BARGHOUTHI
Over the past 64 years, Palestinians have tried armed struggle; we have tried negotiations; and we have tried peace conferences. Yet all we have seen is more Israeli settlements, more loss of lives and resources, and the emergence of a horrifying system of segregation.
Khader Adnan, a Palestinian held in an Israeli prison, pursued a different path.
Despite his alleged affiliation with the militant group Islamic Jihad, he waged a peaceful hunger strike to shake loose the consciences of people in Israel and around the world. Mr. Adnan chose to go unfed for more than nine weeks and came close to death. He endured for 66 days before ending his hunger strike on Tuesday in exchange for an Israeli agreement to release him as early as April 17.
Mr. Adnan has certainly achieved an individual victory. But it was also a broader triumph - unifying Palestinians and highlighting the power of nonviolent protest. Indeed, all Palestinians who seek an independent state and an end to the Israeli occupation would be wise to avoid violence and embrace the example of peaceful resistance.
Mr. Adnan was not alone in his plight. More than 300 Palestinians are currently held in “administrative detention.” No charges have been brought against them; they must contend with secret evidence; and they do not get their day in military court.
Britain’s practices in Northern Ireland during the 1970s and 1980s were not so different from Israel’s today - and they elicited a similarly rebellious spirit from the subjugated population.
In 1981, Bobby Sands, an imprisoned member of the Irish Republican Army, died 66 days after beginning a hunger strike to protest Britain’s treatment of political prisoners. Mr. Sands was elected to Parliament during his strike; nine other hunger strikers died before the end of 1981; and their cases drew worldwide attention to the plight of Roman Catholics in Northern Ireland.
Just as Margaret Thatcher, then the British prime minister, unsympathetically dismissed Mr. Sands as a “convicted criminal,” Israeli officials have accused Mr. Adnan of being an active member of Islamic Jihad. But if this is the case, Israel should prove it in court.
Mr. Adnan’s actions over the past nine weeks demonstrated that he was willing to give his life - nonviolently and selflessly - to advance Palestinian freedom. Others must now show similar courage.
What is needed is a Palestinian version of the Arab revolutions that have swept the region: a mass movement demanding freedom, dignity, a just peace, real democracy and the right to self-determination. We must take the initiative, practice self-reliance and pursue a form of nonviolent struggle that we can sustain without depending on others to make decisions for us or in our place.
In the last several years, Palestinians have organized peaceful protests against the concrete and wire “separation barrier” that pens us into what are best described as bantustans. We have sought to mobilize popular resistance to this wall by following in the nonviolent traditions of Martin Luther King Jr. and Mohandas K. Gandhi - and we remain determined to sustain peaceful protest even when violently attacked.
Using these techniques, we have already succeeded in pressuring the Israeli government to reroute the wall in villages like Jayyous and Bilin and helped hundreds of Palestinians get their land back from settlers or the Israeli Army.
Our movement is not intended to delegitimize Israel, as the Israeli government claims. It is, instead, a movement to delegitimize the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, which we believe is the last surviving apartheid system in the world. It is a movement that could free Palestinians from nearly 45 years of occupation and Israelis from being part of the last colonial-settler system of our time.
I remember the days when some political leaders of the largest Palestinian political parties, Al Fatah and Hamas, laughed at our nonviolent struggle, which they saw as soft and ineffective. But the turning point came in the summer of 2008, when we managed to break the Israeli naval siege of Gaza with small boats. Suddenly, I saw great respect in the eyes of the same leaders who had doubted the power of nonviolence but finally recognized its potential.
The power of nonviolence is that it gives Palestinians of all ages and walks of life the tools to challenge those subjugating us. And thousands of peace activists from around the world have joined our movement. In demonstrations in East Jerusalem, Silwan and Hebron we are also being joined by a new and younger Israeli peace movement that categorically rejects Israeli occupation.
Unfortunately, continuing Israeli settlement activity could soon lead us to the point of no return. Indeed, if we do not soon achieve a genuinely independent Palestinian state, we will be forced to press instead for a single democratic state with equal rights and responsibilities for both Palestinians and Israelis.
We are not sure how long it will take before our nonviolent struggle achieves its goal. But we are sure of one thing: it will succeed, and Palestinians will one day be free.
Conversation about this article
1: Harinder (Uttar Pradesh, India), February 25, 2012, 8:01 AM.
Jews and Muslims - age-old cousins - will have to learn the art of co-existence and tolerance. Their own history has nothing to teach them except hate and distrust. Live and let live is the only way forward.
2: Baldev Singh (Bradford, United Kingdom), February 25, 2012, 9:48 AM.
Non-violence should be a statute in every ideology!
3: Sangat Singh (Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia), February 26, 2012, 2:32 PM.
Sikh History is replete with instances of non-violence far greater than any Gandhian moment. This was despite having the courage and ability to strike, according to the edict of Guru Gobind Singh to take up the sword only when every other peaceful means had failed. To face the barrel of the gun unarmed requires far greater courage. Let's revisit our history of the supreme examples of martyrdoms, starting with Guru Arjan at the hands of Jahangir who had the notion of wanting to destroy the fledgelng Sikh nation and and turning the entire subcontinent into an Islamic State. Then, the unparalleled martyrdom of Guru Tegh Bahadar in defence of the right of another faith to practice its beliefs and to protect them from forcible conversion by a third faith. Another example was Guru ka Bagh in the early 1920s to regain control of their own houses of worship that had been usurped by British-sponsored mahants who had started to think themselves as owners of our gurdwaras. In 1921, one such Sundar Das Udasi, the mahant of Guru ka Bagh who lived a dissolute life and refused Sikhs from cutting down trees for firewood for Guru ka Langar. At Sundar Das's behest, five Sikhs were arrested on trumped-up charges of trespass and speedily fined 50 rupees each and sentenced to six months rigorous imprisonment. This sparked off an unparalleled agitation, and Sikhs decided to daily send a batch of five Sikhs to chop firewood and court arrest. The daily arrests gave such a boost to the movement that G.M. Beatty, Additional Superintendent of Police, ordered the police to disperse them by lathi-charges; the non-violent protesters were mercilessly beaten and contemptuously dragged by their hair by the police in an attempt to drive them away through terror. A new heroism had arisen and imparted a new lesson in moral warfare. The jathas were to remain silent and peaceful in word and deed, and stoically suffered. They arrived in much larger numbers and submitted themselves to the beatings. A new force had risen in the land, a new lesson in moral warfare taught to the world. Some 5,605 Sikhs thus courted arrests. At the end, the mighty Empire came down to its knees. English missionary Rev. C. F. Andrews who happened to visit Guru ka Bagh and eye witnessed the police terror, put it thus: that he had witnesses hundreds of Christs being crucified and gave a graphic description of the hitherto unprecedented passive resistance of the Akalis. Do you have other equal examples of any such a definition of non-violence? [For full story on what C.F. Andrews reprtage, go to http://www.sikhchic.com/article-detail.php?id=115&cat=12 ]