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<DIV><FONT size=2>(13) The myth of Gandhi and Palestinian reality </FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2>By Ali Abunimah </FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2>The Electronic Intifada <BR>8 September 2004 </FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2><A
href="http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article3066.shtml">http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article3066.shtml</A>
</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2>The recent visit of Mohandas K. Gandhi's grandson, Arun
Gandhi, to Palestine has sparked new discussion about the role of nonviolence in
the Palestinian struggle for freedom. In a speech before the Palestinian
Legislative Council, Gandhi called upon 50,000 Palestinian refugees to march
back home en masse from their exile in Jordan, forcing the Israelis to choose
between relenting to a wave of people power, or gunning the marchers down in
cold blood. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2>In an editorial, the English-language Jordan Times gently
endorsed the idea, arguing: "Perhaps it's time for the world to accept that the
refugees need to have a say in their own fate. Perhaps it's time for them to
make their voices heard. Perhaps they should march." However, the newspaper also
warned that such tactics could lead to "losses to the Kingdom," and recalled
Israel's harsh military retaliation against Jordan and Lebanon when the
Palestinian Liberation Organization used those countries as bases. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2>While one can admire Mohandas Gandhi's nonviolent principles,
one can hardly point to the Indian experience as a demonstration of their
usefulness in overthrowing a colonial regime. Indeed, Gandhi's concepts of
satyagraha, or soul power, and ahimsa, or nonviolent struggle, played an
important role during the Indian independence struggle, however the
anti-colonial period in India was also marked by extreme violence, both between
the British and Indians and between different Indian communal groups.
Anti-colonial Indians committed a wide variety of terrorist acts; the British
government was responsible for numerous massacres and other atrocities; and
communal violence before, during and after independence claimed the lives of
millions of people. One simply cannot argue that Indian independence was
achieved in a nonviolent context. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2>Nevertheless, the fact that the Palestinian leadership has
never seriously sought to use mass, organized nonviolence is yet another example
of its monumental lack of creativity. Imagine, for example, if the Palestinian
president, Yasser Arafat, instead of abjectly and unsuccessfully begging his
Israeli captors to allow him to attend the Christmas services at Bethlehem's
Church of the Nativity last year, had simply announced he would walk there
without their permission, and invited all the people of Ramallah, international
figures, clergymen, and the world's press, to walk with him? What if Palestinian
ministers slept in and defended with their bodies the houses and farms of their
people, slated for demolition or seizure by Israel? </FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2>We had a tantalizing glimpse of the potential power of such
action on the bittersweet day the late minister Faisal Husseini was buried in
June 2001, when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians flooded into occupied
Jerusalem, and Israel was powerless to stop them. For those brief hours the
people made Jerusalem free and whole. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2>The call for nonviolent resistance by Palestinians has also
been taken up in Israel, although more disingenuously. Yoel Esteron, a columnist
and former managing editor at Ha'aretz, lauded Arun Gandhi in a recent column,
and wondered, "what would have happened if four years ago the Palestinians had
chosen passive resistance?" Esteron lectured the Palestinians: "It is worth it
to them to choose Gandhi's way. And it is worth it to us. If the Palestinians
stop committing suicide on our buses, this will be a more effective weapon than
explosive belts ... Ostensibly, the key rests in the hands of the stronger side.
Wrong. If Israel were to lay down its weapons, it would be forced to pick them
up again after a few murderous terror attacks ... The key is in the
Palestinians' hands." </FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2>While apparently embracing Arun Gandhi's call for nonviolent
actions, Esteron would not actually want Palestinians to act on Gandhi's
suggestion that refugees return home in force. Esteron has argued forcefully
that the refugees must give up their right of return. Nor is it necessary to
wonder, as Esteron does, what would have happened had the Palestinians opted to
engage in nonviolent resistance. From 1987 to 1993, during the first intifada,
they did exactly that. And despite it all, their mass protests and strikes were
met with brutal repression. Israel did not have bus bombings to use as an excuse
for its retaliation, since the first bus attack occurred in 1994. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2>While the first uprising that began in 1987 shifted
international public opinion toward the Palestinians, it did not result in gains
on the ground. According to the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem, from the
beginning of the first intifada in 1987 until the signing of the Oslo Accords in
September 1993, Palestinians killed a total of 100 Israeli civilians, half of
them inside the Occupied Territories. During the same period, Israeli occupation
forces and settlers killed more than 1,160 Palestinian civilians. The Israeli
answer to what was then a largely peaceful mass uprising was what is commonly
referred to in Israel as "the appropriate and Zionist response" - the violent
confiscation of more land and the building of ever more settlements.
</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2>The present conflict preserves this gross imbalance, where the
victims of violence are overwhelmingly Palestinian, but at far higher levels of
violence all around. The conflict is also increasingly characterized by
nonviolence, even if this remains invisible to most Israelis and to the world's
media. For Palestinians, circumventing barriers and checkpoints in order to get
to school, to work, or simply to visit family or worship, is a daily act of
resistance. The recent hunger strike by thousands of Palestinian prisoners and
their families was another example that was largely ignored internationally. The
wire services carried dozens of photographs of silent vigils and protests by
prisoners' families, but few of those made it into newspapers. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2>On 30 August, China's Xinhua news agency reported the death of
<BR>55-year-old Aisha al-Zaban. She had been on hunger strike for 12 days in
solidarity with her imprisoned son and his comrades. Doctors had advised her to
end her fast, but she refused and died of a heart attack. I was unable to find
her name in any of the dozens of American newspapers that routinely echo the
calls for Palestinians to follow the way of Gandhi. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2>It is important to distinguish between those like Arun Gandhi
and the Palestinians with whom he is in dialogue, who are genuinely seeking new
and creative ways to energize the freedom struggle; and those like Esteron,
whose calls for nonviolence are simply another bankrupt exercise in shifting the
blame from the occupier to the occupied, while still posing as advocates for
peace. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2>Ali Abunimah is a co-founder of The Electronic Intifada. This
article first appeared in The Daily Star</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
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