Christ!... Eric is absolutely right: Naiman, like Gitlin, is full of shit.
Not that it matters really, but Palestinians have been engaged in non violent actions as part of their struggle for decades -- the problem is that no one in the West ever gave a fuck one way or the other-- making it all the more easier for the Israelis to continue their violent race cleansing policies in peace.
"During its struggle for independence, the Jewish community in Palestine could assume some degree of restraint on the part of the British forces. Palestinians know full well that they can expect no such restraint were they to follow the course of the Zionists. Even nonviolent actions— political efforts and merchant strikes, for example, even verbal and symbolic expression—have long been repressed by force, failing for lack of support from outside, not least among those who laud the virtues of such means. If the British had treated the Jews of Palestine in the manner of the Israeli repression over many years, there would have been an uproar in England and throughout the world." (Chomsky, Fateful Triangle)
"...The list goes on, and despite the increase in Israeli repression, Palestinian nonviolent resistance is nothing new. While some have adopted an Israeli narrative that identifies nonviolent Palestinian dissent as something new, the reality is that Palestinians have consistently chosen nonviolent resistance before arms – from the general strikes of 1936, to the consistent appeals to international legal bodies, to the weekly demonstrations against the wall. It has been the continued dispossession at the hands of Israel, and the silence of the international community despite these nonviolent efforts, that has led some Palestinians to view violence as the only option.... http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/may/21/palestinian-nonviolence-israeli-repression
A racist settler state that beats and tortures children for displaying the colours of the Palestinian flag in pictures drawn at school, shoots rockets from planes and helicopters at civilians penned up in concentration camps, that can, even now in full view of the world, parachute a notorious death squad paramilitary unit, guns blazing under the cover of night, onto a ship occupied by nonviolent protesters and those engaged in bearing witness, and then bizarrely enough convince much of the liberal broadcast media in the West that they were defending themselves from deck chair wielding terrorists is NOT amenable to Naiman or Gitlin's warm and fuzzy feel good 'people power'.
In fact, these flaky liberal calls for nonviolence only come about precisely when Palestinians can no longer stand being killed or tortured in large numbers and are forced to respond with violence. It's only at this point that they stop being invisible to the likes of Gitlin.. and then, having been forced to take notice, liberals can only acknowledge, or psychologically come to terms with Palestinian suffering by openly wondering about their use of violence... or about the Palestinian's "refusal to recognize the state of Israel"... or by expressing frustration about the "corruption of their leaders"... or by wondering about their propensity for antisemitism... or by suggesting that Palestinians are being "used" by their leaders (as though they'd be working contentedly in Israel's plantation system were they not being misled by their leaders... or outside agitators)... or by complaining how Palestinians brought this on themselves by sabotaging the Oslo accords... And on it goes, with no shortage of idiot liberal talking-points on this score.
Engaging in armed struggle at different points in their struggle was a matter of Palestinian survival. For example, Israel's strategy to Hamas' repeated calling for cease-fires, or even unilaterally declaring cease-fires on their own (something never acknowledged by the liberal press) is to carry out a relentless campaign of murdering civilians and Palestinian political leaders until they can provoke any desperate violent response. When Hamas finally does respond with rocket attacks, NPR, BBC, or the CBC will be sure to broadcast stories about how the Israeli's retaliated to Hamas terror rockets (by -- unfortunately, of course -- blowing up a Palestinian school). The fact that they can even get away with such a transparent strategy is shocking. But as Max Ajl over at Jewbonics pointed out in a recent example of this scenario...
"...The purpose of the assassinations is to antagonize Hamas into substantively breaking the ceasefire on its end so that Israel can acquire the diplomatic and ideological maneuvering room to carry out another escalation and destroy the weapons stores Hamas has built up, in a long-standing pattern in which Israel uses targeted murders to break ceasefires. The Hamas leadership called the air strike a “crime,” and a “serious escalation” and said that Israel would “bear all the consequences.” That retaliation will take the form of calculated, cool, level-headed Hamas rocketry, a frequent target for condemnation. Even amongst circles sympathetic to those enduring the siege, one sees little recognition of the flight of those rockets being over-determined. The rockets may do nothing for the Palestinian resistance, but if Hamas simply sits on its hands, Israel will (1) keep on assassinating its leadership, in the surety that it will weaken both the Hamas government and movement in the process of doing so -- decapitating senior Palestinian leadership is a long-standing pattern meant to create "chaos in the Palestinian political system" -- or (2) push militants behind the groups further to the right – the Salafiis, Islamic Jihad – that Hamas may or may not be able to control. This is what power does: it makes resistance by the oppressed very hard. In that sense, condemnation of those rockets is an exercise in moralizing." http://www.maxajl.com/?p=5141
This is a general strategy btw, not just against Hamas, but against ANY political leadership the Palestenians throw up. Israel's invasion and destruction of Lebanon in the eighties was an attempt to undermine PLO peace initiatives, and to destroy it as a political force. PLO political and peace initiatives were often accompanied by Israeli political assassinations and massacres. In fact, a fundamental policy of the Israelis in regard to any Palestinian political leadership, or local Arab government, is to neutralize them sufficiently enough so that they can be left alone to carry out as smoothly as possible their ethnic cleansing policies, and to create as quickly as possible the necessary "facts on the ground". When the PLO in the last years of Arafat became a Vichy administration for the Israeli occupation, by among other things, keeping a lid on Palestinian discontent, it didn't any way stop Israeli's use of torture, killings of civilians, the seizure of homes, dumping of toxic waste, the putting up of those charming "Jews Only" signs -- in short, the all around ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, which continued on as normal, and completely off the radar to fuzzy liberals... at least that is until the rise of Hamas and a new Palestinian resistance forced the issue into Western public awareness. Only then did we start hearing the sobbing about the lost opportunities of the Oslo accords (because of Palestinian intransigence), and as fucking always the need for Palestinians to turn the other cheek.
mep