Israel Attacks Nonviolent Resistance in the West Bank

by Charles Lenchner

category: Middle East

Published March 03, 2009 @ 07:09PM PT

Every so often, some folks ask the question: why aren't the Palestinians using nonviolent resistance to defeat the occupation? Why always with the terror? One answer is: they are. Another is: the Israeli occupation is serious business run by professionals. To succeed over time, it must defeat both the violent resistance AND the nonviolent resistance.

Two weeks ago the Guardian ran a story about how the mess in Gaza was providing cover for serious repression of nonviolent activists in the West Bank, specifically in the villages resisting the path of the separation barrier cutting off access to agricultural land.

Recent events support this claim. Last Friday, Palestinians from the Jayyous, Bil'in and Ni'lin were joined by international activists in their ongoing weekly demonstrations. For years now, these villages have been nonviolently resisting the separation wall. Anarchists Against the Wall reports that:

As the protest march reached the end of the village and continued on the road towards the wall, soldiers began firing teargas canisters and throwing concussion grenades, driving people back into the village and causing local youth to throw a handful of stones in retaliation. Army jeeps then entered the village itself, and soldiers went into houses, searching, harassing and intimidating people. Shortly after, the army imposed a curfew on the entire village, as a form of collective punishment designed to scare its residents into stopping their demonstrations.

Ben White (The Guardian) mentions that although the raids on Palestinian villages are commonplace for the occupied West Bank, in recent days the increasing number of raids were taking place in communities known to be hotbeds of civilian led protests, not Palestinian militant groups. Local residents - and others - interpret these assaults as attempts to intimidate the protest movement. White refers to two other important events which took place lately. In East Jerusalem, Israel closed the remaining passage in the wall in the Ar-Ram neighborhood of the city. This cuts off tens of thousands of Palestinians from the city. Those who hold the proper permits will now have to enter the city by first heading north and using the Qalandiya checkpoint. At the same time the Efrat settlement in the West Bank will be expanded with an expropriation of 420 acres.

White claims that these events in the West Bank are even more dramatic and central to the Israel-Palestine conflict than the truce talks with Hamas, the Gilad Shalit case and the worrying rise of Avigdor Lieberman. Yet there hardly been any media coverage on any of these incidents.

It is true that in thinking about the Israel-Palestine conflict, people usually consider Hamas as the focus, whereas the wider context is constantly being forgotten. White insists on reminding us that:

The Hamas Charter is not a Palestinian national manifesto, and nor is it even particularly central to the contemporary leadership. Before Hamas existed, Israel was colonising the occupied territories, and maintaining an ethnic exclusivist regime; if Hamas disappeared tomorrow, Israeli colonisation certainly would not.

Perhaps one of the main reasons the events in the West Bank doesn't get media coverage has to do with the fact it really does bring up the true essence of the conflict: Israel stealing land while using the tools or repression to keep the population defenseless. The resistance in the West Bank and its violent suppression has nothing to do with Hamas. The right to protest against the normalization of the occupation is one of major importance.

Resistance is the twin brother of occupation. You cannot have one without the other. And the more difficult it is for civilians to act in concert using nonviolent methods, the easier it is for armed militants to claim that they are the answer. This is one case where you can't have you cake at eat it too.

This article was written by Charles Lenchner and Roni Henig.