Non-Violent Resistance: A Strategy for the Occupied Territories

Non-violence is not an innovation in the struggle of the Palestinian people. Palestinians have used non-violent methods since the beginning of the 1930s side by side with the armed struggle in their attempts to achieve their goals against Zionism. The six-month strike of 1936 and the Arab boycott of Israel are two prominent examples of the use of non-violence in the service of the Palestinian cause. In the occupied territories today, the resistance against the occupation does not generally reflect violent methods. School and commercial strikes, petitions, protest telegrams, advertisements and condemnations in the daily papers, and the attempts to boycott Israeli goods are, in fact, manifestations of non-violent struggle. Syrian citizens in the occupied Golan Heights are also conducting a powerful, concentrated and successful campaign of non-violent resistance to the attempts of Israel to impose Israeli law on the Golan Heights.* This campaign appears to be well organized, and intelligent in its methods, ideas, and the execution of classic non-violence tactics.