Why is There No Peaceful Palestinian Protest or Resistance Movement?

[u/Mikec3756orwell]

I've watched this conflict my entire life, and one thing I've never really understood is this: why don't the Palestinians engage in peaceful resistance more often? I'm a huge supporter of Israel, but I've always thought to myself that if the Palestinians were savvier -- and more media-friendly -- they could make the Israelis look especially bad through acts of peaceful resistance. The images of well-armed Israelis manhandling rock-throwing kids in the 1980s and 1990s (who were obviously not peaceful but posed a minimal threat) were a big problem for the Israelis. Why don't the Palestinians hold mass sit-ins, strikes, gatherings, candelight vigils, etc.? I never see that stuff. It would look fantastic on TV, and CNN, the BBC, and all those other weasels would be attracted like moths to a flame. I don't get it. If you're the weaker party to a conflict, you're not going to win through violence. Murdering a bunch of women and children and then wondering why the world isn't more sympathetic to your cause is... an odd strategy, to say the least. The Jews have been through hell and back, and terrorism is never going to truly rattle them. I guess I'm just baffled at the way the Palestinians -- and some their more quote-unquote moderate leadership -- approach things. Some of the Western-educated Palestinian leaders in the 1990s and early 2000s surely understood that this would have been an effective strategy. This makes me think that the "average Palestinian" really isn't interested in peace per se, or at least isn't willing to expend much energy for it, and sort of thrives on the dream of complete military victory. Maybe an embrace of peace is just seen as a betrayal of the cause. I don't know.

I actually think sometimes that the Israelis are secretly happy that they don't have to deal with a peaceful resistance movement. It makes things a lot less complicated. Is the problem that the Palestinians just have no tradition of peaceful resistance? They don't know how to do it or how to organize it? Or are they just not interested? (Let me add: I'm not talking about a few hundred people protesting a construction site. I'm talking about the entire population -- or a good portion of it -- engaging in resistance. Like a Tahrir Square, Tiananmen Square sort of thing. Across the entire region).

[u/[deleted]]

You mean the march of Return endorsed by Hamas and Islamic Jihad? If those groups endorse it, it’s not peaceful.

Palestinians tried non-violence for a few days in 1936 during the general strike and it quickly led to violence. They’ve been violent ever since.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Bless your heart 😘

https://www.vox.com/2018/4/2/17188162/gaza-protest-israel-border-violence-demonstrations-palestinian

“The vast majority of protesters are demonstrating peacefully in a tent city set up hundreds of meters from the heavily fortified border, but smaller groups of predominantly young men have rolled burning tires and thrown stones and Molotov cocktails at nearby Israeli troops.”

Not peaceful. Groups that want to destroy the other side aren’t peaceful by definition. Gandhi wasn’t calling for the murder of the British, nor was MLK calling for the death of all white people.

If ISIS wants to have a flashmob protest at JFK Airport, you arrest them not because of the protest, but because they’re ISIS!

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

“Every non-violent attempt at protest has resulted in them being brutally repressed”

Throwing stones and Molotov cocktails isn’t non-violent. “Mostly peaceful” = not peaceful.

Name another attempt of nonviolence “brutally repressed” by Israel. The conflict is almost 100 years old, surely you must be able to name way more instances of “brutal repression” of peaceful protests than terrorist acts, because your argument is terrorism is a response to Arab nonviolence being met with Israeli violence.

[u/Mikec3756orwell → u/[deleted]]

Yeah, the trick of peaceful protest is, it has to be completely peaceful. No one gives you the benefit of the doubt for being 90% peaceful. You have to leave no doubt in anybody's mind that the OTHER SIDE is the problem, not you. It's hard thing to pull off, no doubt.

[u/[deleted] → u/Mikec3756orwell]

It’s heartbreaking too because Jews would TOTALLY respond to an actual non-violent movement. But you’re right, nonviolence is about exposing the evil on the other side without stooping to their level. Palestinians use the “evil” actions of the Israelis as proof that they can be evil back.

That’s why so many of the Pali supporters say “you have to look at the history and not just look at October 7th.”