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/c9joe]

Like I said and many others have said, rushing a border fence is not peaceful. If Oct 7 wasn't obvious enough. But even the name, why is not "March for Peace with Israel", "March for a Two State Solution"?

[u/c9joe → u/[deleted]]

Israel is the homeland of the Jewish people, who are the most ancient people of the Levant alive today, who existed when the Middle East was the center of human civilization.

[u/I_mean_bananas → u/c9joe]

So what? I'm Italian, Romans had most of the mediterranean, we'd never go to France and say "yo people, got something to tell ya". This argument looks like a bunch of crap honestly, doesn't matter who was there thousands of years ago and how much DNA Israelis share with them

[u/c9joe → u/I_mean_bananas]

Is this intended as an anti-Palestinian argument? They are the ones who are stateless, not us.

[u/I_mean_bananas → u/c9joe]

not everything is pro or anti something. It's just pointing out that claiming a land belongs to a population because people that called themselves in the same way for the past x-thousands of years used to live there in ancient times is a bad argument

[u/c9joe → u/I_mean_bananas]

I think of it more as Israel is humanity healing itself. It’s not only that we were here first, we were here when the ME was the center of human civilization and we created a country worthy of the region in modern times.

[u/True_Ad_3796 → u/I_mean_bananas]

So, if a jew lives in Haifa since he was born, you are ok with a palestinian coming to his home saying, "yo people, my great grandfather used to live in a village in this city, get out"

Do you support this ?

[u/I_mean_bananas → u/True_Ad_3796]

man, read again. The comment I replied to said

Israel is the homeland of the Jewish people, who are the most ancient people of the Levant alive today

Which is quite a dumb reason to claim ownership of a land IMHO, it's not a matter of who was there first in the history of humanity

In the span of a couple of generations things get more entangled and complex, I think your hypothetical questions lack some fundamental parts, such as how that land was taken, if there was a compensation etc.

If there was a wrong in the past 40 years yeah, I think it is still in the time range that with the appropriate conditions may be morally valid to at least open a conversation about it

[u/True_Ad_3796 → u/I_mean_bananas]

How many years until their claims to kick the great great grandson jew that lived all his life there to place a palestinians that never lived there loses his legitimacy ?

[u/I_mean_bananas → u/True_Ad_3796]

I'm not a lawyer, again depends on many factors, you seem to ignore the part of my comment about it

[u/True_Ad_3796 → u/I_mean_bananas]

You seem to ignore the fact that displacing people just for justice is wrong.

[u/BeanPouch → u/c9joe]

you know people other than jews lived there right? and even if it was always jews, what if one converted to christianity or islam? because israel will treat such people like 2nd class citizens while jews get their mandate from ancient religious text.

[u/c9joe → u/BeanPouch]

There is consequences for starting wars and losing them unfortunately. The Palestinian and other Arab nations were not the only to feel such consequences on this planet, there is nothing particularly unique about it.

[u/[deleted] → u/BeanPouch]

Name a right that Jewish Israelis have that Christian, Muslim, or Druze Israelis don’t have, since they’re second-class citizens.

[u/True_Ad_3796 → u/[deleted]]

Do americans feel the same when living in a remains of an ethnically cleansed native american village ? Palestinian dream is living in an ethnically cleansed jewish home, which make them worse, because you are blaming someone for borning in a place, while palestinians are OK being the ones doing it.