Jump to content

14 posts in this topic

Recommended Posts

Filed: Timeline
Posted

A New Palestinian Movement: Young, Networked, Nonviolent

By Joe Klein

Fadi Quran is the face of the new Middle East. He is 23, a graduate of Stanford University, with a double major in physics and international relations. He is a Palestinian who has returned home to start an alternative-energy company and see what he can do to help create a Palestinian state. He identifies with neither of the two preeminent Palestinian political factions, Hamas and Fatah. His allegiance is to the Facebook multitudes who orchestrated the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt and who are organizing nonviolent protests throughout the region. In the Palestinian territories, the social-networking rebels call themselves the March 15 movement—and I would call Quran one of the leaders of the group except that it doesn't really have leaders yet. It is best described as a loose association of "bubbles," he says, that hasn't congealed. It launched relatively small, semisuccessful protests in the West Bank and Gaza on the aforementioned March 15; it is staging a small, ongoing vigil in the main square of Ramallah. It has plans for future nonviolent actions; it may or may not have the peaceful throngs to bring these off.

I meet with Quran and several other young Palestinians at the local Coca-Cola Bottling Co. headquarters in Ramallah, which tells you something important about this movement: we are not meeting in a mosque. I've known one of them, Fadi El-Salameen, for five years. He was an early volunteer for the Seeds of Peace program, which intermingled Palestinian and Israeli teenagers at a summer camp in Maine. In recent years, El-Salameen has spent much of his time in the U.S. and has achieved a certain prominence—he is quietly charismatic, a world-class networker, the sort of person who is invited to international conferences—but he is now spending more time at home in Hebron, organizing the March 15 movement in the West Bank's largest city. "I met some of the leaders of the Tahrir Square movement at a conference in Doha," he tells me. "They don't fit the usual profile of a 'youth leader.' They are low-key, well educated but not wealthy. They are figuring it out as they go along, trying to figure out what works."

The young Palestinians don't seem as pragmatic as all that; they are somewhere beyond wildly idealistic. "The goal is to liberate the minds of our people," says Najwan Berekdar, an Israeli-born Arab who is a women's-rights activist. "We want to get past all the old identities—Fatah, Hamas, religious, secular, Israeli and Palestinian Arab —and create a mass nonviolent movement." Berekdar has touched on an idea that might prove truly threatening to Israelis: a "one state" movement uniting Palestinians on both sides of the current border. But the young Palestinians have not focused on anything so specific. Their current political plan is to go back to the future—to achieve Palestinian unity by resurrecting and holding elections for a body called the Palestinian National Council, which took a backseat after the Oslo accords created the Palestinian Authority and its parliamentary component. This seems rather abstruse—the basic rule for people-power movements is, Organize first, bureaucratize later — and it would be easy to dismiss these young people as hopelessly naive but for two factors. The first is that they've seized the Palestinian version of a suddenly valuable international brand: the Tahrir Square revolution. "We cannot discount their importance," a prominent Israeli official told me. "Not after what happened in Egypt."

But equally important are their methods. Ever since Israel won control of the West Bank and Gaza in 1967, the Palestinian national movement has been defined by terrorism, intransigence and, until recently in the West Bank, corruption. It has never been known for dramatic acts of nonviolence. "If they'd been led by Gandhi rather than Yasser Arafat, they would have had a state 20 years ago," Kenneth Pollack of the Saban Center at the Brookings Institution told me. Israeli officials acknowledge that the recent, peaceful economic and security reforms led by Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad have been the most effective tactics the Palestinians have ever used in trying to create a state. But they haven't gotten the Palestinians anywhere in their negotiations with the equally intransigent Israeli government. Jewish settlements continue to expand on Palestinian land. A mass nonviolent movement might tip the balance, especially if the world—including the Israeli public —began to see Palestinians as noble practitioners of passive resistance rather than as suicide bombers.

The Israeli leadership is as perplexed as everyone else about what the revolutionary tide in the region will bring. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said he'd prefer dealing with democracies, but he isn't so sure that the Tahrir Square movement will yield a democracy in Egypt (and there are already indications that Egypt's new government will push harder for a Palestinian peace accord than Mubarak ever did). Netanyahu has wisely called for a Marshall Plan for the Middle East, an idea that the Saudis—who seem to agree with the Israelis on practically everything these days—have also quietly endorsed. "If you can't get the young Egyptians involved in big public-works projects, like new housing, which is badly needed," an Israeli intelligence expert told me, "then they're back in the square for sure, only they'll be supporting the Muslim Brotherhood this time."

That seems unduly pessimistic. The Facebook rebels may have more influence on the suddenly antiquated Islamists than vice versa; if there is Shari'a, it will come with alternative-energy start-ups and a Coca-Cola chaser. "You have to wonder what sort of influence this revolution has had on Hamas," a Palestinian Christian said to me. "Are they watching al-Jazeera and seeing nonviolence succeed where terrorism has failed?" (See "In the West Bank: A Visit With a Soon-To-Be Ex-Negotiator.")

The Israelis assume not, which seems a safe assumption: Hamas rule in Gaza is going well, despite the Israeli boycott. "The Hamas military wing is making money off the smuggling from the tunnels [from Egypt into Gaza]," a West Bank businessman tells me. "They sell my product for twice my price. And yet the standard of living is rising in Gaza." In fact, Hamas seems more secure right now than Fatah, despite the economic successes in the West Bank. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has been wounded by the leak to al-Jazeera of private memos that showed Palestinian negotiators making what seemed to be major concessions to the Israelis. In order to restore some of his credibility, Abbas has been reaching out to Hamas, raising the prospect of a reconciliation—and destroying any slim hope of an accord with the Israelis. "Abbas has to choose," a Netanyahu aide told me, "between Hamas and us." (Comment on this story.)

So the stalemate continues—with one exception: the March 15 movement and the rush of history in the region. The young activists may be preoccupied by the chimera of Palestinian unity at the moment, but what happens if they turn their full attention to the Israeli occupation? What happens if they begin to organize marches to protest the near daily outrages perpetrated by Jewish settlers? What if they stage sit-down strikes to open roads that are used by settlers but closed to Palestinians? What if they march 10,000 strong against a settlement that is refusing Palestinians access to a traditional water supply? "If it is nonviolent, then that means, by definition, it is civilized," an Israeli official said. "We have no problem with that." But what if the Palestinians are nonviolent and the Jewish settlers are not? "I think about the dogs unleashed on Martin Luther King in Birmingham," Quran says. "I think about the beatings. That's what it took for Americans to see the justice of his cause. We will be risking our lives, but that is what it takes. I only hope that we're not too well educated to be courageous."

http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,2062308,00.html

Filed: Country: United Kingdom
Timeline
Posted

What happens if they begin to organize marches to protest the near daily outrages perpetrated by Jewish settlers? What if they stage sit-down strikes to open roads that are used by settlers but closed to Palestinians? What if they march 10,000 strong against a settlement that is refusing Palestinians access to a traditional water supply?

I'd like to see that. Peaceful protests instead of suicide bombs.

biden_pinhead.jpgspace.gifrolling-stones-american-flag-tongue.jpgspace.gifinside-geico.jpg
Filed: Country: England
Timeline
Posted

They will get a lot further with peaceful action than Hamas, et al, will ever get with terrorism. I wish them all the best in their endeavours and hope their efforts aren't derailed by the terrorists, who seem to greet any move by the Israelis, either toward peace or otherwise, with the same response every time - more violence.

Don't interrupt me when I'm talking to myself

2011-11-15.garfield.png

Filed: AOS (pnd) Country: Canada
Timeline
Posted

Non-violent methods historically don't work, so it's a fair assumption in calling it a 'dream.'

A wet dream is an absurd way of putting it though. "Pipe" dream maybe if we want to talk context.

The problem with peaceful revolutions, is the protests can only go so far until someone else breaks.

People don't win wars by 'talking it out.' At the end of the day if you want things to change to 'your' way, a true revolution is needed and a lot of people would have to die.

It's like bringing a knife to a gun fight. Who's going to win at the end of the day?

The idea is great, but it's naive to say the least.

nfrsig.jpg

The Great Canadian to Texas Transfer Timeline:

2/22/2010 - I-129F Packet Mailed

2/24/2010 - Packet Delivered to VSC

2/26/2010 - VSC Cashed Filing Fee

3/04/2010 - NOA1 Received!

8/14/2010 - Touched!

10/04/2010 - NOA2 Received!

10/25/2010 - Packet 3 Received!

02/07/2011 - Medical!

03/15/2011 - Interview in Montreal! - Approved!!!

Posted (edited)

I would have hoped she would be more supportive of something like this. Instead, all she can muster is derision and contempt for the very idea of nonviolence. Very strange.

She's being honest is what she's being. Anyone that knows the score over there knows that article you posted is right out of a fantasy novel.

Edited by Why_Me

sigbet.jpg

"I want to take this opportunity to mention how thankful I am for an Obama re-election. The choice was clear. We cannot live in a country that treats homosexuals and women as second class citizens. Homosexuals deserve all of the rights and benefits of marriage that heterosexuals receive. Women deserve to be treated with respect and their salaries should not depend on their gender, but their quality of work. I am also thankful that the great, progressive state of California once again voted for the correct President. America is moving forward, and the direction is a positive one."

Filed: Country: United Kingdom
Timeline
Posted

She's being honest is what she's being. Anyone that knows the score over there knows that article you posted is right out of a fantasy novel.

She could have said that. Instead she called it "Joe Klein's wet dream".

Translation: "it's no surprise that a Jew would love to see the Palestinians give up their armed struggle, but dream on, Jew"

biden_pinhead.jpgspace.gifrolling-stones-american-flag-tongue.jpgspace.gifinside-geico.jpg
 

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
- Back to Top -

Important Disclaimer: Please read carefully the Visajourney.com Terms of Service. If you do not agree to the Terms of Service you should not access or view any page (including this page) on VisaJourney.com. Answers and comments provided on Visajourney.com Forums are general information, and are not intended to substitute for informed professional medical, psychiatric, psychological, tax, legal, investment, accounting, or other professional advice. Visajourney.com does not endorse, and expressly disclaims liability for any product, manufacturer, distributor, service or service provider mentioned or any opinion expressed in answers or comments. VisaJourney.com does not condone immigration fraud in any way, shape or manner. VisaJourney.com recommends that if any member or user knows directly of someone involved in fraudulent or illegal activity, that they report such activity directly to the Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement. You can contact ICE via email at Immigration.Reply@dhs.gov or you can telephone ICE at 1-866-347-2423. All reported threads/posts containing reference to immigration fraud or illegal activities will be removed from this board. If you feel that you have found inappropriate content, please let us know by contacting us here with a url link to that content. Thank you.
×
×
  • Create New...