How Mass Nonviolent Resistance Could End Israel’s Blockade of Gaza

14 January 2015

 - If diplomacy and judicial redress won’t go anywhere, then the only option left is popular resistance. But what kind of popular resistance? The question is not whether Palestinians have the right to use armed force to end the occupation. Of course, they do. Rather, the point at issue is a practical one: Which tactics and strategy are most likely to yield political gains? However heroic the resistance of the people of Gaza, however inspiring their indomitable will, the fact remains that, after going three bloody rounds with Israel in the past five years, after suffering death and destruction on a heartrending scale, armed resistance has yet to produce substantive improvements in people’s daily lives.

What if the quantum of time, energy, creativity and ingenuity channeled into building the tunnels (a wondrous feat of civil engineering) were instead invested in Gaza’s most precious resource: the people? What if they organized a mass nonviolent demonstration demanding an end to the blockade of Gaza? What if 1.8 million Gazans marched on the Israeli border crossings under the banner, STOP STRANGLING US! END THE ILLEGAL BLOCKADE OF GAZA! What if Gaza’s one million children stood at the head of the march? Yes, children. Wasn’t it the “children’s miracle” in Selma, Alabama, during the Civil Rights Movement that broke the back of segregation, when Black children, positioned in the front lines, fended off police attack dogs and high-velocity fire hoses? (1) What if Palestinians found the inner wherewithal to stay nonviolent even as Israel fired murderously on the crowd? What if the vast reservoir of Palestine’s international supporters simultaneously converged, in the hundreds of thousands, on UN headquarters in New York and Geneva, enveloping and blockading the buildings?