Reversing defeat through non‐violent power

Abstract

When the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) decided to embark on the two‐state political platform in 1974, this constituted tacit recognition of the reality of the state of Israel in Palestine within the Green Line. The PLO's shift was also effectively an admission of defeat for the previous PLO programme that called for a secular, democratic state throughout all of Palestine. Today, advocates of the one‐state solution argue that the two‐state solution is no longer possible due to the realities Israel has created on the ground in the West Bank and Gaza. In other words, the political programme launched by the PLO in 1974 has effectively been defeated. The growing one‐state movement is, thus, the third time Palestinians are reacting to Israel's defeat of Palestinian attempts to obtain their human rights. It is against this background that this paper attempts to address three questions: Why has the two‐state political programme not been achieved?; What sources of non‐violent power could potentially realize and effect Palestinian human rights?; and What is the single most important strategy of which no Palestinian political programme should ever lose sight?

Keywords:

• BDS movement (boycott, divestment, sanctions)
• non‐violence
• two‐state solution
• one‐state solution
• Intifada

Notes

1. The phrase ‘all citizens are equal’ or ‘a state of all its citizens’ is a more effective term than secular, which is often misunderstood in the region to mean atheist.

2. The Call's full title is ‘Palestinian Civil Society Calls for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel Until it Complies with International Law and Universal Principles of Human Rights’, 9 July 2005. For the full text and list of signatories, see http://www.bdsmovement.net/?q=node/52/.

3. For the global BDS movement, see http://www.bdsmovement.net/?q=node/126/, as well as the websites of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign in the UK, the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation in the United States, and Australians for Palestine, among many others.

4. See http://pacbi.org/.

5. For more information, see http://www.righttoenter.ps/.