Opinion Editorials, June 2007
June 2007 Opinion Editorial Links
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A Quiet Revolution: The First Palestinian Intifada and Nonviolent Resistance
A New Book By Mary Elizabeth King
ccun.org, June 11, 2007
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An eye-opening new account of the first Palestinian intifada
“We
can discern from these pages that it is not too late to strengthen the
nonviolent peacemakers who are working to find solutions for all
contenders, without the burdens of bankrupt violence.”
–
From the Introduction by President Jimmy Carter
“Mary
King, the legendary activist scholar, has written a profound, easily
accessible, carefully documented book about the first Intifada. She has
gone beyond the headlines to the history, people, struggles, agony and
possibilities that make the Palestinian-Israeli conflict the centerpiece
of our human tragedy. This is a must read.”
– Professor Marcus Raskin, George Washington University,
Washington, DC
“This
is an erudite, meticulous, and groundbreaking book, written in lucid
prose, by an acclaimed expert on nonviolent action. . . . Mary King
revealingly explores the attempts of dedicated groups to further the
principle of nonviolent political struggle amidst the clashes of two
national movements, Palestinian and Zionist-Israeli.”
– Professor Michael Freeden, Faculty of Politics, University of
Oxford
In
A Quiet Revolution, King
presents the remarkable and previously untold account of the first
intifada as a massive nonviolent social mobilization. The Palestinians’
deliberately chosen methods for resisting the Israeli occupation
effectively debunk the widely held notion of the first intifada as
violent. A decades-long spread of knowledge about nonviolent strategies
throughout Palestinian society shaped the uprising, which was years in the
making, not a spontaneous rebellion as press accounts led many to believe.
Joint
Israeli-Palestinian committees were the earliest harbingers of a
political evolution underway, and stood in contrast to the PLO's military
doctrine of “all means of struggle.” Once
under way, the intifada’s ability to continue despite harsh reprisals
relied on thousands of “popular committees,” often started and run by
women, to sustain communities under curfew or on strike. From the 1987
uprising would emerge the most cogent pressure to date to create a
Palestinian state alongside Israel, with implied acceptance of the
latter’s permanence.
Drawing
on the history of nonviolent movements―from the strategies of the
U.S. civil rights leaders in the American South to the Czech and
Slovaks’ velvet revolution to the Serbian activists who brought down
Slobodan Milošević―King argues that through the use of
nonviolent strategies, Palestinians and Israelis can achieve peace.
Mary
Elizabeth King
worked alongside Martin Luther King Jr.
(no relation) as a student. Now professor of peace and conflict studies at
the UN-affiliated University for Peace, and distinguished scholar of the
American University Center for Global Peace in Washington, D.C., King is
author of Freedom Song: A Personal
Story of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement, which won her a 1988 Robert
F. Kennedy Memorial Book Award, and Mahatma
Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr: The Power of Nonviolent Action. She
lives in Washington, D.C., and Oxford, UK.
A
Quiet Revolution by Mary Elizabeth King
Nation
Books: ISBN 1-56025-802-0 /
$16.95
Available
in August at local bookstores and online at Amazon.com, bn.com, and
Powells.com.
To place a bulk order, contact Nation Books’ special sales department: (510) 595-3664 ext. 317.
Publishers
Weekly,
4 June 2007
*
Starred review
A
Quiet Revolution: The First Palestinian Intifada and Nonviolent
Resistance.
ISBN
978-1-56025-802-5
A
scholar of nonviolent resistance and civil disobedience, King
contends
that the first Palestinian intifada (1987-1993) was
explicitly
peaceful from its inception. Stating that “[h]istory is
often
the narrative of wars, and military historians enjoy prestige,
whereas
the chronicling of how societies have achieved major
accomplishments
through nonviolent resistance is scant by comparison,”
she
draws on a wealth of documentary and statistical evidence to
demonstrate
that the Palestinians exercised remarkable restraint
during
the first years of the intifada. Tying together the threads of
civil
society, political mobilization and social change, she delivers
a
fascinating account of a nation in transition. In the occupied
“territories,”
she argues, the Israeli military brutally repressed the
“wedging
open of nongovernmental political space and development of
institutions
not under official purview” and deepened the
Palestinians’
desire for change. The closure of the educational
institutions
in the
and
professors to return to their home villages, where they were
quickly
able to politicize uneducated people. . . . [H]er book is essential
reading for anyone interested in Mideastern peace. (Aug.)
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