Back in 2002, First published this interview with Mubarak Awad who’s long made the case to Palestinians for nonviolent resistance to Israeli oppression. He remains committed to his ethic and his NGO, “Nonviolence International,” is still engaged (though the Israelis exiled him to America in the course of the first intifada). Awad may not be an ace prophet – his prescriptions for elections in Gaza seem almost quaint now but his moral imagination is undeniable. Let’s hope he and his kind help write the future of Palestine…
We asked George Lakey – a longtime proponent of nonviolent direct action – to interview Mubarak Awad – a Palestinian Christian psychologist who organized a nonviolent resistance movement against occupation of Palestinian lands at the end of the 1980’s. Israel expelled him to the United States where he currently runs an NGO based in Washington D.C. – Nonviolence International.
Awad has allowed that Palestinians had little use for nonviolent strategies before the first intifada. Gandhi, for example, was not a popular figure in the Muslim world because he was against the creation of Pakistan – an Islamic state. Awad set out to try to develop an education program of nonviolence in Islam a generation ago. He went to India to find a Muslim who worked with Gandhi, Abdul Ghaffar Khan, who brought the Pathan people into the Indian anti-colonialist struggle. Awad wrote a book about Khan and he began to reach out to interested Muslims. (Sufis were immediately responsive.) He started the Palestinian Centre for the Study of Nonviolence and went to schools, cities, clubs –- to anyone who would hear him, telling them that they could get rid of the Israeli occupation through nonviolent means. Nonviolence, according to Awad, was a matter of not accepting the authority of those who occupy you. He taught Palestinians how to turn up the pressure by turning the other cheek. He recalls how “tough it was for Palestinians not to look somebody in the face, not to argue with them, not to fight them. I went to political meetings and gave a training for the PLO people in Tunis about how nonviolence can work. They thought I was crazy.”
Awad eventually wrote a position paper that was published in a Palestinian magazine spelling out 120 ways in which the Palestinians could use nonviolent struggle against the Israelis. (Including driving on the wrong side of the road!)
Once an old man came to him whose land been taken by the Israelis. Awad told him to get 300 or 400 people from his village – children, young people, old people – anybody who wanted to come take down the fence the settlers had put around the land. But he insisted that if the Israeli army came, not a single person should throw a stone. They should sit in, instead, and refuse to fight back even if they were attacked. The old man and his community successfully took back his land back from the settlers. That moved many Palestinians who started coming to Awad’s Centre instead of to the PLO. He also began connecting with Israelis and Christians who joined in nonviolent acts sponsored by the Centre. Awad focused in particular on bringing Palestinian and Israeli women together. One of his chief objectives was to teach Palestinians not to be afraid of Israelis – “taking fear away from people and replacing it with courage is the essence of nonviolence.”
Awad (MA below) began the following interview with George Lakey (GL below) by acknowledging the “very unfortunate” fact that the Palestinians are now being “heard more than any time in their history” because of the suicide bombings. He allowed that there was an “ingredient” of sacrifice in those acts but refused to connect them with past nonviolent protests by individuals who immolated – or starved – themselves without harming others. He noted the intifada of the 1980’s was characterized, at least initially, by a kind of resistance that was very different from that of the suicide bombers…
GL: How would you compare the first intifada with this one?
MA: The first intifada was all about convincing the Palestinians not to depend on outsiders – depend on yourself. And to do that you had to have activities that would let people see that they were capable of resisting occupation. We got people not to eat or drink any product made in Israel; we said don’t pay taxes; if there’s a letter sent to you in Hebrew, send it back because you’re an Arab and you should be proud to be an Arab. We advised people to refuse to participate in official Israeli occasions. Or even when the time came to change the clocks, we insisted on keeping our own time. Just a complete rejection of the concept of occupation. The activities were meant to show that the occupation was wrong and evil and you have to resist it with your mind, your body, your heart and your soul. And also with activities on a daily/weekly/monthly basis. Unfortunately, in a cause where the armed struggle has been the thing for the youth and the PLO – people have a difficulty understanding how a revolution could be nonviolent. The first intifada was really an introduction to nonviolence and to what could be done with it. Later, unfortunately, people started throwing stones – and that becomes central to the intifada rather than the continuation of the earlier kinds of resistance. But for the first four or six months it was completely nonviolent.
GL: The concept of the rejection of the occupation is very much like what Gene Sharp talks about – the power of nonviolent, non-cooperation. Isn’t that right?
MA: Yes that’s right. But the second intifada is really such a different thing. The second intifada became a very religious one rather than a political one. Because of the fear of the Palestinians that Sharon is going to go to the mosque with all those soldiers – the fear that he would come one time to destroy the mosque to build the temple – I’m talking about the Dome of the Rock. On Al Haram Al Sharif. And then after that so many people were shot at and died in Al Haram to protect Al Haram – the whole thing became very Islamic, very religious. And there’s always a difference in feeling between a religious and a political struggle. And now the intifada has stopped being mixed, because the religious people started the suicide bombing and the political types – Fatah and other people start using what Hamas is using because it is very effective.
GL: So I hear you saying that as long as you conceive of the struggle politically it also becomes more pragmatic whereas when it’s religious it’s more symbolic and people may be more willing to do desperate acts of violence. Are there other examples of nonviolent tactics that Palestinians have used over the years either in the first intifada or more recently?
MA: Even in the second intifada, there have been many, many uses of non-violence. But the Israelis now under Sharon have 30 new settlements and nobody’s thought about how to stop it. One thing that we used to do was go to land where there was going to be a settlement and plant olive trees on it. The Israelis have a law that if the land has olive trees – any fruit trees on it – they cannot confiscate it. So we used Israeli law to protect some of that land by planting the trees. And we did that on thousands of acres. We always pushed hard to ensure we included some Israelis in whatever kind of protest activity we were engaged in. It’s logical for us because it lets the Israelis see the suffering of the Palestinians and what the government is doing in their name.
GL: What are the prospects for getting Palestinians (and Israelis) involved in some of these nonviolent activities now?
MA: In the first intifada we were able to get a lot of people thinking about nonviolent struggle and asking if it could be done and could be successful. So now, nonviolence is not something strange to the Palestinians. People say they believe it might work. Or it might not work. Or maybe we should act on it. But it’s not something that’s now identified with American ideology – or with some Israeli group or American group that has seduced the Palestinians with notions of nonviolence. But the Palestinians must start debating it and accepting or rejecting it. It will become most powerful if it is a home-grown activity by the Palestinians with their own culture and ideology. It’s uniquely suited to the Palestinians. In the midst of the new intifada, for example, the Israelis wouldn’t allow a lot of people to go and pray. And so thousands of people went out to pray in the streets in front of the checkpoint. They were making a very strong nonviolent statement. They were saying: “We wanted to go pray over there and they’re not allowing us so we’re going to block the roads here and stop everything.” And just recently in Ramallah, the Israeli army wanted to go into the hospital and the doctors of the hospital came and said no way – we will not allow you to come in the hospital. Many times people don’t say “this is non-violence” – but that’s the way they act because it’s a necessity. People have to do something and this is what they do. And later on we could call it non-violence.
GL: Can you think of any reasons why Palestinians might at some point use more and more non-violence?
MA: Well to me, it seems that the more blood is shed between people, the more time will be required for healing, for reconciliation. And in any struggle the less bloodshed – the fewer people killed – the faster the two sides can get together to work on their problem. I don’t think that at this time the Israelis can have adequate security or can be trusted by the Palestinians. No-one can trust each other now because of the killing and the destruction. If we use nonviolent activities in our efforts to achieve a Palestinian state we will be able to convince the majority of the Israelis that we are not trying to harm them, but we cannot live under slavery, under colonization. That’s something that belongs to the past. They cannot destroy our nationalism, our aspirations to having a state of our own. And we could show it by having thousands and thousands of people in the street.
My last idea before the invasion of so much of the Palestinian land was to press for an election. Two months ago I was arguing that we needed to pour our energy into a democratic election. And it doesn’t matter if Hamas wins or anyone else. Let’s have the whole world see that we’re interested in an election. And I was saying loud and clear that we should have all the refugees come home for it. We should start walking – we don’t need permission – back to Palestine from Jordan, from Syria, from Egypt, from Lebanon, from anyplace. And the whole world would say: “those are serious people – they’re willing to die.” And they would pressure the Israeli government, the Arab governments and the international community to do something.
GL: That’s a very bold idea. The whole world’s attention would be on refugees coming from various countries, asserting their right to return, putting their own bodies on the line. If at some point people agreed to do that – to take nonviolence on the offensive (and I hear you emphasizing the election as another kind of demonstration) then would you imagine there could be a useful role for these third party people from Europe and the U.S. who are even now showing good will by saying that we’d like to go over and perhaps provide some protection in an unarmed way by intervening and encouraging people not to use violence on each other? Do you imagine there being a role for such people in the scenario you’re developing?
MA: Yes, definitely. Very much so. I think that when two peoples engage in this kind of a conflict, they don’t see the humanity in each other. They have to look at someone else to really direct them in that kind of engagement – to tell them just sit back, look and see that this person is a father, a mother – has kids who want to go to school, want to get educated, want to ride a bike. The third party can help make the “other” into a human being. When we don’t see that, all we can see is death and the other person has to die. That’s when you need a third person who can say: “Look, look! Easy now, easy.” You need someone to just sit with them, talk with them, engage with them. To have coffee with them and coffee with the other side. It’s important. Third parties allow you to rethink.
From June, 2002