Abstract
The struggle between Israelis and Palestinians has persisted for nearly a century and has engulfed them, as well as regional and global communities, in prolonged conflict and turmoil. Too often Israeli and Palestinian communities have sought to redress their grievances, both perceived and real, through violence—ranging from state-sponsored military strikes to non-state assaults on civilians to individual acts of personal violence. Despite the long and widely publicized history of violence in the Israeli-Palestinian struggle, there is also a historic and ever growing commitment to nonviolence and cooperative peacebuilding as a means of attaining a fair, equitable, and negotiated settlement to the conflict. Yet these movements have not received the same level of attention and study as violent forms of resistance. As a result, there is a major gap in the knowledge base in terms of understanding the full phenomenon of popular nonviolent resistance—one that in part has propagated a narrative that resistance either is an exclusively Palestinian activity or involves little or no intentional cooperation and coordination across Palestinian, Israeli, and inter-national activist groups. Based on anthropological fieldwork conducted between 2006 and 2009, this chapter will challenge the compartmentalized theorization that posits that Palestinian, Israeli, and international activists are separate agents of resistance by examining cooperative popular resistance and peacebuilding organizations and networks at work in Israel, East Jerusalem, and the West Bank.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
For a general discussion, see Musa K. Budeiri, “The Nationalist Dimension of Islamic Movements in Palestinian Politics,” Journal of Palestine Studies 24, no. 3 (1995): 89–95.
See further John W. Amos, Palestinian Resistance: Organization of a Nationalist Movement, Pergamon Policy Studies on International Politics (New York: Pergamon Press, 1980).
Michael C. Hudson, “Developments and Setbacks in the Palestinian Resistance Movement 1967–1971,” Journal of Palestine Studies 1, no. 3 (1972): 66–67.
E.G.H. Joffe, “Arab Nationalism and Palestine,” Journal of Peace Research 20, no. 2 (1983): 158.
Mary-Jane Deeb, “Militant Islam and the Politics of Redemption,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 524 (1992): 62.
See further the following works: Ziad Abu-Amr, “Hamas: A Historical and Political Background,” Journal of Palestine Studies 22, no. 4 (1993): 5–19;
Halim Rane, “Jihad, Competing Norms and the Israel-Palestine Impasse,” Australian Journal of International Affairs 63, no. 1 (2009): 41–63;
Loren D. Lybarger, Identity and Religion in Palestine: The Struggle between Islamism and Secularism in the Occupied Territories (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007).
Meir Litvak, “The Islamization of the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict: The Case of Hamas,” Middle Eastern Studies 34, no. 1 (1998): 148.
See Julie M. Peteet, “Violence and the Construction of a Gendered Identity in the Occupied Territories,” PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review 17, no. 1 (1994): 1–10;
Julie M. Peteet, “Male Gender and Rituals of Resistance in the Palestinian ‘Intifada’: A Cultural Politics of Violence,” American Ethnologist 21, no. 1 (1994): 31–49.
See Suha Sabbagh, Palestinian Women of Gaza and the West Bank (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998);
Frances S. Hasso, Resistance, Repression, and Gender Politics in Occupied Palestine and Jordan, 1st ed., Gender, Culture, and Politics in the Middle East (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2005);
Julie M. Peteet, Gender in Crisis: Women and the Palestinian Resistance Movement (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991);
Cheryl Rubenberg, Palestinian Women: Patriarchy and Resistance in the West Bank (Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2001);
Simona Sharoni, Gender and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: The Politics of Women’s Resistance, Syracuse Studies on Peace and Conflict Resolution (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1995).
See Abigail B. Bakan and Yasmeen Abu-Laban, “Palestinian Resistance and International Solidarity: The BDS Campaign,” Race Class 51, no. 1 (2009): 29–54;
Hilary Rose and Steven Rose, “Israel, Europe and the Academic Boycott,” Race Class 50, no. 1 (2008): 1–20;
Omar Barghouti, “Putting Palestine Back on the Map: Boycott as Civil Resistance,” Journal of Palestine Studies 35, no. 3 (2006): 51–57;
Duncan L. Clarke, “Mainline Protestants Begin to Divest from Israel: A Moral Imperative or ‘Effective’ Anti-Semetism?,” Journal of Palestine Studies 35, no. 1 (2005): 44–59;
Saree Makdisi, “The Israel Divestment Campaign and the Question of Palestine in America,” South Atlantic Quarterly 102, no. 4 (2003): 877–894;
Ronald R. Stockton, “Presbyterians, Jews and Divestment: The Church Steps Back,” Middle East Policy 13, no. 4 (2006): 102–124.
See further Mubarak E. Awad, “Non-Violent Resistance: A Strategy for the Occupied Territories,” Journal of Palestine Studies 13, no. 4 (1984): 22–36;
Johan Galtung, Nonviolence and Israel/Palestine (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Institute for Peace, 1989);
Jeff Halper, “A Strategy within a Non-Strategy: Sumud, Resistance, Attrition, and Advocacy, in Open Forum: Strategizing Palestine, Edited by George Bisharat and Beshara Doumani,” Journal of Palestine Studies 35, no. 3 (2006): 45–51;
Mary Elizabeth King, A Quiet Revolution: The First Palestinian Intifada and Nonviolent Resistance (New York: Nation Books, 2007);
Douad Kuttab, “Non-Violent Options for Palestinian Resistance,” Peace Review 15, no. 1 (2003): 19–24.
See further Maia Carter Hallward, “Negotiating Boundaries, Narrating Checkpoints: The Case of Machsom Watch,” Critique: Critical Middle Eastern Studies 17, no. 1 (2008): 21–40;
Samuel Peleg, “Peace Now or Later?: Movement-Countermovement Dynamics and the Israeli Political Cleavage,” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 23, no. 4 (2000): 235–254;
David Newman and Tamar Hermann, “A Comparative Study of Gush Emunim and Peace Now,” Middle Eastern Studies 28, no. 3 (1992): 509–530;
Dorit Naaman, “The Silenced Outcry: A Feminist Perspective from the Israeli Checkpoints in Palestine,” NWSA Journal 18, no. 3 (2006): 168–180;
Jeff Halper, “From Protest to Resistance: The Making of a Critical Israeli,” Journal of Palestine Studies 36, no. 3 (2007): 36–49;
Irit Halperin, “Between the Lines: The Story of Machsom Watch,” Journal of Humanistic Psychology 47, no. 3 (2007): 333–339.
Mica Pollock, “Using and Disputing Privilege: Young U.S. Activists Struggling to Wield ‘International Privilege’ in Solidarity,” Race/Ethnicity: Multidisciplinary Global Contexts 1, no. 2 (2008): 227–251;
Rachel Neumann, “International Solidarity Movement,” in Globalize Liberation: How to Uproot the System and Build a Better World, ed. David Solnit (San Francisco: City Light Books, 2004);
Charmaine Seitz, “Ism at the Crossroads: The Evolution of the International Solidarity Movement,” Journal of Palestine Studies 32, no. 4 (2003): 50–67;
Josie Sandercock et al., eds., Peace under Fire: Israel/Palestine and the International Solidarity Movement (London: Verso, 2004).
Jessica P. Weinberg, “‘The Most Basic Threat …To Israeli and Palestinian Women Is… The Occupation’: Enduring Strategies and Shifting Tactics of Israeli and Palestinian Feminist Peace Ngos in the Post-9/11 World,” NWSA Journal 19, no. 2 (2007): 104–117.
Janet M. Powers, Blossoms on the Olive Tree: Israeli and Palestinian Women Working for Peace (Westport: Praeger, 2006).
Nancy Stohlman and Laurieann Aladin, Live from Palestine: International and Palestinian Direct Action against the Israeli Occupation (Cambridge: South End Press, 2003).
Sherry B. Ortner, “Resistance and the Problem of Ethnographic Refusal,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 37, no. 1 (1995): 190.
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2011 Maia Carter Hallward and Julie M. Norman
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Sauders, R.R. (2011). Partners for Peace: Cooperative Popular Resistance and Peacebuilding in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. In: Hallward, M.C., Norman, J.M. (eds) Nonviolent Resistance in the Second Intifada. Middle East Today. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230337770_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230337770_4
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-29735-1
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-33777-0
eBook Packages: Palgrave Political & Intern. Studies CollectionPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)