If the movement towards non-violence really takes off, it will eventually succeed. I believe that. It will succeed with both the American and the Israeli public. But the key is total commitment to non-violence along with non-cooperation and peaceful resistance. As long as anyone is utilizing violence it might as well be everyone committing violence.
About The Author

BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
Israel is going to do everything it can to provoke these people to resort to violence. I hope they stay the course and continue to follow in MLK’s footsteps. It takes bigger men and women to follow this path when you’re constantly oppressed, uneducated, starved etc, and it might not be fair, as Israel should be the “bigger” person; however, it’s succeeded as a model the world over.
Oh, and one thing that makes me mad about this article and the MSM in general…
I love how they term it ‘try.’ Like non-violent is something alien the Palestinians just found out about.
this is interesting.
Why do you expect? Does the TradMed in this country ever give the Palestinians a break?
Best of luck to them.
Steal my house, my orchard, my everything and I’m committing violence if I throw a stone at you. Oh, how Israel suffers.
This. It will fail because the Israeli public wants it to fail. They will interpret anything as violence and use it to justify slaughter.
Non-violence only works when the state that it opposes has a conscience.
So the question that a truly non-violent Palestinian movement will raise is whether Israelis any longer have a conscience.
Less you feel superior, it took a hundred years for America to discover its conscience about civil rights, and that fight is not over fifty years later.
Ya know, i used to believe in that.
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(Haaretz) – U.S. President Barack Obama’s demands during his meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last Tuesday point to an intention to impose a permanent settlement on Israel and the Palestinians in less than two years, political sources in Jerusalem say.
Israeli officials view the demands that Obama made at the White House as the tip of the iceberg under which lies a dramatic change in U.S. policy toward Israel.
Of 10 demands posed by Obama, four deal with Jerusalem:
● opening a Palestinian commercial interests office in East Jerusalem,
● an end to the razing of structures in Palestinian neighborhoods in the capital,
● stopping construction in Jewish neighborhoods in East Jerusalem,
● not building the neighborhood of Ramat Shlomo.
The "everybody knows" argument of construction in East Jerusalem
It is not just Obama’s demands that are perceived as problematic, but also the new modus operandi of American diplomacy. The fact that the White House and State Department have been in contact with Israel’s European allies, first and foremost Germany, is seen as part of an effort to isolate Israel and put enormous political pressure on it.
Israeli officials say that the Obama administration’s new policy contradicts commitments made by previous administrations, as well as a letter from George W. Bush in 2004 to the prime minister at the time, Ariel Sharon. According to this view, the new policy is also incongruous with the framework posed by Bill Clinton in 2000.
The Sasson Report: investigation of the legal status of Israeli settlements
The weird men behind George W Bush’s war
≈ Cross-posted from shergald’s diary — New York Times says Palestinians trying less violent path? ≈
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."