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The First Palestinian Intifada
AND Nonviolent Resistance
Mary Elizabeth King
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I
NTRODUCTI O^^^N
President Jimmy Garter
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in 2018 with funding from
Kahle/Austin Foundation
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A Quiet Revolution
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The First Palestinian Intifada
and Nonviolent Resistance
by Mary Elizabeth King
Introduction by President Jimmy Carter
Nation Books
New York
www.nationbooks.org
half hollow hills
A Quiet Revolution:
The First Palestinian Intifada and Nonviolent Resistance
Copyright © 2007 Mary Elizabeth King
Published by
Nation Books
An imprint of Avalon Publishing Group, Inc.
245 West 17th Street, 11th Floor
New York, NY 10011
Photograph information:
1. Feisel Husseini (waving): Credit: Hashomer Hatzair Archive,
Givat Haviva, Rachamim Israeli, al-Hamishmar Collection.
2. Ghassan Khatib: Credit: Hashomer Hatzair Archive,
Givat Haviva, Isaac Harari, al-Hamishmar Collection.
3. Hanna Siniora: Credit: Hashomer Hatzair Archive,
Givat Haviva, Rachamim Israeli, al-Hamishmar Collection.
4. Human chain (holding hands): Credit: Hashomer Hatzair Archive,
Givat Haviva, Rachamim Israeli, al-Hamishmar Collection.
5. Gene Sharp: Credit: The Albert Einstein Institution.
All other photographs courtesy of the author.
Nation Books is a copublishing venture of the Nation Institute and Avalon Publishing
Group, Incorporated.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any
form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any
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in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.
ISBN-10: 1-56025-802-0
ISBN-13: 978-1-56025-802-5
987654321
Interior design by Ivelisse Robles Marrero
Printed in the United States of America
Distributed by Publishers Group West
Dedicated to my husband
of thirty- three years,
Peter Geoffrey Howard Bourne,
whose interest and fascination with my work
has continually sustained and encouraged me.
About the Author
Mary Elizabeth King is professor of peace and conflict studies at the UN-
affiliated University for Peace, and distinguished scholar with the American
University’s Center for Global Peace, in Washington, DC. She is visiting
research fellow at Oxford University’s Rothermere American Institute, in
Britain.
In 1988, she won a Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Book Award for
Freedom Song. In 2002, New Delhi’s Indian Council for Cultural Relations
released the second edition of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King,
Jr, which chronicles nine contemporary nonviolent struggles, originally
published by UNESCO in 1999. Her work has taken her to more than 120
developing countries.
As a presidential appointee in the Carter administration. King had
worldwide oversight for the Peace Corps and other U.S. volunteer service
corps programs. In the U.S. civil rights movement, Mary King worked
alongside the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (no relation) in the
student wing of the movement, an experience which defined her life. She
co-authored “Sex and Caste” with Casey Hayden, a 1966 article now
viewed by historians as tinder for the second wave of feminism. King’s
doctorate in international politics is from the University of Wales at
Aberystwyth. In 1989, her alma mater Ohio Wesleyan University honored
her with its highest award, and in 2003 she received the Jamnalal Bajaj
International Prize for the promotion of Gandhian values.
Contents
Preface vii
Introduction by President Jimmy Carter xv
Chapter 1
The First Intifada: A Variety of Perspectives I
Chapter 2
The Significance of Nonviolent Struggle:
Strategies and Potential 11
Chapter 3
Historical Review: Early Use of Nonviolent
Sanctions by Palestinians 25
Chapter 4
Historical Organizing and Leading Precedents 59
Chapter 5
Women at the Forefront of Nonviolent Strategies 87
Chapter 6
Movements of Students, Prisoners, and Work
Committees
101
Chapter 7
‘‘We Chose to Accept Occupation" 127
Chapter 8
East Jerusalem Activist Intellectuals: New Ideas
Prepare the Way 165
Chapter 9
The Intifada, or “Shaking Off" 203
Chapter 10
The Israelis 241
Chapter 11
The End of the First Intifada 257
Chapter 12
The Legacy 295
Epilogue 323
Acknowledgments 345
Appendices 349
Notes 359
Index 449
Preface
All OVER THE WORLD, groups struggle in civilian movements that have at
their core the refusal to obey and cooperate with unjust authority. They are
a formidable force for justice and human rights. Nonviolent movements have
for millennia altered the course of history—from protests against the Roman
caesars, to home rule in India, to the U.S. civil rights movement, to this cen¬
tury’s popular dissent for free and fair elections in Serbia and Ukraine, and
nonviolent resistance in Belarus, France, Iran, Lebanon, and Zimbabwe.
Adapting an alternative to passivity and violence with vigils, boycotts,
demonstrations, and strikes against authoritarian bureaucracies and despotic
regimes, ordinary persons have changed their societies through organized
dissent relying on action methods deliberately chosen because they do not
utilize guns or military weaponry.
Civil disobedience—a form of power with ancient roots—-was during the
nineteenth century viewed as a way of remaining personally true to one’s
beliefs; the individuals or groups who used it had little intention of producing
broad political transformations. During the twentieth century, peoples seized
upon this ability to exert themselves in collective action aimed specifically at
political change. Direct action disheartened British colonialism in India,
broke the bars of racial discrimination in the United States, and helped to
bring down the Berlin Wall.
On virtually every continent, nonviolent movements for social and
political change are attempting to forge peaceful transitions to democracy,
guarantee human rights, secure justice, bring down repressive dictatorships,
and end military occupations. They are not always successful. Outside the
framework of liberal democracies, independent citizen-based action may be
cruelly crushed. In Burma in 1988 and into the 1990s, and in China in
viii • A Qwzef Revolution
1989, such movements were brutally quelled, with no perceptible modifica¬
tions of the respective regimes in response to the people’s grievances.
The behavior of participants defines nonviolent action, not their convic¬
tions or adherence to a creed. Nonviolent action does not entail or condone
violence against persons or the threat of physical assault. Rather, it implies an
active response in which the taking of action is not violent. Conventional
warfare, armed struggle, and guerrilla warfare seek to achieve their goals
through producing fear or capitulation, as injury to life and limb demoralize
their opponent, or with expressly violent subjugation. In contrast, nonvio¬
lent struggle employs strategies for applying sanctions to bring about results;
it does not seek to accomplish its goals through physical harm, injury, killing,
or bloodshed.
Nothing in my personal background predisposes me to favor either the Arabs
or Israelis in the Eastern Mediterranean, and I can identify with the suffering
and grief of both peoples. I am also deeply concerned about the tragedies
endemic in this part of the world and elsewhere, when parties to conflicts in
effect make pacts and agree to a policy of violence. My family background
does not incline me to prejudice on either side. Yet it disposes me to polit¬
ical defiance and resistance against unjust authority. I am a direct descendant
of an officer with Nathaniel Bacon in the failed rebellion of 1676 against
Governor Alexander Spotswood, the British representative in colonial Vir¬
ginia, which served as dress rehearsal for the successful American Revolution
a century later. A number of officers ended up at the gallows, although I
don’t know if my ancestor was one of them. When Spotswood returned to
Britain for an audience with King Charles II, according to our family oral his¬
tory, the monarch told him, “Governor, you have hanged more men in Vir¬
ginia than I killed to avenge my father’s death,” referring to the execution of
Charles I. I am also a collateral descendant of Henry Clay, the twice-unsuc-
cessful Whig candidate for president in 1832 and 1844, who famously said,
“I would rather be right than president,” and freed his slaves in his will.
After being graduated from Ohio Wesleyan University in 1962, where I
had organized a student committee to support the sit-ins against racial segre¬
gation then roiling the South, I worked alongside the Reverend Dr. Martin
Luther King, Jr. (no relation) in the student wing of the U.S. civil rights
