As demonstrated by people’s revolutions elsewhere, espousing popular resistance does not require favoring one form of struggle over another. Restricting popular resistance only to nonviolent struggle empties it of its revolutionary content. The Palestinian intifada was a model for popular resistance and our compass as we navigated through multiple and effective spheres of resistance: peaceful, violent, popular, factional, economic, political, and cultural. Not only does the scholarly literature reject the logic of breaking resistance up into various forms and methods, but the reality of the challenges the Palestinian people face in their struggle against the Israeli occupation precludes such an approach: we are up against an all-encompassing settler-colonialism that relies on the most extreme forms of violence conventionally associated with occupation combined with apartheid policies. And the hostility they [the Palestinian people] encounter extends to all segments of our population, wherever they may be located. What is necessary, then, is the creative combination and integration of all legitimate methods of struggle enabling us to deploy each type or method of resistance according to the specific conditions warranted by different political junctures. On the wider, national level, we need a unified political program that, first and foremost, provides the means to put resistance into practice. And we need political stances and discourses that are similarly united around resistance. Lastly, we need a mutually agreed-upon, overall national framework, which defines the principal forms of resistance that will determine all resistance actions. We must exercise the ability to put forward this form or that with careful attention to the specific circumstances, and according to the needs of a particular situation or political moment—without ruling out any one form of resistance. Calls for nonviolent popular resistance and slogans about the rule of law and confining the use of arms to the PA are mere pretexts to justify targeting the resistance and answering to the Israel’s security dictates. The rule of law is meaningless if it flies in the face of our right to resist the occupation and denies the logic of such resistance. And as for the monopoly on the use of force, it makes no sense if that force is not directed at the enemy. ~ Ahmad Saadat of PFLP interview @ palestine-studies.org/jps/fulltext/165585
Posted on: Thu, 02 Oct 2014 00:59:52 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015