Recently, Sami Awad met with the leaders of Fatah Tanzim, the youth group of Yasser Arafat's political party. Realizing that the armed Palestinian rebellion against Israel wasn't working well, they wanted to learn more about non-violent resistance. "You might not be up for it," Awad recalled telling the young Palestinians. "It might be easier for you to carry a gun."

The meeting offered a glimmer of hope in the violent region, says Awad, executive director of the Hold Land Trust-Palestine, a social service organization that promotes non-violent resistance to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank.

Awad has also pitched non-violent struggle to Arafat. The Palestinian Authority leader is "open to the idea," he reports, but is not convinced. "I don't think he understands his leadership role," explains Awad. "You need a Gandhi or a Martin Luther King to make [non-violence] work." Sponsored by Al-Awda, the Providence chapter of the Palestinian Solidarity Network, Awad addressed 40 people at the Providence headquarters of Direct Action for Rights and Equality (DARE) on Sunday, June 23.

The 1987 Palestinian Intifada, or uprising, was overwhelmingly dominated by the non-violent tactics of boycotts, tax resistance, and identification card burnings, Awad says, but a violent response to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict became more popular when Hezbollah pressured Israel to withdraw from southern Lebanon. "Israel will not pull out of the West Bank as easily," Awad recalled telling youth leaders. "They will actually enforce their position."

The conflict between Israel and Palestine is not a religious conflict, Awad says, but a colonial war of independence. Israel must either accept Palestinians as full citizens or grant them an independent state, he says, describing Jewish settlements, sprinkled throughout the West Bank, as the key barrier to peace. Providing military protection for the settlements and access roads to Israel separates Palestinian areas from each other, Awad relates, like the bantustans South Africa developed under apartheid to control blacks. Currently, travel between Palestinian regions, he says, requires a special permit and unemployment is approximately 65 percent.

A majority of Jewish settlers would leave the subsidized settlements, Awad believes, if given comparable jobs and housing elsewhere, but a large minority, which believes that God gave the West Bank to the Jews, will be far more difficult to convince to move.

Most Palestinians blame the US government, not the American people for their plight. That may change, however, Awad says, because Palestinians believe Americans, unlike citizens of many Arab nations, have the power to force their government to change. As for suicide bombers, Awad says, "You can't stop them until you give them hope."

Issue Date: June 27 - July 4, 2002