Saturday, June 4th, 9.30 – 11.15, at Università di Verona, Room 2.2
Abstract:
Until the recent uprisings in the Middle East, nonviolence was rarely a term associated with this part of the world in the Western media. Nevertheless, the effective nonviolent protests confirmed the power and relevance of civil disobedience in the Arab world. This paper focuses on Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT). It examines the ways in which nonviolent resistance against the Israeli occupation is conducted and to what extent it is able to counter sophisticated mechanisms of oppression used by the Israeli state.
Through an analysis of specific nonviolent direct actions, such as the weekly demonstrations against the Wall, it aims to show the effectiveness of this form of political action, together with its complexities. Furthermore, nonviolence, apart from a resistance strategy (as perceived by Palestinians), seems to have become an almost cliché concept (similar to ‘democracy’ and ‘human rights’) advocated by Western-funded non-governmental organizations in the OPT. Many NGOs impose nonviolence (rather than ‘nonviolent resistance’) as a condition for funding. The analysis presented is based on research fieldwork conducted in Israel and the OPT by the author.
