Civilian Jihad

"A colleague of mine, Maria Stephan, edited this book. It’s a collection of essays about the Middle East. They reveal different groups’ approaches to their disagreements, including those by the Palestinians. We think of the latter’s protests as violent – and they certainly were during the second Intifada. But there are many heroic examples of Palestinians resisting the separation barrier in a non-violent way, in the face of constant attack. The book dispels one of the myths about non-violent action: that it only works in liberal democracies. Gandhi could use it against the British because Britain had a developed legal system. Martin Luther King had a voice because the United States is an advanced democracy. And so on. In fact, we have seen that it also works against repressive and authoritarian regimes, as demonstrated in Egypt and Tunisia and in other parts of the world. Numbers matter tremendously. Historically, much depends on having a mass mobilisation of people. In the 2004 Orange Revolution in Kiev, more than 100,000 people turned up day after day. They showed the authorities that theirs was a movement that would not be suppressed. The military and police were reluctant to use force against such a vast crowd."