Popular Resistance in Palestine: A History of Hope and Empowerment [Paperback]

The book is a new release by the Palestinian Professor and author Mazin Qumsiyeh of Bethlehem and Bir Zeit University. If one is a frequent viewer of RamallahRamallah Yahoo group or various alternative news outlets such as MondoWeiss you may have read something by him. He has recently returned to Palestine after giving a multi-week speaking tour in Europe and the United States talking about his book.

As a preface I believe his book is important for a few reasons. The first being it is written by a Palestinian Professor who lives in Palestine. This may seem like a moot point but being a student at a Zionist university you are told there are no "true" Arab (especially Palestinian) authors. Meaning as I was told in a class with a guest lecturer Avraham Sela, "All Arabs that live in Arab countries are inherently unable to write a non-biased history, they always feel the need to glorify their leader and blame Israel." Now granted if anyone started off a sentence with "All Jews..." they would immediately be cut off and called anti-semitic, but making blanket statements about 350 million people of which he has met maybe a thousand in his life is halal. Not that I believed this blanket statement, but the point is that it is taught like this. Also I believe his book is very important because it is not of the usual history people refer to when they say resistance, especially referring to Arabs or Palestinians. There are countless books about Palestinian "infiltration" after 1948 and many more about Fedayeen and initial sabotage missions carried out post 1967. This book deals with neither is a fresh recount of the peaceful nature of the resistance of Palestinians against a colonial settler movement/state.

His book describes popular resistance (as he terms to be a non-violent resistance against an oppressor) displayed by Palestinians since the outbreak of the Zionist movement. His focus is mostly pre-Israel but also has very revealing chapters involving Palestinian Israeli resistance under the military government (1948-1966), post 1967 resistance, and First Intifada resistance. He sources many foreign and Arabic sources to document the intelligentsia resistance to Zionism in the form of leaflets, strikes, etc before and during the mandate. In addition he documents various methods used by Palestinians to resist against the partitioning of their land and the brutal tactics used before during the Mandate to crush any form of resistance to British/Zionist rule. He also goes against traditional history to describe the ways Muslim and Christian organizations worked together to resist Zionist colonization throughout the history of Zionism from 1882-present day. His detailed analysis of the First Intifada being a mode of popular resistance to be emulated is a refreshing account of the solidarity Palestinians faced and could be a future mode of popular resistance, as opposed to the Second Intifada that after a brutal and deadly crack down by Israel resulted in the death of thousands of people.

Mazin Qumsiyeh overall writes a very thorough and well documented account of non-violent Palestinian (and later with individual international and Israeli support) resistance to the fourth most powerful military in the world with minimal symbolic help from the outside world. He spends his last chapters describing the possibility of building a movement based off of lessons learned from the past in Palestine and other regions. Towards the end like any theoretical book it gets a tid lofty and less substantive but what book on the subject of popular resistance would not be. Overall a great read from cover to cover and a recommended read for anyone interested in the subject. Anyone can purchase the book on Amazon as it just got there or if they are in Palestine can get the book in any alternative book store. A solid 9.5/10.

Palestinian resistance against an Israeli "belligerent occupation" is mostly viewed as terrorism and rocket attacks. The brutal violence that was inflicted upon the Palestinian people by the Israeli occupation force is mostly ignored by the West. The most what the Western politicians are doing, is recommending the Palestinian to abstain from using violence, ignoring Israel`s forty-five-year-old occupation and colonization of another people. For them, popular resistance seems immoral or unnecessary.

The late Israeli professor of sociology at the Hebrew University, Baruch Kimmerling, wrote on March 27, 2001 in the Israeli daily "Haaretz": "Since 1967, millions of Palestinians have been under a military occupation, without any civil rights with, and most lacking even the most basic human rights. The continuing circumstances of occupation and repression give them, by any measure, the right to resist that occupation with any means at their disposal and to rise up in violence against that occupation. This is a moral right inherent to natural law and international law."

Mazin B. Qzmsiyeh teaches at Bethlehem University and Birzeit University and works for a number of civil organizations. He received his Ph. D from Texas Tech University. He did his postdoctoral training at St. Jude Children Research Hospital and the University of Tennessee (included Clinical Fellowship). He published extensively in areas ranging from Zoology to Genetics. He serves as chairman of the board of the Palestinian Center for Rapprochement between People and coordinator of the Popular Committee against the Wall and Settlements in Beit Sahour. Besides this book, his political writing includes "Sharing the Land of Canaan: Human rights and the Israeli/Palestinian Struggle.

The author writes the history of popular resistance in Palestine beginning with the Ottoman rule, continuing during the Zionist build-up from 1917 to 1935, the great Arab revolt of 1936 to 1939, the devastation to the Nakba (the catastrophe) from 1939 to 1948, from the Nakba to the occupation of the whole of Palestine in 1967, via the period of the so-called peace process to the current Boycotts, Divestments and Sanctions campaign (BDS).

Qumsiyeh writes that by examining the Palestinian situation, everyone will recognize that there are no examples of completely nonviolent struggle for freedom from colonial occupation. "I cannot think of a single historical precedent where the struggle for rights was waged solely by violent means or solely by nonviolent means. It seems that history of human struggle is a mix of both to varying degrees." (21) International law recognizes the right to resists an occupation authority.

The Israeli colonization of Palestinian land cannot be permanently maintained without ideological and material support from outside. The U. S. government, pro-Israeli pressure groups and the European Union give billions of dollars and Euros to Israel, used inter alia for building colonies on occupied land or are invested in the military sector. The BDS campaign, which Qumsiyeh strongly supports, brings these facts to the fore and attempts to induce governments, churches and private investors to restrain from investments in a country that has been occupying, oppressing and colonizing another people for the last 45 years.

The author is optimistic that this form of popular resistance will bear fruit in the long run. This book refutes the claims that Palestinians never tried nonviolence. It would make more sense to ask the Israel military to restrain its violence and use nonviolent means to deal with the resistance. Qumsiyeh's history of popular resistance in Palestine should be read by everyone who is opposed to colonialism and foreign domination.

Dr. Ludwig Watzal, works as a journalist and editor in Bonn, Germany.

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