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Gandhi 2008 International Conference Wardha, 29-31 January 2008 Third-party nonviolent intervention in conflict areas: from Gandhi’s Shanti Sena to the International Solidarity Movement in Palestine by Veronique Dudouet, Berghof Research Center for Constructive Conflict Management, Berlin Introduction Mohandas Karamchand ‘Mahatma’ Gandhi (1869-1948) is best known and celebrated for his articulation of the philosophical and strategic principles of nonviolence, or nonviolent action, as well as their application to the struggle against British imperialism and for Indian sovereignty and self-sustainability. These principles have been emulated by many contemporary movements of liberation against external occupation or oppressive regimes across the world. This paper is mostly concerned, however, with the application of Gandhian nonviolence as a technique of cross-border intervention by third parties to bring about constructive social change in acute conflict situations. Starting with a brief summary of Gandhi’s thinking and strategy for nonviolent intervention, I will then analyse the role of third-party (or external) advocacy in local or national nonviolent liberation/resistance campaigns, and define more closely the concept and boundaries of what I call ‘cross-border nonviolent advocacy’. Section three offers a categorisation of nonviolent advocacy into several types of off-site and on-site intervention (e.g. mobilisation, accompaniment, solidarity, interposition, etc), illustrated by recent or contemporary examples of their use. Finally, second four applies these concepts and typology of nonviolent intervention to one specific case study: the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) in Palestine. It assesses the organisation’s stance towards nonviolence, the relationship between internal activism and external advocacy and the principle of ‘local ownership’, and the relative effectiveness of the various on-site and off-site activities carried out by its volunteers since its establishment in 2001. 1. Satyagraha and Shanti Sena: the Gandhian legacy Nonviolence rests on a commitment to oppose violence in all its forms, whether physical, psychological or structural. Hence, it encompasses not only an abstention from the use of physical force to achieve an aim, but also a full engagement in resisting oppression, domination and any other forms of injustice. Gandhi, whose actions and ideas have most crucially influenced the development of nonviolent action in the twentieth century, coined the word satyagraha to describe the theory of conflict intervention which could best accommodate his moral philosophy. It is made up of an amalgamation of two Gujarati words, Satya (truth) and Agraha (firmness), and has been most commonly translated in English as ‘truth-force’ (Gandhi 1928). Gandhi also strongly insisted upon the unity of means and ends, advising satyagrahis (practitioners of satyagraha) to act in a goal-consistent manner; nonviolence is the means by which satya, the end, can be reached. Satyagraha is indeed closely tied to the religious precept of ahimsa, which means in Sanskrit the complete renunciation of violence in thought and action. 1 Employed as an instrument to effect social or political change, a satyagraha campaign might involve the use of multiple nonviolent resistance techniques. For instance, non-cooperation (e.g. boycott, strikes, tax resistance) implies holding on to truth by withdrawing support of what is wrong: if enough people do it, or even if one person does it to a great enough depth, evil has to collapse from lack of support. Its inspiration stems from European and American traditions (e.g. Quakers, Thoreau, Tolstoy) based on the ‘theory of consent’1, in which civil resistance was understood primarily in terms of individual civil disobedience to unjust laws. Applying these concepts to the level of collective action, Gandhi sought to build mass protest movements (with the exception of fasts and the so-called “individual satyagraha” campaigns of 1940-1), relying on a movement of well-trained, pure hearted soldiers of nonviolence who thoroughly understood the strict conditions of satyagraha. Concerning the use of such techniques for purposes of defense against external aggressions (as a ‘living wall’), or as an interpositionary force in international disputes, Gandhi was referring to his satyagrahis as an army of peace (Shanti Sena), and in the 1920s he explored some detailed ideas for regional or neighbourhood peace armies, a concept which he continued to develop until the end of his life (Nagler 1997). After India gained independence, he started to advocate some version of organised nonviolent peacekeeping forces, to be used for example during the Kashmir dispute. In fact, he was about to establish a formal Shanti Sena when he was assassinated (Weber 1993: 69). His proposal was taken on by his followers and formally implemented in 1957 under the leadership of Vinoba Bhave, but has mostly been employed for peacekeeping purposes within India, as opposed to the international arena (with a few notable exceptions, see below). Over the following decades, several proposals for setting up international nonviolent interpositionary forces (e.g. World Peace Brigade, World Peace Guard, etc.) were formulated, but none of them has been taken up by the UN or any other intergovernmental institutions. Instead, such large-scale nonviolent peacekeeping projects have been replaced by an array of smaller initiatives, less ambitious but more practical (Weber 1993). The next sections explore the conceptualisation and application of such projects by various scholars and practitioners. 2. Conceptualisation of cross-border nonviolent advocacy There is a growing body of literature dealing specifically with the phenomenon of cross-border nonviolent advocacy, attempting to analyse, conceptualise or classify past and ongoing examples of its use. In the theory of nonviolence (or nonviolent action), third parties are called in support of local nonviolent movements for human rights, democracy or self-determination. Their intervention is especially crucial in case where the power differential or ‘social distance’ between the activists (or the “oppressed” social/ethnic/national group) and the pro-status-quo forces (e.g. repressive regime, or external occupiers) is too big, or where the ‘consent theory of power’ does not apply. For instance, the Kosovo or Palestinian independence movements during the 1980s and 1990s were not able to use Gandhian strategies of non-cooperation and civil disobedience vis-à-vis the Serbian and Israeli regimes, because these were (and still are) less interested in the compliance of the Albanian and Palestinian population with their policies than in possessing and controlling their land. Therefore, nonviolent resisters were unable to raise the costs of continued occupation to a level necessary to cause their occupier to withdraw (Rigby 1991, Clark 2000). 1 According to this theory, first formulated by the French philosopher Etienne La Boetie, the authority of any ruler or regime rests on the continued voluntary consent, obedience or cooperation of its subjects. Therefore, the essence of nonviolent struggle rests on the withdrawal of this consent, so that governments can no longer operate (Sharp 1973). 2 One remedy for such situations, according to the peace researcher Johan Galtung (1989: 20), consists in creating a dependency relationship between the oppressive regime and oppressed population through a ‘great chain of nonviolence’. He argues that nonviolence works better the shorter the social distance between the conflict parties, and that when it is too great (e.g. activists being regarded as “nonhumans” by their opponents), “third-party intervention (or better, intercession) from somebody closer to the oppressor can stay the hand of the violent oppressor better than can the nonviolence of the oppressed themselves”. For instance, in the case of the Indian independence movement, opposition groups within Britain played a crucial role in relaying the cause of the Indian masses to their government. In the above-mentioned cases of Palestinian and Kosovo Albanian nonviolent liberation movements, a similar role was played by Israeli and Serbian opposition and human rights groups. In this paper, however, I will rather concentrate on the functions which might be performed by grassroots international (mostly Western) initiatives. The concept of third-party (or cross-border) nonviolent advocacy will be defined here, with Burrowes (2000: 50), as an “action that is: 1) carried out, or has impact, across a national border, 2) by grassroots activists, 3) with the aim of preventing or halting violence, or facilitating social change for the benefit of ordinary people or the environment, 4) by applying the principles of nonviolence”. It should be distinguished from other modes of third-party intervention in emerging or violent conflicts or post-conflict societies, such as preventive diplomacy, mediation or facilitation of peace negotiations, humanitarian intervention, development cooperation, dialogue and reconciliation promotion, etc. One of the main differences between classical conflict resolution activities and nonviolent advocacy lie in their ethical stance vis a vis the conflict parties. Whereas the former always emphasises the need for impartiality on the part of external interveners, most advocacy groups deliberately work on the sides of the victims or the low-power group, to assist them towards empowerment and the reduction of imbalance in the conflict, even if some nonviolent organisations (e.g. Peace Brigades International) insist on non-interventionist and non-partisan approaches. Laue and Cormick (1978: 217-8) defined the principle of empowerment by an ethical question which should, according to them, dominate every third-party action in a conflict: “does the intervention contribute to the ability of the relatively powerless individuals and groups in the situation to determine their own destinies to the greatest extent consistent with the common good?” Although practitioners in conflict resolution and nonviolent advocacy share a common goal of achieving peace by peaceful means, the former tend to emphasise the reduction of polarisation and tensions in a conflict, facilitating cooperative relationships between opponents, while the latter are primarily concerned with the removal of the structural sources of injustice, inequality and oppression (Francis 2002). They also give greater attention to the principles and techniques of nonviolent action as defined by Gandhi, M.L. King, Gene Sharp and others. In this paper, a cross-border intervention will be considered as nonviolent only if it involves a challenge to established methods of exerting social change. It is “sometimes illegal … and is often carried out in life-threatening circumstances” (Burrowes 2000: 50). Cross-border nonviolent advocates also place an important emphasis on the concept of ‘local ownership’ in effecting social and political change. Whereas external third-party opinion and action can act as a powerful supporting force, they cannot represent a substitute for the mobilised capacity for nonviolent struggle by the grievance group itself. The primacy of action belongs to internal civil society activists. For example, although Gandhi did not rule out outside intervention on behalf of the Indian liberation movement, he insisted strongly on total identification, to the point of immersion in and with the oppressed, as a condition for such action (Galtung 1989: 28). The International Centre on Nonviolent Conflict (ICNC), one 3 of the main agencies currently offering this type of third-party assistance, insists that “In no historical instance [of political change brought about by nonviolent movements] has external support or assistance been pivotal. That is because only indigenous causes and strategies can be successful in mobilizing discontented majorities2.” For this reason, most authors reject the terminology of ‘assistance’ (which might be connotated with a victimisation of local populations), referring instead to cross-border support or accompaniment (Muller 1997: 74). 3. Types and examples of third-party support to indigenous nonviolent resistance/liberation movements Bearing these considerations in mind, there is a great range of tools available to outside parties to encourage the development of nonviolent dynamics for positive change, in situations of potential or actual conflict. This paper will only consider forms of intervention relevant for grassroots non-governmental organisations, as opposed to state or intergovernmental initiatives. A number of typologies of cross-border nonviolent intervention have been proposed. For instance, Rigby (1995) classifies various strategies according to their on-site or off-site location. The most comprehensive typology so far is offered by Burrowes (2000), who identifies nine forms of nonviolent intervention by trans-national groups, on behalf of low-power groups in conflicts that are national or international in scope. Combining and adapting these two models, this paper will now present some illustrations of various forms of action which can be implied by the generic terminology of cross-border nonviolent advocacy. ‘Off-site intervention’ refers to “efforts which do not involve the physical presence of the interventionists in the zone of conflict itself” (Rigby 1995: 454). The first form of intervention identified by Burrowes, local nonviolent campaigns, consists in taking nonviolent initiatives in support of a struggle in another country. The logic behind these initiatives is to try to either prevent or halt violence or injustice directly by launching sanctions of their own against violent or and repressive regimes, or, indirectly, to exert pressure on their elites (e.g. Western governments) to reverse policies that support these regimes. This function is performed, for instance, by international organisations such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch or the recent online petition resource Avaaz.com, through diplomatic action, protest or ‘public shaming’ strategies. When international indignation is turned into more substantial forms of action, such as the imposition of economic sanctions (withdrawal of credit, severance of supplies, boycott), it becomes much more difficult to ignore by the pro-status quo forces. For instance, between the 1950s and 1990s many groups and individuals across the world conducted campaigns designed to put pressure on the South African government to end apartheid, by organising consumer boycotts of South African exports, and campaigns to persuade governments and corporations to stop supplying finance, oil and weapons to the apartheid regime. Such initiatives are also geared towards drawing international attention to acts of violence and injustice and mobilising people to act in response to that concern, which Burrows refers to as mobilisation actions. For instance, he cites the case of the 1992 voyage of the Lusitania Expresso from Darwin to Dili, East Timor, to lay wreaths at the scene of the 1991 Dili massacre and to mobilise support for East Timorese independence, by engaging in active mediatisation around this event. Many other grassroots campaigns have been persistently combining efforts to mobilise international public opinion and exert cross-border pressure for change in highly repressive societies (either directly or by lobbying foreign 2 See http://www.nonviolent-conflict.org/resources_MacKinnon.shtml 4 governments and international institutions), such as the UK-based Guatemala Solidarity Network or Colombia Solidarity Campaign, the Free Burma Coalition, the International Nepal Solidarity Network, etc. Diasporas often play a crucial leading role in organising such campaigns. As their names indicate, such organisations also embody another type of third-party advocacy, namely ‘nonviolent solidarity’, which will be reviewed more thoroughly further below (as a form of on-site intervention). Outsiders might also support pro-change activists by providing resources to local organisations, in the form of financial, technical or strategic support. In his latest book, Sharp (2005) explores professional forms of external assistance to local nonviolent activists, such as the supply of literature and handbooks about nonviolent struggle3; offering generic advice on how to conduct strategic planning for nonviolent action; providing printing facilities or services; making available radio broadcasting facilities and equipment; and providing bases and centres for study and training in this type of struggle. The production and dissemination of films documenting the successful application of nonviolent struggle in various contexts4 is another tool which can be used as ‘teaching’ material for third-party trainers. An example of organisation which offers capacity-building training for leaders of nonviolent movements across the globe is the Serbian-led Centre for Applied Nonviolent Action and Strategies (CANVAS), a team of consultants with first-hand experience of successful civil resistance campaigns in their home countries5. For instance, I took part, in November 2007, to a training workshop in Spain convened by CANVAS and the ICNC, who had invited a group of nonviolent activists from over fifteen countries, in order to impart them with specific mobilisation and campaigning skills, based on lessons-learnt from their own experience in Serbia and South Africa. Having conducted such programs for over four years, they have developed a comprehensive training curriculum; this workshop was recorded on camera and will be the subject of a film to be disseminated for further training purposes. Their argument is that although only local movements can decide which methods and tactics fit best within their own cultural and geopolitical situation, there is a generic set of analytical and strategic tools which can be transferred from other contexts. Such activities can be both carried out off-site (by inviting local activists to programs conducted overseas), or on-site (external consultants travelling to conflict areas in order to reach a wider audience). When it comes to ‘on-site intervention’, defined as “actions which involve the physical presence of the actionists in the zone of conflict” (Rigby 1995: 454), four interrelated forms of nonviolent advocacy can be distinguished. First, nonviolent accompaniment refers to activities carried out in a conflict area in order to create a safe, localised political space so that activists can engage in nonviolent activity. Organisations such as Peace Brigades International (in Guatemala, Sri Lanka, Colombia, Mexico, West Timor, Aceh), Christian Peacemakers Team (in Haiti, Palestine, Colombia, Iraq), the Balkan Peace Team (in former Yugoslavia), Nonviolent Peaceforce (in Sri Lanka) accompany threatened local human rights activists in their daily work to protect them from being killed or ‘disappeared’. The presence of these unarmed ‘bodyguards’ - especially if they come from ‘powerful’ countries - can discourage the recourse to violence by soldiers and combatants of the warring parties and help to limit human rights violation. Their effectiveness, in fact, is partly due to the reluctance of armed forces or paramilitary groups to 3 For example, translated and/or edited versions of his seminal 1973 book The Politics of Nonviolent Action have been read and used by movements for democracy and human rights in Mexico, Chile, Serbia, Eritrea, Burma, Tibet, Venezuela, Palestine, Belarus, Russia, etc. (Sharp 2007). 4 The US filmmaker Steve York, for instance, has directed the production of numerous documentaries about nonviolent struggles in India, the US, South Africa, Chile, Serbia, Ukraine, etc. He has even co-produced an interactive computer game on nonviolent strategy to teach leaders of opposition movements the methods of influencing or changing the political environment using nonviolent methods (see www.yorkzim.com). 5 See www.canvasopedia.org 5 risk upsetting Western governments by attacking foreign volunteers during their protection or ‘human shield’ mission. Moreover, protective accompaniment also encourages civil society activism, by allowing threatened organisations more space and confidence to operate in repressive situations (Mahony 2004: 6). Secondly, external nonviolent advocates might perform acts of nonviolent solidarity through their presence in a zone of military violence, to share the danger with local people and highlight the suffering that violence is causing. In this case, the purpose of their activities is not so much to prevent violent attacks against local activists, but rather to convey messages of solidarity and publicise their plight to external audiences, including the constituency of the authoritarian regime or occupying forces. For instance, the Iraq Peace Team has sent delegations of volunteers to Iraq since 2002, ahead of the US attack, to live and experience the war with Iraqi people, and expose their situation to the outside world6. The two remaining forms of on-site nonviolent advocacy suggested by Burrowes are more ambitious and should be applied on a larger scale, as their success is partly conditioned by the number of trained volunteers involved. The first one, nonviolent interposition, is performed by unarmed activists placing themselves as a ‘buffer’ force between conflicting parties (or between a military force and its civilian target), to help prevent or halt war. An early attempt at civilian interposition was the proposal by the Gandhian leader Jayaprakash Narayan in 1962 to lead a contingent of the Shanti Sena (see above) between the warring armies of China and India, which never materialised (Weber 1993). In 1990-1, the Gulf Peace Team organised an international peace camp at the border between Iraq and Kuwait, as part of the struggle to prevent a war in the Persian Gulf, but the limited number of activists (they were 73 altogether) was obviously insufficient to resist physically or politically the violence of two military forces totalling a million combat personnel. On a more modest scale, nonviolent interposition might be aiming to stop the fighting temporarily (such as the symbolic peace caravan to Sarajevo, in December 1992, by 500 Italian peace activists) or to protect a village from external attacks (such as the International Service for Peace - SIPAZ in Chiapas). The Christian organisation Witness for Peace claims that its interposition activities in Nicaragua during the 1980s, by sending 4,000 US activists to live in war zones across the country, significantly reduced the number of attacks on the Nicaraguan people by the US-sponsored Contras (Burrowes 2000: 64). These examples show that nonviolent interposition is easy to organise on a small scale, but it is very hard to succeed in mass interposition actions when the unbalance between the nonviolent ‘troops’ and warring armies is too strong. When a war is on, nonviolent attempts to stop the fighting requires a flexible strategy, a spread of micro-initiatives, and a gradual and step-by-step programme of actions in close coordination with local communities (Muller 1997, Müller 2006). Finally, nonviolent invasion is the most disruptive and daring form of cross-border intervention. It refers to the act of invading and occupation of a violent or potentially violent space to expedite social change. Originally conceived by Gandhi in a national context, as a method to reoccupy one’s land or claim ownership over one’s resources (e.g. attempts to take over salts works during the 1930-31 Salt Satyagraha), it has very rarely been applied across national borders. Burrowes cites one single example of such cross-border intervention, namely, the invasion of Portuguese Goa by several thousand Indian satyagrahis in 1955, in support of a local nationalist movement, which was violently repressed. I will now illustrate these principles and typology of cross-border nonviolent intervention through one specific case of advocacy organisation. The International Solidarity Movement has been applying most of these various strategies while working with Palestinian grassroots activists to empower them in their nonviolent struggle against the Israeli 6 See http://vitw.org/ipt/ 6 occupation of the West Bank and Gaza strip: what assessment can be offered on its work so far? 4. Case study: the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) in the Palestinian occupied territories In the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, since the outbreak of the second intifada (September 2000), there have been several inter-governmental attempts to deploy an international force of unarmed observers to interpose themselves between the Israeli army and Palestinian civilians during outbreaks of violence7, but they have been relentlessly vetoed at the Security Council by the United States. In the absence of inter-state initiative8, the ‘transnational civil society’ has filled in the gap by sending delegations of international volunteers to the region. Among the different organisations which are explicitly committed to nonviolent forms of intervention9, I will mostly concentrate on the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), because it “has emerged as the most visible face of international activism in Palestine”, “sufficiently effective to be the object of stepped up Israeli pressures” (Seitz 2003: 50). According to its own definition10, The ISM is a Palestinian-led movement committed to resisting the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land using nonviolent, direct-action methods and principles. Founded by a small group of [foreign and Palestinian] activists in August 2001, ISM aims to support and strengthen the Palestinian popular resistance by providing the Palestinian people with two resources, international protection and a voice with which to nonviolently resist an overwhelming military occupation force. This description clarifies the organisations’ principles and methods of engagement (nonviolent direct action), the links between foreign volunteers and the local population (international advocacy at the service of Palestinian activists), and some of the roles it aims to perform on the ground (protective accompaniment, raising awareness globally, and ending the occupation locally). These three elements will now be reviewed in the light of my own experience with the ISM in 200311, complemented by more recent interviews with its co-founders, and some electronic documents retrieved from the organisation’s website. 4.1: Commitment to nonviolence and its limits According to the original ISM mission statement, “As enshrined in international law and UN resolutions, we recognise the Palestinian right to resist Israeli violence and occupation via legitimate armed struggle. However, we believe that nonviolence can be a powerful weapon in fighting oppression and we are committed to the principles of nonviolent 7 See for instance the European campaign led since 2004 by the French organization Mouvement pour une Alternative Non-violente (MAN) calling for the deployment of an international peace force (force internationale d’intervention civile de paix) in Israel/Palestine. 8 There is one exception to this rule of non-intervention by foreign states: since 1994, a ‘Temporary International Presence’ operates in the highly divided city of Hebron in the West Bank. Composed of civil-military delegates from six European countries, this mission is very limited as it only has an observation mandate, reporting back to the delegates’ respective countries and Israel on human rights and security issues (www.tiph.org). 9 There are other such organisations currently active in the region, such as the Christian PeacemakersTeam (in Hebron), the International Women’s Peace Service (in Salfit) or the French Campagne Civile Internationale pour la Protection du Peuple Palestinien. 10 Retrieved from http://www.palsolidarity.org/main/about-ism/ 11 In Summer 2003, I spent several weeks as a participant observer with ISM, in the context of a PhD research fieldwork, following volunteers in their different areas of operation within the West Bank (Jenin, Tulkarem, Qalqilia, Nablus districts). 7 resistance.” This sentence, which has raised a lot of controversy12, was later withdrawn and replaced by a more principled statement: “The ISM maintains that all military tactics should be stopped by all sides in favor of nonviolent alternatives”. It also justifies its reliance on nonviolent methods by using the strategic argument relative to its efficiency: The ISM seeks to bring about an end to violence by actively resisting the occupation through nonviolent means. The Israeli government has long worked to crush peaceful resistance, making it very difficult for Palestinians to act nonviolently on a large scale. We’re working to develop an alternate way of resisting – non-violently - that can be effective13. In an interview, two of the co-founders of the movement define nonviolence both in its negative and positive connotations: it excludes the use of verbal and physical abuse, but it also implies respect for everyone, including the opponent (Arraf and Shapiro 2002). Another co-founder adds the dimension of “standing up for the powerless but not against the powerful”, and the importance of establishing links with the opponent (Andoni 2003). These statements reflect very closely the Gandhian principles of ahimsa and satyagraha outlined above. As a condition for joining the ISM in Palestine, all new volunteers are required to commit to supporting only nonviolent resistance. During the two-day intensive training that they have to take on their arrival, a number of related rules are spelt out, such as the interdiction to touch or verbally abuse soldiers or settlers, or to use anything that could be considered as a weapon. A strong focus on communication is another essential element of nonviolence, and the ISM trainers insist on the necessity to do everything openly, and with respect for all people. However, considering that most training programs only last for one weekend, they do not allow sufficient time to delve into the principles and strategy of nonviolent resistance or third-party intervention, and cannot be compared with the professional training offered to by CANVAS (see above) or even less with Gandhi’s teachings and satyagrahi schools. Instead, they mostly focus on role-plays and practical exercises preparing volunteers with legal, media and security issues they might come across during their support activities. The few weeks I spent with the ISM enabled me to verify that the principles of nonviolent intervention are clearly followed on the ground. One example demonstrates the impact that nonviolent action makes in the mind of the Israeli occupation forces. When 41 internationals within the ISM (including myself) were arrested on August 5th, 2003 for “obstructing the army” by refusing to leave a “closed military area” in the village of Mas’ha14, we were all released the following day and praised for our “passive resistance”, except for one Italian volunteer who was expelled from the country for having resisted her arrest “violently”. The most challenging debates concerning the respect for nonviolent rules of engagement concern the ISM’s position on Palestinian stone throwing. While most other international solidarity groups have firmly ruled out the option of taking part in any activity which would involve such symbolically violent acts, ISM volunteers have been caught several times in the middle of a demonstration where children started throwing stones towards Israeli military jeeps, provoking the army’s violent reaction, and the group was divided regarding the 12 This statement has generated an intense debate in the US press following the killing of the volunteer Rachel Corrie, and has often been misused or misquoted by hostile journalists trying to depict the ISM as supporting Palestinian armed resistance. 13 Retrieved from http://www.palsolidarity.org/main/about-ism/tough-questions/ 14 In a collective effort of international (ISM and IWPS), Israeli (Anarchists Against the Wall and Gush Shalom) and Palestinian activists (local grassroots committee against the wall and local ISM coordinators), the group was attempting (unsuccessfully) to prevent the demolition of the segment of a house which stood in the way of the separation wall under construction. When released the next day (on bail signed by an Israeli guarantor), we were forbidden from re-entering any Palestinian area for the rest of our stay in the country. 8 appropriate response. Some maintained that the action should be called off immediately, while others decided that their role was to stay and protect Palestinians from Israeli retaliation. I witnessed a confrontational demonstration against the wall near Tulkarem where six internationals were injured by rubber bullets while protecting stone-throwing teenagers, and at the time of my leaving the country, the debate was still continuing on this issue. 4.2. International advocacy at the service of Palestinian nonviolent activism What measures are implemented to ensure that external and internal groups work on the base of equality rather than subordination, so that foreign presence does not compete or replace local action? The founders of the ISM insist on defining it as a joint “Palestinian-international movement with a Palestinian leadership”15. The decision to be a joint movement has several implications. In terms of decision-making, the highly decentralised ISM relies on working groups in each area of operation, which are coordinated by a mix of local and foreign volunteers selected and trained by the central staff. In addition, to insure that the movement does not compete with or replace internal initiatives, all activities are jointly organised with civil society NGOs or political parties, invited to take part in direct action as equal partners. The ISM is open to collaboration with every local organisation which agrees to abide by the nonviolent rules of engagement. In order to maintain this inclusive line of operation, it has turned down offers of financial assistance from the Palestinian Authority or any political party. During their orientation and training weekend, ISM newcomers are repeatedly instructed to avoid making cultural, political or strategic judgements, or creating the impression that they are dictating Palestinians what to do. A ground rule of engagement is the interdiction to interfere in Palestinian domestic issues, no matter what the outsiders feel about who is right or wrong. All work must be done within the norms and traditions of Palestinian society16. If the movement trains its activists, it avoids using the term ‘training’ in the community, because it would sounds insulting to Palestinians. On the contrary, foreigners are ‘here to learn, not to teach’. When interviewed on this issue, the then ISM coordinator, the Palestinian Ghassan Andoni, also added: “we don’t need people making proposals from abroad about how we should organise resistance. In a way, this is like colonialism. The Palestinian people can only accept those who are engaged in the resistance themselves and those who support approaches already existent in the society”. How are these principles understood by foreign activists, and are they applied on the ground? All activities organised during my observation time were preceded by some kind of consultation with the locals, even for such routine actions as checkpoint watch. However, I noticed some variations in the way relationships were built between a regional ISM team and the local population, according to the style of intervention of each team. Moreover, my overall impression of the dynamics of international-Palestinian relationships in summer 2003 was that rather than simply assisting local nonviolent activists, the ISM was often taking over the planning and handling of activities, without waiting for Palestinian spontaneous initiatives. The timing of activism was also indicative of the relative dependency on foreigners: the peak period of proactive popular protest in the West Bank is located around Christmas and summer holidays, when more foreign volunteers are able to travel to Palestine. At the time of my visit, Andoni also expressed his wish that in the near future, the definition and functionality of the ISM would be able to shift, from initiating action to 15 Interview with G.Andoni, Beit Sahour, July 2003. 16 This means, for example, that female volunteers need to abide by the local customs when it comes to the role of women in the public domain. In a predominantly Muslim society, it is also forbidden to consume alcohol. 9 supporting locally-initiated mass-based popular resistance. “When Palestinians start participating en masse, they will be able to take real ownership of the ISM, but at present, it is still a joint movement, and the moment you talk about joint international-Palestinian action, foreigners are always tempted to take the lead”. He also added that it was all the more important for the ISM to support local action rather than initiate it, for “international activists come and go, but indigenous people have to live through the consequences of the actions, and especially they are the ones to suffer retaliation from the Israeli army or administration”. Five years later, it can be observed that Palestinians have taken the lead in several sustained nonviolent campaigns against the wall. In the village of Budrus, for instance, the strategy chosen by local leaders has turned over the dynamics of relationships between local activists and external advocates. In an interview, a local resident recalled that “in the north, from Jenin until Budrus, there were Israeli and international demonstrators, supported by Palestinians. But here we think that it is our problem and that we have to defend our land and do something, and the Israeli and international protestors are only supporting us. We are very grateful for [their] support, but the Palestinians have to make a stand” (Levy 2004). Despite these encouraging signs of popular mobilisation (another example is the recent legal victory in Bi’in after three years of intense nonviolent activism), on a national scale, this dream of a mass-based movement is yet to be attained. 4.3: On-site and off-site intervention: Assessing the effectiveness of the ISM in Palestine and abroad The various forms of activities which have been carried out by the ISM since its inception in 2001 embody all of the categories of cross-border nonviolent intervention defined in section 3. Starting with on-site intervention, the functions of nonviolent accompaniment and interposition represent a crucial part of ISM’s activities. The organisation does not distinguish between these two forms of intervention, and indeed they are very closely connected, so they will be treated here as one single category under the encompassing function of protection. ISM volunteers offer protective accompaniment to Palestinians endangered by frequent attacks from soldiers or settlers (including children on their way to school), or by acting as human-shields17 during demonstrations. This international presence often prevents local activists from being injured when they engage in direct action on their own, such as removing a roadblock or attacking the separation barrier. One activist from Jenin recalls a July 2003 demonstration in Anin where a soldier shouted at him: “But for those [foreigners] who are with you, we would have shot all of you!” (Mansour 2006). Additional activities carried out by ISM volunteers which embody the function of protection include for instance ‘home stays’, which consists in sleeping in houses threatened by Israeli demolition warrants, because they have been built without permit, are located too close to a settlement, or belong to the family of a suicide bomber. Negatively, it needs to be acknowledged that there have been a few cases when the intervention of ISM volunteers has made things worse for the Palestinians they were trying to protect. For example, an activity like ambulance accompaniment, which was practised a lot during the Spring 2002 campaign, was later discontinued because Palestinians felt that the response of the army was worse when internationals were present. The tragic events of Spring 17 It should be noted that the ISM officially rejects the term ‘human shield’ to describe its function, because its leaders associate it with “a special reference to civilians used by military or armed personnel for protection” (ISM press conference statement, May 5, 2003). 10 2003, when two ISM volunteers were killed during their protection or interposition mission18, have also proved that the function of human shields has become less relevant once soldiers stopped being afraid of shooting at internationals, even at the expense of bad media publicity outside Israel. While such tragic incidents should have forced the coordinators to rethink the movement’s strategies at the time, several interviewees felt that this had not been the case. The ISM has also been carrying out actions embodying the function of nonviolent solidarity by bringing both symbolic and material support to Palestinian communities engaged in unarmed resistance to the Israeli occupation. For instance, they have visited houses occupied by the army to deliver food and medicine to families detained in their own houses. ISM volunteers were also the first foreigners to enter the massively bombarded Jenin refugee camp during the Israeli ‘Operation Defensive Shield’, and it is also widely known across the occupied Palestinian territories for its forced marches through the sieges of Arafat’s headquarters in Ramallah or Bethlehem’s Church of Nativity in 2002. International volunteers are also acting as “witnesses of occupation” by reporting publicly the actions of the occupant, and documenting human rights abuses by the army and settlers. In an interview, a local village leader was asked whether in his opinion the popular struggle was reaching its goals. He remarked that “In the end, Israel still building the wall. But this will not happen without a price; the world and Israelis are starting to realise the oppression of this wall” (Daraghmeh 2005). And this is where the ISM can bring its greatest contribution to the movement, by tapping into the resource that internationals can provide: global attention (Arraf and Shapiro 2003: 74). One of the most important successes claimed by the organisation concerns indeed the relative success of its media section in bringing the world’s attention to its activities, by attracting journalists to its demonstrations or sending reports to a worldwide audience. Volunteers proudly cite the fact that the issue of the wall became more prominent in the Israeli and international public arena after the ‘2003 freedom summer’ intensive campaign by the ISM and other groups on this issue19. The most confrontational form of intervention, nonviolent invasion, has been employed by ISMers while attempting to tear down the separation barrier/wall, and helping Palestinians to reclaim their confiscated land by forcing their ways into fields or olive groves trapped on the Western side of the wall. Beyond these sporadic actions, a more ambitious project of nonviolent cross-border invasion is being planned by the Free Gaza Campaign, led by ISM volunteers formerly denied entry into Israel-Palestine. In spring 2008, around forty international activists will attempt to enter the Gaza strip from the sea (sailing from Cyprus), at the invitation of Palestinian NGOs but without Israeli authorisation, thereby recognising Palestinian control over their own borders. This campaign aims “1) To open Gaza to unrestricted international access; 2) To demonstrate that Israel still occupies Gaza, despite its claims to the contrary; 3) To show international solidarity with the people of Gaza and the rest of Palestine; and 4) To demonstrate the potential of nonviolent resistance methods.”20 If it succeeds, it will be indeed finally break the isolation of the Gaza strip, where the ISM has not been able to send any team since 2003. 18 On March 16, 2003, Rachel Corrie was fatally run over by a bulldozer while attempting to protect the home of a Palestinian physician from demolition. One month later, April 11, Tom Hurndall was shot in the back of the head by an Israeli military guard tower while he was escorting Palestinian children out of the line of Israeli fire. He died nine months later of his injuries. The two incidents too place in the border town of Rafah in the Gaza strip. 19 The demonstrations which I witnessed in Summer 2003 were for example reported in such prominent newspapers as the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Guardian, Le Monde, etc. 20 See http://www.freegaza.org/ 11 “Militant tourism” in Palestine is only one facet of the work carried out by the ISM, and in fact, at least half of its activities take place outside the ‘holy land’, in the volunteers’ own countries. Therefore, both categories of off-site intervention explored in section 3, local nonviolent campaigns and mobilisation actions, also form important part of the organisation’s mandate. For instance, the success of their informational campaigns in Palestine is partly due to the relentless effort of the media and campaigning work performed by the ISM regional teams overseas, mainly in North America and Western Europe. ISM support groups have been created in several dozen countries, by veterans of the movement, in order to establish media contacts to relay field information, organise speaking tours for returning activists or visiting Palestinians, and fundraise for sending more volunteers. The organisation estimates that half of its several thousand volunteers have come from the United States, 1/4 of whom are of Jewish origin21 (although these figures are only approximate as the ISM lost its statistics database after an Israeli raid of its media office in May 2003). Therefore, they are in good position for lobbying the most influential of Israel’s allies, especially by acting as a powerful alternative Jewish voice - as a counter-power to the pro-Israel lobbies such as AIPAC - within the Unites States. Judging by the persistent pro-Israel stance of the Bush administration and US Congress, it seems that the ISM and other Jewish anti-occupation groups still represent a silenced dissident voice, and local campaigns to claim justice for the murdered US-citizen Rachel Corrie have not met the same success as the family and friends of the fellow-ISM member Tom Hurndall in the UK (who obtained the legal pursuit and prosecution of the IDF soldier who had shot him to death). Recently, ISM members have been forcefully engaging the debate in favour of international sanctions against Israeli occupation policies, through an economic, sportive or cultural boycott. According to one of the co-founders of the movement, the promotion of ‘boycott, divestments and sanctions’ (BDS), called for by many Palestinian civil society groups, is in fact one of their main current strategies of intervention. Her argument is that “when we can isolate Israel economically, politically, socially, the way that Apartheid South Africa was isolated, perhaps only then will the occupation become costly enough for Israel to want to do something about it” 22. Conclusion This paper has shown that Gandhi, by developing the moral philosophy and practical application of nonviolent resistance or satyagraha, has set an example which has inspired many contemporary campaigns. Whereas his vision of a highly-trained and disciplined ‘peace army’, able both to defend Indian communities against external aggression, and to intervene abroad in other conflicts, failed to become a reality, numerous groups have applied Gandhian techniques and principles to the field of third-party intervention, with various degrees of success. The International Solidarity Movement is one among many examples of such groups. One of the most crucial questions which arise in the Palestinian context, generated by the growth of militant violence since the outbreak of the second intifada, is relative to the role of cross-border nonviolent intervention in contexts where there is not (yet) a meaningful internal nonviolent movement. Besides protection and solidarity activities, it then becomes the 21 The rest of the contingent mainly comes from Canada and the United Kingdom, though an increasing number of ISM volunteers travel from mainland Europe and Asia (mainly Japan). The ISM attracts mostly native English speakers because it is the working language of the movement, and French or Italian speaking volunteers, for example (the two non-English speaking nationalities most represented in the nonviolent movement in Palestine), prefer to work with their own networks, such as Campagne Civile Internationale pour la Protection du Peuple Palestinien (CCIPPP). 22 Email correspondence with Huwaida Harraf, 18.06.2007. 12 task of foreign intervenors to encourage and inspire local civil society activists to actively resist the occupation by nonviolent means, without running the risk of being perceived as imposing external models or trying to ‘pacify’ Palestinians. Since my last visit to the occupied territories, there has been a dramatic increase in ‘popular [meaning unarmed] resistance’ in Palestinian villages, illustrated especially by the so-called ‘third intifada against the apartheid wall’23. Several of these grassroots campaigns have also claimed a few legal victories, the Israeli Supreme Court ruling against the planned route of the security barrier in cases where the expropriation of Palestinian land could not be justified by the security needs of Israeli citizens and settlers (Ghalili 2004). Local developments on the ground in the coming few weeks and months will decisively influence the future expansion of this grassroots movement, and eventually the acknowledgement of its efficiency by both West Bank and Gaza Palestinian leaderships. 23 For an account of these three-headed campaigns by Palestinian, Israeli and international anti-occupation activists, see for instance Dudouet (2004). 13 References |