The Cost of Change: Three Social Movements’ Methodologies in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories
The separation barrier in Bethlehem limiting access for Palestinians to travel freely to and from Jerusalem.
By Rev. Dr. Mae Elise Cannon and Kevin Vollrath
Although social movements in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories (oPt) differ in methodology, strategy, and an understanding of the cost necessary to accomplish peace, many still share the common goal of bringing an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This article considers the unique methodologies of social movements in Israel and the oPt and asks questions about their engagement. How do social movements define the core issues of the conflict? Some movements identify the ongoing struggle as discord between two people groups - Israelis and Palestinians. Others see the primary problem as the decades-long military control and occupation of East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Gaza. Finally, some social movements address human rights violations and commit their work to ending apartheid through combatting the different legal systems applied to Jewish Israelis and Palestinians living in the West Bank.
Using anthropologist David Aberle’s categorizations, this paper considers methodological differences in various movements in Israel and Palestine. Aberle’s work applies because he classified movements not only by the number of participants engaged, but also by the locus of change sought. Aberle’s analysis answered questions about what movements are trying to change and their degree of motivation (i.e., what cost or sacrifice are they willing to make?). Aberle described four types of social movements: alterative movements, which are focused on amending individual behavior; redemptive movements, sometimes motivated by religion, which are committed to inner transformation for individuals; reformative movements, which work to change systemic injustice; and revolutionary movements, which seek to transform and dismantle a current reality.[1]
The movements considered in this article include an international women’s organization as an instance of an alterative social movement, two groups committed to the collective mourning of death as expressions of redemptive movements, and grassroots communities of local resistance to occupation as examples of revolutionary social movements. Women Wage Peace (WWP) ensures that women’s voices are elevated in the peacemaking process, that women are protected against war crimes, and that their work in peacemaking is properly recognized. The Parents Circle-Families Forum and Combatants for Peace (CfP) work to heal the wounds of trauma and loss, sowing unity between both sides of the conflict. The local revolutionary movement in the West Bank Palestinian village of Nabi Saleh pushes the boundaries of non-violent resistance.
Each of these movements draws on feelings that are deeply human—from a desire for safety and the prosperity of one’s children, to empathy over shared loss and ongoing suffering, and anger at unacknowledged and unchanging injustice. In varying degrees, participants are willing to pay some cost and make sacrifices in their efforts toward peace. These costs might include sacrificing personal reputation within their own societies, even to the extent of social exclusion, or threats of violence. Many participants in these movements have lost loved ones as a result of violence. Indeed, the threat of death—either as a result of military action or violent resistance against occupation—always exists for those engaged in social movements. Women Wage Peace operates to avoid further loss and sacrifice; Combatants for Peace and the Parents Circle channel their grief toward reconciliation through the building of individual relationships; and community members in Nabi Saleh harness their anger at loss to stand up for their community and its right to live without the constraints of military occupation.
Women Wage Peace (WWP) as an Alterative Social Movement
Women Wage Peace (WWP) believes there will be no resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict without women's empowerment, particularly in the peacemaking process. Founded after the 2014 conflict between Israel and Gaza, Women Wage Peace aims “to bring about the resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by means of an honorable, non-violent and mutually acceptable agreement, with the participation of women from diverse groups of the population in Israel, in accordance with UN Resolution 1325.”[2] UN Resolution 1325 calls on member nations to recognize women’s oft neglected role in peace work and their disproportionate suffering from war. As of 2020, WWP boasted 44,000 members.[3] While WWP exists as an organization of largely Jewish Israeli women, Palestinians and men also participate in smaller numbers.
Using Aberle’s identification of methodologies of social movements, WWP might be understood as an alterative social movement because of its emphasis on the self-improvement of individual beliefs and behaviors. Aberle states alterative movements result in “partial change in individuals” rather than changing broader communities, which is exemplified in the work of WWP.[4] According to WWP Central Committee member Vivian Silver, the educational aims of WWP include advocating for peace and security for all of Israel, including “Jews and Arabs,” and “bridging divides within Israeli society as they are making peace with the Palestinians.”[5] One of the strengths of this movement is the way in which it elevates the voices and contributions of individual women who might otherwise be marginalized within Israeli society.
WWP emphasizes the necessity for negotiations to appeal to women due to their predominant influence in child-rearing. If women do not pursue peace, it is unlikely the next generation will either. Women’s voices must therefore be represented in peace processes. Indeed, many women involved in peace work appeal to their identity as women or mothers to explain their motivations. Former Israeli Ambassador to Belgium and representative of WWP Tamar Samash explained that she and her colleagues commit to their work because “we don’t want our children to die in wars.”[6]
One way to understand the effectiveness of WWP is by considering their work through the lens of sacrifice. As Samash made clear, many women are motivated to seek peace by the loss of loved ones, or the fear of such a loss. Though not always risking their own lives, members of WWP and other similar organizations sacrifice their time, creative energy, and social capital for the movement. In addition to influencing Israeli politics, these sacrifices also develop trust with Palestinians, necessary for the flourishing of democratic culture.[7] In addition to the personal cost of losing loved ones to war and conflict, members of social movements can experience isolation and exclusion from more mainstream members of society. Yahaloma Zechut, a 27 year veteran of the Israeli army and a member of WWP, tells of her experience: “During the first Women Wage Peace meeting that I hosted, someone took me to the kitchen to tell me that I was a traitor.”[8] According to political scientist Marco Giugni, “people who have been involved in social movement activities, even at a lower level of commitment, carry the consequences of that involvement throughout their life.”[9]
While successfully engaging in education and transformation of individuals, social movements like WWP are also criticized for their limited willingness to address what Palestinians view as core issues of the problem, such as realities of living under military control, settlement expansion, forced displacement of communities, and other human rights considerations affecting people living in the oPt. The movement of WWP recognizes that sacrifices made by many women largely go unrecognized and uncelebrated, but does not attempt to engage in broader transformational change by addressing systemic injustices.
The Parents Circle and Combatants for Peace as Redemptive Social Movements
While alterative movements focus primarily on the transformation of individual behaviors, redemptive social movements build upon individuals’ personal experiences of loss and transformation, to motivate them toward more radical change. Like alterative movements, redemptive social movements emphasize the need for both Palestinians’ and Israelis’ individual attitudes to be transformed for peace to come about. According to Aberle, in redemptive social movements, the transformation sought requires both a deep change in thinking on the individual level as well as activism in pursuit of radical change across the society.[10]
The redemptive social movements highlighted here reject violence and believe in the humanity of all people, whether oppressor or oppressed. The Parents Circle-Families Forum (PCFF, founded in 1998) includes members of families from Israel and Palestine who “have lost an immediate family member to the ongoing conflict.” Combatants for Peace (CfP, founded in 2006) is an ever-growing group of Palestinians and Israelis who took part in “the cycle of violence in our region,” whether serving in the IDF or fighting for Palestine’s freedom.[11] Interestingly, many of the participants and leaders in CfP are the children of parents involved in the Parents Circle. Both groups have long lists of moving stories in which Israelis and Palestinians bond over their shared loss or fervent commitment to justice as they understand it. Both organizations believe there will be no peace in Israel and Palestine until Israelis and Palestinians talk to each other and recognize their shared humanity.
According to these redemptive movements, recognizing one’s enemy’s humanity is essential to ending violence, which is a prerequisite for broader peace work on a national level. Sulaiman Khatib, the co-founder of CfP, explained in Disturbing the Peace, a documentary about the organization, that former combatants learn “we actually have something in common: that willingness to kill people that you don’t know.”[12] This is the starting point for recognizing that even one’s enemy has hopes, dreams, fears, and family. Chen Alon, the other co-founder of CfP argues that “it is indispensable to fight in this system to deny the humanity of the other side-- otherwise, how could you possibly kill someone?”[13] Put a different way, Israeli Rami Elhanan of the Parent’s Circle says, “We, the bereaved families, together from the depth of our mutual pain, are saying to you today: Our blood is the same red color, our suffering is identical, and all of us have the exact same bitter tears. So, if we, who have paid the highest prices possible, can carry on a dialogue, then everyone can.”[14] Recognizing the “other” side’s humanity thus contributes to ending the cycle of violence.
Redemptive movements can also be better understood in terms of sacrifice, and the cost individuals are willing to incur for the sake of the cause. According to Israeli philosopher and ethicist Moshe Halbertal, sacrifice shares with confession an ability to transform the past. He argues confession is not simply admitting to a failure and committing to change in the future but “a way of viewing one’s past sins and failures as a road that leads to a deeper understanding and revelation.”[15] Sacrificing anger and even hatred towards one’s enemy by sitting with them in PCFF or creating a peaceful relationship with a former enemy combatant in CfP transforms loss and willingness to kill into peacework. Such sacrifice allows for a new understanding of oneself, each other, and the nature of peace.
The Parents Circle includes those who have lost an immediate family member. Almost certainly a cost none of them would have chosen, the death of a loved one activated many PCFF members to begin to engage in activism. Participants in the peace movement pay many pre-activism costs inherent to their environment of conflict, war, occupation, and death. In the case of bereaved parents, the death of a child fits this category. However, the cost does not end there. There are also post-activism costs— those they choose to pay to be involved in peacemaking and reconciliation. As Elhanan wrote in a letter to his daughter years after her death speaking about his own transformation and the bond he shares with Palestinian Bassam Aramin:
Since you left, my life has changed completely. I am a different person. Every morning I fly off on my black motorbike to Beit Jallah to meet my Palestinian brother Bassam. He also lost his beloved ten-year-old daughter, Abir… it was not our destiny to lose our beloved daughters! That the cycle of blood can be stopped, and that there is no other way but through dialogue and reconciliation.[16]
While the PCFF focuses on dialogue and reconciliation, one of the characteristics of redemptive movements is their commitment to change something specific about the social structure of their communities. According to Aberle, redemptive social movements may seek a more limited change but are targeted at the entire population. In that regard, both PCFF and CfP engage in events like the Israeli-Palestinian Memorial Day Ceremony, which target awareness not only in Israel and the oPt, but in recent years included hundreds of thousands of participants worldwide.[17]
Another advantage of CfP and PCFF’s methods of conflict resolution is the challenge they pose to stereotypes of Palestinians as violent. Media portrayals of Palestinians as violent diminish international support for their cause, which further delays peace.[18] It is true that one of the main tactics used by Palestinian political parties during the Second Intifada in the early 2000s was suicide bombing.[19] However in 2006, Hamas moved into a ‘new era’ and abandoned the use of suicide attacks. Yihiyeh Musa, a Hamas member of the Palestinian Legislative Council, said, “The suicide bombings happened in an exceptional period and they have now stopped… They came to an end as a change of belief.”[20] Nonetheless, regardless of shifting policies within Palestinian political movements and variances of support or critique of suicide bombings by Palestinian civilians, one of the long-term effects remains the perspective that “all Palestinians are terrorists” or support violent resistance to Israeli occupation.
One of the challenges experienced by groups like CfP and PCFF includes the inability to meet in Israel or the oPt. Palestinians with West Bank identification papers cannot travel into Israel without a permit, and many Jewish Israelis fear or have difficulty traveling into the West Bank. In 2019, the State of Israel denied entry requests to 181 West Bank Palestinians seeking to join Combatants for Peace’s annual Memorial Day Ceremony, commemorating “all the victims of this ongoing conflict, on both sides.”[21] One Haaretz editorial alleged that Israel’s real motivation in denying entry to these Palestinians is the possibility that Israelis and others in the world would recognize viable peace partners among Palestinians.[22] If the Israeli state is threatened by the public image of Palestinians openly seeking peace with Israel, there is good reason to suspect popularizing this idea is an important means of resisting Israel’s occupation.
Ultimately, reformative organizations like CfP and PCFF play important roles in educating, gathering, and mobilizing large numbers of people to address the effects of the ongoing conflict. These movements focus not only on transforming individuals but addressing systemic issues. However, neither of these organizations has comprehensive strategies of nonviolent resistance or civil disobedience as a part of their methodologies of bringing about change. Individuals in these movements engage in radical activism, but, as a whole, the organizational foci rest in the space of dialogue and reconciliation.
Revolutionary Local Resistance Movement of Nabi Saleh
The final case study considered in this article is the revolutionary social movement happening in the West Bank Palestinian village of Nabi Saleh. Revolutionary social movements have the goal of dismantling a current reality. Local resistance movements are not formal organizations but are rooted in specific villages or geographic areas and respond to particular acts of occupation, like the seizure of land, demolition of homes, or general displacement. This category includes movements and places like Bi’ilin, a village near Ramallah that protests the wall dividing Israel from the West Bank, which also separates many Palestinians from their homes and land.[23] Another such movement includes Gaza’s “Great March of Return” (March 2018- December 2019), which called on Israeli authorities to end their blockade on Gaza and allow Palestinian refugees to return to their homes.[24] Similar movements exist in Kafr Qaddum, Hebron, and elsewhere throughout the oPt. These movements demonstrate the importance of local communities recognizing their shared suffering and working together to confront the occupation directly.
Nabi Saleh is a Palestinian village of about 550 residents that lies 20km northwest of Ramallah in the West Bank. Its name means “The Prophet Saleh” in Arabic, “Saleh” being a common name that means valid, pious, or righteous. For Nabi Saleh, the military control and occupation of the West Bank must be brought to an end. From 2009 until recently, the village hosted weekly protests against the Israeli occupation, one form of directly confronting occupation forces. On Fridays after dhuhr prayers, villagers would attempt to march to a nearby spring called Ein al-Qaws, now protected as part of the Israeli settlement of Halamish. On many Fridays, IDF soldiers would stop the march with “tear gas, rubber-coated bullets, water-cannon blasts of a noxious liquid known as ‘skunk’ and occasionally live fire.”[25]
In addition to their popular resistance, the village is also famous for being home to the Tamimi family. Bassem Tamimi spent several years in prison for allegedly inciting violence and organizing “unauthorized processions,” and encouraging stone-throwing.[26] Amnesty International recognized him as a prisoner of conscience, meaning he was imprisoned primarily because of his political beliefs.[27] A daughter in the family, Ahed, became famous for slapping an Israeli soldier when she was sixteen, resulting in a three-month detainment and eight-month prison sentence.[28]
Much of the resistance in Nabi Saleh consists of nonviolent protesting, but protesters do sometimes engage in stone-throwing and other types of resistance. Bassem Tamimi desires to start a Third Intifada and he hopes resistance will maintain nonviolent principles, emphasizing labor strikes, protests, and boycotts.[29] Revolutionary social movements employ these types of techniques of nonviolent resistance and civil disobedience.
Local resistance movements like those in Nabi Saleh are necessary for peacework because they harness and direct anger against injustice. As Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. explained while protesting the imprisonment of Vietnam War protesters, “there can be no justice without peace, and there can be no peace without justice.”[30] Bassem Tamimi no longer advocates a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, arguing that the growth of settlements in the West Bank makes such a reality impossible, even though “I’ve sat in jail for this idea, I’ve lost my sister and 22 other people from our village in the struggle for two states.”[31] The establishment of peace requires the anger of those most impacted by injustice to mobilize others and to embrace a future reality that manifests what they hope justice will look like.
Like the other social reform movements, revolutionary local resistance movements involve sacrifices. According to Halbertal, only good things are sacrificed, and sacrifice makes something (e.g. prior action, the sacrificed object, the sacrificer) good.[32] The Tamimi family has sacrificed time in prison for a liberated Palestine. Other protesters in Nabi Saleh risk imprisonment, injury from IDF retaliation, the lives of their family members, and freedom of movement.[33] May these sacrifices one day lead to equality and human rights in Israel and Palestine, where justice and equality are manifested and available to all people who reside in the land.
David Aberle argued revolutionary movements are necessary for bringing about ultimate changes in society, but such efforts of resistance and social change in the oPt experience many challenges.[34] For example, according to Amnesty International, Palestinians in the oPt have been banned from holding political gatherings and often face threats of arrest or punishment. Amnesty International asserts: “Since 1967, Israeli authorities have arrested hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, including women and children, under military orders, many of which criminalize a wide range of peaceful activities.”[35] The same report identifies some 100,000 Palestinians arrested by Israeli forces during the First Intifada between 1987 and 1993. Numerous scholars, including political scientist Fouad Moughrabi, assert political restrictions levied by the Israeli military have effectively limited the ability of revolutionary local resistance movements to grow and spread.
Conclusion
Each of the above-mentioned movements make sacrifices in different ways. Activists involved with Women Wage Peace sacrifice their time and energy in hopes that women will have proper influence in international politics and that they will not lose their children in extended war and conflict. However, movements like WWP are minimally effective when it comes to the “complicated” issues of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Such alterative social movements are effective in engaging individuals but remain limited in addressing broader systemic issues.
Meanwhile, members of Combatants for Peace and the Parents Circle sacrifice their anger and hatred of the “other” side for the sake of peace. These peace activists have decided to lay down their arms and embrace their enemies in pursuit of reconciliation and peace. Still, these movements of redemptive social change focus on dialogue and reconciliation without engaging in more direct activism and social resistance as mechanisms for change.
Finally, activists in Nabi Saleh risk sacrificing their lives or being arrested for protecting their community’s dignity in hope of freedom. Movements like Nabi Saleh are revolutionary in their efforts to employ more diverse tactics of social resistance such as boycotts, weekly protests, and other nonviolent responses to the oppression they experience. More work can and should be done to evaluate the effects and efficacy of each of these movements and their ethical premises (especially potential justifications for violence in Nabi Saleh and other local resistance movements). Despite varied means of women’s empowerment, peaceful relationships, and local protests, each movement plays a vital role in establishing peace in Israel and Palestine.
About the Authors
Rev. Dr. Mae Elise Cannon is the executive director of Churches for Middle East Peace (CMEP). Cannon has her doctorate in U.S. History from University of California – Davis and is ordained in the Evangelical Covenant Church (ECC).
Kevin Vollrath serves as the manager of Middle East partnerships for CMEP and is a PhD candidate at Princeton Theological Seminary.
Endnotes:
Aberle, David. Peyote Religion Among The Navaho. Viking Fund Publications in Anthropology. Issue 42. Aldine Publishing Company, 1966.
UN Resolution 1325 on women, peace, and security was adopted unanimously by the UN Security Council in 2000, acknowledging the disproportionate effect of war and conflict on women and girls.
“About us,” Women Wage Peace, accessed on January 20, 2021, https://womenwagepeace.org.il/en/about/.
Aberle, Peyote Religion, p. 317.
Jewish Women's Archive. "Episode 16: Women Wage Peace (Transcript)." (Viewed June 28, 2022) https://jwa.org/podcasts/canwetalk/episode-16-women-wage-peace/transcript.
Tamar Samash, representative of Women Wage Peace, interview over Zoom, January 13, 2021.
Danielle Allen, Talking to Strangers: Anxieties of Citizenship since Brown v. Board of Education, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004, p. 70.
Jewish Women’s Archive.
Giugni, M. (2008). Political, biographical, and cultural consequences of social movements. Sociology Compass, 2, pp. 1582–1600, 1590.
“Types and Stages of Social Movements,” Lumen Learning, accessed on June 29, 2022, https://courses.lumenlearning.com/wm-introductiontosociology/chapter/types-and-stages-of-social-movements/.
“About PCFF,” The Parents Circle, accessed January 20, 2021, https://www.theparentscircle.org/en/about_eng/; “About,” CFPeace, accessed January 20, 2021, https://cfpeace.org/about/.
National WWI Museum and Memorial, “Disturbing the Peace: Creating a New Story for Conflict Resolution,” February 9, 2017, 21:00, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLbCotRlWmM.
“Disturbing the Peace”, 22:50.
Rami Elhanan: Replacing Pain with Hope. “Israeli Palestinian Bereaved Families for Peace.” Accessed January 22, 2021. https://www.theparentscircle.org/en/stories/rami-elhanan_eng/.
Moshe Halbertal, On Sacrifice, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012, p. 50.
“Smadar Elhanan,” American Friends of the Parents Circle - Families Forum, accessed June 29, 2022, https://www.theparentscircle.org/en/letters-of-hope-2/smadar-elhanan/.
“The Israeli-Palestinian Memorial Ceremony,” CFPeace, accessed January 25, 2021, https://cfpeace.org/the-israeli-palestinian-memorial-ceremony/.
Mariam Barghouti, “How Mainstream Media gets Palestine Wrong,” Al-Jazeera, December 30, 2017, https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2017/12/30/how-mainstream-media-gets-palestine-wrong.
Robert J. Brym and Bader Araj, “Suicide Bombing as Strategy and Interaction: The Case of the Second Intifada,” Social Forces, Volume 84, Issue 4, June 2006, Pages 1969–1986, https://doi.org/10.1353/sof.2006.0081.
Conal Urquhart, “Hamas in Call to End Suicide Bombings,” The Guardian, April 6, 2006. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/apr/09/israel.
Editorial, “Danger: Peace Combatants,” Haaretz, May 2, 2019, https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/editorial/danger-peace-combatants-1.7194154; “ The Israeli-Palestinian Memorial Ceremony,” CFPeace, accessed January 25, 2021, https://cfpeace.org/the-israeli-palestinian-memorial-ceremony/.
Tzvi Joffre, “Palestinians denied entry for Israeli-Palestinian Memorial Day Ceremony,” The Jerusalem Post, May 1, 2019, https://www.jpost.com/breaking-news/palestinians-denied-entry-for-joint-memorial-day-event-588430.
The Spectre, “Bi’ilin a sign of hope and struggle,” Network23, October 7, 2011, https://network23.org/thespectre/2011/07/10/biilin-a-sign-of-hope-and-struggle/.
“Six Months On: Gaza’s Great March of Return,” Amnesty International, October 2018, https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2018/10/gaza-great-march-of-return/.
Ben Ehrenreich, “Is This Where the Third Intifada Will Start?,” New York Times, March 15, 2013, https://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/17/magazine/is-this-where-the-third-intifada-will-start.html.
Ehrenrich.
“Israel/OPT: Activist Jailed for Peacefully Demonstrating: Bassem Tamimi,” Amnesty International, November 28, 2012, https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/mde15/062/2012/en/.
Yotam Berger and Jack Khoury, “Palestinian Teen Ahed Tamimi After Her Release: ‘Resistance Will Continue Until Occupation Ends’,” Haaretz, July 29, 2018, https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/palestinian-teen-ahed-tamimi-released-from-israeli-prison-1.6315634.
Noah Kulwin, “Struggle in Nabi Saleh,” Jewish Currents, November 20, 2018, https://jewishcurrents.org/struggle-in-nabi-saleh/,
Warren Blumenfeld, “Revered Dr. Martin Luther King Jv. and No Peace without Justice,” The Good Men Project, April 2, 2018, https://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/reverend-dr-martin-luther-king-jr-and-no-peace-without-justice/.
Oren Ziv, “Bassem Tamimi: One State,” +972 Magazine, February 19, 2020. https://www.972mag.com/bassem-tamimi-one-state/.
Moshe Halbertal, On Sacrifice, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012, p. 39.
The entrance to Nabi Saleh, like a few other Palestinian cities with local resistance movements, has been sealed by IDF. K. F., “Israeli forces seal off entrances of two Ramallah-district villages,” English WAFA, August 20, 2020, https://english.wafa.ps/Pages/Details/131160.
Aberle, p. 315.
“Israel’s Occupation: 50 Years of Dispossession,” Amnesty International, accessed June 29, 2022, https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2017/06/israel-occupation-50-years-of-dispossession/.