A Gandhi in Gaza?

 

 Maybe it is time to accept armed struggle is not working. Could a Gandhi be more successful here?

This column appeared in Lokmat Times on Nov 1, 2023

Alok Tiwari

Critics of Mahatma Gandhi often credit success of his nonviolent movement to ‘gentlemanliness’ of the British. They say it wouldn’t have worked against someone like Hitler who might have had him picked up and sent to gas chambers long before he became a Mahatma. We would never know how it might have turned out. I personally think Gandhi would have run rings around Hitler. It’s the same argument that Palestinian organizations have used to reject his ways. They believe nonviolent struggle would never work against Israel backed by the devious West.

Hence, they resorted to an armed struggle to secure the Palestinian state. This was earlier led by Palestine Liberation Organization of Yasser Arafat and is now waged through organizations like Hamas. The movement has gone through several wars, often backed by powerful Arab allies. Or violent street protests like Intifada that continued for decades. It all only resulted death and destruction on a massive scale, mostly on the side of Palestinians. The damage done in Israeli side, relatively less to begin with, was quickly repaired by massive aid from its western allies. Meanwhile, the dream of independent Palestine remains as distant as ever while Israel has gone on to occupy more and more territory either through outright annexation or through allowing illegal Jewish settlements on lands that properly should go to Palestine. The military asymmetry between Israel and Palestinian has only grown even as more and more allies of Palestine now not only recognize Israel but are keen to do business with it.

Maybe it is time to accept that armed struggle is not working. Could a Gandhi be more successful here? Let us try to imagine what a Palestinian Gandhi would be like. In keeping with times, let us assume she might be a woman. If one exists today, she might be living in a most deprived neighbourhood of Gaza where mere existence is a struggle. A Palestinian Gandhi might start with being one with citizens of the lowest rung, probably working to educate the kids or providing succour to the ailing.

She might start small. Trying to end everyday injustices that make life miserable in her neighbourhood. For this she might need to take on not just the Israeli controllers but also local Palestinian strongmen who derive power from the people’s sense of grievance. It could be securing better buildings for schools or supplies for the hospitals. Maybe, better sanitation and municipal services. In all these she would ensure not one stone is thrown at anybody.

As her reputation spreads and she is able to involve more people with her, she might seek to build bridges with Jews all over the world and especially in Israel. She will harbour no hatred against Jews despite her people’s recent history with them. She will also explicitly recognize Israel’s right to exist despite the perceived injustice of its creation. Make no mistake, there are many people within Israel who are disgusted with what their country does with Palestinians. Their difficulty is that there is no one among Palestinians whom they can support without appearing to be treasonous. A Palestinian Gandhi would create a space, an ashram if you like, where even they can join the common humanitarian movement for better lives for Palestinians. She would make sure a good number of Jews are part of it.

As she gets her feet wet in politics, she would lay out a vision for a future Palestine as a non-sectarian, secular entity that has space for every religion and community. With this vision in mind, she would need to engage with radical Jews settling on Palestinian lands. She would send out a message that they were welcome to stay and contribute to the future Palestinian state where they would have full religious freedom and equal rights but as Palestinian citizens. This might earn her wrath of radical Palestinians for whom compromise is an anathema. Maybe, they’d try to kill her but that’s a risk every Gandhi takes.

Most of all, she would need to underline one fact not only to her people but also to Israel and the world at large: that while her people would not settle for anything less than a fully sovereign state on land originally meant for them, they would not kill or engage in any kind of violence towards that end. She may even go to the extent of calling for complete disarmament of the Palestinian people, maybe undertaking a fast to make militant groups give up their arms. She may like to do it in a very demonstrative manner, like having bonfires of AK-47s mass destruction of rockets.

This is not the path of the weak. This way, as Palestinians seek their homeland from an unwilling and militarily powerful adversary, they may need to face tanks and guns unarmed. But they would make it infinitely more difficult for Israeli forces to fire upon them. Today, thanks to Hamas’s atrocity against Israeli civilians, Israel can bomb their neighbourhoods out of existence without compunction. It would find no justification to continue its blockades, injustices, and usurpation of land against a people and a leader who never hit back.

A Gandhi would think of a lot more different ways in which to put Israel on the defensive morally. Today, Israel can portray its excesses and denial of justice as retaliation of Palestinian violence. Depriving Israel of that excuse is key to securing concessions. Sometimes, we joke ‘Majboori ka naam Mahatma Gandhi’. Nothing can be farther from truth. Palestinians need to know it is not Majboori but Mazbooti ka naam Mahatma Gandhi.