Palestinians take Gandhi’s path and win followers

WEST BANK - Though militancy and stone throwing remain deeply ingrained in the Palestinian psyche, passive resistance protests on the lines of what India’s iconic leader Mahatma Gandhi followed and espoused at the turn of the 20th century, is gaining favor with some West Bank politicians and the public.

It’s taken years, but the predominantly passive Palestinian protest movement started in Bilin seems to be making inroads among a broader swath of Palestinians, winning public support from the likes of Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, reports the Christian Science Monitor (CSM).

Frustrated with unending peace talks and disillusioned with the recent military Intifada, many Palestinians are looking for a new path to statehood.

Those advocating passive resistance are asking Palestinians to swallow a bitter pill-accepting the inefficacy of Arab militants against Israel’s military superiority.

Organizers in Bilin admit that moving Palestinians away from stone throwing to the fully non-violent doctrine of passive resistance promoted by Gandhi in India and American civil rights leader Reverend Martin Luther King in the segregated south of the 1950s is not easy.

Palestinians believe they have the right to armed resistance and rock throwing under international law, and therefore, it would take more courage to lie in front of a bulldozer.

Abandoning violence for the most part, Bilin residents along with international and Israeli sympathizers have staged marches to the Israel’s security fence for the last five years. (ANI)