Violence, Nonviolence, and the Palestinian National Movement

Wendy Pearlman

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9781107007024
• eBook ISBN: 9781139119887
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Why do some national movements use violent protest and others nonviolent protest? Wendy Pearlman shows that much of the answer lies inside movements themselves. Nonviolent protest requires coordination and restraint, which only a cohesive movement can provide. When, by contrast, a movement is fragmented, factional competition generates new incentives for violence and authority structures are too weak to constrain escalation. Pearlman reveals these patterns across one hundred years in the Palestinian national movement, with comparisons to South Africa and Northern Ireland. To those who ask why there is no Palestinian Gandhi, Pearlman demonstrates that nonviolence is not simply a matter of leadership. Nor is violence attributable only to religion, emotions or stark instrumentality. Instead, a movement's organizational structure mediates the strategies that it employs. By taking readers on a journey from civil disobedience to suicide bombings, this book offers fresh insight into the dynamics of conflict and mobilization.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Violence, Nonviolence, and the Palestinian National Movement
• Title
• Copyright
• To my parents
• Contents
• Preface
• Acronyms
• 1 The Organizational Mediation Theory of Protest
• 2 National Struggle under the British Mandate, 1918–1948
• 3 Roots and Rise of the Palestine Liberation Organization, 1949–1987
• 4 Occupation and the First Intifada, 1967–1993
• 5 The Oslo Peace Process, 1993–2000
• 6 The Second Intifada, 2000
• 7 Comparisons: South Africa and Northern Ireland
• 8 Conclusion
• Notes
• Index