Popular Resistance in Palestine

Published November 2010 by Pluto Press

The Western media paint Palestinian resistance against Israeli occupation as exclusively violent: armed resistance, suicide bombings, and rocket attacks. In reality these methods are the exception to what is a peaceful and creative resistance movement. In this fascinating book, Dr Mazin Qumsiyeh synthesises data from hundreds of original sources to provide the most comprehensive study of civil resistance in Palestine.

The book contains hundreds of stories of the heroic and highly innovative methods of resistance employed by the Palestinians over more than 100 years. The author also analyses the successes, failures, missed opportunities and challenges facing ordinary Palestinians as they struggle for freedom against incredible odds. This is the only book to critically and comparatively study the uprisings of 1920-21, 1929, 1936-9, 1970s, 1987-1991 and 2000-2006.

The compelling human stories told in this book will inspire people of all faiths and political backgrounds to chart a better and more informed direction for a future of peace with justice.

♦ “This is a timely and remarkable book written by the most important chronicler of contemporary popular resistance in Palestine. Mazin Qumsiyeh brilliantly evokes the spirit of Mahatma Gandhi, Edward Said, Rachel Corrie and many others, to tell the unvarnished truth about Palestine and Zionist settler olonialism. With its focus on ‘history and activism from below’, this is a work of enormous significance. Developing further his original ideas on human rights in Palestine, media activism, public policies and popular, non-violent resistance, Mazin Qumsiyeh’s book is a must read for anyone interested in justice and how to produce the necessary breakthrough in the Israel-Palestine conflict” 
Prof. Nur Masalha, author of ‘The Politics of Denial: Israel and the Palestinian Refugee Problem’

♦ “Qumsiyeh’s inspiring accounts of both the everyday and the most extraordinary acts of Palestinian indigenous resistance to colonialism expose the misguided claims that Palestinians have never tried nonviolence; in fact, they are among the experts, whose courage, creativity, and resilience are an inspiration to people of conscience everywhere. Even with the arms of a military superpower, the Israeli government’s failure to quell the Palestinians’ spirit and insistence on human rights reminds us that the greatest strength of all belongs to those with justice on their side, who will ultimately triumph.”
Anna Baltzer, author of ‘Witness in Palestine’

♦ “Mazin Qumsiyeh’s insider’s chronicle of Palestinian civil resistance and its quest for self-reliance, independence, political rights, and self-liberation clearly shows that collective nonviolent action by Palestinians has been neither episodic nor an aberration, but remarkably consistent and for nearly a century. His sweeping account belongs on the bookshelves of Israelis who are fearful, Palestinians who are unsure of next steps, and a global community that has yet to take a meaningful stand for peace with justice. Anyone concerned about the future for all the peoples of the Middle East will take encouragement from his invigorating analysis.”
Mary Elizabeth King, Professor of peace and conflict studies and author of ‘A Quiet Revolution: The First Palestinian Intifada and Nonviolent
Resistance’

♦”Mazin Qumsiyeh’s book is enlightening and powerful.  It reveals the human suffering and destruction of Palestinian people and land, which are the appalling consequences of Israel’s ethnic, nationalist, military, project that has displaced the indigenous Palestinian population and committed crimes of genocide and apartheid. In spite of such injustice, we can all take hope and inspiration from Mazin’s stories of the lives of the courageous Palestinian people who make the real, often unrecorded, history. Their peaceful spirit and persevering struggle for human rights and international law, has been, and continues to be, carried out (in the main) by popular nonviolent resistance.  Their method of active NV resistance deserve to be known more widely by the International community who need to see such examples, so they too can reject violence, militarism, and war, and build their security and freedom on Human rights and International Law.”
Mairead Maguire, Nobel Prize Winner

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