People will often ask “where is the Palestinian Ghandi?” as a way of faulting Palestinians for using violent tactics in their resistance against Israeli domination. But the truth is that Palestinians have long used nonviolent means of resistance, though these attempts rarely receive attention in the mainstream media. But scholars have noted that media attention is critical to the success of nonviolent movements, because it is the response of a broader public to nonviolent efforts that “render the opponent’s behaviour too costly socially, economically or politically (Sharp 1990; Galtung 1989).”
In Palestine, instead of nonviolent protests being recognized as a productive move towards resolving the conflict, nonviolent protesters frequently face fines, beatings and imprisonment, if not worse. An example is the case of Abdullah Abu Rahma who received four months in prison for participation in the commemoration of the Nakba in 2016.
Some attempts at nonviolent resistance by Palestinians include the following:
1 Engagement with Zionist Leaders & the British Government: Palestinians mounted diplomatic and advocacy efforts as early as the late 19th century. Rashid Khalidi, a prominent Palestinian scholar and Professor Emeritus of Columbia University, opens his book One Hundred Years War on Palestine with the story of his great-great-great uncle, Yusuf Diya al-Din Pasha al-Khalidi, a learned man who spoke multiple languages and regularly read the overseas newspapers. Yusuf Diya learned early of the Zionist movement in Europe and in 1899 wrote to the chief rabbi of France, warning of the dangers he foresaw if the Zionist project moved to implementation. When the Balfour Declaration was issued in 1917 formalizing British support for a Jewish state in historic Palestine, additional diplomatic attempts were made to get Britain to change course. Some of the correspondence between Britain and Palestinian groups are on the United Nations’ website. In the 1930’s diplomatic efforts expanded into protests and demonstrations that were violently suppressed. In a notable incident in 1933, an 81 year old man, Musa Kazim al-Husseini, was severely beaten by British troops, and died a few months later.
2 Engagement with International Institutions: As international institutions began to develop, Palestinians advocated for their cause through diplomatic engagement with bodies such as the League of Nations and later the United Nations. In 2012, Palestine was granted a non-member observer status in the United Nations, and representatives there have continued to advocate for Palestinian rights through the bodies set up by the International community. Although the UN has frequently passed resolutions and voted on the topic of Israel-Palestine, these votes are frequently vetoed by the United States, which has historically acted to protect Israeli interests on the global stage.
3 Civil Disobedience: Although the term “Intifada” (meaning “uprising” or “shaking off”) is sometimes misused to suggest violent resistance, the first Intifada of the late 1980’s was in fact a largely nonviolent movement, characterized by mass protests, civil disobedience, strikes and boycotts, or the raising of the Palestinian flag, which had been outlawed by Israel. The extent of Palestinian “violence” during this period was largely symbolic stone throwing. The Israeli military responded with a brutal crackdown that included a policy of breaking the bones of nonviolent protesters, and resulted in over one thousand fatalities.
4 Economic Tactics: In 2005, a broad coalition of Palestinian Civil Society began the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement to pressure Israel into complying with International Law and the Universal Declaration of Human rights. Inspired by the South African anti-apartheid movement, BDS calls for global, grassroots action to support Palestinian rights. The movement covers the use of boycotts, which are refusals to purchase or do business with companies involved in the occupation, divestment, which covers the withdrawal of investments in those companies, and sanctions, which are state-level restrictions on trade or the imposition of financial penalties. As a response to the BDS movement, and an indication of its potential, pro-Israeli activists have successfully passed anti-BDS legislation in 35 US states.
5 Protest Marches: More recently, the Great March of Return was a months-long effort by the people of Gaza to draw attention to the Palestinian Right of Return (UN Resolution 194). Beginning in March, 2018, the Great March of Return involved weekly, nonviolent marches to the border wall in Gaza, and was met with sniper attacks on unarmed civilians that could constitute war crimes. The full UN report on these protests can be found here.
6 Arts & Literature: For years Palestinians have also used the arts to tell the world about their plight. In the diaspora, Film Festivals have been held in cities like Boston and Chicago. In 2025, the film “No Other Land“, created by a group of Israeli and Palestinian film makers, even won an Oscar, but nevertheless failed to secure nation-wide distribution. Pulitzer-prize winning poet Mosab Abo-Toha and writers like Refaat Alareer, who was killed in December 2023, used their words as a way to resist occupation through storytelling. Initiatives like We are Not Numbers in Gaza and the Freedom Theater in the Jenin refugee camp also used the arts as ways to give voice to the voiceless.
7 Social Media: In 2021, social media was used to draw global attention to home demolitions and evictions in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of East Jerusalem using the hasthag #SaveSheikhJarrah. During the campaign, Palestinian activists reported that their content was suppressed by mainstream platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, and while Twitter apologized for taking down some of the content, valuable documentation of human rights violations was lost in the process.
Additional Sources:
- Foreign Policy Magazine : Palestine’s Hidden History of Nonviolence
- World Peace Foundation: The Silenced Voices of Nonviolent Resistance in Palestine
- Assessing Nonviolence in the Palestinian Rights Struggle by Victoria Mason and Richard Falk
- Amnesty Report : Six Months on: Gaza’s Great March of Return
- Ted Talk: Pay Attention to Nonviolence by Julia Bacha
- Why there’s no Palestinian Nelson Mandela, Explained by a South African Professor