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Mubarak Awad is a Palestinian-American psychologist and an advocate of nonviolent resistance.
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Mubarak Awad is a Palestinian-American psychologist and an advocate of nonviolent resistance.
Awad, a Palestinian Christian (a member of the Greek Orthodox Church), was born in 1943 in Jerusalem when it was under the British Mandate. [1] When Awad was five years old, his father was killed during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War and he became a refugee in the Old City of Jerusalem. [1] [2] His mother was a pacifist and argued against revenge. [2] He was given the right to Israeli citizenship in 1967 when East Jerusalem was annexed by Israel after the Six-Day War but refused and kept his Jordanian citizenship. [3] [4]
Mennonite and Quaker missionaries influenced Awad's views in his youth. [2] In the 1960s he moved to the United States to study at the Mennonite Bluffton University and received a BA in social work and sociology. [2] [5] He went on to obtain an MS in education from Saint Francis University and a PhD in psychology from the International Graduate School of Saint Louis University. [1] [5] [6]
He was granted U.S. citizenship in 1978 and settled in a small town in Ohio. [2] [3]
Awad was the founder and former president of the National Youth Advocate Program (NYAP) in the United States. [6] The organization developed from the Ohio Youth Advocate Program (OYAP) established by Awad in 1978 with support from the Ohio Youth Commission (now the Department of Youth Services), the state department responsible for finding placements for "at risk" youth referred to the state from county juvenile courts. [5] [7]
As an offshoot of NYAP, he later founded and directed Youth Advocate Program International, headquartered in Washington, DC. [8] According to the website, "The Youth Advocate Program International, Inc. (YAP International) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. It established its headquarters and advocacy center in Washington, DC in 1996. YAP International's mission is to promote and protect the rights and well-being of the world's youth, giving particular attention to children victimized by conflict, exploitation, and state and personal violence." [9]
In 1983 Awad returned to Jerusalem and established the Palestinian Centre for the Study of Nonviolence. [10] [11] Before the intifada , Awad published papers and lectured on nonviolence as a technique for resisting the Israeli occupation. He wrote that nonviolence could be used as a means of resistance. The Centre also sponsored a number of nonviolent actions during the early months on the first intifada. Among the tactics employed was the planting of olive trees on proposed Israeli settlements, asking people not to pay taxes and encouraging people to eat and drink Palestinian products. In the Middle East he is often referred to as the Arab Gandhi due to the similarity between his teachings of the power of nonviolence and those of Mahatma Gandhi in India during the British Raj. [12] He believed these tactics could be used to resist the Israeli military occupation. He also drew upon the methodologies of Gene Sharp's trilogy, The Politics of Non-Violence. Using this knowledge and his experience, Awad prepared his own "12-page blueprint for passive resistance in the territories," eventually published in the Journal of Palestine Studies . [13] He has translated into Arabic the teachings of Mohatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King. In 1998 Holy Land Trust (HLT) [14] was established out of PCSN and The Journey of the Magi (JOM) by Sami Awad, Mubarak Awad's nephew. [15]
In 1987, Awad attempted to renew the residency permit he had been issued in 1967. [3] His application was declined and he was ordered to leave the country when his tourist visa expired. [3] Awad claimed, with support from U.S. consular officials, that under international conventions Israel did not have the right to expel him from his place of birth and he refused to leave. [3] The Israeli government stayed the deportation order mainly at the insistence of the U.S. [10] In May 1988, Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir ordered Awad arrested and expelled. [3] Officials charged that Awad broke Israeli law by inciting "civil uprising" and helping to write leaflets that advocated civil disobedience that were distributed by the leadership of the First Intifada. [3] No evidence was provided to support the charge and Awad appealed the decision to the Supreme Court. [3] The court ruled that he had forfeited his right to residence status in Israel when he became a U.S. citizen and he was deported in June 1988. [3] U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz's appeal to Shamir to revoke the deportation order was declined. [3] Ian Lustick, professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania, cited the ruling in Awad's case as one of a number of examples that he argues demonstrate that "[t]here has never been an official act that has declared expanded East Jerusalem as having been annexed by the State of Israel." [16]
Critics argue that Awad advocated violence under the guise of calling it civil disobedience. In a 1984 article for the Journal of Palestine Studies , Awad stated, "for the Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza the most effective strategy is nonviolence. This does not apply to the Palestinians living outside. Nor is it a rejection of the concept of armed struggle. This is nothing short of war." [17] Awad called to "block roads, prevent communications, cut electricity, telephone, and water lines, prevent the movement of equipment, and in other ways obstruct the government." [18] The article speaks openly about throwing stones. Awad's article called for a campaign of harassment against Israelis and for "psychological warfare" to "demoralize" the population. He also called for "the destruction of Israeli fences and power lines," according to Time magazine. [19]
Awad has called for Israel to be replaced with Palestine. In a Jerusalem speech to Palestinian students he said "the PLO wants the entire Palestine and I agree. Palestine for me is the Galilee, Akko, Ashdod, everything. This is Palestine for me." [20] Dr. Shlomo Riskin, founding chief rabbi of the Israeli settlement of Efrat in the West Bank, called him "an articulate wolf in sheep`s clothing" who "clearly represents a threat to the lives of Israeli citizens." [21] Israeli diplomat Moshe Arad in a New York Times article decried Awad who he claimed took American citizenship, in accordance with immigration law, which required that he 'intends to reside permanently in the U.S. and then turned around and claimed to the Israeli Supreme Court that his intention was always to reside in Jerusalem. "Nonviolence as merely a convenient tactic... incitement and acts of violence - are these the watchwords of a man truly committed to peace and moderation? No. Western audiences do not hear these Awad views in English. But his local audiences hear them in Arabic," Arad said. [22]
In 1989, Awad founded Nonviolence International, a non-governmental organization in Special Consultative Status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council. [23] Nonviolence International's stated mission is to promote nonviolent action and seek to reduce the use of violence worldwide. [23]
Awad has taught at the American University in Washington, D.C. since the early 1990s. [1] [5] He is an Adjunct Professor in the School of International Service where he teaches classes in the theories and methods of nonviolence. [5]
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The Palestine Liberation Organization is a Palestinian nationalist coalition that is internationally recognized as the official representative of the Palestinian people. Founded in 1964, it initially sought to establish an Arab state over the entire territory of the former Mandatory Palestine, advocating the elimination of the State of Israel. However, in 1993, the PLO recognized Israeli sovereignty with the Oslo I Accord, and now only seeks Arab statehood in the Palestinian territories that have been militarily occupied by Israel since the 1967 Arab–Israeli War.
The First Intifada, also known as the First Palestinian Intifada or the Stone Intifada, was a sustained series of protests, acts of civil disobedience and riots carried out by Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories and Israel. It was motivated by collective Palestinian frustration over Israel's military occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, as it approached a twenty-year mark, having begun in the wake of the 1967 Arab–Israeli War. The uprising lasted from December 1987 until the Madrid Conference of 1991, though some date its conclusion to 1993, with the signing of the Oslo Accords.
The Second Intifada, also known as the Al-Aqsa Intifada, was a major uprising by Palestinians against the Israeli occupation, characterized by a period of heightened violence in the Palestinian territories and Israel between 2000 and 2005. The general triggers for the unrest are speculated to have been centered on the failure of the 2000 Camp David Summit, which was expected to reach a final agreement on the Israeli–Palestinian peace process in July 2000. An uptick in violent incidents started in September 2000, after Israeli politician Ariel Sharon made a provocative visit to the Al-Aqsa compound, which is situated atop the Temple Mount in East Jerusalem; the visit itself was peaceful, but, as anticipated, sparked protests and riots that Israeli police put down with rubber bullets, live ammunition, and tear gas. Within the first few days of the uprising, the IDF had fired one million rounds of ammunition.
Nonviolence is the personal practice of not causing harm to others under any condition. It may come from the belief that hurting people, animals and/or the environment is unnecessary to achieve an outcome and it may refer to a general philosophy of abstention from violence. It may be based on moral, religious or spiritual principles, or the reasons for it may be strategic or pragmatic. Failure to distinguish between the two types of nonviolent approaches can lead to distortion in the concept's meaning and effectiveness, which can subsequently result in confusion among the audience. Although both principled and pragmatic nonviolent approaches preach for nonviolence, they may have distinct motives, goals, philosophies, and techniques. However, rather than debating the best practice between the two approaches, both can indicate alternative paths for those who do not want to use violence.
Nonviolence International (NI) acts as a network of resource centers that promote the use of nonviolence and nonviolent resistance. They have maintained relationships with activists in a number of countries, with their most recent projects taking place in Palestine, Sudan and Ukraine. They partnered with International Center on Nonviolent Conflict to update Gene Sharp's seminal work on 198 methods of nonviolent action through a book publication. NI has also produced a comprehensive database of nonviolence tactics, which stands as the largest collection of nonviolent tactics in the world. They partner with Rutgers University to provide the largest collection of nonviolence training materials in the world.
Nafez Assaily, born in 1956 in the West Bank, in the Old City of Jerusalem grew up in Hebron, and is a sociologist and Palestinian peace activist. As early as 1997 he was defined as a Palestinian who had argued for a comprehensive strategy of non-violence through 43 years of the failure to achieve anything by armed struggle.
A peace movement is a social movement which seeks to achieve ideals such as the ending of a particular war or minimizing inter-human violence in a particular place or situation. They are often linked to the goal of achieving world peace. Some of the methods used to achieve these goals include advocacy of pacifism, nonviolent resistance, diplomacy, boycotts, peace camps, ethical consumerism, supporting anti-war political candidates, supporting legislation to remove profits from government contracts to the military–industrial complex, banning guns, creating tools for open government and transparency, direct democracy, supporting whistleblowers who expose war crimes or conspiracies to create wars, demonstrations, and political lobbying. The political cooperative is an example of an organization which seeks to merge all peace-movement and green organizations; they may have diverse goals, but have the common ideal of peace and humane sustainability. A concern of some peace activists is the challenge of attaining peace when those against peace often use violence as their means of communication and empowerment.
Sumud meaning "steadfastness" or "steadfast perseverance" is a Palestinian cultural value, ideological theme and political strategy that emerged in the wake of the 1967 Six-Day War among the Palestinian people as a consequence of their oppression and the resistance it inspired. This noun is derived from a verb meaning "arrange, adorn, lay up, save". Those who are steadfast - that is, those who exhibit sumud - are referred to as samidin, the singular forms of which are samid (m.) and samida (f.).
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Meta Peace Team (MPT), formerly Michigan Peace Team, is a nonprofit, grassroots organization founded in 1993 that seeks to pursue peace through active nonviolence and create an alternative to militarism through empowered peacemaking. MPT provides creative nonviolence training workshops to ordinary citizens with a framework of third party nonviolent intervention (TPNI), and it deploys peace teams to conflict areas both domestically and internationally. Its peace teams have worked in places such as Iraq, Haiti, Bosnia, Egypt, Panama, Mexico, Gaza Strip, and the West Bank; they have also been placed within the United States to create peaceful presences at national and state political conventions, Ku Klux Klan rallies, and gay pride parades, among many other events. MPT also works in collaboration with other peace and justice groups around the globe, including Nonviolent Peaceforce, Christian Peacemaker Teams, Veterans for Peace, the International Solidarity Movement, Peace Brigades International, the Shanti Sena Network, and the Metta Center for Nonviolence. Its current offices are located in Lansing and Detroit, Michigan. MPT is a founding member of the Shanti Sena Network.
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Issa Amro is a Palestinian activist based in Hebron, West Bank. He is the co-founder and former coordinator (2007–2018) of the grassroots group Youth Against Settlements. Amro advocates the use nonviolent resistance and civil disobedience to fight the Israeli Occupation of the Palestinian Territories. In 2010, he was declared "human rights defender of the year in Palestine" by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights In 2013, the United Nations Human Rights Council expressed concern for his wellbeing and safety due to numerous accounts of harassment from Israeli soldiers and settlers and a series of arbitrary arrests. At present, Amro is being indicted by the Israeli military court with 18 charges against him. In May 2017, Bernie Sanders along with three U.S. senators and 32 congressmen wrote to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to urge Israeli authorities to reconsider the charges against Amro.
We Are Not Numbers (WANN) is a project established in 2015 by Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor to provide English-language writing workshops for young Palestinians in Gaza. It provides each participant with six months of training and mentoring with experienced English writers, professional authors, reporters and communicators. The features, stories, news reports and social media content produced as part of the program have been featured by various media outlet, among them Huffington Post, Mondoweiss, the New Arab, the Palestine Chronicle and +972 Magazine.
Sulaiman Khatib is co-director and co-founder of Combatants for Peace, a bi-national, grassroots nonviolence movement in Israel and Palestine. Combatants for Peace is dedicated to three main pillars: nonviolent direct action, joint partnership between Israelis and Palestinians and ending the Israeli military occupation. Khatib was nominated, along with Israeli co-founder of Combatants for Peace, Chen Alon, for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2017 and 2018. He has been compared in the press to a modern-day Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr. or Nelson Mandela. He cites these three nonviolence leaders as his personal inspiration and the key to his transformation from violence to nonviolence.
