As part of the 2010 Fletcher Summer Institute for the Advanced Study of Nonviolent Conflict, longtime activist and Distinguished Scholar at the University for Peace Dr. Mary King offered an overview of the remarkable and previously untold account of the first intifada as a massive nonviolent social mobilization. The Palestinians’ deliberately chosen methods for resisting the Israeli occupation effectively debunk the widely held notion of the first intifada as violent. King will discuss the decades-long spread of knowledge about nonviolent strategies throughout Palestinian society that shaped the uprising, which was years in the making, and will offer details on the intifada’s ability to continue despite harsh reprisals. Through the determination of thousands of “popular committees,” often started and run by women, and the ability to sustain communities under curfew or strike, the nonviolent movement during the first intifada was a “quiet revolution” which emerged as the most cogent pressure to date to create a Palestinian state alongside Israel.

Dr. Mary Elizabeth King