PREACHING non-violent resistance to those involved in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would appear to be an uphill struggle. But yesterday the grandson of the pacifist Indian leader Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi did just that.
In a 45-minute meeting with Yassir Arafat, the Mahatma’s fifth grandson, Arun Gandhi, told the Palestinian leader that pacifist protest was the only way forward.
Mr Arafat, who has seen years of armed opposition to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, looked on in silence as Dr Gandhi talked to reporters after the meeting, telling them that had the Palestinians adopted passive resistance from the start of their dispute with Israel, hostilities could have ended by now.
Mr Arafat agreed with the principle of non-violence, but said that it was not always possible.
Dr Gandhi, 70, was on the second day of a week-long visit to Israel and Palestine.
Advertisement
But the focus for the man who runs the M.K. Gandhi Institute for Non-Violence in the US city of Memphis will be the rise of Israel’s separation wall and the occupation.
“I hope to explain the philosophy of non-violence,” he said at a refugee camp in Ramallah. “I want to make them realise that unless we change the culture of violence, civilisation will destroy itself. Fifty-five years of violence has achieved nothing but more agony and it is time for them to try new ways to deal with the issue.”
Dr Gandhi has fond memories of his grandfather, who evolved his political philosophy of passive resistance in opposing racism as a lawyer in South Africa and, after his return to India, in the struggle for independence from Britain. As a boy of 12, Dr Gandhi last saw the Mahatma just before he was assassinated.
His visit came about after Mohammad al-Atar, director of Palestinians for Peace and Democracy, visited the Memphis foundation after the International Court of Justice ruling against the construction of the separation fence.
Dr Gandhi, whose father Manilal was the Mahatma’s second son, will today visit a 24ft-high section of the barrier in the Abu Dis neighbourhood in East Jerusalem. He will be accompanied by Ahmed Qureia, the Palestinian Prime Minister.
Advertisement
Born in South Africa, Dr Gandhi lived there for 23 years before moving to India, where he worked as a journalist for 30 years. He has toured the world pressing the strategy of non-violence that his grandfather used to end British colonialism in India in 1947.
Dr Gandhi told a rally of Palestinians yesterday that “freedom is very near”. As long as the occupation continued it was their right to resist, but he said that it should be done peacefully.