The democratizing qualities of the Palestinian village Bil’in’s civil resistance campaign

ABSTRACT

This paper deals with the quality of civil resistance and, in particular, the democratizing qualities of various civil resistance practices. There is a great amount of research on civil resistance and its capacities to foster social change, and in particular its impact on increased democracy. However, we still have an empirical bias in this research since these studies mainly focus on mass-mobilized breaking resistance. This paper provides an analysis of various civil resistance practices’ democratizing qualities based on a case study – namely the Palestinian village Bil’in’s campaign against the Israeli plans to build a ‘security barrier’‚ through the village’s farmlands. The process of the campaign began in 2002 and lasted until the Supreme Court of Israel’s decision from 2007 to re-route the building of the ‘security barrier’ away from the farmland from was implemented in 2011. Based on a ‘process tracing’ (PT) methodology, an analysis of, primarily, interviews that were made with Bil’in activists and proxy activists (mainly Israelis) is presented, where the tracing underlying mechanisms could explain why the campaign had an impact on democracy. Theoretically, the paper applies the concept of ‘democratizing qualities’ (Munck 2016), as well as the analytical toolbox that is labelled the ABC of civil resistance. The paper will conclude with a presentation of potential causal mechanisms that may explain why the civil resistance campaign impacted on democracy. The guiding overarching research question is: In what ways can different practices of civil resistance have democratizing qualities?

KEYWORDS:

• Bil’in, civil resistance
• democracy
• Israeli occupation
• security barrier

1. Introduction

By tradition, research that seeks to understand social change – not least regarding what contributes to ‘democratization’ – has focused on political elites and organized parties. However, this dominant tradition has come to be increasingly challenged and eventually supplemented by a research strand that focuses on ‘resistance from below’. In recent decades, this strand has presented new and important insights in various academic forums that contribute to a better understanding of the complex processes of political development, in particular democratizing qualities. This development is welcome but not sufficient. Several key issues remain; for example, the fact that these new and valuable insights are not equally distributed between different geographical areas.

When it comes to research on social change and democratizing qualities in the Middle East – focusing on e.g. ‘politics from below’, ‘informal politics’ and ‘extra-institutional dynamics’ – there is still quite a lot left to be addressed. Studies that take such a perspective are still very unusual, if not completely absent (see e.g. Korany and El-Mahdi 2012, p. 8). This is at a time when a lot is going on in the Middle East and research on collective public actions is claiming that popular mobilizations from ‘below’ are positive for democratization (Diamond 1994). As emphasized by Craig Brown (2018, p. 258), ‘nonviolent campaigns’ general dynamics, specifically their decentralized nature, are considered as potentially providing a foundation for subsequent democratization’.

The refinement of a complementary research strand on democracy that promotes qualities from activities that are played out from ‘below’ is taking place in a global context and is characterized by, among other things, increasing autocratic tendencies. Alizada et al. (2021, p. 9) write that, ‘the level of democracy enjoyed by the average global citizen in 2020 is down to the levels around 1990’.

This current development could help us to understand the fact that civil resistance in all corners of the world is increasing. It could be argued that the increasing use of various civil resistance practices is best understood as a response to widespread non-democratic developments, to a non-negligible degree and stems from the presumed negative effects of a rather extreme neoliberal globalization (Bayer et al. 2016, Chenoweth 2020, Chenoweth 2021, Della Porta 2014).

Research that mainly focuses on ‘mass-mobilized civil resistance’ has empirically and theoretically revealed that this type of resistance could promote changes towards increased democracy (see e.g. Chenoweth and Stephan 2011, Lambach et al. 2020). In addition to these important results, scholars also have shown that other forms of civil resistance practices harbor democratizing qualities. However, the research underlying these results is considerably less developed. In particular has quantitative research ‘of civil resistance … been limited by a reliance on aggregate, campaign-level data’ (Chenoweth and Cunningham 2013, p. 273).

All in all, not a lot of research has been carried out on everyday resistance (Vinthagen and Johansson 2013, Scott 1990), constructive resistance (Lilja 2021, Koefoed 2017, Vinthagen 2015) and, by extension, how these types of resistance impact democratization and democracy. There is even less research on how these practices interrelate with each other, as well as the underlying mechanisms that can help us understand why these practices foster increased democratization. Considering this, the chief aim of the paper is to discuss the democratizing qualities and impacts on democracy from the perspective of not solely mass-mobilized but also everyday and constructive resistance. The discussion takes place through a case study in a geographically understudied area within the field – namely the Middle East. Furthermore, the paper seeks to understand the democratizing qualities of a civil resistance campaign that is being played out in the Palestinian village Bil’in, which is located in the West Bank, Palestine.

Since 2002, the residents of Bil’in have been conducting a civil resistance struggle with the aim of preventing the building of the Israeli the ‘security barrier’ that was planned to be built through parts of the village’s farmlands. Making a case study of the civil resistance campaign enables us to make an in-depth study of the entire plethora of civil resistance practices that have played out, how they have unfolded over time, as well as how they interrelate with one another. Even more importantly, the case study approach also makes it possible to identify potential underlying causal mechanisms that may contribute to our understanding of the democratizing qualities of the ongoing civil resistance campaign, as well as, at least tentatively, other civil resistance campaigns.

The Bil’in dissent that is discussed in this paper began when the Israeli plans to build the wall became public in 2002.¹ The Israeli key arguments to justify the so-called Israeli West Bank Barrier had, rather unsurprisingly, to do with ‘security’. The barrier was expected to prevent Palestinian fedayeen fighters from entering Israel in order to carry out ‘suicide’/‘terror’/‘martyr’ attacks against military and/or civilian targets.

Even though the barrier is in place today (2023), the Bil’in campaign is, albeit with a slightly different focus, still ongoing. The discussion and the results that are presented in this paper trace the process from the very beginning (in 2002), via the Supreme Court of Israel’s decision (in 2007), which then ruled that the barriers should be re-routed away from the Bil’in farmlands, and the court ruling was in fact actually implemented (in 2011). In other words, it is the entire cycle of activities, from the start to end, of this unique civil resistance campaign that is under the loupe intra. By this, we can identify possible underlying causal mechanisms that impact on democracy; in this particular case as well as, more tentatively, in general. The overall question guiding the remainder of the paper is: In what ways can different practices of civil resistance have democratizing qualities?

2. Previous research

In mainly comparative politics studies, research on the democratizing qualities of civil resistance campaigns mostly identify the mass-mobilized protests as units of analysis and do not include other important civil resistance practices of various civil resistance campaigns (Schulz 2023).

Previous research has shown how civil resistance responses to autocratic tendencies include democratizing qualities (Bethke and Pinckney 2021, Chenoweth 2020, Chenoweth 2021, Bayer et al. 2016). In particular, this research shows why and in what ways mass-mobilized civil resistance impacts democratization (Bayer 2018, Bayer et al. 2016, Bethke and Pinckney 2021, Chenoweth 2020, Chenoweth 2021), as well as its capacity to foster both regime changes and establishment of a democratic system (Chenoweth and Stephan 2011, Lambach et al. 2020).

The year 2019 was a peak year, with more mass-mobilized civil resistance campaigns since the year 1900. The various campaigns took place in more than 30 countries all over the world. Erica Chenoweth teaches us that,

[a]mong the 565 campaigns that have both begun and ended over the past 120 years, about 51 percent of the nonviolent campaigns have succeeded outright, while only about 26 percent of the violent ones have. Nonviolent resistance thus outperforms violence by a 2-to-1 margin.

(Chenoweth 2020, p. 74)

Felix S. Bethke and Pinckney (2021, p. 504) have shown in their study of nonviolent resistance (NVR) that there exists ‘ … strong evidence that initiating a democratic transition through NVR substantially improves democratic quality’. Other scholars have reached similar conclusions and argue, for example, that ‘new democracies growing out of mass mobilization are more likely to survive than are new democracies that were born amid quiescence’ (Kadivar 2018, p. 390).

Mazumder (2018) has, by using a survey covering 150,000 U.S. civil rights movement activists, displayed how social movements can also have a long-term impact on the quality of democracy; he argues ‘ … that social movements that no longer exist today can still lead to a persistent impact on politics outside of formal institutional changes’ (p. 932). By this, he is suggesting that there is ‘a causal relationship between historical civil rights protests and contemporary political behavior’ (Mazumder 2018, p. 932).

Donatella Della Porta and Diani (2006) have also shown ‘that social movements activity have resulted into new legislation, change in public policy, public opinion, and procedural changes, as well as greater recognition for new actor’s democratization in authoritarian regimes [and] more participatory approaches in representative democracies’ (p. 249).

More recent research, such as Jennifer M. Larson et al. (2019) has revealed how ‘diffusion’ works due to new communication tools, such as Twitter. Based on an analysis of 130 million Twitter users, they found that,

… participation depends on exposure to others’ intentions and network position determines exposure … showing that protesters are significantly more connected to one another via direct, indirect, triadic, and reciprocated ties than comparable non-protesters. These results offer the first large-scale empirical support for the claim that social network structure has consequences for protest participation.

(Larson et al. 2019, p. 690)

In other words, the number of protesters that are involved may be an explanation, a causal mechanism, as to why there is an increased chance to democratize society.

By the same token, Chenoweth (2021, p. 94) argues that the campaign numbers matter and ‘most succeed after mobilizing 3.5%’ of the population in a specific country. The legitimacy of the dominant power, whose power rests on the acceptance of the broader public, then becomes undermined. She also shows that other mechanisms matter for the success, including the diversity of the participants. The more diversified the resistance movement is, the greater the chance that it will encourage defection from the oppressing party and, by extension, the greater the chance that the campaign will succeed (Chenoweth 2021). Chenoweth also underlines the importance of other resistance practices (in combination) as well as discipline and organization skills; the latter since it could increase the resilience of a campaign (see also Chandler 2015).

However, neither Chenoweth, nor others have – to any greater extent, if at all – included other forms of resistance that are part of campaigns, such practices as avoidance, everyday resistance and/or constructive resistance, and how such practices, in turn, impact on democracy (cf. Bayat 2021, Lilja 2021, Johansson and Vinthagen 2019, Vinthagen 2015, Scott 1990).

To summarize, the gradually growing literature on democratization that is initiated from ‘below’ is today vast and has, during the last two decades, been able to challenge and/or supplement the dominance of research on elites and macro-structural transitional approaches towards democracy (see e.g. O’Donnell and Schmitter, 1986). Even though some casual mechanisms have been identified, we need to go deeper into civil resistance campaigns’ entire life cycles, inherent activities, and the interrelations of the various civil resistance practices in order to gain a better understanding of the ways in which democratization through civil resistance works (cf. Lambach et al. 2020). This conclusion is the underlying rationale to why the present study focuses on different civil resistance practices as part of a larger civil resistance campaign. In addition, even though a reasonable number of interesting insights are currently on the table, ‘this literature has never been very specific on causal mechanisms’ (Teorell 2010, p. 129), and ‘the true impact of political mobilization … remains an open question’ (Michael Coppedge 2003, p. 125 in Teorell 2010, p. 129).

This study, which focuses on the democratizing outcomes of the Palestinian Bil’in civil resistance campaign, is carried out by the application of a newly introduced toolbox for analyzing resistance, which is popularly known as the ABC of civil resistance and was developed by Mikael Baaz et al (2021, 2023). This means that the analysis of the Bil’in campaign includes three overarching categories of civil resistance practices: avoidance resistance, breaking resistance, and constructive resistance, respectively, as well as the interrelationship between these three analytical categories.

Our previous analysis of some civil resistance micro-campaigns in different countries has shown the importance of analyzing various civil resistance practices (in relation to one another). It has contributed to a better understanding of why and how these civil resistance campaigns work (Baaz et al. 2021, Lilja et al. 2017, Schulz 2015). The present study focuses specifically on how these practices interrelate within the specific Bil’in campaign, and which practices can be identified, as well as how they may explain why there are democratizing qualities of the campaign activities. Applying a ‘process tracing’ (PT) approach, also gives time-series data that reveal patterns for how the various ABC resistance activities develop and change over time.

In addition to the above, the study displays how avoidance resistance activism is related to mass-mobilization, thereby increasing the resilience capacity of the campaign (see also Chandler 2015). Also, it shows how a ‘civil resistance culture’ is formed, which in turn increases the democratizing qualities. Finally, the importance of various constructive resistance activities is displayed. The analysis indicates how political alternatives and democratic organizational structures are built, and how these can be seen as important conditions, or rather causal mechanisms that contribute to explaining how democratization qualities of a specific civil resistance campaign develop.

3. Understanding democracy impact

Before turning to the analysis of the Bil’in campaign, we will make a brief presentation on what ‘democracy impact’ implies. Our unit of analysis in the paper is the resistance campaign in Bil’in. By the concept of campaign, we, in this paper, understand a ‘ … series of observable, continuous, purposive mass tactics or events in pursuit of a political objective … such as expelling a foreign occupier or overthrowing a domestic regime’ (Chenoweth and Lewis 2013, p. 416).

Munck’s (2016) of previous research on the quality of democracy shows that most researchers, besides including free and fair elections as a basis, differ on which other aspects should be included in an analysis. The main reason for this, he argues, is that they have different understandings of how democracy should be defined. Hence, definitions are key. In addition, Munck’s analysis also implies that democratization can be seen as a non-deterministic transitional stage, or process, towards democracy (cf. Dahl 1971).

By a multidimensional and disaggregated dataset, the Varieties of Democracy Research (V-Dem) project provides a unique approach to conceptualizing and measuring democracy. The approach encompasses five core principles of democracy, namely: electoral, liberal, participatory, deliberative, and egalitarian.

Each principle is represented by a separate index, and each is regarded as a separate outcome … In this manner V-Dem reconceptualizes democracy from a single outcome to a set of outcomes. In addition, V-Dem breaks down each core principle into its constituent components, each to be measured separately. Components include features such as free and fair elections, civil liberties, judicial independence, executive constraints, gender equality, media freedom, and civil society. Finally, each component is disaggregated into specific indicators. This fundamentally different approach to democratization is made possible by the V-Dem Database, which measures 450+ indicators annually from 1789 to the present for all countries of the world.

(V-Dem, https://www.demscore.se/partners/varieties-of-democracy-v-dem/)

Based on this idea, we, in this paper, embrace the idea that democracy is best measured through an understanding of various qualities of democracy.

Munck (2016, p. 15), finally writes that ‘ … there is much disagreement concerning the expansion of the concept of quality of democracy to include the process of implementation of government decisions and outcomes of the political process’. In this paper, we suggest that the various activities within civil resistance campaigns are activities that are performed by actors who have limited access to decision-makers. In the case of Bil’in, the villagers, who are living under Israeli occupation, have no access to the decision-makers via the ballot – not even to the ones in the Palestinian Authority (PA) (see Mi’ari and Schulz 2022). In other words, the villagers are primarily directed to conduct their political struggle by extra-parliamentary means.

In addition to the above introduced theoretical backdrop, the paper also leans on previous research on potential democracy outcomes that result from resistance activism, including: (i) Changes in norms, discourses, or subject positions (Wainwright 2016) (which might be local or wider in scale, encompassing smaller or larger segments of society, be temporary in nature, or more permanent changes, with accompanying changed attitudes or opinions); (ii) Improved pre-conditions for democratic practices/institutions and participation (Brown 2011) (as for e.g. the improved socio-economic situation or empowerment of marginalized groups); (iii) Reforms within systems (Roberts 2009) (as changes of policies or laws that, while involving democratization, still maintain the logic of the fundamental system); (iv) Institutional change (see Lijphart 1999, Schock 2013) (more long-term reforms that materialize through new institutions or institutional functions); and, (v) Regime change or system change (see Chenoweth and Stephan 2011) (where regimes or systems encounter sudden and dramatic changes in the form of revolutions, or the like, and a combination of reforms that are so fundamental that the logic of the system or regime changes).

Other researchers may have chosen other aspects of qualities of democracy. However, the justification to include the above discussed possible increased democracy qualities could be found in the Bil’in case, and/or are still goals that the Bil’in campaign aims to achieve.

4. A brief note on the ABC toolbox

Generally, resistance could be understood as a response to power from ‘below’ – as a subaltern or subordinated practice that could negotiate, challenge and undermine power, or such a practice performed on behalf of and/or in solidarity with a subordinated position (see Baaz et al. 2016). Building on this basic understanding, we, in this paper, use three overarching analytical categories of civil resistance. The three types of resistance used for analytical purposes has been summarized by Baaz et al (2016, 2021). in the ABC of resistance model, where the A for avoidance resistance, the B for breaking resistance, and the C for constructive resistance (Lilja 2021, Baaz et al. 2021, Schulz 2023, 2020, Vinthagen 2015).

Various avoidance articulations of resistance often come in the form of hidden and/or disguised activities that are performed by scattered or organized individuals or groups (see further e.g. Scott 1990, Bayat 2021). It is a multifaceted resistance category, that is often integrated in people’s everyday lives in highly repressive contexts. Anna Johansson and Vinthagen (2019) have displayed how not only farmers, LGBTQ activists, prisoners, migrant workers, students, flight attendants, but also female politician and middle-level civil servants apply this kind of hidden resistance to handle their everyday life. As pointed out by Kasbari and Vinthagen (2020), due to the evasive nature of everyday resistance, the political impact of this kind of subtle or less visible resistance has been studied less.

As indicated above, breaking resistance has been the most researched form of dissent in mainstream literature over the last decades (Chenoweth and Stephan 2011, Tilly and Tarrow 2011, Sharp 2005). Breaking resistance typically comes in the form of large-scale and organized mass-mobilized articulations (such as civil society, social movements, revolutions and so forth). This resistance category includes protests, strikes, civil disobedience, objections to direct orders and road blockades, or temporary occupations of particular spaces, boycotts, and so on. The concept of ‘power breaking’ rests on the idea that power is – temporarily, locally, or potentially – ruptured by some kind of public refusal to do what is ordered or expected of them (Vinthagen 2015).

So far, the least researched civil resistance practice is constructive resistance (Baaz et al. 2021, Lilja 2021, Schulz 2020, Koefoed 2017). Maijken Jul Sørensen points out the need to focus on this specific practice, which is seen as initiatives that, ‘ … simultaneously acquire, create, built, cultivate and experiment with what people need in the present moment, or what they would like to see replacing dominant structures or power relations’ (Sørensen 2016, p. 57).

This latter resistance category focuses on subalterns’ ways to build alternatives or generate new narratives and discourses thereby downplaying the focus on the oppositional and breaking side of civil resistance practices. Constructive resistance can be defined ‘as subaltern practices that might undermine different modes and aspects of power in their enactments, performances, and constructions of “alternatives”’ (Koefoed 2017, p. 43). Minoo Koefoed elaborates on the constructive resistance by stating that, ‘[t]hrough a constructive programme, movements reduce their dependencies upon oppressive, dominant systems while establishing the foundations on which a new, liberated society could be built’ (Koefoed 2017, p. 43).

In sum, the ABC of resistance practices can be assumed as being activities that propose to impact democracy. The inquiry and analysis of the ABC activities of the Bil’in campaign is later presented. First, however, is a short discussion on methods and material.

5. Methods and material

In this paper we, as mentioned above, rely on a methodological approach inspired by PT. The underlying rationale is seeking to trace the pathway of the Bil’in campaign as well as identify potential causal mechanisms for how and why it has had an impact on democratization. The approach taken by Derek Beach and Rasmus Brun Pedersen (2013) enables one to organize and identify assumed causal mechanisms that could contribute to explaining a certain outcome of a (temporal delimited) process. A PT approach will enable a within-case analysis (although a transferable generalizability to external cases will also be discussed), and provide data that can contribute to reveal how, when, and why the various ABC resistance practices have been applied during the process. It also enables us to identify possible causal mechanisms that can give inputs towards explaining how the process led to an impact on democratization (directly or indirectly). The working definition for causal mechanism in this paper is inspired by Jochen Gläser and Grit Laudel (2019, p. 3), who ‘ … define a causal mechanism as a sequence of causally linked events that occur repeatedly in reality if certain conditions are given and which link specified initial conditions to a specific outcome’. (italics in original)

To map the Bil’in campaign, various sources have been consulted, but the main bulk of data is extracted from the many interviews that were conducted in Israel and Palestine. Over the years (2011–2022) some 50 interviews (around 60% men and 40% women) have been conducted with Bil’in activists, both leaders and ordinary villagers, Israeli proxy-resisters that supported the Bil’in campaign, Palestinian activists in villages close to Bil’in, various Israeli and Palestinian non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that report on the committed human rights violations by Israeli soldiers and settlers during protests as well as officials from the Palestinian Authority (PA) that are dealing with the civil resistance campaigns in the West Bank. Complementary sources, including literature, documentaries and films have also been consulted. In addition, field visits were made to Bil’in village during April 2011, November to December 2013, March and October 2019, and September to October 2022, as were additional visits to other places in Israel and Palestine in 2011, 2015, 2016, 2019, and 2022 to collect data from authorities and NGOs working on both sides with the overall aim to make (participatory) observations.

As already mentioned, the approach used in this paper is inspired by a PT approach. Furthermore, it is inspired by a theory testing PT approach’‚ (see further Beach and Pedersen 2013). The approach is chosen, since the underlying idea is to make a systematic study of the link between the outcome (impact on democratization) and,

… an explanation based on the rigorous assessing and weighting of evidence for and against causal inference. By defining process-tracing in these terms, we emphasize the role of theory and the empirical testing of hypotheses. The challenge is to assemble a research design equipped to do so. (Ricks and Liu, 2018, p. 842)

In other words, the PT of the Bil’in campaign aims at finding explanations as to why the campaign began, unfolded over time, and how the various expressions of dissent interpreted by the ABC model have had a direct or indirect impact on democratization. However, it is important to underline that the explanation that is sought after is not made through a verified statistical analysis (i.e. a statistical significance of a high variance of the sample), but, rather, through a discussion that seeks to identify and verify the existence of causal (potential) mechanisms. In other words, through a search for ‘fingerprint evidence’ that theoretically can contribute to informing and explaining a specific outcome.

The first step is to formulate a primary hypothesis. In this specific case, the primary hypothesis was as follows: The resistance campaign of Bil’in caused increased democratization. In the hypothesis lies an implicit assumption that the civil resistance activity assumed to have the potential to foster social change.

6. The Israeli occupation context

The resistance campaign needs to be contextualized. The village of Bil’in has been affected by the Israeli occupation since 1967. It has an area B status, implying no full autonomy, due to the Oslo II Accord of 1995, and leaving most of the power in Israeli hands. It has close to 2,000 inhabitants and is situated some 10 km west of the city of Ramallah in the occupied West Bank. One can argue that resistance against the occupation did not necessarily begin with the Israeli plans to build a wall through the farmlands of the village. Rather, the villagers have been in a structural setting in which they have lived and experienced the beginning of the Israeli occupation, its impact on the villagers’ everyday lives, as well as the changing occupation’s impacts over time since 1967 (Schiff and Ya’ari 1990). The occupation, as well as the historical Palestinian resistance experiences, has shaped the contextual conditions for the idea to mobilize a nonviolent campaign in Bil’in (Carpenter 2017).

However, in this paper, we are not per se focusing on the structural conditions that have shaped the context before the wall building plans were revealed, but rather on the specific resistance campaign that followed from the point when the Israeli wall building intervention began. With a focus on the agency (the resisters), the aim is to trace who the various actors that are involved have been, and what their resistance activities have been consisted of within the campaign. Furthermore, one aim is to identify key events in the process in order to reveal the mechanisms that were part of and/or led to the social change outcomes of increased democratization.

However, before focusing on the methodology itself, it is worth remembering that those complex social processes, such as the Bil’in campaign, do not just occur in a vacuum, but are, as said above, in themselves an outcome of other processes and structures that have developed over time.

7. Findings

First of all, in this section, the timeline of the Bil’in campaign is presented. This discussion identifies some key events that changed the dynamics of the campaign. This part includes a brief description of the various resistance activities that impacted democratization. Then, follows a presentation of the data analysis that has identified potential causal mechanisms that (at best) can contribute to explaining why the campaign led to the social change outcome of increased democratization due to similar activities.

7.1. Establishment of the timeline of the Bil’in campaign

By following Ricks and Liu’s (2018, p. 843) guidelines for how to conduct process tracing, we need to start by ‘identify[ing] how far back in time we must go to seek out our cause’. It seems instinctively correct to place the start of the process at the moment when the news of the Israeli plans to build the Separation Wall reached the villagers in Bil’in (in 2002). However, one could also argue that an appropriate place to start would be at the beginning of the Israeli occupation, which occurred much earlier in 1967. The occupation resulted in many historical civil resistance campaigns and had, thereby, already increased democratization in Bil’in and other Palestinian occupied areas (although in a limited way) (see for instance Zimbardo 2008). Some would even go as far back as 1948, when the state of Israel was established. This is when Palestinian villages and towns were erased, a large portion of the local Palestinian population was uprooted and ended up in the diaspora, and the refugee reality soon followed (Pappé 2006, Morris 1999). Against these views, the argument is that Bil’in was not part of the Israeli state foundation but became part of the Hashemite Kingdom in 1949. Also, from an agency perspective (i.e. the Bil’in campaigners), the specific aim of this analysis is to trace the actors who were involved, and identify what their activities have consisted of, as well as when and where it took place, around the time when the plans to build the Separation Wall became public. The Israeli plans are seen as a significant threatening game changer of upholding the (already restricted) livelihood capacities of the Bil’in villagers. In addition, these plans were a one-sided Israeli decision that was taken without involving the villagers’ voices and opinions (i.e. a democracy deficit).

Considering the above, as well as the data that has been collected and analyzed, the timeline and key events of the Bil´in campaign make sense. In toto, it covers the years from 2002 to 2011.

2002: Israeli decision to build a wall (but not on the so-called Green Line – armistice line of the 1949 war between Israel and Jordan) is made public. The decision implies that parts of several Palestinian villages’ farmlands will be expropriated. Bil’in is one of the villages that risks losing its farmland and income source because of this.

2004–2005: Subalterns have an emotional response. Grievances and anxiety are felt in Bil’in, which leads to a collective willingness to act when Israeli bulldozers and soldiers arrive to uproot the farmlands of the village.

2005: Subalterns have an active response. Organization of the mobilization of the civil resistance campaign follows the first phase.

2005–2007: Various ABC civil practices are played out, both on a daily and weekly basis (Breaking resistance protests on Fridays). Israeli proxy resisters become involved.

2007: Resistance impacts on democracy. The Supreme Court of Israel decides that the wall must be re-routed away from the Bil’in farmlands, thereby implementing the villagers’ political wishes.

2007–2011: Continuation of the campaign plays out, including external and international proxy-resisters, which eventually lead to the implementation of the Supreme Court of Israel’s decision.

Overall, the Bil’in campaign can be seen as an activity that stems from ‘below’; it is a ‘bottom-up’ strategy that is assumed to have had an impact on democratization. The Bil’in campaign consists of various civil resistance activities that have contributed to the uniting and mobilizing of the people who are directly affected; the Bil’in villagers’ actions have, thereby, helped to prevent the building of the Separation Wall through their farmlands. We can thereby assume that this campaign, at least, maintained the villagers’ livelihood capacity. The activities in themselves, the way that they organized the people who got involved, and the strategies they applied all directly and indirectly impacted in various ways on democratization. The way that the campaign was organized and the high number of villagers who participated in the collective activities are also factors that are assumed to have increased the democratic culture, the democratic organization structures, the empowerment sentiments, et cetera, as well as having an outreach effect on the broader Palestinian, Israeli and international public (and regimes) by increasing their awareness of the consequences of the Israeli plans to build the Separation Wall. The applied PT approach helps us to, in a systematic way, collect empirical evidence (and counter evidence) in order to assess our assumptions, mentioned above, as well as finding out what potential underlying causal mechanisms could be identified.

7.2. Potential causal mechanisms

If we build on the assumption that the impact of democracy includes changes in norms, discourses, or subject positions, we can ascertain the existence of such changes in the case of Bil’in campaign. From the interviews that we conducted with campaign members; one can identify that Bil’in inhabitants’ voices spoke of a process in which the village residents increased their solidarity with each other. Also, during times of great worry, or sadness and grief after villagers had been killed or injured by Israeli soldiers during protests, a community can find a sense of healing and these emotions were sensed jointly through a strengthened, collective community feeling within the village (interviews nos. 2–10, 2022, see also Marris 2008). This led to the side effect, or indirect effect, of a spontaneous involvement of all villagers, where people of different gender, political opinions and social status became part of the decision-making on how to organize the resistance campaign.

When analyzing the various phases in the Bil’in campaign, it becomes obvious how different kinds of emotions contributed to a collective understanding for a joint resistance campaign. Different emotions arose depending on the events that developed on the ground. When the Israeli plans were revealed and made public, the villagers felt that great injustices were being done to them, which, by extension, angered them. According to some of the respondents (interviews nos. 2–10, 2022), there was not one single Bil’in inhabitant who was not deeply affected or didn’t feel great frustration. The fact that someone else decided about their living conditions – without any consultation, discussion, or being given any influence on the decision – created a sense that injustice had been bestowed upon them. They also felt that the Israeli plans were illegal and a violation of international laws. These emotions also came to the fore when the first Israeli bulldozers arrived at the site of the farmland at the end of 2004 with the intention to expropriate it. The Israelis entered into the heart of Bil’in’s olive cultivation area. The bulldozers were accompanied by Israeli soldiers and vehicles. The aim was to uproot the olive trees and begin the building of the ‘Security Barrier’. The villagers’ spontaneous reaction was deep anger, and a sense of collective readiness spread instantly to prevent the uprooting. One of the respondents (interview no. 5, 2022) said that ‘[e]specially for Palestinians, when they [the Israelis] broke up the trees, it was like killing our children … very hurtful’. The respondent also added that everyone came and wanted to protect the trees when the village’s loudspeaker announced that the Israelis had come to uproot them. A sense of collective readiness to apply spontaneous breaking resistance in order to defend the trees – by placing their bodies around them and prevent the uprooting – involved men, women, young and old, and it did not matter what political differences they may have had in the past. All those who came to the olive grove felt that they had a role to play. This increased the villagers’ way of perceiving each other; they now had a heightened sense of equality within the community, in which everyone was invited to participate in the campaign, no matter what their social positions were in the past. Given that the Bil’in campaign is taking place within a context of the ongoing Israeli occupation, the inhabitants also perceived their resistance activities within the broader struggle for the implementation of Palestinian national rights. Palestinian identification matters to the villagers, although the local solidarity and pride of being a Bil’in campaigner developed simultaneously in the campaign process (interviews nos. 1–14, 2022).

After the initial attempts to prevent the Israeli wall from being built, along with the success of partially delaying the Israeli work, the villagers felt ready to organize and plan their future strategies, which came to include avoidance and constructive resistance, alongside their breaking resistance repertoires.

8. Inclusive organization and discourse challenges

After the spontaneous and collective action, through breaking resistance, to prevent the Israelis’ initial tree uprooting, the Bil’in villagers decided to create a popular resistance committee that would involve anyone who wanted to participate. A social mobilization occurred and anyone who wanted and could participate did so. The Bil’in Popular Committee to Resist the Wall and Settlement was founded, and the villagers decided to apply civil resistance tactics, or as they prefer to call it, – popular resistance, which is based on an overall nonviolent principle (see also Qumsiyeh 2010). By applying popular resistance tactics, the Bil’in villagers reasoned that they still ran the risk of being killed, but in smaller numbers when compared with armed resistance. The idea was also to show the world that Palestinians do not use violence despite the fact that brutal force was being applied by the Israelis. This method of organization was made in order to create an efficient and resilient campaign. However, the involvement of all those in the resistance committee indirectly created an organized direct democratic decision-making body. In fact, the main concern was to find a way to prevent the building of the wall, and the spontaneous organization structure was an outcome of the way the villagers involved its inhabitants (interviews with activists from Bil’in and activists from similar campaigns in neighboring villages, nos. 1–4, 2011, nos. 1, 2, 9, 10, 20, 21, 23, 24 and 26, 2013, and nos. 4, 5 and 10, 2022).

As soon as the campaign began, various innovative forms of resistance started to develop, based on how the Israelis responded towards the Palestinian civil resistance (interviews with activist, nos. 9 and 10, 2013, Bil’in, interviews with activists and other informants, nos. 1–10 September 2022). Although the Bil’in villagers used various tactics and practices in their resistance, they also had to constantly find new and creatives ways of acting. This is due to the fact that the Israelis often found new ways to respond to the applied practices. The Israelis often escalated the use of force after a new resistance tool was introduced and responded with even harsher repression. For instance, one of the key leaders, Abdullah Abu Rahmah, was injured during one of the many demonstrations when an Israeli soldier shot him in the head (interview, no. 10 September 2022). Arrests of villagers soon followed during the demonstrations, but also occurred during Israeli night raids.

Due to the constant presence of the Israeli military occupation in the West Bank, it is common among Palestinian civilians to apply various strategies of avoidance resistance. In Bil’in, also, avoidance became a key to survival and avoiding arrests, although some villagers occasionally got caught. From the interviews conducted, they participants underline that the avoidance resistance strategies were performed both at individual and collective levels. With the constant unannounced and undesirable visits by the Israeli forces, the Bil’in residents had to find new ways to avoid Israeli control and surveillance. For instance, when the Israelis made their raids, many of the villagers would find ways to support individuals from getting arrested by the Israeli forces. They tried to warn them by making personal visits or using social media and/or mobile phones. The resisters often avoided arrest by simply sneaking secretly out from the village despite Israeli curfews. Again, the collective identification as a community, and the solidarity that developed, created cohesion; a joint sense of belonging to the same people that were fighting for their rights (interviews with activists, nos. 9 and 10, 2013, nos. 1 and 2, 2019, Bil’in, see also Schulz 2023)

Despite, or maybe thanks to, the harsh Israeli measures in Bil’in, the collective sense of community was strengthened. People felt a certain degree of pride for being part of the campaign, and their reputation reached the external world. In particular, those who had been injured by Israeli soldiers’ beatings, rubber bullets, or from being hit by tear gas canisters, felt a certain dignity and pride in having stood up to the overwhelming military might of the Israeli Defence Forces (interviews with activists, nos. 1, 2, 9, 20, 21, 23 November 2013, April, and October nos. 1–2, 2019, Bil’in, interviews nos. 1–10, September, and October 2022).

The various power-breaking resistance tactics included a whole repertoire of activities that were employed by the villagers in Bil’in. The weekly demonstrations were done on such a regular basis that they turned into a part of the everyday. The creativity and the preparations for the weekly protests included a range of symbols such as flags and symbolic colors that were painted on themselves or their clothes (interviews with activists, nos. 1, 2, 9, 20, 21, 23 November 2013, and nos. 1–2, 2019, Bil’in). Leaders in the planning of these protests were chosen and anyone who wanted to have a lead role needed the support from others, but also had to be in the very front of the demonstrations in the protest lines. As one of the key leaders underlined, the leader’s role ‘is that the person must go first in the front of protests and be the last to leave the demonstrations’ (interview no. 10, 2022). In other words, that person had to be ready to take the highest risks in the confrontations with the Israeli soldiers. Nevertheless, many of the campaign leaders have been men in the Bil’in case, however, on many occasions, women took the lead role in the weekly protests, and thereby placed themselves under severe risks. At the same time, the women thereby gained deep respect from others for daring to do these frontline protests. Also, the Bil’in villagers noticed that when women participated in these protests, less violence was used by the Israeli soldiers (interview nos. 1–14, 2022). In general, the civil resistance strategies already decreased the Israeli soldiers’ willingness to use lethal fire on the protesters. Several of the respondents also witnessed that when women participated and were in the frontline, the Israeli soldiers were confused about how to handle them (interview nos. 1–14, 2022). This does not mean that no repressive methods were applied. Tear gas and stinky liquids were commonly thrown at the protesters in combination with beatings of the women protesters. In an already existing patriarchal structure in Palestinian society, the women’s role in Bil’in contributed somewhat to changing stereotypes of perceiving women as uncapable and as non-strugglers. Historically, ‘Palestinian women have been playing a key role in community organisation and mobilisation since the first Intifada, the uprising in 1987’ (Silwadi and Mayo 2014, p. 76. See also Lockman and Beinin 1989, King 2007). The women’s participation somewhat increased the egalitarian thinking in the village and the mutual respect between men and women who were contributing to the struggle thereby increased the overall equality and democracy level in the village (interview nos. 1–5 and 10, 2022). Similar evidence has been identified in other villages where women played a role in the civil resistance campaigns on the West Bank (interviews nos. 1–4. 2011, and nos. 1, 2, 9, 20, 21, 23, 2013, see also Carpenter 2017). Fish (2002) shows that historical, existing gender gaps in education are a key factor for explaining the democracy deficit in many states in the Middle East. However, the structural conditions are slightly more benign in the Palestinian context compared to most other Arab states. For instance, many Palestinian women are increasingly becoming well-educated (Tansel and YDaoud, 2014). This structural change, in combination with women’s important role in the Bil’in campaign, can be seen a slow, but nevertheless, gradual discourse change towards increased gender equality (interview no. 3, 2022). This sluggish discourse change does challenge existing patriarchal structures, but it increases both the empowerment of women in Bil’in as well as the common unification of villagers through their joint struggle against the Israeli occupation (interview nos. 1–14, 2022).

Besides the participating inhabitants from the Bil’in village itself, many other participants from neighboring villages also came to join the campaign. While Bil’in villagers had been part of other affected Palestinian villagers’ campaigns, the other villages’ inhabitants showed solidarity with Bil’in. This solidarity between the West Bank villages was widespread and the readiness to become involved was, in general, very high (interviews with activists, interview nos. 1–4, 2011, interviews nos. 1, 2, 9, 20,21, 23, 2013, interview nos. 1–2, 2019, Bil’in). It is possible to argue that the networks between the villages, who all on an individual village level all organized in a similar way, contributed to a gradual democratization process from ‘below’.

Another strategy by the villagers was to apply constructive resistance in order to build alternatives and thereby challenge the existing Israeli discourses about Palestinians being perceived as potential terrorists (see also Gordon and Perugini 2020). This was made by finding different ways to reframe the conflict issue (i.e. the wrongdoing by building the Israeli wall through Bil’in’s areas that provide a livelihood to the villagers). This constructive resistance tactic was applied by the Bil’in campaigners and thereby established as ‘parallel institutions’; movement-controlled alternative institutions that create autonomous governance of the Bil’in society and land, as well as independent resources (e.g. activist media outlets, as well as alternative social security systems for families in need after having suffered Israeli repression). Thereby, they downplayed the issue to the overarching Israeli-Palestinian conflict and instead defined it in terms of (in)justice. This contributed, to some extent, to humanizing the Palestinians within the Israeli media and discussions about the issue in Israeli society. Not only external media, but Israeli media debated the issue on a regular basis while the campaign was ongoing (interview nos. 6, 7, 12 and 14, 2022). Although far from a majority among Israelis, the Israelis increasingly saw the campaign as understandable and legitimate.

It also led to the involvement of Israeli proxy resisters, who joined the villagers in their campaign. While Israelis in general did perhaps not give their total support, at least they could understand the rationale behind the villagers’ struggle (interviews with villagers, nos. 9, 10 and 16, 2013, nos. 1 and 2, 2019, and nos. 2–6, and 10, 2022).

The involvement of Israeli supporting proxy-resisters was a sensitive issue for the Bil’in villagers. They feared that the involvement of Israelis risked including spies that could easily weaken and harm the campaign. The Bil’in protesters had experiences from previous campaigns in neighboring villages when Israeli secret agents participated in the protest marches, and then suddenly arrested some of the protesters.² This was made by the Israelis in order to create confusion and fear.

However, the Bil’in committee decided to initially allow the involvement of approximately 50 Israeli proxy resisters, due to the Israeli resisters willingness to let the Palestinians lead the campaign. The Bil’in villagers saw that the Israeli proxy protesters were instantly ready to walk in the front of the breaking resistance protests marches, thereby risking being the first to confront Israeli military brutality. In addition, although to a far less extent, the Israeli military also applied beatings, arrests, and other repressive methods against the Israeli proxy resisters. The Israeli proxy resisters readiness to sacrifice everything for the Palestinian villagers made an impact on the Bil’in villagers. They felt the Israelis sincere support, which in turn gained the villagers’ respect. It also led to a close relationship building between these Israelis and Palestinians (interviews with villagers, nos. 9, 10 and 20, 2013, nos. 1 and 2, 2019, and nos. 2–6 and 10, 2022).

The reputation of the Bil’in campaign also attracted international solidarity activists who came for visits, and occasionally participated in the weekly protests as well as in discussions, and other constructive resistance practices. More importantly, all proxy resisters, Israeli and internationals alike, contributed to bringing increased awareness of the Bil’in campaign. The Bil’in villagers’ political issues and views came to the fore, and thereby the proxy resisters came to be bearers and performers of Bil’in’s political voices, whose needs related to their own livelihood situations that had to be fulfilled in order to be able to survive. Hereby, the proxy resisters became indirectly part of a democratization process. Due to these new established networks, proxy resisters voiced and lifted the Bil’in villager’s political needs to an external agenda both in Israel and the global arena. Thereby they transformed the previously suppressed villagers’ political issues into a much discussed and legitimate democracy issue. Although both Israelis and international visitors brought different ideas and experiences with them on how to organize resistance campaigns, which they aired in joint discussions with the Bil’in campaigners, all agreed that the whole campaign must be decided and directed by the villagers to ensure that they decided on their future steps, since the whole issue was linked to their living situation. In other words, Bil’in villagers were the owners of the issues and in a democratic domestic decision-making process, without outsiders’ involvement, they should decide for themselves what is best for them (see also Kelly 2016).

The involvement of the Israeli supporters came to be a crucial part of the chain for the developments towards change. While the proxy-resisters’ involvement in the various ABC practices was important for infusing new creative ideas, it also created an important momentum for the impact on the villagers’ domestic organized democracy. The joint Israeli-Palestinian cooperation led to a somewhat decrease in the power asymmetry between the Israeli state and its military and the Bil’in villagers. The mere involvement of Israeli activists made it also harder for the Israeli military to use harsh military means. The joint cooperation thereby contributed to countering the repressive measures taken by the Israeli military. The Israeli activists, due to their access as citizens, could contribute to negotiating with the military’s so-called Civil Administration Authority, as well as finding ways to approach various Israeli institutions and authorities. In addition, the joint actions contributed to humanizing the involved Palestinians and legitimized the Bil’in campaign’s agenda – now framed as a justice issues. The conflict was hereby transformed from a mere Israeli-Palestinian conflict to an issue about people’s livelihoods and survival. The Israeli proxy-resisters could also reach out to the broader Israeli public, impacting the discourse from a security oriented one to a justice discussion. Although not to a great extent, the Bil’in issue came on to the media agenda, and somewhat challenged the main Israeli official discourse. The most crucial impact, however, was that the proxy-resisters could bring the issue to the Israeli Supreme Court. The Bil’in villagers, who are under Israeli occupation rule, can only approach the Civil Administration, who would most likely not rule in favor of the campaigners. Due to the fact that the Palestinians do not have Israeli citizenship, they are prevented from bringing the issues to the Supreme Court of Israel. However, the Israeli activists could do this. In the end, the Israeli activists, who also had juridical knowledge, managed to convince the Supreme Court of Israel who decided in 2007 in favor of the Bil’in campaign’s struggle. This implied that the Israeli state should change the route of the Separation Wall and redirect it around, and not through, the land of the village (interview no. 5, 10 and 14, 2022).

At the same time, after the Supreme Court of Israel’s decision was taken, the implementation of the decision took another four years. The Bil’in campaign continued its ABC resistance practices, and the interviewed persons all claim that only the persistence and strong resilience of the campaign was the reason for why the decision was implemented. The constant reminder of the issue to the broader Israeli public, due to the campaign, played into why Israel eventually rerouted the wall (interviews with various activists and other informants, nos. 1–4, 2011, nos. 1–27, 2013, and nos. 1–14, 2022).

9. Conclusion

Previous research has shown that social change towards increased democracy due to a specific civil resistance campaign is possible (Chenoweth and Stephan 2011, Schock 2013). This study complements these previous insights by applying a broader analytical toolbox that includes adding two more resistance categories – avoidance and constructive resistance, respectively, besides the commonly analyzed breaking resistance, or contentious politics in Tilly and Tarrow’s (2011). The applied analytical tool of the ABC of civil resistance (Baaz et al. 2021) gives us new empirical inputs to the overarching research questions: In what ways can different practices of civil resistance have democratizing qualities?

The data collected and presented above help us to identify the organizational formation (i.e. high involvement and participation of the most concerned subalterns, compare with Chenoweth and Stephan 2011, high legitimacy of leadership for those who had been democratically elected); applied communication strategies (capacity to transform the issue and turn it into a broader societal justice issue, and foster a democratic dialogue around it that promotes empathy and humanizes the subaltern’s concerns), which can cause changes in norms or discourses inside the subaltern group and/or in broader society); as well as changes in resistance behaviors (acting peacefully, reasoning of why the issue is a justice issue, gaining domestic and/or international support and/or proxy-resistance, etc.). Finally, the analysis reveals that the civil resistance actions empowered the subalterns, created a stronger identification and solidarity among the campaign members, and created changes in norms and discourses related to democracy and justice. This in turn increased the resilience capacity of the campaigns.

Using a design in which the democracy outcomes (success) were pre-known always runs the risk of focusing too much on mechanisms that contributed to the democracy impact. Future research should also inquire about resistance campaigns that did not prevent Israeli decisions to build the Security Barriers through the villages’ farmlands. One could assume that in these cases, the way that the campaign was organized also had a certain impact on democracy. However, the question is whether those campaigns applied different ABC strategies, and if the impact on democracy was equally compared with the Bil’in case. For instance, one aspect could be to decipher what extent other campaigns resulted in an equal amount of common identification among the subalterns in the villages, and if the solidarity was equally as strong as in the Bil’in case. We also need to address the issues related to constructive resistance within failed campaigns. Do alternatives of how to handle the conflict issues, which are presented by the civil resistance activists, exist, and do they also succeed to become part of a larger public debate, and thereby impact democracy? As this study indicated, apparently actors’ creativity matters for social change. In future research, we need more comparative studies that include a careful design of the impact of political structures on the civil resistance room of maneuver. This will give further inputs into research on democracy building from ‘below’, where the case of Bil’in gave indication to the argument that they could be assumed to be actors with democratizing qualities who push the democratic frontier forward (Schulz 2006) in Palestinian society.

Also, given the current relatively violent situation in the West Bank (July 2023), with Israeli incursion occurring in Palestinian cities almost on a daily basis (primarily Jenin and Nablus), which results in armed confrontations, we need to find out in more detail how armed resistance practices impact on civil resistance and, more importantly, grassroots democracy processes.

10. Referred interviews³

2011 (May)

1. Male, Palestinian Nil’in activist Nil’in 2011 Maj-22

2. Group interview with women from Ni’lin, Nil’in 2011

3. Interview with four youngsters from the village of Ni’lin 2011

4. Group interview with woman from Budrus 2011

2013 (November)

1. Male, Palestinian Activist, Betlehem

2. Male, Palestinian NGO worker, Betlehem

3. Male, Palestinian NGO worker, Ramallah

4. Male, Palestinian Journalist and Youth Activist Coordinator, Ramallah

5. Female, NGO worker, Ramallah

6. Male, Palestinian academician and NGO worker, Bir Zeit University

7. Male, Palestinian students, Ramallah

8. Male, international staff from EU-POL COPPS, Ramallah

9. Male, Palestinian Bil’in activist

10. Male, Palestinian activist and member of the organization Against the Wall

11. Male, Palestinian academician, Birzeit University

12. Male, Palestinian Hamas member, Palestinian Legislative Council Member

13. Male, Palestinian Hamas member, Palestinian Legislative Council Member

14. Female, Palestinian NGO worker and member of Aldameer, Ramallah

15. Female, Palestinian NGO worker and member of Hurriyat, Ramallah

16. Male, Palestinian NGO worker, RCHRS, Ramallah

17. Female, Palestinian NGO worker and member of Woman Affairs Technical Committee, Ramallah

18. Male, Palestinian journalist and NGO worker, Ramallah

19. Male, Palestinian NGO worker, Bethlehem

20. Male, Palestinian Bil’in activist

21. Group interview with teenagers in Budrus

22. Male, Palestinian academician and youth activist, Birzeit University

23. Female, Palestinian Nil’in activist

24. Group interview with women from Nil’in

25. Group interview women from Amareeh refugee camp, Ramallah

26. Male, Palestinian youth activist and member of BDS, Ramallah

27. Female, Palestinian NGO worker and member of Woman Program Center, Ramallah

2019 (April and November):

1. Interview with male activist from Bil’in

2. female activist from Bil’in, 2019

2022 (September – October):

1. Female Israeli activist, 9^th September and 30^th September, Tel Aviv

2. Female Bil’in activist, 10^th September, Bil’in

3. Female Bil’in activist, 10^th September, Bil’in

4. Male Bil‘in activist, 10^th September, Bil’in

5. Male Bil‘in activist, 10^th September, Bil’in

6. Male Bil‘in activist, 10^th September, Bil’in

7. Female Palestinian media person, 18^th, Ramallah, and 27^th September, Jericho

8. Male Palestinian youth, 27^th September

9. Male Palestinian media person, 27^th September, Jericho

10. Abdallah Abu Rahmah, 19^th September, Ramallah

11. Male Palestinian NGO worker, 23^rd September, Ramallah

12. Male Palestinian NGO worker, 26^th September, Jerusalem

13. Female Palestinian NGO worker, 29^th September, Al Ram

14. Male Israeli NGO worker at B’Tsleem, October 25^th, 2022

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Vetenskapsrådet [2017-00881].

Notes on contributors

Michael Schulz

Michael Schulz is Professor in Peace and Development Research at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. He has published extensively on various issues in the Middle East (resistance, democracy and state building, conflicts, security, and regionalism). The most recent publications are Civil Resistance and Democracy Promotion, London/New York: Routledge 2023, ‘Whiter Democracy in Palestine? Palestinian Public Opinion Survey Towards Democracy, 1997-2016,’ Journal of Holy Land and Palestine Studies, 21, 2 (2022), pp. 176-203 (with Mahmoud Mi’ari), 2022, Between Resistance, Sharia Law and Demo-Islamic Politics, Lanham, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield Publisher Group, 2020, and The Routledge Handbook of Middle East Security (co-eds. Jägerskog & Swain), London: Routledge, 2019.

Notes

1. Initial plans had already been discussed in Israel during the mid-1990s within the then Rabin government. This was revealed to the author during an interview in the Knesset in 1995 – more specifically in the Knesset office of the then Israeli police minister Moshe Shahal (author interview, June 12, 1995, Jerusalem).

2. From the documentary Five Broken Cameras, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rH_d_L33V2s (Accessed: 8 September 2018).

3. Haisam Abdul Rahman worked as research assistant for this project and conducted the interviews in 2011 and 2013.