Between Popular Resistance and Violent Escalation, the Case of Israel-Palestine

While the Palestinian popular revolt (first Intifada) in 1987 led to a mutual recognition agreement in 1993, the second Intifada in 2000 led to five years of Israeli military lethal repression and terrorist acts taking the lives of 4000 Palestinians and 1000 Israelis. The second Intifada didn’t lead to mutual recognition but to a military move: unilateral withdrawal of Israeli army and the establishment of a blockade around Gaza. The blockade led to three big rounds of rocket firing from Gaza and Israeli air force “mowing the grass” (2008, 2012, 2014) and dozens of smaller aerial violent clashes between Palestinian rockets and Israeli air force strikes.

Following the October 7 Hamas territorial invasion of the Israeli settlements around Gaza and the slaughter of 1200 Israeli men, women and children (800 of them civilians), and the abduction of 250 hostages, some sociologists and activists interpreted the attack as a legitimate act of resistance to the blockade, ignoring the expected violent retaliation and disastrous deterioration. The Israeli military used unprecedented brutal violence, killing more than 40000 Palestinians, destroying entire neighborhoods and public institutions, claiming self-defense, acts that were recognized as a “plausible” case of genocide by the ICJ initial resolution in January 2024.

In this paper I will elaborate the conceptual distinction between resistance, which aims to open political space for recognition, representation and negotiation, on the one hand, and intractable violence leading to mutual lethal violent clashes, on the other hand. I already suggested the distinction between these two forms of struggle on my previous works - Politics and Violence, 2010; Mo[ve]ments of Resistance, 2014. In this paper I’ll elaborate on the dynamics that led to the present deterioration, within a historical path dependent eventful sociology approach, including the regional and global factors, examining the current critical turning point it created.