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Hi Nina et al,

Any opinion I give must be understood to be coming from a place of vastly less information than some of the others of you have. But that said, I find myself in agreement with Nina and Matt that a boycott of negotiations would be a skillful nonviolent tactic at this point. Negotiation as a preliminary step in satyagraha is important; but it is also important that it be abandoned and replaced with other actions whenever it is understood to have “failed.” The release of the Palestine Papers may be grasped as a moment of failed negotiation, should the Palestinians choose to approach it as such. Just as Gandhi’s letter to Lord Irwin had to precede the action of the Salt March, the Palestinians have “had” to attempt negotiation. They have held to negotiations, and then have largely held to nonviolence through the recent rounds of “negotiations,” to the point that much of the international community sees theirs as a movement of nonviolent resistance (as I understand that opinion).

So the question for me now is not whether negotiations should be stopped — I will argue that they should — but what should come next. For Gandhi, the strategy was to announce publicly the end of negotiations, dig deep within, watch and wait, discriminate and plan; through that process he came up with his plan for the Salt March and was able to carry it out with clarity. I suggest the same might work for the Palestinian people: 1) announce the end of negotiations and solidly stick to that promise, 2) determine a concrete mass act of civil disobedience to follow, 3) reach out to the international community to make their plan, strategy, and nonviolent intent explicitly known, 4) and with sufficient planning, discipline, and clarity, carry out that plan.

These are the first thoughts that come to me as I assess the situation from where it stands now; may they be of some benefit. More may come to mind later! Thoughts?

Shannon