Mairead Maguire
Non-Violent Resistance
Why do you believe the Palestinian situation should be at the front of the international agenda?
It is one of the saddest and longest running conflicts in the world. Out of a population of ten million people, seven million are refugees or displaced around the world - it is a very sad situation. It is caused by Israeli policies which, when changed, can bring peace not only to Palestine, but indeed change the whole climate in the Middle East.
Is non-violent protest the best method to confront tyranny?
When guns come into a situation it heightens the tension and makes solutions very difficult. We are beginning to learn that militarism and war and weapons and armed struggles and armed revolutions, they create more violence, more fear, more tragedy and they don’t solve the problem. A person that has inspired me is Abdul Gaffer Khan. Abdul Gaffer Khan was a great Muslim leader; he knew Gandhi, he lived in Afghanistan, he mobilised the tribes in Afghanistan to non-violently resist the British occupation and to work together for justice; he is a great Muslim hero of non-violence.
But was it Abdul Gaffer Khan’s actions that forced the British to withdraw from Afghanistan?
It most certainly helped and if you want to argue about what worked, they didn’t kill anybody in the process and this is the beauty of non-violence. We use non-violence, but I believe it is a serious political science; non-violence works, I believe that passionately.
Perhaps non-violence works better alongside an armed struggle?
I might say to you that we use non-violence not because we believe it works, but because it is right. Non-violence means that I respect my own life, I respect your life. I believe that every human life is special and sacred and that if I have a problem with you or a government, I have a responsibility to work in solving that problem without killing someone.
I have to say to you that I would love to see the Israeli government take up non-violence because the Israeli government today is the fourth most militarised country in the world. The Israeli government has nuclear weapons, over two hundred nuclear weapons. The Israeli government’s policies are unjust. You only have to go there to see the wall and to see the injustice of what is happening. You see the slow ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people by Israeli policies.
The problems facing the human family today are enormous; no one country on its own can deal with these issues anymore. We’re interdependent and we need each other for survival. Now, in order to deal with those enemies of the human family that we know exist, we need money; we need the money out of militarism to deal with the real issues of justice, equality, and human rights for every single child on the planet because we are responsible for each other. I’m here today sitting in Gaza because I am responsible for what’s happening to the children of Gaza and I want to do what I can to help that. So if we take the money out of militarism and put it into dealing with all of these social, economic and political issues, we can solve these problems. Israel is the 4th most militarised country in the world, it has a huge army, weapons of mass destruction provided by the western world, provided by the UK, the country I come from, provided by America. The western countries send all these arms to developing countries, take the money back off them that they need to educate and feed their children. We have straddled the developing world with huge debts, we send them arms to kill each other with and we take their money and we live a very good lifestyle while the children die of starvation. I don’t want a world like that, when I know that it can be different.
So we have really got to say: Israel has this military and you know what? It’s still not safe! Israeli people are frightened, they think that somehow they have put all their hope in having all this military security and they are so fearful that their ethnic identity will be eroded. That’s ethnic fear. We all know what ethnic fear is because when people are frightened they are afraid to move towards peace; they are afraid to give anything.
1st August 2009