If, as is possible, the UN General Assembly in September recognizes a Palestinian state based at least somewhat on the 1967 borders, what happens next? In the short run, nothing much. The Palestinians have little power and the US will exert all its influence to make sure that nothing changes significantly. But that could change if non-violent protests in the region against Israeli policies become a mass movement.

What will happen if masses of unarmed Palestinians and Israelis march together the way that Gandhi and his followers marched in India to combat British rule? The recent Nakba demonstrations that resulted in Israeli forces killing about 20 unarmed Palestinian demonstrators and wounded hundreds on May 15 in a crackdown on the borders with Syria and Lebanon is one possible precursor, suggesting that the Israeli government will act with brutal force.

Even if the Israeli forces shoot and kill many unarmed protestors, the US government and media will downplay these events and not express outrage, just as they are downplaying the killings of unarmed people in Bahrain and Yemen, in the former country by foreign troops (Saudi Arabian). But as the British discovered with Gandhi, attacking unarmed people and jailing their leaders is usually counterproductive in the long run. It stiffens the resolve of people rather than undermining it, and throws up a multitude of new leaders to take the place of those incarcerated or killed.

In his article titled Salt march to the Dead Sea: Gandhi’s Palestinian reincarnation in the June 2011 issue of Harper’s Magazine (subscription required), David Shulman says that Gandhian nonviolent methods are catching on in Israel and Palestine though it is by no means a mass movement yet.

New forms of civil disobedience are spreading within Israel, driven by peace activists and ordinary citizens who are fed up with the blatant injustice of Israeli policy and who are increasingly prepared to break the letter of the law when the law is discriminatory, indeed racist. You can read about some of the people involved in Michael Riordon’s fine book Our Way to Fight. As Palestinian independence comes nearer— hopefully, to become a reality this year—there will be more and more instances of such protests inside Israel and, in some cases, by Israelis working inside the occupied territories, together with Palestinian partners.

Make no mistake, when it comes to Israeli activism, we’re not talking about anything like a mass movement. But I’m not sure that numbers are the best indicator of what’s to come. The Israeli settlers who hijacked the entire political system to their utterly destructive goals some three decades ago numbered, initially, at most a few thousand. I think that even a few hundred brave individuals prepared to face the riot police and the soldiers and the courts in the name of the Eighth Commandment may, with the help of the outside world, be enough to spark the change.

No one can say what form the revolutionary fervor currently sweeping the Arab world will eventually take in Palestine. It may very well be directed, first, against the centers of power in Gaza and Ramallah (Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, respectively; up-to-date studies show a sharp decline in popular support for the former). Eventually, however, the tide will turn against the Israeli occupation; the Israeli government has no effective response to a situation where hundreds of thousands of Palestinians decide to assert their freedom, one can hope, in nonviolent ways.

When I look at the Palestinian issue, I often feel a sense of despair because things seem so hopeless. It seems the parties are so entrenched so as to never permit a just solution. Then I remind myself that I used to feel the same way about South Africa, that the whites would never give up on their iron rule over the blacks, that Nelson Mandela would die in prison, and that it would end up either as a bloody mess or as a long slow strangulation of the black people. And change emerged, largely peacefully.

The catch is that for all their many faults, neither the British nor the Afrikaaners or the liberation movements were driven by religious fanaticism. It is different in the Middle East. Daniel Levy points out that the ultra-orthodox Jews known as the Haredim is one of the fastest growing groups in Israel. That is not a good sign. The dominance of religion usually makes peaceful resolutions of conflicts harder because each side thinks their god is the right one and he supports them.

But we must have hope. As Shulman says:

Hope is a spiritual act, far removed from, say, optimism, a rather shallow option. So let me say it: there is hope, today, in Palestine, more than I’ve ever seen before. The Israeli government is doing what it can to destroy it, but I doubt that the government will succeed.

I hope that he is right. I have pretty much given up hope that governments will do the right thing. They are too captive to either moneyed interests or to the narrow sectarian religious and political groups that the media pays so much attention to. But I do have hope that when ordinary, right thinking people join up with others who seek to live normal, dignified, decent lives, and are willing to put their lives on the line to achieve this, great things can happen.

Gandhi and Martin Luther Ling showed that it can be done.