For years, Israel has said that it cannot negotiate with Palestinians because there is no leader who can represent Palestine and who doesn’t support violence. But finally, things are changing. It appears to be increasingly accepted by Palestinians on the West Bank that the path that offers them the most hope is a non-violent path of demonstrations against the occupation at home and the world wide push for BDS against Israel. Front and centre in this is the Palestinian prime minister, Salam Fayyad.

As always in dealing with the Middle East, perception is as important as reality. So the significance of this recent article in the New York Times is two-fold: both what it says, and that the Times (not traditionally a paper that has said much positive about Palestinians) is saying it.

Palestinians Try a Less Violent Path to Resistance New York Times

Something is stirring in the West Bank. With both diplomacy and armed struggle out of favor for having failed to end the Israeli occupation, the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority, joined by the business community, is trying to forge a third way: to rouse popular passions while avoiding violence. The idea, as Fatah struggles to revitalize its leadership, is to build a virtual state and body politic through acts of popular resistance.

“It is all about self-empowerment,” said Hasan Abu-Libdeh, the Palestinian economy minister, referring to a campaign to end the purchase of settlers’ goods and the employment of Palestinians by settlers and their industries. “We want ordinary people to feel like stockholders in the process of building a state.

Uri Avnery is an analyst one can rely on. Now in his 80s, he once served with Irgun, left them over their terrorist tactics, and in 2001 he and his wife won the Right Livelihood Award (the “alternative nobel prize”) “… for their unwavering conviction, in the midst of violence, that peace can only be achieved through justice and reconciliation”. Here are his thoughts on Fayyad, as written in Counterpunch.

The Big Gamble

It is impossible not to like Fayyad. He radiates decency, seriousness and a sense of responsibility. He invites trust. None of the filth of corruption has stuck to him. He is no party functionary. Only after much hesitation did he join a small party (“the Third Way”). In the confrontation between Fatah and Hamas, he does not belong to either of the two rival blocs. ..The 58-year old Fayyad is the very opposite of Yasser Arafat, who first appointed him as Finance Minister. …the biggest difference between the two lies in their methods….. Fayyad, on the other hand, puts all his – and the Palestinians’ – eggs in one basket. He chose a single strategy and sticks to it. That is a personal and national gamble – and bold and dangerous indeed.

Fayyad believes, so it seems, that the Palestinians’ only chance to achieve their national goals is by non-violent means, in close cooperation with the US.His plan is to build the Palestinian national institutions and create a robust economic base, and, by the end of 2011, to declare the State of Palestine.

Is this strategy working? Can it work? Again there is perception and there is reality. Juan Cole has a fascinating exploration of American perceptions in his blog, Informed Comment, in a look at attitudes towards Palestine among Americans in general, and American Jews in particular.

More American Jews want a Palestinian state than do not want oneaccording to a just-released survey of American Jewish opinion by the American Jewish Congress(48% to 45%). Admittedly,67% of the general American public supports a Palestinian state, but that nearly half of American Jews do, as well, shows that this issue is controversial only because a few far rightwing fringe elements are supported by a small number of extremely wealthy Christian Zionists and Wall Street types…. Some 64% of American Jews are also in favor of dismantling ‘some’ settlements on the West Bank to get peace, and nearly one in ten want all settlements disbanded.

And this week Roger Cohen in the New York Times has the most rare and delicate of things, an optimistic article about the prospects of peace. Though, as he puts it, “or rather, the complete despair about the “peace process” with which I arrived in Israel has eased. O.K., that’s not exactly optimism, but in the Middle East small mercies count.” In his piece, well worth a read, he writes:

I detect three developments. The first is Obama. The second is Fayyad. The third is what Danny Ayalon, the deputy Israeli foreign minister, called “the sugar-coated poison pill” of the Israeli status quo. I’ll take them in order.

Last week, a letter from President Barack Obama was conveyed to Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president. In it, I understand, Obama spoke of his very strong commitment – unprecedented commitment – to a two-state peace and said that if Israel seriously undermines trust between the two parties, the United States will not stand in the way of a United Nations resolution condemning that…. Obama’s recalibration of U.S. Middle East diplomacy is ground-shifting. He’s being pummeled from the usual quarters but he’ll stay the course because he’s a realist and because soldiers have told him that, with 200,000 plus American forces in Muslim countries, getting to Israel and Palestine living side-by-side in peace is a vital U.S. national security interest.

And that is real change. Whether we can believe it will make a longterm difference will -of course – only become clear in the longterm, but Cohen quotes George Mitchell in the same article, and Mitchell says this:

No one in the world knows American politics better than me, and this I will say. There has never been in the White House a president that is so committed on this issue, including Clinton who is a personal friend, and there will never be, at least not in the lifetime of anyone in this room.

So the combination of Fayyad and Obama may push matters towards a resolution. Hope, “that thing with feathers” in Emily Dickinson’s phrase has sometimes been spotted fluttering through the Middle East. But perhaps, there is something solid emerging now on which it may alight.

Insha’Allah.