In the past few months alone there have been reports from the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson, from another group sent by the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, from the U.S. State Department, from numerous international and even Israeli human rights organizations. Sometimes there is enough coercive power in the hands of the strong, or willingness to comply or suffer quietly on the side of the weak for such relationships to exist, for a time, without outward signs of resistance. But this is not peace. To tell the Palestinians to go back and live quietly under Israeli occupation until the Israelis decide of their own accord to stop the occupation and the settlements is much like telling a woman who has escaped from a violent husband to go back and live with him because her departure has upset the neighbors and caused a scandal in the neighborhood, and if she goes back and behaves obediently he might one day sober up and stop beating her. So the Palestinians must not return to the status quo ante and must continue to resist.
Resistance takes many forms.
When your enemy is trying to starve you, feeding your children and sharing your food with your neighbor is resistance. There is a crucial debate among Palestinians about what forms resistance should take and an increasing sense that armed resistance as it has been carried out by a few Palestinians is militarily useless and excludes most of the population from participation. Resistance does not just take place inside the occupied territories. The Israeli government and its supporters are engaged in a global disinformation campaign, especially in the United States. Countering this propaganda, through the media, with the internet, by organizing local events and by all the means available to activists is also resistance and a crucial part of the struggle.