The philosophy and practice of nonviolence is a means to resist oppression to achieve real and meaningful change without using physical violence or armed resistance. Nonviolence is a tool for ordinary civilians to resist and create change, and this practice provides a role to everyone in a community from children to the elderly. Friends of Hebron and our partner Youth Against Settlements (YAS) are deeply rooted in nonviolence as an explicit strategy against military occupation. Friends of Hebron partners with YAS to nurture Palestinian nonviolence and train young Palestinians in nonviolent methodologies based in the traditions of Palestinian unarmed struggle and inspired by global movements all over the world.
Nonviolence is active rather than static and works as a coherent political methodology and an ethical framework developed in response to structural injustice. Nonviolent activism combines individual discipline and collective organization, and its philosophy is rooted in both the individual and the collective as agents of change. The practice of nonviolence requires ongoing training and internal accountability. Participants must learn how to respond to provocation, intimidation, and repression without escalating harm or undermining collective goals. This includes developing clear codes of conduct, preparing individuals—especially youth—for high-pressure encounters, and emphasizing the importance of coordinated action over individual reaction. Such preparation reflects an understanding that nonviolence is most effective when it is organized, intentional, and rooted in shared political education.
Palestinian nonviolence emerges from a long history of popular struggle against systems of domination, including the late Ottoman Empire, the British Mandate, the Jordanian rule, and the various stages of Israeli occupation. Throughout the twentieth century and into the present, Palestinians have employed a range of nonviolent methods to resist dispossession and assert political agency. These have included mass strikes, refusal to cooperate with unjust administrative systems, community-led education initiatives, land defense through continued cultivation and presence, and the formation of local committees to organize collective responses to repression. A central concept shaping this tradition is steadfastness, which emphasizes remaining rooted in place, maintaining community institutions, and preserving social continuity despite sustained pressure. Nonviolence has served as one of the primary ways this steadfastness is enacted, particularly in environments where armed resistance would further endanger civilian life or justify intensified repression. Through nonviolent presence—such as accompanying and supporting families, reopening closed spaces, or continuing daily routines under restriction—communities assert their rights and challenge attempts at erasure.
Youth participation has been especially significant in carrying this tradition forward. Young people have played key roles in documenting abuses, organizing educational activities, and engaging international audiences through factual reporting and testimony. Their involvement reflects an intergenerational transmission of nonviolent practice, where experience and mentorship shape new forms of engagement suited to contemporary conditions, including digital documentation and transnational advocacy.
Palestinian nonviolence is also part of a broader global history of civil resistance. Comparative studies of movements against colonial rule, racial segregation, and authoritarian governance reveal shared strategies and principles across diverse contexts. These include mass participation, the strategic use of noncooperation, the centrality of moral legitimacy, and the importance of sustaining movements over time rather than seeking immediate outcomes. Documentation, public testimony, and engagement with legal and human rights mechanisms are integral to nonviolent practice. By grounding advocacy in evidence and lived experience, nonviolence challenges dominant narratives and creates pathways for accountability that extend beyond local contexts.
Nonviolence is understood as a long-term commitment that prioritizes the preservation of life, the integrity of community, and the development of political agency. It reflects a conviction that the struggle for justice must be conducted in ways that do not replicate the very systems of domination being opposed. Through disciplined nonviolence, resistance is simultaneously an immediate response to injustice as well as a means of shaping a more just and equitable future.
Issa Amro's Journey To Nonviolence
Our executive director Issa Amro was a young engineering student in the year 2003 at the Palestine Polytechnic University in Hebron. He was in his final year of a five-year engineering degree, staying up all night to work on solving complicated calculus equations. 23-year-old Issa had no interest in politics at the time; his dream was to become a professor in Engineering and to work on developing sources of renewable energy. He showed up to class one day to find that the Israeli army had shut down his university. In a moment of panic, realizing that he stood to lose his degree and the last five years of hard work, he rushed home, turned on his computer and typed "how to make a revolution" into the search bar. His searches led him to nonviolent leaders such as Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., and Nelson Mandela. He read everything that he could about the practice of nonviolent change, including nonviolence theory by scholars such as Gene Sharp. Issa rallied a large group of students together and led them in a series of nonviolent actions, including teach-ins, demonstrations, media work and more. The student protestors did not only protest the army; they protested and petitioned their own municipality to demand that they help pressure the Israeli army to reopen the university. After half a year, the student protestors succeeded. Issa returned to school and graduated as both an engineer and an activist. This success inspired more than twenty years of intense human rights work and nonviolent activism in the community in Hebron. Soon afterward, this journey led Issa toward establishing a community center for nonviolent activism immediately next to an illegal Israeli settlement and Israeli military base, as well as found the grassroots initiative Youth Against Settlements.
