One of the most important aspects of Palestinian resistance is the refusal of Palestinians to leave their land even when there are opportunities to do so.

In 1948, around 100,000 Palestinians succeeded in remaining within the borders of the new state of Israel, a community that has today grown to one million. Palestinians represent 20 percent of the Israeli population and this number is growing. While there are no tanks on the streets of Palestinian towns and villages in the 1948 areas, Israeli policy has deliberately made life as difficult as possible for those Palestinians that remain. Discrimination, land confiscation, and racism are rife inside Israel, a situation that could tempt many to leave. Living life as second-class citizens is never easy, and those who remain represent a form of resistance underrated by international media but by no means unnoticed by the demographic-obsessed Israeli strategists.

At various points throughout the past half century, Israel has developed plans to transfer Palestinian citizens out of the country through various means, particularly by making visas easily available to other countries (see Nur Masalha, A Land Without a People: Israel, Transfer, and the Palestinians 1949-96, London, Faber and Faber, 1997.) In the mid-1950s, for example, Israel worked on a transfer plan aiming to send Palestinian citizens to Libya (16-21). Today, Nazareth citizens have reported to IslamOnline about being contacted “randomly” by the American embassy in Tel Aviv regarding opportunities to get a green card and to immigrate to the United States. The fact that Palestinians have remained steadfast in their land, despite constant pressure, remains an act of peaceful resistance in itself.

As this whole folder has shown, the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza have to live daily with curfews, checkpoints, unemployment directly caused by occupation, military attack, and arbitrary arrest and prison. Those many thousands of Palestinians who remain, who continue to go to work, who queue at checkpoints, who develop alternative systems of survival through religious and community networks are resisting the occupation on a daily basis. This Palestinian steadfastness in clinging to the land is a form of resilience to which the occupier has no reply.