Non-violent, anti-occupation activist movements in the West Bank-- particularly in the village of Bil'in-- have attracted global media attention and even won victories in the Israeli courts. Yet similar movements in Gaza have received scant media coverage and failed to gain traction among Gaza civilians. This colloquium talk by former Israel/Palestine journalist Ashley Bates will argue that Gaza's extreme isolation, combined with the lethal force that is regularly used by the IDF against unarmed demonstrators, has severely limited the possibilities for Palestinian civilian activists challenging Israel's land and sea blockade of Gaza.

Ashley Bates, project coordinator at the International Institute's Conflict and Peace Initiative, previously worked as an independent journalist in Gaza, the West Bank, Israel, and the United States. She also worked for eight years as the Program Director, and then Executive Director, of an Israeli-Palestinian dialogue program called Hands of Peace. Ashley lived in Gaza for six months in 2010, where she covered a grassroots, non-violent activist movement that expanded rapidly following Israel's deadly raid on a Gaza-bound humanitarian flotilla. The movement subsequently fizzled, and multiple activists were killed. Ashley's articles have been published in the Nation, Ha’aretz, Mother Jones, Global Post, the East Bay Express, Jerusalem Post Magazine, and the Columbia Journalism Review. Her 2010 blog, Dispatches from Gaza, recounts her experiences working as a journalist in Gaza.