Tibetans have used self-immolation to highlight Chinese oppression, Indians to decry the caste system and Poles, Ukrainians and Czechs once used it to protest Soviet rule.
But more likely for Harb, the model was Mohamed Bouazizi, the Tunisian street vendor who set himself on fire in late 2010 after officials humiliated him once too often. His public death triggered a wave of protests across the Middle East that became the Arab Spring.
Bouazizi's self-immolation suggests its power to set our consciences on fire.
It is the ultimate act of individual self-sacrifice, one that is entirely non-violent except to the victim himself, performed altruistically in a greater, collective cause.
Who did Harb hope to speak to with his shocking act?
In part, according to his family, he was angry with the Palestinian leadership. His family was trapped in the unresolved feud between Gaza's rulers Hamas and the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the West Bank.
That dispute has led the PA to cut the salaries of its workers in Gaza, including Harb's father.
But Harb undoubtedly had a larger audience in mind too.
Until a few years ago, Hamas regularly fired rockets out of the enclave in a struggle both to end Israel's continuing colonisation of Palestinian land and to liberate the people of Gaza from their Israeli-made prison.
But the world rejected the Palestinians' right to resist violently and condemned Hamas as "terrorists." Israel's series of military rampages in Gaza to silence Hamas were meekly criticised in the West as "disproportionate."
The Palestinians of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, where there is still direct contact with Israeli Jews, usually as settlers or soldiers, watched as Gaza's armed resistance failed to prick the world's conscience.
So some took up the struggle as individuals, targeting Israelis or soldiers at checkpoints.
Again, the world sided with Israel. Resistance was not only futile, it was denounced as illegitimate.
Since late March, the struggle for liberation has shifted back to Gaza. Tens of thousands of unarmed Palestinians have massed weekly close to Israel's fence encaging them.
The protests are intended as confrontational civil disobedience, a cry to the world for help and a reminder that Palestinians are being slowly choked to death.
Israel has responded repeatedly by spraying the demonstrators with live ammunition, seriously wounding many thousands and killing more than 100. Yet again, the world has remained largely impassive.
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