Non Violent Resistance

Today we headed back into the West Bank to visit two villages north of Ramallah that are engaged in significant non-violent resistance to the construction of the separation wall, or apartheid wall, through their villages. We stopped first at Nilin, where we met guides who are active in the grass roots organization there that stages weekly demonstrations against the continued building of the wall. The Israeli government is taking 60% of the remaining land that belongs to the village and that is used by the villagers as farm land. This is active farmland that they do cultivate and which provides income for them. The land is being taken by the Israelis to build the separation wall. In the past two weeks there have been two well publicized incidents during these weekly non-violent demonstrations. Israeli soldiers shot and killed a nine year old child two weeks ago, who was walking with members of his family during the demonstration. His uncle was one of our guides today. And his art teacher from school was also with us and showed us a drawing the child had done just days before he was killed. It showed several houses standing side by side. On one house was a Palestinian flag and on the one next door was an Israeli flag. When the teacher asked him why he drew a picture of two houses with the different flags he replied that he hoped that it would be possible for Israelis and Palestinians to live next door to each other. And just last week, two teenagers were shot, one was killed instantly and the other is in the hospital with serious injuries and is not expected to survive. The boy who died last week was 17 years old. When the villagers stage these demonstrations, which are always non-violent, in which they do not carry any weapons, the Israeli soldiers shoot them with rubber coated bullets, tear gas canisters, and concussion grenades. They also routinely beat the demonstrators. These demonstrations have gotten a great deal of publicity around the world and frequently are attended not only by the local citizens of Bilin and Nilin but also by human rights and peace activists from Israel, Palestine and international organizations. We watched a video of the Bilin demonstrations and were surprised to see John, our Christian Peacemaker Team guide from Hebron on the film footage. CPT teams regularly accompany the demonstrators in Bilin and Nilin. In Nilin we got out of the bus on the main street in the village and our guide took us on the dusty, rocky local path out to the olive tree fields where we could see the construction vehicles that are working on the extension of the wall. We also could see, just across the ridge, a black Hummer with an Israeli soldier standing beside it gun in hand. He was keeping a close eye on us the entire time we were out there.

The villagers told us of the repercussions they face from the Israeli military as a result of their non-violent resistance. Not only do they face the violent response from the military when they are demonstrating, but the leaders of the local community group are often taken by the soldiers from their homes in the middle of the night and carted off to prison, charged with being violent terrorists or liberation fighters. One man spoke of the trauma his children are feeling because the soldiers also shoot randomly into the villager’s homes. His son was hit on the shoulder by a rubber bullet and has had symptoms of PTSD ever since. The land that the Israelis are taking represents a significant portion of the land that remains after the 1948 and 1967 wars in which the vast majority of the land that used to be theirs was taken. It is part of the ongoing “war” by the Israelis against the Palestinians in the West Bank and the intentional and concerted effort to simply drive them off the land entirely. As we stood on the hilltop in the olive grove in Nilin we could see the Israeli settlements all around, on every hill. The contrast between the Israeli settlements and the Palestinian villages is striking. The settlements consist of modern homes with manicured lawns, electricity, water, municipal services, and well paved roads with ready access to Jerusalem and other Israeli cities. The villages by contrast are often deprived of water, municipal services like garbage pick up, and have been so isolated by the snaking of the wall through the West Bank that the villagers can’t easily get from one town to the next because of blocked roads and checkpoints. Roads that the settlers can take to get from one place to the next are off limits to Palestinian villagers. They are forced onto secondary roads, that snake miles around the Israeli settlements so that they often have to go 20 miles to get from one place to the next when the actual distance is only a mile or so. The barriers to movement and the taking of the villagers’ land has caused unemployment to skyrocket among the Palestinian villages in the West Bank.

After our visit to Nilin we went to Bilin where we climbed the very steep hill up to the point where the Israeli army is building the separation wall and where the weekly Friday demonstrations take place. Our guide pointed out that every Friday, at the same time as religious Christian pilgrims are walking the Via Dolorosa in the old city of Jerusalem, the villagers of Bilin are walking their own Via Dolorosa as they march in protest against the occupation and specifically the building of the wall through their village. When we got to the barrier point where the demonstrations usually end, we got out of the bus to take photographs. Two Israeli soldiers shortly arrived and kept a very close watch on us from the other side of the fence. Soon, an armored car arrived to back up the two soldiers. Since we were obviously tourists and not demonstrators the soldiers did not bother us, but the tension of the region was palpable as we felt ourselves being watched and scrutinized by two young men carrying weapons.

We had lunch in the home of one of the organizers of the Bilin and Nilin resistance movement. It was true Palestinian hospitality as we sat in his living room, served by his wife and children a delicious lunch of grilled chicken and rice with yogurt and vegetables. In his home were posters with the picture of the 17 year old who was killed last week. I took a picture of his three year old daughter holding that poster up for all of us to see. Once again, we were reminded of the extent to which this occupation and the conflict it is causing is harming yet another generation of innocent children. All these Palestinian families want is to raise their children without fear and with sufficient food, clothing and other life necessities. And everything that the Israeli government is doing is making it next to impossible for parents to raise their children in peace and safety. And then there were the reports yesterday in Sderot of Jewish children growing up traumatized by the Kassam rockets landing in their neighborhoods with alarming regularity.

We then went to Birzeit University, one of the premier universities in the Palestinian West Bank. There we learned of the challenges they face trying to run a university under the conditions of the occupation. They have trouble keeping faculty, because they cannot pay very much and only faculty who live close to the school can work there because of the checkpoints and diversions that make it difficult for anyone other than local residents to get there with any ease. They have also suffered closures of the university by the Israeli government. Their student body has become mostly local young people again because of the difficulty of travel through the West Bank. It is so hard for Palestinians to move about with the checkpoints and closed or diverted roads, that people are deterred from commuting to the university from any distance. We spoke with some students who expressed their feeling that life under occupation is like living in a prison. They are not free to come and go, many of them cannot study abroad because they cannot get a visa to get out of the country, they cannot go to Jerusalem because they don’t have the blue identity card, they have green ones which limit them to the West Bank and on and on.

From there we returned to E. Jerusalem to meet with a representative of Combatants for Peace, a relatively new human rights organization comprised of former Israeli soldiers who believe that this conflict cannot be resolved by force and militarism and Palestinians who have served time in Israeli prisons due to their resistance to the occupation, whether violent or non-violent. The man who spoke to us was Bassam Aramin, a Palestinian who has spent 6 years in Israeli prison. He told us briefly the history of this organization, which started in 2005 when he and a few other Palestinians met with some Israeli soldiers who were disillusioned with the militaristic activities of the Israeli government and began dialogue. Their group gradually grew in number and held a big meeting in 2006 with over 400 people in attendance, including members of the PLO and Hamas. In January 2007, Mr. Aramin was asked to speak at Tel Aviv University. He went to do his talk and there were demonstrators there because by then this organization was well known and protests were common when they were doing speaking events. During the course of that day, Mr. Aramin’s 10 year old daughter, Abir, was shot and killed by an Israeli soldier. Her younger sister was standing right next to her, holding her hand when she fell to the ground. Mr. Aramin has made it clear that he wants justice for his daughter, but not revenge and he is pursuing justice through the military tribunals of the Israeli army, assisted by a human rights organization that provides legal assistance. Mr. Aramin does a lot of public speaking, using this tragedy as a platform to promote his belief in non-violent resolutions to conflict. There was nary a dry eye in the house when he held up a picture of his daughter and said, quietly, “This is not the face of a Palestinian terrorist.” He and the organization have made it part of their agenda to publicize and thereby educate the public about the number of incidents of brutal behavior by young Israeli soldiers, incidents that in many cases qualify as “war crimes.” Mr. Aramin says he is convinced that the average Israeli parent who sends their teenagers off to the mandatory military service required of all 18-21 year olds have no idea exactly what they do during that service. He believes many of them would be outraged at what really goes on and would be sympathetic and desirous of stopping it.

Today was another tough day, emotionally. Once again I was struck by the impact this endless conflict is having on another entire generation of children. The slaughter of the innocents continues day after day. The bullets, the tear gas, the endless, senseless violence. What was encouraging was again to meet people who are committed to working for peace through non-violent means, who believe that fighting with weapons and continuing the cycle of violence will do nothing to end the conflict. The Palestinians we met today are inspiring in their commitment to work for justice without revenge, to pursue peace even when they are being consistently made the victims of violence, when their lives are unnecessarily complicated and oppressed by the occupying force. In the past two weeks we have met many, many Palestinians who want to work for a peaceful resolution to this conflict. It goes without saying that the notion that all Palestinians are terrorists is nothing more than Israeli (and all too often American) propaganda, designed to dehumanize an entire people and to justify relentless violence at their expense. It is time we put a human face on this conflict so that Abir Bassam, the nine year old boy who died two weeks ago and the teenager who died last week will be among the last children to die in this adult conflict.