Resisting Oppression

There was another another suicide bombing, this time in Jerusalem. A young woman from a refugee camp in Nablus blew herself up. My God. This has meant that getting to and from Jerusalem went from difficult to nearly impossible, due to Israeli checkpoints and roadblocks, and I did not attempt it this weekend.

This week three of us went to a demonstration in Beit Awwa, not far from Hebron, a place where the separation wall is to go up. It was organized by ISM, another international group with a mission comparable to ours but which is secular. (The differences between ISM and CPT are numerous, but I won't bother with them here!) Anyway, ISM invited us.

It was quite a scene. Practically the whole village turned out, except for those who were working and those who were in school. Even one school let the children out of classes to attend. It was a middle school for girls, and they were all there in their school uniforms, and some of them spoke quite passable English. Anyway, we were there to accompany them in their display of resistance and opposition to the building of this wall and the militarization and land confiscation that goes with it. The Palestinians seem to believe that the presence of internationals lowers the risk of violence from the Israeli soldiers.

The demonstration was an impressive display, until a group of young men started throwing stones. I did not see what started first, the stone throwing or the tear gas. I think it does not matter, though. It is like dealing with small children---it does not matter who started it, because both sides were in it.

To give it some perspective (and I saw all this very clearly, because shortly after it started, I was right up front), the stones were no more than about 5 inches in diameter. They were not boulders. The Israeli soldiers had humvees and other armored vehicles, bulletproof vests, M-16 rifles and oozies. The Palestinian men had rocks. I counted 22 soldiers. There were around 500 villagers, I would estimate--although ISM claims there were over 1000--and no more than a couple of dozen stone throwers.

According to my research, no more than 5% of Palestinians are armed, and those who are have very low-tech weapons, no match for the carefully armed (by the United States) Israeli army. This explains why those people who believe that only violence will get the Israeli army out of Palestine have turned to terrorist acts.

So the young men threw stones and the army shot tear gas bombs, lots of them. I learned a lot about tear gas that day. They shot the bombs right into groups of people, right into the groups of girls, who were huddled together. Shortly after, they started with rubber bullets. I counted 12 people taken away in ambulances. They had to be taken all the way to Hebron, because Beit Awwa does not have a clinic that could handle them. Hebron is not far in distance, but bad roads and hills makes it a 45 minute trip. And then there are army checkpoints along the way, and they do stop ambulances.

The injuries were from rubber bullets, and from tear gas bombs exploding into groups of people, causing the people closest to them to collapse. Two of those taken away by ambulance were from the girls school. There were lots of people--in fact, almost everyone--affected by the tear gas, but most did not need medical treatment.

Of course there were no injured soldiers. The rocks are no threat to them. Why not just sit in the armored vehicles and let the men throw stones? Why not just drive away to a reasonable distance, where they can still observe but not be hit by stones? Why not negotiate with the demonstration organizers, made up of Palestinians and internationals, to allow them to demonstrate all they want if they stop throwing stones? Why this extreme reaction? I don't get it.

It was a battlefield, and the Palestinians lost, as they have been doing from the beginning. When it was over, I asked myself what was the purpose of that. The Palestinians gained nothing from the exercise. Because of the stone throwers, the international press will continue to label them "terrorists." Never mind that they were a small minority of the demonstrators, the vast majority of whom were peaceful. Never mind the actions of the soldiers. I worry that when 22 soldiers can so easily put down 500 or so villagers, then the exercise becomes disempowering for the Palestinians, not empowering.

But then I was thinking about the importance of resisting oppression, especially your own oppression. Demonstrating is a way of saying that you refuse to go along with it, that you refuse to just passively roll over in the face of human rights violations on a massive scale. I think that some form of resistance, even if it fails, must be good for the spirit.

During the fracas, I gave out a lot of handy-wipes and Kleenex to crying little girls. I felt like the Sandra Bullock character in the movie "Two Weeks Notice," carrying handy-wipes to a demonstration. Don't ask me why I always have them with me...

Afterward, many people thanked us for being there. One guy told me that they believe that if internationals had not been there, then the soldiers would have used live ammunition. I asked him if that could really be true. He said he had seen it himself. I can't judge if it is true or not, but even if it isn't, the perception becomes important. Because then our presence enables these villagers to mount some resistance in a space that feels safer to them.

Hebron Life

I am writing from Jerusalem. I came in on Saturday night by myself, because I just needed some alone time. Saturday night I sat on the rooftop of a pizza place in the Christian quarter of the Old City sipping wine and enjoying the view of Jerusalem. I think it was the first time that I really felt I was in the Holy Land. Of course, the scenery is better at night because you can't see the dust... The wine was a treat, because there is no alcohol in Hebron. The pizza was pretty bad, but I also had a salad with lettuce in it! I have really been missing the lettuce. Then I took a hot shower.

Sunday I went to West Jerusalem, the Israeli side. It was my first time visiting this section of Jerusalem. We just don't get over there because we are here for such short time periods, and our business is in East Jerusalem. Going to West Jerusalem felt like going back to the West, with modern shopping malls and fast food. I ate at a vegetarian restaurant and had my second salad with lettuce in it. I also had spinanch lasagne and some tofu on the side! Later we took a service van (pronounced servees, with the accent on the second syllable) to Tel Aviv to visit the beach, and I swam in the Mediteranean in my underwear (forgot a bathing suit).

This morning I ate at my favorite pastry shop next to the internet cafe in the Arab section of the Old City. I would never usually eat so much pastry, but they do incredible things with pistachios, and I have been losing weight, so it probably doesn't matter. I can't think why, because it seems like all I do is eat, and falafel is not exactly low-fat.

Hebron is still pretty well locked down, except that now the Jerusalem service vans are getting all the way through, making getting to Jerusalem much simpler. Somebody dug out a pass through one of the blockades so that the service vans can pass, but no other vehicles are going through. I'm not sure I understand the system; the van driver paid 5 shekels to a Palestinian guy minding the blockade when we went through. There are still "flying checkpoints" on the way, and at one point we were stopped and all the men had to get out of the van to be searched and ID checked. It must be so humiliating for them.

Last week several of us went to visit the Jabbar family. One brother, Atta, has suffered 2 home demolitions. Now he is in his third house, but last year some nearby settlers took over the house at gunpoint and claimed it was their synagogue. After several months the family got a court order and was able to move back in. But the settlers had done much damage to the home and they had to reconstruct parts of the inside. The couple is about my age, but they look older than my parents. The last few years have taken a huge toll.

Another brother, Jaudi, spent twelve years farming a hillside belonging to his family. Then the army came with orders to seize the land for the nearby Jewish settlement, and they built a wall separating him from his land and preventing him from farming it. A few years later he tried to build an extension onto the family home to give more space to his family (he has 7 children and is living with his parents and sister), and the army bulldozed it. They are all living together in a 3-bedroom house.

After the home demolition, someone from CPT lived with the family for three months. Jaudi talked to us about how much that meant to him, just the moral support. He said we have been important to him to talk to, because he needs to talk about it or he will go crazy. He said that with those two actions, all his dreams died, and nothing in life is sweet for him any more. He wanted the farm for his children. There is some farmland left, but now, because of the closure of the entire West Bank, he can't sell any of his produce in Israel, which was the main market.

Last week we set up a regular check point watch at the army check point near our apartment (called Beit Romano). We live between two checkpoints, Beit Romano and Ibrahimi Mosque, and the army base is just behind us. We are spending two hours every day monitoring and recording what the soldiers do. This means recording ID checks, searches, and detentions,and monitoring whether their behavior is appropriate to the Palestinians they stop. The soldiers do not like it, and seem rather intimidated by our presence. Once, when I was there, they repositioned themselves so we could not see them. The Palestinians are pleased that we are there, and the fact that the soldiers are intimidated makes me think it is a good idea.

I had an unpleasant encounter with a soldier the other day. I was doing a street patrol with my teammate on Rosh Hashanah, when there is a lot of settler traffic through the Old City and a higher possibility of confrontation. When we were returning through a checkpoint called Gate 5 a soldier stopped us and said we couldn't pass, that we would have to wait because there was some kind of military exercise going on. In other words, we couldn't walk back to our own home.

Usually I try to be civil to the soldiers but not exactly friendly (why should I be nice to someone who is pointing a gun at me?) because I don't want there to be problems for the Palestinians they are detaining. But this time there were no Palestinians, and he was detaining me. So I told him that he was violating my rights by detaining me. He said he was only doing his job, and I told him that he did not have to follow orders that are illegal. To make a long story short, the encounter upset him, so he decided not to let us pass at all. If we were Palestinian we would probably still be there. As it was, we walked away from him and entered by a different gate, where there was no trouble.

I feel that since confronting the soldiers is something that Palestinians cannot do, but I can do, then I should do it, to try and encourage them to have some kind of conscience. They are still human beings, first and foremost.

Also during the Rosh Hashanah holiday my teammate and I decided to walk along Worshipper's Way. This is an ancient path that leads to Abraham's Cave, now the site of a synagogue on one side and a mosque on the other. The path leads to the synagogue side, and it is said that it is a path that Abraham probably walked. There are ancient houses and ruins of houses there. Recently the soldiers dumped fill dirt on the path in order to widen it, and some think, to pave it. In places the dirt is so high it covers over the doorways and windows of Palestinian homes. When we were there, the place was infested with soldiers, and I was saddened by it. A lot of settlers from a nearby settlement were walking the path that day, and the soldiers were there to keep the Palestinians away.

Desperation and Despair

It is getting worse here. They have locked down the entire West Bank until after Yom Kippur. What that means practically is that our movement is restricted, and the movement of Palestinians even more so. More people have been arrested and killed, and we hear what sounds like tank fire every night.

The Israelis are doing this in retaliation for suicide bombings. Based on what I have experienced here, my feeling is that suicide bombings are more about suicide than bombing. If you understand it as a suicide, then you will have a clear picture of the situation of desperation and despair that Palestinians are living.

I am feeling angry about Western attitudes. The United States justified dropping nuclear weapons on Japan because of Pearl Harbor---along with fire-bombing Tokyo. We justify invading and occupying two countries after 9/11, killing thousands and torturing many. But we are shocked and appalled at a small number of violent resisters to murder, military occupation, land confiscation, home demolitions, torture, and mass detention? I don't get it.

Just to be clear: As I am sure you all know, I think the Palestinians would be far better served by mass nonviolent resistance in the style of Gandhi, King, and Mandela, and I wish they had the leadership that would take them there. I wish for the same nonviolent leadership in the United States.

On Tuesday we went to the small Palestinian village of Suseya at the invitation of farmers because they wanted to draw water from their well. In order to do that, they have to get a permit from the Israeli army, even though it is their own well on their own private land. In the past, even though they hold a permit, armed Israeli settlers from nearby have stopped them, so they wanted accompaniment.

The water-drawing went without incident, but while we were there we received a call from a nearby village. Israeli settlers were uprooting and dragging away olive trees from the village grove. The olive trees are their livelihood. By the time we got there, the settlers had taken away 40 trees, leaving the grove in ruins. We did manage to get it on Israeli radio, but too late to stop the settlers.

On the way home, we had to do our usual driving all over the place to find a way back into Hebron. We got dropped off at Beit Anun, a place where many come and go. We found the Israeli army there preventing Palestinians from crossing over to the blocked road into Hebron. They were letting people in, but one by one. The men were stopped; the women were let by. One man said to us, "I need a sex change operation. Then they would let me across. I am not a man anyway. If I were a man, I would not be in this situation."

Many Palestinians are now avoiding the roads and cutting through vineyards on the outskirts of Hebron to get in to the city. As we drive by, we can see lines of people snaking through the grapevines. The army does not stop this, proving that the whole thing is more about harassment than actual closure.

Yesterday we were returning from a visit and the cab took us to the only blocked road where there was no army truck. There were vegetable trucks parked on either side of the blockade, transferring their products from outside the city to trucks that could take them inside (see the photo above). The drivers were throwing heads of cauliflower at each other across the barrier.

We have passed a number of ambulances that were detained by Israeli soldiers. The villagers in Suseya tell us stories about trying to get to the hospital in an emergency. They are prevented by law from using the paved road to the nearby city because it is a settler road--Palestinians cannot drive on it. So the ambulance cannot come to them. They have to go to the hospital by donkey.

Have I mentioned the license plate system? Palestinians have green and white license plates, and those cars can't go on many roads (settler roads) and can't go into Jerusalem. Yellow and black license plates can go anywhere. These are for Israelis and the few Palestinians who have Jerusalem IDs. People also have ID cards with different colors, designating where one is allowed to move. This is a lot like the Soviet Union, the very system that many of these Jews escaped from for Israel.

Yesterday we visited two families who have home demolition orders because their land is located near an Israeli settlement. In both cases it is private land, owned by the people who live there. The Israeli army can just demolish homes on private land! One family has three small children. The father is the offspring of refugees from the 1948 occupation. He went to Saudia Arabia to earn enough money to come home to Palestine and buy land and a home for his family. Now he works as a hairdresser, although nobody in his community has any money, so they use the barter system. The mother has a university degree in computer science and speaks beautiful English, but she can't find work. They have lived with a demolition order for four years; they never know when the bulldozer will show up.

The other family is wealthier and has a big plot of land with grapes and fruit trees. But they have to get a permit to harvest their crops, and the army will only let them do it one day each week. They have 30 tons of grapes they can't harvest! But even if they could harvest them, they cannot sell them because of the West Bank closure. The market for them would be in Israel, and they can't get them through.

I hope I am giving you a sense of the despair and desperation here. The Palestinians are not the terrorists.

Lockdown in Hebron

Hebron is in lockdown. Lockdown is a term used in U.S. jails when inmates are locked in their cells and cannot walk around the common areas or go outside. Sometimes they do it just to get an accurate count; other times it is punishment imposed after some kind of incident. In Hebron, the "incident" was last week's suicide bombers, who lived in Hebron.

The Israeli army had previously blocked most of the roads in and out of Hebron,but now they have finished the job. They have locked us down.

There are currently 4,082,300 registered Palestinian refugees, 32% are living in camps. Refugees make up 32.6% of the population of the West Bank. Over 60% of Palestinians live on less than $2.15 per day, the official poverty level here. There are 98 Israeli army check points and 99 road blocks, and the worst affected areas are Ramallah and Hebron. 50% of the total land mass of the West Bank is under the control of Israeli settlers. This land was confiscated from Palestinians.

This military occupation is harsh, leaving people in despair and without hope. But Palestinians retain their self-respect, and almost everyone here is engaged in some form of nonviolent resistance. Some people are also engaged in violent resistance.

One form of nonviolent resistance involves the roadblocks. We can get out of town by taking a cab to a roadblock, then climbing over the pile of rocks and dirt, then catching another cab waiting on the other side. We have to repeat this 2, sometimes 3, times to get to Jerusalem. Returning from Jerusalem on Sunday, we found that the army had put up yetanother barrier: barbed wire. We took a cab to the roadblock, climbed over it, then took a cab to the barbed wire, then walked around three sets of coiled barbed wire in the road about a half block apart. Then we caught another cab.

The whole town is being punished for the action of two residents. Another form of collective punishment involves aggressive I.D.checks. There are military check points all over Hebron, and Palestinian men are routinely detained. This activity has picked up noticeably since the suicide bombing. Today we witnessed Israeli border police parading aline of 35 or so young Palestinian men toward the check point nearest our apartments. The police made them squat in a line for an hour. When someone asked the officer in charge why the men were detained, his reply was, "because I want to."

The image of Hebron as a jail and the Israelis as our jailers fits the situation here. The violence of the jailer is well-known but rarely punished, while the violence of the inmate results in severe punishment for the whole population. The only difference is that most people here never committed a crime. They landed in this jail due to geography, international politics, ethnic origin, religion, and bad luck.