MCC Palestine Update #43
In all of our conversations with our Palestinian colleagues and partners this past week, one refrain has been repeatedly sounded: this is the worst time since 1948. The re-invasion of several West Bank cities; the cutting off of water, electricity, and telephones in much of those cities; a tightening of the already repressive siege on every Palestinian town, village, or refugee camp, a siege which prevents access to education, health care, and employment; increased talk of the "transfer" (expulsion and/or genocide) of Palestinians within Israeli political discourse--all add up to a frightening reality.
Israelis, too, of course, are frightened. The series of suicide bombings carried out by various Palestinian militant groups in Netanya, Haifa, and West Jerusalem during this Passover period left scarred and broken bodies, aching souls.
How to begin to think, to work, to act in this situation? As Christians, we must rededicate ourselves to the discipline of prayer. Susan Mark Landis of the Mennonite Church USA has asked us to provide her with daily prayer requests. We will be happy to add you to this daily list; drop us a line if you wish your name to be included. We must also raise our voices about what makes for peace. Sadly, the United States government is proving less interested in pressing towards a just resolution of the conflict than in giving tacit approval to Israeli actions in the occupied territories. Nothing, of course, can justify attacks on civilians, such as suicide bombings. We must also remind our elected officials that such acts do not occur in a vacuum. In the aftermath of the Passover attack in Netanya, the Israeli journalist Gideon Levy wrote in Sunday's edition of Haaretz newspaper reminded his readers of the harsh siege conditions under which Palestinians having been living during their holy days and the killings of civilians which have happened routinely during the past 18 months, including on holy days such as Eid al-Adha. "Never has the blood of so many Israelis been shed in such a brief period and never have the Palestinians been subjected to such harsh conditions of occupation as they are now. So now, of all times, it has to be stated clearly once again: Interwoven with them [the Palestinians] as we are, as long as their holiday is ruined, ours will be, too." The path out of the present nightmare for Israelis is not, as the current Israeli government seems to believe, through an increase in violence, but along the path of justice; for Palestinians, meanwhile, justice, peace and security will only be delayed so long as suicide bombings continue. May peace and justice soon embrace!
Below are three pieces. First, we include the Latin Patriarch's Easter homily as a reminder of our resurrection hope. Second, a short news item concerning the Christmas Lutheran Church in Bethlehem. Finally, an analysis of different forms of "terrorism" by the Israeli political scientist Lev Grinberg.
1. Easter Message
Michel Sabbah, Patriarch, Jerusalem
31 March 2002
Brothers and Sisters
1. I address you this Easter message on Good Friday to remind ourselves of the intimate link between the two memories. Today, we meditate the unfathomable mystery of God as we hear our Lord Jesus Christ, the Eternal Word of God, crying on the Cross: "My God, my God, why have you forsakenme?" Then he gave up his spirit, in front of a crowd facing the mystery of God with irony. On Easter Sunday we commemorate the manifestation of the same mystery in the glory of the Resurrection. The Lord Jesus Christ, Eternal Word of God, rising from the dead, and triumphing over death, sin and all kind of evil. Christ is risen, yes indeed, he is risen.
2. From the same place which God wanted to sanctify by his presence and his mystery, from the Holy city, form the Calvary and near the empty tomb, place of our glorious salvation, I wish you a holy Easter and ask God to fill you with his grace and blessing, to grant you in your daily life the strength, glory and joy of Resurrection. I address this message particularly to our faithful in the Holy Land, and I ask God Almighty to give us all the power to triumph over all the forces of death which are manifested through the various trials and sufferings which demolish us in these days. For us all, for all the inhabitants of this land, I ask God to grant us a just and definitive peace which put an end to the bloodshed, the demolition of houses, the siege, the humiliations imposed upon the human being by sterile security measures, which produce only more sufferings, more death for all, Palestinians and Israelis alike, and more hatred towards each other.
3. The Holy city, place of the mystery of God, sign of his presence and of his love and his justice among men, is itself today the source of dissent and the cause of bloodshed. Jesus Christ came and brought salvation to everyone. He brought love to everyone. For all he gave a unique commandment in which he summed up all the law and the prophets: love each other. love God and love your neighbour, linking between the love of God and that of God's children. In this difficult commandment, every responsible in human societies, and particularly in our Holy City, could find, if he wished, enough strength to put an end to dissent, sufferings and bloodshed. The way which leads to peace is in itself clear and simple. The way which puts an end to all violence, protects the Israeli and guarantees his security, frees him from fear, anxiety and threatening death at every moment and in every place, gives back to the Palestinian his freedom, land and dignity, puts an end to his sufferings and guarantees his security and tranquility, this way consists of removing a military fact which weighs upon the land since 1967: the Occupation of the Palestinian Territories.
Therefore, instead of reacting against force by a greater one, the Israeli leaders should react with a new force, the strength of the spirit and the moral courage which invites them to put an end to the bandage imposed upon the land which they occupy. This would be a security measure, a wise and efficient one which will produce the desired security that all military actions failed to produce, so far. This measure will regenerate a new life in this Holy Land, and will allow all its inhabitants to participate in its holiness. So all together they will build a new land and a new human being will emerge.
4 We mourn and pray for all the victims. All are dear and precious in the eyes of God, as well as to the heart of every mother, father, relative and friend. We present them all before the eyes of the Almighty, ask him to accept them all in his mercy and to have compassion upon us all. We ask him to open the eyes and the hearts of those who have in their hands the key of peace and the ability of ending the occupation which only demolishes peace day after day and makes it always farther.
5 Some religious leaders, Jews, Christians and Moslems, after the Alexandria meeting in January of this year, started meeting in order to reflect together on the tragedy of this land, with the hope of reach one common vision, so that they may hear together the words of the Psalmist: "I am listening. What is God's message? God's message is peace for his people, for his faithful, if only they renounce their folly. Faithful love and loyalty join together. Saving Justice and Peace embrace." (Ps 84, 9.11). Hopefully, they will reach a common position which will manifest the justice and love of God in this regard. God does not help a brother against his brother, but gives his grace to every one in order to triumph over the inner evil so as to enable him to practice justice for himself and for his brother. In this way the salvation of God will become nearer to us as says the Psalmist: "His saving help is near for those who fear him, his glory will dwell in our land." (Ps 84,10).
6. Brothers and sisters, as we celebrate the glorious Resurrection of the Lord, I invite you to remain patient and firm in the trial. I urge you to see in the Resurrection of the Lord the source of a permanent hope and strength to build together justice and peace: "so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the Father's glorious power, we too should begin a new life”. (Rom 6:4). May the Resurrection of the Lord be a resurrection to all the inhabitants of our land, for a new life and a new love based on justice and reconciliation. Christ is risen, yes indeed he is risen.
+Michel Sabbah, Patriarch, Jerusalem
2. Urgent News Release: The Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan
BISHOP DR. MUNIB A. YOUNAN of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan (ELCJ).
2 April 2002
The Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church, the pastor¹s home and the church¹s International Center in Bethlehem have been hit by shelling from Israeli tanks and soldiers today, April 2, 2002, at about 9:00 am, Palestinian time. Rev. Mitri Raheb, pastor of the church, reports that the Israeli tanks entered the Old City of Bethlehem at 3:30 am today. Tanks were also positioned in a circle around the Old City. The shelling began at 6:30 am. The heaviest gunfire and fighting is taking place now in the Old City, from Manger Square to the Christmas Church compound.
Rev. Raheb reports that tanks have destroyed the first floor entrance to his home and also have destroyed the garage doors. The family is living on the second level of the building and fears that they will be invaded. The tanks and soldiers are stationed immediately outside the church and parsonage. At 10:10 the electricity was lost in the church and parsonage.
Also, Rev. Raheb reports that they have heard much glass breaking, both in the church and in the offices. Although they cannot go to see the damage yet, it seems that at least some of the 110 year old stained glass windows have been destroyed.
The parsonage has tanks on both side of it, so the tank fire is deafening and shakes all the buildings. Rev. Raheb has been making telephone calls to members of the congregation, one-fourth of whom live in the Old City. To date no one has been injured, but all are terrified of the fighting and invasion.
According to the Fourth Geneva Conventions, places of worship and churches should never be assaulted.
3. Israel’s State Terrorism
Lev Grinberg *
What is the difference between State terrorism and individual terrorist acts? If we understand this difference we'll understand also the evilness of the US policies in the Middle East and the forthcoming disasters. When Yassir Arafat was put under siege in his offices and kept hostage by the Israeli occupation forces, he was constantly pressed into condemning terror and combatting terrorism. Israel's State terrorism is defined by US officials as "self-defense", while individual suicide bombers are called terrorists.
The only 'small' difference is that Israeli aggression is the direct responsibility of Ariel Sharon, Benjamin Ben Eliezer, Shimon Peres and Shaul Mofaz, while the individual terrorist acts are done by individuals in despair, usually against Arafat's will. One hour after Arafat declared his support of a cease fire and wished the Jews a Happy Passover feast, a suicide bomber exploded himself in an hotel in Netanya, killing 22 innocent Jews celebrating Passover.Arafat was blamed as responsible for this act, and the present IDF offensive has been justified through this accusation.
At the same time, Sharon's responsibility for Israeli war crimes is being completely ignored. Who should be arrested for the targeted killing of almost 100 Palestinians? Who will be sent to jail for the killing of more than 120 Palestinian paramedics? Who will be sentenced for the killing of more than 1,200 Palestinians and for the collective punishment of more than 3,000,000 civilians during the last 18 months?
And who will face the International Tribunal for the illegal settlement of occupied Palestinian Lands, and the disobedience of UN decisions for more than 35 years?
Suicide bombs killing innocent citizens must be unequivocally condemned; they are immoral acts, and their perpetrators should be sent to jail. But they cannot be compared to State terrorism carried out by the Israeli Government. The former are individual acts of despair of a people that sees no future, vastly ignored by an unfair and distorted international public opinion. The latter are cold and "rational" decisions of a State and a military apparatus of occupation, well equipped, financed and backed by the only superpower in the world.
Yet in the public debate, State terrorism and individual suicide bombs are not even considered as comparable cases of terrorism. The State terror and war crimes perpetrated by the Israeli Government are legitimized as "self-defense", while Arafat, even under siege, is demanded to arrest "terrorists."
I want to ask: Who will arrest Sharon, the person directly responsible for the orders to kill Palestinians? When is he going to be defined a terrorist too? How long will the world ignore the Palestinian cry that all they want is freedom and independence? When will it stop neglecting the fact that the goal of the Israeli Government is not security, but the continued occupation and subjugation of the Palestinian people?
As Israelis in the opposition, we are fighting against our government, but the international support that Sharon receives is constantly jeopardizing our struggle. The whole international public opinion must be reverted, and the UN must deploy intervention forces in order to stop the bloodshed and the imminent deterioration. Israelis and Palestinians desperately need the awakening of the international community's public opinion and a reversal in the global attitude. These are needed both in order to save our lives (literally), and preserve our hope in a better future.
* Dr. Lev Grinberg is a political sociologist, and Director of the Humphrey Institute for Social Research at Ben Gurion University
Tuesday, April 2
Wednesday, March 27
MCC Palestine Update #42
MCC Palestine Update #42
Yesterday we moved the MCC office from Sheikh Jarrah, where it had been for nearly 46 years, to the Mount of Olives. During our breaks, we can wander out to the meeting area of the building where our new office is, and look out over Jerusalem's Old City: the Dome of the Rock, the al-Aqsa Mosque, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. It's a beautiful sight.
Sadly, as you all know, the beauty of people created in God's image has too often been scarred in Palestine/Israel: scarred by killings and maimings, by the weak and the strong; scarred by the violence and humiliations of occupation and siege; scarred by the hatred of the occupied for the occupier and the hatred of the powerful for those whom they control and yet also fear.
This Sunday, we will gather with other Christians on the Mount of Olives (just a two-minute walk from our office) to celebrate the Easter mass as the sun rises over the Judean desert. Easter's sun will dawn on a broken land, on the broken bodies and spirits of Palestinians and Israelis. Yet, as improbable as it will seem, we will confess in the mass that through Jesus God has trampled the power of evil underfoot, has restored creation, and has reconciled all--be they Palestinian or Israeli, Canadian or American--to Him. It is this improbable belief and hope which sustains us in our work in Palestine/Israel. Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!
Below you will find two pieces. The first is an Easter message from Bishop Munib Younan of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jerusalem. The second, by veteran Israeli peace activist Uri
Avnery, details the conditions which creates suicide bombers.
1. Easter Message from Jerusalem 2002
Bishop Dr. Munib A. Younan of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan (ELCJ).
26 March 2002
(We are) always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies.
(II Corinthians 4:10, NRSV)
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace and salaam to you from Jerusalem and from the Christians who are carrying in their bodies the death of Jesus, making visible the life of Jesus.
As a Palestinian Christian I have often wondered what St. Paul's words mean in my life. How do I live out the suffering, death and resurrection of Jesus? I have always been taught that this happens in Baptism, and I still believe this is true, as we read in Romans 6.
I have found that many of my questions are starting to be answered in a deeper way as I live together with my church and my society in the tribulation, difficulties and crises of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. We feel hopelessness in the midst of dehumanization, seeing the blood of innocent people flowing in front of us, seeing people who are terribly burned from conventional and non-conventional bombs, visiting the families of people whose loved ones have been killed, watching funeral processions taking place every day, seeing many young people who don’t care whether they live or die, meeting those who live in trauma, watching people develop psychosomatic illnesses. All of this creates hopelessness and a sense of loneliness. We are experiencing what Jesus experienced on the cross when he cried, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
When I read the passion history and see the relationships and actions of Pilate, Caiaphas and Herod, and read the story of Pilate, the Roman governor, and his relationship to Jesus and to Barabbas “ it seems that I am seeing in our present world the same stories relived. The pull of world power and material interests are more important than the lives of human beings.
In all this the words in Hebrews 4:15 bring us comfort and encouragement: “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been "tested" as we are, yet without sin.”
As a human being Jesus suffered. He knows that our suffering might come in unexpected ways, such as serious illnesses, broken relationships and other losses. He also knows that our human suffering is a reflection of the unjust situation in which we live. In his suffering, Jesus was not abandoned. This is a comfort to those who suffer, knowing that Jesus fully experienced and understands our sorrow and pain. There are many ways in which human beings suffer and carry the cross. There are many questions we ask, and there are many enigmas to which we have no easy answers. God does not have a heavenly pharmacy in which just the right pills are found for every suffering person. But we who suffer do know, as Thomas a Kempis has said, that if you carry the cross, the cross will carry you. This is not a theory; it is the real thing.
I understand more and more every day what it means to live the death and resurrection of Jesus in my body. It is in carrying the cross, of living in martyria. As a church in martyria we are called to be a servant to our people, not a master. In this we follow the example of our Savior, Jesus Christ, who died on the cross for all people. When we Palestinian Christians carry the cross and feel lonely, frustrated and abandoned, we are also carrying a message to the world, to you. The message may be strange to you, it may be painful to you, but the message belongs to all of us. It calls us to give up all hatred, all dissension, all crises and to trust in God's love and mercy.
Jesus Christ went through death to life. His resurrection on the third day gives us hope. And the more we experience the death of Jesus in our bodies the more the meaning of the resurrection will open up and become clear for us.
The resurrection of Christ assures us that, no matter what, life is stronger than death. This gives us confidence that the spiraling violence will not have the last word, nor will injustice, occupation, illness, broken relationships, or anything else which tears us down and is against God's will for all creation. Even if we are crushed, the Resurrection gives us hope that both Palestinians and Israelis can have peace, freedom, reconciliation and security which will lead to the dignity and abundant life God intends for all people. For Palestinian Christians the Resurrectionis the only hope to which we cling.
Good Friday is the time for prayer, and we ask that you include the suffering people in Palestine and Israel in your prayers. We also ask that offerings may be made to help the Palestinian Lutherans continue their mission in this land, especially now in this time of great need in our society.
We also want to thank you for being partners in carrying the cross. In this way you assure us and we assure ourselves that Jesus is made visible in our bodies. For this reason we want to greet you from the Jerusalem of the Cross and say,
Al-Masih Qam “ Hakkan Qam!
Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!
Al-Masih Qam “ Hakkan Qam!
Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!
Al-Masih Qam “ Hakkan Qam!
Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!
Your brother in Christ,
+ Bishop Dr. Munib A. Younan
The Lutheran Bishop in Jerusalem
2. A Queue of Bombers
Uri Avnery
Gush Shalom, 23 March 2002
When a whole people is seething with rage, it becomes a dangerous enemy, because the rage does not obey orders.
When it exists in the hearts of millions of people, it cannot be cut off by pushing a button.
When this rage overflows, it creates suicide bombers – human bombs fuelled by the power of anger, against whom there is no defense. A person who has given up on life, who does not look for escape routes, is free to do whatever his disturbed mind dictates. Some of the suicide bombers are killed before they reach their goal, but when there are hundreds of them, thousands of them, no military means will restore security.
The actions of General Mofaz during the last month have brought this rage to an unprecedented pitch and instilled it into the hearts of every Palestinian, be he a university professor or a street boy, a housewife or a high-school girl, a leftist or a fundamentalist.
When tanks run amok in the center of a town, crushing cars an destroying walls, tearing up roads, shooting indiscriminately in all directions, causing panic to a whole population – it induces helpless rage.
When soldiers crush through a wall into the living room of a family, causing shock to children and adults, ransacking their belongings, destroying the fruits of a life of hard work, and then break the wall to the next apartment to wreak havoc there – it induces helpless rage.
When soldiers shoot at everything that moves – out of panic, out of lawlessness, or because Sharon told them “to cause losses” – it induces helpless rage. When officers order to shoot at ambulances, killing doctors and paramedics engaged in saving the lives of the wounded, bleeding to death – it induces helpless rage.
When these and thousand other acts like them humiliate a whole people, searing their souls – it induces helpless rage.
And then it appears that the rage is not helpless after all. The suicide bombers go forward to avenge, with a whole people blessing them and rejoicing at every Israeli killed, soldier or settler, a girl in a bus or a youngster in a discotheque.
The Israeli public is dumbfounded by this terrible phenomenon. It cannot understand it, because it does not know (and perhaps does not want to know) what has happened in the Palestinian towns and villages. Only feeble echoes of what really happened have reached it.
The obedient media suppress the information, or water it down so that the monster looks like a harmless pet. The television, which is now subject to Soviet-style censorship, does not tell its viewers what is going on. If somebody is allowed to say a few words about it, for the sake of “balance”, the words are drowned in a sea of chatter by politicians, commentators acting as unofficial spokespersons and the generals who caused the havoc.
These generals look helplessly at a struggle they do not understand and make arrogant statements divorced from reality. Pronouncements like “We have intercepted attacks”, “We have taught them a lesson”, “We have destroyed the infrastructure of terrorism” show an infantile lack of understanding of what they are doing. Far from “destroying the infrastructure of terrorism”, they
have built a hothouse for rearing suicide-bombers.
A person whose beloved brother has been killed, whose house has been destroyed in an orgy of vandalism, who has been mortally humiliated before the eyes of his children, goes to the market,
buys a rifle for 40 thousand shekels (some sell their cars for this) and sets out to seek revenge. “Give me a hatred gray like a sack,” wrote our poet, Nathan Alterman, seething with rage against the Germans. Hatred graylike a sack is now everywhere.
Bands of armed men now roam all the towns and villages of the West bank and the Gaza strip, with or without black masks (available for 10 shekels in the markets). These bands do not belong to any organization. Members of Fatah, Hamas and the Jihad team up to plan attacks, not giving a damn for the established institutions.
Anyone who believes that Arafat can push a button and stop this is living in a dream-world. Arafat is the adored leader, now more than ever, but when a people is seething with anger he cannot stop it either. At best, the pressure-cooker can cool off slowly, if the majority of the
people are persuaded that their honor has been restored and their liberation guaranteed. Then public support for the “terrorists” will diminish, they will be isolated and whither away. That was what happened in the past. During the Oslo period there were attacks too, but they were conducted by dissidents, fanatics, and the public aversion to them limited the damage they caused.
American politicians, like Israeli officers, do not understand what they are doing. When an overbearing vice-president dictates humiliating terms for a meeting with Arafat, he pours oil on the flames. A person who lacks empathy for the suffering of the occupied people, who does not understand its condition, would be well advised to shut up. Because every such humiliation kills dozens of Israelis.
After all, the suicide-bombers are standing in line.
Yesterday we moved the MCC office from Sheikh Jarrah, where it had been for nearly 46 years, to the Mount of Olives. During our breaks, we can wander out to the meeting area of the building where our new office is, and look out over Jerusalem's Old City: the Dome of the Rock, the al-Aqsa Mosque, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. It's a beautiful sight.
Sadly, as you all know, the beauty of people created in God's image has too often been scarred in Palestine/Israel: scarred by killings and maimings, by the weak and the strong; scarred by the violence and humiliations of occupation and siege; scarred by the hatred of the occupied for the occupier and the hatred of the powerful for those whom they control and yet also fear.
This Sunday, we will gather with other Christians on the Mount of Olives (just a two-minute walk from our office) to celebrate the Easter mass as the sun rises over the Judean desert. Easter's sun will dawn on a broken land, on the broken bodies and spirits of Palestinians and Israelis. Yet, as improbable as it will seem, we will confess in the mass that through Jesus God has trampled the power of evil underfoot, has restored creation, and has reconciled all--be they Palestinian or Israeli, Canadian or American--to Him. It is this improbable belief and hope which sustains us in our work in Palestine/Israel. Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!
Below you will find two pieces. The first is an Easter message from Bishop Munib Younan of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jerusalem. The second, by veteran Israeli peace activist Uri
Avnery, details the conditions which creates suicide bombers.
1. Easter Message from Jerusalem 2002
Bishop Dr. Munib A. Younan of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan (ELCJ).
26 March 2002
(We are) always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies.
(II Corinthians 4:10, NRSV)
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace and salaam to you from Jerusalem and from the Christians who are carrying in their bodies the death of Jesus, making visible the life of Jesus.
As a Palestinian Christian I have often wondered what St. Paul's words mean in my life. How do I live out the suffering, death and resurrection of Jesus? I have always been taught that this happens in Baptism, and I still believe this is true, as we read in Romans 6.
I have found that many of my questions are starting to be answered in a deeper way as I live together with my church and my society in the tribulation, difficulties and crises of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. We feel hopelessness in the midst of dehumanization, seeing the blood of innocent people flowing in front of us, seeing people who are terribly burned from conventional and non-conventional bombs, visiting the families of people whose loved ones have been killed, watching funeral processions taking place every day, seeing many young people who don’t care whether they live or die, meeting those who live in trauma, watching people develop psychosomatic illnesses. All of this creates hopelessness and a sense of loneliness. We are experiencing what Jesus experienced on the cross when he cried, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
When I read the passion history and see the relationships and actions of Pilate, Caiaphas and Herod, and read the story of Pilate, the Roman governor, and his relationship to Jesus and to Barabbas “ it seems that I am seeing in our present world the same stories relived. The pull of world power and material interests are more important than the lives of human beings.
In all this the words in Hebrews 4:15 bring us comfort and encouragement: “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been "tested" as we are, yet without sin.”
As a human being Jesus suffered. He knows that our suffering might come in unexpected ways, such as serious illnesses, broken relationships and other losses. He also knows that our human suffering is a reflection of the unjust situation in which we live. In his suffering, Jesus was not abandoned. This is a comfort to those who suffer, knowing that Jesus fully experienced and understands our sorrow and pain. There are many ways in which human beings suffer and carry the cross. There are many questions we ask, and there are many enigmas to which we have no easy answers. God does not have a heavenly pharmacy in which just the right pills are found for every suffering person. But we who suffer do know, as Thomas a Kempis has said, that if you carry the cross, the cross will carry you. This is not a theory; it is the real thing.
I understand more and more every day what it means to live the death and resurrection of Jesus in my body. It is in carrying the cross, of living in martyria. As a church in martyria we are called to be a servant to our people, not a master. In this we follow the example of our Savior, Jesus Christ, who died on the cross for all people. When we Palestinian Christians carry the cross and feel lonely, frustrated and abandoned, we are also carrying a message to the world, to you. The message may be strange to you, it may be painful to you, but the message belongs to all of us. It calls us to give up all hatred, all dissension, all crises and to trust in God's love and mercy.
Jesus Christ went through death to life. His resurrection on the third day gives us hope. And the more we experience the death of Jesus in our bodies the more the meaning of the resurrection will open up and become clear for us.
The resurrection of Christ assures us that, no matter what, life is stronger than death. This gives us confidence that the spiraling violence will not have the last word, nor will injustice, occupation, illness, broken relationships, or anything else which tears us down and is against God's will for all creation. Even if we are crushed, the Resurrection gives us hope that both Palestinians and Israelis can have peace, freedom, reconciliation and security which will lead to the dignity and abundant life God intends for all people. For Palestinian Christians the Resurrectionis the only hope to which we cling.
Good Friday is the time for prayer, and we ask that you include the suffering people in Palestine and Israel in your prayers. We also ask that offerings may be made to help the Palestinian Lutherans continue their mission in this land, especially now in this time of great need in our society.
We also want to thank you for being partners in carrying the cross. In this way you assure us and we assure ourselves that Jesus is made visible in our bodies. For this reason we want to greet you from the Jerusalem of the Cross and say,
Al-Masih Qam “ Hakkan Qam!
Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!
Al-Masih Qam “ Hakkan Qam!
Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!
Al-Masih Qam “ Hakkan Qam!
Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!
Your brother in Christ,
+ Bishop Dr. Munib A. Younan
The Lutheran Bishop in Jerusalem
2. A Queue of Bombers
Uri Avnery
Gush Shalom, 23 March 2002
When a whole people is seething with rage, it becomes a dangerous enemy, because the rage does not obey orders.
When it exists in the hearts of millions of people, it cannot be cut off by pushing a button.
When this rage overflows, it creates suicide bombers – human bombs fuelled by the power of anger, against whom there is no defense. A person who has given up on life, who does not look for escape routes, is free to do whatever his disturbed mind dictates. Some of the suicide bombers are killed before they reach their goal, but when there are hundreds of them, thousands of them, no military means will restore security.
The actions of General Mofaz during the last month have brought this rage to an unprecedented pitch and instilled it into the hearts of every Palestinian, be he a university professor or a street boy, a housewife or a high-school girl, a leftist or a fundamentalist.
When tanks run amok in the center of a town, crushing cars an destroying walls, tearing up roads, shooting indiscriminately in all directions, causing panic to a whole population – it induces helpless rage.
When soldiers crush through a wall into the living room of a family, causing shock to children and adults, ransacking their belongings, destroying the fruits of a life of hard work, and then break the wall to the next apartment to wreak havoc there – it induces helpless rage.
When soldiers shoot at everything that moves – out of panic, out of lawlessness, or because Sharon told them “to cause losses” – it induces helpless rage. When officers order to shoot at ambulances, killing doctors and paramedics engaged in saving the lives of the wounded, bleeding to death – it induces helpless rage.
When these and thousand other acts like them humiliate a whole people, searing their souls – it induces helpless rage.
And then it appears that the rage is not helpless after all. The suicide bombers go forward to avenge, with a whole people blessing them and rejoicing at every Israeli killed, soldier or settler, a girl in a bus or a youngster in a discotheque.
The Israeli public is dumbfounded by this terrible phenomenon. It cannot understand it, because it does not know (and perhaps does not want to know) what has happened in the Palestinian towns and villages. Only feeble echoes of what really happened have reached it.
The obedient media suppress the information, or water it down so that the monster looks like a harmless pet. The television, which is now subject to Soviet-style censorship, does not tell its viewers what is going on. If somebody is allowed to say a few words about it, for the sake of “balance”, the words are drowned in a sea of chatter by politicians, commentators acting as unofficial spokespersons and the generals who caused the havoc.
These generals look helplessly at a struggle they do not understand and make arrogant statements divorced from reality. Pronouncements like “We have intercepted attacks”, “We have taught them a lesson”, “We have destroyed the infrastructure of terrorism” show an infantile lack of understanding of what they are doing. Far from “destroying the infrastructure of terrorism”, they
have built a hothouse for rearing suicide-bombers.
A person whose beloved brother has been killed, whose house has been destroyed in an orgy of vandalism, who has been mortally humiliated before the eyes of his children, goes to the market,
buys a rifle for 40 thousand shekels (some sell their cars for this) and sets out to seek revenge. “Give me a hatred gray like a sack,” wrote our poet, Nathan Alterman, seething with rage against the Germans. Hatred graylike a sack is now everywhere.
Bands of armed men now roam all the towns and villages of the West bank and the Gaza strip, with or without black masks (available for 10 shekels in the markets). These bands do not belong to any organization. Members of Fatah, Hamas and the Jihad team up to plan attacks, not giving a damn for the established institutions.
Anyone who believes that Arafat can push a button and stop this is living in a dream-world. Arafat is the adored leader, now more than ever, but when a people is seething with anger he cannot stop it either. At best, the pressure-cooker can cool off slowly, if the majority of the
people are persuaded that their honor has been restored and their liberation guaranteed. Then public support for the “terrorists” will diminish, they will be isolated and whither away. That was what happened in the past. During the Oslo period there were attacks too, but they were conducted by dissidents, fanatics, and the public aversion to them limited the damage they caused.
American politicians, like Israeli officers, do not understand what they are doing. When an overbearing vice-president dictates humiliating terms for a meeting with Arafat, he pours oil on the flames. A person who lacks empathy for the suffering of the occupied people, who does not understand its condition, would be well advised to shut up. Because every such humiliation kills dozens of Israelis.
After all, the suicide-bombers are standing in line.
Thursday, March 14
MCC Palestine Update #41
MCC Palestine Update #41
Lenten greetings from Jerusalem! Sonia and I returned two days ago after two weeks in the United States doing some speaking for MCC in Ohio and Indiana.
The worsening situation in Palestine/Israel weighed heavily on our hearts as we spoke in various fora. It was appropriate, we felt, to be speaking about Palestine/Israel during Lent, the liturgical time when we approach the shadow of the cross with a heightened sense of our sinfulness. Since our return two days ago, we have heard terrible stories of destruction, of death, of humiliation from friends and partners throughout the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Simply going to work, school, or the hospital becomes impossible and/or dangerous for hundreds of thousands of Palestinians.
We were asked repeatedly during the past two weeks if we saw hope in various things: the Saudi initiative; the US-sponsored UN resolution calling for a state of Palestine alongside Israel; the growing number of Israeli soldiers refusing to serve in the occupied territories. Briefly: yes, we do see hope in these things. At the same time, however, we must report that what we hear from our Palestinian friends and partners is despair and hopelessness: the Saudi proposal and the UN resolution are seen as yet more rhetorical gambits with little chance of effecting the reality of occupation.
In our next update we will write more about MCC programs. This present note--a long one--includes several pieces written in the storm of the past two weeks. We hope that you find some or all of them useful.
--Alain Epp Weaver
1. A massacre that covers the whole nation
Ghassan Andoni
The Palestinian Centre for Rapprochement between People
Started at Balata refugee camp and still moving. Today it is Bethlehem. The message is clear: if you do not accept our occupation and domination you will be destroyed. Sir, we cannot accept your occupation and domination because it had already destroyed us.
It is almost the same Scenario everywhere. F16, bombarding the PA buildings and adjacent neighborhoods; Tanks invade cities and towns but mainly refugee camps; dozens of innocent civilians killed and hundreds injured; Ambulances are not allowed to evacuate casualties. 50 Palestinians killed in one day and hundreds injured most of them were kept bleeding in the narrow streets of refugee camps. Ambulances were not allowed to evacuate the casualties. To encounter the seen of Israeli tanks hitting two ambulances in the narrow streets of Tulkarim refugee camp, the army commander of the Tulkarim area identified Palestinian ambulances and
medical teams as legitimate targets for the Israeli army.
The Israeli army generals are so proud of their ability to move inside the Palestinian refugee camps through cracking down the cement walls between the heavily crowded and adjacent
Palestinian homes. Right now and in Tulkarim refugee camp no family can close the door and shelter inside home.
The best that the Israeli foreign Minster and Nobel Prize winner Shimon Peres could do was to refuse to comment. While he publicly reminded Israelis that there is no need to reoccupy Palestinian areas because already those areas are occupied, he failed to raise a voice against the war crimes conducted by his Prime Minster and the elected leader of his Party, defense
Minster Ben Eliazer.
The calls from inside the Israeli society for more Palestinian blood and the complete silence from the side of the International community will stay for long deep inside Palestinians. Palestinians
will trust no one. Each mourning mother, each confused little kid, and each homeless family will always ask: where were you when all of this happened?
Can any of you look directly to their eyes and provide an answer?
The Palestinian Centre for Rapprochement between People
64 Star Street, P.O. Box 24
Beit Sahour - Palestine
www.rapprochement.org
The center is a non-profit making NGO, started in 1988 during the first Intifada. PCR runs community service programs, youth empowerment and training programs. PCR is also very much involved in the non-violent resistance against the Israeli Occupation of Palestine.
2. Sir, It’s the Wrong War!
After the invasion of the Balata refugee camp by a regular brigade of the IDF, the brigade commander appeared on television and said that he had expected the Palestinians to fight like tigers, but that they behaved like pussycats.
This is a frightening sentence, because it discloses a startling fact: the Brigade commander does not understand in what kind of campaign he is engaged. He has to be told, with all due respect: “Sir, you are fighting the wrong war!”
Clearly, he believes that he is engaged in a conventional war between armies. The enemy is supposed to stand up and fight like men, assault rifles against tanks and fighter planes.
The commander and all his colleagues, including the Chief-of-Staff and his deputy, would be well advised to read a good book about guerilla warfare, such as Mao Tse-Tung’s treatise, which tells the guerilla fighter: Never confront the regular army. When the army attacks, you disappear. When the army is not ready, you attack.
For example: The army surrounds Arafat in Ramallah, Destroy a Merkava tank in Gush Katif. A whole brigade invades Balata; Get out and send a single fighter to kill the team of a check-point near Ofrah. A brigade attacks Jenin; Get out of their sight and infiltrate Atzmona settlement.
The statement by the brigade commander indicates that the IDF is fighting on a front that does not exist, and is not prepared for fighting on the front that is there. it’s like a general setting out to conquer Syria and holding a map of the Sudan in his hands.
Since Chief-of-Staff Mofaz and his senior officers don’t even understand the nature of this struggle, they are failing. Out of frustration and anger they shoot in all directions and commit a small massacre every day, without any purpose or chance of success. Since they were not trained for this kind of struggle and do not understand it, they are condemned to commit every possible mistake. One after another, they use all the methods that have already failed in Algeria, Kenya, South Africa, Vietnam and a dozen of other countries.
They try to starve the inhabitants into submission (“closure”),and inadvertently turn them into potential suicide-bombers with nothing to lose. They assassinate the chiefs of the fighting groups (“targeted prevention”), and clear the way for younger, more efficient and more energetic commanders. The kill massively (“you have to strike them”) and turn the relatives of the victims into avengers.
If this is the way of the generals, the “political echelon”, composed of pensioned generals, is worse. They imprison Arafat in Ramallah in order to prove that he is “irrelevant”, and turn him into the most relevant person in the entire Middle East. As a result, all internal criticism of Arafat has ceased. Practically all Palestinians admire their President, who is taking part in their lot, suffers like them and is risking his life like them.
And beyond that: tens of millions of Arabs, who see rousing reports from beleaguered Palestine every hour on al-Jazira TV, compare the courageous Palestinian leader to their own rulers, who are now very worried indeed. In response they sounded the alarm in Washington and have compelled President Bush to do something.
Sharon and Ben-Eliezer declare that if the Palestinians are made to suffer more and more, they will eventually surrender and agree to live in several Ghettos, as proposed by Sharon. In
practice, the opposite is happening: the more the pressure on them mounts, the more their unity grows, their methods of resistance improve and their readiness to suffer and not to surrender
increases.
Thousands of Palestinians are ready to undertake actions leading to certain death, and their number is growing. How many Israelis are ready to go into action if there is no chance at all of
coming out alive? Palestinians know full well that they are fighting for their very existence; Israelis know that they are fighting for the settlements and bankrupt politicians.
The Israeli government cannot win this struggle. After paying a terrible price - slaughter and destruction - this will become clear to the public, the government will fall and we shall make peace according to the Saudi Crown Prince’s excellent proposal.
3. A Call For International Action: END THE OCCUPATION NOW!
Jeff Halper
Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD), 6 March 2002
This is the moment of decision. The Israeli army today opened its widest campaign against Palestinian "targets" ever non-stop bombardment from the air, sea and land, invasion of large Palestinian areas (especially in Gaza), house demolitions, killings, arrests and the declaring of a virtual halt to Palestinian traffic on all the roads of the Occupied Territories. This is the time when all of us -- NGOs, faith-based organizations and citizens, Palestinians, Israelis and members of the international community -- must arise and focus our efforts on one goal, and one goal only: To bring an end to the brutal Israeli occupation of the West Bank, East erusalem and Gaza NOW.
During the seven years of Oslo, Israel pursued a particular vision of "peace:" a non-viable and only semi-independent Palestinian mini- state that would relieve Israel of the three million Palestinians residing in the Occupied Territories but would leave it in control. Israel's ferocious response to the Intifada came from a fear that the Palestinian Street would break the PA out of the Oslo framework and lead it to a true dismantling of the Occupation, to a viable and truly sovereign Palestinian state.
That is the battle being waged now, between an Israeli-controlled Palestinian Bantustan and a viable, sovereign Palestinian state. Couching Palestinian resistance as mere "terrorism" (and thereby cynically exploiting the simplistic "anti-terror" approach of the post-September 11 Bush Administration), Israel is using its entire military arsenal (except its nuclear weapons) to suppress Palestinian aspirations "for once and for all." Sharon, who believes that there can be only one "victor," has declared that the current offensive, escalated daily, will not cease until the
Palestinians "surrender."
The only force preventing the defeat of Palestinian aspirations for independence is the Palestinian Street. This is the force that rose up against an Oslo process that was leading it to apartheid. This is the force that appealed to the international community for support in its struggle against a vastly superior military and political oppressor. But how long the Palestinian people can hang on is a matter of question. People speak bravely of fighting for as long as it takes, but military strikes, invasions of refugee camps, impoverishment, house demolitions, severe restrictions on movement and psychological fatigue all take their toll. Israel's smooth, well-oiled machine of public relations and diplomacy has succeeded in isolating the Palestinians internationally and delegitimizing Arafat's leadership.
This is the time when an international Intifada is called for, when members of the international community must stand up and demand that their governments end the Occupation NOW. This must be the focus of our actions. All else, no matter how well intentioned, has been rendered irrelevant by the events of the past weeks.
What must we do?
* International NGOs, faith-based organizations and political groups must join their extensive but scattered and poorly-focused networks into a coherent, adamant Campaign Against the Occupation. Each country must form a campaign team and those teams must develop a working framework of cooperation and joint ction. The international and country-based teams should then establish contacts with Palestinian and Israeli organizations for purposes of -- articulating our immediate concerns and demanding an end to the occupation now;-- coordination;-- the development of informational and campaign materials
-- the dispatching of local delegations (Palestinian, Israeli and joint) for the purposes of lobbying, media work and appearing in public forums abroad. Effective lobbying in the American Congress, the European Parliament and in European capitals is essential. I would urge that joint Palestinian-Israeli delegations be sent with a simple, compelling message: we are on the same side, the side that aspires to a just peace that addresses the right of self-determination of the Palestinian people while bringing security, stability and economic development to the entire region;
-- the dispatching of international delegations to Palestine to engage in resistance actions, and to develop with them effective follow-up actions back home.
We also need more effective means of raising funds for our work, and of focusing our funding on campaigns and actions that bear directly upon the urgent task of ending the Occupation.
* Palestinian organizations must focus their efforts on a Campaign to End the Occupation Now, pulling together the agendas of their many organizations into a coordinated and effective effort. In my opinion, a close working relationship between Palestinian NGOs and those Israeli organizations that share in their agenda of ending the Occupation is essential for effective advocacy.
* Israeli peace and human rights organizations must also develop a more effective framework of action. Besides our scattered protest activities, we must find ways to effectively communicate with the Israeli public, and we must be much more involved in international networking and campaigns, including production of better informational materials. We must also seek ways to support Palestinian organizations.
All the pieces are in place. We have the organizations and the world-wide networks. Some of us have the information, others the funding, still others the skills at putting together an international campaign, working with the media, gaining access to decision- makers. Some of us are here, on "the ground" in Palestine/Israel, with all we can contribute; others are abroad, in key positions to influence public opinion in their countries and their governments' policies. We now all share the responsibility the collective, urgent responsibility of bringing all our resources to bear on the only issue before us: ending the Occupation now.
People and organizations at the center of international networks have to decide how to proceed. You all know each other. Network, discuss, develop mechanisms of coordination and suggest to us "on the ground" how to link up effectively. Palestinian organizations perhaps through PNGO should declare a common Campaign For Ending the Occupation Now in order to focus their attention and interact effectively with organizations abroad, with all the contact information. Again, I would urge a meeting with partner Israeli organizations to strengthen the cooperation. ICAHD will work to create better forums of cooperation among Israeli organizations, and to augment the present emphasis on activism with effective international advocacy and campaigning.
We should not underestimate our power, the power of the international civil society, which is growing in strength and organization. This is the moment in which we must arise and assert our collective will…...End the Occupation NOW!
4. Witness to destruction
Adam Shapiro
The first thing you notice at the entrance to the Balata Refugee Camp is the overturned, burned out car stuck in a huge man-made crater in the ground. But this was the battleground of the previous three days, as the Israeli Army sacked the camp and destroyed homes, cars, property, and lives with wanton abandon and without much purpose. Other than to attack and terrorize a people who have nothing in this world and who have already been made homeless – and who have remained refugees for over 50 years.
Inside the camp, this alleged “hotbed of terrorism” the group of us eight internationals were met and greeted by the residents with inquisitive looks, “salaam aleikum” shouted from time to time, and lots of little kids running up to us to see who were these strangers. All tried to make us feel welcome and when they learned that we were there in solidarity with the people of the camp and wanted to take pictures to show the world, we were pulled in many different directions at once to witness what the Israelis had done.
What they had done was obvious, and it was all over the camp. Immediately noticeable, at eye level, was the black spray paint on the walls – arrows, numbers, Hebrew writing and stars of David, markings the soldiers made to allow themselves to navigate through the crowded camp. Permanent markings of the three days of hell the camp endured. We later found these markings inside people’s homes as well, painted on the walls.
Thirty homes were destroyed in the camp, but hundreds more effectively ruined and damaged. The camp is densely populated and some alleyways between the buildings are barely wide enough for me – an average sized male – to pass through. Other structures are just built wall-to-wall. When the Israeli army took down a building – allegedly looking for weapons or rockets (no evidence of any found) – it meant that the neighbors’ buildings also were damaged. The first place I visited was a destroyed home. Next door, the building was still standing, but upon walking in, I discovered that the neighbor had lost his wall. The home was also damaged by the demolition and the home utterly unusable. If each house demolished results in the two or three neighboring buildings also being damaged beyond use, then the result is between 90 and 120 structures affected. Each structure contains at least two (and usually more) apartments, housing anywhere from 10 to 40 people. Therefore, at minimum, 900 people were left homeless by the home demolitions in the camp – this is the calculus of Israel’s war on the Palestinian people. Walking through the streets of the camp, destruction was all around us. Peering down alleyways, we inevitably spotted the chunks of stone, the twisted metal and the broken piece of furniture that indicated a home was demolished. Cars had been set ablaze and riddled with bullet-holes – the carcasses lay in the streets as added testimony to the siege. Every house we visited had a story to tell. Some were simply shot up, others had tear gas thrown inside, while others were invaded and occupied by the soldiers.
We visited one home that had been occupied during the entire siege by Israeli soldiers. Upon entering the house, the soldiers offered to allow the family to leave, but promised them they would never come back to the house. The family stayed – three children (aged 4 to 9), two young women (one pregnant) and an elderly woman. The man of the house – PLC member and leading figure in the camp, Hussam Khader – was not home for fear of his life. The soldiers forced the family into one room – approximately 8x10 feet – and made them stay there the entire three days. For the first twenty-four hours, not a single person was allowed to leave the room at all – not for the bathroom, not for food, not for water. The soldiers ransacked the entire place – taking money and computer disks, breaking furniture and emptying drawers, ripping apart passports and overturning children’s beds. We knocked at the door of the home when we arrived. As we entered the sitting room, we heard child whimper – little Ahmed (four years old) was afraid we were the Israelis coming back to the house. He is traumatized by the experience and needs to be near his mom and aunt constantly. But he is tough, and before long he was playing with my camera. He told me to follow him upstairs and there he showed me how the soldiers had ransacked his room. He was amazed by the sight and asked me why the soldiers did this to him.
The last home we visited in the camp was located on the main street, near the cemetery. A ground floor apartment was located adjacent to a store. The main gate of the store was blown apart and the glass from the window lay in the street. The back wall of the small store was torn down and you could see directly into the apartment behind – but there was not much to see. Walking into the house we were unable to step on the floor directly – it was covered with clothing, broken dishes, broken furniture, etc. The electricity was cut, so we had to poke around in the diminishing light until a portable fixture was brought in. The lit room revealed the full destruction – even the washing machine was not safe from the brutality of the soldiers. A fully veiled young woman (only her eyes showed) boldly came up to me and asked if I spoke English. I replied that I did and that she could speak to me in either English or Arabic. She explained that she was the oldest of four children in the house – 14-years old – and that her father was dead. She led me over to where the kitchen had been and searched in the broken glass for something. Finally, she pulled up a picture frame with a photo of her father in it and explained to me that Israeli spies had killed him in 1994. In a flash she was back in the pile on the ground looking for another photo – that of her grandfather, also dead. Now holding both pictures, this young Muslim woman, proud to know English and proud of her family, calmly explained what had happened when the soldiers came – how they had to flee and spend the night outside the camp in the nearby fields. For more than fifty years they had been refugees, and now Israel wanted to attack them again. But, she told me, struggling with her emotions and her sense of dignity, “they must know we are strong children and we won’t leave this land, my grandfather’s land. We will return to the land which they occupied in 1948.”
These refugees, like those in the other camps, have lost everything and live with virtually nothing. Now, day after day, the Israeli army is going after them in a pogrom deliberately designed to provoke and to strike terror in the hearts of an entire people.
Like little Ahmed Khader, the world must ask, why are the Israelis doing this?
5. The view from Beit El
Gideon Levy
Haaretz, 3 March 2002
Most Israelis, it is safe to assume, have never and probably will never visit the settlement of Beit El. They therefore have no idea what an inhabitant of that large settlement sees when he opens his window. To the east, the settler sees nothing but the military. The road leading to his community currently crosses through a huge Israel Defense Forces base that was once Training Center 4 and is now the headquarters for the tremendous forces guarding Beit El and environs. The road home thus passes through tanks and armament stores, which is in itself a dubious experience.
To the west, the settler sees a desolate road, strewn with stones and earthwork obstacles. This is the old Ramallah-Nablus road, the highway that became an abandoned road when all traffic on it was prohibited. If the settler looks into the distance, he will see yellow blotches on the sides of the road in the valley spread out below him. These are Palestinian taxis, traveling on dirt roads to transport the handful of inhabitants who skirt the checkpoints on foot. In wind and cold, in all weather, they make their way from checkpoint to checkpoint. They have no choice.
Slightly to the north, on the edges of the abandoned road, is a large group of horribly crowded, shabby houses, surrounded by a fence as if it were a prison. This is home to about 6,000 Palestinians, residents of the Jalazun refugee camp who for months have been trapped inside their camp. Occasionally they can sneak out of the camp on foot, through the wadis, but the soldiers are liable to shoot at them as has already happened more than once. Leaving by car is just a distant dream, of course.
Hapless and hopeless, people who have already been dealt blows by fate twice before, in 1948 and in 1967, have now also been deprived of their freedom of movement and of their miserable livelihoods. Trapped in their camp, they can only look yearningly at the spacious and thriving mega-settlement that sprang up near their home.
Slightly south of Jalazun, the settler can see the Surda checkpoint, where about two weeks ago an IDF soldier was killed while protecting Beit El. Southwest of there, though no longer in his range of sight, is the Ein Ariq checkpoint, now more closed and dug-in than ever; this is where six IDF soldiers, stationed at the checkpoint to protect the handful of residents of Dolev and Talmon, neighbors of the Beit El settler, were killed.
To the northwest lies the campus of Bir Zeit University. The dream f thousands of youngsters, the same dream that the youngsters of Beit El dream - of acquiring education and a vocation - has been shelved. The university is closed and reopened frequently, the last two academic years have been disturbed as a result of the checkpoints, and when it is possible to reach the campus it can be done only on foot.
A look to the east: Near the military court and the bases the settler can see a long line of Palestinians walking silently alongside the fences, in the shadows of the tanks. Children and old people, pregnant women and the sick, carrying their bags and baskets, terrorized by the tank turret. These are the inhabitants of the surrounding villages, who can reach the closest city, Ramallah, their source of life, only by foot. They walk the six to seven kilometers in either direction for work, shopping or the clinic. The settlers' cars pass by on the road that is open to Jews only.
The justice-loving journalist Yoav Yitzhak wrote in Ma'ariv, with a certain degree of fiendishness, that it is a serious oversight that these wretched villagers are permitted to walk near the settlements and thereby to endanger their security, while the settler Emuna Elon, who lives in Beit El, said on Dan Shilon's television program that her heart was stirred by these pilgrims. Maybe the horrific plan of her husband, Tourism Minister enBenny Elon, to expel all of these villagers from their land will solve the problem. But apart from these sanctimonious statements, it appears that the fate of her neighbors does not affect her or her friends.
Tanks, checkpoints, refugees, racially separated roads, long lines of people on foot, ambulances bouncing along rocky roads and terrible suffering can be seen every day from the window of the
settler in Beit El, and he lives comfortably with it all.It is difficult to comprehend how, among the nearly 5,000 inhabitants of Beit El, there is not a single righteous man in Sodom, no one who will stand up and admit wholeheartedly that his settlement, and all others like it, is the cause of all this suffering. How is it that there is not a single settler in Beit El who is losing sleep over the women in labor who cannot get to the hospital, the sick people who die along the twisted dirt paths, the children who must walk to pay a holiday visit to their grandmother?
It must take a large degree of cold-heartedness to drive on the paved road leading from your house and see the large numbers of people who are forced to walk in the mud and rubble just because of the existence of your settlement - and to keep on believing in the justice of that distorted path; to see all that suffering through your window without batting an eyelash. The dispute with these settlements cannot be a political discussion only, but also a deep moral dispute because of the human suffering they impose on their neighbors.
Now, however, it is not only the suffering of the neighboring Palestinians that is on the heads of the residents of Beit El, but also the blood of the soldiers killed defending them.
The truth must be said: If Beit El, Talmon and Dolev were not there, the checkpoints of Ein Ariq and Surda would not be there either. They have no connection to the security of the state and the seven soldiers killed there up to now would not have been killed. Does the fate of these Israeli soldiers not give rise to any second thoughts in Beit El, either?
6. Saying No to Israel's Occupation
Ishai Menuchin
Yesh Gvul, 9 March 2002
JERUSALEM - In this past week of madness and carnage, hope for peace between Israel and the Palestinians appears impossible. After 35 years of Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, the two sides seem only to have grown accustomed to assassinations, bombings, terrorist attacks and house demolitions. Each side characterizes its own soldiers as either "defense forces" or "freedom fighters"
when in truth these soldiers take part in war crimes on a daily basis. Daily funerals and thoughts of revenge among Israelis tend to blur the fact that we, the Israelis, are the occupiers. And as much as we live in fear of terrorism and war, it is the Palestinians who suffer more deaths hourly and live with greater fear because they are the occupied.
Twenty years ago, when I was first inducted into the Israeli Army, to serve as a paratrooper and officer for four and a half years, I took an oath to defend Israel and obey my commanders. I was young, a patriot, probably naïve, and sure that as a soldier my job was to defend my home and country. It did not occur to me that I might be used to carry out an occupation or asked to fight in military engagements that are not essential for the defense of Israel.
It took me one war - the Lebanon war - many dead friends, and some periods of service in the occupied territories to find that my assumptions were wrong. In 1983, I refused to serve in acts of occupation, and I spent 35 days in military prison for my refusal. Today, as a major in the reserves of the Israel Defense Forces, I still defend my country but I will not participate in a military occupation that has over the decades made Israel less secure and less humane. The escalating violence is evidence of this truth.
Being a citizen in a democracy carries with it a commitment to democratic values and a responsibility for your actions. It is morally impossible to be both a devoted democratic citizen and a regular offender against democratic values. Depriving people of the right to equality and freedom, and keeping them under occupation, is by definition an antidemocratic act. The occupation that has now lasted a generation and rules the lives of more than 3.5 million Palestinians is what drives me, hundreds of other objectors in the armed forces, and tens of thousands of Israeli citizens to oppose our government's policies and actions in the West Bank and Gaza.
My commitment to democratic values caused me to act against the occupation - to sign petitions, write ads, and take part in demonstrations and vigils. But those acts of opposition were not enough to absolve me of having to make a moral choice about participating in the occupation as an officer and ordering others to do so. So while I continue to serve in the defense force, I selectively refuse military orders if they require my presence in the territories outside the pre-1967 Israeli borders. I will not obey illegal orders to execute potential terrorists or fire into civilian demonstrations. (Since October 2000 more than 850 Palestinians have been killed by my army: 178 were minors, and 55 were executed.) And I will not take part in "less violent" actions like keeping Palestinians under curfew for months, manning roadblocks that prevent civilians moving from town to town, or carrying out house demolitions and other acts of repression aimed at the entire Palestinian population.
As our government prepares to increase military action in the West Bank and Gaza, Israelis need a true debate about the nature of Israel's presence in these territories. Israeli and international human rights groups have raised their voices about the persistent violation of Palestinian human rights. I believe it is my duty as a citizen of a democratic nation to protest this conduct, which cannot be justified.
I and others who serve in the defense forces cannot by our actions alone change government policies or make peace negotiations more likely. But we can show our fellow citizens that occupation of the territories is not just a political or strategic matter. It is also a moral matter. We can show them an alternative - they can say no to occupation. When we begin to see Israel's situation in that light, perhaps we will be able to let go of our fear enough to find a way forward.
Ishai Menuchin is a major in the Israel Defense Forces reserves and chairman of Yesh Gvul, the soldiers' movement for selective refusal.
7. Special Report: Intifada Update Palestinian Human and Material Losses Inflicted by Israel during the Intifada (Uprising) September 28th, 2000 - March 14th, 2002
The Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and Democracy (MIFTAH)
Number of Palestinians killed by Israeli security forces and settlers
Palestinians in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and east Jerusalem: 1,201
Palestinians in Israel: 14 Palestinians
In southern Lebanon (killed in clashes on Israeli northern borders): 2
Total (including 234 deaths inflicted among children aged 18 and below): 1,217
Gender Distribution of Deaths
Total number of Palestinian men killed: 1,170
Total Number of Palestinian women killed: 47
Number of Palestinians injured by Israeli security forces and settlers
Live ammunition: 4,231
Rubber bullets: 5,400
Tear gas: 4,988
Miscellaneous: 3,825
Total (including 6,000 injuries inflicted among children below the age of 18): 18,444
Number of olive trees uprooted form Palestinian land: 112,900
Area of Palestinian cultivated land destroyed: 3,669,000 m²
Since 1967, Israel has confiscated almost 750,000 acres of land from the 1.5 million acres comprising the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Since 1967, almost 200,000 tress have been uprooted by Israeli forces from Palestinian land. Since 1967 only, more than 7,000 homes have been demolished on the basis that they were not supported by the required construction permits (permits for Palestinians are almost impossible to obtain from the Israeli authorities). Please refer to MIFTAH's fact sheet on Home Demolition and Land Confiscation at http://www.miftah.org/FactSheets/sheets/HouseDemolition.htm
Israeli attacks against doctors and ambulance drivers:
Number of ambulance drivers killed: 4
Number of doctors killed: 1
Number of doctors and ambulance drivers injured: 122
Number of ambulances hit: 165
Number of cases in which ambulances were denied access to rescue: 350
Number of Palestinian schools previously shut down due to Israeli siege: 174
Number of Palestinian students previously deprived from attending school: 90,000
Number of Palestinian school children killed, injured, or attacked to date: 435
Impact of Israeli closures on Palestinian economic life:
Number of Palestinians unemployed due to the closures: 257,000
Avg. unemployment rate in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip: 53%
Total income losses for Palestinian workers previously employed inside Israel: $ 3.6 million/day Actual losses: Shortfall in GNP between Sept.-Mar. $ 1.5 billion
Decrease in per capita income: 47%
Percentage of Palestinians living below poverty line: 64%
Estimated loss if closures continue in 2001: $ 1.7 billion
Daily overall economic losses (according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics): $ 11 million
Sources: *Palestine Red Crescent Society
*The World Bank (West Bank and Gaza Strip)
*Office of the United Nations Special Coordinator (UNSCO)-Gaza
*Ramallah Hospital
*Al-Shifa Hospital, Gaza
*PECDAR
*UNICEF
*B'Tselem
Public Information Department
Public Affairs Unit
The Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and Democracy (MIFTAH)
Jerusalem office Tel: +972-2-585 1843
Ramallah office Tel: +972-2-298 9490
WWW.MIFTAH.ORG
8. Balata has fallen
Ze'ev Sternhell
Haaretz, 8 March 2002
There was something surreal about the television appearance, last Saturday night, by the commanders of the two brigades that operated in the refugee camps of the northern West Bank. The commander of the Paratroop Brigade declared: Balata camp has surrendered. Indeed, the refugee camp was "conquered" by elite forces, using state-of-the-art weaponry, and backed up by tanks, armored personnel carriers and helicopters. If the whole thing were not sad and grotesque, it would be amusing.
But this is a story that is characteristic of the road that has been followed by heroic little Israel, which was admired by the whole Western world, until this terrible period. There were times when the paratroopers were known as the fighters of the Mitla Pass, Ammunition Hill and the Chinese Farm. The Golani Brigade used to be famed for breaching the fortifications of Rafah, as the fighters of Tel el Faher and the Hermon outpost. Their sons and grandsons have fallen to the level of breachers of walls in shacks built of blocks and boards. And they are no longer ashamed to speak of war when what they are really engaged in is colonial policing, which recalls the takeover by the white police of the poor neighborhoods of the blacks in South Africa during the apartheid era.
There was a time - on the first day of the 1967 Six-Day War -when the commander of a tank company in 7th Brigade, Avigdor Kahalani, stopped his tank column in the midst of advance to contact near Rafah so he wouldn't run over two frightened Bedouin children. He waited until their mother came to collect them. Later that day, Kahalani's tank was hit and he suffered extensive burns. To the division commander, Major General Israel Tal, the behavior of the young officer, and not just his fighting, was exemplary.
Today, again in Rafah, army men of a different generation watch as children play next to a booby-trapped bomb that was placed there by the IDF and don't lift a finger. It must have been clear to all of them that if the children touched the bomb it would explode, with loss of life.When the military advocate general finally decided to launch an investigation into the incident - in which five children were killed – the division commander did everything in his power to prevent the probe from taking place.
In colonial Israel, and more especially the Israel in which advocates of "transfer" sit in the government, human life is cheap - and therein lies the most serious danger to our future A society in which dozens of children are killed as a result of army operations can easily lose its last remaining moral inhibitions. The fact that the Palestinians are also killing indiscriminately cannot absolve us of responsibility for what is going on in the territories. The killing of innocent people is gradually becoming a norm, and that norm is being implemented in the service of a goal that seeks to deprive another people of its freedom and its human rights: The Sharon government is turning the territories into one huge jailhouse, and is turning its citizens in warders who are called upon to suppress a prisoner uprising. That was not quite the purpose of Zionism.
If the army is dominated by shamelessness, and if purely military actions by the Palestinians, such as successful attacks on army outposts and checkpoints, are included under the rubric of terrorism, the settlers' camp is doing all it can to label our inability to cope with the Palestinians' war of independence as the "Rosh Hashanah War." This half-baked attempt to create symmetry between a just war and a campaign of colonialist suppression is not merely a curiosity: It is the desecration of the memory of those who fell in the 1973 Yom Kippur War. It won't be long before we are told that the battle in which tank crews risked their lives on the banks of the Suez Canal and the effort in which an Israeli tank destroys a Palestinian car containing a mother and her three children is the same war.
We should take note here of an interesting phenomenon. The number of Israeli civilian casualties in the past year is far greater than the number of soldiers who have been killed or wounded. When all is said and done, the army is waging a deluxe war: It is bombing and shelling defenseless cities and villages, and that situation is convenient for both the army and the settlers. They are well aware that if the army were to sustain casualties on the same scale as occurred in Lebanon, we would now be on our way out of the territories.
We perceive the death of civilians in shooting attacks or at the hands of crazed suicide bombers in the heart of our cities, including the extinction of whole families, as a decree of fate or as a kind of act of nature. However, the death of soldiers immediately poses the critical question: What are the goals of the war? For what end are the soldiers being killed? Who sent them to their death? As long as the conscript troops do not pay too heavily, as long as the reservists are not called up in massive numbers to protect and defend the occupation, the question of "why" does not dictate the national agenda.
However, the atmosphere in the country is rapidly approaching the boiling point. More and more people are beginning to understand that the Israeli reprisal operations only engender despair, and despair gives rise to suicide bombers. Today, when the whole political system is paralyzed, it looks as though it will be possible to bring an end to the madness that is raging here, only if people take to the streets en masse and demand an immediate start to negotiations.
9. ‘So, are you going to shoot me?’
Amira Hass
Haaretz
AL-AMARI REFUGEE CAMP - Tuesday, March 12, 2:30 in the afternoon. Amal Abu Radwan was in the kitchen cooking a dish of rice and lentils. About 14 hours earlier, the Israel Defense Forces took control of Ramallah and encircled Al-Amari, where she lives with her family. Some of her children were at home, some of them were roaming the alleys. Her husband, Jamal, who works in maintenance at the UNWRA center in the camp, was somewhere outside. Suddenly she heard noises on the other side of the eastern wall of her narrow kitchen.Narrow, but renovated: Only four months ago, after slowly accumulating the needed sum, the renovation was completed - ceramic tiles, a new refrigerator, a new sink, a lighting fixture. Within minutes, the sink and the pipes were destroyed and a huge hole gaped in the wall. Two of her children fled the house in alarm. Another daughter went into shock and would not speak for two days afterward. The kitchen filled with soldiers."Silence," said one of the soldiers in Hebrew. "Ruhi," (Leave), he said in Arabic and aimed his rifle as if to say, "If not, I'll shoot you." In any case, this was how Amal Abu Radwan interpreted his gestures. She pointed at the new refrigerator and asked them not to harm it. And then she saw that they intended to break through the opposite wall, into the neighbors' bathroom. "I begged them to make the hole in the corridor, not in the kitchen. But they were holding a map [on which the houses of the camp were indicated], and the soldier told me that was impossible, because according to the map they had to cut through here."Jamal Abu Radwan hurried home when he heard that soldiers had broken in. In the small camp, where 8,000 people crowd into about 10 square dunams on the main road between El-Bireh and Ramallah, news spreads fast, even when the place is surrounded by tanks. His daughter Jamila relates that the soldiers found a green flag in the house and told her father, who is clean-shaven and dresses in jeans: "You are Hamas." They beat him on the back with a rifle, the members of his household relate, and put him into a room together with his brother, who would later be arrested (and then released). "They told Mother that she was not Hamas, because she doesn't have a veil and her hair is exposed and she wears trousers."In the apartment, eight people live in two rooms. The soldiers took everything out of the cupboard, found nothing, and took the door along with them. Amal laughs as she tells about the suspicious door that was taken away under arrest (and never returned).Her mother-in-law also hastened to the house, to be with the family, who were told to crowd into the hall. A soldier aimed his rifle at Amal, and she fainted. "What happened to her? Why did she faint?" the soldier asked the mother-in-law in astonishment.Three-year-old Hussein crept up to another soldier and grabbed for the rifle. The soldier smacked him lightly on the hand and made gestures the family interpreted as "Do you want to shoot me?" Until 5 A.M. on Wednesday, they were held in one room and heard the soldiers going in and out through their kitchen on their way to their missions in the camp. When they were finally able to move freely in their home, they discovered that the contents of the pot of rice and lentils had been spilled out, the new lighting fixture had been smashed and a toy rifle the son had received on the Feast of the Sacrifice had disappeared.Some of the children slept over at the home of their 65-year-old grandmother, a native of the destroyed village of Jimzu. She calculates her sons' ages by the number of years that elapsed between 1948 and their births. On Tuesday, she walked around in the alleys and approached the main road near her son Jamal's home. "Suddenly a soldier appeared and aimed his rifle at me. I said to him: "So are you going to shoot me? Aren't you ashamed to act like this?"Claims of lootingFrom the Abu Radwan home the soldiers entered a somewhat larger house, where on that night between Tuesday and Wednesday several of the soldiers slept. Three of the young men of the house were arrested, and the women and children were rounded up into a single room. The girls' bedroom was broken into, and a hole was made in the wall that leads to the neighbors' bathroom. During the search for weapons, which were not found, everything was overturned - clothing, mattresses, closets, blankets, the contents of cupboards - an all-too-familiar picture.And as in other homes in the camp, the inhabitants will claim that money was taken from trouser pockets and wallets, as were video and still cameras, mobile phones and regular phones, gold jewelry and computers. In one home they displayed an empty chocolate box: The soldiers found it, related the homeowner, and gleefully ate all the chocolate as the family looked on. Similar claims have been heard during the past year from nearly everywhere Israel Defense Forces soldiers have broken in, throughout the West Bank. The IDF Spokesman's Office always says that it has no knowledge of these claims and that complaints must be filed at the coordination and liaison office.Apparently most of the destruction at Al-Amari was to the home of Nabil Anabi, on the third floor above the camp's coffee shop. The soldiers entered it through the window, on Tuesday at about 7:30 P.M. after they had failed to break down the thick concrete wall between his home and his mother's. The soldiers rounded up the family in the kitchen, and one soldier stood facing them with his rifle aimed. They wanted to sit in the chairs but they were ordered to sit on the floor. As they sat, they shrank every time they heard the sounds of crashing and breakageAfter pleading with the soldiers, the family was allowed to go downstairs to the family's grocery and sleep there. On their way down they had to pick their way over fragments of broken glass and tiles, furniture that had been smashed and used as barriers on the staircase, and the television set that had been flung down the steps to the first floor. "They even broke the name of Allah," mourned Nabil, 40, pointing at a gold-colored paper rolling on the stairs in a frame the glass of which was smashed.At least five of the houses built on higher ground were taken in this way to become observation and firing posts.Frightening momentsNabil Anabi had undergone an operation, and he has documentation to prove it. Therefore, he did not report for arrest. His brother did. On Tuesday morning, when the shooting had died down a bit, over the loudspeakers came the call to men between 15 and 45 to report to the girls' school. Um Mohammed, who is about 70, and her daughter tried to persuade her 15-year-old grandson, R., to run away. "They are mindless, the soldiers. Who knows what they will do to him? They will beat him up," said the grandmother. But R. decided to go, "Because after all, what could they do to me? They have nothing against me." Gradually all the men of the camp (those who were left after the wanted men, activists in Fatah and other organizations and members of the security forces had slipped away), arrived at the entrance to the school, along with R. at about 10 A.M. They were all held there until 7 in the evening, some of them handcuffed, some of them not. "And we didn't know what was happening to them, 10 meters from here," related the grandmother.At 7 in the evening, military Jeeps took all 169 of the detained men from Al-Amari to the Ofer army camp southwest of Ramallah. There they were made to sit on the ground. At 11 P.M. tents were brought, and later mattresses, but no blankets. There were 47 people in the tent with R. "The older ones argued among themselves all the time. They don't all like each other. They also took their anger out on us," relates R. "On Wednesday we ate for the first time."What did they bring to eat? "Ice cream. Chocolate ice cream."It was not just for the youngsters, he said, but also for the adults. Later they were given regular food and blankets.On Thursday about 90 of them were put into buses, with their hands cuffed in front of them. They were kept this way in the buses, with the motors running, from 10 A.M. until 4 P.M. Meanwhile, another group of detainees was taken for interrogation. What is your economic situation, the men in this group were asked. They answered: "Thank God, everything is fine, we have plenty of everything," so that the interrogator would not think that he had a candidate for enlistment as a collaborator in economic distress. On Friday, of the 169, 10 remained under arrest.At 4 P.M. the buses drove as far as the gates of the Ofer camp, a distance of a few meters. There, the detainees were taken off the buses after they were given a "detainee release" form. The entire area was under IDF control, but nevertheless they were told to disperse on their own on the streets of Bitunya, which were under curfew. These were perhaps the most frightening moments."A sharpshooter in a building can't see your release form," said R. Somehow they got to the headquarters of the Preventive Security in Bitunya, where they spent the night. From there they heard the IDF tanks on their way out, to the entrances to the city. In Ofer camp and in the school, R. was not afraid. "It's the first time I've seen Jews, and the army, up close. I wasn't afraid. To me, it was the soldiers who looked afraid."
Lenten greetings from Jerusalem! Sonia and I returned two days ago after two weeks in the United States doing some speaking for MCC in Ohio and Indiana.
The worsening situation in Palestine/Israel weighed heavily on our hearts as we spoke in various fora. It was appropriate, we felt, to be speaking about Palestine/Israel during Lent, the liturgical time when we approach the shadow of the cross with a heightened sense of our sinfulness. Since our return two days ago, we have heard terrible stories of destruction, of death, of humiliation from friends and partners throughout the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Simply going to work, school, or the hospital becomes impossible and/or dangerous for hundreds of thousands of Palestinians.
We were asked repeatedly during the past two weeks if we saw hope in various things: the Saudi initiative; the US-sponsored UN resolution calling for a state of Palestine alongside Israel; the growing number of Israeli soldiers refusing to serve in the occupied territories. Briefly: yes, we do see hope in these things. At the same time, however, we must report that what we hear from our Palestinian friends and partners is despair and hopelessness: the Saudi proposal and the UN resolution are seen as yet more rhetorical gambits with little chance of effecting the reality of occupation.
In our next update we will write more about MCC programs. This present note--a long one--includes several pieces written in the storm of the past two weeks. We hope that you find some or all of them useful.
--Alain Epp Weaver
1. A massacre that covers the whole nation
Ghassan Andoni
The Palestinian Centre for Rapprochement between People
Started at Balata refugee camp and still moving. Today it is Bethlehem. The message is clear: if you do not accept our occupation and domination you will be destroyed. Sir, we cannot accept your occupation and domination because it had already destroyed us.
It is almost the same Scenario everywhere. F16, bombarding the PA buildings and adjacent neighborhoods; Tanks invade cities and towns but mainly refugee camps; dozens of innocent civilians killed and hundreds injured; Ambulances are not allowed to evacuate casualties. 50 Palestinians killed in one day and hundreds injured most of them were kept bleeding in the narrow streets of refugee camps. Ambulances were not allowed to evacuate the casualties. To encounter the seen of Israeli tanks hitting two ambulances in the narrow streets of Tulkarim refugee camp, the army commander of the Tulkarim area identified Palestinian ambulances and
medical teams as legitimate targets for the Israeli army.
The Israeli army generals are so proud of their ability to move inside the Palestinian refugee camps through cracking down the cement walls between the heavily crowded and adjacent
Palestinian homes. Right now and in Tulkarim refugee camp no family can close the door and shelter inside home.
The best that the Israeli foreign Minster and Nobel Prize winner Shimon Peres could do was to refuse to comment. While he publicly reminded Israelis that there is no need to reoccupy Palestinian areas because already those areas are occupied, he failed to raise a voice against the war crimes conducted by his Prime Minster and the elected leader of his Party, defense
Minster Ben Eliazer.
The calls from inside the Israeli society for more Palestinian blood and the complete silence from the side of the International community will stay for long deep inside Palestinians. Palestinians
will trust no one. Each mourning mother, each confused little kid, and each homeless family will always ask: where were you when all of this happened?
Can any of you look directly to their eyes and provide an answer?
The Palestinian Centre for Rapprochement between People
64 Star Street, P.O. Box 24
Beit Sahour - Palestine
www.rapprochement.org
The center is a non-profit making NGO, started in 1988 during the first Intifada. PCR runs community service programs, youth empowerment and training programs. PCR is also very much involved in the non-violent resistance against the Israeli Occupation of Palestine.
2. Sir, It’s the Wrong War!
After the invasion of the Balata refugee camp by a regular brigade of the IDF, the brigade commander appeared on television and said that he had expected the Palestinians to fight like tigers, but that they behaved like pussycats.
This is a frightening sentence, because it discloses a startling fact: the Brigade commander does not understand in what kind of campaign he is engaged. He has to be told, with all due respect: “Sir, you are fighting the wrong war!”
Clearly, he believes that he is engaged in a conventional war between armies. The enemy is supposed to stand up and fight like men, assault rifles against tanks and fighter planes.
The commander and all his colleagues, including the Chief-of-Staff and his deputy, would be well advised to read a good book about guerilla warfare, such as Mao Tse-Tung’s treatise, which tells the guerilla fighter: Never confront the regular army. When the army attacks, you disappear. When the army is not ready, you attack.
For example: The army surrounds Arafat in Ramallah, Destroy a Merkava tank in Gush Katif. A whole brigade invades Balata; Get out and send a single fighter to kill the team of a check-point near Ofrah. A brigade attacks Jenin; Get out of their sight and infiltrate Atzmona settlement.
The statement by the brigade commander indicates that the IDF is fighting on a front that does not exist, and is not prepared for fighting on the front that is there. it’s like a general setting out to conquer Syria and holding a map of the Sudan in his hands.
Since Chief-of-Staff Mofaz and his senior officers don’t even understand the nature of this struggle, they are failing. Out of frustration and anger they shoot in all directions and commit a small massacre every day, without any purpose or chance of success. Since they were not trained for this kind of struggle and do not understand it, they are condemned to commit every possible mistake. One after another, they use all the methods that have already failed in Algeria, Kenya, South Africa, Vietnam and a dozen of other countries.
They try to starve the inhabitants into submission (“closure”),and inadvertently turn them into potential suicide-bombers with nothing to lose. They assassinate the chiefs of the fighting groups (“targeted prevention”), and clear the way for younger, more efficient and more energetic commanders. The kill massively (“you have to strike them”) and turn the relatives of the victims into avengers.
If this is the way of the generals, the “political echelon”, composed of pensioned generals, is worse. They imprison Arafat in Ramallah in order to prove that he is “irrelevant”, and turn him into the most relevant person in the entire Middle East. As a result, all internal criticism of Arafat has ceased. Practically all Palestinians admire their President, who is taking part in their lot, suffers like them and is risking his life like them.
And beyond that: tens of millions of Arabs, who see rousing reports from beleaguered Palestine every hour on al-Jazira TV, compare the courageous Palestinian leader to their own rulers, who are now very worried indeed. In response they sounded the alarm in Washington and have compelled President Bush to do something.
Sharon and Ben-Eliezer declare that if the Palestinians are made to suffer more and more, they will eventually surrender and agree to live in several Ghettos, as proposed by Sharon. In
practice, the opposite is happening: the more the pressure on them mounts, the more their unity grows, their methods of resistance improve and their readiness to suffer and not to surrender
increases.
Thousands of Palestinians are ready to undertake actions leading to certain death, and their number is growing. How many Israelis are ready to go into action if there is no chance at all of
coming out alive? Palestinians know full well that they are fighting for their very existence; Israelis know that they are fighting for the settlements and bankrupt politicians.
The Israeli government cannot win this struggle. After paying a terrible price - slaughter and destruction - this will become clear to the public, the government will fall and we shall make peace according to the Saudi Crown Prince’s excellent proposal.
3. A Call For International Action: END THE OCCUPATION NOW!
Jeff Halper
Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD), 6 March 2002
This is the moment of decision. The Israeli army today opened its widest campaign against Palestinian "targets" ever non-stop bombardment from the air, sea and land, invasion of large Palestinian areas (especially in Gaza), house demolitions, killings, arrests and the declaring of a virtual halt to Palestinian traffic on all the roads of the Occupied Territories. This is the time when all of us -- NGOs, faith-based organizations and citizens, Palestinians, Israelis and members of the international community -- must arise and focus our efforts on one goal, and one goal only: To bring an end to the brutal Israeli occupation of the West Bank, East erusalem and Gaza NOW.
During the seven years of Oslo, Israel pursued a particular vision of "peace:" a non-viable and only semi-independent Palestinian mini- state that would relieve Israel of the three million Palestinians residing in the Occupied Territories but would leave it in control. Israel's ferocious response to the Intifada came from a fear that the Palestinian Street would break the PA out of the Oslo framework and lead it to a true dismantling of the Occupation, to a viable and truly sovereign Palestinian state.
That is the battle being waged now, between an Israeli-controlled Palestinian Bantustan and a viable, sovereign Palestinian state. Couching Palestinian resistance as mere "terrorism" (and thereby cynically exploiting the simplistic "anti-terror" approach of the post-September 11 Bush Administration), Israel is using its entire military arsenal (except its nuclear weapons) to suppress Palestinian aspirations "for once and for all." Sharon, who believes that there can be only one "victor," has declared that the current offensive, escalated daily, will not cease until the
Palestinians "surrender."
The only force preventing the defeat of Palestinian aspirations for independence is the Palestinian Street. This is the force that rose up against an Oslo process that was leading it to apartheid. This is the force that appealed to the international community for support in its struggle against a vastly superior military and political oppressor. But how long the Palestinian people can hang on is a matter of question. People speak bravely of fighting for as long as it takes, but military strikes, invasions of refugee camps, impoverishment, house demolitions, severe restrictions on movement and psychological fatigue all take their toll. Israel's smooth, well-oiled machine of public relations and diplomacy has succeeded in isolating the Palestinians internationally and delegitimizing Arafat's leadership.
This is the time when an international Intifada is called for, when members of the international community must stand up and demand that their governments end the Occupation NOW. This must be the focus of our actions. All else, no matter how well intentioned, has been rendered irrelevant by the events of the past weeks.
What must we do?
* International NGOs, faith-based organizations and political groups must join their extensive but scattered and poorly-focused networks into a coherent, adamant Campaign Against the Occupation. Each country must form a campaign team and those teams must develop a working framework of cooperation and joint ction. The international and country-based teams should then establish contacts with Palestinian and Israeli organizations for purposes of -- articulating our immediate concerns and demanding an end to the occupation now;-- coordination;-- the development of informational and campaign materials
-- the dispatching of local delegations (Palestinian, Israeli and joint) for the purposes of lobbying, media work and appearing in public forums abroad. Effective lobbying in the American Congress, the European Parliament and in European capitals is essential. I would urge that joint Palestinian-Israeli delegations be sent with a simple, compelling message: we are on the same side, the side that aspires to a just peace that addresses the right of self-determination of the Palestinian people while bringing security, stability and economic development to the entire region;
-- the dispatching of international delegations to Palestine to engage in resistance actions, and to develop with them effective follow-up actions back home.
We also need more effective means of raising funds for our work, and of focusing our funding on campaigns and actions that bear directly upon the urgent task of ending the Occupation.
* Palestinian organizations must focus their efforts on a Campaign to End the Occupation Now, pulling together the agendas of their many organizations into a coordinated and effective effort. In my opinion, a close working relationship between Palestinian NGOs and those Israeli organizations that share in their agenda of ending the Occupation is essential for effective advocacy.
* Israeli peace and human rights organizations must also develop a more effective framework of action. Besides our scattered protest activities, we must find ways to effectively communicate with the Israeli public, and we must be much more involved in international networking and campaigns, including production of better informational materials. We must also seek ways to support Palestinian organizations.
All the pieces are in place. We have the organizations and the world-wide networks. Some of us have the information, others the funding, still others the skills at putting together an international campaign, working with the media, gaining access to decision- makers. Some of us are here, on "the ground" in Palestine/Israel, with all we can contribute; others are abroad, in key positions to influence public opinion in their countries and their governments' policies. We now all share the responsibility the collective, urgent responsibility of bringing all our resources to bear on the only issue before us: ending the Occupation now.
People and organizations at the center of international networks have to decide how to proceed. You all know each other. Network, discuss, develop mechanisms of coordination and suggest to us "on the ground" how to link up effectively. Palestinian organizations perhaps through PNGO should declare a common Campaign For Ending the Occupation Now in order to focus their attention and interact effectively with organizations abroad, with all the contact information. Again, I would urge a meeting with partner Israeli organizations to strengthen the cooperation. ICAHD will work to create better forums of cooperation among Israeli organizations, and to augment the present emphasis on activism with effective international advocacy and campaigning.
We should not underestimate our power, the power of the international civil society, which is growing in strength and organization. This is the moment in which we must arise and assert our collective will…...End the Occupation NOW!
4. Witness to destruction
Adam Shapiro
The first thing you notice at the entrance to the Balata Refugee Camp is the overturned, burned out car stuck in a huge man-made crater in the ground. But this was the battleground of the previous three days, as the Israeli Army sacked the camp and destroyed homes, cars, property, and lives with wanton abandon and without much purpose. Other than to attack and terrorize a people who have nothing in this world and who have already been made homeless – and who have remained refugees for over 50 years.
Inside the camp, this alleged “hotbed of terrorism” the group of us eight internationals were met and greeted by the residents with inquisitive looks, “salaam aleikum” shouted from time to time, and lots of little kids running up to us to see who were these strangers. All tried to make us feel welcome and when they learned that we were there in solidarity with the people of the camp and wanted to take pictures to show the world, we were pulled in many different directions at once to witness what the Israelis had done.
What they had done was obvious, and it was all over the camp. Immediately noticeable, at eye level, was the black spray paint on the walls – arrows, numbers, Hebrew writing and stars of David, markings the soldiers made to allow themselves to navigate through the crowded camp. Permanent markings of the three days of hell the camp endured. We later found these markings inside people’s homes as well, painted on the walls.
Thirty homes were destroyed in the camp, but hundreds more effectively ruined and damaged. The camp is densely populated and some alleyways between the buildings are barely wide enough for me – an average sized male – to pass through. Other structures are just built wall-to-wall. When the Israeli army took down a building – allegedly looking for weapons or rockets (no evidence of any found) – it meant that the neighbors’ buildings also were damaged. The first place I visited was a destroyed home. Next door, the building was still standing, but upon walking in, I discovered that the neighbor had lost his wall. The home was also damaged by the demolition and the home utterly unusable. If each house demolished results in the two or three neighboring buildings also being damaged beyond use, then the result is between 90 and 120 structures affected. Each structure contains at least two (and usually more) apartments, housing anywhere from 10 to 40 people. Therefore, at minimum, 900 people were left homeless by the home demolitions in the camp – this is the calculus of Israel’s war on the Palestinian people. Walking through the streets of the camp, destruction was all around us. Peering down alleyways, we inevitably spotted the chunks of stone, the twisted metal and the broken piece of furniture that indicated a home was demolished. Cars had been set ablaze and riddled with bullet-holes – the carcasses lay in the streets as added testimony to the siege. Every house we visited had a story to tell. Some were simply shot up, others had tear gas thrown inside, while others were invaded and occupied by the soldiers.
We visited one home that had been occupied during the entire siege by Israeli soldiers. Upon entering the house, the soldiers offered to allow the family to leave, but promised them they would never come back to the house. The family stayed – three children (aged 4 to 9), two young women (one pregnant) and an elderly woman. The man of the house – PLC member and leading figure in the camp, Hussam Khader – was not home for fear of his life. The soldiers forced the family into one room – approximately 8x10 feet – and made them stay there the entire three days. For the first twenty-four hours, not a single person was allowed to leave the room at all – not for the bathroom, not for food, not for water. The soldiers ransacked the entire place – taking money and computer disks, breaking furniture and emptying drawers, ripping apart passports and overturning children’s beds. We knocked at the door of the home when we arrived. As we entered the sitting room, we heard child whimper – little Ahmed (four years old) was afraid we were the Israelis coming back to the house. He is traumatized by the experience and needs to be near his mom and aunt constantly. But he is tough, and before long he was playing with my camera. He told me to follow him upstairs and there he showed me how the soldiers had ransacked his room. He was amazed by the sight and asked me why the soldiers did this to him.
The last home we visited in the camp was located on the main street, near the cemetery. A ground floor apartment was located adjacent to a store. The main gate of the store was blown apart and the glass from the window lay in the street. The back wall of the small store was torn down and you could see directly into the apartment behind – but there was not much to see. Walking into the house we were unable to step on the floor directly – it was covered with clothing, broken dishes, broken furniture, etc. The electricity was cut, so we had to poke around in the diminishing light until a portable fixture was brought in. The lit room revealed the full destruction – even the washing machine was not safe from the brutality of the soldiers. A fully veiled young woman (only her eyes showed) boldly came up to me and asked if I spoke English. I replied that I did and that she could speak to me in either English or Arabic. She explained that she was the oldest of four children in the house – 14-years old – and that her father was dead. She led me over to where the kitchen had been and searched in the broken glass for something. Finally, she pulled up a picture frame with a photo of her father in it and explained to me that Israeli spies had killed him in 1994. In a flash she was back in the pile on the ground looking for another photo – that of her grandfather, also dead. Now holding both pictures, this young Muslim woman, proud to know English and proud of her family, calmly explained what had happened when the soldiers came – how they had to flee and spend the night outside the camp in the nearby fields. For more than fifty years they had been refugees, and now Israel wanted to attack them again. But, she told me, struggling with her emotions and her sense of dignity, “they must know we are strong children and we won’t leave this land, my grandfather’s land. We will return to the land which they occupied in 1948.”
These refugees, like those in the other camps, have lost everything and live with virtually nothing. Now, day after day, the Israeli army is going after them in a pogrom deliberately designed to provoke and to strike terror in the hearts of an entire people.
Like little Ahmed Khader, the world must ask, why are the Israelis doing this?
5. The view from Beit El
Gideon Levy
Haaretz, 3 March 2002
Most Israelis, it is safe to assume, have never and probably will never visit the settlement of Beit El. They therefore have no idea what an inhabitant of that large settlement sees when he opens his window. To the east, the settler sees nothing but the military. The road leading to his community currently crosses through a huge Israel Defense Forces base that was once Training Center 4 and is now the headquarters for the tremendous forces guarding Beit El and environs. The road home thus passes through tanks and armament stores, which is in itself a dubious experience.
To the west, the settler sees a desolate road, strewn with stones and earthwork obstacles. This is the old Ramallah-Nablus road, the highway that became an abandoned road when all traffic on it was prohibited. If the settler looks into the distance, he will see yellow blotches on the sides of the road in the valley spread out below him. These are Palestinian taxis, traveling on dirt roads to transport the handful of inhabitants who skirt the checkpoints on foot. In wind and cold, in all weather, they make their way from checkpoint to checkpoint. They have no choice.
Slightly to the north, on the edges of the abandoned road, is a large group of horribly crowded, shabby houses, surrounded by a fence as if it were a prison. This is home to about 6,000 Palestinians, residents of the Jalazun refugee camp who for months have been trapped inside their camp. Occasionally they can sneak out of the camp on foot, through the wadis, but the soldiers are liable to shoot at them as has already happened more than once. Leaving by car is just a distant dream, of course.
Hapless and hopeless, people who have already been dealt blows by fate twice before, in 1948 and in 1967, have now also been deprived of their freedom of movement and of their miserable livelihoods. Trapped in their camp, they can only look yearningly at the spacious and thriving mega-settlement that sprang up near their home.
Slightly south of Jalazun, the settler can see the Surda checkpoint, where about two weeks ago an IDF soldier was killed while protecting Beit El. Southwest of there, though no longer in his range of sight, is the Ein Ariq checkpoint, now more closed and dug-in than ever; this is where six IDF soldiers, stationed at the checkpoint to protect the handful of residents of Dolev and Talmon, neighbors of the Beit El settler, were killed.
To the northwest lies the campus of Bir Zeit University. The dream f thousands of youngsters, the same dream that the youngsters of Beit El dream - of acquiring education and a vocation - has been shelved. The university is closed and reopened frequently, the last two academic years have been disturbed as a result of the checkpoints, and when it is possible to reach the campus it can be done only on foot.
A look to the east: Near the military court and the bases the settler can see a long line of Palestinians walking silently alongside the fences, in the shadows of the tanks. Children and old people, pregnant women and the sick, carrying their bags and baskets, terrorized by the tank turret. These are the inhabitants of the surrounding villages, who can reach the closest city, Ramallah, their source of life, only by foot. They walk the six to seven kilometers in either direction for work, shopping or the clinic. The settlers' cars pass by on the road that is open to Jews only.
The justice-loving journalist Yoav Yitzhak wrote in Ma'ariv, with a certain degree of fiendishness, that it is a serious oversight that these wretched villagers are permitted to walk near the settlements and thereby to endanger their security, while the settler Emuna Elon, who lives in Beit El, said on Dan Shilon's television program that her heart was stirred by these pilgrims. Maybe the horrific plan of her husband, Tourism Minister enBenny Elon, to expel all of these villagers from their land will solve the problem. But apart from these sanctimonious statements, it appears that the fate of her neighbors does not affect her or her friends.
Tanks, checkpoints, refugees, racially separated roads, long lines of people on foot, ambulances bouncing along rocky roads and terrible suffering can be seen every day from the window of the
settler in Beit El, and he lives comfortably with it all.It is difficult to comprehend how, among the nearly 5,000 inhabitants of Beit El, there is not a single righteous man in Sodom, no one who will stand up and admit wholeheartedly that his settlement, and all others like it, is the cause of all this suffering. How is it that there is not a single settler in Beit El who is losing sleep over the women in labor who cannot get to the hospital, the sick people who die along the twisted dirt paths, the children who must walk to pay a holiday visit to their grandmother?
It must take a large degree of cold-heartedness to drive on the paved road leading from your house and see the large numbers of people who are forced to walk in the mud and rubble just because of the existence of your settlement - and to keep on believing in the justice of that distorted path; to see all that suffering through your window without batting an eyelash. The dispute with these settlements cannot be a political discussion only, but also a deep moral dispute because of the human suffering they impose on their neighbors.
Now, however, it is not only the suffering of the neighboring Palestinians that is on the heads of the residents of Beit El, but also the blood of the soldiers killed defending them.
The truth must be said: If Beit El, Talmon and Dolev were not there, the checkpoints of Ein Ariq and Surda would not be there either. They have no connection to the security of the state and the seven soldiers killed there up to now would not have been killed. Does the fate of these Israeli soldiers not give rise to any second thoughts in Beit El, either?
6. Saying No to Israel's Occupation
Ishai Menuchin
Yesh Gvul, 9 March 2002
JERUSALEM - In this past week of madness and carnage, hope for peace between Israel and the Palestinians appears impossible. After 35 years of Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, the two sides seem only to have grown accustomed to assassinations, bombings, terrorist attacks and house demolitions. Each side characterizes its own soldiers as either "defense forces" or "freedom fighters"
when in truth these soldiers take part in war crimes on a daily basis. Daily funerals and thoughts of revenge among Israelis tend to blur the fact that we, the Israelis, are the occupiers. And as much as we live in fear of terrorism and war, it is the Palestinians who suffer more deaths hourly and live with greater fear because they are the occupied.
Twenty years ago, when I was first inducted into the Israeli Army, to serve as a paratrooper and officer for four and a half years, I took an oath to defend Israel and obey my commanders. I was young, a patriot, probably naïve, and sure that as a soldier my job was to defend my home and country. It did not occur to me that I might be used to carry out an occupation or asked to fight in military engagements that are not essential for the defense of Israel.
It took me one war - the Lebanon war - many dead friends, and some periods of service in the occupied territories to find that my assumptions were wrong. In 1983, I refused to serve in acts of occupation, and I spent 35 days in military prison for my refusal. Today, as a major in the reserves of the Israel Defense Forces, I still defend my country but I will not participate in a military occupation that has over the decades made Israel less secure and less humane. The escalating violence is evidence of this truth.
Being a citizen in a democracy carries with it a commitment to democratic values and a responsibility for your actions. It is morally impossible to be both a devoted democratic citizen and a regular offender against democratic values. Depriving people of the right to equality and freedom, and keeping them under occupation, is by definition an antidemocratic act. The occupation that has now lasted a generation and rules the lives of more than 3.5 million Palestinians is what drives me, hundreds of other objectors in the armed forces, and tens of thousands of Israeli citizens to oppose our government's policies and actions in the West Bank and Gaza.
My commitment to democratic values caused me to act against the occupation - to sign petitions, write ads, and take part in demonstrations and vigils. But those acts of opposition were not enough to absolve me of having to make a moral choice about participating in the occupation as an officer and ordering others to do so. So while I continue to serve in the defense force, I selectively refuse military orders if they require my presence in the territories outside the pre-1967 Israeli borders. I will not obey illegal orders to execute potential terrorists or fire into civilian demonstrations. (Since October 2000 more than 850 Palestinians have been killed by my army: 178 were minors, and 55 were executed.) And I will not take part in "less violent" actions like keeping Palestinians under curfew for months, manning roadblocks that prevent civilians moving from town to town, or carrying out house demolitions and other acts of repression aimed at the entire Palestinian population.
As our government prepares to increase military action in the West Bank and Gaza, Israelis need a true debate about the nature of Israel's presence in these territories. Israeli and international human rights groups have raised their voices about the persistent violation of Palestinian human rights. I believe it is my duty as a citizen of a democratic nation to protest this conduct, which cannot be justified.
I and others who serve in the defense forces cannot by our actions alone change government policies or make peace negotiations more likely. But we can show our fellow citizens that occupation of the territories is not just a political or strategic matter. It is also a moral matter. We can show them an alternative - they can say no to occupation. When we begin to see Israel's situation in that light, perhaps we will be able to let go of our fear enough to find a way forward.
Ishai Menuchin is a major in the Israel Defense Forces reserves and chairman of Yesh Gvul, the soldiers' movement for selective refusal.
7. Special Report: Intifada Update Palestinian Human and Material Losses Inflicted by Israel during the Intifada (Uprising) September 28th, 2000 - March 14th, 2002
The Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and Democracy (MIFTAH)
Number of Palestinians killed by Israeli security forces and settlers
Palestinians in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and east Jerusalem: 1,201
Palestinians in Israel: 14 Palestinians
In southern Lebanon (killed in clashes on Israeli northern borders): 2
Total (including 234 deaths inflicted among children aged 18 and below): 1,217
Gender Distribution of Deaths
Total number of Palestinian men killed: 1,170
Total Number of Palestinian women killed: 47
Number of Palestinians injured by Israeli security forces and settlers
Live ammunition: 4,231
Rubber bullets: 5,400
Tear gas: 4,988
Miscellaneous: 3,825
Total (including 6,000 injuries inflicted among children below the age of 18): 18,444
Number of olive trees uprooted form Palestinian land: 112,900
Area of Palestinian cultivated land destroyed: 3,669,000 m²
Since 1967, Israel has confiscated almost 750,000 acres of land from the 1.5 million acres comprising the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Since 1967, almost 200,000 tress have been uprooted by Israeli forces from Palestinian land. Since 1967 only, more than 7,000 homes have been demolished on the basis that they were not supported by the required construction permits (permits for Palestinians are almost impossible to obtain from the Israeli authorities). Please refer to MIFTAH's fact sheet on Home Demolition and Land Confiscation at http://www.miftah.org/FactSheets/sheets/HouseDemolition.htm
Israeli attacks against doctors and ambulance drivers:
Number of ambulance drivers killed: 4
Number of doctors killed: 1
Number of doctors and ambulance drivers injured: 122
Number of ambulances hit: 165
Number of cases in which ambulances were denied access to rescue: 350
Number of Palestinian schools previously shut down due to Israeli siege: 174
Number of Palestinian students previously deprived from attending school: 90,000
Number of Palestinian school children killed, injured, or attacked to date: 435
Impact of Israeli closures on Palestinian economic life:
Number of Palestinians unemployed due to the closures: 257,000
Avg. unemployment rate in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip: 53%
Total income losses for Palestinian workers previously employed inside Israel: $ 3.6 million/day Actual losses: Shortfall in GNP between Sept.-Mar. $ 1.5 billion
Decrease in per capita income: 47%
Percentage of Palestinians living below poverty line: 64%
Estimated loss if closures continue in 2001: $ 1.7 billion
Daily overall economic losses (according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics): $ 11 million
Sources: *Palestine Red Crescent Society
*The World Bank (West Bank and Gaza Strip)
*Office of the United Nations Special Coordinator (UNSCO)-Gaza
*Ramallah Hospital
*Al-Shifa Hospital, Gaza
*PECDAR
*UNICEF
*B'Tselem
Public Information Department
Public Affairs Unit
The Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and Democracy (MIFTAH)
Jerusalem office Tel: +972-2-585 1843
Ramallah office Tel: +972-2-298 9490
WWW.MIFTAH.ORG
8. Balata has fallen
Ze'ev Sternhell
Haaretz, 8 March 2002
There was something surreal about the television appearance, last Saturday night, by the commanders of the two brigades that operated in the refugee camps of the northern West Bank. The commander of the Paratroop Brigade declared: Balata camp has surrendered. Indeed, the refugee camp was "conquered" by elite forces, using state-of-the-art weaponry, and backed up by tanks, armored personnel carriers and helicopters. If the whole thing were not sad and grotesque, it would be amusing.
But this is a story that is characteristic of the road that has been followed by heroic little Israel, which was admired by the whole Western world, until this terrible period. There were times when the paratroopers were known as the fighters of the Mitla Pass, Ammunition Hill and the Chinese Farm. The Golani Brigade used to be famed for breaching the fortifications of Rafah, as the fighters of Tel el Faher and the Hermon outpost. Their sons and grandsons have fallen to the level of breachers of walls in shacks built of blocks and boards. And they are no longer ashamed to speak of war when what they are really engaged in is colonial policing, which recalls the takeover by the white police of the poor neighborhoods of the blacks in South Africa during the apartheid era.
There was a time - on the first day of the 1967 Six-Day War -when the commander of a tank company in 7th Brigade, Avigdor Kahalani, stopped his tank column in the midst of advance to contact near Rafah so he wouldn't run over two frightened Bedouin children. He waited until their mother came to collect them. Later that day, Kahalani's tank was hit and he suffered extensive burns. To the division commander, Major General Israel Tal, the behavior of the young officer, and not just his fighting, was exemplary.
Today, again in Rafah, army men of a different generation watch as children play next to a booby-trapped bomb that was placed there by the IDF and don't lift a finger. It must have been clear to all of them that if the children touched the bomb it would explode, with loss of life.When the military advocate general finally decided to launch an investigation into the incident - in which five children were killed – the division commander did everything in his power to prevent the probe from taking place.
In colonial Israel, and more especially the Israel in which advocates of "transfer" sit in the government, human life is cheap - and therein lies the most serious danger to our future A society in which dozens of children are killed as a result of army operations can easily lose its last remaining moral inhibitions. The fact that the Palestinians are also killing indiscriminately cannot absolve us of responsibility for what is going on in the territories. The killing of innocent people is gradually becoming a norm, and that norm is being implemented in the service of a goal that seeks to deprive another people of its freedom and its human rights: The Sharon government is turning the territories into one huge jailhouse, and is turning its citizens in warders who are called upon to suppress a prisoner uprising. That was not quite the purpose of Zionism.
If the army is dominated by shamelessness, and if purely military actions by the Palestinians, such as successful attacks on army outposts and checkpoints, are included under the rubric of terrorism, the settlers' camp is doing all it can to label our inability to cope with the Palestinians' war of independence as the "Rosh Hashanah War." This half-baked attempt to create symmetry between a just war and a campaign of colonialist suppression is not merely a curiosity: It is the desecration of the memory of those who fell in the 1973 Yom Kippur War. It won't be long before we are told that the battle in which tank crews risked their lives on the banks of the Suez Canal and the effort in which an Israeli tank destroys a Palestinian car containing a mother and her three children is the same war.
We should take note here of an interesting phenomenon. The number of Israeli civilian casualties in the past year is far greater than the number of soldiers who have been killed or wounded. When all is said and done, the army is waging a deluxe war: It is bombing and shelling defenseless cities and villages, and that situation is convenient for both the army and the settlers. They are well aware that if the army were to sustain casualties on the same scale as occurred in Lebanon, we would now be on our way out of the territories.
We perceive the death of civilians in shooting attacks or at the hands of crazed suicide bombers in the heart of our cities, including the extinction of whole families, as a decree of fate or as a kind of act of nature. However, the death of soldiers immediately poses the critical question: What are the goals of the war? For what end are the soldiers being killed? Who sent them to their death? As long as the conscript troops do not pay too heavily, as long as the reservists are not called up in massive numbers to protect and defend the occupation, the question of "why" does not dictate the national agenda.
However, the atmosphere in the country is rapidly approaching the boiling point. More and more people are beginning to understand that the Israeli reprisal operations only engender despair, and despair gives rise to suicide bombers. Today, when the whole political system is paralyzed, it looks as though it will be possible to bring an end to the madness that is raging here, only if people take to the streets en masse and demand an immediate start to negotiations.
9. ‘So, are you going to shoot me?’
Amira Hass
Haaretz
AL-AMARI REFUGEE CAMP - Tuesday, March 12, 2:30 in the afternoon. Amal Abu Radwan was in the kitchen cooking a dish of rice and lentils. About 14 hours earlier, the Israel Defense Forces took control of Ramallah and encircled Al-Amari, where she lives with her family. Some of her children were at home, some of them were roaming the alleys. Her husband, Jamal, who works in maintenance at the UNWRA center in the camp, was somewhere outside. Suddenly she heard noises on the other side of the eastern wall of her narrow kitchen.Narrow, but renovated: Only four months ago, after slowly accumulating the needed sum, the renovation was completed - ceramic tiles, a new refrigerator, a new sink, a lighting fixture. Within minutes, the sink and the pipes were destroyed and a huge hole gaped in the wall. Two of her children fled the house in alarm. Another daughter went into shock and would not speak for two days afterward. The kitchen filled with soldiers."Silence," said one of the soldiers in Hebrew. "Ruhi," (Leave), he said in Arabic and aimed his rifle as if to say, "If not, I'll shoot you." In any case, this was how Amal Abu Radwan interpreted his gestures. She pointed at the new refrigerator and asked them not to harm it. And then she saw that they intended to break through the opposite wall, into the neighbors' bathroom. "I begged them to make the hole in the corridor, not in the kitchen. But they were holding a map [on which the houses of the camp were indicated], and the soldier told me that was impossible, because according to the map they had to cut through here."Jamal Abu Radwan hurried home when he heard that soldiers had broken in. In the small camp, where 8,000 people crowd into about 10 square dunams on the main road between El-Bireh and Ramallah, news spreads fast, even when the place is surrounded by tanks. His daughter Jamila relates that the soldiers found a green flag in the house and told her father, who is clean-shaven and dresses in jeans: "You are Hamas." They beat him on the back with a rifle, the members of his household relate, and put him into a room together with his brother, who would later be arrested (and then released). "They told Mother that she was not Hamas, because she doesn't have a veil and her hair is exposed and she wears trousers."In the apartment, eight people live in two rooms. The soldiers took everything out of the cupboard, found nothing, and took the door along with them. Amal laughs as she tells about the suspicious door that was taken away under arrest (and never returned).Her mother-in-law also hastened to the house, to be with the family, who were told to crowd into the hall. A soldier aimed his rifle at Amal, and she fainted. "What happened to her? Why did she faint?" the soldier asked the mother-in-law in astonishment.Three-year-old Hussein crept up to another soldier and grabbed for the rifle. The soldier smacked him lightly on the hand and made gestures the family interpreted as "Do you want to shoot me?" Until 5 A.M. on Wednesday, they were held in one room and heard the soldiers going in and out through their kitchen on their way to their missions in the camp. When they were finally able to move freely in their home, they discovered that the contents of the pot of rice and lentils had been spilled out, the new lighting fixture had been smashed and a toy rifle the son had received on the Feast of the Sacrifice had disappeared.Some of the children slept over at the home of their 65-year-old grandmother, a native of the destroyed village of Jimzu. She calculates her sons' ages by the number of years that elapsed between 1948 and their births. On Tuesday, she walked around in the alleys and approached the main road near her son Jamal's home. "Suddenly a soldier appeared and aimed his rifle at me. I said to him: "So are you going to shoot me? Aren't you ashamed to act like this?"Claims of lootingFrom the Abu Radwan home the soldiers entered a somewhat larger house, where on that night between Tuesday and Wednesday several of the soldiers slept. Three of the young men of the house were arrested, and the women and children were rounded up into a single room. The girls' bedroom was broken into, and a hole was made in the wall that leads to the neighbors' bathroom. During the search for weapons, which were not found, everything was overturned - clothing, mattresses, closets, blankets, the contents of cupboards - an all-too-familiar picture.And as in other homes in the camp, the inhabitants will claim that money was taken from trouser pockets and wallets, as were video and still cameras, mobile phones and regular phones, gold jewelry and computers. In one home they displayed an empty chocolate box: The soldiers found it, related the homeowner, and gleefully ate all the chocolate as the family looked on. Similar claims have been heard during the past year from nearly everywhere Israel Defense Forces soldiers have broken in, throughout the West Bank. The IDF Spokesman's Office always says that it has no knowledge of these claims and that complaints must be filed at the coordination and liaison office.Apparently most of the destruction at Al-Amari was to the home of Nabil Anabi, on the third floor above the camp's coffee shop. The soldiers entered it through the window, on Tuesday at about 7:30 P.M. after they had failed to break down the thick concrete wall between his home and his mother's. The soldiers rounded up the family in the kitchen, and one soldier stood facing them with his rifle aimed. They wanted to sit in the chairs but they were ordered to sit on the floor. As they sat, they shrank every time they heard the sounds of crashing and breakageAfter pleading with the soldiers, the family was allowed to go downstairs to the family's grocery and sleep there. On their way down they had to pick their way over fragments of broken glass and tiles, furniture that had been smashed and used as barriers on the staircase, and the television set that had been flung down the steps to the first floor. "They even broke the name of Allah," mourned Nabil, 40, pointing at a gold-colored paper rolling on the stairs in a frame the glass of which was smashed.At least five of the houses built on higher ground were taken in this way to become observation and firing posts.Frightening momentsNabil Anabi had undergone an operation, and he has documentation to prove it. Therefore, he did not report for arrest. His brother did. On Tuesday morning, when the shooting had died down a bit, over the loudspeakers came the call to men between 15 and 45 to report to the girls' school. Um Mohammed, who is about 70, and her daughter tried to persuade her 15-year-old grandson, R., to run away. "They are mindless, the soldiers. Who knows what they will do to him? They will beat him up," said the grandmother. But R. decided to go, "Because after all, what could they do to me? They have nothing against me." Gradually all the men of the camp (those who were left after the wanted men, activists in Fatah and other organizations and members of the security forces had slipped away), arrived at the entrance to the school, along with R. at about 10 A.M. They were all held there until 7 in the evening, some of them handcuffed, some of them not. "And we didn't know what was happening to them, 10 meters from here," related the grandmother.At 7 in the evening, military Jeeps took all 169 of the detained men from Al-Amari to the Ofer army camp southwest of Ramallah. There they were made to sit on the ground. At 11 P.M. tents were brought, and later mattresses, but no blankets. There were 47 people in the tent with R. "The older ones argued among themselves all the time. They don't all like each other. They also took their anger out on us," relates R. "On Wednesday we ate for the first time."What did they bring to eat? "Ice cream. Chocolate ice cream."It was not just for the youngsters, he said, but also for the adults. Later they were given regular food and blankets.On Thursday about 90 of them were put into buses, with their hands cuffed in front of them. They were kept this way in the buses, with the motors running, from 10 A.M. until 4 P.M. Meanwhile, another group of detainees was taken for interrogation. What is your economic situation, the men in this group were asked. They answered: "Thank God, everything is fine, we have plenty of everything," so that the interrogator would not think that he had a candidate for enlistment as a collaborator in economic distress. On Friday, of the 169, 10 remained under arrest.At 4 P.M. the buses drove as far as the gates of the Ofer camp, a distance of a few meters. There, the detainees were taken off the buses after they were given a "detainee release" form. The entire area was under IDF control, but nevertheless they were told to disperse on their own on the streets of Bitunya, which were under curfew. These were perhaps the most frightening moments."A sharpshooter in a building can't see your release form," said R. Somehow they got to the headquarters of the Preventive Security in Bitunya, where they spent the night. From there they heard the IDF tanks on their way out, to the entrances to the city. In Ofer camp and in the school, R. was not afraid. "It's the first time I've seen Jews, and the army, up close. I wasn't afraid. To me, it was the soldiers who looked afraid."
Saturday, February 16
MCC Palestine Update #40
MCC Palestine Update #40
We received disappointing news the past week from our partner, the Applied Research Institute-Jerusalem (ARIJ). ARIJ staffer Nader Hreimat called to tell us that Israeli bulldozers had plowed under several acres of crops planted by farmers participating in an ARIJ- directed field study of what seed varieties can best thrive in rain-fed farming conditions. The farmers' land, it turned out, had been confiscated for the construction of a bypass road to connect illegal Israeli colonies in the Bethlehem area with Jerusalem. More land confiscation’s, more despair, less hope for a dismantling of illegal Israeli colonies and a just sharing of Palestine/Israel. To learn more about ARIJ's work, look up its website: http://www.arij.org/
Below are three pieces. The first, from the on-line journal Palestine Report, details conversations in the occupied territories about the possibilities of nonviolent direct action against the occupation. The second, by Israeli journalist Ran HaCohen, is a powerful analysis of occupation, terrorism, and their relationship. The final (third) piece is by a Palestinian staff member of Save the Children, reporting on his trip home to Nablus: unfortunately, his story is the daily reality for hundreds of thousands of Palestinians.
1. How to fight back
Joharah Baker
PalestineReport.org, 13 February 2002
ASK PALESTINIANS what they think of Mahatma Gandhi or Martin Luther King Jr. and the answer will most likely be full of admiration and respect for the two activists. Some Palestinians have even memorized the famous phrase, “I have a dream…” coined by King in his fiery speech in August of 1963. In the same breath, however, most Palestinians will tell you that they do not have a Gandhi or King of their own nor do they think these men’s ideologies could ever be emulated in the Palestinian resistance movement.
The subject of non-violent resistance has recently become recurrent in Palestinian discourse, mostly among intellectuals, expatriates, politicians and internationals who have come to the Palestinian territories in solidarity with the Palestinian people and in protest of the ongoing Israeli occupation.
As Palestinians enter the 17th month of the Palestinian uprising, local and international individuals and groups are thinking up alternative ways to fight the injustices of the occupation without shedding so much blood. “Our tools of resistance have been wrong,” contends Haidar Abdel Shafi, former Palestinian negotiator and head of the Palestine Red Crescent Society. “It is wrong if we think we can win militarily - it is not realistic.”
But Abdel Shafi does not say that the Intifada must take on completely nonviolent methods, for the simple reason that he believes fire must be fought with fire. “You can fight through armed struggle,” he says. “If an armed settler comes to take your land or home by force you can meet him with arms. This is self-defense.”
He believes, however, that the armed struggle must draw a more direct cause and effect relationship between Israeli actions and the Palestinian response. Self-defense, Abdel Shafi says, must be focused against Israeli actions such as home demolitions, the uprooting of trees and the overall Israeli goal of breaking the Palestinian will. This responsibility falls on the shoulders of the leadership, says the Palestinian personage.
When Abdel Shafi speaks of nonviolence, he speaks in terms of resistance through endurance. “[The leadership] must help the people to remain steadfast,” he says, since the battle will be long and difficult. This entails aiding the Palestinian people economically and with moral support in the face of the Israeli assault. But Abdel Shafi shuns the suggestion that Palestinian circumstances are comparable to that of the Indians under British colonialism when asked if those same nonviolent methods of civil disobedience could be incorporated into the Palestinian resistance. “The British were not in India as a colonial occupation,” he notes. “Their goals were economic.” In contrast, Palestinians are fighting a battle for their very survival, he points out.
Israeli intentions, implemented through settlement construction and making Palestinians illegal on the land, remain expansionist in nature. Fateh general secretary in the West Bank Marwan Barghouti also rules out substituting military actions with nonviolent demonstration. “An occupation that is so heavily armed cannot be answered with nonviolence,” he says definitively. But, he compromises, the Palestinians can and do utilize peaceful means in their struggle against Israeli occupation. “All resistance is legitimate for the Palestinians - strikes, sit- ins and conferences, alongside armed confrontations.”
Historically, the Palestinian revolution has never adopted nonviolent resistance as an ideology. From the start and with the establishment of the Palestine Liberation Organization in 1964, Palestinians pledged armed struggle against the usurpation of their land. Even when PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat made his dramatic appearance before the United Nations General Assembly in 1974, he made it clear that if forced, the Palestinians would continue their armed struggle against Israel. “I have come bearing an olive branch and a freedom fighter’s gun,” he told the international community. “Do not let the olive branch fall from my hand.”
With the continuation of Israeli occupation over Palestinian land captured in the 1967 War, Palestinians felt they had no other choice but to resist this occupation, a right enshrined in the Fourth Geneva Convention. As the Palestinian leadership in exile continued to support armed struggle against Israel, some voices emerged inside the occupied territories calling for a less violent approach.
In the early eighties, a soft-spoken Palestinian-Christian by the name of Mubarak Awad began to address Palestinians on the virtues of nonviolent resistance. In 1985, two years before the outbreak of the first Intifada, Awad started the Palestinian Center for the Study of Nonviolence. Although Awad’s views found a limited audience among Palestinians, they were never fully implemented. Israel, however, saw the activist as a threat. In June 1988, Awad was deported and settled in the United States where he set up an organization called Nonviolence International. Awad’s views did not get the widespread support that he had been hoping for among his fellow Palestinian citizens.
Today, Awad attributes this to his people’s lack of knowledge and understanding of nonviolence ideologies. “In the Arab mind, nonviolence is just surrendering to the one who has more power,” he told a Canadian interviewer.
But during the uprising of 1987, there were tangible signs that Palestinians were exercising some of the general concepts of non- violent resistance. The underground leadership of the Intifada called on Palestinians to boycott Israeli goods and work towards self- sufficiency by planting their own gardens. Neighborhood committees popped up throughout the different Palestinian cities, villages and camps, teaching children whose schools had been shut down and showing housewives how to can their own tomatoes, make their own pickles and knit their own sweaters.
But it was in the town of Beit Sahour near Bethlehem that the residents showed the most determination to fight the occupation using nonviolent means. In 1988, the residents not only boycotted Israeli goods, but started a town-wide refusal to pay Israeli taxes. As their civil disobedience continued, Israel raided Beit Sahour, seizing cars, refrigerators, televisions and other properties.
That movement and its tactics never spread to other areas and eventually died off. Its memory, however, has not. As Palestinians and the outside world assess the approaches of the current Intifada, Beit Sahour is an experience that has not been forgotten. “I think this is a more courageous act than shooting at Gilo [Israeli settlement],” says Italian European Union parliamentary member Louisa Morgantini. “Their act of civil disobedience had a very strong effect in the first Intifada.” Morgantini does not deny that Palestinians have the right to resist the occupation. However, she feels that shooting, even at Israeli military targets, will not bring about positive results. “There is no strategy in this Intifada,” she says, mirroring Abdel Shafi’s thoughts. “The Intifada came as a reaction; people were fed up.” She says that the leadership must think in political terms of what could help the struggle, which she adds regretfully, has not happened in this uprising.
Morgantini still expresses hope that nonviolent tactics could eventually take over the guerilla activity prevalent in this Intifada. As part of an international campaign in support of the Palestinians, Morgantini has forced herself through Israeli checkpoints, brought down roadblocks and--along with Israeli peace activists--broken through the blockade around President Yasser Arafat to meet with him in his Ramallah headquarters. Still, she does not romanticize her actions and knows that the real beneficiary of these protests will be the audience in her own country. “We know that when we open a roadblock, the Israeli soldiers will come and close it again,” she says realistically. “But we were there and we take this back to our own countries and try to put pressure back home.”
She believes these kinds of supportive activities are important because Palestinians are less at risk when internationals are involved. Israeli soldiers are more wary of shooting live ammunition into a crowd when there are Europeans, Americans or Israelis among the Palestinian protestors. But she does not blame the current atmosphere on Palestinians alone. She believes that developing a culture of nonviolence is a matter of concern for the whole world--not just Palestinians. At this moment in time, she says, the world is far from this goal. “The culture in Europe and in the US is a culture of war not of peace,” she says. Besides, she continues, the world demands too much of Palestinians. “Everyone in the world asks of the Palestinians - who are the most oppressed - to be perfect. I don’t ask that.”
Other foreigners engaged in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict are more passionate about the option of nonviolent resistance on the ground. In an article published on the website Palestine Chronicle, American writer Paul Larudee says in simple terms why nonviolent resistance should be given a chance in the Palestinian uprising. “It is not that violence or even certain types of violence are immoral or that nonviolence is somehow nobler. It is that violent resistance plainly is not getting the job done,” he writes. By obeying Israeli soldiers at the checkpoints and producing their identification cards on demand, he says, Palestinians are following the rules laid down by the occupier. “The power of an occupier, an oppressor or a government is its ability to control a population. In order to do so, the people must consent to be controlled. Once this consent is removed, the occupier is powerless,” Larudee writes.
On the ground, these ideas seem to be taking root within a limited circle. The International Solidarity Movement - a group of international, Israeli and Palestinian activists - come together periodically to protest the ongoing Israeli occupation and to show their support for the Palestinian struggle for freedom. According to their press material, they break through roadblocks, stop tanks, rebuild demolished homes and peacefully protest unjust Israeli measures. Their coordinated actions are based on the idea that without internationals among them, Palestinians would be much more vulnerable to Israeli violence. But according to some Palestinians, what is needed more than a shift to nonviolent methods of resistance is a reorganization of strategies for this resistance. If this were accomplished, the resistance would develop a life of its own, they say. “We can tolerate and endure suffering much longer and much better than the Israelis,” says Abdel Shafi confidently. The battle, he argues, is an extended one and Palestinians need better planning to persevere. “I think the Palestinian people are a miracle,” says Louisa Morgantini. “I don’t understand how they can continue to resist such aggression - how do they not explode.”- Published 13/2/02© 2002 Palestine Report.
2. Letter From Israel
Ran HaCohen
Antiwar.com, 15 February 2002
http://www.antiwar.com/hacohen/h-col.html
Terrorism vs. Occupation > >Readers very often accuse me that I do not write about Palestinian terrorism against Israel. A typical reader writes: "if Israeli gunmen were going in Palestinian pizza places, weddings, buses, discos, shoe stores and deliberately massacring Palestinian civilians, Ran HaCohen would go on a tirade against Israel. Yet he remains silent on Arab terrorism against Israeli civilians." I would like to relate to this accusation. But before doing that, let me pay a small tribute to a brave Israeli soldier who refuses to serve in the occupied territories any longer.
The Tel-Aviv weekly "Ha'Ir" last week printed forty short evidences of such refusers; here is one of them. Not the most shocking one. The harder stuff sometimes makes it to the news. But it illustrates some of the daily, banal routines of occupation, countless similar scenes that take place every day, every night, in endless variations. And they all count as "no news".
A SOLDIER'S STORY "Jabaliya (a refugee camp near Gaza). Terrible heat. It's after midnight, we are on our way to arrest "wanted people" - small criminals and tax-evaders whom the Shin Bet wants to blackmail. We surround the area and storm into the house. The officer quickly climbs the wall and I, his signalman, close behind him. We break into the "house": a single small room, blankets on the floor, four kids aged two to six or seven. They and the parents - a young woman and a not so young man - all wake up in panic, weeping and yelling. They are hysteric, and we, very young soldiers, too.
We shout at them to shut up and at the man to dress up, and "search" the home. There is nothing to find, nothing to look for. Handcuffs, and out to the lorry. Several arrested Palestinians have been gathered there, and someone from the Civil Administration is 'taking care' of them: slaps in the face, kicking. I want to say something, but off we go to the Shin Bet camp.
The man we have arrested is smashed at the lorry's floor, weeping, sobbing in fear, with a broken voice, 'I beg you, I beg you...'" (written by Sergeant (res.) Yotam Cohen)
ALTRUISM AND DISTRACTION Now back to why I don't write on terrorism. Surprisingly, this accusation comes mostly from American readers. At first I thought I should be grateful for this rare token of altruism: Are people living in the US actually more concerned about my well-being than I am?! But as all too often the complaints ended with such cordial blessing as "you racist anti-Semite", I gathered that pure altruism might not be the true motivation.
So why do people want me to talk about terrorism? Surely not because they know too little about it. As a mourning Palestinian mother said last week, international press would pay more attention to a Jewish settler's dog injured in a terrorist attack than to her dead child.
Terrorism is the most popular term in Middle East media coverage, and still people want me to talk about it too. So why? I believe it is because those people do not want me to talk about another term: occupation. Note how seldom this term is used when the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is dealt with. In fact, when you hear someone say "terrorism" over and over again, you can be certain he won't use the term "occupation".
TERRORISM VS. OCCUPATION Terrorism and Occupation may look like twin brothers. Both are illegitimate: occupation is acknowledged by international law, but for a limited time, not for 35 years; resistance to occupation (which is what Palestinian terrorism is about) is legitimate too, but not when innocent people are targeted. Both are murderous: innocent Israelis fall victim to terrorism, innocent Palestinians fall victim to occupation.
Terrorism is pervasive: it threatens all Israelis;
Occupation is even more pervasive: all Palestinians are under occupation, and as we have seen above, while terrorism can get Israelis in pizza places or discos, occupation visits Palestinians in bed, either by a missile or because some Shin Bet agent wants to blackmail them into collaboration.
Needless to say, the number of Palestinian victims of the occupation overwhelmingly exceeds the number of Israeli victims of terrorism - if you like, one more reason to talk about occupation more than terrorism. Israel, especially since September 11th but even long before, has been trying to convince the world that the Palestinian Authority, not just individual Palestinians, is engaged in terrorism.
True or not, the uncontroversial reality is that the State of Israel, not individual Israelis, is running the occupation. Israel sometimes claims that the occupation has been forced upon it against its will. It is one of the most ridiculous claims I have ever heard, but this is actually what Ehud Barak's celebrated "analytical mind" was trying to sell us: that because he had supposedly made some "generous offers" to the Palestinians, and because they had supposedly rejected these offers, Israel could not stop the occupation. Sounds ridiculous? Ask some Israel fans and you'll see how seriously they take this joke.
WHY OCCUPATION? The simple fact is that Israel is occupying the territories because it wants to occupy them. It does not withdraw from them, because it wants to take the land for settlements, for water and for regional strategic considerations. It does not annex them, because it does not want to give citizenship to three million Palestinians. Occupation is the only way to satisfy both aims. It may be direct occupation, it may be an indirect one: in fact, Israel is generously offering the Palestinians both options. Israel's present message to Arafat is expressed clearly and shamelessly: either you comply with the occupation, or we replace you with some other "leaders" who will. Shimon Peres prefers the former option, Sharon prefers the latter. They both support the occupation, they have both done more than any other Israeli politician for the sake of the Israeli settlements, they differ in tactics but share the same cause.
ENLIGHTENED OCCUPATION Centuries of colonialism have proved that "an enlightened occupation" is a contradiction is terms. Occupation cannot be tolerable and therefore cannot be tolerated. Expecting a people to live without political rights is both unreasonable and immoral. The occupied Palestinians, in order to get rid of the occupation, use violence - verbal violence, physical violence, violence against soldiers and settlers and deplorable violence against innocent people. Thus, the occupation becomes ever more violent and the deprivation of political rights is inevitably followed by violations of human rights.
You cannot oppress one people for the sake of another without resorting to atrocities. It starts with exploiting one's weakness (a sick elderly mother, a sick child) to blackmail one into collaboration, it goes all the way through torture, siege, starving and killing and it ends in letting a pregnant woman die with her infant at a checkpoint. As Friedrich Schiller said, this is the curse of the evil deed: it inevitably gives birth to ever more evil.
Indeed, Palestinian terrorism has increased step by step with occupation; the cruelest stage of occupation, with the whole world singing the praises of Oslo while the settlements were expanding rapidly and the canonization of the territories by checkpoints and highways was advancing in an unprecedented high pace, gave birth to the appalling phenomenon of Palestinians whose despair had overwhelmed them to the point of being ready to die in order to kill their oppressors. Just like the 200,000 settlers, just like the hundreds of checkpoints, the suicide bombers haven't always been there: they emerged in a specific historical context.
HOW TO STOP TERRORISM So why don't I talk of terrorism? Because Palestinian Terrorism is not the Occupation's twin brother, but rather its murderous offspring. Like father, like son. Terrorism is horrible; but occupation too, and the former is the result of the latter. To stop the circle of violence, to stop terrorism, the occupation must stop first. Since a one-state solution seems unlikely under the present circumstances, Israel must end the occupation by withdrawing all its forces, dismantling all its settlements and letting the Palestinians establish a true independent state in the entire territories occupied in 1967.
This is the only way to uproot terrorism, not bulldozing the Gaza strip or aiming a cannon at imprisoned Arafat's head. Talking of terrorism has become a way to keep silent about occupation. This is what some readers want me to do: to stop talking about occupation and to talk about terrorism instead. Sorry, guys: talking about Palestinian terrorism will not save anyone's life. It's talking about occupation that will hopefully bring both occupation and terrorism -in this order - to an end.
3. Dear all,
Although you might be experiencing something similar every day, the story of my trip home yesterday is something I want to share with you. After 2 days of not being able to get to Nablus, where I live with my family, I thought obeying Israeli army orders to be back at the checkpoint before 16:00 hours will help me reach home. So I shortened my working day and was able to reach the entry checkpoint of Huwara at 15:00.
An Ethiopian soldier rudely shouted at me and told me that I did not have the right to enter the city. His colleague supported him and threatened violence if I did not leave the area. Of course I called Rania [SC’s Program/Admin. Assistant] so that she could contact the appropriate people to facilitate my journey home.
Obviously, this level of coordination has become tiresome to Palestinian professionals always asking for better treatment; and when none of the phone calls to the IDF Civil Administration paid off by 16:15, I decided to try another entry point.
At the other entry point (Awarta), a Russian soldier was again denying the right of the locals to reach their families at the other side of the checkpoint. Interesting! Witnessing all that from my viewpoint and in order to save time, I decided to park the car at Huwara village and walk through Till. On my way to park the car, I encountered a flying checkpoint with other Ethiopian soldiers blocking the way for another 30 minutes and after parking the car, I joined a group of pharmacists to walk through Till.
When I reached Till, it was already dark and there was no one around. Even the donkey Othman [SC’s EEGP Project Manager who is also from the North] used earlier this morning was tired and he ended his day. As a result, I had to walk 13 kms through the mountains to reach the first point to get a taxi home. On our way, fearing the soldiers above the hill on the left side, we were listening to Israeli soldiers singing songs in different languages and this helped keep us calm.
I felt really angry that somebody all the way from Ethiopia or Russia has the nerve to stand at the door of my house and prevent me from reaching Nasha`at (my 4 -year old son) and his mother. On the lighter side, the walk through Till was good exercise. The walk had obviously increased the level of endorphins (hormones that the body produces and have a similar effect as morphine) in my blood and when I reached home, I was in a good mood.
This is my story for today! Enjoy it.
Ali
We received disappointing news the past week from our partner, the Applied Research Institute-Jerusalem (ARIJ). ARIJ staffer Nader Hreimat called to tell us that Israeli bulldozers had plowed under several acres of crops planted by farmers participating in an ARIJ- directed field study of what seed varieties can best thrive in rain-fed farming conditions. The farmers' land, it turned out, had been confiscated for the construction of a bypass road to connect illegal Israeli colonies in the Bethlehem area with Jerusalem. More land confiscation’s, more despair, less hope for a dismantling of illegal Israeli colonies and a just sharing of Palestine/Israel. To learn more about ARIJ's work, look up its website: http://www.arij.org/
Below are three pieces. The first, from the on-line journal Palestine Report, details conversations in the occupied territories about the possibilities of nonviolent direct action against the occupation. The second, by Israeli journalist Ran HaCohen, is a powerful analysis of occupation, terrorism, and their relationship. The final (third) piece is by a Palestinian staff member of Save the Children, reporting on his trip home to Nablus: unfortunately, his story is the daily reality for hundreds of thousands of Palestinians.
1. How to fight back
Joharah Baker
PalestineReport.org, 13 February 2002
ASK PALESTINIANS what they think of Mahatma Gandhi or Martin Luther King Jr. and the answer will most likely be full of admiration and respect for the two activists. Some Palestinians have even memorized the famous phrase, “I have a dream…” coined by King in his fiery speech in August of 1963. In the same breath, however, most Palestinians will tell you that they do not have a Gandhi or King of their own nor do they think these men’s ideologies could ever be emulated in the Palestinian resistance movement.
The subject of non-violent resistance has recently become recurrent in Palestinian discourse, mostly among intellectuals, expatriates, politicians and internationals who have come to the Palestinian territories in solidarity with the Palestinian people and in protest of the ongoing Israeli occupation.
As Palestinians enter the 17th month of the Palestinian uprising, local and international individuals and groups are thinking up alternative ways to fight the injustices of the occupation without shedding so much blood. “Our tools of resistance have been wrong,” contends Haidar Abdel Shafi, former Palestinian negotiator and head of the Palestine Red Crescent Society. “It is wrong if we think we can win militarily - it is not realistic.”
But Abdel Shafi does not say that the Intifada must take on completely nonviolent methods, for the simple reason that he believes fire must be fought with fire. “You can fight through armed struggle,” he says. “If an armed settler comes to take your land or home by force you can meet him with arms. This is self-defense.”
He believes, however, that the armed struggle must draw a more direct cause and effect relationship between Israeli actions and the Palestinian response. Self-defense, Abdel Shafi says, must be focused against Israeli actions such as home demolitions, the uprooting of trees and the overall Israeli goal of breaking the Palestinian will. This responsibility falls on the shoulders of the leadership, says the Palestinian personage.
When Abdel Shafi speaks of nonviolence, he speaks in terms of resistance through endurance. “[The leadership] must help the people to remain steadfast,” he says, since the battle will be long and difficult. This entails aiding the Palestinian people economically and with moral support in the face of the Israeli assault. But Abdel Shafi shuns the suggestion that Palestinian circumstances are comparable to that of the Indians under British colonialism when asked if those same nonviolent methods of civil disobedience could be incorporated into the Palestinian resistance. “The British were not in India as a colonial occupation,” he notes. “Their goals were economic.” In contrast, Palestinians are fighting a battle for their very survival, he points out.
Israeli intentions, implemented through settlement construction and making Palestinians illegal on the land, remain expansionist in nature. Fateh general secretary in the West Bank Marwan Barghouti also rules out substituting military actions with nonviolent demonstration. “An occupation that is so heavily armed cannot be answered with nonviolence,” he says definitively. But, he compromises, the Palestinians can and do utilize peaceful means in their struggle against Israeli occupation. “All resistance is legitimate for the Palestinians - strikes, sit- ins and conferences, alongside armed confrontations.”
Historically, the Palestinian revolution has never adopted nonviolent resistance as an ideology. From the start and with the establishment of the Palestine Liberation Organization in 1964, Palestinians pledged armed struggle against the usurpation of their land. Even when PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat made his dramatic appearance before the United Nations General Assembly in 1974, he made it clear that if forced, the Palestinians would continue their armed struggle against Israel. “I have come bearing an olive branch and a freedom fighter’s gun,” he told the international community. “Do not let the olive branch fall from my hand.”
With the continuation of Israeli occupation over Palestinian land captured in the 1967 War, Palestinians felt they had no other choice but to resist this occupation, a right enshrined in the Fourth Geneva Convention. As the Palestinian leadership in exile continued to support armed struggle against Israel, some voices emerged inside the occupied territories calling for a less violent approach.
In the early eighties, a soft-spoken Palestinian-Christian by the name of Mubarak Awad began to address Palestinians on the virtues of nonviolent resistance. In 1985, two years before the outbreak of the first Intifada, Awad started the Palestinian Center for the Study of Nonviolence. Although Awad’s views found a limited audience among Palestinians, they were never fully implemented. Israel, however, saw the activist as a threat. In June 1988, Awad was deported and settled in the United States where he set up an organization called Nonviolence International. Awad’s views did not get the widespread support that he had been hoping for among his fellow Palestinian citizens.
Today, Awad attributes this to his people’s lack of knowledge and understanding of nonviolence ideologies. “In the Arab mind, nonviolence is just surrendering to the one who has more power,” he told a Canadian interviewer.
But during the uprising of 1987, there were tangible signs that Palestinians were exercising some of the general concepts of non- violent resistance. The underground leadership of the Intifada called on Palestinians to boycott Israeli goods and work towards self- sufficiency by planting their own gardens. Neighborhood committees popped up throughout the different Palestinian cities, villages and camps, teaching children whose schools had been shut down and showing housewives how to can their own tomatoes, make their own pickles and knit their own sweaters.
But it was in the town of Beit Sahour near Bethlehem that the residents showed the most determination to fight the occupation using nonviolent means. In 1988, the residents not only boycotted Israeli goods, but started a town-wide refusal to pay Israeli taxes. As their civil disobedience continued, Israel raided Beit Sahour, seizing cars, refrigerators, televisions and other properties.
That movement and its tactics never spread to other areas and eventually died off. Its memory, however, has not. As Palestinians and the outside world assess the approaches of the current Intifada, Beit Sahour is an experience that has not been forgotten. “I think this is a more courageous act than shooting at Gilo [Israeli settlement],” says Italian European Union parliamentary member Louisa Morgantini. “Their act of civil disobedience had a very strong effect in the first Intifada.” Morgantini does not deny that Palestinians have the right to resist the occupation. However, she feels that shooting, even at Israeli military targets, will not bring about positive results. “There is no strategy in this Intifada,” she says, mirroring Abdel Shafi’s thoughts. “The Intifada came as a reaction; people were fed up.” She says that the leadership must think in political terms of what could help the struggle, which she adds regretfully, has not happened in this uprising.
Morgantini still expresses hope that nonviolent tactics could eventually take over the guerilla activity prevalent in this Intifada. As part of an international campaign in support of the Palestinians, Morgantini has forced herself through Israeli checkpoints, brought down roadblocks and--along with Israeli peace activists--broken through the blockade around President Yasser Arafat to meet with him in his Ramallah headquarters. Still, she does not romanticize her actions and knows that the real beneficiary of these protests will be the audience in her own country. “We know that when we open a roadblock, the Israeli soldiers will come and close it again,” she says realistically. “But we were there and we take this back to our own countries and try to put pressure back home.”
She believes these kinds of supportive activities are important because Palestinians are less at risk when internationals are involved. Israeli soldiers are more wary of shooting live ammunition into a crowd when there are Europeans, Americans or Israelis among the Palestinian protestors. But she does not blame the current atmosphere on Palestinians alone. She believes that developing a culture of nonviolence is a matter of concern for the whole world--not just Palestinians. At this moment in time, she says, the world is far from this goal. “The culture in Europe and in the US is a culture of war not of peace,” she says. Besides, she continues, the world demands too much of Palestinians. “Everyone in the world asks of the Palestinians - who are the most oppressed - to be perfect. I don’t ask that.”
Other foreigners engaged in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict are more passionate about the option of nonviolent resistance on the ground. In an article published on the website Palestine Chronicle, American writer Paul Larudee says in simple terms why nonviolent resistance should be given a chance in the Palestinian uprising. “It is not that violence or even certain types of violence are immoral or that nonviolence is somehow nobler. It is that violent resistance plainly is not getting the job done,” he writes. By obeying Israeli soldiers at the checkpoints and producing their identification cards on demand, he says, Palestinians are following the rules laid down by the occupier. “The power of an occupier, an oppressor or a government is its ability to control a population. In order to do so, the people must consent to be controlled. Once this consent is removed, the occupier is powerless,” Larudee writes.
On the ground, these ideas seem to be taking root within a limited circle. The International Solidarity Movement - a group of international, Israeli and Palestinian activists - come together periodically to protest the ongoing Israeli occupation and to show their support for the Palestinian struggle for freedom. According to their press material, they break through roadblocks, stop tanks, rebuild demolished homes and peacefully protest unjust Israeli measures. Their coordinated actions are based on the idea that without internationals among them, Palestinians would be much more vulnerable to Israeli violence. But according to some Palestinians, what is needed more than a shift to nonviolent methods of resistance is a reorganization of strategies for this resistance. If this were accomplished, the resistance would develop a life of its own, they say. “We can tolerate and endure suffering much longer and much better than the Israelis,” says Abdel Shafi confidently. The battle, he argues, is an extended one and Palestinians need better planning to persevere. “I think the Palestinian people are a miracle,” says Louisa Morgantini. “I don’t understand how they can continue to resist such aggression - how do they not explode.”- Published 13/2/02© 2002 Palestine Report.
2. Letter From Israel
Ran HaCohen
Antiwar.com, 15 February 2002
http://www.antiwar.com/hacohen/h-col.html
Terrorism vs. Occupation > >Readers very often accuse me that I do not write about Palestinian terrorism against Israel. A typical reader writes: "if Israeli gunmen were going in Palestinian pizza places, weddings, buses, discos, shoe stores and deliberately massacring Palestinian civilians, Ran HaCohen would go on a tirade against Israel. Yet he remains silent on Arab terrorism against Israeli civilians." I would like to relate to this accusation. But before doing that, let me pay a small tribute to a brave Israeli soldier who refuses to serve in the occupied territories any longer.
The Tel-Aviv weekly "Ha'Ir" last week printed forty short evidences of such refusers; here is one of them. Not the most shocking one. The harder stuff sometimes makes it to the news. But it illustrates some of the daily, banal routines of occupation, countless similar scenes that take place every day, every night, in endless variations. And they all count as "no news".
A SOLDIER'S STORY "Jabaliya (a refugee camp near Gaza). Terrible heat. It's after midnight, we are on our way to arrest "wanted people" - small criminals and tax-evaders whom the Shin Bet wants to blackmail. We surround the area and storm into the house. The officer quickly climbs the wall and I, his signalman, close behind him. We break into the "house": a single small room, blankets on the floor, four kids aged two to six or seven. They and the parents - a young woman and a not so young man - all wake up in panic, weeping and yelling. They are hysteric, and we, very young soldiers, too.
We shout at them to shut up and at the man to dress up, and "search" the home. There is nothing to find, nothing to look for. Handcuffs, and out to the lorry. Several arrested Palestinians have been gathered there, and someone from the Civil Administration is 'taking care' of them: slaps in the face, kicking. I want to say something, but off we go to the Shin Bet camp.
The man we have arrested is smashed at the lorry's floor, weeping, sobbing in fear, with a broken voice, 'I beg you, I beg you...'" (written by Sergeant (res.) Yotam Cohen)
ALTRUISM AND DISTRACTION Now back to why I don't write on terrorism. Surprisingly, this accusation comes mostly from American readers. At first I thought I should be grateful for this rare token of altruism: Are people living in the US actually more concerned about my well-being than I am?! But as all too often the complaints ended with such cordial blessing as "you racist anti-Semite", I gathered that pure altruism might not be the true motivation.
So why do people want me to talk about terrorism? Surely not because they know too little about it. As a mourning Palestinian mother said last week, international press would pay more attention to a Jewish settler's dog injured in a terrorist attack than to her dead child.
Terrorism is the most popular term in Middle East media coverage, and still people want me to talk about it too. So why? I believe it is because those people do not want me to talk about another term: occupation. Note how seldom this term is used when the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is dealt with. In fact, when you hear someone say "terrorism" over and over again, you can be certain he won't use the term "occupation".
TERRORISM VS. OCCUPATION Terrorism and Occupation may look like twin brothers. Both are illegitimate: occupation is acknowledged by international law, but for a limited time, not for 35 years; resistance to occupation (which is what Palestinian terrorism is about) is legitimate too, but not when innocent people are targeted. Both are murderous: innocent Israelis fall victim to terrorism, innocent Palestinians fall victim to occupation.
Terrorism is pervasive: it threatens all Israelis;
Occupation is even more pervasive: all Palestinians are under occupation, and as we have seen above, while terrorism can get Israelis in pizza places or discos, occupation visits Palestinians in bed, either by a missile or because some Shin Bet agent wants to blackmail them into collaboration.
Needless to say, the number of Palestinian victims of the occupation overwhelmingly exceeds the number of Israeli victims of terrorism - if you like, one more reason to talk about occupation more than terrorism. Israel, especially since September 11th but even long before, has been trying to convince the world that the Palestinian Authority, not just individual Palestinians, is engaged in terrorism.
True or not, the uncontroversial reality is that the State of Israel, not individual Israelis, is running the occupation. Israel sometimes claims that the occupation has been forced upon it against its will. It is one of the most ridiculous claims I have ever heard, but this is actually what Ehud Barak's celebrated "analytical mind" was trying to sell us: that because he had supposedly made some "generous offers" to the Palestinians, and because they had supposedly rejected these offers, Israel could not stop the occupation. Sounds ridiculous? Ask some Israel fans and you'll see how seriously they take this joke.
WHY OCCUPATION? The simple fact is that Israel is occupying the territories because it wants to occupy them. It does not withdraw from them, because it wants to take the land for settlements, for water and for regional strategic considerations. It does not annex them, because it does not want to give citizenship to three million Palestinians. Occupation is the only way to satisfy both aims. It may be direct occupation, it may be an indirect one: in fact, Israel is generously offering the Palestinians both options. Israel's present message to Arafat is expressed clearly and shamelessly: either you comply with the occupation, or we replace you with some other "leaders" who will. Shimon Peres prefers the former option, Sharon prefers the latter. They both support the occupation, they have both done more than any other Israeli politician for the sake of the Israeli settlements, they differ in tactics but share the same cause.
ENLIGHTENED OCCUPATION Centuries of colonialism have proved that "an enlightened occupation" is a contradiction is terms. Occupation cannot be tolerable and therefore cannot be tolerated. Expecting a people to live without political rights is both unreasonable and immoral. The occupied Palestinians, in order to get rid of the occupation, use violence - verbal violence, physical violence, violence against soldiers and settlers and deplorable violence against innocent people. Thus, the occupation becomes ever more violent and the deprivation of political rights is inevitably followed by violations of human rights.
You cannot oppress one people for the sake of another without resorting to atrocities. It starts with exploiting one's weakness (a sick elderly mother, a sick child) to blackmail one into collaboration, it goes all the way through torture, siege, starving and killing and it ends in letting a pregnant woman die with her infant at a checkpoint. As Friedrich Schiller said, this is the curse of the evil deed: it inevitably gives birth to ever more evil.
Indeed, Palestinian terrorism has increased step by step with occupation; the cruelest stage of occupation, with the whole world singing the praises of Oslo while the settlements were expanding rapidly and the canonization of the territories by checkpoints and highways was advancing in an unprecedented high pace, gave birth to the appalling phenomenon of Palestinians whose despair had overwhelmed them to the point of being ready to die in order to kill their oppressors. Just like the 200,000 settlers, just like the hundreds of checkpoints, the suicide bombers haven't always been there: they emerged in a specific historical context.
HOW TO STOP TERRORISM So why don't I talk of terrorism? Because Palestinian Terrorism is not the Occupation's twin brother, but rather its murderous offspring. Like father, like son. Terrorism is horrible; but occupation too, and the former is the result of the latter. To stop the circle of violence, to stop terrorism, the occupation must stop first. Since a one-state solution seems unlikely under the present circumstances, Israel must end the occupation by withdrawing all its forces, dismantling all its settlements and letting the Palestinians establish a true independent state in the entire territories occupied in 1967.
This is the only way to uproot terrorism, not bulldozing the Gaza strip or aiming a cannon at imprisoned Arafat's head. Talking of terrorism has become a way to keep silent about occupation. This is what some readers want me to do: to stop talking about occupation and to talk about terrorism instead. Sorry, guys: talking about Palestinian terrorism will not save anyone's life. It's talking about occupation that will hopefully bring both occupation and terrorism -in this order - to an end.
3. Dear all,
Although you might be experiencing something similar every day, the story of my trip home yesterday is something I want to share with you. After 2 days of not being able to get to Nablus, where I live with my family, I thought obeying Israeli army orders to be back at the checkpoint before 16:00 hours will help me reach home. So I shortened my working day and was able to reach the entry checkpoint of Huwara at 15:00.
An Ethiopian soldier rudely shouted at me and told me that I did not have the right to enter the city. His colleague supported him and threatened violence if I did not leave the area. Of course I called Rania [SC’s Program/Admin. Assistant] so that she could contact the appropriate people to facilitate my journey home.
Obviously, this level of coordination has become tiresome to Palestinian professionals always asking for better treatment; and when none of the phone calls to the IDF Civil Administration paid off by 16:15, I decided to try another entry point.
At the other entry point (Awarta), a Russian soldier was again denying the right of the locals to reach their families at the other side of the checkpoint. Interesting! Witnessing all that from my viewpoint and in order to save time, I decided to park the car at Huwara village and walk through Till. On my way to park the car, I encountered a flying checkpoint with other Ethiopian soldiers blocking the way for another 30 minutes and after parking the car, I joined a group of pharmacists to walk through Till.
When I reached Till, it was already dark and there was no one around. Even the donkey Othman [SC’s EEGP Project Manager who is also from the North] used earlier this morning was tired and he ended his day. As a result, I had to walk 13 kms through the mountains to reach the first point to get a taxi home. On our way, fearing the soldiers above the hill on the left side, we were listening to Israeli soldiers singing songs in different languages and this helped keep us calm.
I felt really angry that somebody all the way from Ethiopia or Russia has the nerve to stand at the door of my house and prevent me from reaching Nasha`at (my 4 -year old son) and his mother. On the lighter side, the walk through Till was good exercise. The walk had obviously increased the level of endorphins (hormones that the body produces and have a similar effect as morphine) in my blood and when I reached home, I was in a good mood.
This is my story for today! Enjoy it.
Ali
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