A Missing Link in Support for Palestinian Human Rights From Bil’in to Birmingham
By DAVE HIMMELSTEIN
One of the latest in the long series of unpublicized Israeli attacks on civilians took place on August 25 in the West Bank village of Bil’in, a longstanding bastion of nonviolent Palestinian resistance. It occurred during the weekly protest against the Israeli de-facto-boundary wall being constructed in their midst. About 100 protestors — Palestinian, Israeli and international activists — were walking to the site of the wall when, without provocation, soldiers in riot gear waded in and began clubbing demonstrators and firing rubber bullets at close range.
An Italian, an Israeli and two Palestinian activists were beaten so badly they had to be taken to hospital. One American suffered a concussion and another sustained hand injuries, in addition to taking a rubber bullet in her back and another one in her hip. Besides being clubbed, a Palestinian coordinator was shot with three rubber bullets in the back and one in the leg.
Unfortunately, but unsurprisingly, this mayhem remains an unknown reality for mainstream-media consumers in North America. Despite the long-running nature of such activity and the graphic brutality of Israel’s response, coverage of these actions in Canadian and U.S. media is scant to non-existent. And, of course, the public invisibility of such activity abroad contributes to making it such a tough sell on the ground. The media blackout was dissected by Patrick O’Connor in October 2005, his report pointing out that the New York Times had published only three feature reports on Palestinian nonviolent resistance in the previous three years — “this despite the fact that Palestinians have conducted hundreds of nonviolent protests over the last three years throughout the West Bank against Israel’s construction of the Wall on Palestinian land, and despite the fact that the Israeli army killed nine Palestinian protesters, wounded several thousand protesters, harassed and collectively punished villages that protested, and arrested hundreds of protesters, including nonviolent protest leaders.”
Palestinians have grown used to a prevalent refrain in expressions of support received from international well-wishers: If only you guys acted like Martin Luther King or Mahatma Gandhi, the whole world would jump on your bandwagon. That message, of course, is superfluous–indeed, counter-factual. Organized non-violent Palestinian resistance has been going on for decades and continues to be actively exercised in the struggle against the occupation and the separation wall. Israeli products and services have been boycotted; military orders have been refused; confiscated properties have not been vacated. “Newsworthy” incidents gain sporadic attention, as when Israel was obliged to bring in the bailiffs in 1989 to deal with Palestinians’ refusal to pay taxes in the town of Beit Sahour. Higher profile was Israel’s 2003 siege of the Church of Nativity to crack down on Palestinian priests who were protecting fellow Palestinians.
Yet the exhortations continue. In fact, Palestinians have gotten the Go-Gandhi message from only two generations away from the horse’s mouth. It was delivered in 2004 by Arun Gandhi, 70-year-old grandson of the Mahatma, a naturalized American citizen who directs the Institute for Non-violence in Tennessee. While standing next to Israel’s separation wall in Abu Dis, Gandhi framed the non-violent option in terms of necessity: “I don’t think Palestine has the economic and military capacity to confront a huge state like Israel, which has not only a powerful military arsenal but powerful friends.”
Back in North America, socio-ecumenical rabbi Michael Lerner is explicit about the homegrown icon of nonviolence. “Imagine,” he told Al-Jazeera, “a parallel with Martin Luther King Jr: if blacks had been adopting violent methods at the same time as he was giving speeches in Washington, could he have achieved what he did? Peaceful protest is the only way the Palestinians can ever win.” And Lerner sets the bar high: “It will have to be an all or nothing. It cannot be that some sections of the community resist non-violently while others do not.”
A parallel between Palestinians and African Americans seems to have occurred to at least one American president. In Perceptions of Palestine, Kathleen Christison reports that Jimmy Carter made the explicit comparison in arguing against the view that the Israel-Palestine situation was hopeless. (She offers a contrapuntal reality-check by pointing out that Carter didn’t actually meet a real live Palestinian till a few years after leaving office.)
Among African Americans, since the days when Dr. King took pains to position himself as supportive of Israel, a perceived parallel between their human rights struggles and those of Palestinians has been more widespread at the grass-roots than at the elite level, with certain notable exceptions. Of course, all such perceptions are filtered through the convoluted multi-level interface that exists between African Americans and Jewish Americans. But, in a nutshell, Israel has turned out to be a bridge-burner. Jews were highly active in the early civil rights movement, but many of them felt rudely shaken when Martin was eclipsed by Malcolm. Things have never been the same. Any rekindling of Black-Jewish solidarity will probably take place outside established channels and, psychologically, will entail cornerstone realignment towards Israel on the part of North American Jews. Potential role models are the courageous Israeli Jews who have joined with Palestinians in direct action campaigns for decades–not to mention “righteous gentiles” from abroad like Rachel Corrie, the young activist from Olympia, Washington who was bulldozed to death while trying to prevent a home demolition.
The raw material for a North American shock of recognition exists. If the Bil’in confrontation were played out on TV screens in the United States and Canada, memories of historic King-related TV newscasts would undoubtedly be evoked. These would certainly include unforgettable images from spring 1963 in Birmingham, Alabama, when a “Bull” named Connor turned police dogs, fire hoses, stun guns and tear gas on civil rights protestors. Advocates for Israel would respond by brandishing a handful of quotes where MLK praises Israel for its democracy and supports its right to protect itself. But those guarded remarks would likely be overshadowed by the visual flashback, supplemented perhaps by a rereading of King’s celebrated “Letter from a Birmingham jail.” That missive lays out the operational dynamic of passive resistance (“nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue”) and confronts the law-and-order crowd (“everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was ‘legal’ and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was ‘illegal'”).
The King legacy is certainly a homegrown influence on the many brave Americans and Canadians who have asserted their own spiritual “birthright” by going to Palestine and joining in nonviolent direct action against the Israeli occupation. Rachel Corrie’s unacknowledged but ongoing presence hovers over the U.S. State Department, which is doing its best to discourage Americans from joining such actions. According to a recent advisory: “Those taking part in demonstrations, nonviolent resistance, and ‘direct action’ are advised to cease such activity for their own safety.”
While Bil’in has become emblematic of non-violent resistance, it is far from alone, as pointed out by Mohammed Khatib, secretary of the Bil’in village council and resistance committee member. During an interview in France last fall, he mentioned Budrus as another “notable” example of resistance, attributing Bil’in’s visibility to operational originality and media coverage. Khatib sees the presence of supporters from abroad as natural and inherent in the situation: “It is the international community which created the state of Israel, and, through its tribunals, has also condemned the construction of the wall, settlement activity and the Occupation. Together we must make Israel comply with international law.”
A mighty thread connects Birmingham with Bil’in. The organic outrage which was channeled into, and given form by, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, is the same passion that sustains the International Solidarity Movement, Ta’ayush, Gush Shalom, Palestinian Centre for Rapprochement, Holy Land Trust, and others. It animates a trans-national community of purpose for which, as is the case with Zionism, overall outlook is more important than organizational structure. However unlike Zionism, it bears the mark of a defining restraint and self-discipline that gives it unique built-in credibility.
Dave Himmelstein is a writer and editor in Montreal. Reachable at chebrexy@hotmail.com
Gaza is dying. The Israeli siege of the Palestinian enclave is so tight that its people are on the edge of starvation. Here on the shores of the Mediterranean a great tragedy is taking place that is being ignored because the world’s attention has been diverted by wars in Lebanon and Iraq.
A whole society is being destroyed. There are 1.5 million Palestinians imprisoned in the most heavily populated area in the world. Israel has stopped all trade. It has even forbidden fishermen to go far from the shore so they wade into the surf to try vainly to catch fish with hand-thrown nets.
Many people are being killed by Israeli incursions that occur every day by land and air. A total of 262 people have been killed and 1,200 wounded, of whom 60 had arms or legs amputated, since 25 June, says Dr Juma al-Saqa, the director of the al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City which is fast running out of medicine. Of these, 64 were children and 26 women. This bloody conflict in Gaza has so far received only a fraction of the attention given by the international media to the war in Lebanon.
It was on 25 June that the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit was taken captive and two other soldiers were killed by Palestinian militants who used a tunnel to get out of the Gaza Strip. In the aftermath of this, writes Gideon Levy in the daily Haaretz, the Israeli army “has been rampaging through Gaza – there’s no other word to describe it – killing and demolishing, bombing and shelling, indiscriminately”. Gaza has essentially been reoccupied since Israeli troops and tanks come and go at will. In the northern district of Shajhayeh they took over several houses last week and stayed five days. By the time they withdrew, 22 Palestinians had been killed, three houses were destroyed and groves of olive, citrus and almond trees had been bulldozed.
Fuad al-Tuba, the 61-year-old farmer who owned a farm here, said: “They even destroyed 22 of my bee-hives and killed four sheep.” He pointed sadly to a field, its brown sandy earth churned up by tracks of bulldozers, where the stumps of trees and broken branches with wilting leaves lay in heaps. Near by a yellow car was standing on its nose in the middle of a heap of concrete blocks that had once been a small house.
His son Baher al-Tuba described how for five days Israeli soldiers confined him and his relatives to one room in his house where they survived by drinking water from a fish pond. “Snipers took up positions in the windows and shot at anybody who came near,” he said. “They killed one of my neighbours called Fathi Abu Gumbuz who was 56 years old and just went out to get water.”
Sometimes the Israeli army gives a warning before a house is destroyed. The sound that Palestinians most dread is an unknown voice on their cell phone saying they have half an hour to leave their home before it is hit by bombs or missiles. There is no appeal.
But it is not the Israeli incursions alone that are destroying Gaza and its people. In the understated prose of a World Bank report published last month, the West Bank and Gaza face “a year of unprecedented economic recession. Real incomes may contract by at least a third in 2006 and poverty to affect close to two thirds of the population.” Poverty in this case means a per capita income of under $2 (£1.06) a day.
There are signs of desperation everywhere. Crime is increasing. People do anything to feed their families. Israeli troops entered the Gaza industrial zone to search for tunnels and kicked out the Palestinian police. When the Israelis withdrew they were replaced not by the police but by looters. On one day this week there were three donkey carts removing twisted scrap metal from the remains of factories that once employed thousands.
“It is the worst year for us since 1948 [when Palestinian refugees first poured into Gaza],” says Dr Maged Abu-Ramadan, a former ophthalmologist who is mayor of Gaza City. “Gaza is a jail. Neither people nor goods are allowed to leave it. People are already starving. They try to live on bread and falafel and a few tomatoes and cucumbers they grow themselves.”
The few ways that Gazans had of making money have disappeared. Dr Abu-Ramadan says the Israelis “have destroyed 70 per cent of our orange groves in order to create security zones.” Carnations and strawberries, two of Gaza’s main exports, were thrown away or left to rot. An Israeli air strike destroyed the electric power station so 55 per cent of power was lost. Electricity supply is now becoming almost as intermittent as in Baghdad.
The Israeli assault over the past two months struck a society already hit by the withdrawal of EU subsidies after the election of Hamas as the Palestinian government in March. Israel is withholding taxes owed on goods entering Gaza. Under US pressure, Arab banks abroad will not transfer funds to the government.
Two thirds of people are unemployed and the remaining third who mostly work for the state are not being paid. Gaza is now by far the poorest region on the Mediterranean. Per capita annual income is $700, compared with $20,000 in Israel. Conditions are much worse than in Lebanon where Hizbollah liberally compensates war victims for loss of their houses. If Gaza did not have enough troubles this week there were protest strikes and marches by unpaid soldiers, police and security men. These were organised by Fatah, the movement of the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, also known as Abu Mazen, which lost the election to Hamas in January. His supporters marched through the streets waving their Kalashnikovs in the air. “Abu Mazen you are brave,” they shouted. “Save us from this disaster.” Sour-looking Hamas gunmen kept a low profile during the demonstration but the two sides are not far from fighting it out in the streets.
The Israeli siege and the European boycott are a collective punishment of everybody in Gaza. The gunmen are unlikely to be deterred. In a bed in Shifa Hospital was a sturdy young man called Ala Hejairi with wounds to his neck, legs, chest and stomach. “I was laying an anti-tank mine last week in Shajhayeh when I was hit by fire from an Israeli drone,” he said. “I will return to the resistance when I am better. Why should I worry? If I die I will die a martyr and go to paradise.”
His father, Adel, said he was proud of what his son had done adding that three of his nephews were already martyrs. He supported the Hamas government: “Arab and Western countries want to destroy this government because it is the government of the resistance.”
As the economy collapses there will be many more young men in Gaza willing to take Ala Hejairi’s place. Untrained and ill-armed most will be killed. But the destruction of Gaza, now under way, will ensure that no peace is possible in the Middle East for generations to come.
The deadly toll
* After the kidnap of Cpl Gilad Shalit by Palestinians on 25 June, Israel launched a massive offensive and blockade of Gaza under the operation name Summer Rains.
* The Gaza Strip’s 1.3 million inhabitants, 33 per cent of whom live in refugee camps, have been under attack for 74 days.
* More than 260 Palestinians, including 64 children and 26 women, have been killed since 25 June. One in five is a child. One Israeli soldier has been killed and 26 have been wounded.
* 1,200 Palestinians have been injured, including up to 60 amputations. A third of victims brought to hospital are children.
* Israeli warplanes have launched more than 250 raids on Gaza, hitting the two power stations and the foreign and Information ministries.
* At least 120 Palestinian structures including houses, workshops and greenhouses have been destroyed and 160 damaged by the Israelis.
* The UN has criticised Israel’s bombing, which has caused an estimated $1.8bn in damage to the electricity grid and leaving more than a million people without regular access to drinking water.
* The Israeli human rights group B’Tselem says 76 Palestinians, including 19 children, were killed by Israeli forces in August alone. Evidence shows at least 53 per cent were not participating in hostilities.
* In the latest outbreak of violence, three Palestinians were killed yesterday when Israeli troops raided a West Bank town in search of a wanted militant. Two of those killed were unarmed, according to witnesses.
Gaza is dying. The Israeli siege of the Palestinian enclave is so tight that its people are on the edge of starvation. Here on the shores of the Mediterranean a great tragedy is taking place that is being ignored because the world’s attention has been diverted by wars in Lebanon and Iraq.
A whole society is being destroyed. There are 1.5 million Palestinians imprisoned in the most heavily populated area in the world. Israel has stopped all trade. It has even forbidden fishermen to go far from the shore so they wade into the surf to try vainly to catch fish with hand-thrown nets.
Many people are being killed by Israeli incursions that occur every day by land and air. A total of 262 people have been killed and 1,200 wounded, of whom 60 had arms or legs amputated, since 25 June, says Dr Juma al-Saqa, the director of the al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City which is fast running out of medicine. Of these, 64 were children and 26 women. This bloody conflict in Gaza has so far received only a fraction of the attention given by the international media to the war in Lebanon.
It was on 25 June that the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit was taken captive and two other soldiers were killed by Palestinian militants who used a tunnel to get out of the Gaza Strip. In the aftermath of this, writes Gideon Levy in the daily Haaretz, the Israeli army “has been rampaging through Gaza – there’s no other word to describe it – killing and demolishing, bombing and shelling, indiscriminately”. Gaza has essentially been reoccupied since Israeli troops and tanks come and go at will. In the northern district of Shajhayeh they took over several houses last week and stayed five days. By the time they withdrew, 22 Palestinians had been killed, three houses were destroyed and groves of olive, citrus and almond trees had been bulldozed.
Fuad al-Tuba, the 61-year-old farmer who owned a farm here, said: “They even destroyed 22 of my bee-hives and killed four sheep.” He pointed sadly to a field, its brown sandy earth churned up by tracks of bulldozers, where the stumps of trees and broken branches with wilting leaves lay in heaps. Near by a yellow car was standing on its nose in the middle of a heap of concrete blocks that had once been a small house.
His son Baher al-Tuba described how for five days Israeli soldiers confined him and his relatives to one room in his house where they survived by drinking water from a fish pond. “Snipers took up positions in the windows and shot at anybody who came near,” he said. “They killed one of my neighbours called Fathi Abu Gumbuz who was 56 years old and just went out to get water.”
Sometimes the Israeli army gives a warning before a house is destroyed. The sound that Palestinians most dread is an unknown voice on their cell phone saying they have half an hour to leave their home before it is hit by bombs or missiles. There is no appeal.
But it is not the Israeli incursions alone that are destroying Gaza and its people. In the understated prose of a World Bank report published last month, the West Bank and Gaza face “a year of unprecedented economic recession. Real incomes may contract by at least a third in 2006 and poverty to affect close to two thirds of the population.” Poverty in this case means a per capita income of under $2 (£1.06) a day.
There are signs of desperation everywhere. Crime is increasing. People do anything to feed their families. Israeli troops entered the Gaza industrial zone to search for tunnels and kicked out the Palestinian police. When the Israelis withdrew they were replaced not by the police but by looters. On one day this week there were three donkey carts removing twisted scrap metal from the remains of factories that once employed thousands.
“It is the worst year for us since 1948 [when Palestinian refugees first poured into Gaza],” says Dr Maged Abu-Ramadan, a former ophthalmologist who is mayor of Gaza City. “Gaza is a jail. Neither people nor goods are allowed to leave it. People are already starving. They try to live on bread and falafel and a few tomatoes and cucumbers they grow themselves.”
The few ways that Gazans had of making money have disappeared. Dr Abu-Ramadan says the Israelis “have destroyed 70 per cent of our orange groves in order to create security zones.” Carnations and strawberries, two of Gaza’s main exports, were thrown away or left to rot. An Israeli air strike destroyed the electric power station so 55 per cent of power was lost. Electricity supply is now becoming almost as intermittent as in Baghdad.
More than 70 journalists, activists, and members of the diplomatic corps met on September 6th at the Ambassador Hotel in Jerusalem for a press conference regarding the Campaign for the Right of Entry/Re-Entry to the occupied Palestinian territory.
The event was organized in conjunction with the Israeli-Palestine Center for Research and Information (IPCRI). The purpose of the press conference was to engage Israeli officials on the issue in the presence of foreign representatives. No Israeli government representatives, however, were present. A US consulate spokesperson emphasized that the consulate was aware of the visa freeze policy and that the issue was being raised at the highest levels.
The Committee for the Protection of Foreign Passport Holders Residing in and/or Visiting the Occupied Palestinian Territory (CPFPH), launched in June 2006, has stepped up its campaign against the Israeli Occupation authorities’ policy of denying entry to residents of and visitors to the OPT (Gaza Strip and West Bank) who do not hold a Palestinian ID issued by the Israeli Interior Ministry. A Palestinian ID is a personal identification document issued by Israel for Palestinian residents and their children.
IPCRI co-director Gershon Baskin and campaign activist Sam Bahour highlighted the current Israeli “visa-freeze policy”, which is being widely applied at the Israeli controlled border crossings to the occupied territory. “This is one of the more blatantly unjust and blatantly stupid things the government of Israel has ever done,” said Baskin.
Since the start of the Al Aqsa Intifada in September of 2000, Israel has stopped accepting Palestinian applications for family reunification in the West Bank and Gaza as one method of controlling Palestinian demographics. According to B’Tselem, Israel has practiced this method of control on and off since 1967 and now has a back-log of at least 120,000 applications it is refusing to process. Israel, not the Palestinian Authority, is and has always been in control of the Palestinian population registry.
Antigona Shkar of B’Tselem presented findings and individual video testimonies from a joint B’tselem-HaMoked report, published in August, entitled “Perpetual Limbo: Israel’s Freeze on Unification of Palestinian Families in the Occupied Territories.”
Prominent Palestinian businessman Zahi Khouri (chairman of the National Beverage Company) spoke of the ramifications of the freeze policy on the Palestinian business community and called on foreign missions to press Israel to end its closed door policy.
Campaign for the Right of Entry/Re-Entry to the oPt representative Basil Ayish called for action targeted at foreign representative offices as well as the Israeli government. “We declare our insistence on the most basic human rights,” he said. “We demand that Israel immediately stop separating Palestinian families; we demand that Israel stop discriminating against those wishing to enter Israeli-occupied territory, and we expect embassies to protect and defend their citizen’s rights to travel freely through Israeli ports.”
For a comprehensive report on the meeting, go to http://www.ipcri.org.
Contact Person: Rima Merriman, Campaign for the Right of Entry/Re-Entry to the OPTs. Telephone Number: ++972 0599 274 758
The campaign’s forthcoming site can be accessed at: http://www.RightToEnter.ps
On Wednesday 6th September Sam Bahour gave a radio interview on the ethnic transfer of Palestinians out of Palestine. In a poignant testimony to this escalation of Israeli policy Sam Bahour’s aunt and uncle were denied entry at the Allenby Bridge yesterday. They left their home in El- Bireh/Ramallah, where they had been visiting for about 3 months from the US, to go to Amman for two days for some business. Upon attempting to re-enter, they were both “denied entry” and told to get a permit from the Israeli military in order to be able to enter. Of course, the soldier forgot to tell them that the process to get a permit does not work. This case is an addition to the growing list of thousands of Palestinians who are denied entry to their homeland to further the Israeli policy of transfer.
On Friday, August 11th, when the end of the Lebanon War was on the horizon, after several weeks in which no more than token protests had taken place in Bil’in, the weekly demonstration against the separation fence began. Border Police troops, who were waiting, threw stun grenades and fired rubber-coated metal bullets at the demonstrators, even before they left the village to head toward the fence. Limor Goldstein, 28, was wounded in the head by gunfire from a Border Police officer. As documented on the video that was being shot at the time there, two hours elapsed from the time he was injured until he was brought by ambulance to the emergency room at Sheba Medical Center at Tel Hashomer.
The village of Bil’in, located near Ramallah, has become a symbol of the struggle against the separation fence and has been the focal point for more than a year and a half of joint Palestinian-Israeli demonstrations, held on Fridays. While the protests are intended to be nonviolent, there have been violent clashes with security forces.
Limor Goldstein, a lawyer who was born in Germany and who holds permanent residency in Israel, was wounded by a rubber-coated metal bullet that penetrated his brain. Goldstein, who speaks eight languages, says he is not a member of any of the protesting organizations.
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“I have no problem cooperating with them and I admire their persistent action, but I don’t belong to any political organization. I prefer to remain autonomous,” he says now.
In his room at the Re’ut Medical Center in Tel Aviv, Goldstein talks about that day in Bil’in. He looks gaunt and pale. His head is shaven and the marks from the stitches are clearly visible above his right ear, where the bullet penetrated. In a soft voice, nearly a whisper, he says that he still suffers from intense headaches and from pain in his ears and at the place where the bullet struck.
“I have problems with balance. The bullet shattered my skull and entered my brain. The doctors removed it as well as the bone fragments that damaged the brain tissue. They also removed the parts of the brain tissue that were damaged. The part of my brain that was hurt is responsible for visual processing. I have damage to the optic nerve in the left eye and my right eye was also hurt. The long-term damage will be measured over time. In about two months, I’m supposed to have an operation where they’ll implant plastic in the area where they removed the bone.
“I have memory damage. I don’t remember the faces of the doctors who treated me, and I’ve lost details of the event itself. I have a problem with orientation and with my sense of time. It’s hard for me to distinguish between dream and reality. I wake up in the morning and start crying. Sometimes I wake up feeling like I’m supposed to accomplish some task, because that’s what I’ve dreamed, and then I can’t do it and I panic. Sometimes I wake up terrified that I have missed a few antibiotic infusions and that my life is in danger. I usually wake up before dawn and it’s not easy.
“I was in Tel Hashomer for about a week and then I was transferred here, but then the wound became infected and they were worried about meningitis. I was brought back to the operating room at Tel Hashomer and they did a revised procedure on the wound. They removed the patch that was supposed to protect the brain but had become infected, and now the area is open. One bullet penetrated the brain and there was another bullet that didn’t penetrate, but grazed my neck.
“I’m not depressed, but I feel an ongoing helplessness and disorientation. I have nightmares in which I relive what happened and see the Border Police troops coming closer and firing at me, and the road I’m walking on is covered with thousands of bullet casings.
“I can’t read. Everything gets mixed up and it’s exhausting and gives me headaches. I can’t watch television. I listen to music and friends read to me. Now they’re reading to me ‘Sons of Our Neighborhood’ by Naguib Mahfouz. My friends and I are organizing a big demonstration in Tel Aviv against police violence and against political oppression. The meetings take place here on the balcony.”
‘You’re in Lebanon’
“On Friday, August 11, we left our apartment in Neveh Tzedek, my two roommates and I, and drove in the car of Ilan Shalif, a psychologist, to the weekly demonstration in Bil’in. The demonstration usually starts out from the village after the prayer service, at around one in the afternoon.
“That day, over 50 demonstrators had come, including Israelis, leftist activists from the anarchists and human rights activists and others, alongside international activists from the International Solidarity Movement. They were joined by residents of Bil’in. It was another weekly protest against the construction of the separation fence, during which we march toward the route of the fence. Sometimes new people join us and that Friday there were some who’d taken part in the Queeruption Festival, a gay and lesbian political festival in Tel Aviv.” (At the last Queeruption, which took place last year in Barcelona, it was decided that the next, ninth celebration of the event would be held in Tel Aviv in August 2006, as part of the global struggle for freedom, justice and self-definition).
“Before the demonstration started, we explained to the guests from Queeruption that there aren’t always confrontations with the army and that lately, because of the war, the demonstrations had been very brief, and we’d just approached the separation fence route and stopped. We told them about a recent demonstration in which we stood by the fence route for a minute of silence in memory of the victims in Lebanon, and then returned.
“On that day we set out from one of the houses in Bil’in and very soon saw that the army was trying to prevent the demonstration from leaving the village. For anyone who doesn’t know, the main road in the village leads to the home of a woman named Zohra, and after that, there’s a turn that leads to the fence route. We saw the army waiting in front of Zohra’s house and the soldiers standing next to their jeeps, blocking the way and shooting. It’s hard for me to say just how many protesters were with us. There was a column of marchers with spaces between them – spread out in a line – and the army couldn’t have seen exactly how many people had come.
“When my friend Francesca [last name witheld on her request] and I were marching, the soldiers already started firing rubber bullets in all directions and tossing stun grenades. The army, like I said, was still inside the village, before the descent to where the fence route is. One of the first things I saw was a guy who was wounded. He sat on the ground and looked confused and terrified, which didn’t stop the soldiers from continuing to toss more stun grenades in our direction. Francesca and I wanted to help the guy get up, to move him out of there. When we turned around with our back to the soldiers, we saw soldiers on the right, in the olive and fig orchards. On the left was a wall of stones and several demonstrators rushed to find cover there. We went over there while Border Police troops were approaching us with their weapons drawn and firing.
“Francesca and I got pretty close to the guy who was sitting on the ground, covering his ears with his hands, his leg bleeding from a rubber bullet. A stun grenade went off next to him, which made him disoriented. We pulled him to the side and Francesca escorted him to a house behind us, so he could rest there.
“The shooting continued, and the soldiers’ commander, who can be seen on the video without a helmet and holding a megaphone, kept yelling while his soldiers, who were walking on either side of him, kept on shooting nonstop. He yelled: ‘Get out of here! There won’t be any demonstration today. Now you’re in Lebanon.’ The rubber bullets were flying all around and a lot of people got hit in the legs. Today I know that I wasn’t the only one who was hit: 12 demonstrators were hit by rubber bullets and about 10 were beaten by Border Police officers. One of the demonstrators, a young woman from Denmark, suffered a skull fracture as a result of a Border Police officer hitting her on the head with a rifle butt.
“Several demonstrators called out to the soldiers to stop shooting, telling them there were Israeli civilians in this demonstration, but they ignored them and kept on. I was standing by the stone wall as the soldiers kept getting closer and the commander was shouting into the megaphone, ‘Get out of here!’ Meanwhile, Francesca returned. Cameraman Jonathan Massey, was facing the soldiers and walking backward. They beat him with batons and yelled at him to stop filming. He tried to jump back. Francesca and I turned around to head back and I saw that they were coming toward us. We ducked and then I saw that they were aiming at us. I felt a strong blow to the head and then to the neck and I collapsed. I immediately realized that I’d fallen in a bad way because I hit the stones and since there was a slope, my head somehow got caught in barbed wire that was there and my hair, which was long then, got tangled up in it.”
‘It was shocking’
Francesca: “Limor’s head was lying on a rock beneath the barbed wire that hurt his face, and there was hardly any space between his face and the wires. I tried to lift the barbed wires, but I couldn’t, because they were taut. Together with another woman, we managed to lift the wires and free Limor’s head. I can say for certain that the shooting was aimed at Limor. They picked him. We were both already on the way back to the village and with our backs to the soldiers and they aimed at him, and they could have aimed at me, too.”
Goldstein: “The pain was sharp and concentrated on the left side of my head. There was bleeding, but not like with Matan Cohen, who was shot in Beit Sira. I remembered the poster that was put up in Tel Aviv after Cohen was struck in the eye by a bullet. It showed him lying in a pool of blood. I remember that Francesca and others called for help and asked for an ambulance or an army medic.”
Francesca: “The soldiers kept passing by us as if nothing was wrong. Limor was on the ground bleeding and the shooting was still going on. One of the international demonstrators, Jenny, a medic by profession, held Limor’s head. We knew you had to do that with a head injury. Then [another friend] Michal came to help. We kept on shouting, ‘Ambulance, ambulance, army medic! There’s an Israeli wounded in the head’ – and the soldiers who passed by there said, ‘You call an ambulance. We’ll call an ambulance to the war in Lebanon.’ Finally, someone came who said he was an army medic.”
Goldstein: “An army medic came up to me. I asked for a drink and got water poured on my head. He asked me to move my hands. I told him that I didn’t feel good, that my head and neck hurt. My hands were stiff.”
Francesca: “The medic asked Limor what his name was and then he asked, ‘How do you feel?’ And Limor said, ‘Bad, I have pain in my head and neck.’ ‘Move your legs,’ the medic said. Limor moved his legs a little and the medic turned around and left without saying a word. It was shocking.”
Goldstein: “The pain kept getting worse and it was really hot. I was very scared, because this whole time that was I lying there, the soldiers kept on shooting and the explosions from the stun grenades were especially frightening. Francesca kept on calling for help and Michal, who had medical equipment, tried to come over to me, but was prevented from doing so. ‘You shot an Israeli in the head,’ Francesca yelled, and the soldiers answered, ‘There’s no ambulance.’ I lay there writhing in pain and heard everything.”
Francesca: “Stun grenades were still being thrown. We kept Limor in the shade, and he was quiet and pale, and only said that he was hot and in pain. His hands seemed frozen. The muscles stiffened in response to the shock. The whole time we held his head and moistened his lips. The cameraman Jonathan Massey called out to the soldiers, ‘You shot someone,’ and one of the soldiers gave him a bandage and left. We cleaned the wound on Limor’s head and bandaged it. We believed that an ambulance was on the way.”
Goldstein: “People came up and asked what happened. I replied that I’d been shot in the head. I never lost consciousness for a moment. For about an hour I lay on the ground and it felt like an eternity. I just wanted to get out of there and I couldn’t understand why I wasn’t being taken away and I felt angry at these crazy guys who shoot at people from short range for no reason.”
New political awareness
“When I came out of the operating room, the doctors said that they weren’t sure if I’d be able to see or to move my limbs,” Goldstein continues. “Now it looks like I won’t be able to renew my driver’s license in Israel, with such a poor field of vision. The first thing my mother said, when she arrived in Israel from Germany and came right to the hospital, is that it’s unbelievable that they could shoot at civilians like that for no reason.
“I was born in Bremen, in northern Germany, in 1978, and I have a sister who’s two years older than me. My father, Sorin Goldstein, was born in Romania the same year, 1949, that my mother, Rivka, was born in Ukraine. Each of them came to Israel on his own in 1969. My mother, who came from a religious family, didn’t serve in the army and earned a degree in biology from Bar-Ilan University. After my father got out of the army, they met in Tel Aviv. My father’s brother lived and worked in Germany, and my father decided to try his luck there. Now he works in insurance for auto exporting and my mother runs a microbiology lab in Bremen.
“My parents didn’t have a common language aside from Hebrew. I finished high school in Bremen and decided to return to Israel then. I earned a law degree from the Hebrew University in 2001. Then I went back to Europe. For about six months I traveled around Romania and tried to improve my Romanian. Afterward, I went back to Germany and lived in Berlin, which is where my political awareness blossomed and where I started to deal with immigration issues. My connection to Israel goes way back. Every year, since I was a little kid, we’d come to Israel for vacations and I have family here, so I had a close connection to the place and to the Hebrew language.
“I returned to Israel in 2004 and began my internship with attorney Smadar Ben-Natan. I thought of working for Kav La’oved [a nonprofit organization that promotes workers’ rights], but it didn’t work out. But I soon realized that immigrant rights in Israel were in a sorry state. Through my internship, I learned about and became familiar with the reality of the occupation.
“The Ben-Natan firm had several appeals against the fence and we had a few cases in the military courts, which are a shocking sight in themselves. The whole time I followed what was going on in Bil’in and other villages where there were demonstrations against the separation fence. In 2005 I finished my internship and started working in the office of attorney Dan Assan, who specializes in human rights, in legal damages for Palestinians from the first intifada, or prisoners who were tortured under interrogation.”
Security forces respond
Francesca: “After a lot of time passed, some soldiers came with a stretcher and acted like they were doing us a favor. About five or six of us lifted him, including myself, Michal, Jenny and the soldiers, and then one of the soldiers, a reservist who was a bit older, said that he refused to evacuate Limor ‘until everyone gets out of here.’
“We pleaded with him and finally he relented. We took Limor on the stretcher to the place where the military jeeps were. As we were walking, a reservist came up to me and pushed me aside, using his rifle to do it. I waited a little on the side and then I went back and joined the stretcher bearers. Jenny held Limor’s head until we reached the pickup truck and then they would only let Michal stay with him. They told the rest of us to get lost.”
Michal A., who is studying English literature at Tel Aviv University: “Next to the military pickup truck two soldiers came and helped to lift the stretcher into the vehicle, which was filled with riot shields. The two soldiers were supposed to hold the stretcher, because the vehicle was going up an incline. I held Limor’s head. During the trip, more and more shields fell on Limor, who didn’t say a word. I asked the soldiers to help me move the shields off him. I asked the driver to slow down. It was a nightmare. We finally reached the gate below and the soldiers took the stretcher off the vehicle and put it down on the ground in the sun.
“Two medics came. They looked and said that he didn’t look so good, but they didn’t even take the bandage off his head. One medic said that a civilian ambulance should be called and the other said, ‘No, we’ll call a military ambulance.’ They went back and forth for another 20 minutes and meanwhile he’s lying in the sun. Not saying anything. I wet his lips. I literally forced them to move him to the shade, and the whole time I was worried about his neck, which still wasn’t immobilized.
“At last a military ambulance came, and it was packed with all kinds of stuff. The medic got out and said, ‘What do we have here?’ He took off the bandage and looked, and then he ordered the soldiers to empty the ambulance. ‘But take your time,’ he said. Finally we left. I sat with Limor in the back and two people sat up front and the ambulance bounced down a dirt road and I shouted for them to slow down because of his neck … and they didn’t seem to care at all. Finally we reached Kiryat Sefer in Upper Modi’in and a Magen David Adom ambulance was waiting there. They immobilized Limor’s neck and we drove about another 300 meters where, before the Shilat junction, an ambulance with emergency equipment was waiting.
“We got to the hospital two hours after Limor was shot. He was calm and conscious and at the hospital he gave his name and his ID number, even though he was in terrible pain. Throughout this arduous trip, he only moaned and tried to touch his head. When we entered the emergency room, he vomited.”
That day, the Israel Defense Forces spokesman said that the Border Police officers acted in response, after the demonstrators threw rocks at them. But the video clearly shows that the troops shot without any warning and without any rock-throwing or other aggressive or provocative behavior on the part of the protesters. The video shows a Border Police officer firing at Goldstein from very short range, about 15 meters, while Goldstein stood across the road.
In fact, today, Border Police spokesman Avi Moshe does not wish to repeat the claim of the IDF spokesman, and prefers to begin his response with a description of other incidents in Bil’in: “First, let’s point out that for weeks demonstrators have been coming to the separation fence in the vicinity of the village of Bil’in, causing provocations and disturbing the peace by throwing rocks and various objects at the Border Police and IDF forces in that location. In most of the events, a number of Border Police officers were injured, and some were even sent to the hospital. Let’s also point out that in one case, when those demonstrators requested to speak with a Border Police officer there, and the officer agreed and came to talk with them, as soon as the officer turned around to head back toward the forces that were standing on the other side, the demonstrators suddenly started to hurl rocks at him and they wounded him in the head.”
Only after this lengthy introduction does the Border Police spokesman offer this laconic response to the shooting of Goldstein: “As for this specific incident, it is under investigation in the Judea and Samaria District and when conclusions are reached, we will act accordingly.”
Asked about the name of the policeman who shot attorney Goldstein, Moshe says: “I won’t give you his name. As I said, when the investigation is complete, we will act in accordance with whatever is deemed necessary.”
Goldstein, meanwhile, has this to say: “My personal story isn’t the important element in this story. Not the fact that I was born in Germany or who my parents are. What matters is the message of what’s happening in Bil’in and in the villages along the fence route. People are being shot. Lands are being appropriated. As soon as I get well I’ll go back to Bil’in to demonstrate.”W
An Interview with Muhammad Khatib, Jonathan Pollak and Elad Orian,Middle East Report
Beginning in December 2004, and then every Friday since February 2005, Palestinians, Israelis and internationals have converged on the West Bank village of Bil‘in to demonstrate against the barrier that Israel is building there, as part of the chain of walls and fences (the Wall) that the Israeli government hopes will be Israel’s unilaterally declared eastern border. The protests in Bil‘in have been among the most effective and sustained of any in the Occupied Territories. In July 2006, Robert Blecher, an editor of this magazine, sat down with three key activists in this effort: Muhammad Khatib of the Bil‘in Popular Committee Against the Wall and Jonathan Pollak and Elad Orian of Israeli Anarchists Against the Wall. Blecher translated portions of the interview from Arabic and Hebrew.
What is it about Bil‘in that has made the demonstrations here successful?
Muhammad: There are a number of reasons. First, the popular committee has built a close relationship with members of the community. Second, we’ve managed to achieve a balance between protesting and living our daily lives. Yes, we need to demonstrate, but kids also need to go to school. We’ve cut the demonstrations down to once a week—in other places, they were daily—because more than that is not sustainable. Third, there is the relationship between Israelis, Palestinians and internationals. We all work together and share in the decisions, since this is a joint struggle. We have come to know each other better and trust each other.
Fourth, there is the originality and creativity of our demonstrations. Peaceful struggle has been present in Palestine for a long time. But what we’ve done here is adopt new approaches that have developed that struggle and strengthened our relationship with the media into one of trust. If five people were wounded at a demonstration, we say five; if nobody was wounded, we say none. There’s no need to inflate the numbers. The media, in fact, has come to trust us more than the army spokesman about the number of wounded.
Fifth, we know what we want to do and understand the possibility of doing it. International law gives Palestinians the right to use armed resistance, but this path isn’t useful or helpful to us in our struggle here. Our struggle is a truly popular one. The simplest action gives the Israelis a security pretext to use against us, and so we don’t even use stones. That distorts the story. The discussion becomes about who began the violence, and we lose the opportunity to stop the bulldozers and send a message that there is an occupation here. From the media, you would think this is a war between two armies. It’s not. We are the victims, and the Israeli army is an army of occupation.
The occupier, to be clear, is everyone who represents the occupation. Our problem isn’t with Israelis or with Jews. We welcome anybody who comes to us as a partner in the struggle, but we are against anyone who represents the occupation, whether settler or soldier.
Jonathan: Bil‘in cannot be understood as an isolated case, as a single village that is fighting the Wall. There’s nothing fundamentally different here. This part of the West Bank is agriculturally productive, and so all the villages protested when they were cut off from their lands. The struggle against the Wall started around September 2002 in Jayyous, and ever since, it has continued with greater or lesser intensity. Israelis have been involved almost from the beginning, from about November 2002. This is how the relationship with Bil‘in was created, through personal connections.
In most other villages, before Bil‘in, demonstrations were daily. We’d go out to the bulldozers and try to stop them, but the repression was very intense. There were something like 10 people shot dead. People could sustain that pace for one, two, three months. But in the end, they had to stop. That’s how we started in Bil‘in, too. We used to go daily, or say three times a week, but it ended up being only Friday to try to make it sustainable. Work on the Wall in Bil‘in started at a relatively late stage, when there was already a lot of experience accumulated from protesting in other villages. After seeing what happened there, a different strategy was adopted.
Elad: To put it in Marxist terms, the conditions here were ripe, from an Israeli point of view. Sometime before the protests started in Bil‘in, an Israeli was shot for the first time. And it’s relatively easy to get here. It’s not very far north, about halfway between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, so Israelis can come here easily. They don’t have to spend half a day traveling in each direction.
Jonathan: Also, politically, Bil‘in is a very clear case where the Wall was built to facilitate settlement expansion. The extension of the Modi‘in ‘Illit settlement, which is being built on land that belongs to Bil‘in, is illegal even according to Israeli law.
I’ve seen your demonstrations described as “non-violent” and as “direct action.” What is direct action and how does it relate to non-violence?
Muhammad: Direct action in this case is about not allowing any room for doubt that your demonstrations are peaceful and popular, that there isn’t any use of violence. At first, the demonstrations were spontaneous. Confronted with a wall, we went out to say “No!” This refusal wasn’t about the Wall per se, but about the route of the Wall and the settlements—Palestinian society would agree to the Wall if it were on the 1967 border. But the media wasn’t interested, since our demonstrations looked like all the others. Even when we started to get more organized, our message still didn’t get through, since the media only wanted to talk about violence and non-violence, focusing on the number of wounded on each side.
So we changed tactics. We did things like putting ourselves in barrels and tying ourselves up with olive branches. In this situation, how could we possibly use violence against soldiers? This way the message got through about who was the victim and who was the executioner. Against our non-violence, against our peaceful actions, the violence of the soldiers became clear to outside observers.
The media coverage shifted. People began to ask themselves: Why are the demonstrators tying themselves up? This helped make the Wall itself a topic of conversation, but that conversation remained as it always had been: When we protested the Wall, the other side responded that it was necessary for security reasons. We needed to take our demonstrations to a third stage to show the connection between the Wall and the settlements. We needed to show that the Wall in Bil‘in was expropriating our land for the expansion and protection of the Modi‘in ‘Ilit settlement.
Our new plan took our demonstrations beyond the Wall. We put a caravan—the same kind of tract housing unit that the settlers use when squatting on Palestinian land—on the other side of the Wall, on the land seized for settlement expansion. The army removed the caravan and arrested us after 36 hours. We returned four days later with another one. Before they cleared us out again, we asked, “Why are you kicking us out? You say Israel is a state of laws, and a state of laws needs to explain why it’s kicking us out, why it is taking away our right to be here on land that we own.” They answered, “You need to get a permit to move a caravan from place to place. We are not kicking you out because of an issue of land ownership. You didn’t get a permit, and that’s why.” So we said, “What if we had a house, as opposed to a caravan? How would you deal with that?” They replied, “A house would need to have certain specifications, rooms of a certain size and a certain kind of roof.” We were able to build a structure by the next morning at 8, the deadline they had given us to evacuate. That’s how we succeeded in stopping settlement construction.
Jonathan: I don’t like the term “non-violent.” I prefer “civil” or “popular.” Just having to state that the demonstration was non-violent has racist assumptions behind it. You wouldn’t say the “non-violent peace demonstration in Israel.” You would just say “demonstration.” Also, “non-violence” implies that violence is illegitimate and I don’t think it’s our role as Westerners, or my role as an Israeli, to tell Palestinians what’s legitimate and what’s not. If you notice, in Arabic, people say “popular struggle.” Nobody says “non-violent” struggle. It’s hardly ever used. If Palestinians want to describe what they do as ghayr ‘anif (non-violent), I’m the last one to say no. My point is that we should keep in mind that a judgment is inherent in the use of the term “non-violence.”
The Western press doesn’t consider the civil resistance movement significant because it doesn’t fit within its discourse. When I was in the US, I would show crazy footage that nobody ever sees on any of the networks—and not because it’s not good footage and not because it’s unavailable. To the contrary, AP and Reuters were there when it was shot. The reason is because it doesn’t fit with their preconceived assumptions about the role of Israel and the role of the Arab world, and Palestinians specifically. CNN, BBC and Fox have adopted an Israeli discourse that says Palestinians are terrorists and Israel is defending itself. This is the opposite of the real situation: Zionism is a colonial presence in the Middle East that is trying to manage the entire region unilaterally by force, according to its needs. That causes reactions, some more brutal than others.
I can’t help but notice the similarities between the demonstrations in Bil‘in and those of the “anti-globalization” movement, which have popularized a kind of anarchist protest that works against the sternness of traditional Marxism. Using art, bringing in a Basque band and holding a wedding ceremony: These playful, almost joyful activities that you have used in Bil‘in are typical of a new kind of protest culture that has spread around the globe.
Muhammad: The point of our creative direct action is to present something original each time, something media-worthy. Every journalist finds something new to report about, something that attracts attention, not the same old, same old. The media typically wants to film violence, and in the end, it gets the violence it wants, but it gets it from the other side, not from us. The idea to do it this way didn’t come suddenly; it was the product of our accumulated experience. None of us has studied media or art. The style comes from the need to be original; it’s the fruit of necessity.
Educated and aware people come from around the whole world to cooperate with us and participate in the demonstrations, each of which I consider an international conference of sorts. When you participate in over 200 “international conferences,” no doubt your mind will open up to new ideas and your thinking will evolve. That’s happened here, with the presence of Israelis and foreigners.
Jonathan: The funny thing here is that you would expect, from a Western perspective, that the Israelis and Westerners would bring the funny, playful ideas. Actually, these usually come from Bil‘in. The Israelis usually push for more straightforward, let’s-cut-the-fence kind of activities.
Who comes up with the ideas?
Jonathan: It’s Muhammad. He has an exhibit at an art school in Tel Aviv of certain items used in the demonstrations—like a huge snake, representing the Wall, swallowing a white dove.
Muhammad: No, I don’t want to claim credit for the work of others. Okay, maybe I started it, but it’s not just one person who sits and thinks. We work together. Maybe the soldiers are stronger than us, but we use our minds and can overcome them that way. They don’t think; they take orders. If their officer says to hit, they hit; if he says to smash our stuff up, they smash; if he says to shoot, they shoot. If we use our minds, we will be stronger. So we spend time thinking about how to do this.
How do you see the relationship between the anti-globalization movement and protesting the occupation?
Jonathan: As an anarchist, I feel connected to the anti-globalization movement, and I participated in big mobilizations in Prague and Genoa. Obviously, the occupation in the West Bank and Gaza has economic ramifications. Just to take one example, look at the World Bank, which is trying to make the Occupied Territories into a Third World export economy. The World Bank has attacked Israel’s plans for the Wall and how it executed Gaza disengagement because these are hurting the ability of global capitalism to cash in on the cheap labor market available in Palestine. The World Bank would prefer a Wall with terminals on the Green Line that will serve as transit points in a free trade zone.
The limits on the mobility of people and goods get in the way of free trade.
Jonathan: Limits on the mobility of peasants are not a problem for the World Bank. It’s just that the community here is always on the verge of a humanitarian crisis. That is not profitable, and they have to send aid. The World Bank needs something that is poor but sustainable, something that still has a market to cash in on. Israel has gone too far and is preventing this from emerging, but the World Bank’s intent is clear from how it pushes a Middle East Free Trade Area. Its reports on Gaza talk about free trade zones and industrial zones, and the only way they mention agriculture—traditionally, the main sector of the Palestinian economy—is for export. All the projects that are funded—either privately through [former Quartet envoy James] Wolfensohn, or through the World Bank itself—are, in fact, one and the same, since Wolfensohn used to be the World Bank president. Take the greenhouses in Gaza. The people in Gaza won’t ever be able to buy the produce grown there, since the water is too expensive. The produce is only for export.
How would you rate your success, both in media coverage and on the ground?
Jonathan: It depends on how you think about the media. Yes, we’ve gotten a certain amount of coverage, but with the international media, it’s been very scarce. If you check the archives of the New York Times, Bil‘in has only been mentioned once or something like that.
Muhammad: If you ask somebody from Palestine, he’ll say we have succeeded. The Palestinian media has picked up our activities, printing supportive articles and cartoons that show that they appreciate the uniqueness of what we do. The name Bil‘in is well-known. Once someone, a Palestinian, asked a friend of mine, “Which is bigger, Nablus [population 187,000] or Bil‘in [population 1,700]?” Or another example: On al-Jazeera, they report on Bil‘in by name. You would expect them to say that it’s a small village near Ramallah, without mentioning its name. When the main headline is about Bil‘in, when the news mentions that tomorrow there will be a demonstration at Bil‘in along with the fact that Bush will be giving a speech in Washington, that means something.
On the ground, we’ve had success, too. We stopped a settlement. They were putting in new residents. We did the statistics, and from early 2003 to the end of 2005, every day, a new apartment was finished, ready to live in. And if you can force them to stop, that’s an accomplishment.
To do this, we worked on the popular track and the legal track. The popular track served the legal one, which profited from the reputation of Bil‘in. It influenced the articles that were written about the case and the way it was talked about in general. Popular committee members and Israelis did good legal work. They got the documents that proved that the settlement was illegal according to Israeli law and won at the Israeli Supreme Court.
Elad: The fact that an Israeli court stopped the construction of a huge neighborhood of 3,000 units is important. The main legal issue was that according to the plan, they were supposed to build 1,500 units but built something else. You might say this was a technicality, but it was an unprecedented decision. The contractors are losing millions of dollars. The technicality wouldn’t have been invoked without the political action.
Muhammad: Just like they use settlements to impose their politics on our reality, we imposed our politics on their reality. When we built beyond the Wall, we were saying, “Okay, I will deal with you like you deal with me.” If the government is not going to let us build, it can’t let them. The Israeli Civil Administration canceled the work, and then the decision came down from the Supreme Court.
Jonathan: We ask ourselves all the time about on-the-ground achievements. Yes, we have had cosmetic achievements, a few meters here and there. But when I travel around the West Bank, all I see is my failures. Much of the Wall has been built and it’s getting harder and harder to cross. Places where we used to enter the West Bank from Israel are closed now, or in the last stages of construction, which is the hardest thing to see.
In this atmosphere, the mere existence of our movement is an achievement. The fact that there are Israelis who are crossing the line in such a clear way, against everything we are supposed to believe, is an achievement. The fact that Israelis and Palestinians are able to act together in an anti-colonial and self-aware way, with Palestinians taking the lead, and where politics of privilege are considered, is an achievement in and of itself.
Has the Bil‘in protest style spread to other areas in the West Bank?
Jonathan: From going around in the West Bank, I can tell you that Bil‘in has definitely become a symbol of the civil resistance. As the movement progresses, its symbols shift. First it was Budrus. From late 2003 to early 2004, the daily demonstrations in Budrus succeeded in stopping the Wall and changing the path of the barrier. From there, the demonstrations spread; in almost every village where the Wall passed, they occurred daily for almost a year. Then the struggle moved to Biddu with its five martyrs. While those protests were happening, everyone talked about it. Now the symbol is Bil‘in.
Muhammad: When we started, we were thinking about Bil‘in, not about creating a wide popular movement, but today we have become something of a model. Some party leaders may have gotten bored with the old way of doing things and are convinced that at this stage, our way is the way to go. This gives us hope that we have succeeded in generalizing a model that started in one village. But who knows, maybe tomorrow the Wall will be stopped and the model will die.
Who participates from Bil‘in?
Muhammad: People from all political factions and walks of life, from children to adults. Recently, people who previously engaged in armed struggle and former prisoners are joining in as well. This is a new stage for us and another indication of how the demonstrations are becoming a broader-based popular movement.
What about the participants on the Israeli side? What about Palestinian citizens of Israel?
Jonathan: Jewish Israelis obviously have greater privileges than Palestinian Israelis, who in turn have greater privileges than Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. Unfortunately, only a few Palestinian Israelis work with us.
Elad: Every step they take in an inherently racist Israeli society is so difficult that they don’t want to create more problems for themselves by being arrested. The choice for Israeli Jews to get involved is harder, in part because we come from greater privilege, but the cost Palestinians are paying is higher.
Are the other demonstrations also using creative strategies to get media attention?
Muhammad: In Bayt Sira they tried something like this. But unfortunately they couldn’t continue. It’s a question of the specificities of each place. We broke the army in. We got through the period in which violence and collective punishment could have broken us. In other places, Israel has threatened to take away permits. The people were afraid to go to demonstrations. The army doesn’t need to do it with violence; the people restrain themselves. There is also the success factor: We’ve had certain successes here that inspire us to continue, but other places haven’t seen the occupation behave respectfully with this model. So that’s another reason that we are determined that this model will succeed in moving the Wall itself, so there will be something to see, something that can serve as a model for others.
Also, more Palestinians from outside Bil‘in are participating. For the last two months, since we brought the caravan to the other side of the Wall, they come every Friday and bring new people. I’ve heard from Palestinians and Israelis that this is the only place where there’s hope. When you talk about Gaza, Nablus, Lebanon, it’s all killing and war. But here in Bil‘in, Israelis and Palestinians are sharing an overall experience, sitting together, eating, drinking, hanging out. There is something outside of the demonstrations, which means this is the way to do things. Maybe in the future, it will do some political good by showing the path toward a shared life. It’s not a matter of studying, giving speeches or expounding theories. Everybody says they want peace—and they do, on their own terms. What is peace? Is it mutual understanding, with everyone having their own ideas and living together and being friends? No, to think about it only this way is a mistake: You can’t leave out the fact that one party is occupying the other.
In Bil‘in, the model is different. Here, people work together on the ground. We have built trust and strong relationships by participating together in the clashes. Israelis are with Palestinians in the front row. When the soldier fires a bullet, the bullet doesn’t discriminate between Jonathan and Muhammad. When the soldier beats the demonstrators with clubs, Jonathan gets beaten one time and Muhammad the next. Muhammad feels that Jonathan is like him, that the same things are happening to both of them. It’s not like Jonathan is at the beach saying how much he wants peace while Muhammad is being beaten. And after the demonstration, Muhammad welcomes Jonathan: they sit, drink tea, have a good time and go around the village together.
Palestinian and Israeli, their relationship is grounded in a shared struggle. It doesn’t spring from a peace center, where everybody talks about peace and how much they love each other. Take the Peres Center. Where is Shimon Peres today? He is on a public relations trip, trying to convince the world that Israelis are humanitarians and want peace. That is to say, he is prettying up the face of the occupation. Operations like the Peres Center take advantage of the presence of Palestinians to say they want peace. But the real action, the true partnership and cooperation, is here in the struggle. It’s not about prettying up the occupation; it’s about breaking the occupation.
It sounds like this is the future of the fight against the occupation.
Jonathan: I don’t know what the future of the fight against the occupation is. I think this is the right way to do things; that’s why I do it. All Israelis have their colonial tendencies, but this is a part of us that some are trying to shed. It’s important that there will be more and more Israelis who will say, “We will not be good Germans,” who cross the lines to do whatever we can to resist, even at some cost. Obviously, the cost for Palestinians is much greater. But at least some Israelis are overcoming their fears. Bil‘in has given Israelis the opportunity to go from protest to resistance, from politely saying within our democratic structure, “We don’t agree, please stop,” to actually getting down on the ground, with nothing but our bodies, to try to stop the bulldozers. Not asking, not trying to convince, but rather saying, “They shall not pass.”
