West Bank Protests

Sunday is the “day of rest” in most Western countries with their Christian roots. But as friends back home would be looking forward to their roast-dinner, it is the day to go back to work in the Middle East. The Jewish Sabbath means that Israel takes its day of rest on Saturday, and Friday is the Muslim holy day.

But in many villages across the West Bank, Friday is not a day of rest, but a day of action. Elected Popular Committees organise resistance to the specific aspects of Israeli occupation that directly affect their village. Whilst an end to the occupation is the ultimate aim, this is something that requires international mediation, and is something that will be conducted on a level far beyond the reach of most Israeli or Palestinian citizens.

Following the Friday prayers, whole communities join in protest against the route of the Israeli Segregation barrier, the theft of local land by Israeli settlements, the uprooting of residents’ olive trees or the failure to comply with court-rulings. All of these are matters than can be successfully fought on a local level, brought-about by non-violent protest and direct-action.

Bi’lin recently garnered a lot of international media coverage, and the following week parts of the segregation barrier were removed as the protest celebrated its fifth anniversary. Through Israeli courts, and supported by protest, Palestinian residents of An Nabi Salih have won-back access to some of their agricultural land from the nearby Israeli Hallamish (Neve Zuf) settlement.

Whilst the large majority of Palestinian protests here are strictly non-violent, the force used by the Israeli army to repress them is highly aggressive. At every, single protest I witnessed, Israeli forces used tear-gas and sound grenades to disperse relatively small groups of protestors within minutes of their opening; those demonstrators often included small children. On the one occasion where I did see Palestinians retaliate, this was after the Israelis had immersed the demonstrators in clouds of tear-gas.

Further violence is prevented by the presence of international- and Israeli- activists; the (human) rights that are afforded to us are much greater than those with whom we stand in solidarity. We can prevent the use of live-rounds and provide protection against six-month, unwarranted detentions of Palestinians, as well as physical brutality by the soldiers.

But these risks are ever-present. Over the past few weeks, several Palestinians have been killed; shot by Israeli soldiers. At the time of writing, the leader of the Palestinian political group, Fatah, was held in Israeli captivity. I have witnessed soldiers use physical force to violently push demonstrators to the ground.

I often questioned whether what we were doing here actually achieved anything, and what else could be done to change things. Seeing Israeli citizens joining in solidarity, in protest, and taking action against their own government was encouraging. Israeli public opinion will play a large factor in their future policy.

But the international community needs to step-up. Should internationals laws be floundered with such disregard by any other government in the region, sanctions and embargoes would be swiftly forthcoming. Had any other government used such disproportional force as the IDF used in Gaza, including the destruction of a major UN aid compound, the condemnation would be more than just verbal. But we stand by and let this happen.

As citizens, we can push our government for greater engagement to end the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian Territories. We can boycott Israeli goods. The UK government has recently issued guidelines dictating the labelling of food coming from the Palestinian Territories, differentiating between that which is produced by Palestinians, and that of Israeli settlements.

Boycott. Divestment. Sanctions.

Quote of the Day

I ain’t no Fatah dog, I ain’t no Hamas bitch

— Rapping at Sheikh Jarrah, East Jerusalem

Sheikh Jarrah: Part II

Prologue

A strong storm had been blowing through Jerusalem for two days. The road towards the Qalandiya checkpoint, to Ramallah, was flooded and so cars crawled along in queues as the rain hammered down. Police stood knee-deep in water as they ushered through the creeping cars.

I was on shift in Sheikh Jarrah that night. The street was devoid of life; the fire that normally burns in the street had been dragged under the gazebo next to the al-Kurd house, which is where I would spend the next sixteen hours. A group of internationals, Israelis and Palestinians huddled under the tarpaulin, choking on the smoke from the fire, huddled against the biting, piercing wind that howled through the gazebo. This was going to be a long night.

At 3am I woke-up the luckless volunteer who had the next shift. Handing over the sodden blanket, I crawled into my ash-covered sleeping bag, sealing myself in as I shivered uncontrollably. I felt guilty from having dragged my comrade from her sleep, from inflicting this upon her; but as I lay on the make-shift bed, my contrition swiftly left me as my eyes found solace in the respite from my task.

As sufferers of Seasonal Affective Disorder become depressed during winter, I found that meteorological conditions would influence my feelings towards the settlers who inflicted this situation on us all. I had been sat around the fire on a pleasant night when they had thrown fire-crackers at us and could laugh this off. On more charitable nights I would try to engage them in discourse about their reasons for doing this, although become disillusioned when the only argument they can give is their “Biblical right”, or the “dreams that [their] people have had for generations”, for this land.

But during those long, cold, wet hours, my attitude towards them was as bitter as the night.

The Loss of Youth

A few days later, I was back in the neighbourhood. Clouds were still looming overhead but the rain had stopped. A small boy stood crying against a wall. This was the same boy who had been hit by a settler throwing a rock a couple of weeks before. Life takes a hard toll on the children of Sheikh Jarrah; the freedom and opportunities I had whilst growing up would not be afforded to this boy who has been forced out of his house by the government that is occupying his country.

That afternoon, I taught him to ride a bicycle. I jogged alongside him as he rode his brother’s two-wheeler up and down the street; he was laughing in delight the first time I let go. This is the sort of experience that youth should be composed of.

That evening was the weekly community dinner in Sheikh Jarrah. Families arrived with steaming plates of food and the street was filled with a sense of joviality as Palestinians sampled western cooking and we gorged on their local delicacies. Sydney, an ISM volunteer, has established the tradition of these weekly get-togethers, and the atmosphere she had installed in the street was amazing as Palestinians, Israelis and internationals all had a small party.

We had been playing football in the street when the Israeli police showed up. Waving their rifles around, the game was to be quickly disbanded. They first claimed that it constituted an “illegal demonstration”, and later cited that it “wasn’t safe” with the traffic. Virtually the only traffic this cul-de-sac receives is their frequent patrols. One man was arrested as he threw a football, thus ruining another young life. The police tried to arrest another young boy, but we weren’t about to let them ruin another. He was smuggled away.

When I was little, one particular neighbour would often complain when my friend and I would play football in the street; I suppose he feared for his car, or his windows. But he would shoo us off and we would play elsewhere. End of story.

Here, this little distraction from the daily threat of eviction received no complaint from the neighbours. Instead, the Israeli police were waving around loaded rifles and threatening arrest as they violently disbanded the game.

With children growing up in this kind of environment, is it any surprise that they become disaffected and turn to more desperate means of struggle? And Israeli force in the West Bank is relatively “civilised” compared to the stories that come out of Gaza. Israel must be conscious of what they are doing, so are they actively trying to create a further generation of resistance?

On Stone Throwing

The demonstration at An Nabi Salih forced me to face certain questions about what was a legitimate form of resistance… In previous demonstrations, I had seen Israeli soldiers use completely unnecessary aggression to repress what were peaceful demonstrations. When faced with physical force by soldiers, the demonstrators protected themselves, and stood their ground, but did not fight back.

However disproportionate the use of military force — rubber-bullets & tear-gas — is against youths throwing rocks, it could be argued that the use of weapons by the Israeli army, at this point, does become somewhat more legitimate. Or it is at least, legitimised. (Despite the fact that the rocks were thrown in response to IDF aggression.)

This then puts into question the legitimacy of the non-violent demonstrations throughout the West Bank. Are these demonstrations achieving anything?

In many cases, yes.

The weekly demonstrations at Bi’lin have caught both the attention of the international media, and served to challenge court rulings about the route of the Israeli West Bank Barrier. Here at An Nabi Salih, a court has ruled in favour of the Palestinians against one of the settlers’ fences.

When is violent struggle acceptable? The ANC urged South African blacks to mount a “people’s war”, rendering townships ungovernable. But it is the violence inflicted upon the Israelis by Hamas-fired rockets that has caused so much death in Gaza, for example, as Israeli collectively punishes the whole of the Gazan population. By using violence, the use of retaliatory force becomes somewhat more permissible, and the Israeli government is not known for moderation when sending in tanks and bombers. This massive use of force has garnered much criticism from the West, but little, or nothing, has been actively done to stop it. Do things like stone-throwing reduce the sympathy the West has to the Palestinian cause?

Last week, a Palestinian boy died after having been shot by a live bullet at a demonstration. The Israeli forces claimed that they were not using live rounds, but an x-ray of the boys head clearly shows a bullet lodged inside his brain. With this sort of force used against stone-throwing, what would Palestinians face if greater resistance was used?

Protest: An Nabi Salih

Storm clouds were looming overhead as mist rolled over the hills surrounding the small West Bank village of An Nabi Salih that Friday morning. Three of us had left Ramallah early to avoid the closure of the checkpoints that the Israeli military were imposing as part of their crack-down on the demonstrations organised by the Palestinian Popular Committees.

From the hilltop above the village, we could see the pointed, regimented roofs of the Israeli Hallamish (Neve Zuf) settlement that lies on the other side of the valley. The European-style houses lay in stark contrast to the traditional, square houses of the Palestinian villages of the West Bank. On the road below, Israeli army jeeps were beginning to assemble; the reason for our presence here.

The protest is against the illegal seizure of Palestinian agricultural land. Furthermore, the settlers have tried to re-annex more of the An Nabi Salih land despite an Israeli court ruling that the land belonged to the Palestinian village. They have also uprooted hundreds of the village’s olive trees, and have poured concrete into their well.

Entering the house of the organiser of the demonstration, the smell of cooking filling the air as his wife prepared a buffet for the international and Israeli demonstrators who come to lend their support to the Palestinians every Friday. Warming ourselves by the wood-fuelled fire, drinking sweet, strong shay, a video was playing on the computer. It was footage from a previous demonstration here, where Israeli troops were forcefully removing Palestinian women from the streets and subsequently arresting them. Violent repression by the Israeli Defence Forces was commonplace; the large presence of international and Israeli demonstrators here, week after week, was hoped to reduce the level of aggression used. The previous week, one of our fellow volunteers required stitches after being hit in the mouth by a rubber-bullet.

The protest began in the village square with groups of children holding posters that were present at all of the West Bank demonstrations that day. They pronounced solidarity against the recent announcement by President Netanyahu that two West Bank shrines would be added to Israel’s national heritage list. (An article on the BBC.)

We crossed over to the grassy hillside, walking towards the agricultural land that the Israeli settlement restricts. On the road below, the assembly of IDF soldiers began to fire-off large amounts of tear gas towards the demonstrators. The troops began to advance on us, firing more tear gas indiscriminately at the men, women and children above. A woman stood with a raised Palestinian flag as the clouds of tear-gas began to reach us. The local shebab (youths) then began to respond, throwing stones at the soldiers. This was the first time I had witnessed such resistance at a demonstration, which has become known as the archetype of Palestinian resistance.

The sound of the Israeli shots suddenly changed. When firing tear-gas, the fizz of the canisters is preceded by a softer, deeper resonance. I could now see the muzzle-fire from their rifles, accompanied by a shorter crack as the sound reached us. They were firing rubber bullets. The intensity of shots, and its retaliatory stone-throwing, increased as the soldiers made ground further up the hill. As we retreated back to the village, at my side was Ellen, a fellow demonstrator. She was hit by a rubber bullet as we ran. We ushered her back into the house, before continuing to document the violence that was being used to repress this protest.

People ran through the village, and tear-gas was now entering into houses. An Israeli jeep drove up into the village, fired-off forty tear-gas canisters in rapid succession, before quickly driving away. On the opposite hillside, further Israeli troops were advancing upon the village, faced with a line of the shebab who responded with stones and slingshots.

It was on this hillside that the rest of the exchanged occurred. Soldiers would advance on the shebab, firing rubber-bullets and tear-gas, and this would be countered by stone-throwing. As the IDF would retire in order to re-arm, the positions that they previously occupied were taken by the Palestinians. The soldiers then re-advanced on the shebab. These protracted exchanges continued for the next couple of hours, as Palestinians and IDF soldiers conducted a drawn-out dance across the hillside.

I left this demonstration with a lot of questions. What had been achieved here today? My previous experience at demonstrations had involved some close-contact with the soldiers, but today’s events seemed to be played-out with large distances between the two sides. This led to a feeling of little “discourse”. It was the first time I had witnessed a demonstration that was not “non-violent”, with the retaliation by the Palestinian youths. Speaking with veterans of this protest, the events today were the norm. This scene had been played-out time and time again over the preceding weeks; in all likelihood, they would be re-enacted in the weeks to come. As we drank tea and ate fresh almonds back in the organiser’s house, it seemed to be a case of “business as normal”.

» See the collection of photographs from this demonstration.