By Jessica McCallin
They have been referred to as international peace activists by the mainstream media. But that’s far too soft a term for a group of civilians who literally put their lives on the line, dodging Israeli snipers, enduring sieges and lying down in front of tanks, to protect Palestinians in the Occupied Territories.
In April they must have made activist history when they outsmarted Israeli soldiers and broke into Arafat’s besieged Ramallah compound – not once, but twice – whilst the Israelis were trying to isolate him and make him ‘irrelevant’.
More incredibly, 10 of them then managed to break the siege of the Church of the Nativity during it’s fourth week, storming the Israeli blockade and entering the Church with food and medicine for its 200-plus captives.
They take peace or political activism to a very different level and are better seen as deeply concerned individuals who, in the absence of a UN protection and peacekeeping force in the region – Israel refuses to allow one and the US keeps backing it up with security council vetoes - are volunteering to do the protection themselves.
An international brigade, not of fighters such as those who volunteered with the Spanish during the civil war, but of non-violent direct-actionists
Delegations of up to 500 civilians from all over the world, but principally the US, Canada and Western Europe, first started coming to Palestine for two-week direct action missions, at the behest of local Palestinian NGO’s, last year. The plan was to support homegrown resistance efforts and lay the groundwork for a permanent international civilian presence throughout the Occupied Territories.
They joined Palestinians in non-violent resistance work by, amongst other things, helping them dismantle checkpoints, repairing bulldozed houses, and escorting farmers and medical workers. The idea being that, by their very presence, they would provide an element of protection to the Palestinians.
“If you are not involved in the resistance, if you are not actively involved in the struggle, no one listens to you in Palestinian politics. It’s the rules of the intifada,” said Ghassan Andoni, a Bir Zeit University Professor and organiser of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), which, along with the Grassroots Protection for Palestinian People (GIPP) is one of the main NGOs behind the missions, just before the April delegation arrived. “But Palestine is a civilian society. Most Palestinians are not engaged in the fighting. The big question is how to get more Palestinian civilians involved in non-violent resistance to the occupation so that they can influence the course of events. It is here that international civilians come in. Soldiers are less likely to shoot at a group of people if some of them are international. It’s safer for the Palestinians to resist if international civilians resist with them.”
All that changed in April when a delegation happened to coincide with Israel’s umpteenth re-invasion of the West Bank and it’s biggest military operation since the 1967 war.
Israel was not happy with their presence and made this clear by firing on a peace march in full view of the world media’s video cameras. It also rounded up activists and dumped them on settler bypass roads, where they were vulnerable to being attacked and harassed by the predominantly armed, militant settlers.
Towns were placed under complete curfew for weeks on end, their inhabitants imprisoned at home, unable to get food, water or medical care for fear of the snipers. Only the gunmen were on the streets, trying to ward of the fourth biggest army in the world with rifles and homemade explosives.
Resisting with Palestinians was out of the question. There were no Palestinians on to resist with. Instead, the delegates rapidly found themselves transformed into journalists, humanitarian aid workers and siege breakers.
There was no obligation for the activists to endanger their lives. The non-violence training they got from the Palestinians NGO’s didn’t cover this. Some organisations evacuated delegates to Jerusalem. But plenty proved more than willing to take risks.
Their presence proved invaluable. Israel tried to impose a news-blackout, banning foreign journalists, but hundreds of the delegates stayed in the besieged towns with Palestinian families and were able to get information about what was happening to the outside world.
Like everyone else, the delegates were unable to get into Jenin whilst the Israelis pounded it off the face of the earth, but they did get into surrounding villages where they spoke to refugees fleeing Jenin. They were talking about summary executions, human shields and houses being bull-dozed with people inside them more than a week before they were given so much as a mention in the mainstream media.
They escorted medical staff and they bore witness to UN and Red Cross ambulances being shot at, denied access to the wounded and their drivers stripped, beaten and detained.
They bombarded their respective governments and media, calling for diplomatic action and insisting on adequate coverage of naked war crimes and human rights violations.
Their voice was heard and the activists’ presence during the recent invasion seems to have given the movement the jumpstart it needed. International civil society saw first hand how a permanent civilian presence could protect the Palestinians and provide independent proof of violations. Hundreds of voluteers from all over the world started turning up at Tel Aviv airport to join the delegates. Israel, the self-proclaimed beacon of democracy in the Middle East, deported lots of them on the spot, including representatives of European and American human rights organisations, but many got in and many remained long after the original two weeks were up. The ISM alone says it is getting around seven new delegates a week and is working with thirty willing activists at any given time.
Churches in particular are said to be interested in funding a more activist-based, permanent presence. Dutch, Danish and Italian churches are looking to send medical students on rolling five-month delegations. Women in Black, a loose, international network of women peace activists, are hoping to set up shop in one Palestinian village. Students from the UK’s Sussex University have set up the Youth Brigade to help recruit students for future delegations. Many more two-week delegations are planned.
But the stronger the movement gets, the more brutal Israel’s treatment of it looks set to become.
Storming the besieged Church of the Nativity was jaw-droppingly brave. The entire international community, including the UN, seemed utterly unwilling or unable to do anything to end the siege. Even the Vatican and Greek Orthodox Church were silent whilst the oldest church in Christendom, built over the manger in which Jesus was born, was surrounded, it’s priests killed by snipers and its captives starved. To Palestinians it was evidence of their complete abandonment by the world.
But, 10 civilians – four Americans, two Swedes, one Dane, one Irish, one Canadian and one from the UK - defied them all, ran straight through the barricades and stayed until the siege was over. If their governments and international agencies wouldn’t do anything about it, they would.
It was a crystal clear message of solidarity with the Palestinian people and proved a defiance too far for the Israeli occupation forces. Their co-activists – the 13 who staged a decoy so the 10 could enter the church – were cruelly punished.
Huwaida Arraf from the US, explained what happened to her: “After over seven hours of being detained and questioned by the Israeli military, we were finally hand-cuffed and escorted out of Bethlehem. At the checkpoint, guys and girls were divided. The five ladies were pushed onto the floor of a police jeep and our legs were bound. The police officers drove around for a while then stopped and pulled one girl, Ida Fasten from Sweden, out. They cut her loose and left her in the middle of nowhere, by herself. We were horrified! They had taken all of our phones and identification. It was 2am. When I protested leaving a foreign woman out in the middle of unfamiliar territory in the middle of the night, with no phone and no ID, I was physically assaulted, slapped hard in the face.”
All 23 activists were eventually deported and many have been banned from returning to Israel for 10 years. Some went on hunger strike to protest and to point out that they were arrested in Palestinian Authority ruled areas and detained in Israel against their will. Only Huwaida Arraff is understood to have avoided the 10 year ban on returning. All said their embassies and consulates did next to nothing: treating them like a nuisance instead of people to whom they had a duty of care.
Away from the spotlight, Israel’s clampdown on the international activists continues. As Middle East went to press in early June, eight more had been been arrested and threatened with deportation during an IDF invasion of the Balata Refugee Camp. With hundreds of delegates set to give up their summer holidays to go to Palestine, it seems a big showdown between the IDF and the activists is just a matter of time.
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