Report Two: Connecting the Dots … Toward a Nonviolent National Movement

Novemeber 3 – 4

“Anyone not out of this house within 10 minutes will be shot!”

We 12 Americans sit transfixed in the West Bank living room of retired high school principal Ali Owanah as he describes the events of this past September. We have just spent the good part of an hour winding our way through the hazardous back roads of the Palestinian village of Battir, up and down the dramatic terraced hillsides which generations of farmers – ancient Israelite and modern Palestinian alike – have called home. We are led to the Owanah family home by Nurit Steinfeld of Machsom Watch (“Checkpoint Watch” in Hebrew), an organization of 400 Israeli women who daily monitor Israeli checkpoints in the West Bank (www.machsomwatch.org/).

Steinfeld had previously helped Owanah overcome harrowing checkpoint barriers so he could transport his wife back home from a hospital stay in nearby Jerusalem.Now, the family has another barrier to overcome.

Owanah relates the story: “The soldiers came at 1:30 a.m. They grabbed my 22-year-old son, Nader, put him in handcuffs, and took him away. We haven’t seen him since.”

As his young daughters serve us juice, he describes the terror of machine guns being pointed in family members’ faces in the middle of the night, and of their home being subsequently ransacked by Israeli soldiers while they were held out in the cold. What is Nader to be charged with?The family still does not know, and they cannot afford to pay the $2,400 required to get him released.

Owanah’s story is but one of the many personal glimpses into life under military occupation that our delegation has encountered so far.

We walked the crooked alleyways of Dheisheh Refugee Camp, listening to volunteer Jihad Ramadan describe life on a  plot of land just larger than half a square mile that has been home to 11,000 Palestinians for the past 57 years. Around us, children celebrate the Muslim festival of Eid al-Fitr by setting off firecrackers, squirting us with water, and welcoming us with simple English phrases they have learned in school.

 “In general, no one likes war and we all want peace,” explains Jihad.“ But what kind of peace?There is no meaning to peace without a right of return [of the Palestinian refugees].”

We continue to be confronted with conflicting theories about what final status negotiations should look like – a two-state solution … a one-state solution … variations in between. But two Palestinian organizations we visited in Bethlehem are experimenting with tactics of active nonviolence to bring about a new reality on the ground.

 Zoughbi Zoughbi, director of Wi’am, the Palestinian Conflict Resolution Center (www.planet.edu/~alaslah/), and a newly elected Bethlehem city council member, focuses on grassroots nonviolent conflict resolution and restorative justice strategies among Muslim and Christian Palestinians. These strategies are designed to help generate support for a social agenda to improve schools, health services, and economic opportunities. “We are not interested in bringing Israel to its knees,” Zoughbi says, “but bringing Israel to its senses.”

Husam Jubran of the Holy Land Trust (www.holylandtrust.org/)  in Bethlehem describes to us how hundreds of Palestinians have now been trained in Gandhian-style nonviolence tactics. “Nonviolence is not something strange for us. It is a part of our culture and our religion.”There are currently two ongoing weekly peace demonstrations in Palestinian villages in the  West Bank: in Bil’in and Budrus. “We are connecting the dots,” says Jubran, “and in a few years we want to have a nonviolent national movement.”

That night, we stay with Palestinian families in Beit Sahour, a largely Christian city that was a center for nonviolent resistance throughout the first Intifada in the late 1980s.

Back in West Jerusalem on Friday afternoon, it is time to celebrate Shabbat with the Masorti (Conservative movement) congregation of Moreshet Yisrael. But not before we pay a visit to the weekly pre-Shabbat peace vigil of Women in Black (www.womeninblack.net).

Gila Svirsky, who first helped organize these vigils 17 years ago, tells the delegation how she was transformed over a period of many years from a staunch nationalist to a savvy organizer against the Israeli occupation. “Militarism has begun to permeate our lives,” she says. But despite the militarism, Svirsky reports that the umbrella organization for Israeli women activists, the Coalition of Women for Peace (www.coalitionofwomen.org/home), has now taken 4,000 Israelis on “reality tours” to view the Wall, observe checkpoints, and visit Palestinians in their homes.

We Americans on this delegation are in the middle of our own “reality tour.” It is not an easy journey to take, but it is one that is important for all of us who want to work for nonviolent social change, not only in the Middle East – but also at home.

– Phil Stoltzfus and Candace Lautt, for the delegation

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Other Reports from this delegation

Report 1 - Report 2 - Report 3 - Report 4 - Report 5