Report Four: Education, Refusal,
and the Need for “Macro-level Change”

November 7 & 8

It is 9:30 in the evening on Tuesday, November 8, the eighth day of our delegation to Israel/Palestine. We have just finished listening to the last speakers for the day. It is our turn to write a report of our activities of the last two days.  Our task is to present a coherent picture of the kaleidoscope of impressions, images, reactions, and opinions that the delegation has experienced. It may not be possible to do, but we will make the attempt.

On Monday morning, we drove through the rain to the Qalandia checkpoint, the major barrier for traffic in and out of Ramallah. This checkpoint separates Jerusalem and Ramallah, which is the economic, administrative, and cultural center of the West Bank. 

Through the steamy windows of the bus, we viewed the chaos of honking cars, trucks, taxis, and services (multi-person taxis) jockeying for position in line to get through the checkpoint. The surreal nature of the checkpoint – in the shadow of the Separation Wall, with its political graffiti and murals – reflected the strange reality of separating not Israeli from Palestinian territory, but one part of the West Bank from another: Palestinian from Palestinian.

We continued on to Birzeit University near Ramallah. We felt the energy of youth, confidence, and expectation in the students we met there. Birzeit, established in 1975, is the oldest Palestinian university. It is an important national institution and a center of student activism. As such, it has been subject to closure 15 times by Israeli authorities, including five years of complete closure during the first Intifada.

As we listened to the Palestinian students describe their lives, aspirations, and thoughts about the Israeli-Palestinian situation, the impact of American policy in the region became evident. Their anger was palpable. One young woman, finance major, asked: “Do you cry when a Palestinian baby is killed?”  From the students, we understood that the United States. is seen as the primary ally to Israel and an obstacle to Palestinians achieving their national and human rights. 

We were challenged by Ghassan Andoni, the director of public relations for the university and a founder of the International Solidarity Movement, not just to express sympathy for the Palestinian situation but to be more aggressive in working to change U.S. policy.

Helen Murray, coordinator of the “Right to Education” campaign at Birzeit University, believes that instead of focusing on specific injustices, it is necessary to build a movement, like the anti-apartheid movement or the campaign to relieve Third World debt. For example, the divestment initiative in the United States is widely considered by Palestinians to be an important vehicle for change.

Another example of mobilization toward macro-level change is the Refuser movement/s within Israel. Rotem Dan Mor, an active member of the movement of high school refusers, Shministim, made the difficult choice to refuse to continue to serve in the Israeli army for reasons of conscience. He sees refusal as a “rupture in social norms” that can generate broader change in Israeli society. These different acts of resistance are both undeniably controversial and undeniably poignant.

A continuing theme we heard from Jewish Israelis was the tension between the desire to maintain both a Jewish and a democratic state. On our visit to Yad V’Shem  on Tuesday, we viewed a video screen scrolling through the May 14, 1948 Declaration of the State of Israel. One clause read, “It (the State) will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all of its inhabitants, irrespective of religion, race and sex.”

Keren and Paz, Hebrew University students we met on Tuesday night, acknowledged that this ideal had not been achieved and that Palestinian citizens of Israel were not treated equally in terms of municipal services, education, and housing. They said, however, that progress was being made and that they could have a country that is both Jewish and democratic in nature.

However, there is no such visible tension for Shimon Ansbacher, the deputy mayor of Ma’ale Adumim, the largest Israeli settlement in the Occupied Territories. In 1975, Ansbacher was one of the founders of the settlement, which began with 23 families and is now a city of 30,000 Jewish Israeli residents.

Ansbacher expressed his view during our visit Tuesday afternoon that the “Land of Israel,” from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean, is the Biblical inheritance of the Jewish people. 

His position was that there is no perfect democracy. He offered a vision in which Palestinians who accept Israel as a Jewish state could have 95 percent of democracy. This would entail all the rights of citizens, except the ability to serve in and vote for the Knesset (Israeli parliament). Within that context, he said that the Palestinian and Jewish residents should have the right to live anywhere in the Land of Israel. 

Ansbacher is proud that his children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren all live in settlements in the Occupied West Bank and that five of his grandchildren went to Gaza to resist the disengagement.

Tomorrow we will visit Hebron and see another front in the clash between the belief system of the Israeli settlers and the daily struggles of the Palestinians.

Submitted by Faye Straus and Neil Sims for the delegation

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Other Reports from this delegation

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