by IDA AUDEH
It is olive picking season in
Palestine, and so far about 120 activists from almost a dozen countriesæthe US,
England, Germany, Japan, Sweden, Denmark, Spain, Austria, Switzerland, France,
and Italyæhave responded to an appeal by the International Solidarity Movement
(ISM) and arrived to help Palestinians harvest their groves. But the season is
not getting off to a good start. Reports from Jayous (near Qalqilya), Aqraba,
Inbus, and Awartha and Beit Furik (in the Nablus district) tell of beatings and
shootings of Palestinians by the Israeli settlers and at least one shooting
death, that of Hani Yousef, a 22-year-old Palestinian from Aqraba. In some instances,
the settlers harvest the olives while Palestinians watch, helplessly. The
Israeli army does nothing to prevent this. Since October 2000, Israeli soldiers
and settlers have bulldozed, uprooted, or set ablaze about 200,000 Palestinian
olive trees, at a cost to Palestinian farmers of about $10 million.
The 2-year-old ISM
is committed to an active, engaged, nonviolent confrontation of the Israeli
occupation. I interviewed ISM co-founder Ghassan Andoni, who spoke in Boulder,
Colorado as part of a national tour.
Question: Why
the focus on olive picking?
Andoni: Most
Palestinian villagers have no access to their olive groves right now. They are
either adjacent to Israeli settlements, and Israeli settlers do not hesitate to
shoot them if they appear, or they are in closed military areas, or the towns
are surrounded and anyone who ventures out of town risks being shot. We don't
want to lose olive picking in Palestine for two reasons. Life in Palestinian
cities and refugee camps is being destroyed. If Palestinian villages are turned
into cement blocks, without land, without olive groves, then they become
refugee camps. We don't want that.
In addition, olive
picking is an act of defiance, because you are willing to go to areas close to
settlements or areas announced as closed military zones. Soldiers and settlers
will try to stop you, attack you. It is an act of defiance that many
Palestinian villages are willing to take part in. In the villages you can
convince people to participate in civil disobedience and nonviolence.
Question: Tell
me about the road that took you to civil disobedience and nonviolence. What
model of nonviolent resistance are you following? What was your inspiration?
Andoni: The idea of
nonviolent resistance to occupation arose mostly during the first (1987)
intifada. The Rapprochement Center in Beit Sahur led a civil disobedience
movement, and the experience with tax resistance inspired many people in town,
who saw that nonviolence could be effective too. When the second intifada
began, people again started to think about moving in the direction of
nonviolent resistance. We thought that nonviolent resistance could provide the
platform for people who are not engaged to become engaged. The occupation tries
to kill the spirit of resistance. We didn't want this to happen among
Palestinians, and we didn't want this to become a fight between a few hundred
idealists and the occupation army. That would definitely be a lost cause. The
problem is, we didn't have hundreds, we had dozens, and they could easily be
shot at. So the question of protection came up immediately, and that's where
the internationals come in.
Those of us who
eventually formed the International Solidarity MovementæHuweida Arraf and Adam
Shapiro in Ramallah, Neta Golan in Jerusalem and Hare, myself in Beit Sahurægot
together because we found that we were engaged in the same kinds of activities.
Ours were totally individual efforts, dictated by events on the ground. We
weren't trying to apply things we read about, we were just learning from our
own experiences.
Question: What
is the focus of your activities?
Andoni: Our focus
is on active nonviolent resistance as a way of challenging the tools of Israeli
control and expansion of the occupationæmainly roadblocks, checkpoints, and
land expropriation. Without those tools, it will be very difficult to maintain
the occupation. You cannot challenge the control system by shooting at it. But
if you are able to remove a roadblock or go through it regardless of the orders
of the soldiers and if you can do that collectively and regularly, they either
have to bring more soldiers to sustain it, or they have to abandon it. So it
makes the occupation more costly. The idea is this: Instead of Palestinians
adapting to the occupation, we have to shift the burden from the Palestinian
side to the occupier through acts of resistance. Adapting to occupation kills
resistance. Our approach is to take actions that are considered by the occupier
to be illegal and that expose you to punishment and risk. You need to decide to
take the risk.
If you look
carefully, you find that people who wage war are highly motivated, whereas
peacemakers are shy, afraid to take positions because they want to appear to be
objective. Why? Why should people who wage war be so committed and people who
believe in peace not have the guts for it? The ISM says, don't just think peace
or talk about it. If you want it, stick your neck out. Come and protect
civilians in times of war. Go to the Church of the Nativity. Stand with [those
under siege in the church], take food to them. And many did. Go to Jenin when
the massacre was taking place. And come and help Palestinians dismantle the
systems of control. Remove the roadblocks.
The roadblock between Birzeit and Ramallah is operated by two soldiers, but the
road is used by more than 100,000 Palestinians. For the longest time, no one
challenged it. Twice, Palestinians and internationals dismantled it. If this is
done daily, they would have to bring dozens of soldiers to maintain it, or they
might just forget about it, because in fact the checkpoint is about control,
not security. The Israelis increase their control of us, and Palestinians are
expected to adjust. If Palestinians stop adjusting and crack the system of
control, then Israel has to adjust. Israel can't achieve security by caging and
starving people and destroying communities. People have to move, they have to
live, they have to work.
The ISM's first
activity was held on Dec. 28, 2000, about 3 months after the start of the
second intifada. A number of internationals and Gush Shalom members marched
with Palestinians into a military camp at the edge of Beit Sahur, entered the
military camp, asked the soldiers to leave, and put a Palestinian flag on the
tower. The soldiers were caught by surprise, and spiritually the act was very
moving. In Gaza 12 people were killed in an effort to raise the Palestinian
flag on the tower at Netzarim. In Beit Sahur, no lives were lost and the
soldiers stood by helplessly, not knowing what to do.
Question: How
would you describe the structure of the ISM?
Andoni: We agreed
from the start that we would come up with campaigns of direct actions and that
the movement had to be international and Palestinian. It has to be a
Palestinian led movement; we did not want international coming and deciding the
agenda. And we agreed that it would be decentralized and that we would operate
by consensus.
Once a month, the
core group meets to strategize, think about campaigns, decide on where a
presence is needed. Internationals form affinity groups and work together. We
don't really tell them what to do. We might give the broad outlines, such as
the importance of deploying people in Nablus. The main purpose might be for
internationals to stay in the homes of martyrs [suicide bombers] and protect
them from demolition. The group members sit and discuss this, and you end up
with the people who are really into it.
As a movement, we
categorically reject physical and verbal violence, and we distance ourselves
from any Palestinian effort that mixes both. There is a certain way we want to
conduct ourselves, and we don't violate our ground rules.
Question: How
able are you to involve Palestinians?
Andoni: In the
beginning, people were skeptical. We started an ongoing dialog with people
until they accepted that our activities should be done and that there was
nothing suspicious about it. We started coordinating with different active
groups in different areas to organize campaigns, because we didn't want ISM to
become an additional Palestinian faction. We are building a network of
activists, people as well as groups and organizations that are attuned to
working with international groups. I think ISM is well perceived. People
appreciate what the international activists are doing. [Our challenge] is to
get people to see ISM not only as something positive but as something in which
they want to participate.
Question:
Defying a military occupation that doesn't hesitate to shoot entails
substantial risks. How possible is to get people to overcome their fear?
Andoni: It depends.
Some are, and some are not, and that's why we are not talking about big
numbers. We think it will build up very slowly, but if you remember 1987,
nobody expected that Palestinians would do anything. There comes a point you
can never anticipate when collectively people take a decision, and we hope that
this point will come soon. We hope that the example set and the work done will
accelerate this process and get people into it and at least increase the number
of people who are actively resisting the occupation.
Question: How
did the spring incursions change your work?
Andoni: When the
incursion started, we tried to identify what would be the most powerful ways to
mobilize this movement during a time of war, and we realized that we needed to
work on the level of protection and presence. And that's why we started to
deploy internationals in refugee camps, the most dangerous areas, and we
entered the presidential compound and the church of the nativity while under
siege. The internationals took in food and raised morale and were there to
report, because there were lots of biased media reports, images coming from
there of a hostagelike situation. I think those two incidents were what made
the ISM famous.
Question: How
many internationals do you think you have at any given time?
Andoni: We got much
more than we expected. ISM has grown a lot in a short period of time. The
numbers depend on the campaigns. When we have a campaign, during the freedom
summer campaign, we had between 70 to 100 people at any time during the 3-month
period. Between campaigns we might have between 20 and 40 at any time.
Question: What
is the relationship between ISM and Palestinian political factions and the
Palestinian Authority?
Andoni: ISM is part
of Grassroots International for the Protection of the Palestinian People
(GIPP), but in fact the relations with GIPP have never been clear. We have a
different focus: GIPP does a lot of fact finding and reporting, whereas our
focus is direct actions. You have to be open to everyone, to work with
different political factions. But we have our ground rules. We don't work with
any group exclusively, and we won't engage in any violence whatsoever. That's
taboo.
ISM tends to keep a
distance from the PA. The PA has a lot of appreciation for the ISM especially
after our members went to the presidential compound and the Church of the
Nativity during the sieges. But we were always aware that we wanted to keep a
distance. We have always turned down their offers of financial assistance.
Question: What
kind of relations does ISM have with Israeli groups?
Andoni: ISM accepts
individuals as activists irrespective of color, religion, nationality,
whatever. We don't mind working with Israeli radical groups but we don't invite
them. If we have an activity in Nablus, then it is up to the people of Nablus
to invite Israeli groups to participate. We act as guests, not hosts.
Question: What
do you think the future might hold in store?
Andoni: Things
could get worse. We used to think that forced massive transfer [ethnic
cleansing] would be impossible, but now it seems possible. I think if war
breaks out in Iraq, Sharon will spend every minute thinking about a pretext for
massive transfer. Among the Israeli population, it is discussed as something
that is inevitable, as the only solution. When you undermine any form of
coexistence, even one of occupation, you open up the door to other
alternatives, including fascist alternatives.
Question: You
must have some hope that the ISM will make a difference.
Andoni: Each of us
has a certain faith that he doesn't discuss. It is not necessarily logical or
rational. I have this deep faith in the ability of my people. I have never
stopped believing in their capacity to revive, even when things got really bad,
when morale was low. I believe that's what the Palestinians did in 1987. If you
remember that period, everyone was detached, we were even ignoring what was
going on around us. In my town, young people started going to parties. We
thought we lost that generation, the PLO was out of Lebanon, and the occupation
appeared to be here to stay. Suddenly, without anyone expecting it, the
intifada broke out. You cannot force people to think the way you want them to
thinkæit doesn't work this way. The collective unconscious of people moves them
in a direction. You need to trust that the collective unconscious of people
comes to the right decision at the right time. This has happened so many times,
and it will continue to happen.
Ida Audeh's interviews with Palestinian
survivors of Israel's spring 2002 offensive have been published as
"Narratives of Siege: Eye-Witness Testimonies From Jenin, Bethlehem, and
Nablus," Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 31, no. 4 (Summer
2002), 13-34. She can be reached at idaaudeh@yahoo.com.
Information about the ISM is available at www.palsolidarity.org
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