Fencing match

Ha'aretz - Avi Issacharoff 
........Mohammed Khatib, a 36-year-old father of four...member of the Supreme Coordinating Committee] says...... "Our effort at this time is aimed at something much larger than Bil'in or Na'alin: We want a popular nonviolent struggle in all the territories, which in the end will succeed for the simple reason that it is just"...


...It started at the end of 2003 in the village of Mas'ha in the northern West Bank (where an Israeli demonstrator, left-wing peace activist Gil Naamati, was wounded by IDF fire) and then spread to the village of Budrus... It was in Budrus that the demonstrators scored their first successes by stopping the Israeli bulldozers and forcing a change in the route of the barrier. The struggle spread to Biddu, a village outside Har Adar, outside Jerusalem; to Beit Lahia, on Highway 443; and elsewhere. The demonstrators suffered casualties as the IDF responses became harsher. In February 2004, for example, two young Palestinians were killed and about 70 wounded in a single day of demonstrations.

Israelis were involved in the demonstrations from the outset. Meanwhile, casualties sustained by Palestinian civilians led to heightened support for such activism and the idea of the popular struggle increasingly entered the Palestinian consciousness...

The basic underlying goal of the struggle remains unchanged: to alter the route of the separation fence, which passes through land belonging to Palestinian villagers, some of them farmers. (In September 2007, the High Court of Justice ruled that the route of the barrier in Bil'in had to be changed, but in practice nothing was done.) ........

The groundwork for the separation fence in Bil'in began at the end of 2004, Mohammed Khatib relates: "Our activity at that time was only symbolic, on a small scale. After all, this is a small village. The turning point came on May 4, 2005. We tied ourselves to olive trees. That sent a powerful message to Israel, but through the use of totally nonviolent means. Our aim was to create a triangle of activists: Palestinian-Israeli-international. We welcomed every Israeli who wanted to take action against the occupation. Even soldiers came to express solidarity. Everyone who took off his uniform, "ahalan wa sahalan" - "welcome." Our goal is not the soldier who guards the fence; it is the fence itself. We have no intention of killing the fence guards and we have no problem with the army.

"Our method led a great many volunteers from abroad and Palestinians to join us," he continues. "We were able to convey the Bil'in story in the media. We were accurate about the details. We did not make up anything. Abdullah Abu Rahma [who was arrested by Israel about a month ago] coordinated the activity with the Arab media, and I was in charge of the Israeli and foreign media."

The most striking resemblance between the weekly demonstrations and the first intifada - "the intifada of the stones" - is in the way they took shape. They began with ordinary people who owned land and homes on the route along which the fence was built. The struggle was spearheaded not by politicians or armed members of organizations, but by people with no special connection to Fatah or Hamas. At one point some activists from Bil'in set up a body they called a "popular committee.".....

At present, popular committees are active in a number of Palestinian villages, including Bil'in, Na'alin, Maasra (near Bethlehem), in the southern Mount Hebron area, in villages on the ridge outside Nablus, in the Jordan Rift Valley and elsewhere. Each committee has representatives of the official factions, but also activists whose only association is with the idea of the popular struggle.

"We consider every citizen who wishes to take part in the demonstrations to be a member of the popular committee," says Dr. Rateb Abu Rahma, a leading member of the Bil'in Popular Committee Against the Wall and Settlements, and a lecturer in psychology at Al-Quds Open University. Below his home there is a kind of commune of activists from the International Solidarity Movement.

"The secret of our success is unity of the popular struggle against the fence and the settlements. The fence is not an insurance policy for the Israelis - it is a plundering of land. The settlements and the fence lie on Bil'in land and they are not legal. From our point of view, the popular struggle is preferable to violence, because only Palestinians will take part in a military struggle, whereas everyone can participate in a popular struggle.

"It is the army that starts the violence against the demonstrators," he continues. "On Christmas Day, five youngsters dressed up as Santa Claus. We decorated a Christmas tree with empty teargas canisters. That was our message: Everywhere in the world people decorate their trees with flowers, but we did it with teargas grenades. We placed the tree next to a gate in the fence, and the army immediately started to fire teargas. Another example is Bassem Abu Rahma, who was killed from a direct hit by a teargas grenade. So which side is using violence?".....

..... Nineteen demonstrators have been killed in actions like this since 2004...
Five Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire in Na'alin, including two boys, aged 10 and 17, and dozens have been wounded. In Bil'in, Bassem Abu Rahma was killed and many others were wounded. Another eight demonstrators in Na'alin were wounded by regular live ammunition (5.56 mm. bullets) and 28 others by 0.22 inch bullets, which have been banned for use by the military advocate general.

The Yesh Din organization has submitted many complaints in an attempt to prompt investigations of the behavior of the Border Police and the soldiers in these and other cases. To date, only on indictment has been filed. However, in addition to the many casualties, since last June the IDF and the Shin Bet security service have been engaged in a concerted effort aimed at the leaders of the struggle. Thirty-one residents of Bil'in (5 percent of the population) have been arrested in this six-month period, 15 of whom are still in detention; in Na'alin, 94 residents (7 percent of the population) have been arrested since May 2008. Indictments have been filed against three members of the popular committee in Bil'in, mainly for incitement. The IDF operates in the village almost every weekend.

"They arrested Abdullah on December 10," Rateb Abu Rahma says about his brother. "He is accused of stone throwing, incitement and being in possession of means of combat. It's almost a joke. There was an exhibition that an Israeli held at Abdullah's place of various weapons found in the fields of Bil'in. So they accused him of possession. He is 39, a teacher in a Christian school and a university lecturer. Is he going to use violence? He was then accused of throwing stones. They took one of the boys in the village and interrogated him. In his testimony he named dozens of people who threw stones with him, including Abdullah. So it's obvious they read out the names to him and told him to sign."

........"Even the U.S. consul general visited the village," Khatib notes. "The Americans are in direct contact with us, are following the events and have offered financial aid for humanitarian projects in the village. American and Swedish diplomats attended the trial of Abdullah Abu Rahma. Our coordinating committee is working with an international committee which is trying to help.

..... I feel today that I am part of a group that is changing history."  Full story