The Other Israel, briefing April 7, 2001 Protest -Resisting bulldozers & arrest (1) -Rebuilding -Resisting bulldozers & arrest (2) -Jailed Conscientious Objector in trouble -Avnery visits Arafat in Ramallah -Human Rights week in Tel-Aviv At the April 4 ”instant afternoon protest” in Tel-Aviv, 50 to 60 people stood facing the Defence Ministry. The stream of cars passing couldn't miss there slogans: ”Bring the soldiers home”and ”Settlers out of Hebron - Now!” It is difficult in these days of bloodshed to confront the Israeli public in a convincing way with our views. But now that the Hebron settlers were seen assaulting the same soldiers who are there to protect them, Gush Shalom and the Coalition of Women for Justice & Peace decided that this was the time to stand up; to question the logic of the continued presence of the 400 armed Israeli fanatics in the heart of this occupied Palestinian town. Not all who could have been expected to show up at such a time did turn up. One former activist was reported as having gone into ”inner exile”, refusing to read newspapers or hear the news; another one is involved in preparing for actual emigration. The presence of several activists who came in working hours all the way from Haifa to take part in this vigil, and a group of Arab Israeli Hadash activists from even more distant Acre was encouraging - but at second thought, also a sign of the critical mood in our circles. While the media are totally captured by the regular cases of Israeli casualties, and of course hardly pay any attention to the much bigger numbers of Palestinian casualties, enemy-building is the game, with no attention for the ongoing and increased occupation brutality. By trying as hard as we can, we may hope to sometimes produce a sentence or two in the radio news, or a few lines in one or two papers. Difficult to point out the way to the light after the too slow and too insincere ”peace process” collapsed. Contact: Gush Shalom <info@gush-shalom.org>, Women's Coalition <gsvirsky@netvision.net.il> During the Tel-Aviv vigil the news came of the military involved in a wild spree of destroying ”illegal” Palestinian houses all over the West Bank. At least 19 families were left homeless in the space of a few hours. Rabbi Arik Asherman, of Rabbis for Human Rights, had been detained while trying to block the way of the bulldozers which destroyed the Shawamreh Family home at Anata Village, north-east of Jerusalem. On the following day, April 5, some thirty of us - including the meanwhile released Asherman and his fellow Rabbi Yechiel Geitsman - were on the spot in Anata, starting work on rebuilding the Shawamreh home. It is place and a name which had already become become a symbol. Three consecutive times already did the family get their home destroyed, only to have it rebuilt each time again by the joint labor of Israelis and Palestinians. In truth, we did not expect to have to do it a fourth time; in the past two years, the military authorities seemed to have accepted the fact that the Shawamreh family did have a roof over their heads, even if an ”illegal” one under the occupation law. But the respite is over, and the Shawamreh house is once more in ruins; the destroyers used a special machine to dig up the very foundations to make reconstruction as difficult as possible. So there we were again, the people of the Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) and Gush Shalom, clearing the rubble so that a new house could be erected on the site, forming a line and passing stones from hand to hand to the pile which was left by previous demolitions, and carefully sifting the rubble for more or less intact stones and slabs which could be used again. At least, as far as we know, there had been no further demolitions since Wednesday night. On that night the European Union issued a strong condemnation of the demolitions, and the protests which so many of you sent to Sharon, Peres and Co. may have added to the effect. Contact: Rabbis <info@rhr.israel.net>, ICAHD <halper@iol.co.il> Peace Now had not taken part in the action, except for one hard-working activist who came unofficially. But later we learned that they did achieve something significant that day. The Peace Now Settlement Watch put the finger on a revelation internationally embarassing for the Sharon-Peres government: the Housing Ministry (under Sharansky) published tenders for the construction of 708 new housing units in the settlements of Ma'aleh Adumim and Alfey Menashe. The US State Department was quite sharp about it - ”a provocative act, inflaming an already volatile situation” - perhaps seeking to counterbalance the anti-Palestinian tone of recent pronouncements from the Bush Administration. Contact: peacenow@actcom.co.il. As if all this wasn't enough for one week, on Friday April 6 the villagers of Dir Istiya were under attack with the army coming to cut down hundreds of their olive trees. The bulldozers first came on Sunday; Neta Golan and her friends of the International Solidarity group (Israelis, Americans and Germans) protected the trees by passive resistance and were detained; but the uprooting was suspended pending an appeal to the Supreme Court by the villagers. The verdict came within days: the army would be allowed to cut trees, though less than originally intended - they were authorised to cut a wide swath through the olive orchards and destroy some two hundred trees. At about noon, just hours before start of the Pesach weekend a huge force appeared at the site. The villagers held their Friday Muslim prayer in front of the bulldozers and held them up for some time. In the meantime International Solidarity women, who had been waiting in the village for days, chained themselves up to the trees, forcing a further delay until police with sheares were called in to cut the chains and take the protesters off to detention again. (Footage of the whole confrontation was taken by the Jerusalem-based freelance photographer Inigo Gilmore, who can be contacted at 055-333201, 02-625282, inigogil@hotmail.com). Neta Golan and Jasmeen Khayal were remanded in custody after refusing to sign an undertaking ”not to enter again into closed military zones” (a closed military zone is any place which a colonel or higher designates to be such). The two of them will spend Pesach, the ”Holiday of Liberty”, behind bars. They are now in the Kishon Detention Center, and their case was actively taken up by Haifa activists. They will be brought before a Petach Tikva magistrate on Sunday night.The court starts working at 19:00. The presence of peace people inside and outside the courtroom would be highly desirable. Neta and Jasmeen call for international solidarity in their struggle against the uprooting of trees in contravention of the Geneva Conventions. Through lawyer Orna Cohen they passed on a message calling for Israel to respect and adhere to international law and the UN resolutions and for the international community to enforce these laws in Palestine. Contact: Irit <iritka@zahav.net.il>, Tzippora <tzaporah@aol.com> , Susi <susim@inter.net.il>. On the radio, the Army Spokesman explained that the cutting down of the Dir Istiya olive orchard was necessary because ”terrorists and stone-throwers could have hidden behind the trees”. That is the logic of the occupier who doesn't care for what he does to the land which isn't his. Also behind bars this Pesach is the young Gabriel (Gabby) Wolf, imprisoned after refusing to undergo recruitment. He had written to the military authorities ”(...) The State of Israel is occupying territories that do not belong to it and dominating the people living there, denying their basic rights... After reading great amounts of material (including reports by Amnesty and B'Tselem), I became ever more deeply convinced that the only possibility I have to act within the limits set by my conscience is to refuse to be enlisted in the IDF”. Wolf was interviwed by the IDF's ”Conscience Committee”, but failed to convince the officers on it that he does posses that extremely rare thing, a conscience. Persisting in his refusal to be drafted, he was sent off for two weeks at Military Prison 4 in Tzrifin - which, to judge from previous cases, wil be followed by new call-up orders, new refusals and additional prison terms. For some offence committed within the prison, nature unknown, Wolf was placed in the ”Isolation Ward” where he is denied the possibility of having a shower and using the phone. He is also forbidden to send mail, though allowed to receive it. (You can write to him at the address: Gabriel Wolf, Serial No. 7158325, Military Prison 4, Military post 02507, IDF). Updates can be gotten from Sergeiy Sandler of ”New Profile” <sergeiy@bgumail.bgu.ac.il>, who had himself gone through the same treadmill some years ago. Since the present Palestinian uprising broke out sixty soldiers - reservists and consripts - are positively known to have refused to participate in its suppression. The actual number is probably much larger, since many of those who undertake such acts of refusal belong to no organization, seek no publicity and get to our knowlege only by accident. Meanwhile, there are persistent press reports of agitation among reservist, whom the IDF high command is forced to bring in increasing number into the Occupied Territories. Reservist Nir Nahshon, told Yediot Aharonot on April 3: ”My month in the Gaza Strip was the most dangerous in ten years. The strip now seems like Lebanon. Shooting all the time, and you never know when you will be hit. We guarded a tiny settlement which had only one family of settlers, plus a single mother who left the settlement together with us.” There had been a time when reserve military service was virtually universal among Israeli Jewish males - but no longer. Nowadays, the burden falls on a shrinking minority. ”We have had enough of being suckers!” was the main slogan at a demonstration by hundreds of student reservists at the Defence Ministry on Monday, April 2 - which, despite being strickly non-political and avoiding any reference to what the army is doing to the Palestinians, might ultimately prove more effective than anything we peace idealists can do. Meanwhile, this week Arafat's bureau in Ramallah saw several Israeli visitors. Taking part in what has become again something of a taboo-breaking act were several Knesset Members (Yossi Katz and Collette Avital of Labour, Naomi Chazan and Zehava Gal'on of Meretz). The maverick settler Rabbi Menachem Froman was also there, to present his idea of Jewish-Muslim religious rapprochement. In turn, the Gush Shalom delegation headed by Uri Avnery suggested to go beyond meetings of few individuals, and have large groups of Israelis - dozens or even hundreds - take chartered buses into Ramallah or Gaza, to hear first hand the Palestinian version of why Camp David failed, how the Intifada broke out, and what Barak actually offered - as opposed to the widely-circulated vague rumours. In short - all the disputed points of very recent history which are nowdays cited as justifications for the unbridled offensive against the Palestinians. Contact: <info@gush-shalom.org>. On this year's Khol Hamoed Pesach, April 8-12, a wide coalition will be holding a series of activities in the streets of Tel Aviv, all devoted to the subject of human rights violations in the Occupied Territories. Much of the activity, especially during the afternoon and evening hours, will focus around a Human Rights Tent which will be erected at Shenkin Garden on Shenkin Street. It will start off with a Humanistic, Inter- Religious Seder Pesach to be held there between 8.00 -10.00 PM on the night of Sunday, April 8. On the following days the tent will host lectures and photo exhibitions, and there will be ”street theater” performances to make the words ”human rights violations” more concrete to passers by. In addition, an effort will be made to engage unconvinced people in conversation about human rights in general, and human rights violations in the occupied territories in particular, and try to explain what is objectionable in what the state of Israel is presently doing. The events will conclude by a protest march against the closure, departing from the Shenkin Garden at 4.00 PM on Thurdsday, April 12. Further info: moranparis@netscape.net Full calendar of the Human Rights week: Hebrew at http://www.e_seder.op.co.il English at: http://indymedia.org.il/imc/israel/webcast/display.php3?article_id?85 |
