Ghandi in a keffiyeh

Ha'aretz: Ghandi Redux

Here's another story that finally made it to the big time: Palestinian non-violent protests against the Apartheid Wall in the West Bank area of Qalqilyah. For two years now I've been reading the reports of the International Solidarity Movement about the demonstrations against the Wall that have been going on in that area, all the while listening to people babble on about how if the Palestinians had been non-violent they would have a country right now. Well, Meron Rapaport looks at the complex interplay among the Palestinian residents of these towns, Israeli activists against the occupation, and the Israeli Defense Force in the article linked at the top.

There are almost daily demonstrations of Palestinians mixed with Israelis mixed with cameras. In meetings of the popular committees in Bilin or Boudrus or Beit Lakia, Palestinian grassroots activists - not intellectuals who get donations from Europe - are talking seriously about the doctrine of Mahatma Gandhi, about the model of nonviolent demonstrations that is meant to spread from village to village throughout the West Bank.

There ya go, Thomas Friedman. You want Ghandi on the West Bank? You've got him.

Not that the IDF is buying it.

Nonsense - there is no such thing as a nonviolent Palestinian demonstration, say officers of the Israel Defense Forces, whose soldiers have already developed a routine of confrontation with the Palestinian and Israeli demonstrators, and even display fondness for some of those involved.

Yet, Rapaport goes on to point out that 10% of the entire village of Bi'ilin have been wounded during demonstrations in just the last three months, at least 180 Palestinians throughout the area according to B'Tselem -- 16 of them with live ammunition, seven of them fatally -- as opposed to one soilder who lost an eye when a youth threw a stone at him, despite the pleas of village elders not to throw stones.

It is difficult to escape the impression that the IDF is using an iron fist in these demonstrations. That impression is reinforced if we take into account that in the hundreds of demonstrations held since the protests against the separation fence began about two years ago, in the Qalqilyah area, the demonstrators have never resorted to firearms.

The IDF claims that all this demonstration nonsense is the fault of Israeli anarchists stirring up trouble. Getting the Palestinians to demonstrate and protest. Both the Palestinians and the Israeli activists deny this. But the IDF is right about the fact that the Palestinians rarely protest without the Israelis there.

From the army's perspective, there is a clear difference between the attitude toward the Israelis and the attitude toward the Palestinians. "You have to differentiate between Israelis and Palestinians," Segev told his unit commanders in a briefing two weeks ago on Friday. "Where there are Israelis, you don't fire rubber [coated bullets]."

The Palestinians aren't masochists. They know the Israeli presence gives them protection and they actively invite it, as do the Isreali activists actively help in this. It's part of the philosophy behind groups like ISM and Christian Peacemaker Teams. That as unfair as it is, if you're a white Westerner, or in this case, a Jewish Israeli, your life is worth more. So, why not use that unfair value against oppression, or to help protect those who choose to stand up against their oppressors?

Both Hatib and Abu Rahma vehemently deny that the Israelis are behind the demonstrations, as the IDF is convinced. Yonatan Pollack and Einat Podhorny, two of the Israelis who do a lot of traveling between Tel Aviv and Bilin, also say that such claims are preposterous. The Palestinians tell us when and what activity they are planning and invite us to come, they say, but we are never the initiators. However, both the Palestinians and the Israelis concede that the very knowledge that Israelis will be present at a demonstration makes it easier for the Palestinians to decide to confront the soldiers, as it is likely that the troops will use less force when they see Israelis among the demonstrators.

So, in another words, Palestinians need Israelis to be Ghandis.

My Palestinian friends say that it's up to the Israelis to take the moral high ground and do the right thing, which I'm usually inclined to agree with because the Israelis are also the ones in the position of power -- they have the high ground on everything. My Israeli friends, of course, look to the Palestinians to do the moral thing and non-violently protest the occupation. But what these demonstrations in Qalqilyah show is that it takes both sides to do the right thing in this situation. Both Palestinians and Israelis to stand up against the Wall and the Occupation. Both to create the synergy needed to confront the decades of hate and violence and dehumanization.

Elias tells about a demonstration in Qalqilyah in which the majority of the demonstrators were Israelis. During the demonstration a prayer service was held and the cleric who conducted it delivered a sermon against the Jews. "I went over to him and asked him, `How can you talk like that? didn't you notice that half the people here are Israelis?' He replied, `I meant the other Israelis.'"

Murad notes that before the Israelis started to show up for the demonstrations, many in Boudrus knew Jews only as uniformed soldiers. "Now even the children do not shout slogans against the Jews, only against the occupation." An Israeli demonstrator relates that she heard a Palestinian say proudly that "the Israelis" - meaning the demonstrators - had protected them from "the Jews," meaning the soldiers.

"Clearly the fact that we face danger together influences the Palestinians' level of trust in us," says Einat Podhorny from Ta'ayush, an Israeli-Palestinian cooperative organization, and an activist against the fence.

Now, aside from the interesting, and perhaps, troubling, interplay of religion, nationality, and identity demonstrated there with the terms "Israeli" and "Jew," the fact that Palestinians are speaking up against what we in the West find anti-Semitic is progress (though I find it amazingly ironic that we would call Palestinians, who are at least as Semetic as any Jew from Brooklyn or Krakow, anti-Semetic). And while I find this blooming trust the only thing that gives me hope about the Israel/Palestine situation at the moment, for the IDF it's all about the Wall.

"For a month and a half we have encountered a daily routine of disturbances," Colonel Gedj says. "Soldiers find themselves in mortal danger, the machinery is damaged, the workers are attacked. This is delaying the work and causing the loss of a great deal of money. It is a situation that we cannot accept."

At this point in the article, Rapaport has the reader quite skeptical about just how much "mortal danger" these soilders are in. And killing and maiming people protesting the loss of their homes and livlihoods because someone is loosing money building the wall that is causing the loss of homes and livlihoods makes Col. Gedj. look a little bit like Marie-Antoinette.

The article ends with a quote from a senior officer at Command Central who recognizes that protecting machinery and concrete may be easily achieved but at a cost.

"...this is a classic type of disturbance and the army has no problem dealing with it. We only have to internalize the transition from fighting against armed individuals to coping with disturbances. It reminds me of the first intifada, and in the first intifada we were victorious at the operative level without any doubt. Most of the wanted individuals were liquidated or caught - it was an extraordinary success. But in these struggles it is very difficult to determine who wins in the judgement of history."

P.S. As I was looking for that Friedman quote about "a la Ghandi" on Google, I found this brilliant "memo from Ghandi" written by Arjan El Fassed, a Dutch-Palestinian political scientist. You wanna play "who can appropriate Ghandi the best?" Well, Fassed is definitely in the game. ;)