ISRAEL'S BARRIER: Tear it down. Op-Ed By Huwaida Arraf
Huwaida Arraf | 23.02.2004 16:32 | Anti-militarism | World
ISRAEL'S BARRIER: Tear it down: It's an oppressive grab of Palestinian land
BY HUWAIDA ARRAF
February 23, 2004
Detroit Free Press
http://www.freep.com/voices/editorials/earraf23_20040223.htm
BY HUWAIDA ARRAF
February 23, 2004
Detroit Free Press
http://www.freep.com/voices/editorials/earraf23_20040223.htm
ISRAEL'S BARRIER: Tear it down: It's an oppressive grab of Palestinian land
February 23, 2004
BY HUWAIDA ARRAF
The International Court of Justice at the Hague today convenes hearings on the legality of the controversial barrier Israel is building on the West Bank. The UN General Assembly asked the court for an "advisory opinion." Here is one perspective on the debate.
Today, as they debate the wall at the Hague, here in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories, we're wondering: Is the world going to watch this happen again? Will we let walls and fences be erected around communities and allow people to be stripped of their livelihoods and freedom of movement because of their religion and ethnicity?
In Beit Surik, a Palestinian village northwest of Jerusalem, the destruction of olive groves, greenhouses and homes hasn't started yet, but the 4,000 residents need our help. Almost 90 percent of Beit Surik's land and its eight wells will be isolated on the other side of the wall. The villagers will be imprisoned by this structure and denied free access to work, school and medical care. They will have to apply for permits to enter and exit their village.
Will we support their efforts to resist the inevitable, if only so history will record that Beit Surik stood defiant in the face of this land grab? Will we support their efforts to stay on their ancestors' land despite efforts to force them to leave?
Less than 20 miles from Beit Surik, volunteers from the International Solidarity Movement have been supporting nonviolent resistance to the wall for the past two months in the village of Budrus. Last November, Budrus' residents were notified that their land would be razed and isolated by the wall. Since then, they have been mobilizing nonviolent protests and calling for international support. Israeli bulldozers uprooted about 100 of Budrus' olive trees before stopping, possibly in response to the increased visibility brought by peace activists' participation in the village's protests.
The Israeli occupation forces have responded with violence. More than 60 villagers have been injured by rubber-coated metal bullets. Troops invade Budrus and open fire with live ammunition. Nine nonviolent activists are imprisoned, including young children. Women and children alike are beaten and tear-gassed at each demonstration, and the leaders of Budrus' nonviolent resistance were abducted from their homes by soldiers in the middle of the night. Yet the villagers have not been deterred and refuse to sit still while their land is destroyed and their village becomes a large open-air prison.
A year and a half ago, the ISM was part of a similar effort with the villagers of Jayyous. However, despite the petitions, protests, sit-ins, and beatings and arrests of demonstrators, thousands of Jayyous' olive and fruit trees were destroyed. Seventy-five percent of Jayyous' farmland was taken from its owners. More than 200 greenhouses are now abandoned because Israeli soldiers forbid Jayyous farmers from crossing to their land. All of the village's wells fall on the other side of this "security" fence. Today, Jayyous is nearly surrounded by a 9-foot high razor-wire fence, equipped with motion sensors and security cameras. Jayyous' residents have to request special permission to enter and exit their village.
Do the people of Budrus and Beit Surik have reason to believe that their nonviolent resistance can save them from a similar ghetto-like future? Veterans of the Palestinian freedom struggle have little hope. The world community has thus far failed to act to stop Israeli violations of international law and Palestinian human rights. Instead, the overwhelming focus of the international community has been on the Palestinian armed resistance, with little recognition of the prominent nonviolent struggle.
Over the years, Palestinian nonviolent tactics have included the boycott of Israeli goods and services, civil disobedience and rejection of Israeli military administration, the establishment of neighborhood schools (when the Israeli army shut down Palestinian schools), marches, strikes and refusal to pay taxes.
The ISM was created to support unarmed resistance to Israeli occupation by providing the Palestinian people with a resource -- an international presence and a voice -- with which to continue nonviolently resisting an overwhelming military force. As Palestinians, Israelis and foreigners take the lead on the ground to oppose and defeat an oppressive occupation, will the policymakers and international judges follow? Or will they be left behind?
HUWAIDA ARRAF is a cofounder of the International Solidarity Movement. Born in Detroit, she grew up in Roseville and is currently in the West Bank.
February 23, 2004
BY HUWAIDA ARRAF
The International Court of Justice at the Hague today convenes hearings on the legality of the controversial barrier Israel is building on the West Bank. The UN General Assembly asked the court for an "advisory opinion." Here is one perspective on the debate.
Today, as they debate the wall at the Hague, here in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories, we're wondering: Is the world going to watch this happen again? Will we let walls and fences be erected around communities and allow people to be stripped of their livelihoods and freedom of movement because of their religion and ethnicity?
In Beit Surik, a Palestinian village northwest of Jerusalem, the destruction of olive groves, greenhouses and homes hasn't started yet, but the 4,000 residents need our help. Almost 90 percent of Beit Surik's land and its eight wells will be isolated on the other side of the wall. The villagers will be imprisoned by this structure and denied free access to work, school and medical care. They will have to apply for permits to enter and exit their village.
Will we support their efforts to resist the inevitable, if only so history will record that Beit Surik stood defiant in the face of this land grab? Will we support their efforts to stay on their ancestors' land despite efforts to force them to leave?
Less than 20 miles from Beit Surik, volunteers from the International Solidarity Movement have been supporting nonviolent resistance to the wall for the past two months in the village of Budrus. Last November, Budrus' residents were notified that their land would be razed and isolated by the wall. Since then, they have been mobilizing nonviolent protests and calling for international support. Israeli bulldozers uprooted about 100 of Budrus' olive trees before stopping, possibly in response to the increased visibility brought by peace activists' participation in the village's protests.
The Israeli occupation forces have responded with violence. More than 60 villagers have been injured by rubber-coated metal bullets. Troops invade Budrus and open fire with live ammunition. Nine nonviolent activists are imprisoned, including young children. Women and children alike are beaten and tear-gassed at each demonstration, and the leaders of Budrus' nonviolent resistance were abducted from their homes by soldiers in the middle of the night. Yet the villagers have not been deterred and refuse to sit still while their land is destroyed and their village becomes a large open-air prison.
A year and a half ago, the ISM was part of a similar effort with the villagers of Jayyous. However, despite the petitions, protests, sit-ins, and beatings and arrests of demonstrators, thousands of Jayyous' olive and fruit trees were destroyed. Seventy-five percent of Jayyous' farmland was taken from its owners. More than 200 greenhouses are now abandoned because Israeli soldiers forbid Jayyous farmers from crossing to their land. All of the village's wells fall on the other side of this "security" fence. Today, Jayyous is nearly surrounded by a 9-foot high razor-wire fence, equipped with motion sensors and security cameras. Jayyous' residents have to request special permission to enter and exit their village.
Do the people of Budrus and Beit Surik have reason to believe that their nonviolent resistance can save them from a similar ghetto-like future? Veterans of the Palestinian freedom struggle have little hope. The world community has thus far failed to act to stop Israeli violations of international law and Palestinian human rights. Instead, the overwhelming focus of the international community has been on the Palestinian armed resistance, with little recognition of the prominent nonviolent struggle.
Over the years, Palestinian nonviolent tactics have included the boycott of Israeli goods and services, civil disobedience and rejection of Israeli military administration, the establishment of neighborhood schools (when the Israeli army shut down Palestinian schools), marches, strikes and refusal to pay taxes.
The ISM was created to support unarmed resistance to Israeli occupation by providing the Palestinian people with a resource -- an international presence and a voice -- with which to continue nonviolently resisting an overwhelming military force. As Palestinians, Israelis and foreigners take the lead on the ground to oppose and defeat an oppressive occupation, will the policymakers and international judges follow? Or will they be left behind?
HUWAIDA ARRAF is a cofounder of the International Solidarity Movement. Born in Detroit, she grew up in Roseville and is currently in the West Bank.
Huwaida Arraf
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The Wall That Must Fall To Save Israel From Itself
23.02.2004 19:10
Leibowitz is an Israeli human rights lawyer. Nir is an Israeli physicist who is a member of Ta'ayush, an Arab-Jewish group that works to end racism and segregation.
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Wall that must fall to save Israel from itself
By SHAMAI LEIBOWITZ and DAVID NIR
Feb. 22, 2004
As Israeli citizens watching our country being charged with war crimes at The Hague, we must ask a disturbing question: Have our people learned the lessons of history?
As early as 1929, Albert Einstein wrote: "Should we be unable to find a way to honest cooperation with the Arabs, then we have learned absolutely nothing in the 2,000 years of suffering, and deserve all that will come to us."
The birth of Israel followed closely the ashy traces of Hitler's war against humanity and against the Jews most of all. Did the new nation of Israel learn anything from this horrific Holocaust? Has Israel developed enough caution and awareness to resist abusing its overwhelming force against the weak and disadvantaged?
The creation of the Israeli state in 1948 was accomplished by a mass destruction of the Palestinian community. Four hundred and fifty Palestinian villages were demolished. Eighty-five percent of Palestinians were ousted from their ancestral homeland.
Notwithstanding the fact that the Arab states started the1948 war, Israel should have atoned for its grave sins toward the Palestinians. Unfortunately, instead of acting in the manner spelled out in Jewish prayers, saying "I have committed a sin -- what can I do to reconcile with you?", the Israeli state did the opposite. In 1967, it deprived the Palestinians of the remaining 22 percent of Palestine by occupying the West Bank and Gaza, and then instituted a colonial regime which has been in force ever since.
For decades, Israel has promised the international community that it is going to return those occupied lands to the Palestinians. Today, it is obvious that Israel was pulling the wool over everyone's eyes. Israel has continued the path of oppression and discrimination, building Jewish-only settlements on Palestinian lands and subjugating Palestinians to a regime of brute force and terror. Israel has built Jewish settlements on more than 50 percent of the West Bank and Gaza, leaving Palestinians less than 11 percent of historic Palestine in the form of small enclaves and bantustans.
When one observes the Jewish-only highways in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, the blocked and ravaged Palestinian villages and towns, the faces of humiliated men, women and children whose basic dignity has been trampled on, one cannot but wonder how this could have been perpetrated by Jews.
Adding insult to injury, Israel is building a "separation barrier" in the West Bank, which has raised a furor and brought Israel to the defendant's bench in The Hague. The Israeli government is not telling the world what this wall is and will be doing to Palestinians: It will turn Palestinian lands to concentration camps, with checkpoints and roadblocks everywhere, civil rights totally abolished, economic resources shattered, lives managed forcibly at gunpoint.
When one stands in front of the gigantic 24-foot concrete wall that is now erected in the midst of Palestinian Jerusalem, dissecting families, businesses and essential services, interrupting the whole fabric of life, one cannot but conclude that the sole purpose of the wall is to humiliate and strangle. Will it not promote resistance and terror rather than security and peace?
The present Israeli government, though spreading false rhetoric about peaceful aspirations and antiterror measures, is actually doing the utmost to inflict destruction, humiliation and poverty, which are the true infrastructures of terror. It is the role of every fair-minded citizen who abhors terror to take actions that will bring Israel to its senses. Putting Israel on trial in The Hague is one such action; however, it is not enough.
We ask millions of Americans to apply pressure on the U.S. government to halt Israel from building this wall and from continuing its path to self-destruction. As Jews contemplating our history, we realize that the only path to safety is through mutual recognition, not domination. As the prophet Zechariah wrote:
"These are the things you shall do: Speak truth to one another, render in your gates judgments that are just and make for peace." (Zechariah 8:16). We desperately need the loving help of the citizens of the free world. It is time for those who truly support Israel to bring down this wall.
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Leibowitz is an Israeli human rights lawyer. Nir is an Israeli physicist who is a member of Ta'ayush, an Arab-Jewish group that works to end racism and segregation.
SHAMAI LEIBOWITZ and DAVID NIR
Homepage:
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/story.hts/editorial/outlook/2413330