THE HANDSTAND


THE HANDSTAND	JULY 2003
..INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY MOVEMENT Nablus 24 Jun 03 Joseph Phelan Dear Friends, I have been here five days and I am not adjusted to seeing soldiers with guns pointed at people trying to go home, crossing a checkpoint across a road in their country. Here is what I learned: Palestine has a gun held to its heart. Tanks, APCs, jeeps, hummers, f-16, Apaches, checkpoints, new road bocks daily, settlers, snipers, bulldozers, colonial kids with guns, all of it one big gun, the heart of Palestine in the crosshairs, the finger of occupation caressing the waiting trigger. Today, and yesterday no one is allowed to leave Nablus if you live in Nablus, and no one is allowed into Nablus unless you live here. We woke up at 4 am today to try and make it to a nearby village before the soldiers could block the road; we were going to start clearing the 8 or 9 road blocks in the road. Around 5 am after walking for a while on the early morning sand roads we came across a large APC. They told us the internationals could pass the Palestinians with us could not. The soldier said he knew we are not a part pf the conflict, that our Palestinain friends are not a part of the "conflict," but orders are orders. We went bak to Balata, tired and disappointed. Today we approached Aseria checkpoint, walking over a hill in the searing midday sun when up the hill, from around the bend, on the dusty dirt road came a hummer. It stopped sixty feet from us and two soldiers got out immediately yelling at us in Hebrew. We told them we did not understand. They told us to walk forward and give them our I.D.s and we turned around ignoring their shouts, trying to avoid being detained. A Palestinian man who walked forward with us walked towards them and gave them his ID, after several minutes he was released and turned around following us up the hill away from the shouting soldiers. Their guns were aimed at us the whole time, their angry words pressed on our backs like the black hole barrels of their weapon, like the uninterrupted sun. I have not gotten used to this yet. I constantly fight my urge born from heavy exchanges with NYPD to do what the soldiers say. I constantly have to remind myself, overcoming the slowly churning mess of my stomach, that I, as an international, can ignore them to a point. Later in the day we went to Biet Iba; another check point hemming in this ancient city. No one was allowed past the young Israeli soldiers in drab green, hidden behind squat concrete checkpoint huts, squinting through sniper sights at old ladies fainting in the sun trying to get home from the city with small children hanging on their sun browned wind worn fingers. Again they called for our identification, again we walked away hoping to be useful here in the future. Here in this prison city the old walls raise up to the unforgiving sun, the dust of history filling the cracks between the ancient stones. When you see the market center here tucked into the alleys that have held vegetable stalls, butchers and clothing shops for centuries you understand why this war of erasure against the Palestinian people is so centered on land. These homes, these places of worship, these shops are all heritage, they are not the same as contemporary US homes made of plastic and concrete, ready for resale, release, re-rent. These are centers of community, homes, and hearts. There is a bulldozer at the front door of these homes, the gnarled metal teeth crusted with the dust of broken history and the dried blood of family legacy are paid for with US dollars, my dollars. Later in the afternoon we went to Wahara check point (the same one I was turned away from five days ago. The check point was closed when we arrived but through some negotiation with the captain we got it open for people headed into the city with Nablus I.D.s and headed out with outer lying village I.D.s. The negotiation took a little while. We had to deal with a soldier who was holding a bullhorn up to people's ears and shouting into it to go away. He also walked over to a cab and was about to plunge his knife into the tire when we and several Palestinians intervened. This soldier continued to pull his gun up keeping it at chest level with everyone he was talking with, yelling at. This one soldier is not an exception; he seems to be the heavier end of the rule. We have encountered some soldiers a little more sympathetic and hating their jobs, but doing it none the less. I met a young man here who has one year left to study at Bier Ziet University. He is studying science. He is a refugee; he wants his land back, a single Palestinian state. He wants his families land back. He hasn't been to university in three years, it's a thirty minute drive away but he can't get there. The gun is cocked; Israel's finger is playfully tugging the trigger. Every night there is the hum of drones flying across the starful sky. Every night a families house is occupied nearby, every day we wake up to new roadblocks. Here the gun is pressed lightly against Palestine's chest, pushing to the heart. The gun has bullets built on fifty -five years of evictions, land stealing, humiliation, torture, and murder. I feel like this gun is fired every second, every moment there is the chance of death and the only thing shielding this heart is daily resistance, daily push to live and make a life. People continue to have tea with friends, study, argue, love and live. I am amazed as my guts turn to nervous at the sight of a soldier walking towards me his gun swaying with his swagger. I am amazed by people who will to live and resist. In Solidarity Joseph Phelan CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTORS TESTIFY IN COURT June 24, 2003 Five Against the Occupation For a whole hour, before the scheduled time of today's trial, dozens of youths lined the sidewalk in front of the building, holding up placards and chanting "Occupation is Terrorism! - The Refusenick is a Hero!" Long before the judges came in, the small courtroom was filled far beyond capacity, with many activists left outside. When the five accused filed in, they were greeted with prolonged applause. Adv. Dov Henin started by outlining the main defense line. "This trial is not about technicalities and obscure points of the law. This trial is about a major constitutional issue which no Israeli court has dealt with before. The conscience is the most basic part of human dignity, the part of the personality which defines the essential values; the part which if broken, breaks the whole person. It is the contention of the defense in this trial that freedom of conscience is already enshrined in Israeli law and has been so for the last ten years, ever since the Knesset adopted the Basic Law on Human Dignity and Liberty. And this is so even though the military authorities have hitherto refused to take proper cognizance of the fact. The defense asks the court's patience in hearing out the five accused. Each one is ready to bear full responsibility for showing that his decision to refuse military service does indeed proceed from deeply held convictions - the dictates of his conscience." The first to take the stand was Haggai Matar. Matar spoke about his considerable personal experience with the occupation and long quotes from the reports of human rights organizations as well as stories which he heard from fellow prison cell-mates who served in the territories. "In 1999, I joined a special project of joint summer studies by Israeli, Palestinian and Jordanian pupils. Soon afterwards, I started a correspondence with a Palestinian Administrative Detainee, who was held in an Israeli prison for six years without trial. When at last he was released, I visited him in a house riddled by Israeli bullets and with broken furniture. I joined actions of the Gush Shalom and Ta'ayush movements. We went to the territories to rebuild houses demolished by the army, to provide humanitarian help in towns hit by closure or curfew, to support Palestinian villagers who have been violently assaulted by settlers. Always, soldiers tried to block us and in many cases used violence against us. In 2001, I met again with some of the Palestinian pupils of the summer camp who told me harrowing stories of being beaten up and arrested by soldiers. One told of witnessing his friends in Ramallah being shot to death. On August 20, 2002, three days before I was due to present myself for enlistment, I and several other activists got an emergency call to go to Yanoun Village, a tiny place where settlers have so terrorized the inhabitants that the Palestinians all left. We came there and the empty houses were terribly depressing and somber sights. We were very happy that due to our presence, the people started coming back.With all my experiences, I had no doubt: I absolutely don't want to be and can't be part of the Israeli army which I believe has no longer the right to call itself an army of defensee." [The above is excerpted from a two-hour speech; full text in Hebrew and English available from Anat Matar <matar@post.tau.ac.il>] * Matan Kaminer based his testimony on a philosophical analysis. “In this testimony I would like to describe the guiding lines of my conscience and explain why it is incompatible with service in today's Israeli army. For some people the basic value from which their conscience is derived is God's word. For others it is loyalty to their country. For me the basic value is human liberty, human rights. I believe that all human beings have inalienable rights such as the right to life, the right to equality, to welfare, to education, to association, to democracy. All of these rights are violated in countless ways by the occupation - mainly violated as regards the Palestinians, but in many ways also regarding Israelis. The right of Palestinians to life is violated by the policy of liquidations (which indirectly causes also the loss of Israeli life, as we saw last week), and by the constant military activity in populated areas which causes the death and wounding of civilians. The right to equality, both of Palestinians and of Israelis living within the Green line is violated by the policy of settlement which takes land, resources and basic human dignity from Palestinians and which discriminates against most Israelis in the division of national resources. The right of Palestinians to welfare and to education are violated by the ongoing closures and curfews which cause the sky-rocketing unemployment figures and the severe disruption of the educational system. The most fundamental, though not necessarily the most directly painful, is the violation of the right to live in democracy. The very rule over another people which is denied the right to control it's own life and future is a flagrant violation of that right, and after 36 years the pretense that the occupation is temporary wears thin. The contempt for democracy is gradually crossing into Israel proper, with racist extreme right parties becoming an acceptable and common component of government coalitions. The deprivation to the right of democracy of the Palestinians is the root cause of all the crimes which accompany the occupation - both the crimes of the occupier of which I described part, and the crimes of the occupied, pushed to immoral and inhuman ways of struggle. Neither set of crimes is in any way justified. Both are direct derivatives of the occupation and can only be abolished by abolishing the occupation itself. From all of this, it logically follows that service in the army, which is the main instrument for implementing the occupation is totally against my conscience. My decision to refuse enlistment does not mean that I am against the State of Israel, against the people of Israel, or against the Israeli society of which I am part. On the contrary, I feel impelled to do all I can for Israeli society. I have done so in the past and intend to go on doing so. The occupation is a terrible crime; an immoral and malignant crime against another society which spreads also to our own society, strangling and poisoning it. Obviously, in such a situation I can't go into the army. I can only ask that my conscience be recognized and that I be provided an opportunity to do alternative civilian service for the benefit of the Israeli society. * At three in the afternoon it was the turn of Shimri Tzameret, whose testimony was interrupted when the court adjourned at 5 pm. "For years, I have known that I was not going to join the army. I know it with as much certainty as I know that I will never kick a homeless person lying on the sidewalk, never rape a woman, and when I will have a child - never abandon it. We all of us have our own reasoning and my reasons are a bit different from those who spoke before me. I feel that there is no need to detail what the occupation is doing to the Palestinians. What it is doing to ourselves is reason enough. First I want to talk about the suicide bombings. It is a very central part of our life here in this country and many of us are touched personally in one way or another. A bit more than a year ago, exactly on the day when I decided to tell my schoolmates that I am going to refuse to serve in the army, a suicide bombing happened in which the mother of one of the girls in the school was killed. And later on the day it turned out that her sister was killed as well. It brought home to me what does it mean, that the life of this girl whom I knew will never be the same again; how terrible it is when something like this is suddenly breaking in to a life. Some of my schoolmates were angry with me; they said: how can you refuse to go to the army when such things happen. I told them: that is exactly the reason that I am refusing: the army being in the territories is not a way to stop terrorist attacks; it causes them. Exactly because I told this girl, Merav, that I feel committed to do whatever I can to prevent such things from happening again to others, I feel that one of the most important things which I as an individual can do, is refusing to serve in the army. After all, everybody knows how the present situation will end: always for centuries, the rebellion of an occupied people eventually ended in its freedom. The only question how much time it will take, and how many more casualties there will be. I try to make both a bit less. Another point: what the occupation is doing to our society. I want to tell about Rami, whom I met in the prison. I sat with him for hours, listening. It is incredible how many terrible things he had witnessed in just three months of service in the territories. He told me about the young boy who threw a stone at the lieutenant- colonel's jeep which did not hit the jeep. But the colonel still chased the child, caught him and beat him brutally with the butt of a rifle. And another child which a Shabak agent tied up, and then urinated on him. When Rami tried to protest, the man shouted: Go away; I am conducting an interrogation. And he also told me of soldiers looting a shop, and then destroying everything which they could not carry. And he told me about how he could not stand it anymore, and how he sat in the toilet for several hours in the night, the barrel in his mouth, the finger on the trigger. In the end he ran away, and that's how he got into prison. That's what happens to the sensitive people. The non-sensitive ones, those who get used to these Wild West norms, afterwards bring these norms into the Israeli society itself. We are corrupting ourselves. I am not willing to be part of the main instrument of corruption." Final Note There are many signs that the refusal issue is becoming more and more central in the media and Israeli discourse. A number of refusenicks were released over the last two weeks. The best guess on this development is that the army wants the number of refusenicks in jailed reduced. That is good news, but it is accompanied by concern that the IDF hopes to use the current court martial proceedings to teach potential refusenicks that the price, the next time around, for future refusenicks might be high. [This account is based on the invaluable reporting of Adam Keller and Beate Zilversmidt for Gush Shalom. Keller and Zilversmidt are the editors of the Other Israel.]