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Christian Science Monitor
25 September 2007
Al Walajeh, West Bank
"All those who love the
prophet should lend a hand!"
Ten shouting Palestinians
were pushing against one boulder, but the primitive Israeli roadblock
cutting off the tiny Palestinian village from Bethlehem was not budging.
Then, with the help of two giant crowbars, an Israel protester, and a
Japanese backpacker, the group heaved the stone aside, opening the road
for the first time in three years.
"Tomorrow they’ll bring a
bulldozer and move it back," sighed Sheerin Alaraj, a village resident
and a demonstration organizer. "Then next week we’ll come back again to
protest."
Inspired by the
experience of other Palestinian villages, the Al Walajeh demonstrators
are part of a small but growing core of protesters combining civil
disobedience with legal petitions to fight Israeli policies.
Earlier this month, the
village of Bilin, which has held weekly protests since 2004, garnered
widespread attention and praise in the Palestinian press when the
Israeli Supreme Court ordered a part of the military’s separation
barrier near Bilin to be dismantled. Increasingly, other Palestinian
villages are following Bilin’s lead, though it remains to be seen
whether this kernel of nonviolence will grow into a full-fledged
movement.
"Before Bilin, people
never had faith it would achieve anything, neither nonviolence, nor the
legal system," says Mohammed Dajani, a political science professor at Al
Quds University. "Maybe this will be a response to the skeptics, that,
’Look, it works.’ "
Nonviolence means more attention
While Palestinian
militants dominate international headlines through suicide bombings and
firing rockets on Israeli towns, residents of Bilin and a handful of
other tiny farming villages like Al Walajeh have eschewed the armed
struggle. Instead, they have linked arms with Israeli peace activists
and chained themselves to trees to delay Army bulldozers cutting a swath
for an electronic fence severing the villagers from their land.
Though Palestinians
glorify the armed militiamen and those killed in battle with Israel,
protest leaders say the nonlethal tactics have one crucial advantage: it
attracts Israeli and international peace activists, who in turn bring
sympathetic media coverage.
The leaders sound like a
Palestinian version of Martin Luther King Jr., and their voices have
become more prominent in the ongoing debate about whether peaceful or
military actions will win their statehood.
"We use nonviolence as a
way of life.... We learned from many experiences: like India, Martin
Luther [King], and South Africa," says Samer Jabber, who oversees a
network of activists in the villages surrounding Bethlehem.
Every Friday in Bilin for
the past three years the protesters have faced tear gas, rubber bullets,
and beatings that have caused hundreds of injuries. Demonstrators
sometimes threw rocks, one of which caused a soldier to lose an eye.
(While leaders say they’re against such violence, followers don’t always
hold the line.)
"The belief in one’s
rights is more important than anything else. If I am confident about my
rights, nothing will make me despair," says Iyad Burnat, a Bilin
resident and one of the protest leaders. "When you resist an Israeli
soldier by peaceful means, their weapons become irrelevant."
The strategy paid off
when the Supreme Court ruled that the current path of the fence around
Bilin offered no security advantages. Villagers will now be able to
reach their crops without having to pass through gates in the fence
manned by soldiers.
In Al Walajeh, Ms. Alaraj
says the protests would be meaningless without a challenge in the
Israeli courts. Villagers fear that the construction of the separation
wall – set to be more than 400 miles long total, affecting 92
Palestinian communities – will leave the hamlet completely surrounded.
Praise from the Palestinian press
Even though the Bilin
ruling was not the first time the court ordered a portion of the barrier
moved, it has resonated widely among Palestinians.
"It has become obvious
that popular civil resistance has become the best way for national
resistance from the occupation," wrote Waleed Salem in an Al Quds
newspaper op-ed.
The civil disobedience
taps into Palestinian nostalgia for the first intifada in the late
1980s, marked by grass-roots participation and stone-throwing.The
current uprising is led by a network of underground militias, most of
which have ties to political parties.
A way to heal Palestinian rifts, too
Just three months after
Palestinians watched Hamas’s violent takeover of the Gaza Strip from the
Fatah-run militias, nonviolent protest against Israel is being seen as a
way to heal rifts among Palestinians.
"Armed struggle has a
side effect on the occupied people. Palestinians start to use this tool
against the occupation, but in the end they use it against themselves,"
says Jabber. "Violence has become part of the culture. We realize that
we have to reform."
In 2002, an open letter
by Palestinian intellectuals against the use of suicide bombing failed
to trigger a change in the uprising. Now, the demonstrations draw, at
best, several hundred protesters – possibly because the protests are
taking place in poor and isolated villages.Last Friday, only several
dozen came out to move the boulders in Al-Walajeh. Palestinians say that
after seven years of daily conflict, people are exhausted. "It’s because
of frustration," says Alaraj. "There’s been real poverty in the last two
years. And when you’re not eating, then you don’t think of anything
else."
The opening of the road,
organizers hope, will encourage more people to join the protests. "If
everyone moves forward toward that objective it will be most effective,"
says Abdel Hajajreh, a demonstrator. "Don’t forget, Gandhi liberated an
entire country."
By Joshua Mitnick -
Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor
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