Media Credit: Val D. Phillips
Palestinian students face war,
roadblocks
By Val D. Phillips
January 23, 2002
Media Credit: Val D. Phillips
Palestinian students make their way though the Surdan checkpoint in an area of the West Bank.
Val Phillips is a CU-Denver senior who traveled recently with a Colorado Campaign for Middle East Peace delegation to show solidarity for Palestinian citizens in Israeli-occupied territories. The following is her account of some of the problems Palestinian students face in disputed territories.
Imagine encountering heavily-armed foreign soldiers manning a military checkpoint on your way to final exams.
The soldiers block your path, demand your identification, and make you kneel on the ground to empty your books and papers onto the ground. As you do so, they sexually harass women walking by and shout degrading things at the men. Once you have finished showing them everything in your bag, they take your identification and tell you to wait by the side of the road with 12 or 13 other students.
And there you wait — for 15 minutes, an hour, three hours. One soldier brings a two-by-four over and creates a sort of pen for you to stand in. A short while later, he moves the two-by-four, making the 'pen' smaller. You miss your exams. You ask why they are making you wait. The soldiers ignore you or laugh at you or call you a dog to your face. If you attempt to continue, without their permission, they threaten to shoot you. Eventually they return your ID and allow you to proceed, or they send you home. Or they arrest you. Perhaps you are released that afternoon after paying a fine. Perhaps you are sentenced — without charge or trial — to a term of "administrative detention": six months in a foreign prison.
Palestinian students who attend Bir Zeit University in the Israeli-occupied West Bank pass through just such a checkpoint going to and from classes every day.
As one of five Coloradans who participated in two weeks of nonviolent direct action in late December aimed at ending the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, I helped "take over" just such a checkpoint.
The Surda checkpoint, on a Palestinian road, linking the Palestinian village of Bir Zeit with the Palestinian city of Ramallah, is quite far from a border with Israel. It is entirely within "Area A" under the Oslo Peace Accords — a section of the West Bank meant to be exclusively under Palestinian control.
On Dec. 26, as part of International Checkpoint Watch, I observed Israeli soldiers detaining Palestinians without explanation, and without searching their persons or belongings and ignoring them as they emptied their bags on the ground. I also watched them sexually harass Palestinian women, verbally abuse and humiliate Palestinian men, and physically assault a Palestinian driver for crossing the checkpoint after another soldier had given him permission to do so. One soldier, when asked why he was detaining a man, replied that "he must learn to come when I call," while another called a Palestinian man a dog to my face.
Education is a human right, and interfering with that right is a violation of international law. Therefore, on Dec. 28, with Bir Zeit students and nearly 300 other internationals, I helped to open that road to Palestinian students and keep it closed to the Israeli army. By lying or sitting in the road, and enduring tear gas, percussion grenades, being dragged, hit, and bruised by soldiers — with guns pointed at our heads, chests, and bodies — we kept that road open for six hours.
According to U.N. Resolutions 242 and 338, Israel is to withdraw from those territories it occupied in during the 1967 war. Israel has not withdrawn from the West Bank and Gaza. Rather, the military occupation of those lands — with its attendant human rights abuses — continues. The U.S. government has repeatedly vetoed U.N. Security Council resolutions calling for the creation of either an international peacekeeping or international observer force in the occupied territories. Thus, civilians from more than a dozen countries — the International Solidarity Movement — have taken on that role themselves.
In addition to dismantling the Surda checkpoint, we unloaded fruits and vegetables across earthen roadblocks in the rain to get food into Palestinian villages. We planted olive trees to replace those uprooted by Israeli settlers and soldiers. We dismantled roadblocks at the entrances to Palestinian villages, for which we were attacked by Israeli settlers, whose residence in the Occupied Territories is a violation of international law. On Christmas Day, we attempted to march with Palestinian Christians and Muslims from Bethlehem to Jerusalem to pray; the Israeli army forcibly denied our entry.
These were small things, and yet I lost track of the numbers of Palestinians who thanked us and told us how much hope our actions gave them.
There will be another round of international direct action around Easter. For more information on the International Solidarity Movement, or to get involved locally in working for a just peace between Palestine and Israel, check out www.ccmep.org.