Finding Hope Among Tanks and Guns
Nonviolence is a way forward, but Americans need to use their privilege.
By Mark Schneider
Active for Justice (Colorado Springs)
March, 2002
Gasping for breath, my eyes burning from tear-gas, I called over my walkie-talkie desperate for help. On a cloudy, cold rainy morning, Israeli soldiers were attacking my line of international people non-violently trying to liberate an illegal Israeli military checkpoint within Palestine (aka the West Bank and Gaza). As the last rounds of tear-gas were thrown at us a dozen French people joined our ranks, giving us the power to win this round. But the Israeli military would be back.
For over three weeks I joined hundreds of internationals in non-violent direct actions aimed at supporting Palestinian resistance to Israel’s illegal occupation. Both using and letting go of our privileged status as internationals, we got a taste of what Palestinian life is like under Israel’s bloody military siege.
In 1967 Israel invaded the West Bank and Gaza, the remaining 22% of historic Palestine. For 35 years the consensus of the international community has demanded Israel leave and respect Palestinian’s right to self-determination. Palestinians are still waiting.
Meanwhile Palestinian land has been steadily gobbled up by illegal Israeli settlements, military confiscation and thousands of acres of olive groves permanently destroyed. Palestinian water sources are controlled by the Israeli government, consumed mostly by Israelis. Hundreds of Palestinian homes and apartment buildings have been destroyed by Israel, the bulldozers purchased from Caterpiller Inc. Israel has forbidden Palestinians from working in Israel, creating unemployment levels of nearly 70% in Palestine.
Most frightening of all are the US-supplied F-16 fighter jets, Apache helicopter gunships, and M1-Abrams tanks that have repeatedly bombed and shelled Palestinian civilians, killing, in just the last 16 months, nearly 1000 and injuring over 20,000. And political assassination is official Israeli policy laying waste, in just the last 16 months, to an incredible 90 Palestinian leaders. The list goes on and it’s numbing.
It’s bleak, the US government supports Israel 100% (militarily, financially and diplomatically) and it’s getting worse.
So how do Palestinians find hope? By simply surviving and finding ways to resist a foreign military. Most hopeful of all are the existence of people like Dr. Hanan Ashrawi, Dr. Mustafa Barghouti and Ghassan Andoni, three prominent Palestinian leaders actively supporting and organizing nonviolent direct action.
In his 50s, a respected activist living near Bethlehem, Ghassan Andoni has been active in previous violent Palestinian resistance movements in Jordan, Lebanon and in the West Bank. He has spent years in Israeli jails and was tortured. He’s seen best friends killed by US-made bombs and bullets. Yet for over a decade he has been experimenting with nonviolence.
During a training session Andoni explained to our international group that Palestinians need to see nonviolence work. Pointing out how Israel’s hundreds of military roadblocks and barriers are easily held because Palestinians are obedient, he elaborated:
“Now why are we obedient? Because we are scared. If we get close [to the soldiers] we could be shot. Now if we go with you [foreign nationals], and we know that we are not going to be shot at, then our chances of making the occupation procedures non-sustainable are increased.”
“If we can convince [the Palestinian people] that there are certain specific things that could be achieved and are doable, [that will] challenge the major procedures of the occupation, I think a transition can happen. I think we can attract to the streets the people who are not in the streets. We can influence both sides. I don't think we will succeed with this campaign, but with this, and the one after, and the one after. “
Attempting to support his cause, I found myself and other internationals on the receiving end of Israel’s military violence: tear-gas, sound-bombs, live-fire over our heads and in the most terrifying moments back at that checkpoint liberation, heavily armed Israeli soldiers began physically dragging, kicking and beating us – to move us off the road so they could re-gain control of their illegal checkpoint. As I walkie-talkied for more help and was told that none was coming I cringed in total fear as just five feet from me, an Israeli soldier used his M16 to stab at Trevor, an American from Seattle.
Yet the power of love, the willingness to receive the violence and refusal to hit back and the courage of people holding onto each other was too much for the military minds. Not only did we overcome their violence but we lent an important boost to the Palestinian nonviolent resistance movement.
Yet then I went home and Palestinians must continue to live and to resist in that madness. It’s this resilience, embodied in Ghassan’s words, that fuels and propels me on the journey of liberation I’ve devoted my life to.
Mark Schneider is the organizer for the Colorado Campaign for Middle East Peace. More information about his trip can be found at www.ccmep.org/palestine.html You can email him at dogbuckeye@yahoo.com or call 720-956-0700.