Letters from Palestine (26 page)

I pity you for having become murderers.
Since I was a boy, I have hated killing, hated weapons, and hated
the color red, just as I hate injustice and fight against it. That
is how I have understood life since I was a boy, and that, in the
same spirit, is what I have taught others. I gave all my strength
for the sake of peace and justice and for reducing the suffering
that is caused by injustice, whatever its origin.

Yes, I pitied you, because you are sick.
Sick with hate and loathing; sick with causing injustice; sick with
egoism, with the death of the conscience, and the allure of power.
Recovery and rehabilitation from those illnesses, just as from
paralysis, is very long, but possible.

I pitied you. I pitied your children and
your wives, and I ask myself how they can live with you when you
are murderers. I pitied you for having shed your humanity and your
values and the precepts of your religion and even your military
laws, which forbid breaking into homes and beating civilians,
because that undermines the soldier’s morale, his strength, and his
manhood.

I pitied you for saying that you are the
victims of the Nazis of yesterday, and I don’t understand how
yesterday’s victim can become today’s criminal. That worries me in
connection with today’s victim—my people are those victims—and I am
afraid that they too will become tomorrow’s criminals. I pity you
for having fallen victim to a culture that understands life as
though it is based on killing, destruction, sowing fear and terror,
and lording it over others.

Despite all that, I believe that there is a
chance for atonement and forgiveness, and a possibility that you
will restore to yourselves something of your lost humanity and
morality. You can recover from the illnesses of hatred and the lust
for revenge. And if we should meet one day, even in my house, you
can be certain that you won’t find me holding an explosive belt or
concealing a knife in my pocket or in the wheels of my chair. But
you will find someone who will help you get back what you lost.

You will find a soft and delicate infant
here, whose age is the same as the second in which you pulled the
trigger and who will never see his father standing on his feet but
who is full of pride and power, even if he has to push his father’s
chair, having no other choice. Even though I have reasons to hate
you, I don’t feel that way, and I have no regrets.

In spite of this tragedy that changed my life
radically, not only physically but also psychologically and
practically, and not only for me but also for my wife and children,
brothers, and my mother and father, I still believe that violence
cannot end this conflict but will make it more and more complex.
Violence here does not only involve armed conflict but also the
occupation of the land by force and evicting its inhabitants by
force. Colonial settlements are also another form and result of
violence.

My resolve to continue living is also a
desire to reach others with my message to understand that life is a
gift that should not be tampered with, and that all people are
equal on this earth, and that power should exist to protect justice
and defend it and not to create oppression or to dominate other
weaker people.

This last section of West Bank stories
continues to explore some of the themes enunciated in Issa Souf’s
fervent appeal for the use of nonviolent means to confront Israeli
oppression. All three of the writers whose stories are featured in
this section are also ardent and dedicated apostles of nonviolence,
even though all of them have themselves been the victims of
life-threatening incidents of violence perpetrated against them by
Israeli soldiers and settlers.

But these concluding stories also serve to
illustrate another important feature of Palestinian resistance—what
Palestinians call “steadfastness”—steadfast and principled
resistance to the illegal takeover of their land and against all
the pressures, violent and otherwise, to get them to leave their
land and their country. The Palestinian people, however many of
them have been forced to live in the diaspora, are inseparable from
their land, and in these stories, you will read once more of the
inspiring and creative ways that they have continued to wage the
struggle to retain it, to remain on it, and one day to reclaim it
all.

_PHOTO

Iyad Burnat, now thirty-six years old, is the
head of the Bil’in Popular Committee against the Wall and also the
head of Friends of Freedom and Justice in Bil’in. He has been
working with local Palestinians, internationals, and Israeli
activists for over five years in leading protests against the
separation wall near his village and the brutal occupation that it
symbolizes for the Palestinian people.

Iyad is married and has four children. He
participated in the first Intifada (1987–1993) when he was fourteen
years old. In 1992, he was kidnapped from his home and imprisoned
for two years. He has since been arrested eight times and has also
often been wounded while leading his villagers and others in their
weekly nonviolent protests. Soldiers regularly break into his home
as well.

Despite the violence he and his supporters
have suffered, Iyad is himself an apostle of nonviolence and has
said that his own personal hero is Gandhi.

* * *

We had a scary moment when our tour bus
rolled into the outskirts of a village near Bi’lin, the famous site
of weekly nonviolent protest marches against the wall, which has
encroached upon the land of that village and prevented its
inhabitants from gaining access to many of their beloved olive
trees. The village we were trying to get to first was Ni’lin, where
we were to meet one of the leaders of the Bi’lin demonstrations, a
young man by the name of Iyad Burnat.

Ni’lin had also seen its share of protests
since the wall had been erected there—and deaths. (Four
Palestinians have died after being shot by Israeli soldiers, and in
March 2009, an American, Tristan Anderson, from my home town of
Oakland, California, suffered severe brain damage as a result of
being struck with a tear-gas canister.)

The trouble was, when we tried to access the
road to Ni’lin, we found it blocked by Israeli soldiers. Our
delegation got off the bus, and our tour guide, Saïd, walked up to
the soldiers to inquire about the reason for the barrier. He was
told the usual, a “closed military zone” had been declared; we
could not pass. Several of us crowded around the soldiers, saying
that we had already arranged for safe passage to the village in
order to meet someone. The soldiers remained adamant and became
increasingly hostile. The atmosphere was still tense and the
situation unresolved when our guide spotted Iyad walking toward us
from the direction of Ni’lin.

Before he could reach us, however, the
soldiers apprehended him and appeared to arrest him. We, of course,
were very concerned and protested again. Then, with a menacing
gesture, a soldier ordered us to clear out and get back into our
bus. Our guide, not wanting to risk any harm to our group, said we
should comply. We reentered the bus, but the bus itself remained
stationary so we could observe what was going on. We saw Iyad on
the ground with his hands tied behind his back. After a few
minutes, though, we had to leave; it was getting too dangerous for
us, and the soldiers were motioning to us to move on.

With distressed and conflicted feelings
about having to leave Iyad under such circumstances, all we could
do was to drive into Bi’lin to Iyad’s home and await developments.
Of course, by the time we arrived, his family and friends had
already heard the news about Iyad’s arrest. As we learned, he had
been arrested many times before, and, as always, there was no
indication how long he would be held or what would happen to
him.

We spent some anxious moments, drinking tea
(Palestinian hospitality goes on, no matter what!) and simply
waiting to get some news about Iyad.

About a half hour later, we got it. Iyad
himself brought it by walking through the door, a smile of his
face. His children rushed up to greet him. The soldiers had not
really arrested him, after all, just detained him and sent him off
with a warning.

Later, he escorted us up a long dirt road,
through olive groves, until we had reached the wall—it was actually
a barbed-wire fence—and we could see the soldiers just beyond us.
This was the site of the demonstrations that were held every Friday
(we had arrived on a Thursday). Several of us, including me, posed
for photographs against the fence as Iyad told us about the
demonstrations he had been a part of for what was then the past
five years.

As we were leaving the site, I noticed a
spent cartridge lying on the ground and went to pick it up. I
thought I would take it home as a kind of ghoulish souvenir of our
visit.

“Better leave that here,” one of our tour
leaders cautioned me. “You wouldn’t want to be caught with that in
your possession when you go through airport security.” Reluctantly,
I dropped it.

Afterward, we heard that the next day at the
demonstration, a Japanese photographer was seriously injured and
was in danger of losing sight in one of his eyes. You’ll read more
about the purpose and the hazards of these demonstrations in what
follows, but, first, you need to hear from Iyad himself.

* * *

The life of this village depends on the land.
The spirit of these people is tied to this land. We are simple
people, good people, who want our land back—and we want it now.

Bil’in is a small village west of Ramallah,
six kilometers east of the Green Line, with about 1,600 people and
a thousand acres of farmland. In 1996, however, Israel confiscated
seventy-five of these acres to begin building the illegal
settlement Modi’in Illit. In 2005, Israel sucked up 575 more acres
with their separation fence, leaving us with just 35 percent of our
land. This was done under the pretense of security. The real
reason, of course, is that they want to expand Modi’in Illit, which
currently houses 35,000 Jewish settlers and is slated to house a
whopping 115,000 more.

On February 20, 2005, Israel began building
the wall in Bi’lin, where villagers rose up in defiance,
demonstrating daily. We elected representatives from local
organizations to sit on a popular committee tasked with keeping the
struggle alive. And we succeeded. Every single Friday for the past
four-and-a-half years, villagers from Bi’lin have rallied against
the fence. Since then, many Israeli and international activists
have taken part, playing an important role in Bi’lin’s nonviolent
campaign.

And every Friday, almost unfailingly,
Israeli soldiers have met the delegation with force, employing a
variety of weapons to repel the crowd. These weapons range from
batons to percussion grenades, rubber-coated steel bullets to live
ammunition, a machine that issues high-frequency, ear-piercing
noise to a canon that can shoot up to thirty tear gas bombs at a
time. Over one thousand injuries have been recorded, and over sixty
teenagers have been arrested for periods of three to six months.
These days (and nights) we continue to have to endure frequent
raids into our village, arrests, and, of course, injuries to our
demonstrators.

Resolute and implacable, our protest has
taken on creative and surprising forms. In addition to
straightforward marches, we have chained ourselves to our olive
trees, fastened ourselves to our soil. We have locked ourselves in
cages and tied ourselves to fences. We have played music and danced
dabkeh, waved flags and blown foghorns. We have mourned the slain
children of Palestine by fashioning and carrying child-size sacks;
mourned the dead of Gaza and Lebanon by taping our mouths shut,
marching in silence. We have even constructed our own Palestinian
settlements out of wood and cloth in attempts, if only symbolic, to
reclaim our land. We have taken our struggle to the courts, to
conferences, to Europe and the U.S. and the international
community.

And for our resistance, for our relentless
insistence that we deserve freedom and justice, we have suffered at
the hands of the Israeli army, suffered beatings and night raids,
curfews and collective punishment. They have tear-gassed and
torched our houses. They have hit us in front of our children. They
have frightened our children with sound bombs. They have kept our
children afraid.

But none of this has stopped our protest. We
will not and do not give up. We do not and will not lose hope. Our
mission is to spread what is happening in Bi’lin to other places,
to share our strength with our neighbors, to give them the courage
to keep living on their land.

The life of this village depends on the
land. The spirit of these people is tied to this land. We are
simple people, good people, who want our land back—and we want it
now.

* * *

The following letter was written by Kristin
Ess, a participant in one of Bil’in’s weekly protests, shortly
after the fourth anniversary of these demonstrations, in late
February 2009.

* * *

Pouring rain, high winds, flooding to the
north in Tulkarem’s Qaffin, and the heavy presence of Israeli
soldiers wielding machine guns did not stop the Bil’in nonviolent
resistance this week or any other.

It has been four years, every Friday, that
the western Ramallah town and its community of neighbors have taken
to their lands, attempting to stop Israeli forces from confiscation
for the Wall and settlements.

With the M16s that fire gas bombs at will,
along with hand-held grenades lobbed by, literally, smirking
soldiers, Bil’in came out yesterday to demonstrate on Friday, a
week after they marked four years of resistance to the Wall.