I want to see both Israelis and Palestinians thrive. But the question we Americans need to ask ourselves is, how long will we allow our government’s support of an apartheid state to continue?
Andy Douglas | Guest columnist
I’ve never actually met C. She’s my partner’s friend. But I sense her integrity through our email communication. C runs a Catholic Worker House in Wisconsin, serving people with few resources. She also spends two months out of every year in a village in the West Bank of Palestine. Her accounts of life there are heart-breaking. (I refer to her as C as she fears reprisals from the Israeli government if her name becomes known.)
Life for Palestinians in the West Bank, C writes, consists of an ongoing series of humiliations. Checkpoints, settler attacks and military raids are relentless. Think about what life must be like in such conditions. The expansion of Israeli settlements into Palestinian land is a constant source of tension, and although these settlements are technically illegal, their numbers are growing.
When she arrived back in the South Hebron Hills two months ago, C noticed that Israeli settlers had been occupying Palestinian grazing land near Tuba village, harassing Palestinian shepherds and internationals. “They were disrupting and scaring children as they walked to school, and they were calling in the army, which responded by taking the ID of the Palestinian land owner and doing nothing to stop the settler harassment.”
This village has lost a tremendous amount of land to settler aggression and army collusion, C says, and safe passage to other villages and roads is now nearly impossible. Locals are having to kill sheep in order to buy grain to feed flocks that should be otherwise safely grazing.
One can argue about the history of violence and counter-violence between Israelis and Palestinians. But what is clear to someone on the ground like C is the overall pattern of dehumanizing control by Israel, and the increasing destruction of Palestinian lands and property. This, of course, is what former US President Jimmy Carter called the apartheid system of Israel.
Now, with Prime Minister Netanyahu’s government aligned with hard right elements in Israel, the situation is even more dire.
Families in the West Bank live under the constant threat of demolition of their homes and agricultural buildings to make way for Israeli military use of the land. The claim that the land is needed for military training is a smokescreen, a tactic to push out villagers, C tells me. About 18 percent of the West Bank is now given over to Israeli firing zones.
In the village of Khalet Al Dabba, demolition orders have been issued for all of the buildings, including the school. Shortly after C arrived, Israeli bulldozers destroyed an olive grove there, as well as a water cistern in the nearby village of Al Bweibh. Destroying olive trees is both a practical and symbolic method of punishing Palestinians – the trees are a vital part of their culture and subsistence.
Families who try to travel short distances between villages face attacks by Israeli settlers. A family that C knows returned to their village with damage to their car after Israeli settlers stoned passing Palestinian vehicles, breaking windshields. A grandmother and small child who were in the car were thankfully unhurt.
C works with a nonviolent peace corps which helps volunteers connect with local families, bearing witness to the treatment of Palestinians, and encouraging nonviolent resistance.
“I have known these families for about 15 years,” she says, “so these people are extremely dear to me. I’ve seen children grow up to be strong activists, and also am more aware of the human cost of the occupation because of caring for particular people. Accessing health care and education is incredibly difficult here.”
I asked her about some of the villages’ resistance. “People here remain nonviolent even in the face of violence and extreme provocation from settlers and soldiers,” she said. “Planting and replanting olive trees in order to keep land, working with international and Israeli activists to raise awareness of the situation and rebuilding demolished schools and homes over and over again. Refusing to give up and leave.”
Any discussion of the Israel/Palestine question here in the US is usually heated, given the American Jewish community’s divisions. But the question about whether Israelis are simply protecting themselves and their rights provoked a strong response from C.
“I’m sorry, but I find that question too ridiculous for words,” she told me. “What is happening here is systematic ethnic cleansing by a colonial power that receives eight million dollars a day from the US.”
This, of course, hits at the complicated core of the issue. It’s US military and financial support for Israel that allows such a situation to continue. And now, the policies of the right-wing Israeli government have granted settlers impunity to act as they will against Palestinians.
I want to see both Israelis and Palestinians thrive, and live in peaceful co-existence. But to get to that point, the question we Americans need to ask ourselves is, how long will we allow our government’s support of an apartheid state to continue?
*Andy Douglas is the author of “Redemption Songs: A Year in the Life of a Community Prison Choir” and “The Curve of the World: Into the Spiritual Heart of Yoga.”
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Palestinian Media Center In Europe.
Source: THE PRESS-CITIZEN
