Israel Signals Tougher Line on West Bank Protests

[Violet_Crumble]

NILIN, West Bank — For more than a year, this village has been a focus of weekly protests against the Israeli security barrier, which cuts through its lands. Now, the village appears to be at the center of an intensifying Israeli arrest campaign.

Apparently concerned that the protests could spread, the Israeli Army and security forces have recently begun clamping down, arresting scores of local organizers and activists here and conducting nighttime raids on the homes of others.

Muhammad Amira, a schoolteacher and a member of Nilin’s popular committee, the group that organizes the protests, said his home was raided by the army in the early hours of Jan. 10. The soldiers checked his identity papers, poked around the house and looked in on his sleeping children, Mr. Amira said.

He added, “They came to say, ‘We know who you are.’ ”

Each Friday for the last five years, Palestinians have demonstrated against the barrier, bolstered by Israeli sympathizers and foreign volunteers who document the ensuing clashes with video cameras, often posting the most dramatic footage on YouTube.

Israel says the barrier, under construction since 2002, is essential to prevent suicide bombers from reaching its cities; the Palestinians oppose it on grounds that much of it runs through the territory of the West Bank.

While the weekly protests are billed as nonviolent resistance, they usually end in violent confrontations between the Israeli security forces and masked, stone-throwing Palestinian youths. “These are not sit-ins with people singing ‘We Shall Overcome,’ ” said Maj. Peter Lerner, a spokesman for the Israeli Army’s Central Command, which controls the West Bank. “These are violent, illegal, dangerous riots.”

Other Palestinians are “jumping on the bandwagon,” he said, and the protests “could slip out of control.”

The protests first took hold in the nearby village of Bilin, which became a symbol of Palestinian defiance after winning a ruling in the Israeli Supreme Court stipulating that the barrier must be rerouted to take in less agricultural land. According to military officials, work to move the barrier will start next month.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/29/world/middleeast/29palestine.html

[shira]

1. "Palestine's occupation tourism"

On any given Friday in Bil'in, the local Palestinian protesters are joined by scores of Israeli and international activists, who march determinedly alongside the villagers en route to the separation wall. Everyone knows what to expect once they reach the phalanx of soldiers waiting for them on the other side of the barrier: namely, blood, sweat and teargas, and an hour of each side baiting the other before the crowd is dispersed and hostilities cease for another week.

While the cause of the Bil'in residents is entirely worthy, the tactics employed during the protests are far more questionable. Every week without fail, rocks and other projectiles are hurled towards the soldiers by mask-clad youths, known as shabab, while not a finger is lifted by their fellow demonstrators to stop them. Despite billing the march as "nonviolent resistance", the organisers do nothing to ensure the event lives up to such criteria, and by taking no action hand to the army on a plate the perfect excuse to fight fire with fire.

Many of the international activists come to the protest in the hope that their presence will make the troops think twice before using violent measures against the Palestinians, under the assumption that foreign witnesses are worth their weight in gold to those taking on the might of the Israel Defence Forces. Groups such as International Solidarity Movement attempt to absolve themselves of any responsibility for the aggression emanating from the Palestinian side, declaring that since the resistance is "Palestinian-led", they are not going to tell the locals what they can and can't do in the name of fighting the occupation.

At the same time, many of the internationals present are first-timers in the region, and – rather than coming armed with a nuanced understanding of the intricacies of the conflict – simply wander into the West Bank war zone as though day-trippers taking in the sights of central London. Such a phenomenon was the subject of a feature in this weekend's Haaretz, in which the full extent of "occupation tourism" was mapped out in all its dubious glory.

more...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jan/20/palestine-israel-protest-tourism

[azurnoir]

2. Why shira didn't you notice that your post is already a thread

it's right here

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=124x298576

and you must have changed your mind on Freedman because not all to long ago you were saying this, unless of course it was a different Seth

shira Sun Jan-24-10 07:53 AM
Response to Original message
21. Despicable Seth

http://cifwatch.com/2010/01/23/despicable-seth/

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=124&topic_id=298650

but thanks because ISM's reply to Mr Freedman (Seth) is quite informative from your post it is comment #17

In Palestine, solidarity not tourism"

Rebuttal statement on behalf of ISM London

By Pete Jones

As volunteers with the International Solidarity Movement, London we were disappointed to read Seth Freedman?s highly misleading description of the non-violent protests by the Palestinians of Bil?in, and the ISM's support for them ("Palestine's occupation tourism", Comment is Free, 20th January).

Blaming the victim, Freedman bizarrely berates Palestinian participants in the unarmed weekly protests against the Israel occupation army for ?aggression?. This reverses reality. It is the Israeli army that invades the village at night, the Israeli army and settlers that are occupying over 50% of the village's land. Israel is the aggressor.

As someone who lived in Bil?in for almost two months and participated in a number of demonstrations, I witnessed the leaders of the Popular Committee regularly calling for stones not to be thrown during demonstrations. These calls are made both during the march if the youth (shabab in Arabic) are seen preparing to throw a stone, and in announcements during the week. There is plenty of video footage of Bil?in demonstration organisers asking shabab not to throw stones.

The ability of the leaders of the Popular Committee to make such calls may have been diminished recently -- considering the fact that two of them, Abdullah Abu Rahmeh and Adeeb Abu Rahmeh were kidnapped by the Israeli army and are still being held prisoner, and a third, Mohammed Katib has been banned, by Israel, from the village during demonstrations.

It is true that these efforts are not always successful and some hot-headed youth end up throwing stones at the soldiers after the main demonstration, usually after they have been attacked with rubber-coated bullets and tear gas (which sometimes result in death, such as in the case of the late Basem Abu Rahmeh, a peaceful Palestinian protestor murdered by an Israeli soldier in April of last year). Freedman does not live in Bil?in and does not have to live with the regular night-time raids of the Israeli army, in which teenagers as young as 13 are seized, and therefore has no right to dictate the method of resistance to the Palestinians.

Israeli occupation forces have even gone to the extent of infiltrating stone-throwing "mistarvim" (Israeli forces disguised as Arabs) into the protest (see "Gandhi Redux" in Haaretz, 6th September 2005).

Freedman's claim that ISMers are ?occupation tourists? is also false. In fact the ISM has had an ongoing presence in Bil?in since the villagers' struggle began in 2005. It is telling when Freedman claims that "activists and NGO workers who have been operating in the region for years can be relied upon to update the watching world on the state of play in the village " and yet does not name a single one of these mysterious NGOs or activist organisations. The reality is that the ISM has an ongoing and long-term presence in the village. Volunteers often live in an apartment, many staying for months and forging long-term friendships with the people of Bil?in.

ISM volunteers are obliged to attend an intensive training course before they are permitted to work with the organisation. This training ensures ISM activists know the principles which guide the organisation?s work: non-violent action only, Palestinian-led action only and group action only. Freedman seems to scoff at the idea that ISM?s work should be Palestinian-led.

No ISM activist has the authority to tell a Palestinian how to run their resistance. We are not in Palestine to teach non-violence -- in fact the Palestinians' own long tradition of non-violent resistance has a lot to teach us all, from the protests and strikes against the British occupation in the 1930s onwards.

Freedman's description of this central principle as an attempt to "absolve" ourselves "of any responsibility for the aggression emanating from the Palestinian side" is a typically orientalist attitude based on the false assumption that we westerners know what's best for the Palestinians and should lead them.

On the contrary we in ISM view our role as witnessing the occupation so that we can raise awareness in our home countries while at the same time making the environment a little safer in Palestine. As a former Israeli solider, Freedman might know that the Israeli army has different rules of engagement at Palestinian protests when internationals or Israelis are involved in them. Live ammunition is not supposed to be used when they are present, but is allowed when Palestinians are alone.

Freedman has written some excellent CiF articles about the Israeli occupation of Palestine in the past, but shifting away from a colonialist point of view is often a long and difficult process. We wish him a speedy progression.