It's been more than three weeks since I last wrote. The reason is
simple: things have been awful on the ground here in Palestine,
leaving little time for reflection. As usual, Passover—the Jewish
holiday celebrating freedom from oppression—was accompanied by
tightening restrictions on Palestinians. While Jewish Israelis were
feasting nearby, travel within the West Bank became difficult if not
impossible, except of course for settlers who would breeze by the
hundreds of Palestinians waiting for hours at checkpoints on their way
home, to work, to the hospital, or elsewhere. Calling the Army was no
help since most offices and services were closed for the holidays.
Palestinians urgently requiring permits to reach hospitals were forced
to wait as well.

A quick look at the Palestinian Center for Human Rights' weekly report
(http://www.pchrgaza.ps/files/W_report/English/2007/26-04-2007.htm)
shows that Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF)—among other
activities—killed 9 Palestinians (including 2 children and 4
extra-judicial assassinations), injured 20, conducted 30 incursions
into West Bank Palestinian communities, arrested 44 Palestinian
civilians (including 8 children), demolished 8 houses rendering more
than 48 people homeless, and continued to impose a total siege on the
Occupied Territories… all in the past week. This is about average. In
the past few weeks, Israeli settlers have also moved back into an
evacuated settlement in Nablus. Meanwhile, several hundred Jewish
settlers took over a massive building in the heart of Hebron, and
Israel immediately deployed soldiers to protect the new Jewish-only
colony. The nearby Abu Haykal family, friends whom I visited last
month in Tel Rumeida, had their car torched by Hebron settlers who
want nothing more than for them to leave so that a new Jewish
settlement can be set up next to the already existing ones.

The ongoing brutality and harassment are fuelling a growing tension
that I predict will one day explode into a third intifada (Arabic for
"uprising"). The signs are there—intense frustration but an even
stronger determination to throw off the Occupation's yoke.
Demonstrations have been happening all over the West Bank, sometimes
several per day. Israel's excessive force and continued colonization
are unsustainable, because the Palestinians will never stop resisting.
To stop resisting is to have no future—it is national suicide. The
worse the Occupation gets, the stronger the resistance.

Although it is not reported as such, most of the current Palestinian
resistance has been nonviolent. At the Arab American University of
Jenin, the "Green Resistance" student group succeeded in banning the
Israeli-produced Tapuzina fruit juice from the AAUJ campus, part of a
growing Palestinian campaign to support local products rather than
paying for their own Occupation. My neighbor Abu Saed in Haris, whose
trees have been uprooted by settlers three times over the past month
from his land near Revava settlement, continues to replant them week
after week, with support from Rabbis for Human Rights and IWPS. And
about a month ago, more than 350 people—Palestinians, Israelis, and
internationals—gathered for the first-ever Palestine International
Bike Race from Ramallah to Jericho, an event organized by the East
Jerusalem YMCA for people from all over the world to protest human
rights violations in Palestine, demand freedom of movement for
Palestinian civilians, and "support the values of peace and tolerance
in the area" (http://www.ej-ymca.org/site/DisplayNews.cfm?NewsId=205).
The event was projected to be the longest ever international sporting
event protesting the Occupation, but Israeli jeeps cut the race short
by closing traffic to two-wheelers and the "Bikes not Bombs"
enthusiasts were forced to turn back (for photographs and a
participant's account:
http://www.palsolidarity.org/main/2007/03/23/bikes-vs-bombs/).

Near the Quaker Friends School where the bike race commenced is a
cultural center where dozens of Palestinian youth come together every
week to make short films and dance together. After watching an
intensely physical and emotive modern dance rehearsal when I visited
one day, the students explained that for them "art is not a
luxury—it's a must." The Occupation not only threatens Palestinians'
homes, land, livelihoods, time, and future, but also creativity and
expression. The cultural center is tool to prevent Palestinian culture
from being lost or distorted, and students described how they would
meet in secrecy to practice quietly during invasions and curfews as
their own form of creative nonviolent resistance.

In the Salfit region where we live, a new center has been established
to conduct trainings and workshops in strategic communication,
peace-building, conflict resolution, and techniques of nonviolent
resistance. I spoke with the director Fuad, who explained that
nonviolent resistance in Israeli jails (hunger strikes, etc) has
recently increased, and that many Palestinians—particularly those
returning from prison—have been building what he called "a nonviolent
movement for freedom, equality, democratic values, and human rights."
His organization aims to develop programs suitable for each section of
Palestinian society, as well as human rights and democracy awareness
workshops and resistance trainings, but they lack the proper funding
to do so. Fuad told me his own story of transformation from a soldier
in Arafat's "Sabahtash" Army to a committed nonviolence advocate after
his brother was killed. Fuad was particularly inspired by the first
intifada, during which all parts of Palestinian society joined in
nonviolent civil disobedience to demand freedom with one loud voice.
When I told Fuad that IWPS could offer no financial support (although
you could—please contact fuad_alramal@yahoo.com if you can help), he
replied, "We have no money, but our strength is in our beliefs: our
commitment to nonviolence. Violence kills the spirit, pushing it
towards more violence or submission, but nonviolence will always
prevail in the end."

Fuad said he chose to work in the Salfit area because of its history
of nonviolent resistance. Indeed, the past few weeks have seen a
number of major actions in our oft-forgotten rural region. On Land
Day, hundreds gathered in Rafat village to protest the Wall that is
slowly enclosing their village, but when they found the cage unguarded
they grabbed hold and began to rock it, back and forth, all together,
until finally the gates exploded open. When the soldiers arrived,
protesters retreated to their homes, not a single stone thrown. They
had made their point: Rafat will not accept collective imprisonment.

The next day in Salfit town a group of demonstrators found the Wall
unguarded and began removing the electric sensory wire that lines the
fenced sections. Soldiers arrived quickly and began shooting into the
air, but protesters held their ground and raised Palestinian flags
above the cage that cuts off their main road and annexes much of their
land. Salfit, too, will not accept collective imprisonment. Nor will
the rest of the West Bank, where many other actions took place on Land
Day weekend. In Qaffin town in the north, thousands of demonstrators
gathered and marched, danced, and drummed their way to the Wall to
show their spirit and resolve to resist the illegal barrier and
Occupation. In Nablus, hundreds marched to Beit Furik, one of the six
city exits—all Army checkpoints—through which men 16 to 45 years old
are not allowed to pass without a special Israeli-issued permit that
can only be obtained outside the city. The march, organized in part by
the Nablus Women's Union and a society for local handicapped people,
continued through the checkpoint past stunned soldiers unable to hold
the cheering protesters back. The group then occupied the checkpoint,
first by sitting down and later by climbing atop the waiting pens and
hanging Palestinian flags and freedom signs around the base.

Injustice is unsustainable. It cannot be normalized, because there
will always be resistance. The third intifada will come. It may be
nonviolent as the first, or it may be more like the second. Is it a
coincidence that Israel began construction at the Temple Mount holy
site in Jerusalem just as warring religious and secular Palestinian
factions were coming to a truce? Israel prefers that Palestinians
resist one another rather than their oppression, but Palestinians in
the West Bank and at the negotiating table have shown their resolve to
work together against their common enemies: Zionist racism and the
Occupation. United, they will prevail. If the third intifada does not
succeed, there will be a fourth. And then a fifth… As many as it
takes, until justice is served.

By Anna Baltzer