After his arrival from Jordan where he ordained the three
new priests, the Patriarch resumed his activities which doesn’t stop as
usual. Soon when he arrived from Alenbi Bridge on the Jordan Valley near
Jericho, he passed to Jericho which under total siege since more than eight
months in order to visit the Parish priest, Fr. Simon Herro, who is a
Franciscan Father originally from Jerusalem. Imagine that he didn’t go out
of the closed city since the beginning of the Intifada, because if he goes out
he will not be able to come back because he has the Jerusalem Id. Imagine that
the Patriarch should pass another time next Monday to take him in his
diplomatic car in order to go out from Jericho and go to Haifa in order to
take part in the annual common spiritual retreat of all the catholic priests?
The Patriarch is going also tomorrow to Gaza for the second
time since the beginning of the Intifada in order to visit our Parish priest
Fr. Manuel Musallam who is closed there since 9 months. He will visit some
damaged houses and meet some key persons in the Palestinian Authority. He will
take part in the school party in which they will celebrate the success they
got in Cairo when the folkloric group of the school won the first award in a
Middle East competition. You have to know that 5.000 Christians live in Gaza
strip, the majority are orthodox, but we have the biggest school with more
than 1000 students, and we are building another new school, the Rosary Sisters
have another school, the Missionary Sister of Charity (Mother’s Teresa
Sisters) are also working there with handicapped and old people; the Little
Sisters of Jesus are working also in Al-Shate’ Refugee Camp. Therefore, we
hope that the Patriarch’s visit will give some comfort to this small
community in this very difficult time in Gaza.
You will find in today’s Olive Branch the following
documents:
1)
I send you the news and information about the forthcoming peace
camp, or better, camp for nonviolent resistance, to be set up in Al Khader July
1st to 5th. I will enclose the information. This is one grass-roots effort by
Palestinians, with the cooperation of some internationals, to spread the
message of nonviolence as the best (and only) way to bring about peace,
justice and reconciliation for all the peoples of this land. You are of course
invited to take part in this initiative if you want in order to see that
Palestinians don’t only throw stones and shoot they are pacific people
resisting with all the possible ways to end the occupation and to regain back
their freedom.
2)
My
brother, Dr. Sami Aldeeb, who is a doctor in law working in the Swiss
Institute of the Comparative Law in Lausanne / Switzerland, has always strange
and creative ideas. You will find hereby the last one, which is a radical
and non-violent Solution of the Palestinian Refugees Problem. It is only a
flash idea, which might be helpful in order to open ways of new thinking. For
more details about my brother, articles and activities you can visit our
Nonviolence Homepage: http://go.to/nonviolence
3)
Finally
you will find the last article of our dear friend Dr. Harry Hagopian, the
adventurer traveler since more than three months all over the world, he is
actually in Ukraine with an Armenian delegation from Poland welcoming the Pope
during his current visit. In this article, he is telling us about the “Imperatives
of Peace”. He is as usual a dreamer and visionary, but we really need
such persons who try to open our eyes, even if I am afraid that we are already
blind.
With my Best wishes of a good
vision from Jerusalem
Fr. Raed
Abusahlia
You
are invited to
THE
PALESTINIAN NONVIOLENT RESISTANCE CAMP
In
the Village of Al-Khader - Bethlehem
As
part of the ongoing struggle of the Palestinian people to end the occupation,
several Palestinian and International organizations are organizing the
Palestinian Nonviolent Resistance Camp in an area between the village of
Al-Khader and an Israeli army post from July 1st to July 5th,
2001. The camp will
include informative lectures by a variety of Palestinian activists and
intellectuals, field trips to the families of Palestinian martyrs,
demolished homes and confiscated lands, as well as many other group
exercises and activities.
15
Palestinians and 15 Internationals will comprise the core group that remains
at the camp during the entire 5-day period. However, others: from schools,
Palestinian and International delegations, and elsewhere will be welcomed to
join the camp and participate in the activities.
Goals
of the camp:
·
To promote the
value of non-violence to Internationals, Palestinians, and
particularly youths, as a powerful alternative advocacy tool in the fight
against occupation.
·
To produce
an outcome: to effectively stop Israeli barbaric attacks on
Palestinians and to call for an end to the policy of collective punishment and
use of force against Palestinians.
·
To build
solidarity with internationals, and to jointly develop new and
creative non-violent tactics for resisting against oppression.
Why Al-Khader?
Al-Khader,
located on the outskirts of Bethlehem on the way to Hebron, has been one of
the villages heavily attacked by Israeli missiles.
This army post is one example of many that have been illegally built on
Palestinian land and have been bombarding the innocent in villages and cities
throughout the Palestinian territories.
Why now?
During
the past eight months, the world has witnessed the most dangerous clashes in
the history of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. In addition to the hundreds
killed and the thousands injured, Israeli missiles have destroyed hundreds of
Palestinians homes. Palestinian lands have been confiscated, agricultural
fields destroyed, and the Palestinian economy has virtually collapsed. The
strictest closure on Palestinians ever has been imposed, including a
four-month curfew on areas in Hebron. Travel restrictions have been imposed on
all Palestinian traveling in and out of the country and even between areas on
the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
In the
current crisis, it is critical to unite international and regional nonviolent
efforts in one large setting where all concerned individuals and organizations
can collectively call for the end of violent attacks and where the message of
nonviolence and justice can been heard by all.
Program
of Al- Khader Peace camp
Day one: Build the camp and Opening
7:00AM: We will start building the camp.
8:30AM: Breakfast at the site.
1:00PM: Lunch at the site, light food.
5:30PM: Opening
A- Mayer of Al-Khader
B- Poems by a Palestinian Children
C- An Owner of a bombed house
D- Fr. Ayyad and a Sheikh to announce the opening of the camp
7:00PM Dinner at the site, hot meal.
8:00PM Meeting with Ghassan Andoni from PCR to talk about Non Violence
Day two: Solidarity visit to Al- Khader houses
7:30AM: Breakfast and shower.
9:00 AM: Start walking in the village to visit, the families whose houses
were bombed, families lost some of the family members during the
shelling and the family of victim who was assassinated by Israel. We
will walk down town the village and talk to the people and visit the
schools.
1:00PM: Lunch and rest at the site.
4:30PM: Meeting with Jad Issac from ARIJ to talk about water and
environment
7:00PM: Dinner at the site.
8:00PM: Meeting with Salaah Ta'mari to talk about settlements.
Day three: Solidarity visit to Beit Sahour
7:30AM: Breakfast
9:00AM:Drive to Beit Sahour.
9:15AM: YMCA to hear a briefing about the situation in the organization
during the past 9 months. .
10:30AM: Meeting with Adnan Younis, and Josef Hijazine, their houses
were bombed. We will visit the bombed houses and meet with the
families.
1:00PM: Lunch and rest at the Bedouin Tent in Beit Sahour and shower in
the site.
4:30PM: Visit the families of the 2 ladies whom were killed in the
helicopters attack.
7:00PM: Dinner
8:00PM: Meeting with Dr. Manuel Hassasian about Jerusalem.
Day four: Solidarity visit to Beit Jala
7:30AM: Breakfast and shower
9:00PM: We will drive to Beit Jala
9:15: AM: We will walk from the Orthodox club down to the house of Dr.
Harry Fisher.
10:00AM: We will visit, the family of a victim who was killed during the
shelling in February.
10:30AM:Inad theatre,
11:30AM: will meet with Mrs. Fisher who lost her husband during the
shelling.
1:00PM: Lunch in the Orthodox club, it was shelled.
2:30PM: Return to the campsite to rest
4:00PM: Preparation for the demonstration
5:00PM: Demonstration in Al-Khader
8:00PM: Dinner
Day five: Peace Wall and closing
7:30AM: Breakfast
9:00AM: We will start working with the Children of Bethlehem in painting
the Peace Wall.
1:00PM: Lunch
2:00PM: We will fix the wall. Demonstration near the confiscated land
in Al-Khader.
3:00PM: Evaluation and recommendation
5:00PM: Closing ceremony
For
more information on the location of the camp, the activities, and programs
please contact the addresses below
George
N. Rishmawi, Projects' Coordinator
The Palestinian Centre for Rapprochement Between People
Star Street No. 64 P.O.Box 24 Beit
Sahour - Palestine
www.rapprochement.org
Telefax: +972-2-2772018 pcr@p-ol.com
Solution of the
Palestinian Refugees Problem
Since more than 50 years, the Palestinian refugees are waiting for a solution,
but neither the Israeli authorities, nor the United Nations, nor the United
States, accept to find a solution for them.
I have a radical and non-violent solution.
I propose that all the refugees, men and women, children, adults and old
persons, who live in the West Bank and Gaza strip, to go the first Israeli
check-point, without arm, peacefully, in the same day, at the same hour, and
ask them to go back home, and stay there sitting, without eating or drinking,
until a solution is found for them all.
In this way they will challenge all the governments who accuse the
Palestinians of being a terrorist people and refuse to find a solution for
them.
I am sure that the Israeli government and the world will find a solution for
the refugees' problem in less than a week.
We tried all the means: military struggle, crying to the Arab neighbors,
assisting to hundreds of official, secret and semi-secret meetings... without
any result. Why not to try this method?
Sami Aldeeb, doctor in law
Lausanne / Switzerland - homepage: http://go.to/nonviolence
Imperatives of Peace
By
Dr. Harry
Hagopian, LLD
What do we mean by the word ‘peace’?
Do we mean an absence of strife? Do
we mean a forgetting? Do we mean
a forgiveness? Or do we mean a
great weariness, an exhaustion, an emptying out of rancour?
It seems to me that what most people mean by ‘peace’ is victory.
The victory of their side. That is what ‘peace’ means to them,
whilst to the others ‘peace’ means defeat.
Susan
Sontag, 9 May 2001
These portentous words–both in terms of their
significance as much as omen-are excerpted from the acceptance speech that
Susan Sontag delivered in Jerusalem last month when she was awarded the
Jerusalem Prize. This literary honour has been given at the biennial Jerusalem
International Book Fair ever since 1963 to a writer whose work explores the
freedom of the individual in society.
In developing her theme, Susan Sontag also delivered a
grave and unvarnished warning. If the idea takes hold that peace, while in
principle desirable, entails an unacceptable renunciation of legitimate
claims, the most plausible outcome will be the practice of war by less than
total means. Calls for peace will become, if not fraudulent, then certainly
premature. Peace, Sontag added, will then be transmogrified into a space
people no longer know how to inhabit. Peace will then have to be re-settled
and re-colonised!
Prophetic words indeed! And in so saying, Sontag
fulfilled admirably her role as writer whose primary task is not merely to
harbour opinions but to tell the truth and refuse to be an accomplice of
half-truths and misinformation. Indeed, good writers should free their readers
up and shake them up. They should open avenues of compassion and new
interests. They should remind readers that they must aspire to become better
than they are, and that they can change in their own perceptions and beliefs.
In the words of Cardinal Newman, “In a higher world it is otherwise, but
here below to live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed
often.” Words are arrows struck in the rough hide of reality.
These thoughts - and many more - crossed my mind
following two distinct events that occurred last Wednesday! The first event
was the meeting of the Middle East Forum of Churches Together for Britain and
Ireland (CTBI). During the four-hour meeting at Inter-Church House in London,
the Forum members - representing a motley of churches and church-related
organisations in the UK - met with a number of delegates who had visited the
Holy Land in March 2001 as part of a larger CTBI-led Church delegation to the
Middle East. The visitors shared their impressions on their trip, and
discussed somewhat cursorily the report on the visit meant to come out soon.
Speaker after speaker described the suffering of the Palestinians.
Speaker after speaker - some of them more emotively and volubly than
others - exclaimed about the injustices faced by Palestinians and expressed
their sadness at the unravelling of the peace efforts. They underlined that
Israelis and Palestinians approach their ‘peace negotiations’ from
different premises - a poignant reminder of what Sontag referred to in her
speech regarding the definition of peace! They referred to the gutted
Palestinian economy, and lamented the lack of prospects and frustration as
much as hopelessness amongst people there.
That same evening, I watched a short documentary that
Hilary Andersson (former BBC correspondent in Jerusalem) had done on the peace
movements within Israeli and Palestinian societies for the BBC1 Newsnight
television programme. Hilary is an outstanding and well-informed journalist,
and her piece focused a fair bit on Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam. This is a
unique inter-cultural and educational experiment for peace that brings
together young Israelis and Palestinians in a genuine attempt to bridge gaps
and draw the two peoples together. But the very use of this ‘oasis of
peace’ (as the word means in both Hebrew and Arabic) as a peg for the
documentary rendered the contextual reality more eloquent for me. It seems
that the very notion of peace has been subsumed these days to the reductive
role of a few young men and women in a compound! Once again, Susan Sontag’s
words rang true. This piece had struck an arrow at the rough hide of reality
in Israel and Palestine. It suggested that peace had to be re-settled and
re-colonised if it were to stand a chance - ever!
But why has the political situation deteriorated to
such a violent level of enmity and mistrust between the two erstwhile partners
for peace? Can the George Tenets of this world impose a sheer ceasefire upon
those warring sides? Will any such attempt at a cessation of hostilities
succeed? I believe not!
I have argued in previous articles that this latest
episode in violence is the result of a failure of the Oslo process to deliver
any real peaceful dividends to the Palestinians. I have also argued that those
seven years of ‘quiet’ negotiations or multi-tier diplomacy did not lead
to any concrete gains for the Palestinians, and that the Camp David scenario
would have placed the Palestinian territories into a quarantined and
non-porous reservation! I have equally added that the past nine months have
been a process of decolonisation for Palestinians against the occupation of
their land by Israel.
As a committed Christian pacifist, I still insist that
a cessation of all violence between the two parties is one of the rudimental
needs for peace in the region. But I also add that such a move alone will not
be sufficient. It is well nigh
impossible to expect the Palestinians – whether they are affiliated to the
PLO, Hamas or Islamic Jihad - to end nine months of an uprising that cost them
- and the Israelis - hundreds of fatalities and thousands of casualties and
return to the way things were before the fateful date of 29 September 2001. In
order to achieve any progress between the two parties and foment good faith,
Israel - as the party with the upper hand and the better stack of cards - has
a solemn responsibility to make some fateful decisions.
So let me start first by expressing my belief that the
Israeli doctrine of collective responsibility, as a rationale for collective
punishment, is never justified - either ethically or militarily. Israel cannot
use its disproportionate firepower against civilians, demolish their homes or
destroy their orchards and groves, deprive their livelihood and their right to
employment, schooling, medical services, let alone trammel any access to
neighbouring towns or communities, as a punishment for hostile military
activity - which may or may not even be in the vicinity of these civilians.
For another, I also believe that there can be no peace between Palestinians
and Israelis until the planting of artificial Israeli communities in the
Palestinian territories is halted and is followed - preferably sooner rather
than later - by the dismantling of a large number of settlements and the
withdrawal of the military units amassed to guard them.
Just let me take Gaza as an example of this lack of
parity. Gaza consists of 360 square kilometres of land. In 60% of this strip
of land, 1.1 million Palestinians live in deplorable conditions. Well over 50%
of the adult population are currently unemployed, and 72% of the children as
well as 76% of the women are suffering from clinical post-traumatic disorder -
with symptoms ranging from bed-wetting to nightmares - due to the shelling of
their neighbourhoods by the Israeli army. In this strip, the refugee camp of
Khan Younis houses 200,000 refugees and faces the Jewish settlement of Gush
Katif. It has no central sewage system and dirt roads. Conversely, and on 40%
of that same strip of land - which includes a fair chunk of the coastline and
the underground aquifers in an area that is mostly sand dune and hardscrabble
- 6000 settlers live and are guarded by 10,000 Israeli soldiers.
The Jewish settlers in Gaza, unlike some of those in
the West Bank, claim no biblical justification for their presence there. They
just see it as somewhere to live! In fact, Israelis who were looking for space
to spread out were encouraged by successive Israeli governments to move to
Gaza and settle on this land. They were enticed by government grants towards
mortgages, reductions on income tax and cheap houses. Some work in hothouse
agriculture on the strip whilst others commute to jobs in Israel.
The situation in Gaza is a rough microcosm of the
pungent reality in most of the West Bank. The pervading poverty, the
confinement to spaces that are tightly controlled and hemmed in, and the
increase in Israeli settlements, have bred a generation of radicals. These
people are ostensibly willing to die for their cause – as much out of
conviction as out of a politics of despair. They are not going to accept a
ceasefire that is imposed upon them without a radical improvement in their
livelihoods – a return on their investment in the process.
Palestinians need to see an end to collective
punishment and settlements. Israel needs to feel secure. The future prospects
for peace and reconciliation for both sides depend on this bipolar approach.
In a holy land immersed in a multiplicity of truths, it is imperative to meet
the needs of the two peoples and three faiths on a symmetrical basis. This in
itself implies addressing the concerns of two fearful - distressed -
communities. What is required is a bold and proactive vision within a
framework of global ethics that musters up the courage to offer concessions,
abate stereotypes and persist in dialogue.
I would like to be a martyr, and I would like you to be safe
all the time. I want to go now to
the Zionist checkpoint. I will carry my knife with me, and I am going to be a
martyr and will go to paradise. I will be a little bird in paradise.
I will have a big palace, with food and water, and rivers of honey and
yoghurt – everything that I could wish for.
I can see it now. I hope, mum, that you will agree with my request.
Don’t be sad. Don’t
cry, because I will be very safe. I know you will cry, but don’t be very,
very sad because all the people and children are going to be martyrs, and I
want to be one of them
.
These are the words written by Alaa Abu Shamala, an 8-½
year old refugee child from Hay al-Amal / Hope Neighbourhood in the refugee
camp of Khan Younis in Gaza. But a small child should not have to write such a
note to her mother as she prepares to wage her own ‘war’ against Israel!
Yet, the very fact that she has done so goes a long way toward extrapolating
the Palestinian psyche today. It shows a sense of deep despair that is coupled
with real anger and naïve self-immolation.
In the light of such statements from young kids, are
there enough men and women - Israeli, Palestinian or of other nationalities
and persuasions - who are willing to stand up and admit that something is
surely unjust - terribly unjust - with a political system that aids and abets
the young Alaa to write her mother such an upsetting note? Is it not possible
for politicians to realise that peace exacts painful compromises? Is it not
high time that the European Union and other international bodies or
non-governmental and church-related organisations assist the Palestinians and
Israelis mutatis mutandis to extricate themselves from the orbit of
mutual recrimination? Is peace
not noble enough a goal to warrant the re-dedicated efforts of peacemakers? To
paraphrase Vladimir Nabokov, is it not time that ‘the pattern of the thing
precedes the thing’?
One major tool for achieving this breakthrough is the
Mitchell Commission Report. Its careful recommendations impact the issues of
security, settlements and closures on a horizontal plane. Another tool is the
Jordanian-Egyptian initiative that preceded the Mitchell Commission Report but
subscribed to the same ethos. Both those documents are instruments that can
help re-build trust between Israelis and Palestinians. Furthermore, the recent
statement by the American Bishops’ Conference entitled ‘Resolution of the
Israeli-Palestinian Crisis’ carries the moral authority of the Roman
Catholic Church in the USA and incorporates some recommendations that are
persuasive and encouraging for consideration by both sides.
But will any of those mediation efforts prove to be
helpful? Or as Susan Sontag suggests, is it perhaps that the political lexicon
has moved on from a ‘peace’ in its inclusive and altruistic senses to a
‘peace’ that is defined by one ‘victory’ versus one ‘defeat’?
And if so, will there ever be ‘peace’ in a land
where the imperatives of peace are wanting? I wonder..?
©
harry-bvH @ 18
June 2001
