Our daughter called us several days ago to warn us that she was going to be publishing a blog that would upset us. She had promised, before she went to Israel/Palestine, to stay away from any potentially dangerous situations. As many of you know, we lost our oldest daughter to a black ice accident in 1999 when she was just 18, so her younger sister, now almost 23, understands that taking care of herself, that surviving, is as much for us as it is for her (and for her little sister who experienced the loss of her birth family in China).
But of course, being her, our older daughter cannot stay away from what's happening, cannot ignore injustice. So she's already experienced a little heat stroke when helping a Palestinian family rebuild. And in this blog she describes participating in a peaceful protest and experiencing that peace being broken.
Where: South Hebron Hills, the West Bank; and Jerusalem, Israel
Who: Palestinian residents, Israeli and international activists, journalists, Israeli family, me
A funky Spanish woman with a nose ring is strumming a camp song on a guitar in the cool stone-floored kitchen with the turquoise accents across from Damascus Gate in East Jerusalem. We are dancing between the sink and the refrigerator: A, a young Israeli activist, his sweet 13-year-old sister, my British-Israeli friend T, and me. I am dusty, sweaty and sunburned in strange places, especially from working earlier with other Ta’ayush volunteers to dig out a rainwater well that the Israeli army filled with sand and rocks in Susya, a Palestinian village in the West Bank. However, I am rejuvenated by the tea and watermelon slices A’s mother offers us at the wooden table by the wall-length window. She is an architect. A few minutes before our impromptu dance party, we described to her the scene of the demonstration we were invited to join in Tawana, another small village in the South Hebron Hills, after taking the bus there with the Israeli Ta’ayush organizers today.
We roll up to Tawana at 9 am, and congregate in front of their small schoolhouse. Several teachers are calling to the children they have lined up in several rows, from oldest to youngest. After a little while they distribute small Palestinian flags to all of the children, who wear them like belts or necklaces. Several boys and girls head up the crowd, holding a banner that proclaims in multicolored bubble letters, “We want to live in peace and dignity!” A man explains over a loudspeaker that we have two goals, to protest in front of the illegal tent outpost that violent Israeli ideological settlers have set up on their land, and to draw water from a well in their village that the residents are often not able to access due to the hostile settler presence and their protection from the law by the army. A Ta’ayush organizer explains that the continuous political activity in this village is what stops the Israeli government from annexing the entire area.
I recall my visit a few days earlier to Bethlehem, the famous birthplace of Jesus and a Palestinian town, where I stood on the rooftop of a narrow apartment building in a refugee camp and observed the winding wall covered in protest art and enclosing the entire town. I saw the huge red-roofed and tree lined settlements surrounding the town on all sides; the bridges, tunnels, and walled roads built exclusively for the settlers to make sure they avoid any interactions with their Palestinian neighbors. I listened to the gurgle of water filling up tanks with the ration of water Bethlehem will receive for the month at much higher costs than their settler counterparts, who all have running water. The Israeli government protects ideological settlers, who believe they have a divine right to this land, and encourages other settlers to live in these places through absolution from taxes and cheap housing.
In Tawana, we set off across the rocky desert hills covered in olive trees. The small crowd; Israeli, Palestinian, and international, is cheerful, full of women, men, and children chanting in Arabic and English. IDF soldiers, omnipresent with their trucks and guns, tell us we cannot go any further than the water well, which we gather around to watch the children as they take turns dipping their heads into the buckets. Older women sit on large rocks; little boys are playing with the loudspeakers. A large group of IDF soldiers marches down the dirt road towards us, and confers with some of the Israeli activists and Palestinian leaders. As expected, they have declared the area a Closed Military Zone. Ta’ayush organizers advise internationals to move to the back with the children if we don’t want to be arrested. There is some confusion among us about what to do next. Before we make any decisive moves, I see one stone tumble down the hill to my left, and hear a Palestinian woman shouting “LA, LA” (NO, NO), perhaps at a child. In an instant the soldiers pepper the ground with stun grenades, which emit echoing booms, clouds of smoke, and flashes of light. We are all running back the way we came, through the olive trees, and I hear calls herding the children in one direction.
We retreat to a different plot of land further back, still facing the soldiers who have advanced and increased by number to around thirty. We observe a scuffle as soldiers grab several of the activists and we wonder if they will be arrested. Ta’ayush organizers step forward and we see them reasoning with the soldiers. Some of the children draw into a clump at one rock, and a little boy begins a singsong chant again over a loudspeaker. Without warning, there are more blasts, and we realize that the soldiers are shooting tear gas canisters at us. Again we are running, stumbling, shouting. An American Quaker girl with a leg brace I spoke to on the bus ride over is coughing through the gas and half-sobbing as she calls to her brother, who supports her arm and assures her “I’m here.” I keep checking over my shoulder to make sure they are moving along with me, but then there is tear gas leaking through the hand I have over my mouth and I can’t properly breathe or see. My throat burns, my eyes sting and pour acid tears. I remember horror stories about tear gas canisters that have hit people at demonstrations before, I think of my parents, and I force myself to keep running out of range.
We reach a dirt road behind the grove of olive trees and I feel as though maybe it’s a safe base like in games of tag. I can’t see soldiers outside of their trucks anymore. Older Palestinian women are inhaling the odor of halved onions they hold to their nostrils. I learn that the scent of onions and alcoholic wipes helps balance the effects of tear gas. A man collects some of the fallen Palestinian flags and tacks them up on a barbed wire fence. The children are all safe back at the school or in their homes. Ta’ayush organizers bring us into a circle and go over what just happened, explaining that they did not expect for this particular protest to receive violent responses, but that it’s also not surprising. I know from friends and journalists that these kinds of encounters happen on a daily basis in villages all over the West Bank, and that Palestinians are always attacked much more forcefully than anyone else participating in the protests. We return to the school lot, where teachers hand us pastries and juice boxes, and an elderly man from the town thanks groups like Ta’ayush for continuing to return over the years.
Again I recall the paint that Palestinian and international activists and peace-seekers have used to brighten the Bethlehem wall and to express solidarity through various murals and messages. I pray that there will never be a wall around Tawana to serve as such a canvas.
-Diary and photos by the talebearer, at http://talebearer88.tumblr.com
For more information on the group Ta’ayush, click here http://www.taayush.org/
For more information on the nonviolence programs of the organization Holy Land Trust in Bethlehem, click here http://www.holylandtrust.org/
Not surprisingly, this blog was the most upsetting so far for us -- but not just because of the tear gas. Hearing even more details of the protection of extremist settlers at the expense of Palestinians is both depressing and frustrating. Our daughter is now in Tel Aviv and will be joining the Interfaith Peace Builders delegation in a few days. She will be much safer with this seasoned and organized group than she was on her own.
On a personal note from the homefront: We are in vacation in Minnesota. On Thursday, when we entered the college town of Bemidji which is 4 hours north of Minneapolis/St. Paul, there were demonstrators with signs saying "We Want to Work" and "No More Shutdown." My husband asked if they were union people and yes, they were. We honked our support (they had a sign asking for that) along with many other cars and lots of cheers from the protesters and onlookers. A very good way to be welcomed to our vacation spot!