The Nation: Freedom Summer

The Nation: Freedom Summer

Jerusalem
19 Jul 03
Adam Shapiro

The International Solidarity Movement’s second Freedom Summer has
begun, and much has changed since our last: the war on Iraq, which focused
all eyes on the region; the much-hyped road map; full-blown construction
on what Palestinians have come to call the Apartheid Wall. Sadly,
though, much remains the same: the continuing deterioration of the lives of
Palestinians, with poverty and health crises in a crescendo.

The ISM itself is in a far more precarious position. This year,
volunteers signed up knowing that one ISMer was killed, that others have been
shot, expelled or detained. They knew that the ISM headquarters was
raided in May, that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) instituted new
regulations barring the ISM from entering Gaza. They knew that the military
sought to smear the ISM by claiming it has links to terrorists. And still
people from all over the world have come, in record numbers, to
volunteer.

The ISM was founded a few months into the current intifada to engage in
nonviolent action against the Israeli occupation. The idea, inspired by
the Freedom Rides of the American civil rights movement, was that
international civilians could provide a resource for the Palestinian
nonviolent struggle-and that their eyewitness accounts of the occupation could
affect political debate back home. With internationals mixed in with
Palestinian civilians at protests, we believed that Israeli soldiers
would be more reluctant to use lethal force. These efforts worked, at least
at first. Not that violence was eliminated-tear gas, sound grenades and
rubber bullets were still used against Palestinians. But mostly, live
ammunition was avoided around internationals, and rubber bullets weren’t
fired at head or chest level. Last August, for example, I joined 200
Palestinians in a peaceful march near Nablus to break the curfew there.
With forty internationals in the crowd, the IDF relied on tear gas and
sound grenades, firing only a few rubber bullets into the air. When one
soldier fired a rubber bullet lower, into the crowd, I saw one of his
superiors grab his gun and berate him. The message was clear: Israeli
soldiers respected the lives of international civilians more than
Palestinian lives. We, unlike the Palestinians, had governments that could
hold Israel accountable-or so we thought.

Then in March, Rachel Corrie was crushed to death by an Israeli
bulldozer in Rafah. In early April, Brian Avery was shot in the face in Jenin
by patrolling Israeli troops. Less than a week later Tom Hurndall was
shot in the head by an Israeli sniper in Rafah. All three had taken
precautions, identifying themselves as international observers to IDF
soldiers, wearing fluorescent orange vests. They had put themselves in
danger only to the extent that all Palestinian civilian areas were in the
path of a deepening Israeli military occupation. In the four months since
Rachel’s death, more than 200 Palestinians have been killed, most of
them noncombatants, in Israeli attacks.

The assaults on these activists stunned the ISM. But they had little
effect on most Americans. Perhaps it was the poor media coverage or the
distraction of the war on Iraq-or perhaps we have just gotten used to
seeing the victims of Israeli violence as in some way to blame for their
own victimization. Although witnesses say that Rachel was deliberately
run over, the IDF quickly claimed that the driver was not at fault, and
he has remained on the job without suspension. So even if Rachel’s
killing was accidental, future attacks would be less so. In a recent e-mail
to the ISM, an Israeli soldier wrote that while the IDF determination
was by no means a \"direct order to shoot at internationals, it sent the
message that it would be OK.\" Within weeks, if the shootings of Tom
and Brian are any indication, soldiers got the message. Brian came home
to Chapel Hill in June severely disfigured; Tom arrived home to
Manchester, England, in a coma, unlikely to recover. It seems that
internationals now face from the IDF something close to the callous disregard for
life that Palestinians experience every day.

According to the Geneva Conventions, civilians under occupation are to
be protected by the occupying power. When Israel revokes these
protections even for international civilians, it is a sign that such
protections have been utterly dispensed with for local residents. It is routine
in this occupation for Palestinian homes to be destroyed, trees and
agricultural fields to be torn up, land confiscated for the building of
ever more settlements and Palestinians denied access to education and
healthcare.

It’s time for the international community to step in to guarantee the
safety of international observers and of Palestinians themselves. To
start, British and US governments must conduct investigations into the
attacks on their citizens. These investigations should go beyond the
specifics of each case, to determine acceptable rules of engagement for
Israeli soldiers when civilians-international or Palestinian-are present.
They could expose the links between basic Israeli policies of occupation
and the death and injury of Palestinian civilians-policies like home
demolition and rules that allow Israeli soldiers to shoot first and ask
questions later, if at all. In Rachel’s case, an investigation would
undoubtedly uncover the illegal use of US-supplied weaponry. The armored
bulldozer that crushed Rachel was a Caterpillar, and was being used to
demolish Palestinian homes-a likely violation of the US Arms Export
Control Act, which prohibits the use of US-supplied weaponry against
civilians. The use of all US weapons, from F-16s to Apache helicopters, could
thus come under scrutiny, perhaps finally forcing Washington to make
the sale of weapons to Israel conditional on their legitimate
use-effectively undermining Israel’s ability to enforce its occupation.

Despite threats of violence, volunteers from around the world, of all
ages, ethnicities and faiths, have now arrived in the occupied
territories for Freedom Summer, even as diplomats urge cooperation with a road
map that fatally accepts many aspects of the occupation as legitimate.
These volunteers share an understanding that the biggest obstacle to
peace is the occupation itself, solidified by Israel’s \"facts on the
ground\": checkpoints, settlements, bypass roads, military bases and
\"closed military zones.\" The newest \"fact\" (unremarked in the road map)
is the Apartheid Wall, which will annex some 10 percent of West Bank
land and rob many West Bank towns of their only water source. If
completed, it will extend more than 350 kilometers, cut off 72,000 farmers from
their land and trap 140,000 villagers between the wall and the Green
Line. This summer, the wall is our target: the ISM is working with local
communities to tear it down, one piece at a time. We are pressing not
just for a Palestinian state but for the future viability of the
Palestinian people on their land.