NEWS & LETTERS, June - July 2009
Slow success story at At-Tuwani, Palestine
Editor's note: Human rights worker Ceylon Mooney spent this past winter with Christian Peacemaker Teams in the village of At-Tuwani in the South Hebron Hills. It was his fourth trip to Palestine to support Palestinian nonviolent resistance to the Israeli occupation.
At-Tuwani--Typically I wake up at 6:30 am to watch the Israeli army escort Palestinian children on their way to school. After breakfast, I accompany local Palestinian shepherds as they take their sheep and goats out to graze, just as their fathers, grandfathers and ancestors have done for generations. If it weren't for the constant roar of the F-16's overhead, I might forget why I'm here and soak up the austere beauty of this dry area's thorny brush, rolling hills and seemingly endless blue sky.
RESISTING SETTLEMENT EXPANSION
Many At-Tuwani families have been here for hundreds, if not thousands, of years; others arrived during the creation of Israel in 1947-1949, a time known to the native Palestinians as "al Nakba," the catastrophe. Israel's colonization of this land continues to this day. There are more than 200 Jewish-only colonies (called "settlements") throughout the West Bank, most of them built well after the 1949 armistice. Everywhere I see new construction and settlement expansion. In 1981 Israel created the Ma'on settlement on land belonging to At-Tuwani families. In 1997, the Israeli army forcibly removed many residents of two nearby villages to build the Havat Ma'on colony. Many have returned and now refuse to leave.
The steadfastness of Palestinians to maintain what lands they still possess is part of an ongoing campaign of nonviolent resistance. Israeli and international peace activists assist this struggle. In 2004 villagers in the area I am working in invited the Christian Peacemaker Teams and Operation Dove to witness and support their nonviolent struggle.
The internationals' job is to accompany farmers and shepherds accessing their lands. Because of frequent settler attacks on schoolchildren, we were also invited to accompany the kids on their way to school. Settlers attacked the international peace activists, hospitalizing two groups in September and October 2004. Because internationals were injured, the everyday violence used against Palestinians was suddenly visible, and the Israeli government ordered the army and the police to escort the children to school. Now we monitor the army escort.
I see that the native Palestinians in this area are winning. In 1997, when the villages here were cleared out, many families moved to nearby Yatta. Now families are moving back and fields that have not been plowed in years are being plowed; shepherds are grazing their sheep on lands that, until recently, they hadn't been able to access. Slowly, there is a success story in the works.
Israel, the U.S. and too many other countries expect the Palestinians to accept whatever violence is imposed upon them without a reaction, much less a violent reaction. This is absurd. In the face of such loss of land, livelihood, life and lifestyle, how could one not expect a reaction? If we expect Israel to react to the killing of 28 Israelis since 2001 by Palestinian rockets and mortars, how can we not expect Palestinians to react to the killing of 1,300 mostly civilian Gazans--over 300 of them children? Didn't these people have families, too? Don't Palestinian mothers and fathers love their children like Israeli parents do?
NONVIOLENT RESISTANCE FLOURISHES
The international community cannot continue to ignore common sense, and people in the U.S. cannot afford to bankroll a conflict that is destroying both societies. We cannot ignore a legitimate struggle for sovereignty and self-determination of a native people who insist on living their own lives on their own homelands. Our eyes are open to gun-wielding militiamen, but not to the bigger picture, not to the rest of the story. I have been all over Palestine, and I see this struggle every day. With the coming of much-needed rain, I look around and see that nonviolent resistance, like the land here, is fertile.
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