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A home, an olive tree, or a boy with a rock

By Anna Baltzer  Posted by Dick Overfield (about the submitter)       (Page 2 of 2 pages) Become a premium member to see this article and all articles as one long page.   No comments
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At the end of the ceasefire, Hamas put forth diplomatic initiatives aimed at extending the agreement (based on an end to both cross-border attacks and blockade of the strip), but these efforts were actually dismissed by Israel. With an end to diplomatic possibilities and the continuation of a debilitating blockade, Hamas's returning again to rocket attacks was, albeit lamentable, certainly predictable. Renewed violence, far from coming as a surprise, was presumably precisely what Israel was expecting.

So if the decision to strike Gaza in late December was calculated far in advance, why now? The timing coincided precisely with three things: elected officials' holidays in the US, a transitional period for the US administration (a lame duck president and a president-elect hesitant to say anything prematurely), and most importantly: a tight race in Israel for the next prime minister. In fact Israeli Foreign Minister Tsipi Livni, who rejected Hamas's efforts to negotiate an extension of the ceasefire, is running a tight race with the hawkish Likud party. The latter is campaigning on the claim that Livni's political party, Kadima, is too "soft" on the Palestinians, something Livni is working hard to disprove.

Official Israeli explanations mention nothing about US or Israeli political factors, focusing squarely on eradicating Palestinian violence. But if nonviolence and cooperation are Israel's conditions for returning freedom to Palestinians, why weren't those conditions enough in the past? By the end of the year 2008, more than six months since a single fatal attack on an Israeli and following long-term cooperation between the West Bank Fatah leadership and the Israeli government, settlement expansion had heavily increased in the West Bank, about 5,000 Palestinians had been newly captured and imprisoned by Israel (most of them from the West Bank), and the number of West Bank checkpoints had risen from 521 to 699. If Israel wanted to stop a rise in Hamas, why not show that it is willing to make peace with the more peaceful Palestinian leaders?

During my two weeks in the West Bank, coinciding with a time of calm in Israel, I listened to countless stories of immobility, settler attacks, torture, and humiliation. During my first night at the IWPS house, nearby settlers stoned passing cars. I visited a close friend in the nearby Azzoun village, where settlers invade several times a week carrying large American-made semi-automatic weapons. The army's response is to declare curfew on Azzoun, forbidding villagers from leaving their home. School and work have been cancelled three times a week for the past month on orders of the army, wanting to "protect Palestinians." One wonders why the army prefers to shut down a Palestinian village rather than standing up to the Israeli settlers themselves (my colleague Hannah wrote an excellent article addressing this question:

http://www.counterpunch.org/mermelstein12252008.html).

I visited the Bethlehem area where settlers routinely visit and spray-paint stars of David and anti-Arab racist slurs (which locals then paint over, until the settlers return the next time). Water andelectricity in the city are consistently shut off by the Israeli army (Bethlehem has just one functioning traffic light), and enrollment atBethlehem University hovers at 70% female given the high proportion of local men spending their youth in prison (similar to figures of African American males in the United States).

The one concession I witnessed was Israel's release of more than 200 Palestinian prisoners as a gift for the Muslim "Eid Al-Adha" holiday last month. Israel continues to hold more than 7,500 Palestinians prisoner, more than 10% of them without charge. Hundreds more are arrested every month. Then, occasionally, Israel lets out a couple hundred as an act of goodwill and generosity, but somehow Palestinians don't seem to find the habit terribly generous.

I traveled to Nablus where I learned one of my friends had been killed while another, a major organizer of nonviolent civil disobedience during Israel's invasion in early 2007, was in prison. On my way, I passed a group of eleven cement factory workers who had been stopped by the army on their way to the factory and I hopped out of my cab to document the situation. After holding the group for more than two hours, the Israeli soldiers decided to let the eleven grown men go to work. Other breadwinners cannot even access the road to work anymore, like a Bethlehem family whose home I found surrounded on three sides by the Wall, their main road cut off.

Given the West Bank Fatah leadership's cooperation with Israel, one might have expected a change in the situation in the West Bank, but  everywhere I visited the occupation continued as usual, sometimes enhanced. There is no reason for Palestinians—-or us—-to believe that an end to rocket attacks and suicide bombs would bring real change to Israel's continued occupation since neither has in the past. Rather, Hamas's violence provides a convenient, and unfortunate, excuse for Israel to continue what it has been doing all along: expanding and expanding, destroying any obstacle—-be it a home, an olive tree, or a boy with a rock-—in its way.

Anna Baltzer, a peace activist, was born in Berkeley, California. She graduated from Columbia University with a degree in Mathematics and Economics. She first travelled to the Middle East while studying in Turkey on a Fullbright Grant. She travels to the West Bank every year as a volunteer for the International Women’s Peace Service documenting human rights violations. She supports nonviolent resistance to the Occupation. She is the author of Witness in Palestine: A Jewish American Woman in the Occupied Territories. For photos, more reports, and info on Anna's book, DVD, and upcoming speaking tours, visit www.AnnaInTheMiddleEast.com

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Dick Overfield Social Media Pages: Facebook page url on login Profile not filled in       Twitter page url on login Profile not filled in       Linkedin page url on login Profile not filled in       Instagram page url on login Profile not filled in

Richard W. Overfield is an artist/writer currently based in New Mexico after living in Vancouver, Canada for 20 years.His paintings are represented in over 300 public & private collections in the U.S., Canada, Switzerland, France, England, Japan & (more...)
 
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