A Voice from the Ground Standing in Solidarity

The Friends of Sabeel North America (FOSNA)-Sabeel “Solidarity Trip with Palestinian Civil Society” (November 26-December 6) was a pilgrimage for human rights - an opportunity to demonstrate support for Palestinian human rights and social service agencies that have in recent years been targeted for intensifying repression by the Israeli Occupation and settlers and simultaneously isolated by the pandemic. 

Sabeel is a Christian voice for liberation theology in the Palestinian context. Having experienced systematic discrimination, dispossession, and ethnic cleansing often justified by selective recourse to Scriptures revered by Jews, Christians and Muslims, Palestinians thirsted for a theology that emphasized justice, equality, and human dignity. In 2022 limitations on traditional Muslim and Christian religious gatherings during Ramadan and Holy Week, the attack on St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Ramallah on August 18, and the recent provocative visit to Haram al-Sharif on January 3 by National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir have illustrated the Israeli Government’s growing disrespect for religious rights and ballooning sense of impunity. Encounters with religious leaders - the Rev. Munther Isaac of the Evangelical Lutheran Christian Church in Bethlehem, Bishop Emeritus Munib Younan of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land, and Fr. Abdullah Julio, priest of the Greek Melkite church in Nablus - introduced us to courageous defenders of religious freedom.

The trip involved an intensive schedule of meetings with a rich array of activists. Certain themes resonated from one to the next: courage, creativity, and resilience in resisting the Occupation; the need to replace an ossified Palestinian Authority (P.A.) that serves primarily as an Israeli enforcement arm with a secular, democratic polity that allows diverse opinions to flourish; efforts to foster national unity in the face of the Occupation’s systems for crushing it; programs to develop youth leadership and increase the role of women. All of our meetings helped us piece together an understanding of how the Occupation operates and raised some useful ideas for advocacy. Any one of these encounters would be worth a write-up. Two, however, stood out for me as distilling the essence of a situation or assembling pieces of a puzzle. 

One was our meeting in Hebron with Ghassan, brother of Nizar Banat, which illustrated why many politically engaged Palestinians and their allies see the Palestinian Authority as corrupt and autocratic. Nizar was a carpenter who organized the movement known as “Freedom and Dignity” during the elections called for 2021 and then cancelled. Many felt that this campaign represented a serious threat to the Palestinian Authority’s reign. One night, fourteen P.A. soldiers stormed Nizar’s house, beat him brutally, and carted him away on a stretcher. Within an hour they delivered him to a hospital, where he soon expired. According to the autopsy report and nine forensic experts, his death was caused by damage to his respiratory system and heart. The P.A. insisted that he had committed suicide by banging his head against the wall of his cell and refused anything beyond an internal, sham investigation. No soldier was ever punished or disciplined. In response to the killing, the U.S. cut off subsidies to the P.A. police. Nizar’s brother is currently pursuing recourse in U.S. courts and plans a tour to raise donations. He has a gun for protection and, for their safety, lives apart from his family. 

Normally when a Palestinian living under the P.A. dies and after the authorities ascertain that the death is due to natural causes, the family submits the I.D. of the deceased in order to get a permit to bury the body. After the funeral the I.D. is returned, usually with its edges cropped to indicate that it is no longer valid. In Nizar’s case, given the disputed circumstances, the family got neither a permit nor his I.D. From the P.A.’s standpoint, the burial was not carried out according to law. The family instead produced 35,000 copies of Nizar’s earlier I.D. that are circulating in the West Bank and keeping his memory and cause alive.

For understanding how the Occupation undermines Palestinians’ efforts to forge a nation, our day with Salwa Duaibis and Gerard Horton, co-founders of Military Court Watch, was particularly instructive. MCW is a Palestinian NGO staffed by Palestinian and international lawyers who collect testimonies to document military detention of youth under 18 and how Occupation practices generally ignore both Israel’s own laws and the Geneva Conventions. Gerard described martial law’s origins in Military Order #3 issued on June 7, 1967. He outlined how the system of night raids intimidates and manipulates Palestinians, particularly in Area C, softening up the accused to get confessions, creating a network of informants through a combination of bribes and threats, sowing mistrust that destroys social links and communities, hobbling efforts to organize, and stifling unity. Salwa reported the devastating psychological impact on both detainees and their families. In the afternoon she took us to Ofer Prison, where we managed a very brief exposure to a military court hearing in one of the container-like sites. Thirty such hearings take place daily in each of a number of “courtrooms.” All are hasty, all conducted largely in Hebrew with erratic translation.  Most result in confessions because collecting the evidence and getting the legal support for countering accusations are practically impossible. 

While I took full advantage of nine days of the ten-day trip, I tested positive for Covid on day 10 and quarantined to avoid sharing. During this time, our Sabeel host and the staff at Saint Andrew’s Guesthouse in Ramallah provided abundant, reassuring support. I missed the meeting with the respected Palestinian human rights organization Al-Haq, whose offices were raided on August 18. I also missed the discussion with Palestinian-American Sam Bahour, who moved to the West Bank in 1995 to help develop the economy of the future Palestinian state promised by the Oslo Accords. Such a position provides a ring-side seat for observing how Israel’s stranglehold on Palestinian economic development demonstrates the extent to which the Accords are a charade.

Overall, this recent experience of the Occupation left me feeling much as had my Sabeel Witness Trip in November 2012. It was at once heart-rending and enraging to see its subtle cruelty and its physical brutality. At the same time, it was awe-inspiring to witness the steadfast courage and resilience that the vast majority of Palestinians daily demonstrate through their nonviolent resistance and their ability, despite everything, to smile, laugh, experience and radiate joy. Two questions haunt me. How does a commitment to nonviolence survive the grind of the Occupation - its unrelenting intimidation, humiliation, and brute force under the umbrella of U.S. protection? Were I living under such a regime, could I remain nonviolent?  

Thanks to EPF PIN member Priscilla Read for this report.