However long it takes

By Adam Keller

 

June again. Another year has passed, and it is the forty-first anniversary of the occupation.

Forty one years is a long time. It means that no one much below the age of fifty can really recall a time when Israel did not rule over the Palestinian territories; that whole two new generations of Israelis (and of Palestinians!) have grown up in this highly abnormal situation of built-in inequality and oppression, hatred and bloodshed. It means that the occupation has already lasted more than two-thirds of Israel's total history (the so-celebrated sixty years...).

It means that the occupation has nearly outworn the pioneers who embarked on the anti-occupation struggle, four decades ago. And in the year 1987, twenty years seemed such a long time that an activist group called "The Twenty First Year" tried to think of "creative new ways to oppose the occupation."

Then, 1993, watching on TV the handshake of Rabin and Arafat, many of us expected the imminent end of the occupation. Those who were three-year old toddlers at that time of false hope are now soldiers harassing Palestinians at the roadblocks of the West Bank and poised for a mass invasion of the Gaza Strip - except for some individuals who prefer to go to prison.

Last year, when it was a neat round forty years, we succeeded to squeeze out of ourselves an outburst of energy, with dozens of groups preparing months in advance to mark the occupation anniversary with a whole week of consecutive protest events. Nobody at the time had expressed an explicit hope or expectation that all this effort would lead to the actual end of the occupation. Still, there was a certain anticlimax in the realization that another year had passed and the June 5 date came around again and the situation is only getting worse.

There was certainly not anything remotely similar to the spirit of last year. There was, in fact, a kind of despondency and lethargy from which the other groups were roused by the Coalition of Women for Peace who took the initiative to get the groups sitting together. The first planning meeting, hosted by the Feminist Mizrahi group Ahoti in a tiny office at the South Tel Aviv slum, was characterized by prolonged bickering and ill-feeling between various groups, in a futile search for a really original idea, "something which we had not done before" (how original can you still be after forty-one years?).

In the end, we did settle on a protest march through the streets of Tel-Aviv, yes again. But it was decided not to end it with a rally where the audience is expected to listen passively and clap, but with holding discussion circles, sitting down on the grass at the Gan Meir Park and speaking on strategic issues of the struggle.

There is, specifically, one very central strategic question: is the occupation still reversible, so that soldiers and settlers could be removed and a sovereign Palestine created at the side of Israel - or is this clinging to an outmoded model? Has Israeli domination and colonization in effect already created the structure of a single state, an Apartheid state based on oppression and inequality which needs to be democratized as a single state - or is this but a wild dream, which could never be accepted by the majority of Jewish Israelis and which under the guise of super-radicalism dooms the struggle against the occupation which the Palestinians for their part don't give up? Should we perhaps just muddle on, pay less attention to various solutions and their chances of being implemented, and just concentrate on the single fact that the present situation is totally unacceptable and unendurable?

***

Saturday, June 7 - late afternoon at the corner of Allenby Street and Rothschild Boulevard, the area where Tel Aviv began nearly a hundred years ago and which had recently become fashionable again. A few activists appear, already an hour before the scheduled time, and then more and more.

This is not a time for the half-hearted and the fair-weather activists. Those who suspect that the whole thing might be futile and hopeless had stayed home. But still there is a very considerable hard-core, those determined to struggle on whatever the odds and the chances - and a large part of them are young people, born decades after the occupation became a solid fact of life. Soon, row after row of demonstrators are ranged across the boulevard, waiting for the starting moment.

A sound of cheering behind - a large contingent of bicycle riders, the Critical Mass Against the Occupation, had completed their protest ride through the streets of Tel Aviv, and they park their bikes and join the march on foot. And the drummers make themselves heard, loud and clear: "Rat, tat, tat - Down With the Occupation! Rat, tat, tat - Down With the Occupation! Rat, tat, tat...". The poets whose portraits had  recently been hung above the boulevard, each with a few carefully chosen lines, look on.

The march begins. There are some clearly discernable organized groups - Gush Shalom supporters with the Two-State banner composed of the flags of Israel and Palestine; the Communists with their Red flags and the chant linking the occupation to bad-old capitalism; the Meretz people, with green flags emblazoned with the party's name and placards with themes of critical Israeli patriotism ("Occupation is a disaster for Israel!" / "41 years of our shame!"); the black Anarchist flag with the giant "A", held by activists fresh from the confrontation with the army at Bil'in and Na'alin; some radicals with signs proclaiming the Right of Return and supporting an international boycott on Israel.

A large part of the crowd, however, feels no need to display any affiliation other than that of the broad anti-occupation movement, after all the decades and disappointments chanting again and again "Peace - Yes! Occupation - No!"

Much of the attention is given to the ongoing fighting in and around the Gaza Strip, the cruel siege reducing the Strip's million and half inhabitants to poverty on the edge of hunger, and the tit-for-tat killings. A day before yesterday - on June 5, the actual date when the war started in 1967 - a 51-year old Israeli kibbutznik was killed by Palestinian mortar shell and a 4-year old Palestinian girl was killed in the retaliatory Israeli bombing an hour later. This lent a grim realism to the already traditional chant: "Barak, Barak, hey hey hey - how many kids did you kill today?" (sometimes changed to "how many people did you kill?") and "All the ministers share blame for refusing the cease-fire!" A banner summed it up: "Only Peace Will Cease the Fire."

"Everybody, the dead Israeli children and the dead Palestinian children, all are murdered by this bloody government, the damn bastard ministers and generals who are against ceasefire, who don't care how many die. They just drink the blood in their posh cocktail parties!" cries a girl with red t-shirt bearing the words "Human Rights, Animal Rights - the same struggle".

The same point in a bit different formulation, was also made by former KM Uri Avnery and present KM Dov Khenin in their press interviews (respectively to Reuters TV and the Y-net news website:

"There is an alternative to fighting: a ceasefire agreement and subsequent calm in Gaza, a prisoner exchange deal similar to the one that was struck this past week [between Israel and Hizbullah]. We must advance the negotiations with the Palestinians and Syria and base them on the implementation of the Arab League's peace initiative. Life here must be based on dialogue and negotiation rather than fighting. (...) The purpose of this demonstration is to warn of two possible wars – a 'small war' in Gaza, and the larger regional war with Iran, which [Minister Shaul] Mofaz speaks of. The latter may result in a large-scale catastrophe."

Many of the signs and chants link up the two sides of the Gaza border, the embattled Palestinian city of Gaza and its Israeli neighbor and counterpart Sderot: "Sderot and Gaza, don't despair - we will end the occupation yet!"; "Cease the fire, break the cycle of blood!"; "In Gaza and Sderot, the children want to live!"; Solidarity with Gaza and Sderot!" "No occupation, no terror, no missile, no siege!"; No more bereaved families - neither Israeli nor Palestinian!"; "No more walls, no more shelters - dialogue between neighbors"; "Jews and Arabs - we refuse to be enemies!".

A bypassing woman suddenly bursts shouting: "You're sick! Go do this demonstration at the kibbutzim! The kibbutzim! The kibbutzim, they are bombed and killed all the time now!" A grey-haired demonstrator detaches herself from the marching line, speaking calmly and patiently: "This is exactly the right place, here at the center of the country. We want to wake up the people in the cafes and sushi bars here in this boulevard, to get them involved. We have to stop all this fear and hatred. We have to stop the killing of Jews and the killing of Arabs, nobody should die any more. Nobody should live in fear any more."

Meanwhile, the marching line reached the Habima Theater and turned right on the shorter Ben Tzion Boulevard. "Don't say we did not know" read the caption on a large placard, showing two exhausted old Palestinian women waiting at a West Bank roadblock, with a bored young Israeli corporal yawning in the background. "Israel and Palestine - two states, brotherhood of peoples!" the chant went on, and "The government lies to the citizens - brute force is not security!" / "Give Money to Welfare - not to Warfare" / "Create Jobs and Education - not Occupation and Settlement"/ "One, Two, One, Two - Two Capitals in Jerusalem"; "The Settlers' Council is the Mafia Council"; "A corrupt government provides no peace and no security!", "Neither Olmert nor Bush - End the Occupation" (In Hebrew, "Bush" and "Kibush" (Occupation) rhyme well with each other, which had provided many good slogans in the past seven and half years...).

The last part, through King George Street, passed the route of yesterday's Gay Pride March, still strewn with considerable debris.

An activist distributed leaflets calling for the Haifa Pride March, due next week - illustrated with a humorous comics of a young man who discovers his grandmother to be a lesbian. But there was some dissent on this point: "The official Gay and Lesbian community has become totally co-opted and subordinated to the establishment, financed by the Tel Aviv Municipality and sponsored by big corporations, and of course they have nothing to say about the occupation. As a lesbian and radical feminist, I want nothing to do with them!" said an angry militant whose t-shirt bore the words "No Pride in Occupation!"

The Meir Park. Demonstrators put down their flags and banners and after some confusion, the organizers get a large part of them sorted out into six discussion circles: On the number of states desirable, and whether to talk of "occupation" or "apartheid"; can the history of Israel and Zionism be considered colonialist history; how to relate to the international calls for selective or general "BDS" (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions); ways of non-violent struggle, and is it acceptable to take actions which might result in police/army violence; how to more effectively link up with other struggles (social, gender, etc.); and how do we see the dismantling of settlements coming about - if at all.

The discussions were proceeding quite calmly when Yana Knopova, the Women's Coalition coordinator, arrived – passing from group to group to deliver a dire warning: "When you leave the park, stay together. Two of our people were just assaulted outside."

The details of the story were pieced together in the hours after. Ya'el and Zohar, a young woman and a young man who had participated in the demo and preferred to go home after the end of the march, had been followed by four or five men who had been seen lounging at the point where the march ended. After a few minutes, when they were in a side street empty of anyone else, the assailants charged, shouting "traitors!" and started beating up Zohar. When Ya'el tried to shield him, she too was thrown to the ground and kicked. By the time other activists arrived and alerted the police, the assailants were long gone. Zohar was briefly hospitalized, but was meanwhile released. (Anyone who may have seen or photographed the assailants - they seem to have shadowed the march all along - please contact zohar_mil@yahoo.co.uk).

***

When walking along Rothschild, we were under the impression of Olmert's warning of the "The pendulum swinging in the direction of a major military action in Gaza". Today, unnamed military sources say this talk by the PM is "premature" and the "the idea of a ceasefire is still given a chance". Meanwhile, we also got word of an Italian judge and an Irish Nobel Prize Laureate being wounded during the anti-Wall demonstration in Bil'in, Friday. In short - we did the march and go back to the daily routine of the continuing occupation, and the continuing struggle.

 

List of Participating organizations and parties: Coalition of Women for Peace, Gush Shalom, Hadash, Balad, Machsom Watch,  Student Coalition (Tel Aviv University), Bat Shalom, The Alternative Information Center, The Committee Against House Demolitions, Israeli Communist Youth Alliance, Combatants for Peace, Bat Tzafon, New Profile, Anarchists Against Fences, Democratic Women, Tarabut -Hithabrut, The Campus is Not Silent