Israeli Elik Elhanan and Palestinian Sulaiman Al Hamri: Two Combatants for Peace

By Robert Hirschfield


	Sulaiman Al Hamri (l) and Elik Elhanan at Congregation Beth Elohim in Brooklyn, NY (Photo R. Hirschfield).

ELIK ELHANAN and Sulaiman Al Hamri were brought together by loss, and by their vision of peace stripped of the cankers of occupier and occupied. Elhanan lost his 14-year-old sister when a suicide bomber blew himself up beside her on a Jerusalem street in 1997. Al Hamri lost four years of his life when he was jailed twice (the first time at 16) for being a fighter in Fatah. (He and his brothers collectively have lost 25 years of their lives in Israeli jails.) Israeli forces demolished his family home in Bethlehem.

Al Hamri and Zohar Shapira, the brother of Israeli pilot-refuser Yonatan Shapira (see April 2005 Washington Report, p. 18), are the co-founders of Combatants For Peace (CFP), the first Palestinian-Israeli ex-fighters’ peace group in the history of the conflict. “We have three goals,” said Elhanan. “We try to bring together Israeli and Palestinian fighters to talk peace. We speak with Israelis and Palestinians at schools, community centers, private homes. Even if three people in a room want to hear us, we will talk to them. We protest the destruction of Palestinian homes, the Separation Wall at Bil’in, and the occupation. Everything we do, we do together.”

Despite that fact that Israelis are forbidden to travel to West Bank cities, and Palestinians are forbidden from traveling to Israel, the group manages to meet regularly in the West Bank.

“The first meeting was held at my house in Bethlehem in 2005,” Al Hamri recalled. “It was a little bizarre. The Israelis had to go through settler roads, then walk to an olive grove, where cars would pick them up. The Palestinians thought it was a trap, and they would be arrested or killed.”

The Israelis feared for their own lives as well.

Al Hamri’s turn from violence to nonviolence occurred when he was being held under Israeli administrative detention in Ketziot Prison, a violent place. There, in 1993, the Palestinian political prisoners were paid a surprise visit by Prime Minister Rabin, who said he regarded them as the genuine Palestinian leadership on the ground and wanted to negotiate peace with them.

“Rabin was known for his violence against Palestinians during the first intifada, which was nonviolent,” Al Hamri noted. “I saw then that it was possible for an Israeli leader to change. It made me think that another way out of the conflict was possible, that dialogue with the Israelis was possible.”

Prior to Combatants For Peace, Al Hamri worked with the Israeli-Palestinian peace group, Tayoush, and Elhanan was active in Courage To Refuse, a soldier-refuser group founded in 2002. Begun with 52 soldiers and officers, it grew to 200 within two months, and doubled again after four months.

“But I felt that something was lacking,” explained Elhanan, a student of Hebrew literature at Tel Aviv University. “Peace, like marriage or tango, takes two. We had to find Palestinians to talk to.”

At every talk the two men gave during their recent tour of the U.S., Elhanan reflected on the death of his sister.

“My sister did not die for the freedom and security of Israel,” he said at a New York synagogue. “She did not die because the Arab culture is murderous by nature, or because Islam is a murderous religion, or because of a clash of civilizations. My sister died because there is an occupation. She died because there is a political conflict over a piece of land.”

Elhanan said he was horrified when a picture of his sister was displayed at the International Court in The Hague by opponents of those who were challenging the legality of Israel’s Separation Wall.

“They used our family name to justify what was being done in the occupied territories,” he lamented.

Al Hamri, who works as a liaison between the Palestinian Interior Ministry and NGOs, discusses CFP’s cross-border peace work with his Fatah companions and members of other PLO factions, as well as with Hamas members. The harshness of the occupation does not make his outreach easy, however.

But the Hamas mayor of Beit Umar recently welcomed to his town representatives of CFP, Tayoush and the Families Forum who had come to protest Israel’s seizing of Palestinian land to build a settler road.

“A road that will be for Jews only,” Al Hamri pointed out.

Added Elhanan: “We are not like Yossi Beilin, who speaks out for peace in some air-conditioned room in a Northern European capital, not on a West Bank street. Our activism is activism on the ground.”

Saying he was dismayed by Israelis’ indifference to his efforts, Elhanan described Israel as increasingly becoming a country of people who sit at home and do nothing, and who regard activism as bad manners. They don’t really object to his resisting the occupation, he explained, but just wish he wouldn’t go about it so loudly.

“I can deal with confrontation,” Elhanan said. “I can deal with a fight. But I can’t deal with indifference.”

The Israeli government is not indifferent to him, however. CFP members have their phones tapped and are harassed at checkpoints, he said. Their meeting places can be transformed on the spot into closed military zones. Not surprisingly, such treatment requires more of an adjustment for Israeli CFPers than it does for Palestinian members.

Since last summer’s war on Lebanon, Elhanan went on to explain, “Israelis are completely disillusioned. They don’t know what to believe. This a crucial moment. You have to strike when the iron is hot. [Avigdor] Lieberman is doing this, and he is doing this well. If we had elections today, his party, Yisrael Beiteinu [which calls for the transfer of Arab citizens of Israel], would come in second or first. The Zionist left is doing nothing. We need to be present in the street to tell people it can be different—not Lieberman-different, but different is a positive way.”

Robert Hirschfield is a free-lance writer based in New York City.