Combatants for Peace Launches U.S. Tour In Manhattan’s St. Mark’s Church

By Jane Adas


	(L-r) Yonathan Shapira, Bassam Aramin and Ilik Elhanan of Combatants for Peace speak in New York City (Staff photo J. Adas).

COMBATANTS FOR Peace began its U.S. speaking tour in New York City on Jan. 16—the one-year anniversary of the death of Bassam Aramin’s 10-year-old daughter, Abir, who was shot by an Israeli border policeman as she was walking home from the Anata School for Girls. After three days in an Israeli hospital, Abir died. During those days all the Israeli members of Combatants for Peace sat with Aramin. In the presence of his wife, Salwa, and daughter Areen, he assured the audience at St. Mark’s Church in the Bowery that for the sake of all the children of Combatants for Peace, he would not be deterred from his path and would never seek revenge in the name of Abir.

Aramin, a co-founder of Combatants for Peace, spent a total of seven years in Israeli prisons, the first time for raising a Palestinian flag when he was 13 years old. While in prison, Aramin gradually came to realize that the conflict would never be solved through violence. The process began when he saw a film in prison on the Holocaust. He tried to understand how this related not only to Israeli cohesion as a people, but also to Israeli aggression and violence. He came to realize that, as victims of victims, Palestinians are paying the price of others’ sins. Aramin began to talk with an Israeli prison guard who believed that Palestinians were violent settler-terrorists who kill Jews. After a seven-month conversation, the guard became convinced there should be a Palestinian state. Both he and the guard, Aramin explained, were changed by discussion rather than by force.

Aramin’s conviction that violence is not the path, that “after 60 years Israelis are not safe and Palestinians are not free,” is the underlying principle of Combatants for Peace. It began late in 2004, when four Palestinian and seven Israeli former fighters met secretly. The Israelis thought they would be kidnapped, Yonatan Shapira recalled, while the Palestinians thought the Israelis were from Shin Bet. However, they kept meeting far from the media and their numbers grew. As they heard each others’ stories, Shapira related, they came to understand that their common enemy is the occupation, not each other.

Shapira has moved a long way from when he was a proud Israeli air force captain and Black Hawk helicopter pilot who felt he was doing his part to protect his country. It took him far too long, he acknowledged, to realize that what he was part of is a machine of occupation. “Thanks to a brutal commander and brutal operations,” he said, Shapira decided to refuse to be part of the machine. On Rosh Hashana 2003, he was one of 30 pilots who published a letter refusing to continue taking part in war crimes. All the “refusnik” organizations are significant, but Shapiro said it is even more important for Israelis to go to the Palestinian side to see what the occupation has created.

Elik Elhanan spent three years in the Israeli army’s special services, where he saw much he did not want to be part of. His “wake-up call” came on Sept. 4, 1987, when suicide bombers in Jerusalem killed his 14-year-old sister, Smadal. Elhanan described how he needed to find a way to channel his anger and pain, but found only revenge and violence in Israeli society. He then decided, “It’s over. I’m not going to die for them; I’m not going to kill for them.”

Out of spite, Elhanan admitted, he became a conscientious objector, which at that time was the greatest sin in Israel. The greater challenge, however, was to meet the enemy. Elhanan is proud that the day in 2005 when he first met in Bethlehem with Palestinian ex-fighters changed his life.

In spite of “every day being the worst day,” Elhanan finds a spark of hope because every day Palestinians, Israelis and internationals resist the occupation, the separation wall, and the confiscation of land. He remembered an Israeli general saying at the beginning of the intifada that the worst-case scenario was a large-scale, popular, nonviolent Palestinian struggle. Elhanan said with a smile that in the general’s worst nightmares, he would not have imagined a joint struggle, and the task now is to increase the scale of struggle.

Noting that there is a tendency to attribute the failure of the peace process to extremists, Elhanan pointed out that extremists did not institute the occupation or build settlements or erect a separation wall. The Israeli government—“the center of a sick society”—has done all that, he said, and it should be the focus of resistance. He conceded that Palestinian and Israeli members of Combatants for Peace don’t agree on everything—for instance, on Israel as a Jewish state—but they do agree that the occupation must end and that it will not end through violence. “We don’t stop talking, no matter what,” he concluded.

The Rebuilding Alliance organized the Combatants for Peace tour not only to educate the American public, but also to raise funds for a special project. Combatants for Peace has begun constructing a playground at the Anata School for Girls called “Abir’s Garden: A Safe Place to Grow.” For more information and to contribute, visit <www.RebuildingAlliance.org>.

Knesset Member Dr. Ahmad Tibi Sees a “Possible Peace”


Dr. Ahmad Tibi (Staff photo J. Adas).

“How could somebody named Ahmad be a deputy speaker of the Israeli Knesset?” asked Dr. Ahmad Tibi at Baruch College. His Feb. 7 briefing on “The Ongoing Crisis in Palestine” was sponsored by the New York chapter of the Network of Arab-American Professionals. As leader of Ta’al, the Arab Movement for Renewal Party in Israel, Tibi explained, he represents the opposition, the 20 percent of Israelis who are Palestinians. They have two main goals: equal civil rights and an end to the occupation as a prerequisite for Israeli-Palestinian peace.

In almost every field of life in Israel, Tibi continued, there are no equal rights between Jewish and non-Jewish Israelis. In land allocation, education and infrastructure there is a gap of at least three decades—the result, he asserted, of systematic Israeli policy. He cited as an example the fact that “state lands”—land that has been confiscated from Palestinian owners since 1948, which constitutes more than 90 percent of the land in Israel—are allocated only for Jewish citizens. Another example, Tibi said, is the new Citizenship Law, in effect now for six years, which forbids West Bank Palestinians who are married to Israeli Palestinians from living in Israeli Arab villages. This has led to the splitting apart of thousands of Palestinian families, who now are unable to live together. According to Tibi, Israel claims the law is for “security reasons” and because of the “demographic threat”—meaning the increasing number of Arabs and decreasing number of Jews. Worried Israeli academics such as Haifa University’s Professor Arnon Sofer—whose very name translates as “counting”—are daily tracking the number of Arabs born. To demonstrate how counting by ethnicity is racist, Tibi asked the audience to imagine the reaction if someone said the Jewish community is a demographic threat to New York City. What is wrong for Jews in New York, he maintained, is wrong for Palestinians in Israel.

Tibi said he does not believe the main problem in the Middle East is Israeli security when the most insecure individuals are Palestinians under occupation. Every time the Israeli military kills a Palestinian child, he said, the automatic official response is “it was a mistake.” Since 2000, Tibi noted, “official Israeli soldiers given official instructions by the Israeli government” have killed 728 Palestinian children. Wondered Tibi: “728 mistakes?” (B’tselem puts the number even higher: 864.) Tibi labeled Israel’s frequent targeted assassinations of Palestinian civilians “state terror” and evidence that the Palestinian people need international protection.

Tibi charged the U.S. administration of not playing a beneficial role to bridge gaps or even to implement signed agreements. On six different occasions, he said, Prime Ministers Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert promised President George Bush to evacuate settlement outposts. Not only has that never been done, but in fact existing settlements have been enlarged and expanded. He cannot imagine that the U.S. is incapable of pressuring Israel to reduce the number of checkpoints, Tibi said. In his own case, Tibi told his audience, 200 meters behind his house in Beit Hanina is the apartheid wall; 300 meters in front of it is a checkpoint. As a result, he stated, his daughter never makes it to school on time.

Noting that Bush’s Annapolis meeting initiated official talks on core issues—borders, refugees, settlements, and Jerusalem—Tibi reported that, two weeks earlier, Olmert declared Jerusalem will not be discussed because Shas threatened to leave the coalition if it was. MK Tibi saw this as the Israeli government dealing with the Palestinian cause as an internal Israeli coalition problem. What is needed, he asserted, is for Washington to put pressure on the government of Israel and not only give it weapons.

There are deep internal problems on the Palestinian side as well, Tibi acknowledged. The Fatah/Hamas split negatively affects the power of Palestinian negotiators, he said, and is definitely in Israel’s interest. Tibi argued that it is therefore important to restore unity, not least for the people in Gaza suffering under a continuous siege. How, in the 21st century, he asked, can such fascist behavior as shutting down electricity and water for nearly two million people be defended? Tibi is in the U.S. trying to convince senators and cabinet members that the suffering should stop. There will not be a just peace, he concluded, but there is a possible peace.

Jane Adas is a free-lance writer based in the New York City metropolitan area.