Currents of Resistance Show
Transcript
May 11, 2004

WREK

Host: Good evening, Atlanta, and welcome to another evening of Currents of Resistance, the radio show of the Atlanta Independent Media Center here every Tuesday night on WREK 91.1 FM. We're coming on a little bit early this week, because we have a baseball game coming on at five ‘til, but we'll still get our whole half hour of news and information for you tonight. We're be discussing, basically, daily life in the West Bank. We have some guests from Atlanta who have just returned from a village in the West Bank. We have Reverend Sanders and his wife Elizabeth; and Father Aktham Hijazin is also here with us, who's a Roman Catholic priest and a principal in a Catholic school in Zababdeh in the West Bank; and also with us is Amal Kasabri, a member of the Parish Council; and also joining us is Alta Schwartz of the American Friend Service Committee. Before we get going to our guests, let me just say that the opinions on today's show do not necessarily reflect those of the student body, staff, or faculty here at Georgia Tech, but we certainly once again appreciate their use of their studio for our show.

So, tell us a little bit about your background and what made you decide to move over and live in the West Bank.

Marthame Sanders: Elizabeth and I have been there for, as you said, for the last three and a half years working in this majority Christian village in the Northern West Bank. It's one of the few majority Christian villages left in either Palestine or Israel, and it's the only one in the Northern West Bank. And we went there really out of a sense to support the churches there. It was very much of a Christian sense of doing ministry to the church in the land of its birth. And we arrived about one month before the Intifada, the current uprising. And, obviously, the things changed dramatically. But what really got us there in the first place was a trip that I took in 1993 to Ramallah. And at that time, I had a friend who said, “Why don't you take this trip to the Holy Land?” And I said, “Sure.” I had a bachelor's degree in history and was working in a video store. I was actually working down a Little Five Points at the time. And so I went.

And as I was going around telling people I needed to raise money for this trip, I told them I was going to go work on a kibbutz in Israel because that was my only sense of what you would possibly do as a person of faith going to the Holy Land. And instead, it was a trip to Ramallah for three weeks, as I said, and my eyes were opened and I realized how little I knew about the situation over there. And the issues of that place were no longer issues. They became people and they were my friends. The refugees were Dia’ and his father and his grandfather. The stories of torture of Palestinian youth and their imprisonment were Samir and dozens of others who became my friends. That was the original awakening. And then ten years later we ended up going back – well, not quite ten years, more about seven years. We ended up going back and spent the last three and a half years there.

Host: So just the aspect of getting there, it isn't like the sort of place where you can just hop in your rental car and drive there. I'm sure you've got to go through all kinds of checkpoints and this sort of thing. I mean, how difficult is it to get from the airport to where you wanted to go? How long would that have taken you?

Elizabeth Sanders: Well, that's an interesting point. When we first arrived actually, it was really very easy. We arrived, as Marthame said, before this Intifada started, we flew into the airport in Tel Aviv and someone from Zababdeh had driven from Zababdeh to the airport in Tel Aviv from the West Bank into Israel, picked us up and brought us back in a very short amount of time. After this Intifada started and many closures and checkpoints and a hardening happened. Now it is extremely difficult. When we left, it took us probably eight to ten hours to get out of the village and simply to the border in Jordan. In terms of checkpoint, security checkpoints within the West Bank, between Palestinian villages, and then into Israel as well. So it is quite now, accessibility and freedom of movement is a very serious issue; less so for us as internationals and much more so for Palestinians themselves.

Host: So just for perspective here, it would take eight to ten hours to get from the village you're living in to the Jordanian border. If those checkpoints weren't there, if you use it to drive the speed limit, whatever that may be, how long would it take you to get there?

Marthame: Maybe an hour.

Elizabeth: Forty minutes to an hour.

Host: Forty minutes to an hour has turned into eight to ten hours because of the checkpoints.

Marthame: Yeah.

Elizabeth: Yes.

Host: And does being American citizens help you get through the checkpoints, or would it have been even longer if you were a Palestinian?

Marthame: We did not have a car, and so most of our transportation was done through Palestinian transportation, which is largely shared taxis traveling around the West Bank; and around the West Bank, there is a divided system. Israelis have yellow plated cars and are allowed on certain roads, and Palestinians have white plated cars and are forbidden from many of those roads - not all of them, but are forbidden from many of them. As a result, the situation for the Palestinians who live in the West Bank is much more difficult in terms of many issues. But as Elizabeth said, freedom of movement is one of the big concerns. There was also a shift in the time that we were there. Over three and a half years, a lot of things happened. One of them was the killing of Rachel Corrie, who was a young American woman from the Northwest.

And that moment when she was killed under an Israeli bulldozer and standing in front of a doctor's home in Gaza, there was a shift that was palpable in not only the way that internationals there felt, but also how they were treated. We as internationals who were there at the time immediately became much more tentative in our dealings with Israeli soldiers, and they also became much more aggressive in their dealings with us. It's not so simple to say that Israeli soldiers treat everybody horribly. It is far more nuanced than that. And we would find even sometimes in dealing with the same soldier at the same checkpoint, it was a different day. One time he would be joking and laughing and saying, “You can go through.” And another time we'd come back and he would scream at us and raise his M-16 at us. So it's not just a matter of policy, it's also a matter of individual personality and individual circumstance. But overall, we were subject to many of the same travel restrictions just by nature of not having a car. And at the same time, we also had matters of recourse. We knew that – and the soldiers knew that – if we were to be harassed or delayed or detained anywhere beyond reason, then we could contact the embassy. Palestinians do not have that recourse.

Host: Father Hijazin, you are the principal at, it's a private Catholic school, in the village. Can you tell me a little bit about the school and the students, the student body that attends there?

Aktham HIjazin: This school belonged to the Latin Patriarchate Church and Roman Catholic Church in Palestine. And this school was built 120 years ago. And this school has now 650 students. They are coming from Zababdeh and Jenin and other villages surrounding Zababdeh. And they are – this school students, they are mixed between Christian and Muslims, girls and boys together, from age of five years old until the 12th grade.

Host: And how do the students there, particularly the Muslim students, relate to having a school in which you have both boys and girls attending classes at the same time?

Aktham: Not all the Muslims, they are not equal in the relationship with Christian or towards how to treat girls or women. And we have a lot of people sending their children, girls and boys, to the school together, not only in Zababdeh, but also in Bethlehem or Jerusalem or wherever, in Ramallah.

Host: Now in the village you teach in, or you are principal in, beyond the students, how does the general population get along with each other as far as the Palestinian Christians and the Palestinian Muslims and the Jewish people there?

Aktham: First of all, we are, all of us, we are Palestinians – Palestinians, we are Christian or Muslims, and we are living in the same country, same village or cities. And we are working together, studying together, living together. So our relationship is a good relationship, because we're not looking to each other as Christian or Muslim. Because we are under the Occupation now, especially, we're under Occupation as Palestinians, all of them: Christian or Muslim. And we have now a special goal that we want to be free from the Occupation. And it’s the first thing that we are looking for.

Marthame: I mean, what Father Aktham says, and I think it's certainly important when you look at how Palestinians are treated – both Christian and Muslim – by the Israeli soldiers, there is no difference. Being a Christian does not mean that you get better treatment.

Host: Equally brutal for both.

Marthame: It's equally brutal. The prisoners are Palestinian, Christian and Muslim. The same is true of the Wall. The Wall is confiscating land from Christians and Muslims; demolitions: Palestinian, Christian and Muslim homes are being demolished. It is happening without regard for religion. At the same time, Palestinians Christians are a minority community. I think we have a lot of under awareness here of how minority communities are treated throughout the world. And so there is not always total understanding. There are conflicts at times, and what you'll find is – and we often draw a parallel with race relations in the US – if you have two boys fighting on the playground there and they're both Christian, well, boys will be boys. And if it’s two Muslims, it’s the same thing. But if it's a Muslim and a Christian, it can – and sometimes does – flare up into a tribal thing or a religious thing.

You also asked about interactions with Jews, and I would say the same thing: it is very nuanced. Father Aktham has made sure that his students are involved in a number of peace education and exchange groups between Palestinians and Israelis. At the same time, the majority of Jews that people see there are soldiers. And how is this going to affect your view of a people when the only time you see them as is armed people coming in to enforce policies that can be quite often very brutal?

Host: Well, the Occupation has been compared, in a lot of ways, to Apartheid in South Africa back during the sixties, seventies, eighties. And part of the Apartheid situation was that, from what I understand, a lot of the people, the white people minority living in South Africa really had no idea what was happening in the townships because it was never put on the media. They never ventured there. They had no reason to go there, and therefore they had no idea what was happening. Is this a similar situation in Israel where common people who are nonpolitical don't really even realize what's happening within their own borders?

Marthame: I think that's a great question, and I don't know how well I can answer it, because our experience was largely in the West Bank. However, within Israel, military services compulsory. The only way you can exempt from that is through religious education. So, most Israelis have a sense of what it means to serve in the military. I don't know what percentage of those serve in the Occupied Territories, but if they do, then they do know what's going on. But again, that's just kind of, you might be able to answer that better.

Alta Schwartz: Yeah, actually, since the second Intifada started, there has been a stop, a break of movement between the Palestinian and Israeli areas. So, it used to be much more common for Palestinians and Israelis to mingle, to experience one another. And now, the only way that that really happens is an Israeli soldier in a Palestinian area, or a settler in a Palestinian area. So the Palestinians view of Israelis is very much in a violent and military sense, and vice versa for the Israelis.

Host: Now, there are a lot of, I don’t know how many in sheer numbers, but there are Israeli peace groups over there, and they want to see an end to the Occupation. They want to see a normalization relationship. Some of them may advocate peace for land, or this sort of thing. How common is the interaction between the Israeli peace groups and Palestinians, and how much political power do peace groups in Palestine actually have?

Alta: Well, since the recent escalation and violence, I think that you've seen a radicalization of both societies, both Palestinian and Israeli. The peace movements on both sides still exist. Their power is more diminished, and also particularly, their presence in the media, both nationally and internationally. I should point out that there is a Palestinian peace movement. There is nonviolent resistance to the Occupation, and some people even think of it as daily living. A Palestinian's life is resisting the Occupation nonviolently. In particular, there is one group, the Israeli Committee against Home Demolitions that works Israelis and Palestinians together, by rebuilding the home of a man, Salim Shawamra, in the village of Anata. And the rebuilding of that home, that has been illegally destroyed over four times now, is seen as a way Israelis and Palestinians can together nonviolently resist the Occupation.

Host: So if the Palestinians were to take the route of a Gandhi and practice nonviolent civil disobedience sitting down in front of the checkpoints, refusing to cooperate in any way until their demands for a separate state are reached, is that a viable option, or is that fantasy? Or how would the Israeli military respond to something like this?

Alta: Depending on the situation, they very well might respond with violence. Even as an international, I was there last summer in August, and I would not feel comfortable sitting down at a roadblock. Many of the places that we went to, particularly in Gaza, when we went to see the place where Rachel Corrie was killed, we were protected by the Palestinian guides that we had, for fear of being in the sight of military who don't know who we are, and might shoot at us.

Elizabeth: I’d to that, though, that it isn't as though Gandhi said, “let's be nonviolent,” and those efforts were met with nonviolence. Certainly, nonviolent resistance movements around the world are met violently. That's kind of the point. But they also rely on the international community seeing that, seeing nonviolent movements met with violence. And one of the frustrations and fears I think some of us have is that, as these nonviolent movements are active in Israel and Palestine, as Palestinians and Israelis together embark on active nonviolent resistance, which is met with very violent and brutal responses, if it's not seen by the international community, then it's all for naught. And so as Alta said, not only in terms of participation, but also in terms of its representation in the media, these peace groups have suffered somewhat. If it's not in the media, then nonviolent resistance, in some ways, is not a viable strategy.

Host: Well, heading over to the other end of the spectrum, I'd like to ask about Hamas. In this country, in the media and government portrays Hamas as a terrorist group and they certainly claim responsibility for a lot of acts of terrorism and suicide bombings; but I've also seen documentaries on the women of Hamas, and what Hamas does as far as a social organization, as far as supplying food and medicine, and is really a trusted group by the Palestinians who deliver what they say they're going to deliver. Can you speak a little bit about what you've seen with Hamas, if anything?

Marthame: I think what you've put together is a very accurate picture. It is a complex organization which has a military wing, a spiritual wing, a social wing. And what we see almost entirely in the news is the military wing. And I think that the voices that are talking about nonviolent resistance, particularly among Palestinians, are in many ways, to me the most compelling. I think voices that come out of a society and speak against the majority opinion and talk about things like reconciliation and coexistence are the most powerful forces. That's true, whether it's Israeli, Palestinian, whether it's Jewish, Christian or Muslim. And I think the voices are all there. Those voices speaking about Hamas within the Palestinian society are angry with Hamas because of what they perceive as a strategy of resistance which is not only wrong because it is taking innocent lives and engaging in the very strategies which they believe the Occupier is engaging in, in terms of targeting civilians intentionally, but is also ineffective.

If you look at the first Intifada, the first uprising, which the violence was limited almost exclusively to stone throwing. The rest of it was largely nonviolent. You did have some armed clashes, but very rarely. And that got the Palestinian cause onto the world stage. This Intifada has been very violent, it has been very kind of religiously tempered, and as a result, the Palestinians have gotten a Wall. At the same time, we do need to understand what you've just said, why Hamas claims such loyalty, Hamas claims loyalty just as Gama Islamia does in Egypt, because they're not only teaching the kind of teachings that lead to people being willing to engage in suicide bombings and the like, but they're also doing the very things that the society isn't able to do: building clinics, building schools, giving out assistance, food assistance to people that are living in squalor and in poverty. It's very complex and one of the things that is often brought out within the Israeli peace community is the reminder that Hamas largely exists because of the Israeli government's tacit approval of their existence during the first Intifada, squelching of the PLO at the time, which they now see as a much more moderate group, in order to bring about this group, which was much more religious and therefore, they thought, much more controllable. Obviously, that's not the case.

Host: My last question would be for Fr. Hijazin. What do you feel, speaking with the parents of the children you deal with, what is the United States policy? What is the biggest flaw in the policy in the region, and what are people telling you they would rather see the United States doing over there to help fix the situation and help the people there?

Aktham: I think this is a good question, because everybody's looking there saying now, that's the big empire in the world. So, they went to Iraq to liberate people in Iraq, and they are forgetting the mission in the Middle East, which is the Occupation for people there, and for kids and youth who are looking for the future, and they don't have anything in their hands.

So people in Palestine, they do like Americans and American people, and they want them to understand what's happening there. And it's not only to hear what the media here is telling American people that Arabs, they are always terrorists; the Palestinians, they are terrorists; and the Palestinians, they are Hamas. No, they are good people there. They love the American people, and they hope that they could understand what's happening there, and they are human beings there, and they are looking toward the future. And we ask them to pray for us, for peace in the Middle East, so that everybody will be as a human being and be treated as a human being.

Host: Okay. Well thank you very much. You've been listening to Currents of Resistance here on WREK 91.1 FM. We've been speaking with Father Hijazin, Roman Catholic priest and principal of a Catholic school in Zababdeh, West Bank; Reverend Marthame Sanders and his wife Elizabeth and also Alta Schwartz of the American Friend Service Committee. Thanks for coming in on last minute notice to help out. Oh yes. And one final comment.

Marthame: I forgot my plug. We talked about the plug, and I forgot my plug. Big Time radio here. If people are interested in getting more information, particularly about a documentary film that we have produced on Christian life in the Northern West Bank, we invite you to visit our website, which is www.saltfilms.net.

Host: Can you tell briefly, in a sentence or two, what the film is about?

Marthame: The film is a series of nine chapters, each of them focusing on an individual Christian in the Northern West Bank and their lives, the difficulties and the joys that they face.

Elizabeth: Different chapters encounter different issues such as checkpoints, such as the Wall, such as refugee status, each person telling their story with a broad representation of people's lives and the history of the Palestinian people.

Host: Okay, well thank you very much for being with us today. Thanks for tuning in and we'll see you next week. Goodnight, everyone.