WUNRN
Will an Arab Spring
Bloom in Palestine
Patricia Smith Melton
By Patricia Smith Melton - Founder, Peace X Peace
Editor, Sixty Years Sixty
Voices: Israeli and Palestinian Women
Videos - http://www.60voices.org/listen-to-the-women/watch-the-videos/
11 July 2011 - This report is the
first of a series to bring you the voices of Palestinians and Israelis during
this time of dynamic confrontation. Hope and despair have taken turns in the
Middle East through the Oslo Accords of 1993, two intifadas, the building of
the separation wall, a blockade, the killing of more than 1300 Gazans in
January 2009, and a financial upturn in Ramallah in the
If you care and want hope, I encourage you to order read Sixty Years, Sixty Voices: Israeli and Palestinian Women, our Peace X Peace book of interviews, photos, and biographies. You will hear from women from settlements to refugee camps and learn how they break stereotypes, heal their cultures, and live daily lives of courage.
Palestinians and Israelis watch the Arab Spring
through cultural filters of hope and fear. To date they have seen, with the
rest of us, revolutions in
Has Arab Spring impacted the ongoing citizens’
protests in the West Bank against occupation, the separation wall, and land
appropriation by
Gershon told us:
The main quality of the protests in Arab Spring
that has brought real change is the breaking of the fear barrier. The power of
non-violence was demonstrated in
Do you see changes in the weekly
demonstrations in the West Bank or
Palestinian society has not yet demonstrated its
willingness to take to the streets, so there is no mass movement of civil
unrest or civil disobedience yet evident in
The Israeli military is sending a very strong,
loud message that civil unrest will not be tolerated. The quite violent
response of the Israeli army to the few weekly demonstrations in
Why have you joined the protests?
You can’t talk about the price that people pay for their actions without experiencing it with them. I joined to learn on the ground what the Palestinian non-violent resistance movements are facing.
I’m also there to help think and plan how to transform what appears to me to be loosely connected localized protests on the wall and Israeli land grabs into a national non-violent movement against the occupation — and to see if we can develop the notion of “co-resistance” where Israelis and Palestinians stand on the front lines together against the occupation and for peace.
What exists now in the five or six communities holding weekly demonstrations will not make a difference. There is no national strategy. There is a lack of leadership and creative thinking. Non-violent national struggles are about drama and theatrics.
The current state of drama is boring — and the only people paying the price are a few locals in each community. The wider community, at the local level and at a more national level, is not yet engaged. I am not sure Palestinians are ready for a national struggle of this kind. There doesn’t seem to be enough anger and rage to get people to take action — at least not yet.
What is it like inside the demonstration?
There is tension, there is fear. The tear gas is very unpleasant and sometimes painful.
I don’t like when some youth throw stones at the soldiers. I don’t like the idea of a “sort of” non-violence. Recently I tried to stop some youths who threw stones at the very end of the demonstration. I stopped some, but not others.
I feel ashamed from the behavior of the Israeli army — and I feel sorry for some of the soldiers who are doing things that they will pay for in years to come when they have enough separation from their present duties. It will cause them emotional pain later — not all of them, but certainly some of them. And I feel bad that no one helps them to understand that they have the option to refuse to do evil deeds.
“To refuse to do evil deeds” one must first recognize that what he or she is doing is evil. That can be very difficult with someone you believe is your “enemy” and who you have been told wants to harm you, your loved ones, or your country. It is especially difficult when “your enemy” is, in fact, harming you. The cycle tightens.
I think about compassion and knowledge. Does compassion lead us to overlook what we have been told about “our enemy” and behave towards them as we would have them behave towards us and in the process we become friends? Or does knowledge show us that we and “our enemy” are similar and, therefore, we have compassion and behave better towards them? Compassion may be about feeling and knowledge about intellectual understanding, but both are personal. The difference between war and peace is always about personal choices.