MarcGopin.com

The New Face of Israel to the World: Avigdor Lieberman as Foreign Minister, the new Prime Minister looks on with admiration? Fear?

Here is the new government linuep, and here is Avnery’s analysis of Israel’s new government. Quotable quotes by Lieberman proposing nuking Gaza and drowning Palestinian prisoners in the Dead Sea, here, and here. Records on Lieberman’s conviction for beating up a boy who fought with his son can be found here.
This will be interesting. Everything has consequences, and the scientific laws of causality, the literary insight of poetic justice, and the religious ideas of karma, or poked avon avot, the sins of one generation visited on the next, all have their place here. The sins of suicide bombing in Jerusalem gave rise to Netanyahu the first time, which in turn destroyed the peace process and caused the Intifada of 2000, which in turn gave rise to the Wall and the imprisonment of the West Bank and Gaza, which in turn gave us the rocket age in which almost every Israeli family feels threatened and in the mood to vote right wing, which has in turn given us Avigdor Lieberman. Everything has consequences in the causal connections of violence and injustice going back to the very beginning of the Arab/Jewish relationship in Palestine. And everyone is responsible.
The ancient rabbinc idea of kol yisrael areivim zeh lo’zeh, that every Jew is responsible for the behavior and fate of every other Jew, really should be extended to the family of man. We are all as human beings responsible for each other, in every one of our interpersonal, economic and political choices, every day. Because everything we do affects changes that impel others to do what they do, sometimes for good and sometimes for bad. And I say, what many of us increasingly feel, that Israel and the Arab world, are driving each other off a cliff. And the car they are driving in is called ‘irresponsibility’. Let’s see how the cycle continues. It certainly will be interesting.

Elana Rozenman and Ibtisam Mahmeed

THIS LETTER FROM ELANA ROZENMAN:

February 26th, 2009
TRUST- WIN visit to “Cordoba” school, Hebron

The ongoing conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians in the aftermath
of the violence in Gaza and southern Israel has put a strain on the ability
and willingness of many Israelis and Palestinians to engage in
peace-building activities. In that context last Thursday morning a group of
Israeli women (Jewish and Christian) set out from Jerusalem with enthusiasm
and some trepidation to meet with Reem Alshareef who is the Muslim director
of the Cordoba school in the H2 area of Hebron which is under Israeli
control. For pictures, press here and search under ‘Women Hebron’.
The Israeli women were from the left, the right, and the center politically.
All of them are in our wonderful book “Sixty Years, Sixty Voices: Israeli
and Palestinian Women” (www.sixtyvoices.org) One was an Armenian Orthodox
woman who is a nurse at Hadassah Hospital. One of the Israeli women lives
in Nokdim, a settlement not far from Hebron. One is the Director of the
Israeli branch of NAAMAT – the largest Israeli women’s organization On the
way there was discussion about how safe it was to travel without an escort
given the continual stress between the Jewish and the Muslim residents
of Hebron. Some of the Israeli women had not been to Hebron for years and
were surprised to learn that other women go there regularly to pray at the
Tomb of our Patriarchs and Matriarchs.

Reem’s school is across from Beit Hadassah on Shuhada Street in an area of
continual confrontation between Jewish and Muslim residents. We passed the
army guard and the barrier to walk with Reem up the hill to her school. We
brought her beautiful flowers and chocolates and were greeted by the
delicious smells of majedra cooking. We met with the teachers who served us
a delicious meal and everyone introduced themselves and shared a few words
in Hebrew or Arabic with much laughter. We spoke with Reem’s 10th grade
students from her English class and they enjoyed speaking to us in English
and answering our questions about their lives and their future plans. Reem
discussed their situation and history between Jews and Muslims in Hebron –
and basically we just enjoyed being together as women of all ages who are
trying to learn about each other’s lives and build a better future for
ourselves and our children, and who are refusing to be stopped by the
political environment, or the conflict. We women often have an easier time
leaving politics behind and building relationships of friendship and trust.
We were invited to hold our next meeting at the Armenian women’s center in
the Armenian Quarter of the Old City.

When we left, Reem accompanied us down to the street and said she could not
as a Palestinian walk on Shuhada Street. And sure enough — as she started
to walk towards the van with us, the soldier on guard came over and warned
her not to walk with us. Some of our women started arguing with him, but he
and Reem agreed this is the law, and we kissed her good-by and she left to
go back up the stairs.

On the drive back, the women were amazed at how easy it was to get there,
how graciously we were received by everyone at the school, the warm and
lovely atmosphere there and how happy the children were. They appreciated
not only the visit to Hebron and the school, but were grateful to have the
opportunity to get to know Reem and her reality — a possibility that is not
normally available.

A few days later, one of our TRUST WIN Coordinators went with a group of
Jewish women to pray in Hebron and reported:
“As we were boarding the bus in Hebron, my eye caught sight of an Arab woman
on her balcony looking at us. We were too far away to see one another’s
faces yet I felt her peacefulness. Spontaneously, I waved to her in a
friendly way and she waved back. I threw her a kiss and she sent one right
back to me. That moment of intimacy was certainly the highlight of my day!

Elana Rozenman
Director
TRUST – Emun
15 Naomi Street
Jerusalem 93552 Israel
972 2 6749698
972 522861779
elana@trust-emun.org

Martin Luther King on the march, accompanied by white religious representatives, including Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, Alabama, 1965

I just published this essay in the Common Ground News Service:

Non-cooperation can bring a revolution to the Holy Land
by Marc Gopin
26 March 2009

WASHINGTON, DC – It is time for a mass movement of nonviolent non-cooperation and resistance amongst Palestinians-because everything else has failed. I have hopes that the Obama Administration will be the best yet in moving the parties toward resolution, but in my heart I have always felt that there is one path to peace that has never been adopted, and that is the path of nonviolent non-cooperation – but with love – the way of Gandhi and Martin Luther King.

This is something that a number of Palestinians within Israel and Palestine have tried through nonviolent marches, protests, and food boycotts, but it has never received full backing because it only works when it is adopted as the only means of resistance.

This is not about fairness or whether Palestinians should take on the burden of reaching out to Jews. In a fair world, the Jews of Israel, the victors of 1948, would have had the courage and good sense to recognise their victory and respond with generosity. Some Israelis did, but most did not. The need for a mass movement of resistance is not about fairness, it is about what may still work.

The Palestinian leadership has chosen two paths in the last fifty years: Extreme violence against civilians; and recognition of Israel, negotiations, accommodation, and an alliance with Israeli authorities, which has ended up discrediting Fatah amidst widely-believed evidence of overwhelming corruption. Neither path has worked. The Palestinians were dismissed by most Israelis as barbarians for the former and weak for the latter.

Principled nonviolent non-cooperation that also extends a hand to Jews in friendship is the only answer. It presents the Israelis with Palestinians who are tough but fair, generous, peaceful, uncorrupted, but determined to persist and fight. The fight will be taken to the place of greatest Israeli weakness: its sense of moral superiority over Arab society. What Hamas members need to understand is that their embrace of extreme violence against women and children is already a defeat. They are behaving like Nazis inside the Jewish psyche. Instead of targeting children with rockets or suicide bombs, Hamas can put its best people in harm’s way, saying to Israel, “Here, kill me, I will not move, I am walking to Al Aqsa; I am walking to Jerusalem. You can kill me by the thousands with the world watching so that you can be the barbarians. I will not give you an excuse anymore to steal my land or kill my children.

This will work only with absolute nonviolence, with a hand of friendship extended to all Jews who will join. This is the only way that Gandhi and King changed civilisations. Nothing less than a revolution in Israeli consciousness is required right now, and so the gestures and actions must be organised, massive and disciplined. They must constitute an intimate conversation between enemies. The movement must say to the Israeli Jew:

I am going to sit down at this checkpoint, in this airport, because I am waiting for you to treat me with dignity and equality. I know you can as a child of Abraham, as a survivor of injustice and cruelty yourself, as a scion of a noble civilisation. I know your laws demand that you follow orders, that you point your weapons at my children and terrify them, that you force me to strip naked and violate my body. But your laws are unjust, and you can break them and join us… I know that you put up your wall for security and I too want your children to be safe. But you cannot use it as an excuse to steal more of my land, as an excuse to avoid apologising to me for the harm you have done to me for sixty years. Join me and we will fight for peace and justice together, we will negotiate, but I will not allow you anymore to corrupt me, buy me, divide me, or humiliate me. Shoot me if you want to follow orders, or join me if you want to rediscover your Jewish beliefs and values. I will be generous as the prophet Mohammed was; I will be just as he was; I will welcome you to my home, as he did, but it is time for you to see me as equal, as a brother, and then everything else will work out. You can have your Israel and we can have our Palestine, and God will show us the way to do this in peace and justice.

Marc Gopin at the Rumi Forum, Washington DC

Marc spoke recently at the Rumi Forum in Washington, DC, a wonderful group emerging from Turkey that advocates peaceful coexistence globally, especially through a series of schools throughout the world.

Marc speaks here about the principal case study of citizen diplomacy in his forthcoming book, To Make the Earth Whole: Citizen Diplomacy in the Age of Religious Militancy (Rowman Littlefield, June 2009). He describes the challenges of the Syria work, the successful engagement with the Grand Mufti of Syria, the dramatic engagement with Syria at precisely the time in Washington were there was the greatest opposition from the highest levels. Marc describes how he and his Syrian partner, Hind Kabawat, Senior Research Associate at ICAR‘s Center for World Religions, Diplomacy, and Conflict Resolution, managed to pull off this work at such a difficult moment in American politics.

Marc also goes into his work at the World Economic Forum, as well as his religious and Jewish background and how it impacted his work in Palestine, Syria, and Israel in the last twenty five years.

See here for details.

Here is the link to Ebru TV in order to download the video with your media player. Download takes a few minutes.

Childhood in Gaza

Dead Palestinian babies and bombed mosques – IDF fashion 2009

Testimonies on IDF misconduct in Gaza keep rolling in

‘Shooting and crying’

Israeli journalists are reporting on the stories out of Gaza becoming more and more horrible as Israeli troops confess more in the public. Of course what is amazing to the rest of the world is that what they saw with their own eyes through Al Jazeera and other news outlets, Israelis and Jewish reactionaries did not see on their Fox-exclusive television sets–nor believe. Furthermore, if anyone in the world had Palestinian friends and actually believed them then the revelations now come as no surprise. I and my friends were in mourning and shock as it was happening, because we have seen the deterioration in the Israeli psyche and feared the worst. And also some of us in this world actually have Palestinian friends. It is rare in the U.S. and rare even in the Middle East, but true. If  you have friends you know what is happening to their families. You find out, you ask, and when people are crying, their eyes bloodshot all the time, you tend to ask why–that is if you really know and love even one Palestinian. If you are liberal and read liberal magazines and vote liberal, but have no Palestinians you know or trust, then you tend to be skeptical when people in this post-Holocaust world hurl shocking accusations at Jewish soldiers. Smells of antisemitism.

This is the sad reality of isolated Jewish life in Israel and the reactionary Jewish community. They  have no one they trust other than official Israel Defense Forces press releases. That has become the true Torah, if by Torah you mean a source of unquestioned truth. And that is why so many people in Israel now are shocked by the revelations, just shocked. Because only when soldiers say it is true is it true.

It could not be true that during the war Jewish soldiers shot, or had orders to shoot, medical rescue teams so that civilians bled to death everywhere, their bodies left for days and weeks. Jews are doctors, they save lives, they rush to hospitals even on the Sabbath to save their patients, they don’t deliberately make people bleed to death and leave their bodies to rot. It could not be true that Jews shot and even had orders to shoot women and children. Jews don’t do that sort of thing. Except if the graduates of Oranim say they did. Jews don’t make shirts for their army unit that have a picture of a pregnant Palestinian, with a target on her, with the words, “one shot, two kills”. Jews don’t do this sort of thing, Serbians do, Germans do, Goyim do, not Jews. Except if Israeli soldiers confess it, without shame. Then a new day has dawned. And the endless wars of the Jewish people with the Palestinians has killed a little bit  more of what used to be Jewish morality.

Wake up, world, wake up the United States. If you are pro-Israel and only care about Jews, not Palestinians, then think of it this way: Israeli Jews need your help, to save them from themselves. Every day you are turning your back on American atrocities of the last eight years, every day there is more of a revolution going on in Washington. Thank God. Just don’t forget your vassal in the Middle East, the one you encouraged to be a beacon of democracy no matter what the cost to the soul. They need a revolution too, and only you have the power to save them from themselves.

This article just appeared in Today’s Zaman and in Zaman which is Turkey’s preeminent journal. As you can see this has been part of my ongoing efforts to introduce and encourage far more intermediaries in the Middle Eastern conflict who can be effective, trustworthy and more even handed that Western intervention. This is meant also to encourage the United States, Hilary Clinton, and others to follow the lead of where the most moderate voices of the Islamic world are going. This is also a development of my work in Syria which has encouraged cultural revival that is peace-oriented, practical and visionary at once.

Turkey’s return to glory
by
Marc Gopin
For reasons of history, culture and geography, there is a surprising opportunity for Turkey to assume a position of central global leadership in the 21st century and thereby further all of its legitimate national interests.

This is shocking considering the fact that the West and the Arab world often associate the Ottoman Empire with a case study in long-term decay. But it turns out that Ottoman history is replete with extraordinary cultural wealth that is perfect for this moment of history, especially when it comes to the nonviolent diplomatic engagement of multiple civilizations and religions.

This is exactly what the world needs right now. Turkey is where the West and the East must meet, this is where Islam must engage and be engaged, this is where Jews must reconcile with Muslims, and this is where Arabs, Muslims, Jews and Christians must find a new basis for an international social contract between them.

The current divisions are clear, regarding Israel, Palestine and Hamas, for example. It is also clear that Turkey is shifting its traditional role as a non-Arab military power in the region. The prime minister has clearly shifted gears in terms of standing up to Israel’s conduct of its war in Gaza, as well as demonstrating a clear willingness to engage Syria, Hamas and Iran, essentially those who the powerful neoconservatives in Washington labeled “the axis of evil.” This is a bold and difficult move, but if it is framed in the right way it may place Turkey at the cutting edge of diplomatic practice in the 21st century.

In order for Turkey to resume its historic role as a successful weaver of civilizations and religions it will need to perfect its skills of international diplomacy. The nexus at which Turkey is situated is fraught with difficulty, but also with immense opportunity. The West, Israel and the Arab world are in a place of extreme tension with Iran. The West and at least significant portions of the Arab world are in tension and division with Hamas. The West, Israel and Europe are in a significant — though more muted — place of tension with Islamic civilization. Most importantly, much of the world is in great tension with Israeli policies. Turkey has the potential to positively impact all these fronts.

The key to all Turkish engagement must be what I would refer to as ‘positive diplomacy.’ Positive diplomacy focuses on opportunities rather than problems, on relationships rather than controversies and on encouragement rather than criticism. Turkey is to be applauded for roundly criticizing Israel’s use of excessive force in Gaza because the humanitarian circumstances of the war were extreme. But now it is time to turn the message in a positive direction.

Most importantly, in order to not be blackmailed in Washington by reactionary lobbies that do not want to see peaceful progress in the Middle East, Turkey must jettison old forms of diplomacy that focused narrowly on defense of Turkish pride, especially regarding Armenia and the tragic violence at the beginning of the 20th century.

An integrated set of aggressive strategies is called for. These include: First, a very public engagement and reconciliation with Armenia that is accompanied by significant gestures to Armenian citizens, including possibly official welcoming ceremonies to visit Turkey, commemoration of past life in Turkey and also shared mourning of loss of life; second, an embrace of human needs in Azerbaijan, and a commitment to help Azerbaijan develop a more successful negotiation with Armenia in the future; third, an embrace of Jews, Judaism and Israelis that is very public and builds on past relations but that is combined with a strong embrace of Palestinians and very public efforts to negotiate with Hamas on the foundations of a long-term treaty with Israel; and fourth, an ongoing engagement with Syria and Iran as to the conditions of their engagement with Israel and with the Arab world.

The most important point is that Turkey needs to escape the straitjacket of old defensive diplomacy in Washington that held them hostage to the Armenian issue, and instead reclaim their historical, geopolitical and cultural nobility as a bridge of civilizations, continents and religions. This is where the very progressive Islam that is guiding many Turkish citizens today can be a paradigm of enlightenment and democracy that will put the lie to the reactionary Western — and extreme Arab — perceptions of Islamic civilization as violent. Secondly, freed from pressure in Washington by aggressively pursuing a new relationship with Armenians, Turkish leadership will be able to positively engage Jews on their own terms, as they did for centuries, while at the same time calling upon them to engage all Palestinians with dignity, respect and generosity. Turkey is a country that can officially and openly invite hundreds of Israeli professionals and spiritual and cultural leaders to engage in a new relationship with Palestinians on Turkish soil as equals, to engage Muslims, to engage Gazans, to engage Hamas. This could be revolutionary for conflict resolution in Israel and Palestine.

A clever politics can also be a visionary politics. US President Barack Obama has pioneered a politics that combines vision and pragmatism, realism and hope. Turkey can do the same through the venue of its new/old model of enlightened Islamic civilization. Mevlana Jelaluddin Rumi, for example, is one of the most popular poets in the world today, and Sufis are the pioneers everywhere I go in the Arab Middle East where there are bold young peacemakers. This is the age of Rumi, this is the age of the Sufi visionaries and peacemakers.

If this path is pursued with humility and without arrogance, I am convinced that even the most conservative elements in the Arab world will be challenged and even enticed. No one in the Gulf wants the shadow of Osama Bin Laden to haunt the Arab and Muslim worlds forever. The poison has spread broadly to Central Asia, and everyone fears that this is threatening the fabric of the Muslim social order, while it simultaneously emboldens intolerance of Islamic civilization in the West. We need bold leadership in the Muslim world, we need bold partners to prod with great confidence Israel and its enemies to earnestly pursue a final settlement. No one is situated better than Turkey, and no one will be more grateful than President Obama, the most powerful leader in the world today. Turkey needs to bury its ghosts of the 20th century so that the 21st century will see its return to international glory. The time has come for an Ottoman-inspired enlightenment.

Prime Minister Erdogan Honored by the Jewish Anti-Defamation League in the United States

Reopening of the Neve Shalom Synagogue in Turkey after it had been bombed

Prime Minister Erdogan Receiving Hero's Welcome After Speaking Against Israel's War in Gaza

We held a good discussion, heavily attended, at the Wilson Center, together with Dr. Robert Pastor and Mr. Leo Kramer on Gaza and Hamas. Here is the video of the event. All of us were in agreement about the need for serious engagement with whoever is in charge of Gaza. This was decidedly different than other opinions also expressed at the Wilson Center by Robert Satloff and Ephraim Inbar.

It is hard to know what is really going on right now behind the scenes in relations between the United States, Israel, the PA/Fatah and Hamas. Whatever can lead to breakthroughs in my mind is the path forward. Whether it be on prisoner exchange, release of Barghouti who by all statistics could become a unifying leader of Palestine, or a way to break the inhumane blockade. I remain dubious about forcing Hamas to concede to conditions in advance rather than engage them in unconditional negotiations. It feels to me as if Clinton and others have succumbed to the blackmail approach of holding Gaza hostage for Hamas’ acceptance of Israel’s right to exist. This is inhumane plain and simple. On the other hand, I understand the desire to push Hamas in the direction of nonviolence. But recognition of Israel should be the culmination of a negotiation and a final settlement, not the beginning. Nonviolence as a condition makes sense but surrender of all of one’s bargaining chips at the beginning feels like a continuing misunderstanding of the struggle.

EU Delegation Meeting Hamas This Past Saturday

Khaled and friends

Letter from Scott Cooper, MS Candidate ICAR, George Mason University, Managing Director of CRDC.

I would like to introduce your readers to a man whose struggle for peace exemplifies the extremely disciplined and unbelievably determined non-violent Gandhian philosophy. His name is Khaled Abu Awwad and he is Chairman of Al-Tariq (The Palestinian Institution for Development and Democracy). Read more here. He was recently quoted in the Jerusalem Post as saying to some of his Israeli partners, “I am done with sitting, talking, eating humous and having fun… Tell me what we can do to have peace within 10 years and I will go to the *depths of hell* with you.”

Khaled comes from a Palestinian family that has paid the highest price in this conflict. His brother was shot in the head point blank, and another one of his brothers was nearly killed a few years later. Yet his family, colleagues, and partners fight *non-violently* for peace.  It is their children, Palestinians and Israelis alike, who will be caught up in the next cycle of violence should it happen, not ours.

As Americans, wouldn’t it make sense to identify and assist those locals who have taken it upon themselves to change life for the generations to come?

Why do we as Americans feel comfortable mostly as arm-chair, military quarterbacks who seem to have no problem sacrificing children as long as they are far away and not our own. If we truly value human life, would not massive support for Al-Tariq and their Israeli partners like the Sulha Peace Project and many others be the most compassionate thing to do?  These people aren’t waiting for one more cycle of violence because they have to look into the eyes of kids that will die if they wait.

During the war, core members of the Israeli based Sulha Peace Project had the foresight to see through the noise of the local media. Because of this, they leveraged every connection they could, particularly with the IDF, to get much needed food and supplies into Gaza. This was no easy task and it took a lot courage to do it. These are Israelis that I know. Furthermore, these are also the ones who suffer when the world makes blatant and threatening general statements at “Israel” or “Jews.”

One last point for my American counterparts. This month in Washington DC there was a Summit to create a 200 million dollar per year fund to strengthen the collective ability of organizations like Al-Tariq, Sulha, and countless others. If you’re looking to constructively help this conflict, please support the creation of this Fund. This will positively assist millions of Arabs and Jews and their children will thank you for it. Send an email to scoopere@gmu.edu, write ALLMEP in the subject line, and I’ll help you get involved. Furthermore, if you want to know more about Al-Tariq, send an email to Al-Tariq co-founder and  CRDC Senior Research Associate, Aziz Abu Sarah at azizsarah@gmail.com.  If you want to know more about Sulha, send an email to sulha.peace.project@gmail.com.

Kindly,

Scott

Scott Cooper

Attack in Jerusalem

Al Jazeera English interviewed me the other day on American intervention so far in Gaza. Here is the story:

The United States is set to pledge $900m for the Palestinians at a donors’ conference in Egypt, but only a third of that will go towards reconstruction in the Gaza Strip and none of the money will go to Hamas, who rule the territory.

Robert Wood, a spokesman for the US state department, said the US would pledge $300m at Monday’s conference on reconstructing Gaza, to meet “urgent” humanitarian needs in the territory after Israel’s military onslaught in December.

Wood said the $300m would be funnelled through the UN and other organisations.

“Hamas is not getting any of this money,” Wood told reporters in the Egyptian coastal resort of Sharm el-Sheik, where Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, arrived on Sunday on the first leg of a week-long trip to the Middle East and Europe.

The remaining $600m will be pledged to the Western-backed Palestinian Authority (PA) led by Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president.

‘Sidestepping the issue’

In depth
Analysis and features from Gaza after the war

Washington wants the conference to bolster the authority of Abbas, whose PA governs the Israeli-occupied West Bank but holds no sway in Gaza after Hamas routed forces loyal to Abbas and seized the territory in June 2007.

Marc Gopin, from the Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution at George Mason University, told Al Jazeera that the donors’ conference was “an attempt to demonstrate humanitarian concern”.

But, he added, there was “no real addressing of the political fallout in the long run, as to whether there’s going to be reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas and whether in fact this aid can really ever get in”.

“They can’t even get in humanitarian aid at this point because the [Israeli] blockade is so severe.

“I think it really sidesteps the whole issue of what the negotiations really were about in terms of breaking the blockade, which is more properly what [US Middle East envoy] George Mitchell should be working on,” he said.

Continue reading here.

It is not only Israel and the United States that do not want to recognize Hamas. Hamas, as an extension of the Ihwan, the Muslim Brotherhood, is considered a threat to regimes across the region and no one is excited about bringing them to the table. Furthermore, there are some subtle indications that the positive engagement with Syria by U.S. officials is paving the way for indirect Hamas communication. Furthermore, many are loathe to undermine Fatah, despite its failures, because it seems like the last hope for a secular Palestinian state, something that most Palestinians want badly. I think that everyone should be engaged, but it behooves us to understand this fateful choice to empower Hamas.

I am convinced that it is urgent to engage Hamas, not as a capitulation, not as an aquiescence to their violence, but as an aquiescence to the justifiably angry and frustrated democratic voice of the Palestinian people, as a beginning of a process of negotiation to end violence, not an acceptance of violence, and as an end to the sickening collective punishment of Gaza, a million and a half human beings. That Hamas must accede all its bargaining chips on recognizing Israel before negotiations begin is simply a pretext to continue to allow collective punishment. It is like the United States saying to the Soviet Union in the 1970′s that we will not talk to you, we will bomb you, unless you agree to a nuclear freeze right now. Then we talk. The Vietnam War never would have ended this way, nor the Korean War, nor thousands of other wars. You negotiate with the enemy who intends you harm. It is simple.  If you truly value Palestinians and Jews as human beings, as citizens in the crossfire of wars, then you force negotiations. Otherwise politicians will continue their deadly march to competition in bloodshed.

Everything has failed in terms of Israeli and Palestinian relations for almost a hundred years. There will be more and more negotiations, and I have hopes that the Obama Administration will be the best yet in really moving the parties toward resolution. But in my heart I have always felt that there is one path to peace that has never been trod and fully adopted, that is the path of nonviolent noncooperation and resistance but with love, the way of Gandhi and King. I will develop this idea more in the coming months, but this is something that a number of Palestinians inside Israel and inside Palestine have tried, but it has never received the backing of the Palestinian National Movement. On the contrary it was suppressed because it only works when it is adopted completely as the only means of resistance.

This is not about fairness or whether Palestinians should have to have the burden of reaching out to Jews this way. In a fair world, the Jews of Israel, the victors of 1948, should have had the courage and good sense to recognize their victory and respond with generosity, some regrets, and a willingness to coexist. Some did, but most did not, as evidenced by their leadership over the years. But this is not about fairness, this is about what may still work.

The Palestinian leadership has chosen two paths in the last forty years: 1. Extreme violence against civilians, that others call terrorism, and 2. recognition of Israel, negotiations, accomodation and a corrupted alliance with Israeli authorities. Neither path has worked. They were dismissed by most Israelis as barbarians for the former, and weak for the latter. Principled nonviolent noncooperation, that also has a strong hand reached out to the Jews in friendship, sympathy, and respect, may be the only answer. It is what worked for African Americans and for many others.

In that spirit, here is a wondeful story from a village in the West Bank that sees perpetual nonviolent resistance to the Wall that has destroyed the town’s livelihood. They decided to make an exhibit on the Jewish Holocaust! Here are excerpts:

Every Friday, the West Bank village of Ni’lin is home to some of the most violent clashes between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian, Israeli and international demonstrators.

Each week, activists from the village’s Land Defence Committee stage demonstrations at the Separation Barrier which cuts off as much as half the village’s farmland and water from its inhabitants.

As a reporter for a Palestinian news agency in Bethlehem, I too travelled to Ni’lin, but last weekend beheld a spectacle perhaps more remarkable than these weekly Barrier protests: Villagers had set up an exhibition to coincide with the United Nations-declared International Holocaust Remembrance Day on 27 January, an exhibition organised by Ni’lin’s Popular Committee Against the Wall.

Hassan Moussa, the exhibition’s organiser, spoke to me over the phone from Ni’lin. And despite the hot-headed rhetoric coming from both sides that weekend (a number of protesters were tear-gassed just hours before), Moussa explained that the exhibit was organised with the most noble of intentions.

“This is a way of extending our sympathy for the Jews,” and the Palestinians’ way of extending that sympathy “to the Israeli people, themselves,” he says.

“Nobody thinks war will lead to peace and security. It will lead to more violence and hatred and agony, as well as suffering to this area, which is neither in our interest, nor the Israelis.”

Since late January the people of Ni’lin have opted to complement their demonstrations with something “to show the Israelis that we feel sorry for them.”

As a Palestinian activist, Moussa says he also wants to convey his suffering: “My suffering will not lead to peace. When I lose my land, it’s like losing your heart from your body.”

The village’s Municipality hosted the Holocaust Remembrance Exhibition at its headquarters in Ni’lin, where organisers say more than 1,000 visitors have paid tribute to the victims of Nazi atrocities committed against Europe’s Jews.

The exhibition of posters and texts, provided by an Israeli Holocaust museum, details “the genocide that was committed against the Jewish people during the 1930s and 1940s in Germany and in other parts of Europe,” Moussa explains.

Nonviolent Protest in Ni'ilin

Confrontation and Violence in Ni'ilin