April 2002

Views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily of the AFSC.

Letter from Ramallah: Reflections on War and Peace

Colin and Kathy South are the British-born directors of the Friends Schools in Ramallah. Their buildings were struck by US-made missiles in December (evidently directed at Arafat's headquarters nearby), but the girls' and boys' schools remained open until Israel's March invasion, and the Ramallah Quaker Meeting continues to be held at the schools. The Souths sent an account March 13 of living in a city under siege, along with their reflections and questions for the future of Palestine and Israel.

....Wednesday morning. The situation quieted down from about 8:00 pm... We were quite optimistic when we woke up that things were calming down but, far from it, violence flared up again and the road junction to Jerusalem very close to the schools was and now still is the scene of further resistance. Tank fire, stun grenades, or something similar was being used and of course automatic and presumably tank-mounted machine guns. We feel for the innocents who will be the victims...the collateral damage of these events. The noise of detonation of a tank shell, the sonic and structural impact of it, is stunning in itself. It makes your heart skip a beat and your stomach hit the ground.... We are both amazed that there any buildings still standing and that more people have not died.

None of us know what the Israeli agenda really is. The British High Commission and the rest of the diplomatic community seem to be in the dark as much as we. We have heard that they have called for all young men in the town to present themselves for interrogation and marking. Whether this is happening here in the town I am not sure but it did happen in Tulkarem and it probably is happening in the refugee camps. If it follows the same pattern, the men aged 14 to 40 are stripped to the waist, briefly interrogated one by one, suspects detained, others set free with an indelible stamp impressed on their wrists... reminiscent of accounts of procedures in Nazi concentration camps...

We heard this morning that part of the town's water supply has been cut off by tanks ripping up roads as they maneuver. We have heard also that the electricity supply to one of the hospitals in town has been cut off, deliberately it is thought.... The toll of dead and wounded will be known as soon as they have left. Only one ambulance was allowed yesterday during the operation. Today there were none. The dead and wounded were cared for, presumably, by the community.

The operation seems to be have been very efficiently carried out as you would expect from the fourth largest army in the world in its largest operation in the West Bank since 1967. It will be claimed that the Israeli Defense Force did what the Palestinian Authority could not. The difference being that the PNA can only do, in the end, what the people will allow them to do. That is the only option when you do not control any army, navy, or airforce let alone the fourth largest army in the world. The weapons that Palestinian militants had and the raw materials for munitions that were being manufactured locally, it seems, had to be purchased from somewhere. It is known that many of the small arms were sold to them by 'dealers' associated with Israeli munitions stores. The shipment from Iran is still a mystery. How the PNA or anybody else would have got the munitions here via the Red Sea is anyone's guess...that is not to affirm or deny that some official in the PNA tried to arrange a deal ....we do not know the truth of that....

Reflections and Questions

Listening to the news and comment about the political situation prompts us to add a few notes:

1. Arafat: Terrorist or Head of State?
Arafat is the leader of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (Fatah) and democratically elected President of the Palestinian National Authority. He is still the most popular leader of the Palestinian people despite attempts by the government of Israel to discredit and humiliate him. He does have influence over the militant wings of many of the nationalist movements. He however like any democratically elected political leader only has clout when he has the majority public sympathy for his argument. It is doubtful whether Arafat, or any other person more or less moderate than he, could halt the suicide bombing or attacks on Israeli citizens or soldiers without some hope being offered to the people of Palestine that their aims and goals will eventually be met and that visible signs of progress towards those goals are being made.

The aim of Israeli government action seems to be to destroy the infrastructure of the police and army who have largely been involved in defensive action and not pre-emptive attacks on Israel. The ability therefore of the Palestinian National Authority to exercise any restraining action outside Area A or indeed outside Ramallah/El-Bireh where Arafat is detained has been decreased by Israeli action and is now severely limited. It should not be assumed however that Arafat is therefore dispensable and irrelevant. It would be a grave mistake to make that assumption. If he were the kind of person that Sharon insists that he is, the bloodshed at the moment would pale into insignificance compared with the carnage that would be released.

There is a hair breadth between Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza slipping into such greater carnage at the present time. It must be obvious to all that the situation right now is particularly dangerous and threatens the safety of every decent person in Israel and territories that one day will be Palestine. So much bloodshed, so much waste and so much misery.

2. Duplicity and lack of integrity?
The state of Israel was founded by displacing thousands upon thousands of people who left their homes, they thought temporarily, out of fear for their lives. To deny this fact is to blight the cause of peace for the next hundred years. To deny the right of return or some ameliorating compensation for land taken is at the core of this issue.

The State of Israel refuses to define its borders with presumably the implicit threat that it will continue to expand as it sees fit. This fact also blights the cause of peace and is peculiar in that it is often used against the Palestinians. The PNA is accused of not accepting the State of Israel. The PNA agreed at the time of the Oslo accords to accept Israel as a state within 60% of the territory that previously belonged to the Palestinian people and which is defined by the pre-1967 boundaries of Israel. However Israel refuses to accept that it has or ever had any agreed boundaries. The Palestinian community sees the creeping and sometimes galloping growth of settlements in the West Bank as evidence of Israel's intention not to accept anything such as pre-1967 boundaries agreed originally at Oslo.

3. Was an offer made that the PNA should not have refused?
It is suggested that Barak made an offer that Arafat and the PNA should not have refused at Taba last year. This offer would take from the West Bank (excluding East Jerusalem) and Gaza a further 5% of the land beyond the 1967 boundaries of Israel. This 5% that Israel would retain in Barak's offer is so strategically placed with settlements linked by private (exclusively Israeli) roads that the West Bank and Gaza would be no more than satellite states of Israel with no territorial integrity. The question of Jerusalem was not a part of this 'generous' offer and Jerusalem is critical to the economic survival of any Palestinian state--as well as raising the as yet unresolved questions of the status of Christian and Muslim holy sites.

4. Whose violence should stop before talks begin?
For talks to begin following the cessation of violence would require self-control to be exercised by militant Palestinian groups and they have demonstrated on several occasions that for the most part they can exercise such control. The years immediately following promises made at Oslo were evidence of that, and there were successful occasions during this second Intifada when restraint was called for and largely such restraint occurred. On the other hand, no attempt has been made to remove the continuing violence of occupation in the West Bank and Gaza strip and this has continued unchanged since 1967. It is true that Israeli forces have come and gone out of towns and villages, road blocks have been added and then removed, but the prejudicial and racist reality of occupation has remained regardless and thus so has the reality of the unabated violence of occupation experienced by the peoples of the West Bank and Gaza.

5. Death has become an easy sacrifice. Whose fault is that?
The disparity of the wealth, force, and power of the Israeli Government and the various political factions within the territories is obvious and needs no more evidence than the present abuse of such disparity of power in the territories. This abuse of power breeds helplessness and hopelessness which in turn breed reckless violence and suicide attacks. What is there to lose when you have lost your land, your family members, your livelihood, and no one with any political power or military might is prepared to defend you? It is a fundamental mistake to assume--as Sharon has declared--that such a people can be beaten into submission. It may be chilling, but it is no less true that death is an easy sacrifice when you have no other option.

6. On which side is the moral argument?
There is no morality in contemplating the death of another human being or human beings, no matter who is doing the contemplating. There is no justice when an assassination is carried out of an individual before that individual has had a fair chance to defend himself against an accusation. There is no morality when the dead-- strapped to the front of tanks as in Tulkarem--are paraded in front of women and children. There is no morality when the wounded are not allowed attention in the street and the dead are prevented from burial. There is no morality or political interest in peace when a Head of State calls for the terrorizing of a civilian population in order to make the population accept whatever the oppressor demands regardless of justice. It is shameful when a religious people claiming to be civilized and humanitarian behave in this immoral manner.

7. The Courage to Stand up and Declare the Truth
The courage of the refusniks who refuse to serve in the Israeli Army in the West Bank and Gaza and of the various peace organizations in Israel who recognize the truth of the above is to be applauded. The determination of many an Israeli Jew and Israeli Arab to promote the cause of peace and to argue for dialogue now and for the right of self determination of the Palestinian people in an integrated and governable state is a sign of hope. The individual acts of courage and witness by people such as by Daniel Barenboim in offering hope despite everything are recognizable acts of love. The restraint advocated and exercised by many Palestinian leaders in the PNA and outside of it is remarkable. The witness of international young and older people serving in voluntary bodies such as the Christian Peacemaker Teams is encouraging. The growing awareness in Israel itself that the tactics of the Sharon government are not bringing security and peace to Israel is timely.

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