Bristol International Solidarity Movement

Every year the Bristol branch of the International Solidarity Movement sends out ordinary men and women to act as ‘human shields’ during demonstrations throughout Israel and occupied Palestine. Though they may be ordinary, their work - in the face of grave adversity and almost certain defeat, is extraordinary. Privately and now, increasingly, publicly, supporters are admitting that they can do little to stem the tide of defeat. They are, however, able to win the media war by getting their message across, by carrying on - regardless. Bristol ISM now publishes a detailed blog of its experiences; and we have re-published a story arc here, with permission. A week in politics can be a long time. A week in Palestine? You decide.
For more information, visit the blog at http://bristolism.blog.co.uk

Bil’in without soldiers

Friday, Sep. 16, 2005

from ‘T’

It’s past 8am here in Palestine and there are no soldiers! We got to sleep a whole 8 hours and even better, we were woken up by piano playing not sirens! An octogenarian pianist who survived Belsen has flown here from Holland to play the Palestinian national anthem at today’s demo. Let’s see the Israeli press try to brand him an anti-Semite.

It’s nice and sunny, everyone’s having breakfast with their families or wandering around the village drinking coffee and saying hi to their mates. Certainly beats last week’s entertainments.

The Great Escape - but not for “E”

Friday, Sep. 16, 2005

from ‘T’

Well, we’ve had another fine day in Bil’in! The music this morning was great and it was nice not to have the village invaded before the demo for once.

The demo

At about 1pm, after prayers, the whole village plus about 14 Internationals and scores of Israelis marched towards the site where this annexation wall is being constructed. It’s great marching with a mixed group, we had the usual whistles and horns but also chants and singing in at least three languages.

The demo reached the usual barrier of soldiers and razor-wire about halfway between the village and the construction site. We had another concert here with a touring guitarist singing a song written about the wall itself. Political songs can be pretty crass but this one was quite moving and one Israeli was in tears the whole way through.
We all kept whistling and chanting as the Israeli commander tried to read out the ‘Closed Military Zone’ (”go home”) order and after a bit of arguing between demonstrators and soldiers, we surged past their left flank and towards the site.

Getting detained (again)

‘M’, one of the villagers who has been organizing these protests, led the move and soon a group of about eight soldiers made to arrest him. ‘E’ and I had already appointed ourselves his bodyguards for the day and ran interference whilst he struggled and escaped.

Our action pissed off the soldiers more than somewhat and we soon had five/six each wrestling on the floor trying to detain us.

At one point, having been dragged away from E, I pretended to give in and was allowed to stand, only to dive back on top of him and we continued to struggle for almost ten minutes until they finally managed to tie our wrists and carry us away.

This whole time they had been kicking, choking, arm twisting, punching and using their batons. The journalists had been swarming around us this whole time and pictures of the IOF attacking unarmed civilians will be all over the Israeli news tonight and the papers tomorrow morning.

I’ve seen the tape of our assault and the way E in particular was treated was brutal. One of the soldiers was stabbing him in the ribs with his baton whilst another knelt on his face. It’s worth pointing out that not once during any of this did he hit back or even shout abuse at the soldiers. He just refused to be cuffed or carried away and kept repeating that he wasn’t harming anyone, just walking in a village which the soldiers had no right to be in.

Escape!

I was carried, with wrists bound, to a hut near the demo with guards and a camera crew in tow. The camera crew helped straighten me up (my trousers had come down!) and interviewed me, much to the soldier’s disapproval. He just looked around for his officer and made vain attempts to stop it.

Looking around proved to be his downfall however, as I took the chance to run and got out of the door into the olive grove. After that, it was easy. An overweight squaddie with full body armour, helmet, assault rifle, grenade launcher and god only knows how much other kit was never really going to catch me and I was back in the village in minutes. The demo cheered as I ran past and someone took me into a house to have my hands cut free.

Not so lucky…

E however fared differently. He was some way behind me, having put up quite a fight as they tried to get him over a wall, and I think he may have been loaded straight into a jeep. I’ve spoken to him since and he’s being held in a settlement of all places.

“Being in a controlled military zone; illegal demonstration; assaulting a soldier” goes the list of charges. We’ve sent down a lawyer with video evidence proving that the latter is ridiculous and the consulate have gotten involved. Hopefully, he’ll be out in the morning.

Soldiers jailed in Bil’in

Friday, Sep. 23, 2005

from ‘E’

For once the tables were turned on the soldiers today as they were ‘jailed’ for their war crimes in front of the world’s media.

The demo started as usual, marching out of the village to a line of soldiers standing behind razor wire. However, the difference this time was that the soldiers were brought before a mirror giving an appearance of being behind bars, and then read their rights through a loudspeaker.

This stand-off lasted for around 20 minutes. All of a sudden, a section of the protest detached itself from the main bloc, left the road and made a cross-country move for the construction site, leaving the soldiers on the road looking rather gormless. As protestors streamed through the olive trees, soldiers ran after them but never had the numbers in one place to cut them off. Two were arrested between the trees but about twelve made it out into the open, and rushed onto the construction site.

There is no equipment there, no structures yet to destroy. However, it was a symbolic victory and there was a tangible lift in the atmosphere of the village that has lasted throughout the day. Of course those who reached the construction site were violently detained but what did they expect?

The shebab took care of the soldiers for the next three hours with lots of stones and tear gas flying through the air over the olive groves.

However it seemed that the supposed “de-escalation” in violence that a judge called for a week ago has slipped the minds of the soldiers. They specifically targeted journalists with tear gas to get them out the way before they started using rubber bullets on children. Gas canisters were being used as bullets, flying at body level rather than the non-lethal ‘arching’ trajectory dictated in the manual. I saw one person taken off in an ambulance, although I would not be surprised if more were injured.

We were one step ahead of the soldiers, and the sight of them leaving in a hail of stones and songs will rest with me and everyone else for a long time to come.

Bil’in 1

Army 0

Why we’re always getting arrested in Bil’in

Saturday, Sep. 24, 2005 - 12:38:05

from ‘T’

I spent a lot of yesterday afternoon in a nearby Israeli colony, explaining to soldiers and policemen why we’re here and why we turn up in Bil’in each week to have demonstrations.

“Why not have your demonstration in London or Tel Aviv?” asks one.

I try to explain to him that we’re not here to end the occupation (although that would be nice) or even just to stop the wall being built through Bil’in. We’re here because our presence and the “operational problems” it causes the army buys the Palestinian people space to demonstrate, to oppose the wall and the settlements. We can’t do that from Tel Aviv.
We’re not doctors, we’re not engineers, we’re not millionaires, diplomats or soldiers. We cannot end the occupation or even relieve much of the suffering it causes. To attempt that would be to invite failure. What we can do, what we come here for every week, is to allow the people of Bil’in to oppose the theft of their land without getting shot. That’s it.
Our soldier thinks this is a bit pointless. I’m not entirely sure what grounds he thinks he has to discuss what is ‘pointless’ as he cannot think of a single reason why he needs to stop the demonstrations every week.

“The commanders have their reasons. I don’t know them but they are good reasons,” he tells me.

Maybe what the soldier doesn’t consider is what resisting does for the people of Bil’in. The night before last, one of the men told me, “The people in this village have broken their fear”.


And that’s before you consider the fact that the attention the protests have brought to Bil’in has made the up-coming court decision over re-routing the wall (to take less of the village’s lands) accountable to the Israeli public and to the much vaunted ‘international ‘community’. Bil’in has become a cause celebré and in order to preserve the myth of its civility, the Israeli government must been seen to deal with it justly.

Finally, this village has inspired others. A recent Ha’aretz article highlighted the fact that leaders from other villages and nationwide resistance groups are coming to Bil’in to see how this village is fighting. Non-violent civil-disobedience is hardly new to the Palestinians. It was the defining feature of the first intifada and the early weeks of the second. What drove it from the agenda was the extraordinarily levels of violence with which demonstrations were met: 150 unarmed protestors killed in just two weeks; heavy machine-gun fire turned on crowds in West Bank towns. Perhaps the Bil’in model, of civil disobedience with Israeli and International participation, can succeed where intifada and armed resistance have not.

I don’t claim to believe that they will. Not on the all-encompassing scale envisaged at the start of the intifada but perhaps village by village, as the people resist attempts to grab even more of their land for colonial settlement expansion and ‘depopulation’. Smoldering embers compared to those early weeks of blazing hope, but it is resistance none the less. Just try telling someone here that saving the olive groves planted by his grandfather isn’t important. Try telling anyone in Palestine that any piece of this land isn’t worth fighting for. In a 100-year history of dispossession and defeat, no victory is too small.

So we’re here (yes, there was a point to this blog). And we’ll keep coming back until Bil’in has won - or until we’re all sitting in deportation cells.