MIFTAH
Friday, 29 March. 2024
 
Your Key to Palestine
The Palestinian Initiatives for The Promotoion of Global Dialogue and Democracy
 
 
 

Yesterday, Friday, I participated in a protest action against the Apartheid Wall. The action was organized by Arik Aschermann, director of Rabbis for Human Rights. We gathered at noon at Liberty Bell Park in West Jerusalem, a group of about fifty people of different ages and nationalities. There were Israeli Jews and Palestinians; internationals, including a journalist and a cameramam doing a documentary for a French catholic station; members of CPT and ISM.

Arik gave us some pre-departure instructions: if confronted or attacked by soldiers, we were to use no violence of any kind, either physical or verbal. We would be there in a spirit of solidarity for our besieged Palestinian brothers and sisters, and plant some olive trees in a sign of hope for the future. We were to use the buddy system and thus keep track of each other.

After these words, he passed around a sign-up sheet on which to write our name and passport number, in case anyone was arrested.

It looked like a small crowd to me and I was a bit disappointed at the turnout. We boarded the two small busses and followed Arik, who led the way in his personal car.

Eventually we left the main road and bounced along on village roads, only parts of which were paved. After a twenty minute drive, we arrived a the western village of Qatanna, where each of us collected a small olive tree from a little truck and climbed the last steep stretch of rocky road. We arrived at the top of the hill, where a field opened in front of us, and found it, to my surprise, full of Palestinians, most of them men. We estimated the number as well over a thousand. There were flags waiving in the breeze, and there was a festive feeling as if people were there on a picnic. Two dignitaries from the village gave a short speech, one in Arabic and one in English, thanking us for our show of support and solidarity. Every so often the shebab broke into chanting and clapping, their young faces beaming in the overcast day.

Then Arik spoke, Palestinian flags waiving behind him, and after he stopped, the shebab broke into an animated chant in Hebrew: "Ken, ken, shalom! Lo, lo, Sharon!" Yes, yes to peace. No, no to Sharon.

As if by miracle, a man carrying a tray of small brown plastic cups full of aromatic coffee appeared in our midst, offering them only to us. The coffe was boiling hot and delicious! Where had the man come from? There was not a single house in sight! A young American girl whispered: " We help Israel steal their land, and they bring us coffee!" She was referring to the over one thousand acres of land that Qatanna and the nearby villages will lose when the wall is built.

A group of men lined up to pray, kneeling and rising with the Imam. Arik and a few other Jews present lined up near them, rocking back and forth and sideways, now reading from a book, now chanting their prayers. I felt I was in the presence of the Kingdom of God.

A young man was called to dig a hole so I could plant the little tree I had been carrying, and when I gently put it in the ground and started covering the roots with dirt, several hands were there to help me, until an older man said in Arabic, "Let her do it. Let her do it." He did not want to deny me the pleasure of doing the job I had come to do. We smiled to each other in agreement.

A military jeep kept its distance by a wooded area and made no move to interfere with our demonstration.

Young men lined up along the road as we left, and one of them looked at us older women and said to his friend jokingly: "This is the future?" My CPT friend and I chuckled, and I said to her: "No, HE is the future. Nevertheless, if we WERE the future, the world would be much more peaceful and just than it is now."

 
 
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