THE Palestinian refugee camp of Shufat runs along a hillside north of East Jerusalem on land annexed by Israel. It is home to 30,000 people. Families came to live here in 1967 when they were expelled from Jerusalem's Moroccan quarter by the Western Wall. From the camp they watched the founding of Israeli settlements. In recent years they saw them expand and also saw new settlements grow on confiscated Palestinian land.
The Shufat refugees live without modern infrastructure and with dirty water in open sewers. It is almost impossible to obtain a building permit from the Israeli authorities. Some people risk building without one and an extra floor goes up to house growing families. And it is a risk, for the army is likely to post a demolition order on the wall. Any show of resistance, here or anywhere else, invites the bulldozers, leaving only rubble in the mud and despair in the heart. At the start of the year Walid, like many others, feared that his house would be reduced to rubble. But the soldiers did not come; instead a military helicopter flew over the camp. Volunteers from international missions for the protection of the Palestinian people arrived. "How long before the army comes?" asked Daniel from Saint-Nazare in France, a member of the Association France-Palestine-Solidarité.
From the beginning of the second intifada several thousand volunteers have come, from Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, the United Kingdom, France, Canada, the United States, to protect Palestinians. There are doctors, farmers, journalists, artists, lawyers, trade unionists, councillors, representatives of churches. They want to see what is happening, help Palestinians at a local level, express solidarity by helping the sick to cross a checkpoint to hospital or farmers to pick their olives under constant threats from the settlers. They take part in peaceful Palestinian demonstrations — and sometimes joint Israeli-Palestinian ones — to demand an end to the occupation and an international protection force for the Palestinian people.
According to the Palestinian Council for Justice and Peace ((PCJP), from September 2000 to January 2002 there were 949 Palestinian deaths, (including 226 children) and 33,349 wounded, (8,217 children); 2,950 of these have been left with permanent disabilities. On 18 October 2001, after the murder of the Israeli minister, Rehavam Zeevi, claimed by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PLFP) as a reprisal for that of their leader, Abu Ali Mustafa, two months earlier, Israeli troops invaded Bethlehem, Beit Jala and the neighbouring camps. In a week 15 Palestinians were killed, all unarmed civilians. The Israeli human rights organisation B'Tselem condemned the killings, said the army had violated one of the fundamental principles of international law, and felt that the army should be forced to account for its actions, which amounted to a call to violate Palestinian human rights with impunity.
In January 2002 the PCJP counted 34 Palestinians killed by soldiers or settlers, including six children, and 786 wounded (250 of them children); 357 people were arrested: 3,621 dunams (1) of land were confiscated, 423 houses demolished, 2,644 fruit trees uprooted, and 597 people had their crops destroyed.
Unemployment increased because of the state of siege and more military roadblocks that stopped all traffic, goods and people. As national infrastructure is gradually destroyed, life gets a new rhythm: hours lost at checkpoints, the sound of helicopters and F16s overhead. A Palestinian human rights activist says: "We must urgently end this daily violence which produces nothing but bitterness, despair, radicalisation, even the dangerous feeling that inflicting other forms of terror on Israeli society would help stop what is being inflicted on us."
The protection of the Palestinian people is an urgent necessity, not just to stop the violation of elementary rights, but also to end the cycle of terror/attacks/repression and begin to work towards a political solution. But on 14 December the UN Security Council rejected the Tunisian proposal to send an international protection force to Palestine. The US vetoed it and Europe was divided (the UK and Norway abstained, France and Ireland voted for it). In the absence of an official intervention, civil society is now intervening. There are no illusions about the capacity of civilian volunteers to stand up to an army. "But we hope to make states meet their responsibilities," say Nahla Shahal from the International Civilian Campaign for the Protection of the Palestinian People (ICCPPP).
In Palestine the small group Rapproachment run by Hassan Andoni at Beit Sahour, near Bethlehem, has organised such missions since the start of the uprising. Beit Sahour was distinguished by its non-violent resistance to the occupation during the first intifada (1987-1993), when its inhabitants refused to pay taxes to the authorities, undeterred by arrests and house raids. In 2001 most Palestinian NGOs decided to regroup to welcome volunteers from abroad. Local associations realised that, besides bringing immediate and concrete help, visitors ended the Palestinians' isolation, both physical (the result of curfews and bans on movement) and moral. Through solidarity the missions challenge the idea of a world divided between the West and the nations of the South.
Volunteers from an ICCPPP mission went to Beit Rima in the West Bank a few days after an Israeli raid with tanks and helicopters in October 2001. Olivier, a journalist who took part, said: "Our visit began in a ruin with charred walls, covered in glass and burnt cloth. Its owner thought himself lucky: his family was away when the army lobbed an incendiary grenade through the window." Olivier met inhabitants of al-Mawassi in the Gaza Strip, forced to live in tents when their houses were destroyed, and people from Hebron, subjected to curfew for months and attacks by settlers who were never punished.
A group from Rennes in France went to the Aida refugee camps where "the water tanks are broken, almost all the houses are covered in bullet marks and the UNRWA girls' schools are in a shocking state" (2), and met families who had lost a father, a mother, a child. The mission chose to work with the Palestinians in camps and villages. One of its members, Le Duff, said: "We hope to create solidarity, help the Palestinians in their daily resistance. Looking after the crops, whatever the risks, replanting trees on confiscated land, may be less newsworthy than clashes with the army. But the determination to do it is what helps people stay on their land." Among the volunteers are sheep farmers from Brittany whose own love of the land often makes them the most stubborn. At Deir Istia, Dominique and Samira said: "We prepared the soil, dug, got rid of the stones, planted, packed down the soil, not too much so as not to stop the roots growing, placed branches of thorns to protect the young plants from the gazelles and hide them from the settlers. Three of seven nearby settlements, built on confiscated land, look directly on to this land."
Because of their frequent presence at army checkpoints, the volunteers have been written about in the local press and have encouraged many Palestinians — although the Palestinians know that they will still be there when the volunteers have gone. The army does not like this foreign presence, and has sometimes used force against them, calling them terror-tourists. But their numbers continue to grow, reflecting the mobilisation of public opinion in the world.
* Journalist
(1) There are 10 dunams to 1 hectare.
(2) United Nations Relief and Works Agency.
Translated by Wendy Kristianasen