Peacemaking

Sisyphus 

Every Friday Palestinians and internationals head to the Jabari land in between the Israeli settlements of Kiryat Arba and Givat Ha'avot.

Every Friday we participate in an act of nonviolent resistance to the Israeli military occupation of Hebron.

Every Friday there is a dance between the Israeli police and military and settlers and their security people and the Palestinian landowners and the leaders of the Palestinian nonviolent movement in Hebron. 

Every Friday the settlers claim it is their land and the Palestinians are trespassing. 

Last Friday, we had moved to the other side of the stairway built by the settlers to connect the two settlements.  The border police and blue (regular) police came, followed by a few soldiers.  The police told us we could not cross the stairway and sidewalk to reach the far side of the land.  We would have to walk around the long way. 

I said to my teammate, “We should organize a long jump.”  The next thing we knew, a Palestinian had leapt across the walk.  That ended that delaying tactic.  We ended up picking the rest of the olives on trees we hadn't reached last month, and stepping on the walkway as well.  We watched the border police as they got in the way of a settler boy who insisted on stepping on the land and touching the olive trees. 

Every Friday we return to see that the Israeli settlers have undone our work of the week before:  tossing the rocks and tires back into the field after we had carefully lined them up along the road so the settlers couldn't park their cars in the field and pulling up most of the trees planted the week before. 

We are like Sisyphus, pushing that rock up the hill and finding it down at the bottom the next day.  Starting over. 

The Occupation is like that.  Every day the Palestinian community faces checkpoints, ID checks, searches of school bags and purses.  They worry that Israeli soldiers are going to come in the night and abduct their sons.  They worry that when their father is ill, the Israeli military won't let the Red Crescent ambulance through to get him to the hospital.  They worry that they won't be able to work their land because a settler convinces the police it's not theirs to work. 

I wonder if the Palestinian community feels like Sisyphus.  I certainly do.  The Occupation is in its forty-first year.  Nothing has changed.  It's only gotten worse. I've had it to up over my head. 

On Sunday, a Palestinian priest said that the waiting and wondering of the powerless is part of Palestinian spirituality.  "God is great," he said.  That's something I hear frequently from the Muslim community here in Hebron. 

"Sitting sumud,"­ steadfastness.  That's what the Palestinian community does. 

I guess I can too.  Inshallah.  God willing.  But it's awfully hard. 

3 December 2007 
Hebron, West Bank, Palestine

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