30 August 2010
By
Jonathan Cook
Nearly
600
Israelis have
signed up for a campaign of
civil disobedience,
vowing to risk jail to smuggle Palestinian women and
children into Israel
for a brief taste of life outside the
occupied West
Bank.
The
Israelis say they have been inspired by the example of
Ilana Hammerman, a writer who is threatened with
prosecution after publishing an article in which she
admitted
breaking the law
to bring three Palestinian teenagers into Israel for a
day out.
Ms
Hammerman said she wanted to give the young women, who
had never left the West Bank,
“some fun” and a chance to see the Mediterranean for
the first time.
Her
story has shocked many Israelis and led to a police
investigation after right-wing groups called for her
to be tried for security offences.
It is
illegal to transport Palestinians through checkpoints
into Israel without a permit, which few can obtain. If
tried and found guilty, Ms Hammerman could be fined
and face up to two years in jail.
But
Israelis joining the campaign say they will not be put
off by threats of imprisonment.
Last
month, a group of 11 Israeli women joined Ms Hammerman
in repeating her act of civil disobedience, driving a
dozen Palestinian women and four children, including a
baby, through a checkpoint into Israel.
The
Israeli women say they are planning mass “smugglings”
of Palestinians into Israel over the coming weeks.
“The
Palestinians who join us are mainly looking to have a
good time after years of confinement under the
occupation, but for us what is most important is our
act of defiance,” said Ofra Lyth, who helped establish
an online forum of supporters after attending a speech
by Ms Hammerman.
“We
want to overturn this immoral law that gives rights to
Jews to move freely around while keeping Palestinians
imprisoned in their towns and villages,” she said,
referring to regulations that bar most Palestinians in
the
occupied territories
from entering Israel, and Israelis from assisting
them. Exceptions are made for Palestinians with
permits, sometimes issued for a medical emergency or
to some labourers with
security clearance.
For
the Palestinian women, though, it is not about making
a statement or defying an
unjust law,
said Ms Lyth.
“The
Palestinian women tell us: ‘Go ahead and make your
political point, but for us we’re breaking the law so
that we can enjoy ourselves and remember how life was
before the checkpoints and the wall.’ One woman told
me: ‘I just want to be able to breathe again’.”
For
Palestinians in the West Bank, it is not often easy to
breathe. The territory is home to a growing population
of 300,000 Jews in more than 100 settlements. The
settlers are able to drive into Israel on roads that
the army oversees with checkpoints.
It was
through one such settler crossing, near Beitar Ilit,
south of Jerusalem,
that Ms Hammerman took the three Palestinian teenagers
this year.
For
their protection, she has not identifed the young
women or the West Bank
village where they live. She refers to the
women as Aya, Lin and Yasmin. They, too, could face
jail for breaking the law.
In Ms
Hammerman’s article, published in the
Haaretz newspaper
in May, she admitted that she was aware her actions
were illegal.
She
told the women, who were 18 and 19, to take off their
hijabs for the day and dress in western-style clothes
to avoid attracting attention from soldiers at the
checkpoint. She also taught them an easy Hebrew phrase
-- Hakull beseder, or “Everything is okay” -- in case
a soldier spoke to them.
She
then took them on a tour of
Tel Aviv, visiting the city’s
university, a museum, a shopping mall and the beach,
which she noted none of them had ever seen even though
it is only about 40km from their village.
Gisha,
an
Israeli human rights
group, said Israel introduced a permit system to limit
Palestinian movement out of the West Bank in the early
1990s – about the time the young women were born.
Ms
Hammerman wrote that the only dangerous moment during
the trip was when a plain-clothes policeman stopped
them and asked for the women’s identity cards. Ms
Hammerman lied to the officer, telling him that the
women were Palestinians from
East Jerusalem and therefore entitled to enter
Israel.
In
June,
Yehuda
Weinstein, the attorney general, was reported to have
approved a police investigation of Ms Hammerman after
a settler organisation, the Legal Forum for the
Land of Israel,
complained.
The
ranks of Ms Hammerman’s supporters have swollen since
the group placed an advertisement, titled “We refuse
to obey”, in
Haaretz this
month. The ad said the group was “acting in the spirit
of Martin Luther King”, the US
civil rights leader, and demanded that
Palestinians be treated as “human beings, not
terrorists”.
Over
the past week, the online forum has attracted more
than 590 Israelis signing up to repeat Ms Hammerman’s
act of civil disobedience.
“That
has really surprised and encouraged me,” she said. “I
did not realise there were so many other Israelis who
have had enough of this outrageous law.”
Still,
the coverage of Ms Hammerman and her supporters in the
Israeli media
has been largely hostile. During a television
interview last week, she was accused of endangering
Israelis with her trips. The show’s host, Yaron
London, asked whether she had inspected the
Palestinian women’s underclothes for explosives before
allowing them into her car.
She
will will not be deterred, though. She said the group
had discussed future trips for Palestinians, including
taking them to pray at al-Aqsa, the mosque in
Jerusalem that has been inaccessible to most
Palestinians for at least a decade, and visits to
Palestinian relatives they cannot see in Jerusalem and
Israel.
“We
need to get Israelis meeting Palestinians again,
having fun with them and seeing that they are human
beings with the same rights as us.”
She
said her immediate goal was to kick-start a discussion
among Israelis about the legality and morality of
Israel’s laws and challenge the public’s “blind
obedience” to authority.
Ms
Lyth added that the Palestinian women “who have gone
on our trips are the heroes of their village. They and
their families know they are taking a big risk in
breaking the law, but harassment is part of their
daily lives anyway”.
Till
now the trips have been restricted to smuggling
Palestinian women and children only, said Ms Hammerman.
“It is harder to bring men in without being discovered
and the authorities would be likely to treat
Palestinian men much more harshly if they were
caught.”
Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in
Nazareth, Israel. His latest books are
“Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq,
Iran and the Plan to Remake the
Middle East” (Pluto
Press) and “Disappearing Palestine:
Israel's Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books).
His website is
www.jkcook.net.
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