ISM

Volume XIII, Fall 2006, Number 3

BOOK REVIEW


Peace under Fire: Israel/Palestine and the International Solidarity
Movement ,edited by Josie Sandercock, Radhika Sainath, Marissa
McLaughlin, Hussein Khalili, Nicholas Blincoe, Huwaida Arraf and Ghassan
Andoni. Foreword by Edward Said. Verso, 2004. xxii + 297 pages.
$22.00, paperback.

Brock L. Bevan
Freelance writer residing in Sanaa, Yemen


�Mass non-violent action was initiated to support and defend Palestinian
rights and shield them from the aggression by Israeli forces.� This
concisely sums up the story that Peace under Fire tells (p. 17). An
anthology of e-mail correspondence, news articles, press releases, web-
log and diary entries and writings, the book chronicles the actions of the
International Solidarity Movement (ISM) from its founding in August 2001
to January 2004. Through the lens of the ISM, the reader discovers the
peculiar form of occupation that Israel enforces on what it refers to as
Judea, Samaria and � until 2005 � the Gaza Strip.

As a collection of snapshots concerning the ISM, the book lacks
background on the conflict. The reader not conversant with the Israeli-
Palestinian conflict might not understand the context of some of the
dispatches. Then again, the book is not about the long war for Palestine;
rather it is the story of the first two years of the ISM and the story �of the
Israeli military occupation as witnessed by the thousands who have come
to live, work and resist in solidarity with the Palestinian people� (p. xi).

The ISM � founded by Huwaida Arraf, George Rishmawi, Ghassan Andoni,
and Neta Golan � was organized to bring together a force of
international activists with Palestinian activists in order to �raise
awareness of the struggle for Palestinian freedom and an end to Israeli
occupation� (p. 20). The group consists mostly of people who call for the
creation of two states in the area that was British Mandatory Palestine.
Some members call for the creation of a single binational state with equal
rights for all citizens. Unlike other groups, the ISM limits its members to
�nonviolent, direct-action methods of resistance� in confronting the 39-
year-long Israeli occupation of formerly Egyptian-administered Gaza and
the Jordanian-ruled West Bank. The novelty of the ISM lies in its ability to
embarrass Israel more often than other organizations that merely bear
witness to the Israeli army's brutal methods.

A dominant regional military power backed by copious American
packages of grants and loans, Tel Aviv maintains its power through
violence (see Thomas R. Stauffer, "The Cost of Conflict in the Middle East,
1956-2002: What the U.S. Has Spent," in Middle East Policy, Vol. X, No. 1,
Spring 2003). The mere construct of an occupation regime is violent, as it
denotes the rule of one people by another through undemocratic means.
Yet Israel complements this general oppression with more direct kinds:
American-provided F-16s, M1A1s, M-16s, Apache helicopters,
checkpoints, permits, walls, Caterpillar D-9 bulldozers and systemic
imprisonment.

Israel, which has yet to delimit its international borders, has another
potent weapon: the use of the label of �antisemitic� to admonish and
discredit any criticism of its policies. This weapon, combined with the
predisposition of corporate media in the West, the lack of a large body of
active pro-Palestinian supporters, and recent American policy to replace
the former rivalry with the USSR with a rivalry with the Arab and Islamic
worlds, has created the moral space for Israel to literally get away with
murder (Palestine Red Crescent Society, http://www.palestinercs.org/
crisistables/tables_of_figures.htm and B'Tselem, http://
www.bstelem.org/english/Statistics?Casualties.asp).

Conscious of previous Israeli behavior in eliminating nonviolent
resistance, the ISM works to provide Palestinians some attention. Where
the media in the United States and other Western countries might ignore
the harsh treatment meted out by Israeli forces (whether soldiers, border
guards or armed settlers) to Palestinians, the idea is that if an
international observer from the West is present, Israeli behavior will be
moderated. And the presence of an international just might interest the
Western press enough to send a reporter to cover nonviolent actions that
meet with stiff Israeli force. As one report from Conor states:

I suspect the presence of Internationals at the rally kept things from
getting quite nasty. As it was it only generated a paragraph in a story
buried deep within CNN.com. They [the Israeli army] know if
Internationals were killed, then it would be a huge story, and in solidarity
with the Palestinians we used that privilege to protect them (p. 110).

Members of the ISM shield Palestinians from harsher violence and
broadcast to the world the oppression of a nation that former Israeli
Prime Minister Golda Meir declared nonexistent: �It is not as though there
was a Palestinian people in Palestine considering itself as Palestinian
people and we came and threw them out and took their country away
from them; they did not exist� (The Sunday Times, June 15, 1969).

With their bright orange vests with fluorescent strips, members of the ISM
engage in such direct action as removing stone roadblocks, walking
children to school or summer camp, sitting in a house to protect a family
from forcible search, running with ambulances to ensure that they make
it to their patients, marching with Palestinians so that Israeli forces
cannot easily end a protest, and stopping home demolitions. It is
noteworthy that much of ISM�s direct action is an attempt to see Israel
abide by its commitment to international treaties to which it is a
signatory, such as the Geneva Conventions and UN resolutions. Israel
ratified the Geneva Conventions on July 6, 1951. The Fourth 1949
Convention states in Article 3 that persons �taking no active part in the
hostilities� shall in all circumstances be treated humanely.� Among other
behavior, the article prohibits hostage taking, torture and any degrading
treatment. Under UN General Assembly resolution 181 of November 29,
1947, Jerusalem is a corpus separatum under international control. As
such, Israel�s unilateral decision to name Jerusalem as its capital defies
international law. Israel claims that the Occupied Territories are in fact
"disputed," which abrogates its duty to follow international law on
�occupied territories.� International law supports the right to resist an
occupier with force. For instance, demolishing homes of noncombatant
relatives of �suicide bombers� violates Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva
Convention, which states,

No protected person may be punished for an offence he or she has not
personally committed. Collective penalties and likewise all measures of
intimidation or of terrorism are prohibited. Pillage is prohibited. Reprisals
against protected persons and their property are prohibited
(http:www.icrc.org/Web/Eng/siteeng0.nsf/html/genevaconventio ns).

Yet, even though Israel is a signatory to the agreement, it fails to abide by
it and has the support of the U.S. veto on the UN Security Council if an
attempt is made to hold it accountable. Washington has cast its veto in
the Security Council at least 29 times to protect Israel from criticism and
has abstained from voting on some of the resolutions that have passed.

Adam Shapiro, one of the more prominent ISM activists, along with other
members, entered the besieged Palestinian Authority presidential
compound � the Muqataa � in late March 2002. The Muqataa, like
Orient House in occupied East Jerusalem, was a main target of Israeli
action after the beginning of the Al-Aqsa Intifada. These two places were
symbols of Palestinian nationhood and thus provided an opportunity for
the Israelis to illustrate the abject weakness of the Palestinians. Moreover,
the Muqataa held the late Yasser Arafat, president of the Palestinian
Authority and was the locus of accusations leveled at it for encouraging
what Tel Aviv referred to as �terrorism.� Shapiro, along with Caoimhe
Butterly, managed to hamper Israeli attempts to assassinate Arafat and
other Palestinians who were held in the compound.

Critically wounded people were in the Muqataa compound when the two
members of the ISM arrived, yet Israeli forces would not allow ambulances
to remove them. Rather, the Israelis �shot at any ambulance that came
near� the presidential compound in contravention of the Geneva
Conventions and international humanitarian law (p. 46). Such action is
typical of Israeli methods employed against those they occupy. Others are
hostage taking, using civilians as human shields, knocking out electric
power, shooting at unarmed civilians, assassinating militants when they
could be captured, using ambulances as transport, torturing captives,
arresting people arbitrarily, searching houses, destroying property (olive
groves, clothes, furniture), shooting water containers, building the
�separation fence� or �Apartheid Wall,� stealing land, and appropriating
water sources.

Israel � �the Middle East's only democracy� � says it operates with a
purity of arms that Palestinians lack. Yet Israel ordinarily attacks
protected persons with little remorse or concern. When its public relations
begin to fail, Israel tends to say that whatever illegal action it undertook
was a mistake, an accident, the fault of the person shot, or � if need be
� the result of individual Israeli action. �Facts on the ground� speak
louder than words. Since the start of the so-called Oslo Peace Process in
1993, Israel has illegally settled over 400,000 Israelis in the West Bank
(the Foundation for Middle East Peace http://www.fmep.org/
settlement_info/statistics.html). Israel has created Bantustans in the West
Bank by sealing roads off and erecting checkpoints.

The comprehensive Israeli-enforced collective punishment of Palestinians
is exemplified in the following quote: �This is a game of Palestinian Bingo:
we [checkpoint guards] gather all the IDs and sometimes we have a
�bingo� and find a terrorist� (p. 124). The constant inconvenience that
checkpoints mean for Palestinians, the deaths they cause as ambulances
wait to get through them, the humiliation meted out by brash young
soldiers are justified by the capture of the occasional wanted Palestinian.

Making people aware of Israeli crimes is an aim of the ISM. The idea that
Westerners can get away with challenging Israel, its guns, tanks, air force
and gunships without punishment proved illusory. Even though UN
Security Council Resolution 181 allocated to the Jews in Mandatory
Palestine some 55 percent of the territory while they only owned 7
percent of land at the time, the nascent Israeli state went on to conquer
78 percent of the land during the 1948 war.

Not happy with this lopsided victory, Israel has relentlessly struggled to
acquire all of Mandatory Palestine (and at times more, e.g., the Sinai
Peninsula and the Golan Heights). In this quest, the death of a few
Americans or other Westerners is a price it is willing to pay. From this
perspective, the deaths of Rachel Corrie and the Britons Thomas Hurndall
and James Miller, and the shooting of Brian Avery are business as usual.
Edward Said in the foreword wrote:

An American citizen was willfully murdered by the soldiers of a client
state of the U.S. without so much as an official peep or even the de
rigueur investigation that had been promised to her family (p. xiv).

The fact that Washington ignored the willful violence perpetrated by its
client state comes as no surprise. Washington is Israel's most faithful
supporter.

Israel's readiness to attack nonviolent activists supporting the Palestinians
was made clear by then chief of staff, Lieutenant-General Moshe Yaalon,
on the program �Open Line� on Israeli Army Radio. He said that "[the ISM
activists are] creating provocations that injure our [Israelis'] freedom of
action on the ground." In addition, Yaalon said that �this isn't an intifada,
because an intifada is a people's uprising, while here what we have
experienced since September 2000 is a proactive attack and a strategic
decision.� If ISM activists are �creating provocations,� then they are
appropriate targets for Israeli-discharged disproportionate violence.

A strength of the book is that it allows the reader to feel the harsh
environment that the Palestinians endure on a daily basis. Through the
eyes of reports on the ground, mainly from ISM activists, the reader can
see why:

ISM is a danger to the Israeli project of occupation, discrimination, and
apartheid-like rule, but not because Internationals stop bulldozers or
tanks with their bodies. ISM is a threat because we've created the space
for Internationals to see it, live it and speak about it (p. 292).

As a co-founder of the ISM says: �Occupation, oppression and domination
are going to be dismantled the same way they were erected: through the
action of people, through civilian-based resistance� (p. 292).

There are a few typos in the book, and it would have benefited from an
index. Significantly, the lack of an introduction means that the work lacks
context, leaving the nonspecialist reaching for other books. The thematic
format of the items in the anthology creates clarity, but sometimes the
work seems a mishmash with a random newspaper articles. The book is
one of a series on Palestine that feature the ISM. Other books include Live
from Palestine: International and Direct Action against the Occupation,
edited by Nancy Stohlman and Laurieanne Aladin, and Operation
Defensive Shield: Witnesses to Israeli War Crimes, edited by Muna
Hamzeh and Todd May. The epilogue reproduces a letter from an Israeli
reservist to the ISM that shows the kind of effect the ISM has had, even in
the country whose actions the ISM opposes. Daniel Dworsky proudly says,
�My family is available and our home is open to every one of these people
[ISM activists]� (p. 296). At a moment when Israel has once again besieged
Gaza and captured over 50 members of the Palestinian government,
claiming to be punishing the Palestinians for the capture of one soldier,
Dworksy's statement gives hope that there may yet be a way to convince
the Israelis of the error of their ways.