Resisting Occupation

News and Observer; May, 2003; Edwin L. Brown

An ominous turn in the Israeli government's campaign to stifle Palestinian hopes for a better future in their own homeland has received no notice in the News and Observer. On May 9-10, Israeli forces began arresting members of the International Solidarity Movement and made a ruinous raid upon the main, West Bank office of the ISM. You may have missed the significance of this assault by dozens of soldiers, border- and civilian-police upon the main organization actively pursuing nonviolent resistance to the 36-year occupation of remnant Palestine.

The very existence of an international group of volunteers willing to brave the perils endured by Arab Muslims and Christians (Beit Sahour, site of the ISM office, forms a major Christian center in the Territories) has been a constant check on the military's smothering of any opposition.

The current Israeli regime now considers ISM's witness to be the most troublesome fly in the suffocating ointment the army imposes on all but the settlers, as is clear from a waiver now required of foreign visitors to the Gaza Strip; and a total ban on ISM members betrays its aim to suppress any first-hand report on the open-air prison there. But the measures come too late:

Amnesty International is refusing to indemnify the army for these actions in defiance of the Geneva Conventions. The foreign press regards the recent killing of a British photographer filming children's daily life in Rafah as a stark warning that it is open season not just on Palestinian journalists (five have fallen). But despite ongoing detentions, ISM members take on a Palestinian resilience.