For many months now, the Palestinian villagers of Bil’in, west of Ramallah, have been organizing a variety of totally nonviolent mass actions to protest the devastating Separation Barrier that the Israelis have been building right up against their village, which cuts many of the villagers off from their families’ ancestral lands. They’ve faced various forms of brutality from the Israeli occupation forces along the way.
Last Thursday, April 28th, they had yet another action: a march toward bulldozers preparing the land for the Barrier. Some 1,000 Palestinians and 200 Israeli peace activists showed up. But that time, the Israelis launched a sinister new tactic: they had infiltrated some of their people, dressed as “Arabs”, into the body of protesters to act as agents provocateurs. These agents started throwing stones at the Israeli forces lined up in front of them– which then gave the Israelis “permission” to fire back…
According to the website of Uri Avnery’s “Gush Shalom” (Peace Bloc), the Israeli forces responded using “new means of riot control, such as specially painful plastic bullets covered with salt, pepper bombs and more.”
How did the participants in the peace action discover that the stone-throwers were agents? Easy. As soon as the guys started throwing stones, the organizers of the march moved toward them and reminded them that the rules of the action were “complete nonviolence; no stone-throwing!”
At which point the stone-throwers turned around and grabbed hold of the organizers who had approached them and dragged them across to the Israeli lines where they were arrested.
It is an outrage. In my book, a provocateur like that– and the commanders who organized the whole provocation maneuver– are entirely responsible for all the violence that they spark.
I’m not even sure if the men arrested last Thursday have been released yet.
On May 1, Electronic Intifada reported that they were still being held. Here’s what EI said about the April 24 action:
- In a demonstration held last Thursday, undercover Israeli provocateurs threw stones at Israeli soldiers and border police. Special forces used a gas powered gun, not previously used in the West Bank, capable of firing rapid rounds of plastic bullets filled with a white powder (which is currently being analyzed) that caused intense pain to the people shot.
Two Palestinians, Riad Bornat and Ilyan Abu Rahma, who were assaulted and dragged away by the provocateurs, are still being held in Israeli custody.
EI did report– sadly, to my mind– that in a follow-up demonstration May 1, the Palestinian youths did end up throwing stones– and then the Israeli forces started firing rubber-coated metal bullets and what EI described as “live rounds” into the demonstrators.
Such a pity if, without the discipline and leadership that evidentluy had been shown by Bornat and Abu Rahma, the younger shebab started picking up stones and throwing them. Let’s hope others can come forward and reinstate the rules of complete nonviolence…
At a broader level, though, it does occur to me that by planning an action like the provocateur action of April 24th the Israeli security forces were showing that they must have been getting pretty worried by the re-emergence of nonviolent resistance actions among the Palestinians. How much easier it is for the Israeli hawks to keep popular support from Jewish Israelis for their nasty repressive actions against the Palestinians if a huge proportion of Jewish Israelis are terrified of the next suicide bomb going off!
But if the Palestinians are undertaking principled, firm, and firmly nonviolent actions in pursuit of their essential goals– well, that would be a whole lot harder for the Israeli hawks to deal with.
Maybe (oh, let’s hope! let’s hope!) the broadly talked-about “Intifada 3” that might be right around the corner will be a wholly nonviolent popular movement. I’ve made the argument numerous times before: popular unity, popular mobilization, and popular discipline are the basic ingredients for winning anything from the Israelis that is worth having over the longer haul… Oh, like national sovereignty, national independence, and the restoration of the national lands.
As opposed to getting trapped into Gazantustan for three or more generations to come.
Helena, I share your hope that mass nonviolent resistence will be used in all future resistence. It is the only hope.
I think all non-violent action groups, no matter who or where, need to plan for provocateurs within their ranks, and have “peacekeepers” around to handle this. We plan for this at our local rallies, but so far we have had no problems.
The plan is that drummers will circle anyone trying to cause trouble and isolate that person. This would fall apart if there were too few drummers and too many provocateurs, though.
(well, the police made us take down our civilian casualty flags – they said they were dangerous – but they were real police officers and they were not using force, just the threat of arrest. We took them down, put them up again on a private Church lawn, where they hurt nobody!)
Today is the sad anniversary of the day our government turned it’s guns against our children at Ohio State.
There is a new song out that is a remake of the song OHIO – to fit our current war. Here’s the link:
http://www.15megsoffame.com/artist/736/Supaclean/song/1459/Ohio
Well, it’s more like the Palestinians who abhor non-violence:
“GAZA (Reuters) – The Palestinian Authority reiterated Wednesday it had no intention of disarming militants despite constant Israeli calls for such a move and a recent pledge to crack down on unlicensed weapons.”
Some things never seem to change.
I don’t think the Israelis have much to worry about Palestinians using non-violence. What else? Are they going to replace revenge killings with lawsuits? Or honor killings with family therapy?
Oh please.
David
It seems to me Israeli hawks have always feared Palestinian nonviolence and moderation above everything else. Those two things are, after all, the greatest threat of all to their agenda.
“It seems to me Israeli hawks have always feared Palestinian nonviolence and moderation above everything else. Those two things are, after all, the greatest threat of all to the…[Zionist]… agenda.”
— what then are the Palestinians waiting for…
Bring it on! End the Suicide Bombing campaign, call off the Qassam rockets and make liberated Gaza a 21st century showplace of Arab education & entrepreneurialism, democracy and human rights, no less for women. Lead by Example Yes, Nihilism No.
“what then are the Palestinians waiting for”
What are you talking about? Palestinians have been using non-violent methods since the beginning of their struggle. Israel has found this such a serious threat that in the ’70’s they found it necessary to deport the leader of one of the primary non-violent civil disobedience movements. Israel has been very brutal toward non-violent demonstrations, civil disobedience movements, boycotts, and self-sufficiency movements on the part of Palestinians.
“Bring it on! End the Suicide Bombing campaign, call off the Qassam rockets
“and make liberated Gaza a 21st century showplace of Arab education & entrepreneurialism, democracy and human rights, no less for women. Lead by Example Yes, Nihilism No.”
May I suggest that you pay Ghaza a visit and get some idea of the conditions and circumstances there before? Then try walking a mile in the shoes of a Ghaza resident. After you have a realistic idea of what those people are up against you might be a bit more humble.
Or you could get the DVD called “Gaza Strip”. It is difficult to watch how the Israeli troops treat kids who throw rocks.
A friend of mine, in the CPT in Palestine, said two CPTers were badly beaten by the settlers in the West Bank recently. The CPTers are unarmed and nonviolent. Israeli settlers also were poisoning the land so the sheep would die and the Palestinians would get sick (maybe die, too).
Also interesting to look at a map of where the huge wall is being built – with the wells all on the Israeli side of the barrier. With these examples, it is easy to come to the conclusion that Israeli is trying to commit genocide against the Palestian people.
Oh, and did you read about the non-violent protestors who chained themselves to the olive trees? They were not killed, thank god. Just beat up.
I condemn all violence, no matter who does it or their sick reasons why they do it.
Susan – USA: thanks for mentioning the CPT team in Hebron… they are heros in my book. i was very lucky to meet several of them in the fall of 2002 when they provided non-violence training to ISM volunteers.
“GAZA (Reuters) – The Palestinian Authority reiterated Wednesday it had no intention of disarming militants despite constant Israeli calls for such a move and a recent pledge to crack down on unlicensed weapons.”
Some things never seem to change.-wm.tyroler
And the Israeli show no signs of laying down their weapons either, and they have far more weapons. Some things never seem to change.
CPT and MPT people are heros in my book also!
The story of the provocateurs doesn’t quite make sense. The soldiers in the videos were trying to keep the protest away from a construction site.
At first I thought, if the crowd was nonviolent, just ignore them. Then I realized, the demo was walking right into a site filled with workers and construction machinery operating, somewhat like Rachel Corrie.
So I watched BOTH long videos at gush shalom and:
There’s a scene at the end of one of the videos showing a lineup of maybe a hundred or so used up canisters (of tear gas?) that the Palestinians collected. With all that shooting, and nobody dead, it’s a testimony to the determination of both sides to be relatively nonviolent.
Still, it’s really bad idea to use soldiers to do police work. Soldiers are usually trained to shoot first and ask questions never. And pointing a usually-lethal M-16 at an untrained civilian might terrify him or her into doing something really stupid. Afterwards, the civilian is trained to ignore an M-16 being pointed at him, and the soldier is habituated to casually shooting at civilians. This is a recipe for disaster.
It would have been better if the second intifada had never been started, rather than provoking a wall and then protesting it.
Outraged Helena says the provocateurs are responsible for the violence they spark. I didn’t see that violence either.
As a rule, when some web site says “Here’s a link that proves my point”, it usually doesn’t prove anything. That’s why I bothered to watch the videos, and the lack of proof validated my skepticism.
WarrenW, the IDF has admitted that their men were throwing stones at this march, and that use of such agents provocateurs is standard operating procedure.
“Stone-throwing by the undercover forces is part of the way in which they operate in such instances”
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=570288&contrassID=2&subContrassID=1&sbSubContrassID=0
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