CKUT Radio: From the West Island of Montreal to the West Bank

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Throughout the summer of 2004 the International Solidarity Movement brought together Palestinians, Israelis and international on the ground in the Occupied Territories for the Freedom Summer Campaign. The campaign focused on building non-violent civil resistance to confront the daily workings of the Israeli occupation. Freedom Summer 2004 focused on the international condemned Israeli "Security Fence", or what is now often labelled the "Apartheid Wall".

The International Solidarity Movement includes the participation from activists throughout the world including Montreal. I had the opportunity to interview Eileen Young a Montrealer who traveled from the West Island to the West Bank to participate in the Freedom Summer Campaign. Eileen is a long-time social activist who works as a publisher's representative for a progressive Canadian publisher. She lives in Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue and is an artist. In June 2004 she travelled to Palestine with a group of older women, who were all volunteers with the ISM's Freedom Summer 2004.

For more Information about the International Solidarity Movement visit: http://www.palsolidarity.org / http://www.ismcanada.org

FROM WEST ISLAND TO WEST BANK
by Eileen Young

I was fifty-nine years old when I lost my husband of thirty-eight years in a car accident. I had often thought that if I were to outlive him, I would devote more of my time and energy to working for social justice. Both my husband and I had been longtime social justice advocates, beginning with our opposition to the Viet Nam War. Having lost him as a partner left an enormous hole in my life, one that I felt could best be filled by working to make the world a better place for my children and succeeding generations.

So, when the opportunity arose for me to travel to Palestine this summer for two weeks with a group of older women, who called themselves "Women of a Certain Age," I decided to go. The fact that I have a painful hip condition and walk with a cane was a challenge, but not an impediment. Our group of fourteen women, all Americans except me, volunteered for the International Solidarity Movement, a Palestinian group who arrange for people from other countries to travel to Palestine and work with them, using non-violent methods, to challenge the Israeli occupation, and to witness the day-to-day conditions of Palestinians.

I was already aware of the oppressive conditions under which Palestinians are forced to live, especially in the Occupied Territories and refugee camps, since being expelled from their homes in 1948.

Early in our stay, we participated in a peaceful demonstration against the building of the Apartheid Wall, or "security fence", as the Israelis call it. The ostensible purpose of this wall is to prevent suicide bomber attacks in Israel by separating Palestinians from Israelis with an eight metre high concrete barrier. But the wall does not follow the Green Line or 1967 border. Instead, it cuts into occupied territory, separating Palestinians from one another, and often from their land and water sources. Some towns are completely surrounded by the wall. In effect, Palestine has been transformed into many isolated "bantustans" of the sort that existed in South Africa under apartheid. Travel between communities, to jobs, schools, and health facilities has been made incredibly time-consuming and exhausting: check points and road blocks are everywhere, as is the always present threat of attack by Israeli security forces. In the two weeks that I was there, moving from one community to another always meant encountering these obstacles, and passing through them was exhausting.

The demonstration against the wall, in which our group participated, occurred on June 26 in A-Ram, a suburb to the north of Jerusalem, and it was one of many that took place that day. We were to march along a street where part of the wall had already been erected, and where construction was underway. For the people of A-Ram the wall would separate them from Jerusalem completely.

About 3000 people (Palestinians, Israeli and international peace activists) took part in the march. We were walking beside a musical band of boys dressed in white uniforms. Suddenly people in the front turned back; the Israeli soldiers had shot tear gas into the crowd. Overwhelmed, having difficulty breathing, we were all forced to turn back and retrace our steps. Eventually we were able to take refuge in a building of small shops; one of the shopkeepers opened his doors to us, giving us some respite. When we went back out to the street, the soldiers were shooting plastic bullets (which are really heavy metal balls covered with a thin coating of plastic) and sound grenades, creating chaos in the street.

Many of the women in my group (aged 50 to 80) were undaunted, documenting the situation, and attempting to lead people back toward the soldiers. Many Palestinians were hurt, and several Israeli and Palestinian demonstrators were arrested. However, of those arrested, only the Palestinians were held for long periods, with bail levels being set very high. One of them, a coordinator for the International Solidarity Movement in a village to the north of Jerusalem, was badly beaten. What had provoked such an aggressive response to a peaceful demonstration?

Although I did not experience any other overt violence during my stay, I saw everywhere evidence of the kind of day-to-day violence which can in fact be more pernicious in its effects. We were constantly navigating through roadblocks and checkpoints, where one must carry all belongings through to the other side and find other transportation there; the roads are completely blocked. The villages that I visited were surrounded by Israeli settlements, built high on the hills. Surveillance towers often overlooked the Palestinian villages. I saw places where olive trees had been uprooted by soldiers in the night, and places where they had been carefully replanted by Palestinians. I saw houses which had been bulldozed down; in one situation, the home owner started to build another house, only to have it bulldozed down as well.

How must it be to live under these conditions day after day? I found it hard for two weeks. Yet the people I met continued to struggle with dignity for their daily existence, as well as to oppose the injustice of their situation.

One evening we were invited to the home of the ISM coordinator who had been arrested and beaten in A-Ram the previous Saturday; a week later, he was still in prison. We were greeted warmly by his wife, an attractive young woman, and her five children. Refreshments were served and the older children and their mother talked about the anxiety brought on by his imprisonment, as well as their own difficulties with travel to school, to shops, to clinics. "Why", asked our hostess, referring to these things, her husband's incarceration, and the destruction of the local olive groves, "Why is this happening? We only want peace."

These are the people whose story we seldom hear, the degree of their suffering and isolation rarely understood. I have returned to Canada with a strong feeling that the world needs to know and understand this and that we must do more to pressure our own government to stop supporting the cruel and inhumane Israeli policies, which trample on Palestinians' human rights.

Just after I returned from my trip, the International Court of the Hague ruled that the building of the wall contravened the human rights of Palestinians, and called on all states to see to it that any impediment, resulting from the construction of the wall, to the exercise by the Palestinian people to its right to self-determination is brought to an end. Yet, when the General Assembly of the United Nations subsequently presented a resolution condemning the building of the wall, which passed overwhelmingly by a vote of 150 to 6, Canada abstained.

Having seen for myself the terrible injustice suffered by the Palestinian people, I cannot state too strongly that it is up to all of us to pressure our government, and raise our voices, demanding an immediate end to Israeli policies of apartheid and occupation, and supporting the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination.

[For more information about the ISM, or to contact the author, e-mail ism-montreal@resist.ca]