Part One of the Series: Eyewitness Report

Published March, 2004

Ghassan Andoni is a physics professor at Birzeit University, the most respected Palestinian university. He is also one of the founders of the main nonviolent, direct action organization in Palestine, the International Solidarity Movement. We met in his office at the Palestine Center for Rapprochement in Bethlehem. He says that he was a militant before he converted to nonviolence.

In his unheated second floor office, Andoni, a soft spoken man in his mid-50's, told us that the ISM was founded in 1987 after the first Intifada and has since attracted over 4,000 international volunteers from Europe and the United States. About 20% are Jewish.

The ISM arose in response to the arrests, since 1967, of over 600,000 Palestinians, one third of the Palestinian population, and with the IDF's (Israel Defense Forces) confiscation of olive groves and farms to expand settlements. The response was stone throwing, strikes, nationalistic slogans on walls and waving of the Palestinian flag. This immediately provoked severe Israeli reprisals and the cycle of violence which continues until today. The Israelis then agreed to discuss peace proposals in Oslo. But even during this period Israel increased its settlements in the West Bank and Gaza. As the Oslo proposals failed, frustrations led to the second Intifada in 2001 with deadly suicide bombings and armed attacks against the IDF and Israeli civilians. The response was just as bloody: Amnesty International reported that 80 Palestinian children were killed by the IDF in the first three months of the second Intifada.

The ISM is committed to nonviolence, not just as a strategy or tactic, but as a philosophy. Andoni and two other ISM leaders we met in a Brooklyn-based Israeli-Palestinian-American Dialogue group, talked about studying Thoreau, Gandhi, Rev. King and Bishop Tutu. ISM volunteers are required to undergo two days of training before they can work with the organization. Anyone, even members of Hamas, can join their demonstrations if they complete the training and commit to nonviolence while engaged in ISM activities. He added that "if an ISM volunteer throws stones at the Israel Defense Forces, ISM will disengage and become observers but we will stay on the scene."

Nevertheless, Andoni says that ISM is attacked by the Israeli media and by right wingers for allegedly supporting violence against innocent civilians. Human rights activists in Israel and Palestine strongly defend ISM against these allegations although a few criticize some of the volunteers. When some volunteers challenged ISM orders recently they were dismissed and now Andoni says that ISM is calling for "mature volunteers." "Age diversity is the key," he says, "because until now, almost all internationals were young and a few were reckless."

ISM does not align with any political party and does not take positions about the various peace proposals. It tries to remain above the battle on this issue. On the other hand, while it is nonviolent, it recognizes international laws that permit persons in occupied territories to resist military occupation by armed resistance and won't condemn people who do that. But Andoni condemns suicide bombings and attacks against civilians because that they are inhumane and are prohibited by international law. He said that the ISM helped internationals see and experience injustice and they should share that with people in their own countries.

Andoni said that "ISM believes you must oppose the occupation even though the Palestinians and their leadership are not perfect. Most people don't want to take sides and most people love peace but they don't want to wage peace. One has a duty to obstruct injustice."

Andoni said that it is currently difficult for ISM to organize because the IDF frequently attacks peaceful, nonviolent demonstrations and two volunteers have been killed. Also, the Israelis are stopping ISM volunteers from entering Israel [news stories reported that some Palestinian farmers that we had just met were arrested in Dubrus and were charged with illegally hosting international visitors without permission]. In addition, he said, Yasser Arafat, President of the Palestinian Authority, suppresses dissident Palestinian groups, including the ISM. The PA has tried to suppress new Palestinian leadership after the second Intifada began in 2001.

Aron Trauring, an American-Israeli peace activist, reported on a talk by Andoni a few years ago at a peace panel. He wrote that:

Andoni said that the logic of occupation is a form of madness because it leads to violence which breeds violence without end. Andoni is trying to change that...by transforming the Palestinian resistance into a popular uprising. He argues that colonial oppression ends when two conditions occur: the price of colonialism exceeds its benefits [and] within the occupying power an anti-colonial peace movement grows which opposes the colonialism on moral and pragmatic grounds. But to achieve this, the...price extracted of Israelis should...not be in body bags. Nonetheless, there will continue to be Palestinians who demand to extract a price in blood. Israelis and their American Jewish cousins, because of their colonial arrogance and sense of victimhood, cling to the logic of occupation and fail to understand the transformations taking place on the Palestinian side. We do so at great peril.

--Charles Horwitz

Part Three: Hebron - The Christian Peacemaker Team and Displaced Arab Farmers
Part Four: With Physicians for Human Rights to a Refugee Camp