The Journey Begins
A Just Peace, Not Just a Piece is written on the separation wall in Bethlehem. Some thirty yards away, standing ten feet from the wall is the Banksy-owned Walled Off Hotel, closed since October 12, 2023. This past February, I joined seventeen others who traveled to the Holy Land as supporters of Combatants for Peace, Palestinian ex-fighters and Jewish Israeli ex-soldiers who have put down their guns and joined together in non-violent activism to make that aspirational message on the wall a reality.
In two previous trips, I had visited Banksy’s hotel, and it bustled with international tourists. This time, as was the case throughout the West Bank/Palestine, it was different. Now, in wartime, there were very few tourists. The hotel we stayed at in 2022 was shuttered. In the past, I waited in lines to visit the Church of the Holy Sepulcher and the Church of the Nativity, but now we walked right in to enjoy the quiet of the indoors. Getting around the West Bank had become more difficult as Israel had vastly increased the number of checkpoints throughout the region.
In stark economic terms, Zoughbi Zoughbi, long-time director of Wi’am, the Palestinian Conflict Transformation Center, gave us the Bethlehem economic figures: 75% unemployed, 70% poor. It was, the director stated, “the worst of times.”
We visited Aida, one of four refugee camps in Bethlehem, and high above us hung a huge key, largest in the world, symbol of the keys many refugees still hold from the homes they were forced to leave in the 1948 Nakba. Nearby hung a poster of the nine-year-old boy who, years earlier, was shot and killed by an IDF sniper.
Could joint peace groups like the Combatants make a difference, particularly in these very dark times? I knew they were in it for the long haul. They seemed to follow the essence of an Arabic word I heard for the first time on this trip: Sumud or steadfastness. Its most well-known symbol pictures an old woman, laying down on the land, her arms around the trunk of an ancient olive tree, trying to protect the tree from an Israeli-driven bulldozer.
We were desperately in need of inspiration and hoped to find it in nearby Beit Jala at the Palestinian office of the Combatants. There we would hear the testimonies of founding members Avner Wishnitzer and Sulaiman (Suli) Khatib. [Editor’s Note: See the Evolve article To Live This Utopia, for Moments, by Sulaiman Khatib and Penina Eliberg-Schwartz.] We sat around a comfortable room, many of us on cushions, and I recalled being in that same space in October 2022, when we engaged in theatrical role playing led by the Combatants’ theater director, Aymen Helou.
Suli spoke first and told us of his fairly typical early teenage years, drawing the Palestinian flag on walls, an illegal act, and later throwing stones and Molotov cocktails at Israeli tanks. When Avner began, he stressed that he, like Suli, grew up in a “culture of nationalism and militarism” and, like Suli, was raised to “serve.” Avner did serve in an elite IDF unit for four years, where the weapons of killing had the legal imprimatur of a powerful state. Suli did not, and when he and a friend attacked two Israelis with a knife, he, at the age of 14, ended up in prison. His sentence: 10 years, five months.
The experience proved difficult, but Suli soon learned the power of organization and discipline. He took part in two hunger strikes, one for 16 days and the other for 17 days, subsisting on just water and salt. The goals were to improve the prisoners’ conditions and, as he put it, “the battle of the stomach” was successful. He decided to learn Hebrew and Jewish history, including the Holocaust, wanting to understand the other side. He already knew the practice of Sulha, an Arab tradition of stopping a conflict, and through mediation, moving to reconciliation. As he put it, while the prison had jailed his body, his soul was free. When he left prison, he had become committed to non-violence, and to learning more about Jewish Israeli activists. When he and his other comrades heard about former IDF soldiers refusing to serve in the West Bank in 2004, they contacted them.
Avner was among that group. He had always been curious, even skeptical, of the policy of the occupation, and in 2002, while still a reserve soldier, started going to the West Bank with a small group of activists. “What I saw, especially in the southern Hebron Hills —which was the main theater for us— shook me.” He saw very poor people being taken from their homes by the IDF, and he watched settlers violently attack unarmed Palestinians. He saw a “system,” “a whole regime of oppression.” At first, Avner felt “deeply ashamed” as “that system speaks in my name.” Gradually, he felt he couldn’t be part of that system, and in 2004, he, along with a number of other reservists in his same unit, wrote a public letter that they would refuse “to serve in the occupied territories.”
Then Avner and the others began “to look for what’s next.” They wanted to “effectively resist” the system they criticized. It was at that point that they agreed to meet with Suli and his Palestinian friends. The
meeting led to the start of the “Combatants for Peace,” a story told visually and dramatically in the film, Disturbing the Peace. They went around the circle, Jews and Palestinians, each sharing their stories. Avner remarked that even though the differences between them were many, “One thing that we did share is that we were raised to kill people we didn’t know.” But no more. After a few meetings, we realized “we can change and…struggle non-violently against a system that we all agreed is ruinous not just for Palestinians but for Israelis as well.”
To the Gaza Border and Remembrance of Oct. 7th
The next day we drove an hour and a half to Sderot and to an overlook viewing Gaza. We could see buildings in the distance, but I couldn’t tell if it was the rubble we knew was there. We were still in stage one of the Cease Fire, so all was quiet. I wondered if Israelis came up to the overlook to watch the bombings, fire and smoke, in the months before the current cessation. Probably not, as Hamas and others were lobbing missiles into that area
We spent most of the afternoon at Kibbutz Re’im where we met Ramzi Nasser, whose 19-year-old son, Liam, had been kidnapped by Hamas on Oct. 7th. Ramzi identified as Druze, had a Bedouin father and Muslim mother, and had moved to the kibbutz 18 years earlier with his Jewish Israeli wife. We were the first group to hear Ramzi’s detailed story of Oct. 7th. At 6:30 a.m., the kibbutz learned they were under attack. Ramzi immediately called Liam, who lived in an apartment at the other end of the kibbutz. When Liam’s phone went dead at 8:11, Ramzi had no idea what happened, but feared the worse. Soon after, his son’s photo appeared on social media, kidnapped by Hamas, and in a way, that gave Ramzi a sense of relief, not only that Liam was alive, but that his value to Hamas would keep him alive. 54 days later, Liam returned, part of the first hostage-prisoner exchange and brief cease-fire.
Ramzi took us through the pathways of the kibbutz, pointing out details, including the bomb shelters, one of which Liam and his bar mitzvah mates had painted six years earlier, a task that each bar mitzvah cohort traditionally carries out. As Ramzi talked, his bitterness and hatred for Hamas came pouring out, yet in a couple of subsequent stories, he granted some of the Hamas fighters a bit of humanity. We felt touched by Ramzi, listening to what he went through, and we felt his care and concern for us. He had actually gone over to the Nova festival site the evening before to hear the music and to dance. We went to that site, a sizable grassy plain, with some asphalt parking areas, as it had become a huge tourist destination. It was filled with individual signs detailing the bios of those killed and kidnapped, along with their youthful photos. While I knew that hundreds of young people had been massacred there, it was almost too much, and too distant, to directly affect me, at least not in a way that our time with Ramzi had left a visceral impact.
Hebron
Luiz Aberbuj guided us in Hebron, a tense area in the best of times. Luiz grew up in a progressive Jewish milieu in Porto Alegre, Brazil, and after making aliyah, joined the IDF. His experiences harassing children in the West Bank turned him against the army, and he refused service, giving his testimony to Breaking the Silence, the organization he presently works for. He spoke to us of Hebron’s history and walked us through its area. As lunchtime approached, we walked up a steep hill over dozens of stairs, to a Palestinian grass-roots organization, Youth Against Settlements, in the Samud House, where Mohanad Qafesha greeted us.
Provocatively started in 1968, the Jewish settlement in the middle of Hebron now totals about 800, and are guarded by nearly the same number of IDF soldiers and police. That area, designated H-2, is under the control of the IDF who place severe restrictions on the 36,000 Palestinians who live there. The bulk of Hebron’s population, some 200,000, live in what is called H-1, technically under the control of the Palestinian Authority.
Mohanad described the difficulties of Palestinian life in H-2. They can’t receive visitors, even family members, nor are medical personnel nor blue collar artisans (e.g., plumbers, painters, carpenters) allowed. And “things are getting worse…100 times worse since October 7th.” Yet, in the spirit of sumud, Palestinians have learned to make do. One of Qafesha’s main goals is to bring the reality of Hebron life to the outside world through the media, his travels to Europe and production of a documentary.
Al Twani/Masafar Yatta
Later in the day, we visit Al Twani, one of some 20 small villages that make up the region of Masafer Yatta, in the South Hebron Hills. Some of us had met its community leader, Basel Adra, in 2022, and we learned then of his work in journalism and film. This time around we knew that the documentary, “No Other Land,” that Basel had co-directed and, at that time, had secured a nomination for an Academy Award for Best Documentary. (Soon after, having left the Holy Land, we learned that it won the award!) [Editor’s note: See the Evolve article, Settler Violence in the Occupied Territories: Masafer Yatta, by Yasmin Eran-Verdi.]
Basel was away, but we heard from his parents, Nasser El-Adara and Keefah El-Adara, both of whom are featured in the film along with Basel and his Jewish Israeli co-director, Yuval Abraham. Abigail Szor, a staff member of Combatants for Peace, and volunteer, translated for both parents. Nasser focused on the dire situation on the ground, grown worse since October 7th, with increased house demolitions and settler attacks, including gun violence. The community of some 300 continues in the spirit of sumud, aided by dozens of activists who come to the village, escorting the shepherds and the workers on farm land, using cameras as their “weapon” to document human rights violations, and sending them to B’Tselem in Jerusalem.
Across the road by the village school, Keefah described the courageous process by which the community, without a permit, built a much-needed school. The women and children worked during the day, and the men at night (a description which Keefah shares in the documentary). As we left, at the beginning of the Jewish Sabbath, the voices of the men from the nearby settlement singing a favorite traditional song, Shalom Aleichem, reached our ears, thanks to their loud-speaker system.
A Quiet, Restful, Rejuvenated Night
With three rabbis, one Christian minister and a dedicated Quaker amongst us, we decided to have a restful, quiet, community-oriented evening, what became a combination Shabbat/Quaker meeting. We came together in a comfortable room, sat in a circle, shared poetry and periods of silence. We also listened and sang along to the music of Hassan El-Tayyab, one of our group, who worked in D.C. for the Friends Committee on National Legislation:
One thing I know, is you and I are better off together.
If we see mothers cry, in Israel/Palestine,
We won’t turn no blind eye,
Let’s get to higher ground together.
If we all took a stand
We could stop wars across this land,
We’re all in this together.
Better off together.
Khan Al Ahmar, the Jordan River, and Auja
On Saturday, February 15th, we drove to Khan Al Ahmar, towards the Dead Sea. Recently, a single-person settlement, high tower and all, was constructed about 150 yards away on a hill overlooking this long-standing Bedouin community. Each settlement receives connections to water and electricity and a paved road from the Israeli government, all bypassing Palestinian villages. We are greeted by Eid Jahalin, the community’s leader, who offers us the traditional hospitality of coffee. He tells us of settler drones that watch them, of IDF hostility and of the constant struggle to persevere. He asks us, as do many Palestinians, to “share” all of this back home.
Ahmed Helou, a twelve-year veteran of Combatants for Peace from Jericho, translates for us, and also speaks directly to us in English. Some of us already knew that Ahmed and his family had lost 141 Gazan relatives since the war on Gaza commenced. We also knew that Oct. 7th and its aftermath have exasperated tensions within the Combatants for Peace community, but their shared history and connections have kept the group, for the most part, together. Ahmed began:
When October 7th started, “I was very scared—very scared about my family in Gaza and also the situation…[in Jericho] because they locked down all the areas and put check points [in]. I was stuck in my…home for three months. We were in touch by Zoom…[with] Combatants members…It’s not easy. It’s not easy. From the first days, I was in mourning.
On October 8, 2023, his cousin was killed and just two weeks ago, two children, relatives of his, were killed by a falling wall.
We were introduced to about a dozen young Israeli Jews, many from the Combatants for Peace Freedom School of Faith, there for the weekend to walk in support of the shepherds, as shields from increasingly aggressive settlers.
So it is not easy for me to talk and meet Israelis, but with that, I feel a lot of support and empathy from [the Combatants]. It is complicated. Sometimes I feel I can’t meet them. It is not easy to meet. But in general, I continue with hope and continue…working with them because I believe that war will not bring peace. The connection and the honest trust…[will]…bring the peace, and that is what we need to help our people and stop the bloodshed. So because of that…I continue [to be] in touch with them.
With Ahmed as our guide, we traveled on to Jericho, to the Jordan River, and then to Auja, where we were graciously met by a member of the Rashaidai family. Along with some of his friends, we were introduced to about a dozen young Israeli Jews, there for the weekend to walk in support of the shepherds, as hopeful shields from increasingly aggressive settlers. Two had been arrested earlier in the day, but they were subsequently released. Many identified as part of the Combatants for Peace Freedom School of Faith, a new school composed of youths committed to non-violent activism, working for social justice for all. For years, the Combatants had supported both secular Israeli and Palestinian freedom schools, but this was different, a school where its members shared a strong religious background, connecting their ideology to the Torah and associated texts.
About two months ago, I became a father, and my hope for my daughter is that she will not have to live the same life I am living now, always fearing violence, home demolitions, forced displacement that my community… is facing every day. [from Basel Adra’s speech accepting the Academy Award for Best Documentary]
Planting Olive Trees
Traditionally, the final day of a Combatants trip is devoted to volunteer activity, and we were invited to plant olive trees on Palestinian land just outside of Bethlehem. Some three dozen of us, ranging in age from 81 to single digits (Mai Shahin’s lovely niece), spent an adventurous morning with pick ax and shovel getting our hands dirty and placing in the ground small saplings, hoping they would have long lives ahead. As we finished, a few IDF soldiers appeared. We heard part of the discussion, but we had to leave while the talks continued. I checked with a staff member a few days later and, at least at that time, the young saplings remained in place.
Academy Awards and an Ending
About a week after we returned to the U.S., we learned that No Other Land won the Oscar for best documentary. The acceptance speeches by Basel Adra and Yuval Abraham encapsulated the best hopes of our journey.
First Basel:
About two months ago, I became a father, and my hope to my daughter is that she will not have to live the same life I am living now, always fearing violence, home demolitions, forced displacement that my community… is facing every day.
Then Yuval:
When I look at Basel, I see my brother. But we are unequal. We live in a regime where I am free under civilian law, and Basel is under military laws that destroy lives, that he cannot control. There is a different path, a political solution without ethnic supremacy, with national rights for both of our people….Can’t you see that we are intertwined? That my people can be truly safe if Basel’s people are truly free and safe? There is another way. It’s not too late for life, for the living.
About a week later, my wife and I saw “No Other Land” at a Philadelphia theater. As we started to leave, we stayed for the credits, and I smiled when I read that the residents of Masafar Yatta were thanked for their “steadfastness.” May the Combatants for Peace, and all the other peacemakers, be granted the necessary sumud to bring their journey for peace to fruition.
