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coalition of individuals and |
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Coalition for Peace with Justice
Letter to Chapel Hill News [to CPWJ Letters page] [ to CPWJ home page] May 14, 2003The ISM and the Committee of 16 The most ominous new wrinkle in the Israeli government's ever advancing campaign to extinguish Palestinian hopes for a viable future in their homeland has so far received no notice in these pages. On May 9-10 its forces began arresting members of the International Solidarity Movement and made a ruinous raid upon the main, West Bank office of the ISM. It may be that the Editors missed the full implications of this all-out assault by dozens of soldiers, border- and civilian-police upon the premier organization actively pursuing nonviolent resistance to the 36-year occupation of remnant Palestine. The continued existence of an international group of volunteers willing to brave the perils constantly endured by Arab Muslims and Christians (Beit Sahour, site of the ISM office, is among the largest Christian centers in the Territories) has been a constant check on the military's smothering any show of opposition. That the current Israeli regime now considers ISM's witness to be the most troublesome fly in the suffocating ointment the IDF imposes on all but the settlers is clear from the waiver being required of foreign visitors to the Gaza Strip; and a total ban on ISM members betrays its aim to fix a tourniquet on these fingers of us doubting Thomases outside the open-air prison there. But the measure comes too late: Amnesty International delegates may have refused to cross this red line and indemnify the IDF for whatever it does in contravention of the Geneva Conventions, while the latest killing of a British filmer of children's daily life in Rafah reminds the foreign press that it is open season there not just on Palestinian journalists, five of whom have fallen in the new Intifada. But the ISM, which formed when the United States vetoed in the Security Council the desperate calls of everyone from Kofi Anan's personal rep in Palestine to the head of Palestinian Center for Human Rights, and which didn't blink when Sharon ordered new assassinations within the hour of acquiescence to a cease-fire by the militant factions, persevered even when the premier took just 2 days to start a full-fledged invasion of the cities of the OT as his answer to the Saudi-initiated peace offer to Israel by 22 Arab states. Since this letter began, arrests of 5 more ISM members have taken place. An effort finally to snuff out all non-violent resistance is thus to proceed in tandem with the 100% drive demanded against the terrorists is not in doubt. But a local Committee of Sixteen (Christian, Jewish, and Muslim), of which I am one, has been inspired anew by the ISM's determination to endure both the obduracy of the Israeli expansionists and the seeming complicity of American roadmappers...and may the pejoratives here be belied by positive results from the talks just ended in Jerusalem and Jericho or those forthcoming in Washington! From our origin in Autumn, 2000, our goal of peace with justice for all the inhabitants of Israel/Palestine has been pursued through informal approaches to the Scandinavians, who have proved by word and deed a dedication to peacemaking second to none. As long as hope from the Security Council for progress on the conflicts in the Middle East remained, we preferred that our proposal of initiatives to be taken through the General Assembly of the UN should be credited to those who ventured to champion a veto-free resolution there and shoulder burdens of peacekeeping beyond the resources of the ISM. Acting, then, on that Uniting-for-Peace precedent embraced by the United States when it still even-handedly sought a just conclusion to this longest festering global conflict, the Scandinavians or other disinterested parties must now assume the mantle which our own leaders have come to disdain. -Edwin L. Brown, Professor Emeritus of Classics at UNC-CH |
