Can Palestine be Put Back Into the Equation?

[bluesoul]

By KATHLEEN CHRISTISON

"When we demonstrate non-violently the world at least is with us," a young Palestinian resident of the West Bank village of Bilin recently told British journalist Graham Usher. "When we resist violently, it isn't."

Usher, a veteran correspondent in Jerusalem and the Palestinian territories, was describing a non-violent protest against Israel's separation wall that has been running continually since February in this tiny village situated three miles from Israel's 1967 border. Palestinian residents of Bilin, Palestinian activists from neighboring villages, Israeli peace activists, and internationals from the International Solidarity Movement have maintained an almost permanent presence in Bilin to protest the confiscation of the majority of the village's farmland for construction of the wall. The protesters have committed themselves to non-violent tactics, even prohibiting stone-throwing. In response, Israeli security forces have fired live ammunition and rubber-coated bullets into the crowds, beaten and teargassed protesters and, in at least one instance caught on film, sent in provocateurs posing as Palestinians who threw stones at police, provoking an assault on the protesters and the arrest of several Palestinians. More than 100 Palestinians, Israelis, and internationals have been injured by Israeli police and military. And construction of the wall moves on inexorably.

This Palestinian non-violence is an edifying spectacle, worthy of Gandhi and Martin Luther King. But one wonders how the young Palestinian's hope that the world will stand in solidarity with the Palestinians if they are non-violent can ever be realized. For how will the world ever know? How will Israelis and Americans, let alone the world, ever know that Palestinians and their few friends in the Israeli and the international peace movements are risking their lives for the principle that Israel's violence and aggression against Palestinians should be met with non-violent, non-aggressive resistance?

Who in the world cares? Apparently no one. A search of the Washington Post and New York Times archives for the name Bilin (including in its other transliteration, Bil'in) turns up nothing in the Post and only two items in the Times, both merely brief afterthoughts at the end of long wrap-up articles, both limited to two sentences about Israeli forces "clashing" with protesters, both dating five months into the months-long protest, and neither mentioning the non-violent nature of the protest or its duration. If CNN and the television networks have mentioned Bilin at all, the coverage has been minimal.

More:

http://www.counterpunch.org/christison08262005.html

[eyl]

1. If those protests are non-violent

how come most of them end up with some police injuries as well? Do you really think they're beating themselves up?

[Name removed]

2. Deleted message

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[eyl]

3. Oh please

besides, if it's slave labor, how come the Palestinians are complaining they'll be barred from Israel?

[Jim Sagle]

4. Israel doesn 't need and doesn't really want Palestinian labor.

[bluesoul]

5. Dream on

The reality denies you in every way, as always..

[Igel]

6. Israel seems to be importing labor from other countries,

if the heterogeneous composition of some of the ethnicities/nationalisties of those killed by suicide bombers is any indication. This is an unspoken consequence of the intifada, and might well lead to higher structural unemployment rates for Palestinians adjacent to Israel. Unless, of course, the immigrant laborers go home.

At the same time, it's gotten much harder--by Israeli edict--for Palestinians to cross into Israel to work. When Israel closes the border to laborers, Palestinian income declines.

[pelsar]

7. sure does bluesoul

i suggest you open your eyes to the reality of the israeli labor market and how the palestenains are almost no longer a part of it...no matter how much they would like to be...but then that might ruin your prefered view of the conflict....put the blinders back on, the truth can be blinding

[bluesoul]

8. oh yeah

You couldn't stand the fact that Israeli economy would be dependant on Palestinian cheap labor would you? Since you hate them so much...

[Jim Sagle]

13. No fact, just brag....

[Jim Sagle]

12. Step away from the mirror....

[Name removed]

9. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[bluesoul]

10. oh

sure Counterpunch (as a leftist source) is problematic while all those RW posts and articles by the likes of JPost, Benny Morris etc... are all fine and dandy, right? Oh and lets not forget Foxandcorkum and LGF....

I also find a bunch of sources by you and your comrades over here inflammatory, insulting to Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims in general. How's that for a different view?

:puke:

[Jim Sagle]

11. Benny Morris is not RW, he's a LWer who wised up. Just so u know....

[Colorado Blue]

14. Back it up. I am quoting encyclopedia sources, as neutral

as I can possibly find, and those are backed up by historical documentation such as Nuremburg Trial and UN transcripts, as well as independent journalists, researchers and historians over the decades and even the centuries.

I find it problematic that many of the ideals of the far Left are supported by the far Right, and I should think any other PROGRESSIVE would too.

Meanwhile I don't find it at all productive simply to go around barfing and calling people and institutions "right wing" without a shred of reasoning behind the appellation.

I would welcome some creative ideas from you, however. It is obvious you care passionately about the situation of the Arabian people. Good. So do I. Now let's talk.

[bluesoul]

15. ....

Wikipedia is hardly neutral, as are many other encyclopedias. Many times they may just be revealing the bias of those that wrote them especially concerning such divisive issues as the I/P so I wouldn't give too much even on such sources, sorry.

There you go, you're labeling me as far left (and equalling Counterpunch to the far right even though they are the very opposite, I guess Noam Chomsky doesn't mean a lot to you or those Haaretz journalists and writers that also write for CP), only for standing for my liberal ideas and supporting the right of Palestinians.

And you can be sure I care passionately about the Palestinians and Arabs (even though I am not one). Even more when I read internet forums where they're being demonized, with sterotypical generalizing and blaming for all the evil, just not the Israeli (IDF, Likud) side.

And that's ALL i have to say here. Too much time spent and a lot of it wasting for going in circles. EOS from my side