By now it is starkly clear that the so-called “two state” solution in Palestine-Israel is dead, effectively killed by colonization, racism, and brutal repression.  So what’s left to imagine?

One state.

Impossible, many say.  Israel would never allow it, unless Palestinians were either eliminated or contained on reserves as in North America, a model much admired by the Israeli regime.

On the other hand…

Common State: a potential conversation, a new documentary by Israeli film-maker Eyal Sivan, creates an encounter between Palestinian Arabs and Israeli Jews who dare to imagine a shared future.

The film-maker conducted twenty interviews with politicians and settlers, legal experts and artists, older and younger people, Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews, Palestinian Arabs in Israel and in the occupied territories.

Each responds in her/his mother tongue to the same questions from Eyal Sivan.  The screen is split into two, with Israeli Jews and Palestinians in parallel: one listens, one talks, and vice versa.  The goal is to enact a meeting between two realities which in the current picture remain deeply separate and fragmented.

A thoughtful, challenging, painfully hopeful conversation in 12 minutes,  here.

Books.  If you care about them – what they contain, what they mean, how richly they can embody our lives, our stories and our cultures – please don’t miss the gripping new documentary, The Great Book Robbery, by Israeli filmmaker Benny Brunner.   See it here.

At the deep core of the struggle for justice in Palestine is an abiding refusal of a people to be wiped off the map, and written out of history.

Ghosts of Deir Yassin, a new music video by Firas Taybeh, features singer-songwriter Phil Monsour, poet Rafeef Ziadah, and generations of displaced Palestinians.

Deir Yassin has come to symbolize the ongoing pattern of ethnic cleansing on which Israel is built.  On April 9, 1948, some 120 Jewish fighters from two Zionist paramilitary groups (both designated ‘terrorist’ by the British colonial regime) attacked Deir Yassin, a Palestinian village of about 600 people near Jerusalem.  Some 107 villagers were killed, including women and children. Many were shot, others killed by hand grenades thrown into their homes.

News of the killings sparked terror among Palestinians, and a mass exodus from surrounding towns and villages as Jewish troops advanced.   Some historians, including Israelis, argue convincingly that this was the intended strategic goal of the Deir Yassin massacre.

From Ghosts of Deir Yassin:

…They change the names on the signs
But it’s in our hearts these words are written
Of the children who don’t know their homes
They will walk the streets from which they are forbidden.

You see that we are rising, our day is surely coming
No longer in the shadows
Of the ghosts of Deir Yassin.

“Our spring in Palestine is born shackled to a hospital bed.”  Rafeef Ziadah, Palestinian poet.

Photo: Activestills.org

Four recent glimpses of spring 2012 in Palestine:

1)  Hunger strike.

On May 8, close to 2,000 Palestinian prisoners entered the fourth week of a hunger strike, a mass campaign of peaceful resistance, to demand the most basic rights:  an immediate termination of the administrative detention policy and the excessive use of solitary confinement, humane living conditions, family visits, and reasonable access to educational materials.

Two prisoners, Tha’ir Halahleh and Bilal Diab, have now refused food for more than 70 days.  According to Physicians for Human Rights – Israel, both are at immediate risk of death.

On May 7, Israel’s High Court denied their appeals against “administrative detention,” under which people can be held indefinitely without charge or trial.  The presiding judge, Eliakim Rubenstein, acknowledged flaws in the investigations into both the Tha’ir and Bilal cases, casting doubt on information and sources used by the Israeli security service to obtain the administrative detention order.  Even so, the High Court judges refused to release either prisoner, or even to reduce their period of detention.  Instead they upheld the arbitrary power of the military commander who signed the orders.

2)  Britain’s largest supermarket boycotts companies exporting produce from illegal Israeli settlements.

The UK’s fifth biggest food retailer and its largest co-op business, the Co-operative Group has become the first major European supermarket group to disengage from “any supplier known to be sourcing from the Israeli settlements.”

Hilary Smith, Co-op member and Boycott Israel Network (BIN) agricultural trade campaign co-ordinator, said the Co-op “has taken the lead internationally in this historic decision to hold corporations to account for complicity in Israel’s violations of Palestinian human rights. We strongly urge other retailers to take similar action.”

A spokesperson for the Palestinian Union of Agricultural Work Committees, which works to improve the conditions of Palestinian agricultural communities, commented: “Israeli agricultural export companies like Mehadrin profit from and are directly involved in the ongoing colonisation of occupied Palestinian land and theft of our water.  Trade with such companies constitutes a major form of support for Israel’s apartheid regime over the Palestinian people, so we warmly welcome this principled decision by the Co-operative.  The movement for boycotts, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel until it complies with international law is proving to be a truly effective form of action in support of Palestinian rights.”

More detail here.

3)  United Methodists endorse boycott.

In Tampa, Florida, the General Conference of the United Methodist Church voted to call for boycott of all Israeli companies “operating in the occupied Palestinian territories.”  This constitutes the majority of Israeli corporations.

In addition, the conference expressed strong support for the “Kairos Palestine” statement from Palestinian Christians, and called “for an end to military occupation and human rights violations through nonviolent actions,” actions which include boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS). These measures provide the basis for further action by the Church to hold Israel accountable for its colonial and apartheid regime.

More detail here.

4)  Stop the Wall raided by Israeli military.

At 1:30am on May 8, ten armored jeeps of the Israeli Occupation Forces surrounded and raided the offices of Stop the Wall in Ramallah, West Bank.  The Israeli military stole 2 laptops, 3 hard drives and 10 memory cards containing files and photos as well as archive material.  This is yet another attack on Palestinian civil society and their struggle against the repression, land confiscation and ethnic cleansing policies of Israel.

For almost ten years Stop the Wall has been promoting civil resistance and advocacy campaigns against the Wall and in defense of Palestinian rights to self-determination.  This is not the first Israeli attack on Stop the Wall. In September 2009, the organization’s youth coordinator was arrested, and then in December, coordinator Jamal Juma’ was arrested.  Israeli authorities were unable to bring any charges against either of them.  After an international campaign, both were freed.  A few months later the Israeli military initiated an extensive raid at Stop the Wall.

Jamal Juma`comments:  “It is not surprising that the Israeli authorities have chosen to escalate their repression on the same day that the Israeli High Court rejected the appeals of Palestinian hunger strikers Bilal Diab and Tha’ir Halahleh, effectively condemning them to death.

Almost daily people are out in the streets to protest in solidarity with the Palestinian political prisoners, and their discontent with the fruitless and completely stalled diplomatic “process” is growing stronger.  This raid on the Stop the Wall offices is a clear message that the Israeli authorities fear widespread nonviolent action will challenge their policies effectively.  Israel is preparing for confrontation and more repression, clearly showing that it is not ready to allow any of the international sanctioned human rights that Palestinian people are struggling for.”

“Our spring in Palestine is born shackled to a hospital bed.”  Rafeef Ziadah.

Israeli human rights defender Meir Margalit is under attack.   Please add your name to the support petition, which follows below.  It matters.

Meir Margalit has been active in East Jerusalem for over two decades, in his dual role as an elected member of the Jerusalem City Council, and Field Coordinator with the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD).

As ethnic cleansing accelerates across Israel and occupied Palestine, Jewish settlements in East Jerusalem – in direct violation of international law – expand rapidly, while Palestinian residents are forbidden to build.  Unable to obtain permits from the municipal authorities, they are left with no choice but to build or extend their homes without permits.  As a result, thousands of Palestinian homes are under constant threat of demolition.

As a municipal councillor, Meir Margalit has been active in ongoing efforts to change these discriminatory building policies.  At the same time, in his work with ICAHD he also supports the rebuilding of homes demolished by the authorities in violation of basic human rights.  He does this work publicly and, together with others, has enabled the rebuilding of over 200 houses.

Recently the Israeli Ministry of Interior launched legal proceedings against Meir, claiming that he has engaged in illegal building.   He joins a burgeoning roster of Israeli human rights defenders who’ve come under government attack for legitimate non-violent protest actions.

Meir Margalit needs and deserves the support of anyone anywhere who is interested in building the grounds for a just peace in Israel-Palestine.

The life and work of this quietly eloquent, determined man are featured in a chapter of Our Way to Fight.  This brief excerpt begins with my own sense of home:

While I travelled in Israel and Palestine, I knew always that I would return to my home, a safe haven in Canada, a country well insulated from war and chaos.  That is, or should be, the nature of home, a place of comfort and refuge.  For Palestinians it can never be so as long as house demolitions remain standard policy for the Israeli government.

I asked Meir how ICAHD people measure success in their work.  He pauses, looks away, then back at me.  ‘This is something very difficult,’ he replies.  “The municipality has a long list of houses to be demolished, so when we freeze one, automatically the municipality goes to the next.  We may succeed to save the house of Mohammad, but for the municipality it’s not a problem because next they go to Ibrahim’s house.  If we save Ibrahim’s house, the municipality says, ‘Okay, Yusef is next.’  So we can feel happy for five minutes, but no longer because we have to run to another house.  We could only say that we have succeeded when we change this policy.”

The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions estimates that the number of demolition orders in the West Bank and East Jerusalem reaches into the tens of thousands.

“But you know,” Meir resumes, “for us this question of success is not the most important one.  We feel that even if there is no chance of success in the immediate future, this is something we must do – not just to get results, but to be human.  We know that one day we will succeed, we are sure of that, because there is no other choice.  In the Talmud, the rabbis say something like maybe you will not see the results of your work, but you don’t have the right to stop working.”

Please:

• sign the petition in support of Meir Margalit
• give this message wings by passing it on to others.

If you would like to do more, contact: stopdemolitions@gmail.com.