Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, May - June 2001, page 96

Human Rights

 

U.S. and Israeli Jews Join in “Olive Trees for Peace”

Break the Silence, a national network of American Jews who support a just and peaceful settlement between Israel and a viable Palestinian state, announced their “Olive Trees for Peace Campaign” in a full-page ad in the April 8 New York Times.

Says their statement, “We dare not leave peacemaking solely in the hands of Prime Minister Sharon and Chairman Arafat. Both peoples must now act at the grass roots.”

Working closely with the Jewish community in Israel through Rabbis for Human Rights (Israel), and through them with Palestinian villages in the West Bank and Gaza, Break the Silence urges support of people-to-people replanting of olive trees in Palestinian villages where they have been uprooted by Israeli soldiers and settlers.

In the village of Hares, for example, the Israeli rabbis of Rabbis for Human Rights found 1,500 olive trees destroyed—many in places far from where they could have been used as cover for violence.

These olive trees were not decorative. They were the life-support of the village. Some of the trees were hundreds of years old, having produced oil and olives for Hares throughout that time. Each one of them paid the cost of year after year of schooling for a child, or the cost of a room built for a growing child. In short, these trees are the family bank accounts.

The Torah itself declares, “Even if you are at war with a city…you must not destroy its trees.” (Deut 20: 19-20).

Organizers of the campaign said, “We are joining in an act of people-to-people peace-making with Rabbis for Human Rights in Israel—the only Israeli rabbinic association that includes Orthodox, Reform, Reconstructionist, and Conservative rabbis—to help purchase new trees for several Palestinian villages, and then to replant these trees and help meet the humanitarian, human-rights, and environmental needs of these villages while the trees re-grow.

“We ask the American Jewish community and all Americans who care about the lives, security, and peaceful future of Israelis and Palestinians to help Rabbis for Human Rights work with Palestinian villages to replace these uprooted olive trees.”

The ad also invites the public to think about additional steps to take in order to protect Israelis and Palestinians and secure peace:

1. Demand the end of the dangerous settlements of Israelis within the West Bank and Gaza. They weaken the security of Israel and are not in the least necessary to Israel’s existence or self-definition.

They make impossible the emergence of a viable and peaceful Palestine: Many settlers use violence against the Palestinians near whom they live; they attract rage from Palestinians whose land, water, and sense of identity they shatter, and they are vulnerable to violence from outraged Palestinians, leading to by far the largest number of Israeli deaths.

These settlements are bad for both Israel and Palestine. The settlers should be given the compassionate and honorable choice either to come home to Israel or to live as citizens of Palestine, under Palestinian law and with no special relationship to Israel.

2. Urge the Israeli government to let the Palestinian neighborhoods in East Jerusalem elect their own leaders now, so as to establish a responsible self-governing body. There will never be peace unless Palestinian neighborhoods in East Jerusalem can govern themselves.

3. Urge Palestinians to respond to such increasing people-to-people peacemaking by turning to vigorous nonviolent protest, rather than violence, to bring about justice.

The Olive Trees for Peace Campaign hopes to change both Palestinian attitudes toward Israelis and Jews, and the attitudes of Jews in Israel and America toward Palestinians.

Campaign organizers invite the American people as a whole to join in this grass-roots, tree-roots approach to making peace—and urge the U.S. government to adopt these principles:

* 1. Replanting trees.

* 2. Supporting families whose trees have been uprooted and cut down for the six to 10 years necessary for a new tree to give fruit or for a cut tree to regenerate. (This is what Palestinians have been telling us is most important.) The financial loss to a family is NIS 300 ($75) per tree per year.

* 3. Non-tree related humanitarian relief (particularly for food).

* 4. Purchasing olive oil from families prevented from selling it by the closure.

The Shefa Fund, 8459 Ridge Avenue, 2nd floor; Philadelphia, PA 19128-2119; (215) 483-4004 is also collecting tax-deductible donations for this endeavor.

—Ÿherie Brown, director, National Coalition-Building Institute; Rabbi Mordechai Liebling, The Shefa Fund; and Rabbi Arthur Waskow, director, The Shalom Center.

 

Tree Huggers vs IDF

Israel Defense Forces (IDF) arrested German national Yasmin Khayal, Canadian-Israeli Neta Golan, and American Tzap Ryter, as well as Palestinian Anis Saleh in April and charged them with obstructing military vehicles. The activists sat down in the path of a bulldozer as an act of nonviolent resistance to the destruction of an olive grove. The bulldozers, which were attempting to uproot 1,500 olive trees, were temporarily halted as the lawyer representing the village appealed to a higher court.

On April 5, the Israeli High Court heard the case. Fearing the court would place so-called “security” above justice, activists waited in the grove at Dier Istia, chained to the olive trees. They called for all activists to join them to show their solidarity and support. They also took the opportunity while awaiting the return of the bulldozers to strategize on more innovative and effective ways to carry out direct urgent actions. The group is a part of the International Solidarity Movement and demands that Israel uphold international law and U.N. resolutions.

—Yasmin Khayal

 

Activist Discusses Human Rights in the Middle East

On April 4, the U.S. Institute of Peace hosted a lecture entitled “Human Rights in the Middle East: the Crisis of Implementation” by Senior Fellow Neil Hicks. Dr. Hicks has worked for over 15 years with Amnesty International and the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights.

The premise of Dr. Hicks’ research is that human rights conditions in the Middle East are not improving. Governments of the region, he explained, have become more creative in talking the language of human rights, but the rhetoric has not generated real changes. Despite having active local human rights organizations and despite the fact that all states in the region have ratified at least one human rights treaty, there has not been noticeable progress in human rights conditions. The crisis is not specific to the Middle East, he explained. Rather, he said, there seem to be blocks of regions in the world in which general human rights conditions are not improving.

Dr. Hicks focused his project on Egypt and Turkey to examine what has worked and what has not, in order to draw lessons for the future.

He stated that progress has been lacking especially in the area of persuading governments to change to allow for greater implementation of human rights. He explained that in addition to the traditional methods of persuasion, which has had little success, the human rights movement has also sought to produce change through the shaming or coercion of various governments.

One of the main obstacles facing human rights implementation in the region, Dr. Hicks stated, is the common accusation that human rights are Western-imported values, and thus incompatible with local traditions. He acknowledged that what opens the international human rights movement to such criticism is the reality that the movement’s resources are disproportionately centered in the West. Thus, concerns about Western influence on the formulation of the human rights agenda can be somewhat understood. However, Dr. Hicks clarified, despite that myth one cannot find evidence that Islamic values are at variance with human rights. Many of the human rights activists and organizations he interviewed for his research, he said, were Muslims who found no contradiction between human rights values and their faith.

When contrasting the cases of Egypt and Turkey, Dr. Hicks concluded that whereas the local Egyptian human rights movement failed to build a working relationship with independent or oppositional political forces, in the case of Turkey, “a powerful political coalition in favor of human rights change has emerged.” Turkey’s human rights movement, he said, has been successful in raising public awareness of human rights conditions.

Finally, Dr. Hicks concluded that the international human rights movement needs to be more attentive to concerns that its work may inadvertently replicate “the inequitable global power relations.” He warned that generating reports and bringing attention to human rights violations may in fact produce counter-effective results. As an alternative, he encouraged “less visible consciousness raising, education and local capacity building.”

—Asma Yousef

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