Revolutionäre Internationalistische Organisation • RIO • www.revolution.de.com

Neta Golan is an Israeli living in Ramallah, who co-founded the International Solidarity Movement in 2001. She stayed with Yasser Arafat during the siege of the Presidential Compound in Ramallah in 2002, and works as a media coordinator and trainer for the ISM.

The ISM was created to support grassroots, nonviolent resistance in Palestine. It is a joint Palestinian-international movement, but Palestinian-led. We have three central principles: one is non-violence. We are committed to supporting non-violent actions. The second principle is working in groups so we can be effective. We are a consensus-based movement with as little hierarchy as possible. The third one is to say that we as internationals are here as guests. We don't want to be "colonial activists" telling the Palestinians what to do. We take their lead and join Palestinian initiatives. It has to be the local communities that decide on the actions, because it's them that have to stay here and deal with the consequences, which can be horrible.

The ISM was born with the Al-Aqsa-Intifada in September 2000. The Israeli army (IDF) had for a long time been shooting at unarmed demonstrators. But when the mass, nonviolent protests began in the first month of the Intifada, the Israeli Army was killing an average of seven children a day. The killing was systematic. At the time I was sure that the Israeli and international society would be outraged and force the Israeli government to stop. So in the first month I was out demonstrating in front of the Prime Minister's Office in Jerusalem.

But if you had told me back then that five years later it would be completely normal for the army to kill children, well I wouldn't have believed you...

After a month it became clear that this would be accepted because of the racism (you can call it Anti-Semitism, because Arabs are Semites) against Arabs all over the western world. We knew that if we had Israelis and internationals at the demonstrations it could help deter the army's violence.

Our first big action was in December 2000, in the village of Bait Zahur near Bethlehem. There was a march of the Palestinian villagers with international and Israeli activists to the military base Shidma, which was built on the land of Bait Zahur. At the time the IDF was shelling the village from this base, damaging or destroying hundreds of homes. There were clashes between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian fighters constantly. We marched to the base with a letter to the soldiers asking that they go home. Because they knew they were defending no one: there were no Israeli civilians in the area.

The military knew that the Palestinians were too terrified to come near the base. So at the entrance there was not a single guard. After we reached the gates and chanted for a while, we just walked in. 300 people, mostly Palestinians, in the middle of this IDF base. When the soldiers came to confront us and we read them the letter, they didn't really know what to do because Israelis and internationals were at the head of the demo. If it had just been Palestinians they would have known what to do, they would have opened fire. Before we left a French ISM activist, at the request of a local child, put a Palestinian flag on top of the base's watchtower, as a symbol of reclaiming the land.

We have a number of paralell projects. One central area of our work is supporting resistance to the Annexation Barrier, the walls and fences being built around the West Bank. Our main focus is the village of Bilin near Ramallah, where the resistance is most constant, with a demo every Friday for the last ten months.

Every year we try to support the olive harvest. This year we are focussed on the city of Nablus. Together with Israeli groups like Rabbis for Human Rights or Anarchists Against the Wall we go out and pick olives in areas that are under threat from settler attack.

We also provide speakers for international speaking tours. Mohammed Khatib from the Popular Comittee Against the Wall in Bilin has just arrived in France and will spend 40 days there and in Spain. Right now there is a speaking tour across the US organized by ISM USA, with the Israeli Activist Yonatan Pollack.

Hebron, in the South of the West Bank, seems to be the place with the most conflicts between settlers and Palestinians.

We have two projects in the Hebron Area. One is in Tel Rumeida, a neighborhood in the old city where Palestinians live side by side with Israeli settlers under conditions of Apartheid. For example Palestinians can't use central roads, which are reserved for settlers, and Palestinian children on the way to school are subject to settler youth throwing stones at them and other kinds of assaults. International activists from the ISM accompany these children to school every day. For the Palestinians, resistance means just staying in Hebron.

The other project in Hebron is a place called Qawawis. It's land that belongs to Palestinian families that are shephards. They have one house, which was built before 1948. If they try to build anything, even a stable for their sheep, they immediately get a notice from the Civil Administration (the Israeli government of the occupied territories) that if they don't demolish the structure, the IDF will demolish it for them. So they live in caves, surrounded by "illegal outposts". Now this term is confusing, because according to international law all Israeli settlements are illegal. But these outposts are illegal even under Israeli law, because they weren't approved by the government. But even if they're officially not approved, they get a lot of unofficial support: military protection, electricity, water.

The settlers in Hebron are religious extremists, with Messianic beliefs that their holy mission is to save all the land of Greater Israel by getting rid of all the Arabs.

Just recently four ISM activists were expelled from Hebron by the IDF. How did that happen?

A few days ago soldiers had detained the internationals for no reason. The activists called the police, and the police arrested them and held them without charges. After 24 hours (the legal maximum), they were presented to a judge who condemned the police for holding the activists without legal grounds, or even a good reason. But because the area is so sensetive, he released them on the condition that they not return to Hebron for 10 days or participate in any political demonstrations. This has nothing to do with security, this is political persecution.

Yesterday a Palestinian family from near Hebron was trying to pick olives on their land, which is close to a settlement. They were assaulted by settlers, and when they called the police, they were arrested. A number of Palestinian ISM activists were detained as well.

How are the ISM and other anti-occupation groups accepted in Israeli society?

Well I can't give a definitive answer, because I'm based in Palestine. But I can say there is an ongoing diffamation campaign from the Office of Foreign Affairs (who we can't sue for libel) and right-wing settler groups like "Stop the ISM." They spread the most incredible lies. I've had outrageous things written about me, for example that I spent my life in a mental institution. Now, years later, people at meetings still ask me how I managed to become an activist...

But when they found out I am married to a Palestinian man from Nablus, who they claimed was a Fatah activist (which is not true), no more proof of my insanity was needed.

How do Palestinians respond to the ISM, since many activists are of Jewish origin?

I'd say about 20% of our activists are Jewish, from the US, Canada and other countries. The Palestinian communities welcome them; people are happy to have Jewish protestors marching in the demonstrations. Of course there are Palestinian racists. As a Jew in the West Bank I have experienced it. But it's so much less than the anti-Arab racism in Israel - here it's an exception and there it's the norm.

Even the Hamas has welcomed Jewish activists into their houses. In Bilin I've seen Hamas and Israeli activists protesting side by side. When an Israeli is wounded, it's the Hamas kids that run to help them. Just because people here are against the occupation, doesn't mean they can't differentiate between Jew and Israeli, between zionists and peace activists.

Where we work, we ask the communities if they're comfortable with Israelis participating in the actions, and in some places like Nablus City they aren't. But in all the years no community has ever said they're unconfortable with Jewish activists.

In Nablus there is a community of Samaritans, and the Palestinians consider them Jews. They are descendents of the Israelites, so their religion is very similar to Judaism: they speak ancient Hebrew and keep the Shabbat. The point is that in Nablus they are part of the community, there is no general hatred against Jews.

Before 1948, before Zionism became a threat to the Palestinian people, there had always been Jews living in the Arab world. Their situation was incomparably better than the Jews in Europe. According to the Koran, Christians and Jews living under a Muslim regime have special rights. They must be allowed to practice their religion. If you look at Spain, the golden age of the Jews was the centuries of Muslim rule. Once the Christians came to power, the Jews were expelled.

People tend to portray the conflict here as some kind of ancient religious conflict going back millenia. But I can say that on the Palestinian side there is not a religious, just an anti-colonialist agenda.

How do you respond to the accusations that you support terrorist groups or actions?

We respond by telling the truth, that's our strength. But everything that happens here is called terrorism by the IDF. When the British photographer Tom Hurndall was shot by soldiers in Gaza, the first statement by the IDF said he was wearing camoflage and holding a gun. Then they released another statement saying he had been standing next to a Palestinian militant. The truth is that a group of soldiers were shooting at three children at a roadblock, and Tom was trying to get them out of the line of fire.

Or take Rachel Corrie's case: a common lie is that the house she was protecting had a tunnel for smuggling weapons in from Egypt. But anyone who's been there knows that in order to create a buffer zone around the Gaza-Egypt border, the IDF was destroying row after tow of houses. Rachel was run over by a bulldozer. The army at first said that the driver didn't see her - even though she was wearing a bright orange vest and shouting at him with a megaphone! Then they said she was crushed by a part of the house's wall falling on her. The army did an "internal enquiry" just for media purposes, and there was no criminal investigation.

By sending the signal that there were no consequences for shooting internationals, there was a whole wave of ISM activists, UN officials and reporters who were shot, and some killed. The only thing that stopped this was the trial against the soldier who shot Tom. Because of international pressure, a criminal investigation was opened. Before the trial the IDF bulldozed the whole area to destroy any evidence. The soldier was sentenced to seven years in prison - but this only happened because he's a Beduin, an Arab nationality that lives in Israel and faces discrimination.

During the first week of the current Intifada 13 Arab Israelis were shot dead on Israeli territory. These are Israeli citizens in their own country being shot because of their ethnicity. The army had an internal enquiry, with no results. But since then, 17 more Arab Israelis have been shot, and there is not even an enquiry.

What would you like to say to people reading this in another part of the world?

I want to invite people to come and see the situation for themselves. I know it's confusing to get two completely different versions of every story. So I invite, ask, plead people to come and see for themselves what is the reality of the occupied territories of Palestine.