No Screams, No Curses as Jews, Palestinians Talk

They stood beneath the protective shade of a tree or sat on the stone patio of a nearby house here Saturday--groups of two or four or sometimes 10 people, relaxed, sharing bottles of water and speaking in Arabic or Hebrew or English or whatever other language they had in common.

They were Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs, and they represented a small but apparently growing phenomenon that has emerged from nearly eight months of civil unrest here just as surely, if not as strongly, as the fear and hostility of two peoples fighting for what each sees as national existence.

The Palestinians of Beit Sahur have become a powerful symbol of the resistance to Israeli occupation--not because of violent, anti-government demonstrations but because of their acts of peaceful civil disobedience and success at rudimentary forms of self-government.

The Jews were members or supporters of “Stop the Occupation,” one of several leftist Israeli pressure groups born--or in some cases, reborn--in the crucible of what the Arabs call their intifada, or uprising.

And what was happening in those small discussion groups was a still-rare example of the two sides trying to reach through formidable institutional barriers to establish some human contact.

While many Israelis are troubled by their army’s record in trying to end the intifada, and even more say they are ready to trade occupied land for peace with the Palestinians, relatively few have ever met a West Bank Arab on equal terms. Similarly, while there has long been a selection of Palestinian “personalities” who meet officially with sympathetic Israeli groups, few ordinary Arabs here have done the same.

From Different Worlds

People like Anat Porath and Hafida Awad, for example--middle-aged women from different worlds--had never been part of this limited dialogue until Saturday, when they stood, leaning against a stone wall across from Awad’s home and spoke in Arabic about the occupation.

“In our houses, we don’t have any Israeli products--no cigarettes, no soft drinks,” boasted Awad as Porath offered her a smoke. A boycott of Israeli products, wherever some alternative is available, is one of the lesser-known tactics of the intifada.

While Stop the Occupation has been organizing weekly visits to West Bank Palestinian villages for the last few months, Porath said this was her first. A member of the more mainstream Peace Now organization who learned Arabic in school, Porath said she joined Saturday’s outing because she is nagged by the feeling she is not active enough. “Whatever I do, it’s not enough,” she said.

Speaking Her Language

Awad, whose son is imprisoned for intifada- related activity, was obviously pleased to find an Israeli to whom she could speak in her own language. “We came out when we saw them because we wanted to release our anger,” the Arab woman said. “We are very happy they are here.”

Stop the Occupation has a hard core of a few dozen activists in Jerusalem, said spokesman Elnathan Weissert, 28, a student. Most are active in far-left Israeli political parties such as the Communists or the so-called Progressive List for Peace. Their platform calls for Israeli recognition of the Palestine Liberation Organization as the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people and a “two-state solution”--creation of an independent Palestinian state next to Israel on the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

In addition to the hard core, the organization regularly attracts scores of other activists from other groups to its field trips and protests.

Weekly Protest Meetings

One Saturday participant, for example, said she was active in Women in Black, a new Jewish women’s group which holds a protest in a downtown Jerusalem square every Friday afternoon to mourn the effects of the occupation. And there are others.

A group calling itself The 21st Year was formed soon after last year’s 20th anniversary of the Israeli takeover on the West Bank and Gaza Strip following the 1967 Six-Day War.

Another, called the Beita Committee, is a small group of Israelis committed to aid Palestinian families left homeless after the army destroyed 14 houses in the West Bank village of Beita following a still-baffling incident in which three Palestinians and an Israeli teen-ager were killed. “There’s a Limit,” an organization born during Israel’s ill-fated Lebanon war, has been reactivated for men who refuse to serve in the occupied territories.

Palestinian Efforts

New efforts to reach across the cultural and political divide have recently been made by the Palestinian side, as well. Last week two prominent pro-PLO leaders from the territories broke a longstanding nationalist taboo by sharing the podium with an Israeli Knesset member at a public forum organized by Peace Now, endorsing the two-state solution in the process.

These efforts have not been without opposition.

Noisy demonstrators from Rabbi Meir Kahane’s rabidly anti-Arab Kach movement protested the Peace Now forum, for example. And the army has frequently prevented Jewish groups from entering West Bank Palestinian villages.

It happened again Saturday, when troops first turned back two busloads of Stop the Occupation activists at a roadblock outside Beit Sahur. When about 80 die-hards hiked through fields to circumvent the roadblock, more troops, alerted by a spotter plane, raced out to meet them at the edge of town and declared Beit Sahur a “closed military area.”

Smoking and Laughing

There was no trouble--all the soldiers sent to stop the march were officers, and after blocking the road with three jeeps, they stood around smoking and laughing with each other and some of the demonstrators. The activists divided into two groups--some who held up placards with inscriptions such as “Two Peoples; Two States,” and others who took their photograph.

After about half an hour of negotiations, the troops allowed 10 representatives of the organization to go into town, where hundreds of villagers had been waiting to greet them. They received an enthusiastic reception, expressed their support and met the town’s mayor.

Meanwhile, back at the roadblock, other villagers drifted over from their homes and struck up conversations with the activists left behind.

Easy Banter

“As you see, we don’t have any tails,” said one young Palestinian woman as everyone laughed.

“What do you do when you’re under curfew?” an Israeli visitor asked, knowing that Beit Sahur was under army curfew for much of the last two weeks.

“Practicing on the piano or reading. This is all you have to do during the day,” said the Arab woman. “Have you been in the army?” she added, turning to an Israeli man. “Do you know if the rules of a curfew give soldiers the right to order us to make them coffee or tea?”

The man said it had been a long time since he had any experience with a curfew. “But we can find out,” chimed in his woman companion.

To Weissert, it was all a great success. “The visits are very important to let Palestinians know that there are Israelis who are different,” he said.

“And it’s important for us to hear them--to get to know and see the situation (in the occupied territories),” he added.