Palestinians Raise Nonviolent Ruckus Over Israel’s Moves

Samir Harb was startled shortly after midnight Monday by the sight of his 9-year-old daughter and 5-year-old son padding into the living room in their pajamas, pots and pans in their hands and civil disobedience on their minds.

It probably shouldn’t have surprised him. All of Ramallah was awake, it seemed, to express its anger over Israel’s military crackdown in a way that has been all too rare in this region of seething hatred: nonviolently.

But very, very loudly.

Tuesday may go down in Palestinian lore as the beginning of the pots and pans rebellion. Hundreds marched through the streets of Ramallah, banging on kitchenware, garbage cans and anything else handy to show their displeasure over months of Israeli-imposed curfews and last week’s assault on the headquarters of Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat. Thousands more stayed home but banged away from balconies, out windows and on front porches.

The dead-of-night protest lasted two deafening hours and was remarkable in at least two ways.

First, both sides showed restraint. Some young Palestinians threw rocks at Israeli soldiers, and some soldiers fired tear gas and rubber bullets, but no one was seriously hurt. By the standards of demonstrations here--two people protesting in Ramallah were killed by Israeli troops just two nights earlier--it was peaceful.

Second, the demonstration was another indication of how the Israeli siege on the Palestinian headquarters, ordered by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to isolate Arafat, has had the effect among Palestinians of rehabilitating a politician who had been considered on the ropes just a week earlier.

“I’m one of the people who wasn’t very impressed with Arafat,” said Harb, a 35-year-old banker. “But if we feel something against Arafat, it should be our decision to deal with that. I don’t think Sharon should be the one telling us to change him.”

Sharon disagrees, maintaining that Arafat is so untrustworthy a leader that Israel’s security depends on moving him aside.

This point of view, shared by many Israelis, was perhaps best expressed by Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, who was quoted this week as telling European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana: “We cannot tolerate a situation in which anyone can come and kill us. This [siege] is taking place because the Palestinians lack anyone taking responsibility for eliminating acts of terror.”

Israel launched the assault on the Muqata, as Arafat’s headquarters complex is known, on Thursday, not long after a Palestinian suicide bomber struck a crowded bus in Tel Aviv. Six people, plus the bomber, died as a result of the attack, the second suicide bombing in two days.

In ordering the surrounding of Arafat’s headquarters, and the destruction of most of it, Israeli officials have charged that it had become a haven for wanted terrorists. Israel is demanding that the Palestinians turn over as many as 50 of them. Arafat has refused. The standoff continued Tuesday with no signs of resolution.

What also continued was the outpouring of sympathy and support for Arafat, an unthinkable phenomenon to many Israelis, who regard him as an unreformed terrorist who has at best tolerated, and at worst sanctioned, repeated attacks on Israeli civilians.

“It is hard to understand the mass demonstrations that were held by Palestinians this week ... in support of Yasser Arafat,” the newspaper Maariv wrote in an editorial Tuesday. “Instead of standing up to Arafat and his cronies, who represent the failing and tainted leadership, they go out into the streets and cheer the person who sentenced them to a life of poverty and shame.”

Not all Palestinians would entirely disagree with that assessment. To many who marched, it was beside the point.

There were two demonstrations in Ramallah on Tuesday--the pot-banging march in the middle of the night and a more conventional, smaller rally in the city center in the afternoon. Similar rallies were held elsewhere in Palestinian communities. In the northern Israeli town of Nazareth, about 2,000 Israeli Arabs and Jewish peace activists marched in support of Arafat.

“Arafat, don’t be shaken!” chanted the marchers at the second Ramallah protest.

“I hate Arafat,” said a middle-aged hotel worker who would give only his first name, George. “I think he’s corrupt.” Nevertheless, he said, he was out protesting “because Sharon is humiliating not only our people, but our leader. Our leader!”

The midnight march in Ramallah was organized on the fly by a new group that says it is dedicated to peaceful protest against the Israeli military occupation and curfews, which have kept hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from working or going to school.

The group, Nucleus, organized a similar pots-and-pans protest in April, but it was not nearly as successful, according to Dr. Ahmad Badran, a Ramallah dentist who is a co-founder. This time, Badran said, anger over the 24-hour curfews--which are lifted only once every two weeks or so--boiled over, and some neighborhoods participated with near unanimity. He said the organizers only had to post a notice on their Web site and make some phone calls, and word of mouth did the rest.

The siege against Arafat also played a part, he said. People wanted to show support “not for Arafat as a person, but as a symbol of our national struggle.”

Arafat’s popularity has been dwindling, and some Palestinian and Israeli analysts believed his career was in its twilight this month when his Cabinet resigned rather than face a no-confidence vote.

Although Arafat was expected to have little difficulty winning another term as president in elections in January, there was talk of creating a new post of prime minister that would in effect make the president a figurehead. Now, reform-minded Palestinians say, that may all go by the wayside.

“We were going ahead with reform--and then they do all of this,” said Dr. Mustafa Barghouti, a leading advocate of political reform. “They are, in my opinion, helping him resist the change.”