Editor’s
note: On June 8, 2015, prominent nonviolent resistance leader Iyad Burnat of
Palestine received the James Lawson Award for Achievement in the Practice
of Nonviolent Conflict. The award, founded in 2011, is given during an annual educational institute on nonviolent conflict, jointly
organized by the International Center
on Nonviolent Conflict
(ICNC) and the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University in
Massachusetts, USA. During Iyad’s acceptance speech, as well as during an exclusive
follow-up video interview with Amber French and Katherine Hughes-Fraitekh of
ICNC, Iyad spoke about the motivating factors behind the movement that Bil’in
spearheads, key aspects of building and sustaining the movement, strategies and
tactics used, the importance of Israeli and international allies, lessons
learned, and the way forward.
For Iyad Burnat, nonviolent
resistance is as central to daily life as the twisted-trunk olive trees that frame
his rural village of Bil’in in the occupied West Bank. An enthusiastic father of
five with a large smile and deep, piercing eyes, he is recognized not only in Palestine,
but also among scholars and opinion-shapers around the world as a courageous leader among leaders
in an exemplary movement of nonviolent resistance.
Over the past decade, images and
footage of Bil’in’s resistance have spread across the world, in large part due
to the movement’s characteristic use of
creative actions, which have increasingly
captured the attention of international journalists. The movement also gained
significant exposure, especially in the United States, when the film Five Broken Cameras (incidentally filmed by Iyad’s brother, Emad Burnat) was nominated for the 2012 Academy
Award for Best Documentary. It has helped spread the news of the extraordinary
efforts of a small group of Palestinian farmers to end the Israeli occupation
through nonviolent action and strategies to halt expropriation of their land to
expand illegal settlements and build the separation wall.
Iyad first joined the
decades-long nonviolent resistance movement in Palestine as a pupil and member
of a school committee in Bil’in. Since then, he and his family have experienced
significant repression under occupation. At the age of 17, Iyad himself was
arrested by the Israeli military and during interrogation was forced to sign a
confession in Hebrew he didn’t understand for crimes he didn’t commit. He was
then sentenced as a minor to two years in a desert prison which caused him to
graduate late and derailed his planned career as a doctor.
In 2014, Iyad’s son was
shot point blank in the leg by a soldier while standing next to his father during
a nonviolent demonstration and he continues to face physical difficulties from
this injury today. Yet throughout his years of nonviolent resistance, Iyad’s message
has not waivered: “We are not against Jews; we are against the Israeli
occupation.”
The Burnats have lived their entire lives under occupation. Iyad appears second from the left. Source: Iyad Burnat’s Facebook page (with permission).
From Bil’in to the international
stage
Bil’in was among the first villages (including Budrus and
Jayyous) to organize nonviolent resistance against the wall, deemed illegal under international law, due to its
planned route into occupied territory instead of along the internationally-recognized Green Line that is the
modern border between Israel and the Occupied Palestinian territories.
In response to this challenge, in the early
2000s, Iyad and members of his community joined with allies from villages
throughout the West Bank, and more recently Gaza. Facing sustained repression —
including beatings, arrests, torture, home night raids, kidnapping of children
and killing of unarmed participants — from Israeli soldiers and settlers, the
Palestinians from Bil’in and their partners have continued their resistance
nonviolently, including weekly marches every Friday now for more than a decade.
Loss of land in Palestine (1917-present). Information source: Foreign Ministry of Israel, IHR.org, unhcr.org, Reuters, jewishvirtuallibrary.org and unispal.un.org. Click to expand.
The ever-growing weekly protests
are the tip of the iceberg of this increasingly visible and vibrant
nonviolent movement which draws inspiration from prominent leaders such as
Gandhi, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Nelson Mandela, but also
Palestine’s own experience in nonviolent struggle beginning in the 1930s and
continuing through the first and nonviolent aspects of the second intifada. The villagers are joined in their movement by an
increasing number of allies throughout the world, including Israelis,
Palestinians abroad, and communities in the Global South and Global North. One of the international
visitors, Nobel laureate Desmond Tutu of South Africa said during his visit to Bil’in: “Just as a simple
man named Gandhi led the successful nonviolent struggle in India and simple
people such as Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King led the struggle for civil rights in the United States, simple people
here in Bil’in are leading a nonviolent struggle that will bring them their
freedom.”
International
personalities who have participated in the weekly protests in Bil’in
- · Nobel Prize winners Mairead
Maguire from Ireland and Desmond Tutu from
South Africa; - · Former Vice President of the
European Parliament Luisa Morgantini; - · Former US President Jimmy
Carter; - · Former President of Ireland Mary Robinson;
- · Former Norwegian Prime
Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland; - · Former President of Brazil Fernando Henrique Cardoso;
- · Ela Bhatt, an Indian advocate for the poor and women’s
rights.
Some of these individuals, including Mairead Maguire, and Luisa
Morgantini, sustained injuries during the protests.
Burnat explains that the impetus for
Palestinians to resist is embedded in their daily reality — their lives and
environment under occupation teach them to resist. “I learned a lot of methods
from Gandhi, Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela, but life teaches more. When
you struggle and live the life under occupation; when you are suffering and in
pain every day, it teaches you how to resist. It comes from the life.
Nonviolent struggle comes from the life. We are a simple people and nonviolent
resistance is a part of our lives.”
Creativity
for countering repression, celebrating success
Iyad discusses the process of coming up with
the creative, diverse and ever-changing tactics and methods that are the
hallmark of the village resistance movement. Members of the local Bil’in
Popular Committee and the umbrella Stop the Wall Coalition hold weekly meetings
to discuss and analyze the latest news, key issues on the ground, and the
political situation internally and externally and then propose new ideas and actions
focusing on achievable and short-term goals that align with broader strategies. These are then
implemented at strategic times and locations by a number of the movement
members. As lessons are identified, tactics and methods are continually honed.
This is very similar to the process used by Palestinians across East Jerusalem,
the West Bank and Gaza during the first intifada
from 1987-93, which featured a wide array of nonviolent actions supported by
local committees all over Palestine.
Decision-making in the
Bil’in Popular Committee
Decisions for the
movement are made in a horizontal manner with input and decisions made in local
popular committees representing each member village, such as the Bil’in Popular
Committee Against the Wall, then passed on and distributed through an umbrella committee, the Popular Committee Against the
Wall and Settlements, comprised of representatives from the 12 active villages
in the West Bank, including Budrus, Nabi Saleh, and Nil’in, and the newest
member, Khan Younis, Gaza.
Bil’in has become known for
its weekly marches and for originating creative ideas and diverse tactics of
nonviolent resistance. Examples include protesters tying
themselves to olive trees that are being uprooted by bulldozers to make way for
the wall; locking themselves in cages which then must be hauled away by cranes;
or chaining themselves to steel pillars on the ground. They haul in trailer
houses and place these to reclaim their stolen land, barricading themselves
inside in response to the same tactic used by the illegal Israeli settlers. The
farmers of Bil’in also seek to win over the soldiers, offering flowers or
joking with them to find the human connection, even as the soldiers continue to
arrest, beat and sometimes kill them.
Mondoweiss
co-editor Adam Horowitz’s 2009 eyewitness account of nighttime raids
“On
July 7th at 3:30 am soldiers disrupted the tranquility of Bi'lin by forcing
their way into several houses. Israeli soldiers came with a list of 10
names for arrest. When Palestinian, international, and Israeli activists
arrived at the scene they were subjected to violence and intimidation by the
Israeli occupation forces… When activists and community members responded, they
were beaten back with batons and forced to dodge a large number of percussion
grenades. Meanwhile, activists tried blocking the jeeps from leaving by
erecting makeshift barricades in the street. The Israeli occupation forces
responded with a number of percussion grenades and then rammed their jeeps
through. They forced their way up the street and to several other
houses. While there, they arrested a young man and issued nine summons to
families of youths who were not present. This was done without explanation
or warning. The jeeps had to make an escape through a second set of
erected barricades and they exited into the night.”
Source: http://mondoweiss.net/2009/07/israeli-forces-raid-bilin-at-3-am
In one of the most
memorable marches yet, villagers painted themselves blue and dressed as the
indigenous Na’vi people who triumphed over repressive human colonizers in the
popular movie Avatar, gaining international press coverage and stunning
Israeli soldiers sent to disrupt the event. Iyad appears second from the right.
Source: Australians for
Palestine (2010).
Another method of nonviolent resistance
that Bil’in has developed is in direct response to a form of repression that
Israeli soldiers began to use extensively in 2009 and 2010 — nocturnal raids of
villagers’ homes. These nighttime raids instill fear in families and involve targeting
and arresting children with the aim of breaking the families’ will to resist. To counter this tactic, Iyad and the popular committees
developed the idea of increasing their demonstrations and holding them in the
evening, thereby exhausting the soldiers who then had to protect the wall
construction by day and protests by night. This tactic ended in a small but
critical victory for Bil’in — although the night raids did not end entirely,
they decreased significantly from a daily occurrence to once or twice a week,
thereby giving the families and children some relief and less daily trauma.
To help counter the violence and prepare the children for a life
under occupation and struggle, Bil’in teaches its children the context of the
conflict and how to resist nonviolently. This is achieved through modeling
nonviolent action and attitudes, and counseling against revenge. Parents also
try to de-escalate and funnel uncontrollable anger and frustration into
symbolic acts such as throwing stones and water balloons. (In the literature of civil
resistance, stone throwing is not considered a nonviolent tactic. Many
Palestinians argue that it is a symbolic act that is not meant to hurt Israelis,
since they have superior military capacity and armoured vehicles. For them, stone
throwing shows agency and an unwillingness to submit.)
The children are also empowered
to organize their own marches, including one pictured in Five Broken Cameras
where the children march alone holding signs saying “let us sleep” and “we want
to sleep,” messages directed to the Israeli soldiers against the nighttime
raids. In the movie, there is also a heartrending conversation
between a father and his child who is confused about why his parents are not
fighting back with violence or protecting themselves and others with force against
violence by Israeli settlers and military.
“Freedom for the
prisoners. Our hearts with you.” Source: Iyad Burnat’s
Facebook page
(with permission).
Interim
goals: disruption, media coverage and getting international actors involved
Interim goals of the nonviolent resistance
were to drive up the material costs of the wall, reduce the legitimacy of it
and its supporters, and delay its construction so that complementary legal
challenges and media strategies would have more time to work. These goals were achieved,
as the financial costs increased exponentially. Much of the world now questions
the legitimacy of the separation wall, and the construction of the wall was
delayed years longer than planned. While construction was being disrupted, the
cause in Bi’lin gained supporters in Israel and the international community, gaining
support in the “court of public opinion.” Simultaneously, Palestinian activists
worked with Israeli lawyers who were allies to argue their formal legal case
against the wall in Israeli civil courts (known for relative independence when
compared to the Israeli military courts functioning in the Occupied
Territories). They argued that it was illegal to build the wall inside the
internationally-recognized borders between Israel and the Occupied Territories
and cited international rulings in their favour including the critical July 9,
2004 Advisory Opinion by the International Court of Justice, supporting the
Palestinian position.
In September 4, 2007, Bil’in had
a major victory when the High Court of Justice in Israel ordered the government to change the route of the wall near
Bil'in. Chief Justice Dorit Beinish wrote in her ruling: "We were not convinced that
it is necessary for security-military reasons to retain the current route that
passes on Bil’in’s lands." The Israeli Defense Ministry said it would respect
the ruling, but it was
not until 2011 — after four years of continued nonviolent action and pressure to
enforce the order— that they began dismantling a section of the barrier to relocate
it along an alternative route. This ruling and rerouting forced Israel to
return 500 dunums (4 = 1 acre) to farmers in Bil’in.
Even after the court case was
won, activists in Bi’lin continued to gain media coverage and sympathy. Their flare for creative actions, use of visually
compelling images, skill in framing their message, education of journalists
around the world, and international speaking tours by community leaders, as
well as the film Five Broken Cameras, has significantly increased the number of media outlets
and audiences aware of the existence of nonviolent movements in Palestine and
correspondingly, increased active allies.
Another key strategy of the Stop
the Wall Coalition is to engage external actors and international citizens, including
Israelis. Iyad explains that in the beginning, villagers were not always clear
on their importance, but over time the presence of international allies in
Bil’in in protests, including protective accompaniment in homes, resulted in less
use of deadly force by the Israeli military against protestors, less
destruction of houses and property during night raids, independent documentation
of violence and other repression used against villagers, and greater visibility
to the rest of the world of the struggle going on in Bil’in and other villages. This in turn brings increased international
solidarity and understanding of the reality of life under occupation in
Palestine.
Unity
counts, both locally and among Palestinians abroad
Iyad understands the importance
of unity among the movement and continually talks about growing the movement,
the significance of shared goals and values, and the importance of connecting
and unifying with other Palestinians. He is very aware of “divide and conquer”
strategies that have been used by Israelis against Palestinians, dividing
Palestinians residing in the Holy Land — those inside the 1948 borders, Gaza
Strip, the West Bank and East Jerusalem — from
each other through checkpoints, blockades and administrative processes. Iyad says
sorrowfully: “I have never been there. I can’t go inside. I’ve never been to
Jerusalem, I live only 25 kilometres away; nor to the sea, nor to Gaza.”
“I learned a lot of methods from Gandhi, Martin Luther King and
Nelson Mandela, but life teaches more. When you struggle and live the life
under occupation; when you are suffering and in pain every day, it teaches you
how to resist. It comes from the life. Nonviolent struggle comes from the life.
We are a simple people and nonviolent resistance is a part of our lives.”
His story is common among Palestinians of his
generation. Israeli law and actions have aimed to exacerbate divisions in Palestinians
among ethnic, religious, geographic and political lines. Bedouins, Christians, Druze,
Jews, and Muslims from historic Palestine; supporters of different political
parties and factions; urban, rural, and refugee dwellers; and Palestinians
inside 1948 boundaries, residents of the Occupied Territories and East
Jerusalem and Gaza and those living in diaspora — have all been given different
status, and coerced with benefits or sanctions at various times. The Christian
Palestinians inside Israel recently refused a plan proposed by an Israeli
Knesset member to give them special privileges in order to set them against their Muslim compatriots. Yariv Levin, the leader of the
government coalition in the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, explained his objectionable proposal this way:
“My legislation will grant separate representation and treatment for the
Christian public, which will be separated from the Muslim Arabs.”
Iyad also
points out the division among the Palestinian refugees living outside of
historic Palestine in refugee camps or in exile in various Arab countries such
as Jordan, Lebanon and Syria, and Palestinians dispersed in diaspora
communities around the world. He states that: “Palestinians all over the world
need to stand with Palestinians inside, because we have to be together and
united in the same struggle. For example, Palestinians in Jordan, Lebanon and
Syria are affected by the regimes and have to stand up and say no. I want my
freedom, I want my right to return to my home. Sometimes you have to be willing
to lose something. Freedom doesn’t come on a plate of gold [old Arab proverb].
This is the right for everybody, human rights to live in freedom, justice and
equality.” In reaction to repressive tactics, he feels that Palestinians must
resist oppression and find a way to unify.
Pushing
for a third intifada with global support
When discussing the way forward
and their grand strategy, Iyad stresses his vision and his movement’s vision — the
start of a third intifada in the West Bank and broader Occupied Territories.
“We’re looking for a third intifada like the first intifada. A third intifada
in Palestine will lead the Palestinian people to be united in Palestine. There
are many problems inside the Palestinian community, between the West Bank and
Gaza and between political parties, Fatah/Hamas and others. We have to lead the
third intifada, so everyone can be together against the occupation, not each
other.” Palestinians
are feeling more divided than ever before and understand that without unity,
they lose the power in numbers they need to stand up against the Israeli
government. It is key that Iyad is calling for a third intifada first, and
foremost, to unify themselves.
Burnat continues: “I wish to build a global movement to end the occupation.
I wish all the world will put pressure on the Israeli government to follow the
rule of law to stop the occupation.” He mentions major avenues for
internationals to assist Palestinians nonviolently. The first is the Boycott,
Divestment and Sanctions, (BDS) movement which is based on a call for
assistance by a broad coalition of over 100 Palestinian NGOs in July 2005 modeled on the South African BDS movement and
calls for action against Israel until it
complies with international law and universal principles of human rights. Second,
Iyad calls for involvement with the Students for Justice in Palestine at
universities in the United States, Canada and New Zealand where 100 now exist
in the US alone. Third, he mentions supporting or joining groups providing
unarmed civilian protection and protective accompaniment to Palestinians in the
occupied territories.
Bil’in welcomes and relies on
nonviolent solidarity activists such as the Israeli Gush Shalom and Anarchists
against the Wall, and global International Solidarity Movement (ISM) to provide
a modicum of protection and documentation during many of their actions. Since
2005, Bil’in has lost two core members of its community, Bassem Abu Rahmeh’s
death by a high velocity teargas canister fired at his chest on April 17, 2009,
at the age of 29 — documented in Five Broken Cameras — and his sister Jawaher Abu Rahmah, 36, who died a year later in December
31, 2010, after a teargas attack.
“We
have to have hope to resist”
As the Stop the Wall Coalition demonstrates,
steadfastness (sumud) in Arabic and nonviolent discipline
are essential ingredients of a successful movement. Members of the village
communities have learned that they must continue to struggle, day by day, week
by week, despite the violence directed at them. Freedom does not come easy.
“You have to be willing to sacrifice for freedom, and above all else, believe
in your cause and what you’re struggling for. If you believe, you will
continue, if you continue, you will succeed.”
Spend but a few hours in Iyad’s
company and you’ll figure out where his hope and drive come from — his
children, especially his youngest, 15-month old Mohyialdeen who shares his
father’s dark, penetrating eyes. Iyad says, “We have hope to change the
situation. Hope to have a better future for our children. I don’t want my
children to live my life. I’m looking for a future for my children and all
children that is without occupation and violence. We have to have hope to
resist.”