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Occupation magazine - Activism

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`You are not going to stay! Forget it!`
by Beate Zilversmidt
report of Peace Now demonstration in Ariel settlement
June 5 2008

Ariel`s mayor - the very ambitious Ron Nachman - succeeded to get President Peres to attend festivities for the 30th anniversary of the settlement. Nachman wants people to believe that Ariel is an Israeli city just like any other. But actually going there you are immediately confronted with it being a gated community - suspicious towards anybody wanting to enter – an Israeli settlement imposed upon a Palestinian environment.

It was already near dark, Wednesday June 4, when we traveled in a van from Tel-Aviv - 15 people of the students and pensioner age, and one former Knesset Member. Halfway, we were joined by the bus from Jerusalem and together we were let through though looked at with a strange expression through the gate of the Ariel settlement. After all, Peace Now leader Yariv Oppenheimer could show an official permit allowing us to stage a protest during the celebrations.

Passing luxurious villas and buildings activists joked about the `quality of life.` Meanwhile, a police escort led us to a little hill where we were supposed to demonstrate and from where it was impossible to see the podium erected in the settlement center. Also, there we were separated by bushes from a road leading to that center. As if that was not enough the police wanted us to go up the hill even more - to place us behind iron fences totally out of sight of any road.

What was interesting in the negotiations which followed between Oppenheimer and the police was the confidence with which the Peace Now director insisted that he had been promised a place from where we could see the podium. He spoke, not as a dissident without expectations but as a citizen insisting on his rights. The police were the ones pleading `but Yariv, try to understand...`. Maybe Oppenheimer is treated by the police as `one of us` because of his having served as reservist to protect settlements? This fact did not add to his popularity in the peace movement but now it was helpful: the iron fences were moved to where we would at least have some sort of communication with passers by.

It had happened on earlier occasions that a demonstration in a settlement had been banned to a peripheral location, and the organizers had prepared for it. All the activists were provided with a plastic whistle. When we heard, though not being able to see, that Peres started to speak the sharp tone of 40 coordinated whistles was deafening and probably made it to where the celebrating crowd was.

Or was it the constant chanting of the untiring youngsters (joined by the somewhat weaker voices of the old): 30 year Ariel = 30 year shame for the State of Israel / Ariel - a danger / Peres celebrating Ariel Go and return your Nobel / [and, as the settlers insist on all Jews being `brothers`:] Brothers, brothers, leave Ariel - come back to Israel.

Gradually a crowd gathered opposite us. The police who were only few and who saw it as their task to keep the sides separated had an increasingly heavy job.

While some religious looking settlers, Lubavitschers probably, started to dance and sing about `brotherhood`, others tried to overcome the police fences positioned now also in front of them. At some point they angrily chanted `police state, police state` and some of the Peace Nowers joined in - followed by laughter.

Probably at the request of our opponents the police forbade us the further use of the megaphone. `But I have a permit for demonstration with megaphone!` The police succeeded to silence one [`We won`t let you ruin the chances for peace. The settlements are an obstacle - we don`t want to die in vain - Peace Now!`]. But already the megaphone had changed hands and it started all over.

Then Oppenheimer was allowed to take the megaphone, expected to tell us that the demonstration was over. But he turned around: `You are not going to stay! Forget it! You are 15 kilometres away from the border of Israel!` he succeeded to say before anybody understood what was happening.

But then it was really over, and not only the police were wondering how we would get safely into the buses 100 meter from that place, outnumbered as we were by the hostile settler crowd. Eggs were thrown at us - at least that was what we later heard on the radio. The police was apparently afraid of worse than that, and nearly forced us to close the door and start going before former Knesset Member Mossi Raz succeeded to get in.

On the way out of Ariel we were several hundred meters escorted not only by police but also by a stream of running young settlers chasing us after they succeeded in getting around the police and the fences. Someone who wouldn`t know better may have thought that Shimon Peres was among us and was thus honoured on his way back home.


sb







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