20 May 2003
Chapter 1 video
ICAHD
"We are the ones that identify the issues. We are the ones that focus the debate on the crucial issues. We are the ones that go out and expose ourselves to the occupation. We are the ones that confront the contradictions that exist between the ideology and the line given by the state in the narrative that the educational system teaches the people and in fact the realities on the ground.
So I think there is a very crucial role of a peace-movement in any country, all though it´s a small minority.
When we rebuild houses as an act of political resistance, Israelis and Palestinians rebuilding houses of Palestinians that have been demolished, we are saying as Israelis we acknowledge the Palestinian right to this country, a Palestinian presence in this country. We refuse to be enemies. We want to live together, and our two people have to find a way to live together."
Chapter 2 video
MEDIA
"When you take a country with tremendous power, but that´s able to avoid any accountability for its actions. That´s a very dangerous combination. And that´s what the Palestinians are facing."
Chapter 3 video
VICTIMS OF VICTIMS
"Palestinians are in the worst situation possible because, Edward Said has a telling phrase, he says the Palestinians are the victims of the victims and because of that they are victims of victims that are very powerful but have no constraints of their actions, because they are victims. So these victims are able to victimize the Palestinian victims with absolute impunity."
Chapter 4 video
ACTIVISM
"You can bullshit all kind of things, but you can´t bullshit fairness, if you have most of the good things and I don´t, it´s no justification, that´s simply not fair, and that, I think, is the rock bottom thing that motivates a lot of activists.
To analyze a situation means I have to know what´s happening on the ground, not just in theory. The basic question of Anthropology is: what in the hell is going on here? You can´t know that, unless you´re there on the ground talking to people, seeing what´s happening. But at the same time, just being there, and just demonstrating or doing things is a kind of an activism that doesn´t really make sense, isn´t powerful unless it´s connected to a strategy of: how do we change policy? How do we change the situation? And that strategy is connected to an analysis: What´s wrong? What do we want to correct? And so on. The strategy, the analysis and the activism on the ground which is the motor of everything, all those things I think, have to come together.
The Palestinians call us, five, six o´clock in the morning when the bulldozers show up, because we can never know ahead of time where it´s going to be demolition. Or Palestinian organizations call us.
If we get there in time, we get in front of the bulldozers, we physically try to stop the bulldozers and non-violently we get arrested and at the same time we hold up the process until journalists can come.
We sit with the families, we get to know them and we tell them that we are willing to support them politically in rebuilding their houses as an act of political resistance, the house might be demolished again... There´s one house we rebuilt four times.
The elements of occupation are done through a bureaucracy, mainly through, what we call, ´civil administration´. House demolition is visible, it´s graphic, there´s a story, there´s a family, there´s a house, there is bulldozers, there´s us in front of the bulldozers, in other words we´re able to make it human, that people can see it and able to identify with it. Then our job is to deconstruct it, like un-peeling an onion, to say this is the story – now, why are they demolishing this house. Why this policy? Why this family? How do they justify it? That gives us the chance to explain the very complex workings of the occupation."
Chapter 5 video
MATRIX OF CONTROL
"In order to create a whole web of control, that completely surrounds the Palestinians 24 hours a day, and inhibit all their activities. Your ability to go from one town to another, your ability to grow certain kinds of crops, your ability to market your crops, your ability to get married, your ability to drive a car, your ability to work, everything, every little aspect of life is controlled by this Kafkaesque administration that Israel has set up. The more this works the less you need the army for control. At the same time it renders the occupation invisible.
The occupation is not called an occupation, it’s called ´Administration´, these are ´Administered Territories´. The military government is called ´The Civil Administration´; the army is called the ´Israel Defense Force´. The attack on the Jenin refugee camp and ferocious reoccupation of the West Bank was ´Operation defensive shield´. So it minimizes and the word Settlement does the same thing, settlement is a nice word, like neighborhood that Israel also uses all the time. The settlements in Jerusalem is called neighborhood.
Israel has around 200 settlements.
The settlements have around them a massive system of more that 300 miles of by-pass roads that connects the settlements to each other and then integrate them into Israel."
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