Cambridge Occupied

Last Thursday, I watched an Israeli soldier harass a Palestinian woman as she struggled desperately to cross a “checkpoint” to bring her sick baby to the hospital. The woman wept and pleaded, but the stolid soldier would not acquiesce. Oddly enough, I did not witness this encounter in the West Bank or Gaza. I watched this disturbing scene unfold in Harvard Square.

Fortunately, the baby was not real, nor was the soldier’s gun. And although the woman was Palestinian and the soldier Israeli, they were not enemies but colleagues who shared a common purpose. They were actors in the Palestine Street Theater Group, sponsored by Jewish Women for Justice in Israel/Palestine and the Boston Coalition for Palestinian Rights. They re-enacted a scene typical of life in the Occupied Territories to spread awareness about the daily plight of ordinary Palestinians under Israeli military rule.

In the eighteen months since the Palestinian uprising began, the checkpoints have been flashpoints for violence. Unarmed Palestinian civilians have been shot dead by Israeli soldiers while trying to pass through them. As a result, the checkpoints have been frequent targets of Palestinian militiamen. But more than anything, the checkpoints serve as a constant reminder as to who are the masters and who are the subjects in the relationship between Israelis and Palestinians.

The demonstrators at Cambridge’s checkpoint were not alone. They were joined by a multi-ethnic group of supporters who held placards supporting the Palestinian cause and deriding checkpoints and other ills of the occupation. On the other side of the street stood a large group of counter-protesters, including many members of Hillel and Harvard Students for Israel (HSI).

For the most part, protesters and counter-protesters were civil. But there was tension, nonetheless. There was shouting. There were scowls. There were rowdy passers-by who antagonized both sides. The low-point was overhearing a counter-protester tell an anti-Arab joke to his friends. (I did not recognize this individual and I pray that he is not a member of the Harvard community.) And there was the sheer awkwardness of looking across the street and seeing one’s friends and classmates vehemently protesting against what I feel is a just cause.

The hostility was not fueled by hate as much as ignorance. Some of the remarks I heard irked me because of their silliness: “Their demonstration is so stupid—it’s just a ploy to appeal to human sentiment.” Other comments bothered me because of their flagrant inaccuracy. I joined the demonstrators in trying to dispel some of these myths. No—nobody here supports suicide bombings. No—Palestinian territory was not a barren desert wasteland before Israel conquered it in 1967. No—the Palestinian cause is not about destroying Israel; it’s about human rights, self-determination and an end to an illegal occupation.

However, the counter-protesters did not hold the monopoly on ignorance. I freely admit that I was mistaken in thinking I knew what the counter-protesters stood for. I figured that if the protesters were pro-human rights and anti-occupation, then surely the counter-protesters must have been anti-human rights and pro-occupation? They were, after all, staging a loud and angry counter-protest intending to discredit the Palestinian rights supporters.

But I was wrong. Beneath a bumpy surface of inflamed rhetoric, there lay a foundation for mutual understanding. Believe it or not, these two groups, who stood on opposite sides of the street, chanting against each other, would actually agree on quite a bit. Despite their opposition to the demonstration, most of the counter-protesters to whom I spoke acknowledged that what was happening to the Palestinians was “terrible thing” and that Palestinian statehood was a necessity for lasting peace, even if it meant uprooting some of the settlements in the West Bank.

So what was the purpose of the counter-protest? Why a vehement opposition if they recognized the validity of the Palestinian claims human rights and self-determination? They were out there because they opposed the “one sidedness” of the demonstration and they didn’t want Israel being demonized.

My intention is not to gloss over the differences. The protesters and counter-protesters probably disagree on many of the finer details of a Mideast peace plan, from the final status of East Jerusalem, to the rights of Palestinian refugees, to the status of large Israeli settlements. These issues remain stumbling blocks to any agreement. However, on a fundamental level we agree: the violence must end; terrorism and state terror must end; the occupation must end; and a just peace includes a Palestinian state.

This consensus is not a “Cambridge effect”; we do not suffer from the delusions of being thousands of miles away from the loci of conflict. Even in Israel and Palestine—where excuses to make war abound on both sides—the vast majority of people is still in favor of compromise and peace. In spite of decades of dehumanization and state terror, the Palestinian people want to go back to the negotiating table. And in spite of all of those horrific suicide bombings, polls have shown that most Israelis still want to make a deal.

It would be trite to say that there is hope because both sides share a common goal: peace. This banality obscures the fact that they share a lot more in common. In principle, both sides understand what is necessary for a just peace. The details have yet to be resolved, but these specifics cannot be settled in a shouting match; they will require countless hours of arduous debate and compromise. Perhaps next time we would be better off sitting down together at the table of brotherhood instead of standing on opposite sides of an intersection.

Nader R. Hasan ’02 is a government concentrator in Lowell House. His column appears on alternate Wednesdays.