NAZARETH,
ISRAEL // Nearly 600 Israelis have signed up for a campaign of civil
disobedience, vowing to risk jail to smuggle Palestinian women and children into
Israel for a brief taste of life outside the occupied West Bank.
The
Israelis say they have been inspired by the example of Ilana Hammerman, a writer
who is threatened with prosecution after publishing an article in which she
admitted breaking the law to bring three Palestinian teenagers into Israel for a
day out.
Ms
Hammerman said she wanted to give the young women, who had never left the West
Bank, “some fun” and a chance to see the Mediterranean for the first time.
Her story
has shocked many Israelis and led to a police investigation after right-wing
groups called for her to be tried for security offences.
It is
illegal to transport Palestinians through checkpoints into Israel without a
permit, which few can obtain. If tried and found guilty, Ms Hammerman could be
fined and face up to two years in jail.
But
Israelis joining the campaign say they will not be put off by threats of
imprisonment.
Last month,
a group of 11 Israeli women joined Ms Hammerman in repeating her act of civil
disobedience, driving a dozen Palestinian women and four children, including a
baby, through a checkpoint into Israel.
The Israeli
women say they are planning mass “smugglings” of Palestinians into Israel over
the coming weeks.
“The
Palestinians who join us are mainly looking to have a good time after years of
confinement under the occupation, but for us what is most important is our act
of defiance,” said Ofra Lyth, who helped establish an online forum of supporters
after attending a speech by Ms Hammerman.
“We want to
overturn this immoral law that gives rights to Jews to move freely around while
keeping Palestinians imprisoned in their towns and villages,” she said,
referring to regulations that bar most Palestinians in the occupied territories
from entering Israel, and Israelis from assisting them. Exceptions are made for
Palestinians with permits, sometimes issued for a medical emergency or to some
labourers with security clearances.
For the
Palestinian women, though, it is not about making a statement or defying an
unjust law, according to Ms Lyth.
“The
Palestinian women tell us: ‘Go ahead and make your political point, but for us
we’re breaking the law so that we can enjoy ourselves and remember how life was
before the checkpoints and the wall.’ One woman told me: ‘I just want to be able
to breathe again’.”
For
Palestinians in the West Bank, it is not often easy to breathe. The territory is
home to a growing population of 300,000 Jews in more than 100 settlements. The
settlers are able to drive into Israel on roads that the army oversees with
checkpoints.
It was
through one such settler crossing, near Beitar Ilit, south of Jerusalem, that Ms
Hammerman took the three Palestinian teenagers this year.
For their
protection, she has not identifed the young women or the West Bank village where
they live. She refers to the women as Aya, Lin and Yasmin. They, too, could face
jail for breaking the law.
In Ms
Hammerman’s article, published in Haaretz newspaper in May, she admitted that
she was aware her actions were illegal.
She told
the women, who were 18 and 19, to take off their hijabs for the day and dress in
western-style clothes to avoid attracting attention from soldiers at the
checkpoint. She also taught them an easy Hebrew phrase – Hakull beseder, or
“Everything is okay” – in case a soldier spoke to them.
She then
took them on a tour of Tel Aviv, visiting the city’s university, a museum, a
shopping mall and the beach, which she noted none of them had ever seen even
though it is only about 40km from their village.
Ms
Hammerman wrote that the only dangerous moment during the trip was when a
plain-clothes policeman stopped them and asked for the women’s identity cards.
Ms Hammerman lied to the officer, telling him that the women were Palestinians
from East Jerusalem and therefore entitled to enter Israel.
In June,
Yehuda Weinstein, the attorney general, was reported to have approved a police
investigation of Ms Hammerman after a settler organisation, the Legal Forum for
the Land of Israel, complained.
The ranks
of Ms Hammerman’s supporters have swollen since the group placed an
advertisement, titled “We refuse to obey”, in Haaretz this month. The ad said
the group was “acting in the spirit of Martin Luther King”, the US civil rights
leader, and demanded that Palestinians be treated as “human beings, not
terrorists”.
Over the
past week, the online forum has attracted more than 590 Israelis signing up to
repeat Ms Hammerman’s act of civil disobedience.
“That has
really surprised and encouraged me,” she said. “I did not realise there were so
many other Israelis who have had enough of this outrageous law.”
Still, the
coverage of Ms Hammerman and her supporters in the Israeli media has been
largely hostile. During a television interview last week, she was accused of
endangering Israelis with her trips. The show’s host, Yaron London, asked
whether she had inspected the Palestinian women’s underclothes for explosives
before allowing them into her car.
She will
will not be deterred, though. She said the group had discussed future trips for
Palestinians, including taking them to pray at al-Aqsa, the mosque in Jerusalem
that has been inaccessible to most Palestinians for at least a decade, and
visits to Palestinian relatives they cannot see in Jerusalem and Israel.
“We need to
get Israelis meeting Palestinians again, having fun with them and seeing that
they are human beings with the same rights as us.”
She said
her immediate goal was to kick-start a discussion among Israelis about the
legality and morality of Israel’s laws and challenge the public’s “blind
obedience” to authority.
Ms Lyth
added that the Palestinian women “who have gone on our trips are the heroes of
their village. They and their families know they are taking a big risk in
breaking the law, but harassment is part of their daily lives anyway”.
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