As I will not be leaving for Jerusalem until October 4, 2011, this site is still under construction.
My mission in the Jerusalem and the OPT, under the auspices of the EAPPI, is to accompany Palestinians and Israelis in their non-violent actions and to carry out concerted advocacy efforts to end the occupation. Participants in the program monitor and report violations of human rights and international humanitarian law, support acts of non-violent resistance alongside local Palestinians and Israeli peace activists, offer protection through non-violent presence, engage in public policy advocacy and, in general, stand in solidarity with all those struggling for a just peace in the region.
As an introduction to the theme of „words against walls“ I find the poem by Robert Frost as very apposite:
MENDING WALL
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun,
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
‚Stay where you are until our backs are turned!‘
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, ‚Good fences make good neighbors‘.
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
‚Why do they make good neighbors? Isn’t it
Where there are cows?
But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That wants it down.‘ I could say ‚Elves‘ to him,
But it’s not elves exactly, and I’d rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me~
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father’s saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, „Good fences make good neighbors.“
(Text nach: R.F.: Promises to keep. 2002. S. S. 21f.)
Personally, I am of the opinion that all messianic and apocalyptic movements, messianic expectations, whatever their origin, are both dynamic and dangerous. Dynamic because they may energize and motivate the deprived, marginalized and dispossessed (to improve and change their current situations). Dangerous because the „elected“ members of the movement consider themselves as the sole bearers of an unique, absolute and incorrigible knowledge – especially devastating in the attempted realization of this secret wisdom in real historical time.
I may very well be confronted with such movements in Israel and Palestine.
Pertinent in a more political sense is the following quote from Daniel Defoe, which refers to the land enclosures in England during the 17th century. It expresses an anti-capitalist sentiment equally as relevant to the current Middle East situation. All of the globalized and neo-liberal western powers (including the USA and the EU – with Germany calling the tune) follow their own scripts in dealing with the Israel-Palestine conflict, and all seem reluctant to press for a serious solution. They continue to supply arms to all of the (conflicting) neighboring countries to support their own shaky economies and are deeply involved in “private” or “research” projects in the region. I leave it to the reader to follow-up on this line of thought, as it will not often be part of my monitoring activities in Jerusalem and the OPT.
The very lands we all along enjoyed
They ravaged from the people they destroyed
‘Tis all invasion, usurpation all . . .
‘Tis all by fraud and force that we possess
And length of time can make no crime the less . . .
Religion’s always on the strongest side.
(From: Defoe, Jure Divino [1706], quoted in Christopher Hill, Liberty Against the Law [1996])
Please read the disclaimer section, as this blog is an expression of my own opinions and description of my personal observations and does not reflect the official positions of EAPPI or the WCC or their supporting organizations.
My family has supported me immeasurably during the run up to my departure and my son has done all of the working installing this blog.
Words against Walls 