Compliance with the law is not alwasy a virtue, and as our controllers become ever more oppressive, compliance with their laws is ever less virtous. In the extreme situation of Palestine compliance with the laws of the illegal settlers is far more immoral than opposing it.

We should always strive for justice – but blind subservience to the law is increasingly incompatible with that aim.

The struggle of nonviolent resisters to the Occupation and route of Israel’s Wall on legally owned Palestinian property, has united thousands of Internationals with Palestinian farmers, mothers, children and Israelis who endure teargas, beatings, bullets, arrest, and even death to rise up against the most well equipped army in the world; with nothing more than their bodies and a good conscience.

Another Israeli Anarchist who has been arrested and shot more than a few times, is Jonathan Pollak who said in 2005:

“I was six years old at my first demonstration and active on my own at thirteen. I am 23 now. When they started to build the Apartheid Wall in the West Bank I would go a few times a week and watch them deceive the world. The Israeli government successfully marketed the Apartheid Wall as a security barrier. But it is all about segregation, separation and ethnic cleansing.

“Civilian uprising and non-violent activism is not like the Gandhi movie. It`s not carrying posters and saying we don`t like your wall, go away. We stand in front of Caterpillar`s knowing we will be shot and arrested.

“I was shot five times in the last two years by rubber bullets which are 1/2 inch steel bullets covered with plastic. I have been shot in the head and the more experience I have the scarier it is.

“One learns to recognize the ritual of it all: when the IDF will begin using the billy clubs, when the tear gas will come, when the bullets will come.

“We are not a dialogue group, Anarchists Against the Wall is an Israeli organization and we are not colonial liberators. All the strategy is done by Palestinians, we are with them seeking justice and giving support.

“Negotiations alone will not secure freedom for the Palestinian people. During the negotiations of the so-called Oslo Peace Process from 1993-2000, Israel simply imposed its will on the Palestinians, using its overwhelming military and economic power, and US support.

“During seven years of supposed peace, Palestinians saw 200,000 new Israeli settlers arrive in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, the same number of settlers that had arrived there in the previous 26 years.

“However, the recent grassroots struggle against Israel’s Wall has demonstrated that it may be possible to counter Israel’s overwhelming power, and its exploitation of negotiations, through nonviolent resistance. The Wall, is just one blatant Israeli attempt to impose its will, and has become a focus for civilian resistance.

“Although Israel marketed the Wall as a security barrier, logic suggests such a barrier would be as short and straight as possible. Instead, it snakes deep inside the West Bank, resulting in a route that is twice as long as the Green Line, the internationally recognized border. Israel chose the Wall’s path in order to dispossess Palestinians of the maximum land and water, to preserve as many Israeli settlements as possible, and to unilaterally determine a border.

“In order to build the Wall Israel is uprooting tens of thousands of ancient olive trees that for many Palestinians are also the last resource to provide food for their children.

“The Palestinian aspiration for an independent state is also threatened by the Wall, as it isolates villages from their mother cities and divides the West Bank into disconnected cantons [Bantustans/ghettos]. The Israeli human rights organization B`Tselem conservatively estimates that 500,000 Palestinians are negatively impacted by the Wall.

“Faced with a history of suffering, Palestinians have no alternative but to struggle. The only question is how? Killing diminishes our humanity, and Israel’s occupation, which has killed thousands of Palestinians, shouldn’t be our teacher. It is time for both sides to refuse killing.

“Though Palestinians have employed nonviolence since 1929, they have seen little evidence that it will help them to achieve freedom. In 2003-2004, the West Bank village of Budrus decided to set an example for how nonviolence can defeat the Wall.

“All the people of Budrus mobilized, and were joined by Israeli and international activists. In 55 nonviolent marches, Israeli soldiers injured more than 300 people, arrested 33 and killed one, as the villagers, with their bodies alone, attempted to stop the destruction of their land. Faced with Budrus` determined protests, the Israeli government eventually moved the Wall to the Green Line. The village saved 300 acres of its land and 3000 olive trees. Children, women and old people were among the heroes of Budrus` nonviolent struggle.

“Throughout the West Bank, nine protesters were killed in marches against the Wall, thousands were injured and hundreds arrested. Hundreds of civilian protests throughout the West Bank are the reason the world learned of the injustice of the Wall. As a direct result, the International Court of Justice at the Hague ruled in 2004 that Israel’s construction of the Wall violated international law.

“The village of Budrus and the International Court of Justice ruling represent victories for nonviolent resistance. Another success of the joint struggle was the connection forged between Palestinians and the Israelis who joined them in their resistance. This connection, stronger than anything that ideas could create, was unwittingly forged by the Israeli army, through their beatings, the joint arrests and the bullets. Joining Palestinians in nonviolent struggle has allowed some Israelis to voice very clearly that the struggle against occupation and for freedom is not a Palestinian struggle alone, but is their struggle as well.

“We believe that, as with Apartheid South Africa, Americans have a vital role to play in ending Israeli occupation – by speaking out, coming to Palestine as witnesses, or standing with Palestinians in nonviolent resistance.

“We are confident that Israeli occupation will one day be defeated, as were other US government supported repressive regimes – Apartheid South Africa, Pinochet`s Chile and racial segregation in the United States. There is no price too great to pay for freedom, and nothing will deter us from achieving this goal.

“There is no price to high to pay for freedom, equality and universal rights. Without justice there can be no peace.”

Excerpted from “Memoirs of a Nice Irish-American ‘Girl’s’ Life in Occupied Territory” by eileen fleming