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The Nonviolent Activist Editorial
Parsing A Peace Process

s nonviolent activists we want to believe in any efforts toward peace that include face-to-face negotiations by traditional enemies. There have not been many historical moments as moving as the sight of Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat shaking the hand of Israel’s then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin on the White House lawn in 1993. Arafat was beaming, and why not? He’d come a long way from his days as a “terrorist chief” and international pariah. Rabin, too, had come a long way from ordering the arrests and shootings of untold Palestinians as head of the Israeli military; by the time of his 1995 assassination, he was seen (at least by some) as a beloved peacemaker.

Last July, in a continuation of the peace talks that produced the Oslo Accords in 1993, Arafat and current Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak secluded themselves at Camp David in Maryland for two weeks, apparently breaking new ground in compromise proposals but not being able to reach a final agreement. The fact that they kept at it for so many days was a hopeful sign (though at times one had the sense that perhaps neither really wanted to go home, given their own domestic political problems). And then there was President Clinton staying up late, flying home early from Japan, all the while looking rather desperate to secure a legacy as peacemaker in the Middle East.

It is a great relief that there is less violence and more talking in Israeli- Palestinian relations than there was 10 years ago, so why can’t we just rejoice in the effort instead of critiquing it with the inevitable “But … ”?

Because there are aspects of the process that are disturbing. Perhaps the most troubling is the U.S. role as peace broker. Clinton’s “father-knows-best” benevolence not only sticks in the craw, it makes the whole process suspect. One rule of conflict resolution is that a party to the conflict should not act as mediator. But ever since Oslo, the mediator of the peace talks has been the United States, Israel’s constant ally in the world community and its main financial backer. The $3 billion, including $1.8 billion in military aid, that U.S. taxpayers let Congress send to Israel is one of the key reasons that Israel has been able to maintain its occupation of the West Bank and Gaza and to build—and continue to build—settlements there. ($3 billion is a low estimate; with other grants and loans the total may be more than $5 billion.) The United States could put a lot of pressure on Israel to move to true peace, but for its own reasons (including wanting this key ally in the Middle East as well as domestic politics) it hasn’t.

Thus, despite the ongoing peace process, successive Israeli governments have built new settlements, demolished more Palestinian homes, expropriated more land and constructed more bypass roads that divide the Palestinian population centers from each other. Settlements and development surround Jerusalem in a very intentional effort to lessen Arab numbers and weaken their influence in the city. And the refugees remain in the camps.

Arafat’s ego has probably not helped the Palestinians either. As he basked in his role as head of the Palestinian almost-state, the Palestine Authority has shut down opposition media, arrested critics and turned its guns on its own people.

Can such a flawed process create a longterm peace? Is an imperfect peace better than no peace? These are frustrating questions for those of us who profess nonviolence. On one hand, the flawed process has already led to new problems and will lead to more. On the other hand, of course it is better than not talking. We’d love to be asked our opinion. We’d send the negotiations to neutral territory and get the United States out of the process. We’d cut military aid to the whole region and demand disarmament of all sides to the conflict. In the best possible world, we’d abolish the nation-state so that governments’ power games no longer endanger people’s lives.

Meanwhile, we (along with people around the world who care about human rights) urge the Israeli government to stop the settlements, the demolitions and the expropriations now. We demand that the U.S. government exert its considerable influence to bring about such a halt. Finally, we insist that the U.S. abandon its plan to recognize Israel’s claim to all of Jerusalem by moving the U.S. Embassy to that city. Simple justice and the hope of peace in the future demand no less.

Guilty! Guilty! Guilty!

n the wake of the protests at the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia in August, that city’s police chief, John Timoney, called for a federal investigation into what he has called a nationwide conspiracy. Since the great bulk of the protests consisted of nonviolent civil disobedience, we can only assume he referred to a conspiracy to commit such acts.

If there is such a conspiracy, the War Resisters League is part of it. We have been involved in such “conspiracies” for more than 75 years, organizing for—and training people for—nonviolent civil disobedience campaigns against, in the words of our pledge, “war and the causes of war.” We are part of the long and honorable tradition of Gandhian nonviolence that, as adopted in the U.S. South by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and others, helped end the shame of legal apartheid in this country. And we organized for, and trained people to participate in, the newest wave of such protests, the ones that happened in Seattle late last fall, in Washington this past spring—and in Philadelphia the week before last. In the last year, we have also offered nonviolence training for protesters opposed to the bombing of Vieques and those opposed to the sanctions and military actions against Iraq.

There need be no investigation. We admit it: We conspired to bring nonviolent civil disobedience to Philadelphia. Prosecute us, Chief Timoney.

In fact, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is prosecuting some of us. War Resisters League members are among the more 300 demonstrators who sat for almost two weeks in Philadelphia’s jails, held there by unprecedentedly high bail: $15,000 for those charged with misdemeanors (or even conspiracy to commit misdemeanors), up to $1,000,000 for those charged as top organizers of the protests. Excessive bail is a violation of the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, but it was not the only civil liberties violations going on in Philadelphia. We were also particularly concerned about the reports of brutal police tactics, reports of abuse ranging from sleep deprivation to denial of food, water, bathroom access and medications to beatings. Finally, the City of Brotherly Love used police powers to stop protests before they happened—besieging and then raiding a puppet-making space and arresting 75 people on charges of obstructing traffic while they were still indoors.

Indeed, the constitutional violations were so widespread and egregious as to raise the question: Did the Philadelphia police actually conspire to suppress the protests altogether, depriving thousands of protesters—and tens of thousands of the people across the nation for whom the protesters were speaking—of their most basic right to dissent?

How about it, Chief Timoney? We’ve confessed; will you? Or must we—as some human rights groups have urged—call for an independent investigation into Philadelphia’s police practices?