Nonviolent Peaceforce Middle East Report
February 2006

Thirty-five Nonviolent Peaceforce supporters including 20 men and 15 women from nine countries served as International Election Monitors in Palestine on January 25. The NP volunteers attended a two-day orientation led by the UN Development Program for all NGO participants and an additional training in violence prevention led by the Jerusalem Office of the American Friends Service Committee. The NP delegation was dispatched to eight areas in groups of three, each group accompanied by a Palestinian representative from NP Member Organization Grassroots International Protection for the Palestinian People (GIPP). About three hundred short and long-term election monitors from the National Democratic Institute/Carter Center, European Union, and Canada also participated

The role of the international observers was to ensure there were no candidates inside the polling area, that a list of voters was posted; and to respectfully observe, assess, and report on any concerns. For the most part the elections were fair and violence free, although, despite rules to the contrary, campaigning from all sides did take place on election day near the polling areas.

Jerusalem was more challenging in that, as stated in the 1993 Oslo Agreement, Palestinians living in Jerusalem are limited to "absentee voting" in one of six post offices. Israel allowed of maximum capacity of 6,300 voters among the 120,000 eligible. The post office polling locations have less privacy as voters often had to mark their ballets in plain view of Israeli postal workers. Other Palestinians residents in Jerusalem could have traveled to one of thirteen polling centers in the nearby West Bank but feared that if they did so they would risk jeopardizing their Jerusalem registration and identity status with Israeli authorities. The military checkpoints slowed people down and contributed to their impatience and weariness.

NP Observation Mission: Protest at the Wall (contributed by Mary Ann McGivern, Northern Ireland)
Two days after the election, several NP volunteers headed out to observe a weekly nonviolent protest at the Israel Separation Barrier organized by Bil’in’s Popular Committee Against the Wall. Just a year ago, on February 20, 2005, bulldozers turned toward the small Palestinian town of Bil'in and began to uproot olive trees to clear a path for the wall. The 3,000 citizens of Bil'in feared that the Jewish settlers were going to confiscate their land so they had a village meeting and began to develop an organization committed to nonviolence, using their minds, not their hands or weapons, according to local resident Mohammed Katib. “Our struggle is against the occupation, not the people. They take the land and say ‘security.’ They kill people and say ‘security.’ We pull this reason from them. Our hands are tied. We tie our bodies to the trees. We tie ourselves to each other with no way to protect ourselves. We are not a security threat. Our message is to stop the war in our lands and the uprooting of our trees.” The soldiers have used tear gas almost every week and frequently assault the villagers and their supporters (who often include internationals and Israelis). Four hundred have been injured, ten seriously.

NP Strategic Relations Director David Grant also traveled to Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon and met with various NGOs and community leaders for the sake of understanding what obstacles and opportunities a Nonviolent Peaceforce Middle East Region Coordinator might face and where she or he might establish an office. Despite the current political volatility of this region, or perhaps because of it, interest in nonviolent means of addressing social problems is high, although great circumspection is required. NP is pursuing several potential projects, some rather extensive and in cooperation with NP Membership Organizations in Israel and Palestine, and others more basic in other parts of the region.