We were nearing the completion of our journey, and unfortunately for our last presenters we were running quite late. But we pressed on… and arrived in East Jerusalem for our mid-day meal which had been delayed until well into the afternoon. In the midst of the bustle of taking our orders and delivering plentiful servings of middle east salads, pita and humus which preceded our individual Entres, we were joined in the restaurant by a large group of very excited school teachers, celebrating the successful completion of another school year! And true to “liberated” school teachers the world over, these ladies raised quite the ruckus, making it nearly impossible to carry on a conversation. However, Esther and I were sitting across from our speaker, Wael Salame, who joined us to talk about the organization Combatants for Peace. Gershon postponed his formal presentation to the group for our bus ride to Anata (after lunch), but Esther and I strained to hear snippets of his story during our meal.
Wael was first approached by friend and fellow freedom fighter on the Palestinian side, Basam Aramin. At that time, having served close to 5 years in an Israeli prison, Wael refused to attend early CfP organizational meetings, expressing disbelief and a profound mistrust for anyone who served in the Israeli military. He guessed that the whole thing was a ploy to get Palestinians together and ambush them. Eventually, Wael began thinking back on several surprisingly candid conversations he had in prison with one of his Israeli guards. AND, Basam kept asking. At a certain point, Wael relented, although he stayed silent during his entire first meeting, withholding his own stories. Being fluent in both Arabic and Hebrew, Wael intentionally eavesdropped on casual Israeli conversations listening intently for signs of “betrayal.” He sat in genuine disbelief as both comrades and enemies in arms disclosed stories of violence and talked of subsequent transformation. As members of the organization, Combatants declare together, “After brandishing weapons for so many years, and having seen one another only through weapon sights, we have decided to put down our guns, and to fight for peace. ”
Clearly, it is a difficult journey for men (and women) on both sides to come to terms with and be accountable for perpetuation of violence. But Wael was personally drawn to the levels of honesty, regret and transformation he experienced at the meeting and decided on the spot to join colleagues on both sides to break the cycle of violence and bloodshed.
Wael related a bit about the growth of Combatants for Peace since it began in 2005. Originally the criteria to join CfP was some level of participation in violent aspects of the conflict; Israelis as soldiers in the Israeli army (IDF) and Palestinians as part of the violent struggle for Palestinian self-determination. However, the organization has been inundated by citizens on both sides who want to learn about and participate in non-violent action and are in the process of expanding to include and accommodate a wider range of participants, while still holding space for combatants to let go of their conditioned responses and seek reconciliation.
Abir’s Garden
As I struggled to hear above the noise and confusion of the restaurant, Wael spoke somberly of Basam Aramin’s daughter Abir. This was to be a story he shared with the whole group on the bus on the way to Anata. As fate would have it, the Palestinian man responsible for the founding and growth of this most improbable organization, experienced personal tragedy at the hands of the Israeli military. Last January, Abir Aramin, Basam’s 10 year old daughter, was hit in the head by a rubber bullet fired by an Israeli soldier as she crossed the street in front of her school; she succumbed three days later in the hospital’s ICU . Both Palestinians and Israeli Combatants for Peace kept a round the clock vigil in support of Basam’s family during Abir’s hospitalization and throughout the mourning period after her death. One result of this heartbreaking tragedy is that Combatants launched a proactive campaign to build a memorial to this youngster called “Abir Aramin’s Garden- A safe place to grow” in order to provide the children of Anata with an opportunity to play safely in an organized playground.
We could only peer out the bus windows as we cruised by the location of Abir’s Garden, glancing briefly at the memorial plaque erected to Abir where the shooting took place. We had run out of time for even a brief stop. Just prior to driving by the Garden, Wael walked us through a back alley up to a spot as close as we would come to the Wall, currently under construction all along the perimeter of Anata. There was something inexplicably heartbreaking to be present at the sites of two of the most vicious symbols of aggressive mayhem — a looming cement prison enclosure and a memorial to a child – along side a man who has forsaken a life once consigned to armed struggle. How many Abir’s on one side and Hadassah’s on the other will be sacrifices to our inability to recognize the futility of warfare, and by virute of its imprecision, war istelf radicalizes the innocents. How many youngsters will have to look up from both sides into the dark face of cement barriers, obscuring the faces of one to the other? We stood mutely, most of us lost in self-reflection, wondering about the true nature of courage – the courage needed to look directly in the eyes of our “enemies” with honesty and regret – the way Wael now looked fearlessly out at the world.
