INSIGHTS
Reflections on Protective Presence in the West Bank
by Ari Chais
Please note that the names of any children mentioned in this article have been replaced with pseudonyms for reasons of confidentiality.
Amir, a child I met in the Jordan Valley region, is five years old. He’s strong, and very proud of that fact. He could carry my heavy backpack for me all by himself and maybe even believed me when I pretended to lose in arm-wrestling. A few days before I left the Jordan Valley, Amir was playing with a toy truck. “It’s Gill the Settler,” Amir said as he moved it back and forth on the bench. Later that day, Gill, an 18 years old settler from a nearby outpost, or ma’achaz, did show up on his mini-tractor, or trucktoron. He parked his trucktoron in a hill overlooking their property, just a few steps away. He leaned on an Israeli flag that he or one of his friends planted a close to the Palestinian family’s home to mark “their” territory. He watched the family, arranged stones and walked around the property knowing his mere presence was enough to put the family in a state of panic. We filmed him and prepared to call the police. Meanwhile, 9-year old Zahir walked past me, chest puffed up, ready to take him on. Although I secretly admired him for his bravery, I had to chase after him and use my stern teacher’s voice to tell him to go back to his family. I’ve been told Gill had punched him in the stomach before, and when the settlers came the night before, they showed no hesitation putting their faces right in front of the women and children as they were sleeping. Gill eventually left, but we knew he would return soon.
Play is how children internalize the world around them. When Amir, on a day like any other, pretends his toy is the person who terrorizes his family on a daily basis, he is showing us that to him, Gill’s violence is a normal part of life. This normalization points to the systemic reality Amir lives in, where there is nothing to stop Gill other than activists doing protective presence, putting their own bodies on the line. In play, Amir acts out the world as he knows it. A world where the daily injustice his family experiences is in harmony with the machinations of the powers that drive it.
Amir and Zahir’s family see more forms of violence than most will in a lifetime. Here’s some of what I saw during my month providing protective presence:
There’s physical violence: from settlers who steal, beat Palestinians and activists with sticks, throw stones, drive through herds of sheep and set properties on fire to an army that demolishes houses, arrests and tortures Palestinians without trial.
There’s structural violence: Palestinians are not allowed access to water and refused building permits; checkpoints that can be closed at any moment, for any reason, are everywhere.
There is graffiti that says “death to Arabs”.
There is the culture of minimization and naturalization of violence: the “responsible” settlers who, with an affectionate disapproval, called the one who set a field on fire “shovav” (a hooligan; like saying a child is being naughty); those who ask why don’t we call the police, which they know will do nothing; those who use legalese to explain why land that this Palestinian family has lived on for generations is “state land.” The kind of equivocation that’s only said by people who know they can get away with saying anything.
Then there are the passive acts of erasure: road signs where the Arabic is crossed out, Palestinian properties with Israeli flags planted in them, and ponds rebranded with Israeli names (Palestinian families fear harassment if they go there).
Zahir and Amir’s family have to deal with all of this every day.
It’s not aimless violence. It’s a deliberate campaign of erasure, enacted with the blessings and help of the government, military, and police. In the case of Palestinians in Area C, enacted via troubled youth brainwashed by Kahanists to do their bidding.
According to Israeli NGO Kerem Navot, 57 Palestinian communities have been forced to flee since October 7th: 7 partially, and 50 entirely. This campaign of displacement makes Palestinians unsafe in their own homes, and creates a kind of psychological torture you see directed not only at Amir and Zahir, but within their families, too. Imagine that remaining in the land of your parents and grandparents comes at the cost of you and your children living in a state of perpetual fear. It’s unbearable. If their violence is sustained for long enough, settlers hope people will leave “of their own accord” and that they can deny having had anything to do with it. They want to be able to say, by any means necessary, “see, of course we can build here, there’s no one.” And the ponds will have already been given Israeli names, and the Arabic will have already been crossed out of signs, and Israeli flags will have already been planted, and it will all have been normal and allowed in the eyes of the settlers’ children and any new residents that join their communities afterwards. The purpose of their terror is not just ethnic cleansing, it’s to manufacture a sort of amnesia that the land was ever Palestinian in the first place.
Israelis are obviously not all Kahanists. Many despise and resist Kahanist ideology. But this campaign of erasure can be seen everywhere from the river to the sea– Kahanists are taking over the country. The idea that state-sponsored violence can be contained to one part of the country is an illusion. If it’s somewhere, it’s everywhere.
It’s in a Palestinian store in Tel-Aviv adjacent Jaffa where the owner told me of his friend who expressed his grief about the reality in Gaza on Facebook, only to receive a call from Shin-Bet threatening his job. (Suppression of free speech is a common occurrence for Palestinian citizens of Israel).
It’s in West Bank resident Ben-Gvir and his effort to turn the Israeli police into his own private militia. A militia which responds with violence against any of the 70% of Israeli citizens who want the war to end that protest, even family members of hostages. A militia that is attemping to suppress the widespread belief that there is shared interest between all victims for a hostage deal and end the war and genocide in Gaza, because, as minister of Settlements Orit-Strook said, October 7th “was a miracle for settlement expansions.”
It’s in the movement to “resettle Gaza” which, according to fanatic politician Daniella Weiss, is modeling its action after the campaign to establish the West Bank settlement of Evyatar. While in the West Bank, I saw many pamphlets and stickers for it in bus-stops and newly rebranded “Israeli” ponds in area C. In their genocidal pursuit of “greater Israel” they have used every ounce of power they have to intensify the length and brutality of the war. They also firmly believe they will be in Gaza this time next year. Kahanist politicians are refusing to negotiate and in the midst of enacting “the Generals’ Plan:” the ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity currently unfolding in the north of Gaza.
This dynamic is present in Kahanists’ attempts to radicalize soldiers and encourage them to commit war crimes against Palestinians. I learned on a recent tour with Breaking the Silence that Kahanists often co-opt “warm-corners,” spaces for soldiers to receive free meals, which they then use to encourage violence against Palestinians. The ex-soldier tour guide told me how years ago, he was told by Kahanists at “warm-corner” he would get free food if he had hurt a Palestinian that day. These startling admission at the funeral of a settler and soldier is a damning example of how the racism and dehumanization in the West Bank can create war crimes in Gaza.
It’s present at Israeli detention centers like Sde-Teiman, and beyond. I was told in that same Breaking the Silence tour that many of the alleged solider-perpetrators of the horrible crimes which are being committed at the military detention center at Sde-Teiman came from Kiryat Arba, a settlement with a long history of terrorizing nearby Hebron residents and putting stones on Baruch Goldstein’s grave.
It’s in the media. One time, when we were providing a protective presence, Channel 14 came to document us once as “radical leftists” creating problems in the West Bank. The same channel has also called for genocide in Gaza over 50 times. *
Despite it all, Amir and Zahir’s family are surviving. They shouldn’t need your help- they can and will thrive if those who terrorize them stop, but even without the occupation’s permission, they are surviving. I’d like to share a glimpse of the daily resilience it takes to do so:
One night, the mother of Amir and Zahir opened her phone, heard the news. She turned her phone off, sighed, and started singing “You Are My Sunshine.” She watched her kids play soccer as the sun was setting on them. She didn’t know whether settlers would come at night, as they did before in acts of psychological torture. But she knew she was on her own land, and that she planned to remain on it. This song, this moment, was her surviving. She was showing greater resilience than most people could ever understand.
I’ve seen incredible resilience in activists too. Israeli senior citizens going face to face with buff Kahanist teenagers on ATVs is a weekend ritual and Palestinians who, despite facing much greater risks, provide a protective presence too.
As we are fighting the long fight, we must not forget that these people are fighting to preserve Palestinian existence in Area C one day at a time.
If you would like to support them and the many Palestinians urgently facing ethnic cleansing in the west bank, consider supporting Protective Presence through the organizations that facilitate them.
Here is a non-exhaustive list:
To support the Zahir and Amir’s family you can learn about the organization Jordan Valley Activists.
There are many other organizations that do protective presence and other forms of activism in the West Bank. here is is a non exhaustive list: Fa3za, ISM, Achvat Amim, Looking the Occupation in the Eyes, Youth Against Settlements” “Rabbies for Human Rights” and “Combatants for Peace”.
The “Save Al-Makhrour” campaign is a self-initiated campaign by the Kissiya family to reclaim land that was recently stolen from them.
Finally, I am an organizer for a campaign led by Amira Musallam and Mel Duncan to bring 100 trained Unarmed Civilian Protectors to the West Bank. You can learn about our initiative here.
*It is in the genocide. Many scholars and human rights organizations have analyzed Israel’s actions in Gaza and the West Bank against the legal definition of the word genocide. While this analysis is important, it has been my experience that if you are in the West Bank, the writing is on the wall. Kahanists put a sign in the West Bank that says “no future in Palestine”- and they mean it. The dynamics and crimes I’ve witnessed are a clear attempt at destroying a Palestinian future. For them to succeed, they don’t need every Israeli to be a genocidal Kahanists like they are, they need an Israel that empowers them and disempowers those who try to stop them. The fact that not all Israelis are genocidal Kahanists does not mean that all Palestinians are endangered by their extreme actions. In a country where people, including decision makers, are freely allowed to call for their extermination both casually and from government posts, it takes hubris to disagree with Palestinians calling their experience genocide.
Ari Chais is an Israeli-American musician, educator and activist. They organize regularly towards a ceasefire and to the occupation. They have spent a month providing a protective presence in the West Bank and volunteer at UCP for Palestine, an initiative to bring 100 unarmed civilian protectors to the West Bank. The views expressed here are their own.
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