To Cultivate the Olive Tree and to Harvest Peace: An Interview with Fred Marchant

Fred Marchant recently returned from a month-long visit to Israel and Palestine as a member of a delegation sponsored by Interfaith Peace Builders. We took the occasion to interview him the week of January 19 for our newsletter.

With T. Michael Sullivan

Can you give us a brief overview of your trip?

Yes, I was in Israel/Palestine for nearly a month. The first two weeks of the trip I was part of a delegation sponsored by Interfaith Peace-Builders. This group (an offshoot of the Fellowship of Reconciliation) several times a year sends delegations to the region. Ours was, as you note below, the Olive Harvest Delegation, and it was co-sponsored by the American Friends Service Committee. There were fifteen U.S. citizens from all corners of the country, and four from the United Kingdom. They came from all walks of life, some retired academics, some clergy, some younger people just beginning their careers.

There were two group leaders: Ms. Jennifer Bing-Canar, the Middle East expert from the American Friends Service Committee’s Chicago office, and Ms. Alta Schwartz, the outreach director of the Middle East Institute at Georgia State University. The delegation was scheduled to meet with various groups and individuals, from both Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories, who were dedicated to non-violent efforts at resolving the conflict. We met with folks from Jenin, Ramallah, Bil’in, East Jersualem, West Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Tel Aviv, Sderot, and the Erez Crossing region north of Gaza. Our headquarters hotel was in the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem, but we had three overnights -- one in Jenin, one in Beit Sahour (Field of Angels), and Deheisheh Refugee Camp, the latter two near Bethlehem.

The delegation was, in effect, an immersion educational experience, the goal of which was to teach us about the real nature of the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis and the myriad non-violent responses to it, both of which are thoroughly under-reported in our national media.

The trip was titled “Trees of Peace: 2008 Olive Harvest Delegation.” What is the significance of olive trees in this area of the world and of the harvest?

The question is so rich with many possible areas to explore, but I will try to be brief and sketch out a few. For one thing, of course, cultivation of the olive tree is one of the primary agricultural efforts throughout the West Bank. The hillsides are green with olive groves. Olive oil and related products are a primary source of income for many rural Palestinians. At the symbolic level, there is the traditional notion of peace having a connection to olive branches, and that symbolic resonance was very profoundly felt on this trip. To cultivate the olive tree and to harvest peace are the signs of peace. The signs of war and discord can be seen also in the uprooted olive tree. It is said by many that nearly a million olive trees have been uprooted in the West Bank due to the occupation. The construction of the so-called “Security Wall,” for example, cut through olive groves, thereby separating farmers from their livelihood. And just as bad, sometimes during the olive harvest, Palestinian farmers are harassed by right-wing Israeli settlers from the illegal settlements that dot the hilltops throughout the West Bank. International visitors sometimes minimize the likelihood of such harassment. And, finally, it should be said that the olive harvest is an annual time of celebration, and our trip to Jenin was timed for the local celebration sponsored by the Palestine Fair Trade associates of that area.

Can you describe the wall and its function and intent?

Of course, the pictures and the words don’t do it justice. But we shall try. The wall is gray concrete about twenty to twenty five feet high. It has been assembled in segments that are about five or six feet across. If it were miniaturized and made out of plastic, it would resemble something like a Leggo construction. But it is concrete and about as ugly as anything one might imagine. Where you can see it stretching up a hill or off into the distance, it is hard to take your eyes off it. It is a marvel and monument to human misery. It is, and there is no other way to say it, a prison wall stretching around an entire occupied region and its population. Where it is not a wall, it is a fence, often electrified, and decorated with barbed wired. At checkpoints and hilltops and other tactically advantageous places, there are watchtowers, a little higher than the wall itself, and often decorated with camouflage netting. The wall/fence complex runs the whole length of the West Bank, surrounding it, with the Jordan River and its Israeli-controlled security zone as the only place where there is no wall. Gaza too is surrounded by a wall and is, of course, bounded by the sea where there is no wall.

The function of the wall is ambiguous. Its stated function was/is to provide security to Israel and its citizens from infiltrating terrorists. But everyone knows the wall provides no such security at all. It can be gotten around, checkpoints avoided, etc. The assistant director of the UN’s relief program explained to us that everyone knows that the wall provides little or no assurance against terrorism. Sadly, the Hamas rockets provide evidence of this.

No, the Wall, as it is referred to there with a capital letter, is part of what Jeff Halper calls the “matrix of control” in the Occupied Territories. In practical terms it makes life miserable for Palestinians. The checkpoints can make a journey of ten miles take several hours. Imagine a commuter-student coming from Arlington to UMass Boston, with a checkpoint in Park Street station at rush hour, and that is the kind of thing you see at the Qalandria Crossing north of Jerusalem, and on the way to Ramallah. A student coming from Bethlehem to Bir Zeit University north of Ramallah would have to traverse two checkpoints, and the 30 minute trip graduates to 3 hours, each way.

Life is made miserable by the Wall in many ways. I have mentioned the way it cuts off, in some places, a village from its crops. In some towns it snakes through neighborhoods, breaking them apart. All very practical matters. But there is another misery, less practical but somehow hugely important. The Wall is such an insult to the human spirit. It demeans the people on both sides. It turns one into the jailed and the other into the jailer. It reifies the relations between both sides. It is the visible and seemingly permanent reminder of the Occupation itself.


Do geographical features themselves unify or divide the cultures?

I am not sure how to answer this question. Yes, some geographical features help unify a culture. The coastal plains of Israel and the hillsides of the West Bank are very different in geographical feel, but honestly I don’t think Israelis or Palestinians feel that geography is what divides or unifies them as people. The dividing issues are fundamentally political. See my response to the next question.


What are the ongoing tensions and burdens of the people of this region?

The ongoing tensions and burdens of the people of this region are those that pertain to an ongoing military occupation. The Occupation—and most Palestinians refer to it in a manner that you can almost hear the capital letter—is the fundamental issue. We in the United States tend to forget that this Occupation began in the aftermath of the 1967 war. And we tend to forget that occupations are not supposed to be permanent. A permanent one is the same as annexation, only without the official incorporation into the annexing state. The only military occupation that I can think of that has been more lasting than this one is the Chinese occupation of Tibet.

And let us not forget that it is, above all, military occupation. The suspension of all sorts of legal rights—both of person and property—can be invoked in an instant anywhere in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Freedom of movement is curtailed by military procedure and tactic. The highways are military zones. In towns, few new building permits are issued for new housing. When, as is Palestinian custom, a father builds an addition to a house for a son and his new bride, then that house invariably comes under demolition order. This is independent of whether or not there is any security issue at all involved with the house. The rule of law under a military occupation seems to have one primary purpose: to sustain the occupation; anything else is secondary.

The Oslo Peace Accords over fifteen years ago set up three distinct security zones in Occupied Territories. Zone A is under the control of the Palestinian Authority, in terms of both civil and security issues. Zone B is under shared control of Palestinian and Israeli military authorities. Zone C is under the control of the Israeli Defense Forces, in terms of both civil and security issues. The “roadmap” was an idea that there would be increasing areas designated as Zone A, and decreasing areas in the other two categories, but the process has been stalled for years. Instead, the Israeli settlements increase in number and in size throughout the West Bank and, along with them, military protection.

The “settlement” as a word connotes something very different from the reality on the ground. In fact, a settlement can be a few mobile homes and armed guards on a hilltop. Or it could be an enormous tract of hillside developed with modern houses, condo complexes really. The point that always gets lost in the question of the settlements is that they are fundamentally illegal according to international law. Israel has ignored this for so long that we have all become accustomed to and tolerant of the fact that an occupying power is tacitly claiming land it conquered in war.

The expansion of the settlements is the primary obstacle to a sustainable peace, and is certainly one of the ways in which the chances for a just peace seem to be slipping away. And certainly the settlements, be they in towns or rural areas, are visible reminders that not all Israelis think that the Occupied Territories should be returned to Palestinians. Yes, in Gaza there was dismantling of settlements and withdrawal. But now, with the assault on Gaza, that seems as much a matter of preparing the battlefield as giving up territory. Of the 24 settlements that Israel dismantled a couple of years ago, 21 of them were in Gaza. Meanwhile, throughout the West Bank the settlements continued to grow.

In a time of extended tensions and, more immediately, intense conflict, what sustains the people – both Palestinian and Israeli – in the region?

I cannot speak for whole nations of people. I can, however, give some impression of the people I met, a select group I admit, but a group that represents the best in both societies. I met Eric Yellin, of Sderot, who maintains a blog with a Palestinian from Gaza, a person he has never met, but with whom there is friendship and communication, even during the worst of the recent assaults. I met Juliano Mer Khamis, son of a Jewish Israeli mother and a Palestinian father. Juliano, a well-known Israeli actor and director, has devoted himself to the Freedom Theatre in Jenin, founded by his mother, and devoted to the young people there. I met Iyad Burnat of Bil’in who weekly leads marches and demonstrations to the security fence outside his village. I met Ruth Hiller and Dorothy Naor of New Profile, an Israeli group devoted to supporting conscientious objectors and demilitarizing Israeli society. I met Zoughbi Zoughbi of Bethlehem and the Palestinian Conflict Resolution Center, a man who is devoted to the teachings of Gandhi and King, and who works to address the pernicious effects of psychological trauma throughout Palestinian civil society. What sustains these people? Perhaps there is some other secret, but from the outside it is, it seems to me, their faith that most human beings do not want to kill each other and do not want to steal from each other. They know this “secret” about human beings, and they work daily on the basis of it, even as sometimes their worlds around them get crushed, blown up, or otherwise savaged.

Do you have any personal observations on the prospects for peace?

Yes, I would be less than honest if I said automatically I am optimistic. When one sees what has happened in Gaza, naturally one despairs of there ever being peace. But then I think of the people I just mentioned, and feel as though they are the models and the sources of my guarded but sustained belief that there will be, finally, a just peace in the region. The practical key, in my judgment, is for Israel to end the Occupation. That is the key to Israel’s security. That is the key to Palestinian statehood. The outline of a peace plan is there in the Oslo Accords. Most Israelis and most Palestinians want an end to the violence. Peace awaits those leaders who are courageous enough to help it become real. For both Israelis and Palestinians, the one optimistic note I heard in November and December of 2008 was the hope that President Barack Obama might help both sides find the way. Today is the first day of the Obama presidency. I share the hope of my friends in Israel and Palestine.