Does peace have a chance?

A week before Easter I received a forwarded message from Christian Peacemaker Teams—a group of Brethren, Mennonites and Quakers dedicated to violence reduction, who've been in Hebron, West Bank, in the occupied territories of Palestine since 1995—asking recipients to wear orange vests throughout Holy Week to remember the three young, nonviolent activists who had been the recent victims of unprecedented attacks by the Israeli military. The young people, between 20 and 25 years of age, were wearing bright red or orange fluorescent jackets with reflective stripes, the International Solidarity Movement uniform, that identified them as nonviolent peace workers and human rights accompaniers.

On Palm Sunday, I rushed out and bought 10 yards of orange cloth to make vests. My friend Teresa, who cares about the world almost more than anyone I know (and who has a sewing machine), said she'd share the cost and make half the vests. We measured and realized we could make 14 of them. Somehow I made three, and found one person interested in wearing one. I wore mine every day. Teresa started a vest but didn't finish it—she was busy collecting the 1,200 relief kits for Iraq assembled by people all over the Twin Cities. I called a friend to see if her church community wanted some vests but didn't hear back. I heard that a few people at St. Martin's Community had found vests at the dollar store and were wearing them. My friend Gail said she thought she had an orange vest at home and would be glad to wear it. I sent the original CPT forward to my entire e-mail list and got only one response. All in all, I think the concerns represented by the vests were eclipsed by (although directly related to) the war, and that's why people didn't get involved readily. And, ultimately, the vests were just hard to explain, which was why I finally had to try to put it on paper:

Over the past 20 years, unarmed, nonviolent international peacemakers have been able to accompany and protect unarmed civilians in many dangerous parts of the world because official military bodies don't believe it is in their own best interests to be seen as bullies who kill unarmed internationals. In other words, they care what the world thinks of them. (The world is always more critical of killing internationals than of a government killing its own people.) This is one of the reasons that international human rights observors, human rights accompaniers and protectors can be effective.

While the eyes of the world were on Iraq, and while our country was giving itself permission to kill innocent civilians, the Israeli military gave itself permission to attack international human rights protectors, apparently without consideration for international opinion. One of them, Rachel Corrie from Olympia, Wash., was killed on March 16, crushed by an Israeli bulldozer. The face of Bryan Avery, a young man from Albuquerque, N.M., was shattered by Israeli machine gun fire from an armoured personnel carrier in Jenin, West Bank, on April 5. Tom Hurndall, from Manchester, England, is brain dead from an Israeli sniper bullet that hit him on April 11 in Rafah, Gaza, as he tried to pull a Palestinian child to safety. Israel has said the death and injuries were accidents.

Because it appeared that a significant shift in a government mentality had occurred, a shift that would make peace work much more difficult, and because an official government no longer represented a culture of law, I felt compelled to wear an orange vest. My message was not, with so much dying in the world, that these lives were more important than other lives—if I mourned for them, I mourned for all lost innocent lives. And my message was certainly not that I was anti-Israeli-or anti-Jewish. The vest more than anything represented a question: Does the world still react to a military attack on unarmed internationals? Can nonviolence techniques continue to be effective in the future?

In all three incidents, ISM members said their friends were clearly visible and were not attacking Israeli forces in any way and were not accompanied by people who were. Corrie was killed because she stood up to a bulldozer trying to demolish a Palestinian home on the Gaza border with Egypt-for the past year Israel has been building a 9.9 kilometer-long wall to restrict contact between Egypt and Gaza, and says in order to complete construction, a certain width of land must be cleared—homes that are in the way have to come down. In the occupied territories there are always "reasons" to demolish homes, and peace activists from CPT, ISM and others have successfully stood in front of bulldozers for years, thus saving hundreds, if not thousands of homes slated for destruction. In fact, Corrie had saved the home she died in front of many times before.

Corrie believed she was protected and could therefore protect people because she was an international presence. In an e-mail she contrasted her experience as an American in occupied Palestine with the experience of Palestinians: "You are always well aware that your experience is not the reality: what with the difficulties the Israeli Army would face if they shot an unarmed U.S. citizen." But she was the 11th person killed on March 16 in the occupied territories—the rest were Palestinians. She couldn't protect them or herself. As internationals, Avery and Hurndall were also not protected.

Donna Howard of the Nonviolent Peaceforce, an international peace army that will be deployed to Sri Lanka sometime in 2003, said there are various possible reasons why Corrie and Avery's U.S. citizenship and Hurndall's English citizenship didn't protect them. Maybe Israel doesn't care what the world thinks of them. Maybe the soldiers were not properly supervised and that if Israel would admit their soldiers were out of control, they might lose credibility in their bargaining process. Perhaps Israel is confident the United States will back them no matter what they do. "I don't know if anyone really knows the answer. There might be people who really know, " she said.

A more ominous interpretation came from a CPT member in the West Bank. " It feels like open season on peace activists. It's been open season on Palestinians all along, now the lack of accountability in the Israeli military has reached a new level. For Palestinians, the threat of ethnic cleansing looms large; the Israeli attacks on human rights workers accompanying them seem to be part of a move by the Sharon administration in this direction. If the internationals can be chased away, what will happen to the Palestinian civilians?"

Howard said that after these three attacks on ISM kids, people who pursue nonviolence as a strategy might believe that the strategy of international visibility is not working, but it also might have increased the power of nonviolence. She said Corrie's sacrifice might strengthen the possibility for nonviolence to succeed—every Nonviolent Peaceforce office and many other peace groups have pictures of Corrie on the walls. "It's important to honor what they [the three activists] have done."

A resolution has been introduced into the House of Representatives calling for an investigation into Rachel Corrie's death. To contact your representative to co-sponsor the resolution (House Concurrent Resolution 111), go to www.congress.org and enter your zip code for your representative's contact information.