Saif Abukeshek is a Palestinian youth worker, who works as a coordinator with the International Solidarity Movement (ISM). Currently in Australia on a national speaking tour, he spoke to Green Left Weekly's Nick Everett.
"I come from a political family", explained Abukeshek, who was born in the Askar refugee camp, near Nablus in the West Bank, in 1981. "My father was in prison for 14 years. My mother was supposed to spend 12 years in prison and she spent four years and was released after an exchange of prisoners."
As a child, Abukeshek remembers the Israeli Defence Forces coming to his house on a daily basis. "We would have days where my parents could not go out because of the curfew. There were days when my parents would tell me that there are no shops open. When I asked why they explained to me that because a person was killed by the military there was a three-day strike."
Abukeshek became aware of the resistance to the occupation when the first intifada (uprising) commenced in 1989. "I started to understand a lot of the political aspects of the occupation of Palestine", he told me. "When journalists interviewed me they usually thought I was older than my age. I would say that I would rather be playing in the street as I am only 10. But, playing in the street was not easy to do, because the military would be marching in the street."
In May 2000, when Abukeshek was in his last year of school, he was injured in a political march demanding the right of return for Palestinian refugees. "This issue concerns me personally as I am a refugee", he explained. "My family was driven out of their land in 1948. [The land they once had is] closed because they are building factories for weapons."
It was at a demonstration for the right of return that Abukeshek was injured by an Israeli bullet. "We arrived at the checkpoint and the soldiers opened fire. I was in the first line. 10 people were killed that day and I was lucky to survive." The experience, before the second intifada commenced, forced him to consider "what sort of 'peace' we used to have", he told me.
In May 2002, Abukeshek began to work with the International Solidarity Movement (ISM). "We support any action the Palestinians invite us to participate in if it is consistent with non-violent principles", explained Abukeshek. "When people go to Palestine, they learn from Palestinians how to resist the occupation. When small kids challenge the authority of the occupation by going to school, people learn from this."
"In the West Bank and Gaza, in all the occupied cities, we are facing the strongest country in the Middle East and the fourth strongest nuclear power in the world, supported by the strongest country in the world. We are not facing a group of soldiers jumping around or a group of terrorists. We are facing a state, while we have no state, no power, no weapons. Children with stones [are] facing tanks, F-16s, Apaches."
The ISM is currently organising non-violent protest actions against the Apartheid Wall being erected in the West Bank by the Israeli government. Abukeshek explained that the Apartheid Wall is not a new policy. "This policy started after the war in 1967. All of these elements — the wall, settlements, checkpoints — work together. You have checkpoints, you have these colonial bases and now you have the wall."
"The wall seeks to put as many Palestinians as possible into the smallest piece of land as possible", said Abukeshek. "This is killing the daily life of Palestinians; it is destroying their land completely."
"We have a very famous proverb in Palestine", Abukeshek told GLW. "If you hit me and you didn't kill me, that blow makes me stronger. This is what is happening to the movement in Palestine. They target the movement, they hit the movement really strongly, but this movement grows stronger."
"We have thousands of people marching to the wall. They arrest them, they beat them, they shoot them, but they keep marching, they keep protesting, they keep sitting in front of bulldozers, like Rachel Corrie (an ISM activist from the US killed by an Israeli bulldozer on March 16, 2003)."
"The international presence has started to bring media attention,", Abukeshek explained. "When the bulldozer killed [Corrie], I was her trainer. I started to get used to losing Palestinian friends, but I didn't really [expect] that internationals could be killed in Palestine too."
With more than 2000 Palestinians having been killed over the last three years of the intifada, the media has lost interest in reporting their deaths, says Abukeshek. "But when one international is wounded it is a big deal. And when an international is wounded in a civil protest with Palestinians, it is a big deal and the message gets out."
Abukeshek urged Australians to get involved in the campaign to end the occupation of Palestine. "Everybody is encouraged to protest in his or her country against the illegal occupation of Palestine."
On March 20, Abukeshek will be addressing a rally in Sydney protesting the occupation of Iraq. "The Palestinians have always supported the Iraqi people", he told GLW. "While we were under occupation during the second intifada, people broke the curfew and went out protesting.
"[When people were protesting around the world against the invasion of Iraq] we were protesting in Gaza [and] in the West Bank", he told GLW. "We support any people that are living under occupation, any people that are suffering an injustice, suffering from oppression."
"I dream of a bi-national state of Palestine and Israel", Abukeshek told GLW. "We can live together. It is completely not true that Palestinians and Israelis cannot help killing each other. I hope that there will be a peaceful way for this occupation to end and for us to live together one day."
From Green Left Weekly, March 10, 2004.
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