Gush Shalom
Once again, the drab parking opposite the Defence Ministry in Tel-Aviv, just across the fortified gate and the bored sentries guarding the entrance to the nerve center of the strongest army in the Middle East. Since the last time we were here, a fence had been erected at the edge of the sidewalk on our side of the road. The authorities apparently erected it following an eventful night in April when several hundred activists spontaneously surged onto the road and blocked it to protest the invasion of Ramallah (two invasions before the current one).Today, we were brought here by the bombing in Gaza which ended the lives of a senior Hamas leader as well as fifteen civilians, ten of them children - and which apparently nipped in the bud what was the best chance for a cease fire in quite a long while - the military operation which the often over-cautious Meretz Leader Yossi Sarid termed "state terrorism" on prime-time TV last night. A clump of activists are already there before the appointed hour. By 6.00 more and more are arriving, members of Gush Shalom which called the action reinforced by smaller contingents from other groups - altogether about 150 at the peak. Banners are unfurled and hand-made signs held aloft: "Killing follows killing, assassination causes terror"; "The killing of Palestinian children is terror, too"; "A targeted killing of peace"; "There is no military solution"; "Enough with war crimes"; "The economy is collapsoing under the burden of the occupation". A big, black-bordered banner read "We mourn the Israeli and Palestinian children". At its side were the combined flags of Israel and Palestine and the Gush Shalom motto: "Two peoples, two states, one future". There were no special incidents, except the usual fussing of the Defence Ministry security men, who were worried lest the TV crews present take footage of military restricted areas. While they were arguing with the Danish and German camera crews, the youngsters at the front burst out chanting: "Fuad, Fuad [nickname of the Minister of Defence] - how many kids did you kill today?" and "all the ministers are war criminals." The group of radical gays and lesbians known as "Kvisa Shroa" (alternatively translated as "Dirty Laundry" or "Black Sheep") raised some laughter on a rather somber occasion by shouting "We will not sleep with soldiers". While dispersing, more than one of us contemplated the likely future occasions when we would have to come here again in the coming months - the suicide bombings which are the likely result of the Gaza bombings, and the new acts of repression to which these bombings will provide a pretext, and the new Palestinian retaliations and... Then we passed the tall building at the corner of Ibn Gvirol St. where the South African Emabassy was located in the 1980's, and the pavement where "Israelis Against Apartheid" had held their vigils. That, too, had often seemed futile and interminable.
