Ayed Morar, or Abu Ahmed as he is known to all, sat in
jail for a week, including the day we celebrated the
life of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. I wonder if he
thought of King during his incarceration.
Unlike King, Abu Ahmed is unable to protest his
imprisonment by exemplifying the moral injustice done
to him and his people, for the world's powers have
maintained a deaf ear to the plight of the Palestinian
people.
Like King, however, Abu Ahmed is in jail for
organizing and participating in nonviolent direct
action against unjust, discriminatory and violent
policies targeting his people on the basis of their
ethnicity. King ultimately left his Birmingham jail
cell and went on to lead this country toward racial
integration and healing. But Abu Ahmed, though he is released from prison, is still locked up.
Abu Ahmed is from Budrus, a peaceful farming village
in the West Bank that sits relatively near the 1967
border with Israel. Last year, the Israeli government
interfered in the life of the village in an
unprecedented way with preparation for the
construction of a wall blocking the villagers' access
to their fields, and cutting them off from any source
of livelihood. This preparation has meant the
uprooting of thousands of olive trees and the
devastation of the land.
In December 2003, Abu Ahmed and others in the village
started to organize and called on the International
Solidarity Movement -- a grass-roots Palestinian and
international movement promoting nonviolent,
direct-action methods of resistance (in the spirit of
King) -- to join them in protesting the wall.
For days, hundreds of Palestinians marched against the
wall, joined by international and Israeli civilians,
mirroring similar protests elsewhere along the wall.
Ultimately, and not unexpectedly, the Israeli Army
struck back.
On one day, dozens were injured by live and
rubber-coated steel bullets. On Dec. 26, an Israeli
civilian, Gil Na'amati, was shot by Israeli soldiers
at another protest, and on Dec. 30, a Swedish
parliamentarian was arrested with eight other
foreigners. One day later, Israeli Army Jeeps rolled
into the village and arrested dozens of Palestinians,
including most of the organizers. Nonetheless, Abu
Ahmed and his fellow villagers continued, and on the
night he was arrested, Jan. 14, he was planning the
next day's demonstration.
The wall will make Budrus a virtual prison, as it has
many other villages and towns in the West Bank. Gaza
already is a virtual open-air prison, and "unilateral
steps" by Israel are well under way to do the same to
the West Bank. And yet more and more Palestinians are
joining in the nonviolent struggle against Israeli
occupation.
Like King, the Freedom Riders, the Student Nonviolent
Coordinating Committee and others in the civil rights
movement, these Palestinians and their friends are
standing up through action to injustice and violence.
Like Andrew Goodman, James Chaney and Michael
Schwerner, the lives of peace activists Rachel Corrie,
Tom Hurndall, Isaac Saada and Shaden Abu Hijleh have
also been taken too soon. And like those earlier
activists, Abu Ahmed and others are seeking a
fundamental paradigm shift in overturning decades of
injustice in the name of peace.
Recently, we as Americans have reflected on the life
of a man who dedicated himself to the causes of
equality, freedom and justice. However, we must also
consider what King would do in the current situation.
Would he sit idly by while fences and walls were
constructed on 125th Street in New York City to block
off Harlem from the rest of Manhattan? Would he ignore
the razing of hundreds of homes in Compton, making
thousands homeless?
Of course, King would act. He knew that the spirit
within all men and women for freedom and justice could
not be bound, lynched, segregated, isolated,
imprisoned or relocated.
It was that spirit that we commemorated on King's
birthday, that spirit that was unbound by the walls of
the Birmingham jail and that spirit that cannot be
crushed by the wall that Israel is building in the
West Bank. Abu Ahmed, like King, will also one day be
free at last.
------------------------
Adam Shapiro is an organizer with the International
Solidarity Movement in Washington.
