The Israeli Radical Left. Fiona Wright

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      Performing Complicity

      Early on a Saturday morning in Jerusalem’s well-to-do Mishkenot Sha’ananim area, the streets are quiet. A group of Jewish Israeli activists called Ta’ayush, often accompanied by some international visitors, regularly meets here to set off for its weekly activities in the South Hebron Hills area of the occupied West Bank. On one of the days I join the group in April 2011, the organizers give a brief overview of the plans for the day and then split the activists into smaller groups to travel to different spots and join Palestinian farmers in various locations. I am sent with three Israelis and an American to travel in a car rather than the minivan the other group goes in, and our part of the convoy thus skips the stop-and-check by the Israeli army patrol that awaits the group, as it does every week, en route to its destination. Our aim, as in the activities of Ta’ayush more broadly, is to witness, record, and perhaps disrupt the practices of settlers and Israeli military authorities in the South Hebron Hills, where its Palestinian inhabitants face perpetual harassment, violence, and the threat of expulsion and house demolitions. We are to travel to a thoroughly colonial space to perform an anticolonial politics, alongside and on the land of the Palestinians who Ta’ayush activists call their “partners.” The less-articulated side of this activism, though, is the field of interactions it gives rise to among the Israeli activists, settlers, soldiers, and police officers, a scenario that exposes this activism’s complexities, contradictions, and even, as I will explore, shades of complicity.

      We arrive at a roadside location a few kilometers southeast of Yatta, the southern West Bank’s main town, to which the Israeli state would like to see most of the South Hebron Hills’ Palestinian residents relocate. We are greeted by five Palestinian men who come carrying tools and olive trees that we are to plant together in their land, a short walk across fields overlooked by an Israeli outpost—one of the settlements in the region officially deemed illegal even by the Israeli authorities. Ilan, the most experienced of the activists and designated our group’s contact person by the organizers, explains that the settlers often come to disrupt the farmers whenever they try to work on the land and that we are there in the hope that our presence will let them get some more work done before disruption, and to witness and record any interaction with the settlers, army, or police officers. I am assigned the task of filming the activities and Ilan gives me the small video camera the organizers have brought for that purpose, together with instructions about making sure always to get a wide field of vision so that as much as possible will be captured on film.

      Two soldiers are already standing a short distance away from the field when we arrive—it is not the first time Ta’ayush activists have been there, although it is not clear how the soldiers knew we would come today, or whether there is a constant army presence in that spot—but we are able to work undisturbed for about one hour. After that time, one of the settlers, an older man, comes down the hill from the outpost and starts to shout at us. He screams in Arabic at the Palestinians, and in Hebrew at us, accusing Ilan in particular of being a traitor, stating that he is a Hamas supporter. The two soldiers stand by for the time being but call their commander, who arrives after a few minutes. He starts to ask questions of the Palestinian farmers, checking the title deeds they have brought with them to ascertain whether the land does indeed belong to them, and asks why we are there with them. In the course of this discussion, more soldiers and police officers arrive, some of whom are able to speak in Arabic with the farmers. They demand that the Palestinians come to an army office to show a different document than the one they have brought, which is in Arabic and without any map and which the commander claims is not good enough as evidence of ownership. As this is going on, a police officer is taking photographs of each of us. I continue to film the whole interaction, though the Israeli activists, the American, and I remain silent, as we were instructed to do by Ilan at the beginning of the day. The commander then declares the area a closed military zone, the settler still stands nearby shouting at the group, and the Palestinians start to leave. We walk with them, and one of the soldiers asks me (in Hebrew) if I am a journalist, and I respond that I am not. He says that in that case I should stop filming and so I lower the camera, unsure of the repercussions of not doing so, although Ilan later informs me that we are entirely within our rights to film everything and that next time I should continue.¹ The soldier says, in a sarcastic tone, “Shabbat shalom ve chag sameach” (the weekend “good day” greeting and happy holidays, as it was during the Passover festival), and we continue to walk away in silence.

      Ilan is disappointed that we have left without the soldiers showing us a written order stating that the area was a closed military zone, which techically the army has to do before we are legally obliged to leave. Much of the aim of these Ta’ayush actions is to record occasions on which these written orders have been shown, in order to prove continued Palestinian presence on their land.² He asks the Palestinians why they left without waiting for it, and they say they did not realize that the army has to show a written order. Ilan explains to them that next time they can wait until they see such an order, and one of the other Israeli activists, Efrat, asks Ilan why we left without it. Ilan replies, “I’m not going to tell the Palestinians what to do” and explains that because we had filmed the interactions those videos could still be used by Ta’ayush in any advocacy or legal discussions about settler and military harassment of Palestinian farmers. Thus Ilan says that he still considers the action semi-successful.