With violence and tensions growing in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank between Israelis and Palestinians and very little indication of the start of negotiations in good faith, there is increasing discussion of what might be done to prevent increased violence. One possibility suggested is the deployment of international volunteers trained in nonviolent action to interpose themselves between Israelis and Palestinians, largely by being next to the Palestinians.
There are already several such teams on the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Some are Israeli groups such as the Center for Jewish Nonviolence and Standing Together. Others are international NGOs such as Community Peacemaker Teams, the World Council of Churches Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme and the Italian group Operazione Colomba.
While this existing work is extremely important, it will have to be scaled up significantly in number and duration to address the needs of not only the West Bank but especially the Gaza Strip.
One such effort in which I was directly involved was an effort to place a peace team on the Nicaraguan-Honduras frontier in 1981. At the time, it was thought that the 400 strong U.S. troops stationed in Honduras might cross the frontier to attack the Sandinista-leftest government in Nicaragua or to help actively the anti-Sandinista Contras to do so. A group of persons associated with the Santa Cruz Resource Center for Nonviolence in California and affiliated to the organization Peace Brigades International were able to put a team together and move to the Nicaragua-Honduras frontier on short notice. The group called itself “The Jalapa Brigade” after the small Nicaraguan city near the Honduran frontier where it was posted.
When the Jalapa Brigade was being put into place, the Ambassador of Nicaragua to the United Nations (UN) in Geneva was a former student of mine, and his brother, also a former student of mine, was the legal advisor to the President of Nicaragua. In fact, when the team arrived, Daniel Ortega, the President, introduced the team as “Friends of Humanity.”
Through the Ambassador, I was able to inform all the Central American Missions to the UN as to the aims and role of the Peace Brigade. In the end, the U.S. military did not cross the frontier. Perhaps it never intended to do so. It may also have been that the interposition of U.S. citizens with good organizational contacts helped to weigh in the U.S. military decision-making process. When the team left, the leader of the Protestant “Evangelical Committee for Development Aid” said “The proof of your triumph lies in the fact that no attacks were made while you were in the Jalapa area.”
There have been other such interposition efforts. One was the Gulf Peace Team created at the time of the 1990 Iraqi annexation of Kuwait. The aim of the 73-member Peace Team was to be an “international multicultural team working for peace and opposing any form of armed aggression by setting up one or more international peace camps between the opposing armed forces. Our object will be to withstand nonviolently any armed aggression by any party to the present Gulf dispute.” However, on January 27, 1991, the peace camp was closed by Iraq because the authorities had “decided that the continued presence of the camp was a security risk
Today such peace teams for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict may be a real possibility if we move quickly enough and have some governmental cooperation.
René Wadlow, Association of World Citizens
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