In the silence of the courtroom, there was an audible gasp of surprise and shock whenSupreme Justice Aharon Barak, reading the court’s decision, reached the words: “Themilitary commander did not use his discretion in a proportional way, as required.”
At that moment the veteran peace activists who filled the room realized that they had won.
Four days before, we could not have dreamt of that. We were far from the sterile silence ofthe beautiful Supreme Court building: a distance of a few kilometers geographically, adistance of light-years mentally.
At that time we were running through clouds of tear gas, choking and coughing, in thecenter of A-Ram.
It began, surprisingly, in an atmosphere of friendliness. We came in a convoy of busesfrom all over the country in order to join the inhabitants demonstrating against the wall, onthe eve of the Supreme Court decision.
We expected to be held up at the roadblock across the entrance to A-Ram. The demonstrationwas not secret, we had announced it in the media. We were ready to leave the buses quickly andcontinue around the roadblock on foot. We were surprised, therefore, when theborder-policemen were all smiles. The one who entered our bus spoke like a sympathizer. “Doyou know what you are getting into?” he asked in a friendly way. When we answered that we did, hesaid “have a nice day” and waved us on.
In the center of A-Ram, thousands of Palestinians were waiting for us. We intended tomarch on the main road, along the planned path of the wall that will cut the densely populatedurban area in two. The big concrete slabs of the wall were already lying in the ground, waitingfor the moment when the court would lift the temporary injunction that is holding up thebuilding activity.
The demonstration was intended, of course, to be completely non-violent. The proof: inthe first line there marched a Christian Orthodox priest, a senior Muslim sheikh, localdignitaries and present and past members of the Knesset and the Palestinian parliament. Infront of us walked the A-Ram youth orchestra.
As a symbolic act we had brought five big hammers, and some of the demonstrators were askedto use them to strike concrete slabs lying on the ground.
We advanced slowly in the burning sun. Suddenly a row of border-policemen appeared ontop of the hill overlooking the road. Before we realized what was happening, a salvo of teargasgrenades – one, two, three … dozens – were shot at us. In a few moments we were enveloped by a densecloud of gas that covered all escape routes.
We dispersed in all directions, but the gas grenades continued to explode around us.Those of us who made it to the central square of the town were attacked with tear gas, watercannon and rubber-coated bullets.
The place resembled a real battlefield – clouds of gas, the sound of exploding stungrenades and shooting, the screaming sirens of the Palestinian ambulances, burning boxesalong the street, abandoned posters, shuttered shops. When the Palestinian paramedicsstarted to run with their stretchers towards the ambulances, local boys emerged from thealleys to throw stones at the border-policemen (a mercenary force universally hated in thePalestinian territories). From time to time groups of border-policemen ran towards us,grabbing demonstrators of both sexes and dragging them towards the armored jeeps. One of theambulances was burning. Undercover policemen in plain clothes, pistols in their hands – beatpeople and dragged them along the ground.
All this continued for more than two hours. All that time, a question was nagging me: Whywas this happening? Clearly we had walked into a well-prepared trap. But what was the aim?
On the way back we listened to the news on the radio. A police spokesman announced that theborder-police had been attacked by demonstrators who threw axes and hammers at them. In ourbus, everybody burst out laughing.
The mystery was solved two days later in court, when the judges were dealing with A-Ram.The government attorneys demanded that the temporary injunction that was holding up the wallin A-Ram be lifted. They had a crushing argument: two days ago, they said, theborder-policemen guarding the machinery had been viciously attacked by demonstrators.Their life was in danger. Therefore, in order to save the policemen from the evildoers (us),the building of the wall must be speeded up.
The judges, so it seems, were not impressed. They announced that in another two days, onWednesday, the court would publish a set of principles that would, from now on, apply to hewhole length of the barrier, including A-Ram.
And indeed, on Wednesday the decision that caused the audience to gasp was delivered. Weknew in advance that the court could not forbid the wall altogether. That would have been achallenge to the government, the army and the national consensus. Neither did we expect adecision that would have decreed that the wall should be set up on the Green Line (theinternationally recognized pre-1967 border).
We thought that the court would, at most, change the path of the wall a few kilometers hereand there. But the actual decision went much further: it demands big changes all along the 750kilometers of the barrier, in order to remove it from the vicinity of Palestinian villages andrelease their land.
The judges accepted, in fact, most of the arguments that we had been voicing in dozens ofdemonstrations: (a) that the path of the wall violates international law, (b) that itdestroys the fabric of life of the Palestinian population and turns their life into hell, and(c) that this path does not emanate from security considerations, but rather from a desire toenlarge the settlements, annex territory to Israel and drive the Palestinians out.
Judge Barak, the president of the Supreme Court who drafted the decision, was walking atightrope. On one side he risked provoking the powerful military establishment and a largesection of public opinion. On the other side, he wanted to keep his considerable reputation inthe international judicial community.
Years ago I interviewed him at length. One of the things he told me is engraved in my memory:“The court has no divisions to enforce its decisions. Its power is based solely on theconfidence of the public. Therefore, the court cannot distance itself too much from thepublic.” That was shown again this week: Barak went very far, but knew where to stop – half waybetween the planned path and the green Line. In this he was helped by the Council for Peace andSecurity, a pro-peace group of retired senior army officers, who proposed an alternativepath.
Barak knows well that he is taking a considerable risk: if a suicide attack now takes placeinside Israel, the right-wing will surely put the blame on the court.
Actually, something similar has already happened. Only a few minutes after the courtdecision was read out, Colonel (res.) Danny Tirzeh, the skull-capped officer withresponsibility at the Ministry of Defense for the building of the wall, said that the court’sdecision will cause Jews to be murdered. The man was not fired on the spot, God forbid, but onlyrebuked by his minister.
Ariel Sharon may well be satisfied with the court’s decision. True, the path of the wallwill have to be planned anew, costing more money and time. But in a week the International Courtof Justice in The Hague will deliver its decision on the wall and the matter will return to theUN. There the Israeli and American representatives will argue that the Israeli court hasalready rectified the inequities that needed to be addressed.
In A-Ram and the other suburbs of Jerusalem , too, the path will have to be changed. I hopethat it will be removed from the highway where we were demonstrating last Saturday. I haveinhaled enough gas to last me a while.