Abdullah Abu Rahma is a child of the First Intifada, an orphan of the Second Intifada, and a man central to the rebirth of Palestinian nonviolence on the West Bank.

This thirty-six-year-old high school teacher in Bil’in, a town on the West Bank, organizes weekly nonviolent protests against Israel’s separation wall. Every Friday for the past three years, Palestinians—together with Israeli dissidents and young solidarity activists from overseas—have been climbing the hillside where Israel has erected its fence. Soldiers routinely turn them back with tear gas, stun grenades, and rubber bullets. Abu Rahma estimates that 800 people have been wounded since the protests began.

But this has not deterred the protesters, who keep coming back. Once they came with a bride and groom in tow, who took their marriage vows as resisters of the wall. Another time they taped their mouths shut and on their bodies they had written the names of countries whose governments condone the wall.

Except for periodic stone throwing, reminiscent of the First Intifada, the protest in Bil’in is remarkable for its discipline.

After one Friday protest, featuring a squad of bikers all the way from Tel Aviv, the demonstrators gathered on the ground floor of Abu Rahma’s house. He managed to slip away from the crowd to a quiet upper room.

He does not draw you in with any magnetism, but his quiet defiance exerts its own power.

What Anne Lamott said of Grace Paley in Traveling Mercies applies to him: “She reminds me of a durable desert shrub that the wind just can’t blow over.”

Abu Rahma is quick to point out that the nonviolent resistance at Bil’in is very much in the Palestinian tradition.

“During the ’36 uprising, workers staged a general strike that lasted six months,” he says.

Then he discusses the First Intifada. “Workers refused to go to their jobs in Israel,” he says. “Students went on strike. In Beit Sahour, people refused to pay taxes to Israel. There was a boycott of Israeli textiles. Nonviolence gave Palestinians a chance to get involved in the resistance in many different ways.”

That has changed now, he laments: “To be a part of the Second Intifada, you have to be a part of some militia.”

But not in Bil’in.

Its creativity has proven vexing to the Israelis.

“On May 4, 2005, the Israelis told us that they would uproot our olive trees in the morning,” he says. “We defied them by chaining ourselves to the olive trees, saying to them, ‘If you uproot our olive trees, you must uproot our lives.’ The Israeli press was there, Al Jazeera was there. People woke up in the morning and saw us on television.”

The Israelis arrested Abu Rahma three times after that action. But thanks to campaigns on the Internet and to progressive supporters in the Knesset, he won quick release.

The Bil’in resistance can take credit for one of the few tangible triumphs won by Palestinians fighting the wall. In September 2007, the Israeli Supreme Court ruled that the wall at Bil’in was inessential to Israel’s security, and the construction of it had to be discontinued. Farmers whose land was seized to build the final, forbidden segment of the barrier would get back their land.

“The ruling meant we achieved our goal of getting the building of the wall stopped,” he says. But it was not a total victory, he explains, because the court decision gives back to the farmers less than half the land the Israelis took to build the wall.

“By continuing to resist, we intend to get the rest of it back,” he says. “If we hadn’t used nonviolent methods, we wouldn’t have gotten anything back.”

Nonviolence is still met with skepticism by many Palestinians. As a group of women told Amira Hass of Haaretz: “Nonviolent? Do the Israelis recognize such a thing as nonviolence?”

But due in part to Abu Rahma’s efforts, and in part to the horror over the fratricidal bloodletting between Hamas and Fatah, receptivity to nonviolence is on the rise. The leaders of two nonviolent groups, Lucy Nusseibeh of MEND (Middle East Nonviolence and Democracy) and Sami Awad of the Holy Land Trust, both claim that they get more requests for nonviolent trainings than they have trainers to go around.

“When I look out my window,” Abu Rahma says, “I see soldiers and the wall, and the trees behind the wall that used to be ours. When harvest time comes, my children say to me, ‘We don’t want to come with you to the harvest, father. We are afraid of the soldiers.’ ”
His words sadden him. He is silent for a minute or two.

“What Gandhi achieved in his country,” he then says, “I want to achieve in mine.”

Robert Hirschfield is a freelancer who writes for many publications on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. He is currently doing research for a book on Palestinian nonviolent activists.