Crossing boundaries in Israel/Palestine: An interview with Jean Zaru
By Marianne Arbogast

Jean Zaru is a founding member and a current vice-chair of Sabeel, the ecumenical Palestinian Center for Liberation Theology. She is the stated clerk of the Ramallah Friends Meeting. Zaru has served as a member of the Central Committee of the World Council of Churches, specializing in interfaith dialogue. She has also served as president of the East Jerusalem YWCA, and as a vice-president of the worldwide YWCA. Zaru was interviewed by The Witness June 6, while visiting the U.S. on a speaking tour.

Marianne Arbogast: Let me ask you first what I guess is an obvious question: What are your thoughts on the Road Map?

Jean Zaru: If we take the principles that the Road Map was started on, I think there are some positive sides to it. The Quartet is going to be involved and it’s going to end up in having a viable democratic Palestinian state side by side with Israel. But the problem is, there isn’t a mechanism to see this coming about, and this is what bothers us.

They are holding only the Palestinians accountable to stop the violence, while Israel is still going on with extra-judicial killings, with more confiscation of land by building a wall around Palestinian cities, and so on. And if it does not deal with the question of a shared Jerusalem and a just solution for the Palestinian refugees and an end to the Israeli occupation on the territories that were occupied in ’67, then it is going to be a Road Map that is not leading to peace and security and a permanent solution to the Palestinian-Israeli struggle. So I think the U.S. has to really put pressure on Israel not to continue doing what it’s doing while at the same time they’re talking about this Road Map.

It’s like when we had the Oslo agreement and immediately the pressures and the difficulties of life became much more difficult. Gaza and the West Bank have become very disconnected from one another. We were not allowed to go to Jerusalem after Oslo. So these are some of the problems. But at the same time, we are going to give it a chance. International authority accepted it, and we are ready to move on in spite of the reservations the Israelis have put to the American government.

if you want to go to Gaza, the first thing they want to know is you are not a peace activist. You have to sign a paper that you are not a peace activist, and if something happens to you, it’s your responsibility and not the Israeli soldiers’.

J.Z.: I am a pacifist myself — I am a Quaker. I don’t believe that violence will lead us anywhere, neither morally nor strategically. And there are also some people in Israel who feel that way. And we have crossed boundaries and networked with these Israeli groups, as small as they are, to work on these issues. We were joined by internationals — Europeans, Americans, Jews from Israel, Jews from outside the state — that joined us in this nonviolent struggle, accompanied us when we were trying to demonstrate or pick our olives or do things like that. But now the nonviolent movement is becoming also a threat to Israel. And if you want to go to Gaza, the first thing they want to know is you are not a peace activist. You have to sign a paper that you are not a peace activist, and if something happens to you, it’s your responsibility and not the Israeli soldiers’. So I think, then, because the nonviolent movement has been effective, there is also pressure on the internationals that have joined us.

We cannot do it alone, not because we don’t believe in nonviolence, but because of the siege that we are under. Not only are we not allowed to connect with Gaza or with Israel or with Jerusalem — in the West Bank we are closed in our different cities and villages. Where I personally live, in Ramallah, I cannot move in my car two miles north or south or east or west for medical treatment or to attend Sabeel board meetings in Jerusalem or to visit a sick aunt in the hospital or for work or for anything.

M.A.: How long has that been the case?

J.Z.: Jerusalem was closed to us since March, 1993 — we couldn’t drive our cars there. But they were more lenient with women and with older people. We couldn’t drive our cars but we could go in an Israeli car. But now it is impossible. We have to stop and walk through a checkpoint and if we don’t have the right ID, we cannot cross at all.

I have been sick with high blood pressure and in January my cardiologist wanted a barium test for my heart, and the only place they have it is in Jerusalem. I couldn’t go. And an international organization tried to apply for a permit for me and they did not manage to do that.

There is a military Israeli occupation in the West Bank and Gaza -- and this occupation is not only an occupation, it is a system of colonization, where against international law they are bringing over many people from Israel to live on the West Bank in settlements that they build. And these settlements are built on confiscated Arab land, inhabited by Jews only, and they use most of our water resources. Eighty-five percent of the water resources of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank are used by Israelis and settlers. They have their swimming pools and green lawns and flowers, trees and so on, and our villages and cattle are going thirsty.

Now we have another problem with the wall that the Israelis are building. They are not building it along the borders of ’67, the occupied areas. They confiscate land, they uproot trees, and they encircle cities and imprison them, and as a result of that many people are left homeless or without services or imprisoned outside their fields, and their livelihood is cut off.

And this is the situation: The Palestinians have really, by accepting the Road Map, settled to accept to have their state on 22 percent of historical Palestine. And what Sharon is willing to give is much, much less. Because he wants to give the Palestinian Authority responsibility for the people, but not sovereignty over the land or the natural resources or the water.

The Palestinians call it the "apartheid wall," the Israelis call it the "separation wall," but many other Palestinians call it the "transfer wall."

The Israeli peace groups, like Gush Shalom, are very upset also about what’s happening. They have lots of information on their web site about this wall, and they have quoted one of the Palestinians saying, "It’s a tragedy for all of humanity that such forms of oppression are done against the poor and the defenseless."

M.A.: Are you able to have any direct contact with the Israeli peace groups or is that cut off now?

J.Z.: We still contact one another by phone, by email. Some of them, if they come to Ramallah or to Tulkarm or to Jenin, we are able to meet with them. But the people in East Jerusalem aren’t able to meet with them. The people in the West Bank and the people in the Gaza Strip are unable to meet — to see their families, not just for dialogue. To go to work, to go to medical care, to travel. So it is becoming very, very difficult to meet face-to-face and discuss these things unless we are outside the country or we get a permit — and the permits are not easy to get. It doesn’t mean that they’re not working together and connecting in different ways.

M.A.: And you feel it is helpful to have people come from other countries to accompany you?

J.Z.: It is very important, it is very helpful. It is not only a service to all the people committed to nonviolence, it strengthens the peace workers in Israel and in Palestine to work together, to cross boundaries, and to find a new way of transformation of the society.

The occupation is killing us all, the Palestinians and the Israelis, and we have to find a way to liberate ourselves from this catastrophe. It’s against international law, it’s against any kind of human existence really, because we’re denied most of the basic human rights and community rights. We are not asking, as our leaders say, for the moon. It’s a basic human right to have self-determination and freedom.

We have been calling for international protection, and the U.S. vetoes that at the United Nations. So as a result, because we were denied that from the world community as a result of the veto of the U.S., we called on NGOs and the churches to really join us in this struggle and to see what’s going on, to be peace witnesses, to be a sort of protection by witnessing to what’s happening. And as a result of our call, the accompaniment program in Israel/Palestine developed at the World Council of Churches. I don’t know if you’ve heard about that?

M.A.: What I’ve mainly heard about is the International Solidarity Movement.

J.Z.: You have three different groups. You have the International Solidarity Movement, that responded to a call from the Palestinian Non-governmental Organization that wanted grassroots protection. You have the World Council of Churches responding to the call to end occupation and build a culture of peace, where they accompany people in Israel and Palestine in their nonviolent struggles to bring about change. And you have the Christian Peacemaker Teams, another positive presence in the area, trying to accompany school kids, to protect them going to school in the midst of all of what’s happening. And at the same time witnessing what the Israelis are doing in Hebron, for instance. And these people have been also detained, and they’re asked to leave, although they have been there for years.

So there is really a clampdown on the Palestinian territories where journalists cannot come and now peace activists cannot come, and we cannot move.

We have other forces that are not very positive. First of all, the support of the American government for Israel. The occupation would not have lasted so long without that support of the U.S. It is the longest occupation in the world — yesterday it was 36 years.

We have also the Christian Zionists and the right-wing Christians who are against the peace process. In fact, when I was in Washington, there was a big conference — I didn’t attend that but I heard about it — Christian Zionists and Jews who are against the Road Map and against the peace process. They think the land is not occupied and the Israelis should not relinquish it. It is occupied — the whole world recognizes that.

These [Christian Zionists] forces are pro-Israel but anti-Jewish in their theology… They tell me when I meet with them that I am in the way of the fulfillment of the prophecy of god.

J.Z.: Even Sharon — but what he wants to give up is much less, although he recognizes that it’s controlling the people and that’s not right.

So you have these forces that are also poisoning the atmosphere in Palestine. These forces are pro-Israel but anti-Jewish in their theology. They are anti-Muslim, they demonize Islam very much, and they are anti-local-Christian if they don’t take up their theology. They tell me when I meet with them that I am in the way of the fulfillment of the prophecy of God, because I am not the chosen.

What really bothers me is the hypocrisy. If anybody speaks about basic human rights and ending the occupation, and you talk about divestment from Israeli goods because of the occupation, some worry that would be anti-Semitic. But they don’t worry about connecting themselves with the right-wing Christians, and their theology is really anti-Jewish.

M.A.: Could you say a little bit about what it’s like to not only be a Christian in Palestine, but to be a Christian who’s a pacifist? Is that a difficult thing for others to understand in a situation of so much oppression?

J.Z.: I don’t think it’s difficult because most of the Palestinian people are not using violence at all. We don’t have an army, we don’t make weapons, we have a very lightly armed militia that has been ruined by the Israelis. I mean, every day they kill some of the leaders and they detain them and they bomb the police stations and so on.

Most of the Palestinian people — and we have many Palestinians, Muslims and Christians, that are working on this together, as well as those that don’t work from a faith base — are finding that nonviolence is the only way. Some think it strategically, because of the imbalance of power, but many of them feel it’s the only way. And I am part of the steering committee for Palestinian NGO, and we’re working on it. There have been many signatures in the paper, and on the first page, by many of the thinkers in Palestine, that this is the direction we should take. But it is unheard in the world because we’ve been demonized a lot. What you hear in this country is about suicide bombers and the violence of the Palestinians, but people do not speak about the structural violence that Israel is practicing, besides the direct violence that’s killing most of the population on the street. When you find women delivering at checkpoints because they can’t go to the hospital, when you find children are malnourished because their parents are losing their work and they can’t feed them anymore, when 70 percent live on less than $2 a day -- not because they’re poor but because their fields and houses have been demolished -- this is a great form of violence that the world doesn’t speak about. They just see the direct violence that captures the TV and the journalists. And most often the journalists have access to Israel, and that’s how they pick up the violence of the Palestinians, but they have no access to the territories and so they don’t see what Israel is doing to us.

I’ll give you an example: To come here I had to leave Ramallah, which is 25 minutes away from Jericho, to cross the bridge on the Jordan River to go to Jordan and fly out from there. It is usually 25 minutes. Do you know how long it took me because we are not allowed to use the roads, the roads are only for the settlers? It took me about five hours to get to Jericho. And I am a pacifist, a woman over 60, a grandmother, a church leader.

M.A.: I understand that you worked with the YWCA, and I wondered if you would want to say anything about the issues facing Palestinian women in particular.

J.Z.: Palestinian women have been part of the struggle all along, and our role has been appreciated and recognized because we were needed in the struggle. At the same time, at certain stages in our struggle, women tried to have the pain of sexism eclipsed by the pain of lack of national liberation. But I think that’s not right. And many are saying that, to liberate our society, both male and female should be free. Really, in certain situations, because the men are in prison or they have been exiled or they have been wounded, the woman is carrying the whole load by herself. When her house is demolished she’s taking the whole responsibility to care for the whole family in the most difficult situation. So this is recognized and saluted. But we need more than that. We want to be part of the decision-making processes in society and the church and economic, social structures.

I think, at this point, neither our government nor other governments around the world have many women. We’re not unique in that — but it doesn’t mean it shouldn’t happen.

M.A.: What have you noticed since the war on Iraq? Has that changed the atmosphere?

J.Z.: We hoped that things would be better but they’re not any better for us. I think since Sept. 11 Israel hijacked the war against terrorism to make it look as if it is fighting terrorism when it is silencing any resistance against the military occupation. And now after the Iraq war the whole Arab masses everywhere are afraid and they don’t know what’s happening. And Israel feels protected and it continues to claim that what it is doing is a reaction to "terrorism."

But we do not lose hope. And we hope that this time the United States will be more serious in really holding the two parties accountable to end the occupation.

M.A.: I saw that the topic of a talk you’re giving this week is "Hope in the Midst of Suffering." Where do you find hope?

J.Z.: I really have to continue to look for the signs of hope. For me, the people in Israel and Palestine that are crossing boundaries, that see the human being behind the enemy and are trying to network and link no matter how difficult the situation is — for me, these are signs of hope. The resilience of the Palestinian people, that they are continuing to go to school and do whatever they can to affirm life in the midst of death -- that is for me a sign of hope. We have really tried to compromise on many things to bring about a peaceful solution — that is another sign of hope. But, for me, to hope for something is not some kind of spirituality in the clouds. To hope for something you have to work for it. To hope for justice you have to work for justice. To hope for peace you have to work for peace. And my faith in the love and imagination of God is not lost. So I get my hope from that.

We are going through a very hard time, and many forces are at work to make us feel isolated, marginalized and disempowered. The work has been so overwhelming, but this has made us rearrange our priorities and taught us how much we need one another. And that’s good in itself for building the sense of community in Palestine and with others on the Israeli side and internationally.

Each of us, in our work for peace and justice, is there because something is sacred to us… For some, they call it God, for others it’s the Spirit, for others it is the sacredness of life or Mother Earth or belief in freedom. Whatever it is, that center can nurture us to go on.