CAIRO,
April 8, 2006 (IslamOnline.net) – As Israeli occupation forces
killed on Saturday, April 8, two Palestinians, brining to eight a
death toll in a matter of hours, a group of their former comrades were
fighting on a different battlefront; making peace with the
Palestinians.
"We
fought society. The enemy we saw was society," Noam Hayut, former
commander of Qalandiya checkpoint between Al-Quds (occupied East
Jerusalem) and Ramallah, the biggest in the West Bank, told The
Independent Saturday.
He
continues to recall the heartbreaking scene of a Palestinian farmer
"kneeling in the sand and crying" after his Israeli army
unit uprooted the old man's orchards in Gaza.
"All
I could do was use the little Arabic we knew, and shout 'get out of
here'."
Noam,
still do reserve duty, now sees no justification for such actions.
"You
justify it from a military point of view when you are a country at
war. But ... it's an occupation."
There
has been mounting dissent within Israeli officers about the army’s
policies in the occupied Palestinian territories.
Some
reservists further refused to carry out their compulsory military
service in the occupied territories.
Combatants
for Peace
Noam
is part of a unique and unprecedented 120-strong group of Israeli and
Palestinian ex-fighters.
They
plan to publicly launch on Monday, April 10, the "Combatants for
Peace" campaign both against occupation and against violence as a
means of achieving peace.
"Israelis
will say 'why it is always us who have the conscience and no one on
the other side does?' Well, now we have some Palestinians who are with
us and against violence," said Avichay Sharon, another former
elite unit member.
His
"Breaking the Silence" group of anti-occupation ex-soldiers
has played a big part in setting up the Combatants for Peace.
The
Israeli and Palestinian ex-fighters have been meeting in secret for
over a year with Palestinians forbidden to travel into Israel and
Israelis prohibited from entering the occupied West Bank.
Most
of the Israelis were in elite combat units and many, like Noam, still
do reserve duty.
But
all now refuse to serve in the occupied territories.
They
include Yonatan Shapira, one of the 27 Israeli Air Force pilots who
signed the famous 2003 letter refusing to "take part in Air Force
attacks on civilian population centers."
Seeds
of Hope
All
the Palestinians were members of resistance groups and have served
serious time in Israeli jails.
"We
are not academics," says Bassam Aramin, a 37-year-old who was
jailed by Israel for seven years for an attack on an Army jeep.
"We
come from the same battlefield."
The
former fighters, though few, hope to make a difference.
"You
sow a seed and all you can hope it will grow into a big plant,"
says Wa'el Salama, a former Fatah fighter gaoled for an abortive plot
to blow up an Israeli government building in the late 1980s.
Bassam
remains optimistic about peace prospects under the new Hamas-led
government, urging the West to give it a chance.
"I
think Hamas will make peace," he said Noam interjected quietly in
Arabic, "Inshallah" - god willing.
