[rad-green] Bassem Tamimi, leader of popular protests in Nabi Saleh for more than a decade, says two-state solution 'no longer an option.'

*https://www.972mag.com/bassem-tamimi-one-state/
<https://www.972mag.com/bassem-tamimi-one-state/>+972 Magazine
 February 19, 2020*





*‘We gave up on historic Palestine in exchange for nothing’Bassem Tamimi,
who has led popular protests in Nabi Saleh for more than a decade, says the
two-state solution is 'no longer an option.'By Oren Ziv*

[image: Nariman Tamimi (left), Bassem Tamimi (center), and Ahed Tamimi
(right) walk into Nabi Saleh after Nariman and Ahed are released from
Israeli prison, July 29, 2018. (Oren Ziv)]
<https://static.972mag.com/www/uploads/2020/02/main_image20926_8LTAJD9u1p.jpg>
*Nariman Tamimi (left), Bassem Tamimi (center), and Ahed Tamimi (right)
walk into Nabi Saleh after Nariman and Ahed are released from Israeli
prison, July 29, 2018. (Oren Ziv)*

“We need to wake up and change our strategy, to unite our struggle,” says
Bassem Tamimi, a veteran Palestinian activist and father of Ahed Tamimi, as
he sits in his Nabi Saleh home in the occupied West Bank. Tamimi, who was
born in 1967 and has only ever known military occupation, was jailed during
the First Intifada and has been among the leaders of the village’s popular
protests over the past decade. Now, however, he has given up on the
two-state solution. “It’s no longer an option,” he says.

The Tamimi family, and their village, made global headlines in late 2017
when Ahed slapped an Israeli soldier who had entered her family courtyard
during a Friday demonstration. Earlier that day, a soldier had shot a
15-year-old relative in the head. A few days later, soldiers arrested Ahed,
then 16, from her home in the middle of the night. Her mother, Nariman
<https://www.972mag.com/it-is-easy-to-be-a-terrorist-its-much-harder-to-pursue-peace/>,
was arrested shortly after her daughter for filming the slapping incident.
Both spent eight months
<https://www.972mag.com/ahed-tamimi-released-after-eight-months-in-israeli-prison/>
in
prison.

“Why did Ahed slap that soldier?” Tamimi asks rhetorically, in a meeting
with journalists from Israel. “Because I didn’t. That’s the reality: We
need new ideas, and we cannot expect different results if we continue on
the same path. We need to be focused on a goal and change our methods
accordingly, not the other way round.

“We don’t want to live in an illusion,” Tamimi continues. “The peace
process began in Madrid in 1992, but the ‘Deal of the Century’ finished
that process off. But the current situation is better than what they’re
proposing [in Trump’s plan], which offers no right of return and no
territorial contiguity — just population transfer, and total control for
Israel.”

*‘Changing the mentality of occupation is harder than changing the
situation on the ground’*

Nabi Saleh was one of four West Bank villages to have its entrance sealed
off by the Israeli army last week, following a settler protest over
stone-throwing in the area. Last Tuesday, traffic backed up outside the
village as soldiers and Border Police officers expanded the collective
punishment, checking vehicles entering as well as those leaving. The day
after, residents simply began driving around the closed gate, despite the
presence of Israeli troops.

Nabi Saleh, which lies north of Ramallah in the northern West Bank, is home
to a few hundred people. In 2009, residents began staging weekly
demonstrations against the occupation and against the takeover of their
spring by settlers from neighboring Halamish. The protests continued for
two years before being suspended, by which time Israeli forces suppressing
the demonstrations had killed
<https://www.972mag.com/israeli-soldiers-shoot-and-kill-21-year-old-palestinian-in-nabi-saleh/>
four
young Palestinians — three from Nabi Saleh, and one from a nearby village.
[image: Members of the Tamimi family prevent an Israeli solider from
arresting Mohammed Tamimi, 11, during the weekly protest against the
occupation in the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh, August 28, 2015.
(Activestills.org)]
<https://static.972mag.com/www/uploads/2016/03/women2015_011.jpg>
*Members of the Tamimi family prevent an Israeli solider from arresting
Mohammed Tamimi, 11, during the weekly protest against the occupation in
the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh, August 28, 2015. (Activestills.org)*

Dozens of residents — including women and children — have been injured
<https://www.972mag.com/video-israeli-forces-shoot-palestinian-protester-from-close-range/>,
arrested and imprisoned over the years. Numerous Israeli activists
participated <https://www.972mag.com/nabi-saleh-is-where-i-lost-my-zionism/> in
the protests, despite the military’s efforts to block their access to the
village. Demonstrations have renewed in the wake of Trump’s plan; already,
one youth has been wounded by live ammunition.

“Ahed once asked me why we’re fighting for a two-state solution,” Tamimi
says. “I’ve sat in jail for this idea, I’ve lost my sister and 22 other
people from our village in the struggle for two states. We put our faith in
international law and the international community, but we’ve lost. How can
I convince my daughter to continue down this road?”

Tamimi, a longtime Fatah member, now believes that a one-state solution is
the only way. “My children can’t go to the beach, which is 25 miles from
here. So I’m now talking about one state. We need to change our thinking,
to accept the idea that we need to live together.” The idea is gaining
ground among Palestinians, he says, citing a recent survey by Palestinian
pollster Khalil Shikaki, according to which 37 percent
<http://pcpsr.org/sites/default/files/Poll%2075%20English%20press%20release%20%D9%8D_February2020.pdf>
of
Palestinians support a single state.

Nonetheless, he continues, “Israeli society is going to the right. Changing
the mentality of occupation is harder than changing the situation on the
ground.”

Tamimi recalls a talk he and his daughter gave in the United States, before
his visa was canceled, in which she thanked the audience for their tears
but noted “we have enough of them from the tear gas.” Palestinians weren’t
after their pity, she said, because “we’re fighting for our freedom.”
Tamimi, with evident pride, adds that the Palestinian Authority “talk about
needs, not rights. But the refugee who lives in a Manhattan villa has as
much right to return [to Palestine] as someone in a Lebanese refugee camp.”
[image: Bassem Tamimi being led out of the Ofer Military Court, West Bank,
April 10, 2011. (Activestills.org)]
<https://static.972mag.com/www/uploads/2020/02/main_image11561_gOQ9rYBng6.jpg>
*Bassem Tamimi being led out of the Ofer Military Court, West Bank, April
10, 2011. (Activestills.org)*

Tamimi, like many Palestinians in the occupied territories, considers the
PA Israel’s subcontractor in the West Bank. “The PA has become the
handmaiden of the occupation,” he says, adding that this is the precise
reason Israel created the PA — in order to redirect Palestinian anger and
sow internal strife.

This is, he says, the reason that Palestinians in the West Bank chose not
to launch mass protests against Trump’s plan. “People stayed home not
because they’re scared of the occupation, but because they don’t trust the
Palestinian leadership,” he says.  “But change will come.”
‘There is one settlement, and it’s Israel’

Tamimi wholeheartedly believes in returning to the tactics of the First
Intifada. “It changed perceptions, because everyone could participate. In a
popular protest everyone can, and needs to, play a part.

“Armed struggle might be easier, but it doesn’t instill faith in people to
see a guy holding a weapon,” he says.

Tamimi himself has had a long career resisting the occupation. In 1993, he
was tortured during an interrogation and spent several days in a coma. His
sister, Basma, was killed the same year while on her way to his remand
extension hearing at the military court in Ramallah; an army interpreter
pushed her in a stairwell, she fell, and broke her neck and died.

In 2011, Tamimi was arrested and jailed for 11 months for his role in
organizing protests in Nabi Saleh. In October the following year, he was
arrested again during a protest outside a grocery store in an Israeli
industrial zone south of Ramallah, and released in early 2013. And in early
2018, following the arrests of Ahed and Nariman, Tamimi’s son, Waleed, was
also arrested and jailed for a year for protesting.
[image: Ahed Tamimi is seen before her hearing at Ofer Military Court near
the West Bank city of Ramallah, January 17, 2018. (Oren
Ziv/Activestills.org)]
<https://static.972mag.com/www/uploads/2018/03/ahed-smiling.jpg>
*Ahed Tamimi is seen before her hearing at Ofer Military Court near the
West Bank city of Ramallah, January 17, 2018. (Oren Ziv/Activestills.org)*

“There is one settlement, and it’s Israel,” Tamimi says when asked about
settlement expansion in the West Bank. “Whether there are more or fewer
settlements, whether there are checkpoints or not, are just details in the
reality created by the occupier. We need to change the mentality around
ruling over another people. The problem is not just that we cannot build
houses on our own land. That’s part of it, but we want freedom, respect and
rights.”
‘When power is the central value, everything starts to collapse’

“We should have struggled for all of Palestine,” Tamimi says. “Our mistake
in the Oslo Accords is that we gave up on 78 percent of historic Palestine
in exchange for nothing.”

The failure to establish a Palestinian state since the 1990s is, he says,
down to Oslo. “Oslo’s main aim was to show that there is ‘Israel’ and
there’s the ‘occupation.’ It changed the perception of Israel, but created
a schism among Palestinians.”

When asked about the role of the Israeli left in the struggle against the
occupation, Tamimi responds cynically. “There’s a left? Everyone in Israel
is moving to the right, like in the rest of the world. It will keep rising
until everything falls apart. When power is the central value, everything
starts to collapse.”

For Tamimi, Palestinians need to formulate a strategy before inviting
support from outside. “Palestinians need a plan first and foremost,” he
says. “When we have a plan for a nonviolent struggle, then we’ll invite you
[to join us]. That is a Palestinian problem, not a Jewish one. And you need
to retake your religion that has been conquered by Zionism.”

Returning to the subject of Ahed’s slap, Tamimi says her act
<https://www.972mag.com/army-arrests-palestinian-teen-for-hurting-soldiers-masculinity/>
“changed
people’s thinking around the world.” The gap between his and his daughter’s
generation, he continues, is driven by “freedom of information. They know
more than I do about human rights and international law.

“But that’s also a problem, because when you concentrate on universal
values of freedom, justice, and democracy, it pushes you away from national
belonging, and away from collective rights to individual ones.”

Nonetheless, Tamimi still believes in fighting for his children’s
generation. To illustrate, he shares an anecdote about his son Salam. “One
day, while I was in prison, he started crying and saying he didn’t want to
be called Salam [‘peace’ in Arabic]. When we asked why, he said he’d heard
people saying bad things about peace, and he thought they were talking
about him.

“So you see, I have to fight in order to convince him to believe in peace.”

*A version of this post was originally published in Hebrew on Local Call.
Read it here
<https://www.mekomit.co.il/%d7%90%d7%97%d7%a8%d7%99-%d7%a9%d7%a0%d7%95%d7%aa-%d7%9e%d7%90%d7%91%d7%a7-%d7%90%d7%91%d7%99%d7%94-%d7%a9%d7%9c-%d7%a2%d7%94%d7%93-%d7%aa%d7%9e%d7%99%d7%9e%d7%99-%d7%90%d7%99%d7%91%d7%93-%d7%90/>.*

Oren Ziv is a photojournalist, a founding member of the Activestills
photography collective, and a staff writer for Local Call. Since 2003, he
has been documenting a range of social and political issues in Israel and
the occupied Palestinian territories with an emphasis on activist
communities and their struggles. His reportage has focused on the popular
protests against the wall and settlements, affordable housing and other
socio-economic issues, anti-racism and discrimination struggles, and the
struggle to free animals.

-- 

--- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Sid-l" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected].
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/sid-l/CACKppcxtFP5mVG6Ub9y_MY-mp9U7h_iLm0FwCYJBQj92PhU7rA%40mail.gmail.com.

---
To unsubscribe: <mailto:[email protected]>
List help: <https://riseup.net/lists>