Heather: In the cover image for this episode, you see Issa surrounded, up against a wall, with his hands behind his back. You see men in uniforms and some with cameras. The location is Shuhada Street. As we discussed in the last episode, Shuhada Street was once the main shopping area in Hebron, that has now been almost entirely shut down by the occupying military. Behind the crowd, you can glimpse the Israeli settlement of Beit Hadassah, which is located on Shuhada Street, and is a central reason for the closure of the street.  The businesses and homes along Shuhada Street have been cleared out and the people have been cleared out, in order to clear a path for a very small population of Israeli settlers, two of whom you also see in this photo. 

Heather: I asked Issa to tell me what is happening in this photo, starting with… Are you in handcuffs?

Issa: No, I am putting my hands behind my back so I will not be accused of attacking the Israeli settlers.  I was leading a group of activists who were escorting Palestinian kids to go to school in Hebron. The kids, they walk down [there] and we wanted to be there with our bodies to protect the kids from the settler violence.

Heather: And we can actually see this settler violence much better, I think, if we look at the video that was taken of this incident. Can you talk about what we see in this video, Issa?

[Note: You can see the video here.]

Issa: You can see her slapping me. You can see the Israeli police doing nothing to arrest her or to stop her. I was attacked physically by this settler not only one time, but many, many times. This year I was attacked maybe eight times by settlers without any accountability for the settlers who attacked me.

Heather: It is impressive how calm you remain as she smacks you in the face, and the other settler, the male settler, is kind of ramming into you and your fellow activists. But who are these other men in this photo? Who is this man in uniform here? 

Issa: He is an Israeli police man.

Heather: And what about this other man in uniform? Who is he?

Issa: He is [an Israeli] police man, too.

Heather: And is there anyone here from the Palestinian Authority here, anyone here representing you?

Issa: No, this area is under Israeli military control and the Palestinian Authority is not allowed to be here at all.

Heather: And the Palestinian activists in this photo, are they allowed to be in this section of Shuhada Street?

Issa: You know, this street is completely restricted. The street is closed by around ten checkpoints. I am allowed to walk only in twenty percent of the street. The rest I am not allowed to walk on. We are not allowed to drive here as Palestinians at all in this area and Palestinians are restricted from coming into [this section of the street]. Only the Palestinians who are registered at the checkpoint are allowed to be in this area. So, all of the Palestinian activists in the blue vests are people who are living in this closed area in Hebron.

Heather: And who are the men with cameras here?

Issa: They are Palestinian and international journalists there to cover our first day of walking the kids to school.

Heather: And how many times were you able to do this accompaniment?

Issa: We did it for one month, but unfortunately the occupation denied us for maybe half of the month not to escort the kids to go to school. They kept declaring the area as a closed military zone for many, many days.

Heather: You mentioned that Shuhada Street was declared a “closed military zone” after you began accompanying children to school on that street.  Can you talk a little bit about this issue of places suddenly being declared closed military zones? What does this mean?

Issa: That was the first military law issued after the occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in 1967. That law can give the army the authority to declare any area as a closed military zone. It gives them the authority to arrest me from four days to eight days without seeing a judge. They can put me in administrative detention without telling me any excuse or telling my lawyer anything about me.  I can be put in jail for six months and six months [for years on end]. We have around 500 Palestinians in administrative detention. They don’t know what they did, and they don’t know when they will be released.

Heather: For listeners, here are some resources on the laws Issa is talking about: We have the text of the law to which Issa is referring, the Order Regarding Security Provisions.  We also have a report from the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem on the issue of administrative detention, by which, as Issa says, Palestinians can be held without charge, without explanation, for indefinite periods, starting with a six-month period that can be continually extended.

Back to Shuhada Street and this highly restricted area of the street. It is restricted like this, because there are Israeli settlers living in this area, correct?  So, maybe you can tell us more about the settlers, like the woman who is slapping you in the video. What is her status?

Issa: She is under the Israeli civil law and I am under the military law. Her legal status is much higher than mine. So that is what is happening is that we are in the same area and we have two sets of law for different people and I consider that apartheid. So she had the courage to slap me and attack me many times and she’s sure that she will not be accountable for doing that.

Heather: But there aren’t that many settlers in Hebron, are there?

Issa: We have only a few hundred settlers in the city living among 200,000 Palestinians. The few hundred settlers they have much more rights than me and they are under the Israeli civil law and I am under the Israeli military law, so we have two sets of law for two different people in the same area and, you know, you can say that they feel the power. They feel confident to attack me, because the law doesn’t make them accountable . There is no law enforcement on them. They have a kind of impunity to attack us. Personally, I was attacked many times by the settlers physically, slapped, hit, kicked by the settlers, even, you know, I was attacked many times in front of police.

Heather: Right, like in this video. The settler is attacking you and the police are right there. 

Let’s talk about this issue of accompanying children to school, which is a huge issue, kids having to walk into an area where their parents are afraid to go, or may not be allowed to go. As you know very well, Issa, the Israeli army even sends soldiers into the South Hebron Hills to accompany children walking between the villages of Tuwani and Tuba, to protect them from settler violence. Every day, twice a day, getting these kids back and forth to school so they don’t get killed by a settler is an official Israeli army task. It’s nuts!

Issa: You know, we have settlers, they attack the kids, they beat the kids, they prevent the kids from going to school without any accountability. Israeli settlers, you can say that they are acting wild. In South Mount Hebron, between Tuwani and Tuba, they attack the kids on the way to school. They beat them up, they throw stones at them, without any accountability. The main issue is that we have violent, fanatic Israeli settlers in Hebron and all over the West Bank. They have impunity and they can do whatever they like without any accountability. It’s normal to have violent people in any community, but it’s abnormal that they are not accountable for attacking, for shooting, for destroying Palestinian property.

Heather: We talked in the last episode about illegal settlement activity in Hebron, and in this tiny restricted area where you are here, you have Beit Hadassah, which was settled illegally, and now is legal under Israeli law, and protected by soldiers; and you have another settlement that was established on a hill [in Tel Rumeida] in the 1980s that was also illegal, right?

Issa: The settlers occupied a land in Tel Rumeida in 1983 and started there a settlement, an outpost, and it expanded as usually happens. Then in 2002 they built another building there in Tel Rumeida, despite that it’s illegal according to Israeli law to build in an archaeological site. I am living almost 100 meters far from that settlement and you can say that I am on the border of [an additional] Israeli settlement where Israeli settlers are occupying a Palestinian house and living in it against the Israeli law, because the Israeli supreme court just decided that the house belongs to the Palestinians, and the land belongs to the Palestinians, and it should be given back to the Palestinian family, but unfortunately the case is in court since 15 years without any kind of real implementation for Israeli law even.

Heather: And if one of these settlers attacks you, or harms you, you have to launch an appeal with Israel.  There is no Palestinian Authority mechanism to address this problem, and there is no neutral mechanism, if that could possibly exist. And to add an additional layer to it, the settlers themselves are allowed to serve in the army and can serve in Hebron, as I understand. Is that right?

Issa: Many times I saw soldiers serving outside their homes, acting not even according to Israeli law. They are more violent, more aggressive, because they live there, and because they know us, and we know each other.

Heather: Let’s talk about guns. Let’s talk about the fact that the settlers are allowed to carry guns. Why do they all have access to guns?

Issa: The majority of the settlers are armed despite the military presence. They have a lot of soldiers, hundreds of soldiers in Hebron and thousands of soldiers all over the West Bank, but the settlers, they have guns, too, and they act against the law.

Heather: But have they ever said why they allow them to carry guns when they already have soldiers everywhere?

Issa: To have hierarchy and to have the power and to show us that they are more powerful than us and that even we cannot say no to them and that we see them as more powerful than anyone else. It’s about power and by having a gun it means they have our life and they can end it whenever they want. So, as Palestinians we should give up our rights for the settlers  and leave our own cities and think about building a future somewhere else, not in H-2 in Hebron and not in Palestine in general, that you are not safe from the army and you are not safe from the settlers.

Heather: For listeners, I’m going to link you to a recent television series made for Israeli public television on settlers with guns. It is called Harushot and it is subtitled.

Heather: Let’s talk about some more examples of how this all plays out. I would like for you to talk about the soldier Elor Azaria, who I know you have written about.

Issa: Elor Azaria was a soldier in the Israeli army. He saw a Palestinian laying down injured by other soldiers and instead of giving him first aid and treatment according to international law, he cocked the gun and shot him in the head and he slaughtered him. That is considered a war crime called in international law extrajudicial execution. 

I know Elor because he arrested me on the first of March 2016 in Hebron. I spent eight hours with him. He was not that fanatic. He was a normal soldier implementing orders. So I think what he did to that Palestinian to execute him was an order from his commander…and I wrote about it and I said clearly that Elor Azaria is part of the system. It’s not only him that is the criminal, but the system itself, the occupation system. So mainly it’s about the occupation system, which has Israeli soldiers, military law, and the military court, where I go.

That soldier was indicted by the Israeli authorities. He got 18 months in jail only for killing a civilian. He ended his sentence after nine months in jail. I am facing two years in jail for my non-violent resistance. [Meanwhile] Ahed Tamimi got eight months in jail for slapping a soldier.

So that is the military law and the Israeli civil law and the biased accountability and the double standards. An Israeli soldier killed a civilian, slaughtered him against Israeli law and international law, spent only nine months in jail. 

And Ahed Manasra was a Palestinian kid tried to stab Israelis which is wrong and we consider it wrong. He was 12 years and a half only. They sentenced him to nine years and a half. So imagine that a child did something wrong, got nine years and a half, and an Israeli adult soldier slaughtered a civilian and spent only nine months in jail. Because that kid who is spending nine years and a half in jail did something wrong. We all agree, but he could be accountable in a different way sent to a behavior officer to a behavior expert because I don’t think a child with 12 years and a half knows what he is doing, but in Israel they don’t take that into consideration.

Heather: How can you organize [your non-violent resistance campaigns] within such a restrictive system?

Issa: I am not allowed to mobilize any kinds of protests. I am not allowed to organize. I am not allowed to participate. As I said in the beginning, any kind of general assembly is illegal under the military system. Under the military system, you have no rights, you have no opportunity to resist the occupation, even peacefully.

Heather: Do you mean it is literally illegal? It is literally illegal to organize a protest, even if that protest is non-violent?

Issa: It is illegal to invite Israelis and internationals and Americans to come to participate in an olive harvest campaign in Tel Rumeida. One of the questions I had in the Israeli police station once was if I was an organizer for an olive harvest campaign day, calling my people, calling internationals, and calling Israelis to join me in an olive harvest campaign day [to protect Palestinian farmers as they work their fields]. And one of my main charges in the military court now is organizing a protest in 2013 with Obama’s mask and a Martin Luther King mask and marching in Shuhada Street, chanting songs from the civil rights movement here. We were Israelis, Palestinians, and internationals, and I was arrested. I spent a few days in jail. The Israeli friends were released on the spot. They were not arrested. They were detained, but not arrested, and now I am paying a price in the military court for organizing that protest. They consider me organizing an illegal protest and participating in an illegal protest and, you know, refusing arrest and violating the public peace. And, you know, being in a closed military zone.

Heather: I’ll have a lot on the site about this, for those who want to go deeper into the laws. Of particular importance is understanding the crime of “incitement,” of which Issa is charged in the Israeli military court. To men, when I hear incitement, it means incitement to violence. It’s a very serious crime in America. And when you see Issa’s crimes reported by American outlets, they often assume that “incitement” according to Israeli military law is the same thing. But in fact, we need to go back to that highly restrictive Israeli military law to see that it means to influence public opinion in any way that may harm public peace or public order, which can mean simply speaking out about the occupation. [Note: Here is a Human Rights Watch backgrounder on these laws, and here is the law in question, the 2009 Military Order on Security Provisions, which replace previous military orders. See Article H, “Offenses Against Public Order and Thuggery,” under which expressions of sympathy towards a “Hostile Organization” is punishable as “incitement” for ten years.  A hostile organization could be anyone who aims to harm the “public order” (read: any actions to resist the military occupation) in Israel or in the “held area” (read: the occupied West Bank.)]

Heather: Issa, I actually have another photo that I want to talk about and I apologize if this is traumatic to look at, because you are in an Israeli army jeep and you are blindfolded. Can you tell me what is happening? Why are you blindfolded?

Issa: I was campaigning with an American group called If Not Now, trying to ask the new American Congress members not to go with AIPAC to Palestine and Israel and to come with us to show them the real image of the occupation. So I posted a video onto social media asking them not to join AIPAC. The Israeli settlers harassed me when I was filming the video in Shuhada Street and the Israeli soldiers and settlers saw the influence of the video I shared on Twitter with If Not Now and the Israeli soldiers wanted revenge for doing something like that, so I was arrested, ill-treated, handcuffed, blindfolded for a few hours, and then they released me. It happens a lot to me and it depends on the soldier’s ideology what to do with me, because the army gives them space to do whatever they like and there is no accountability for the soldiers for violating Israeli law or violating my basic human rights. I was attacked many times, I was beaten many times by the Israeli soldiers. I receive a lot of threats, death threats sometimes, from the Israeli soldiers.

Heather: Doesn’t this scare you?

Issa: I am always scared. I think they may shoot me anytime. They give me that impression that I will be killed. I will be shot anytime here in the area. So they tell me leave, leave the country. We will reach you in your house. We will come to your house in the night and we will shoot you. We will arrest you from your house. We will destroy your house. We will awaken you in the night. It happens a lot. They came to my house, they arrested me during the night. It’s a military occupation where they have free hand to do whatever they want.

Heather: So it is worse for you if you are an activist.

Add this: If you try to resist the occupation, your life will be much more miserable than it is normally. So that is the occupation. The occupation is making it costly for us to say no to the occupation. The occupation is trying to make it impossible for us to resist or to do any kind of uprising against it.

Heather: Something I have been thinking about is how do you explain all of this to children? What do you tell them about this life they will lead?

Issa: I try to empower the children to know their rights and to know what is allowed and is not allowed by the Israeli military law. Because if they know the law, they get much less harassment from the Israeli soldiers, because the Israeli soldiers, they violate Israeli law and when they see you know the law, they sometimes let you go without any real harassment. I ask them to be calm and to tell us as activists what happens to them, to inform the human rights organizations, also to inform anybody passing by that they are detained so that we know and we send people to defend them and then to if they arrest them or detain them I tell them what to do in the police station, what to say in the station, not to speak without a lawyer, not to accept to sign a paper without reading it with their families, not to answer any questions they don’t know the answers, not to say yes when the answer is no, when to ask to go to the restroom and when to insist to go to the restroom. When to shout, scream if they touch them or if they hit them or if they threaten them, when to even file complaints against the Israeli police and the Israeli army and to follow up and to be strong in front of the soldiers and not to give up and not to show them your fear, because if they see you are afraid of them, they do more, and they harm you.

Heather: It’s just crazy to think that they grow up with this surrounding them. All of this military, all of this violence and oppression.

Issa: It is not only military, by the way. To live in Hebron, you feel that you are in a military zone first, then you see settlers who are controlling the military themselves. You feel the injustice, the inequality, the white supremacy, that on the one hand the settlers get whatever they want, and they can do whatever they want, and they can carry guns, they can attack you, they can attack your house, they can prevent you from going to your work or to your school. They can prevent the ambulance from reaching you in your house. They have water ten times more than you. You are starving for basic needs and I can say that you can see people living next to you [with higher living standards], and you know that to be able to get that life, they have violated your basic human rights. You can see that their lives are more important than your life. And their presence and existence is more important than yours. In spite that it’s your city, it’s your father’s, your grandfather’s city. They come from the U.S. to come in Hebron to tell me that God gave them it. What, what god? I tell them, What God? What god is giving you something that is mine? Why God gave it to you, not to me? If we believe that God is fair, and God is giving us justice and giving us equality, we should not believe that you deserve something more than me from God. We as humans should believe that we are all equal. 

We don’t see that. We see the inequality, every day. We see that we suffer because we don’t exist with the occupation and because we refuse to be slaves. You know, to get a little more rights, you should accept to be a slave.  You should accept to exist with the occupation. If I want to get a permit to go to Jerusalem, I should accept the occupation. I should coexist with the occupation. I should accept that the settlers are occupying my houses and they are taking my resources and they are giving us nothing and I should be thankful to that. If you say no to that, if you don’t accept that in any way, you are blacklisted, you are threatened, smeared, that is the daily life. And you didn’t choose to live there, by the way. They came to you. You didn’t choose to go to them. They came to you.