Ali Abu Awwad

Ali Abu Awwad

Ali Abu Awwad, July 2014.
Born

1972 (age 43–44)


Halhul, West Bank

Nationality Palestinian
Known for Palestinian activist and pacifist

Ali Abu Awwad (Arabic: علي أبو عواد‎‎, born 1972) is a Palestinian activist and pacifist. He is the founder of Al Tariq (The Way), which teaches the principles of nonviolent resistance to Palestinian men, women, and children. He is also a member of the Bereaved Families Forum, and tours the world together with Robi Damelin, a Jewish woman whose son was killed by a Palestinian sniper, to encourage dialogue and reconciliation between Palestinians and Israelis. His life and work has been featured in two award-winning films, Encounter Point and Forbidden Childhood.[1] He lives in Beit Ummar, near Hebron.[2] At the start of 2014, together with Rabbi Hanan Schlesinger and others, Awwad formed "Roots", a group based in the West Bank area of Gush Etzion to promote dialogue and eventually trust between Israelis and Palestinian as a path to peace.[3][4]

Biography

Awwad's family were refugees from Al-Qubayba near Bayt Jibrin, who were forced off their land in the 1948 Palestine war and subsequently settled in Beit Ummar. Born in Halhoul,[5] Hebron Governorate in the West Bank, Awwad was raised in a politically active refugee family and, following in his mother's footsteps (he saw her beaten up by Shin Bet agents when he was 10,[4] and she was arrested several times and spent four years in Israeli prisons) became a member of Fatah. He served two prison sentences. His first arrest occurred while studying for his secondary exams, after an Israeli helicopter observer reported seeing him throw stones. He refused to pay a 1,500 shekel fine, stating later that, while a stone-thrower, he had not engaged in that activity on the day,[4] and served three months in prison in the Negev. Eight months later, he took part in the First Intifada as a teenager, and was subsequently sentenced to 10 years in prison in Israel on charges of stone-throwing, throwing Molotov cocktails, and being part of a military cell. According to Awwad, his major crime consisted in refusing to cooperate with his interrogators who wanted information concerning his mother's activities, and the charges were trumped up for this reason.[2][4] He served four years and was released after the signing of the Oslo Accords,[2] and confined to Jericho. In 1993, after a 17-day hunger strike he managed to get his confiners to allow his request that he see his mother, who was at the time also in prison.[4] The success of his strike was a turning point, as he realized that non-violent protest along Gandhian principles might be a better way to defend one's rights.[4] On his release, he was recruited by the PLO as a policeman, and began arresting and interrogating fellow Palestinians, until he resigned in shame in 1997.[4]

On 20 October 2000, after the outbreak of the Al Aqsa Intifada,[6] during the Second Intifada, he was shot in the leg by an Israeli settler driving a Subaru station wagon with Israeli license plates. He later learnt that the man had killed another Palestinian in Halhul that same day.[4] He was evacuated to Saudi Arabia, where he received medical treatment. On returning, he learnt of his brother Youssef's death. Youssef was an employee of a company that worked with the Jewish National Fund, and, according to his brother, was not involved in political movements. He was shot in the head by an Israeli soldier at a distance of 70 cm after he was mocked by a soldier at a checkpoint, where he had managed to get nearby Palestinian children to stop throwing stones.[4][7] In a further account, he says that the shooting arose from talking back to the soldier, a violation of a new regulation he knew nothing about.[2]

Awwad received training in the principles of nonviolent resistance from Mubarak Awad, founder of the Palestinian Centre for the Study of Nonviolence.[8] Inspired by the teachings of Martin Luther King and Mohandas Gandhi, Awwad founded al-Tariq, which teaches the principles of nonviolent resistance to more than 1,500 men, women, and children.[1]

Together with his mother and brother Khalid, Awwad also became a member of Bereaved Families Forum, an organisation founded by Yitzhak Frankenthal, an Orthodox Jew whose son had been kidnapped and killed by Hamas activists.[4][9] This organisation brings together Israelis and Palestinians who have suffered bereavements in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, with an emphasis on dialogue – both in individual encounters between Palestinians and Israelis, and public dialogue – to raise awareness and promote nonviolence.[10] At the Forum, Awwad met and was befriended by Robi Damelin, a Jewish woman who made aliyah from South Africa in 1967.[9] Damelin's son, David, a peace activist and officer in the IDF who opposed service in the Occupied Territories, was killed by a Palestinian sniper at a checkpoint in the West Bank in 2002.[11][12][13] Awwad and Damelin have toured the world together for several years, arguing that peace can only occur if reconciliation takes place between the victims.[9][12]

He has built on a family plot close by to Gush Etzion and the area where in June 2014 3 Israelis were kidnapped and then murdered a compound to serve as a centre for non-violence and dialogue between Palestinians and settlers.[4]

In the fall of 2014 he toured the US with Rabbi Hanan Schlesinger discussing the how both Israelis and Palestinians can be "right" but that peace will require mutual understanding and honest dialog.[14]

Challenged once by a Palestinian woman who called him a traitor who is creating obstacles for Palestinians who want to fight, Awwad is said to have replied:

"If you feel that the Palestinian airplanes and tanks are locked away in a warehouse and I am holding the keys to prevent you from using them, then you can kill me".[2]

Awwad is a friend of rabbi Hanan Schlesinger who has invited him to address the settler community at Alon Shvut.[4]

David Shulman describes him as one of the leaders of a new generation of non-violent resisters in Palestine, and quotes him as arguing:

"The Jews are not my enemy; their fear is my enemy. We must help them to stop being so afraid – their whole history has terrified them – but I refuse to be a victim of Jewish fear anymore".[15]

On Gandhian principles

David Shulman has cited him as one of three exponents of satyagraha active on the West bank, together with Abdallah Abu Rahmah and the Israeli peace activist Ezra Nawi.[16] "Some people think that satyagraha [Gandhi's word for nonviolence] is weakness; they believe the angrier you are, the stronger you will be. This is a great mistake. ... You cannot practice nonviolence without listening to the other side's narrative. But first you have to give up being the victim. When you do that, no one will be able to victimize you again".[17]

References

  1. 1 2 "Ali Abu Awwad, Palestine: Creating social change through non-violent practice". Synergos. Retrieved 16 July 2012.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 "Interview with Ali Abu Awwad". Just Vision. 12 June 2005. Retrieved 16 July 2012.
  3. ↑ 'Friends of Roots:People,' Roots homepage.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 Elie Leshem, 'In a settler’s living room, a Palestinian reaches out,' The Times of Israel 4 March 2015.
  5. ↑ "Portrait Page - Ali Abu Awwad". Just Vision. 12 June 2005. Retrieved 16 July 2012.
  6. ↑ Bouckaert, Peter (2001). Center of the Storm: A Case Study of Human Rights Abuses in Hebron District. Human Rights Watch. p. 104. ISBN 9781564322609.
  7. ↑ Sarfraz Manzoor (10 May 2009). "She's Israeli, he's an Arab. War has made them like mother and son". The Observer.
  8. ↑ Jafari, Sheherazade; Said, Abdul Aziz (2011). "Islam and Peacemaking". In Nan, Susan Allen; Mampilly, Zachariah Cherian; Bartoli, Andrea. Peacemaking: From Practice to Theory. ABC-CLIO. pp. 228–243 [235]. ISBN 9780313375767.
  9. 1 2 3 Manzoor, Sarfraz (10 May 2009). "She's Israeli, he's an Arab. War has made them like mother and son". The Guardian. Retrieved 16 July 2012.
  10. ↑ Norman, Julie M. (2009). The Activist and the Olive Tree: Nonviolent Resistance in the Second Intifada. ProQuest. pp. 148–149. ISBN 9781109166699.
  11. ↑ "Encounter Point Protagonists". Just Vision. Retrieved 16 July 2012.
  12. 1 2 "Ali Abu Awwad and Robi Damelin". Pangea. 14 May 2008. Archived from the original on 22 September 2011. Retrieved 16 July 2012.
  13. ↑ Umbreit, Mark S.; Armour, Marilyn Peterson (2010). Restorative Justice Dialogue: An Essential Guide for Research and Practice. Springer Publishing Co. p. 280. ISBN 9780826122582.
  14. ↑ 'Dialog: Inspired Palestinian Peace Activist and Befriended Zionist Settler Rabbi,' 8 September 2014.
  15. ↑ Shulman, David (7 June 2012), Israel in Peril, New York Review of Books, p. 29
  16. ↑ Shulman, David D. (June 2011). "Salt march to the Dead Sea:Gandhi's Palestinian reincarnation". Harper's. pp. 76–79, 79. Retrieved 18 September 2011.
  17. ↑ Herschthal, Eric (17 May 2011). "Great Souls of Israel and Palestine: Or, Today's Gandhis". The Jewish Week. Retrieved 16 July 2012.
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