International Solidarity Movement
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Milan Lawyer Is Human Shield in West Bank

Published in Herald Tribune International - Italian Daily

by Cristiano Fubiani
August 3, 2001

BEIT JALLA - Ronaldo Dubini left this besieged West Bank town on Thursday after a night acting as a "human shield" against Israeli security forces.

It was the first time Mr. Dubini, a 43-year-old lawyer from Milan who has been living in nearby Bethlehem since April, found himself in a house being shelled.

A member of the Milan-based "Italy- Palestine Friendship Association," Mr. Dubini joined with 39 like-minded activists, including 18 Americans, to act as a human shield and protest what he called "the ongoing and indiscriminate policy of assassination by the Israeli army of unarmed Palestinians."

On Tuesday, he moved in with a Palestinian family whose house has been hit three times in the past 10 months by Israeli artillery based in Gilo.

"I have never seen anything like this before," he said. "It was scary, of course it was. I couldn't sleep all night on fears that the bombing might start, but it was necessary." As it happened, Israeli shelling was light during his stay in Beit Jalla. That, Mr. Dubini claimed, was due to the psychological pressure created by his presence in Palestinian homes. "I am quite sure the Israelis are more cautions whenever international civilians' lives are at stake, as they can't take the risk of killing any of them," he said. "You can't understand how the Palestinians feel when their houses are being destroyed, unless you live by their side," he added.

"International monitors are more than necessary," said Mr. Dubini.

"Many of the Palestinians who have been killed in Beit Jalla so far were unarmed children, like many of the people who are now being shot are civilians."[Israeli officials claim they have killed at least 60 trained militants, that the tanks in Gilo fire only in response to actions of gunmen in Beit Jalla and called the volunteers pawns in a Palestinian propaganda and exercise, Reuters reported from Jerusalem Thursday.]

Mr. Dubini plans to continue participating in non-violent rallies aimed at ending the violence in the West Bank here. More Italian activists, he said, will come to take part in an Aug. 19 rally aimed at forcing the removal of roadblocks here.

Edward Mast and his wife Linda Bevis from Seattle are spending their honeymoon to show "solidarity" – how painfully old-fashioned that word seems amid the Palestinian-Israeli war – with those under occupation. "I want to be part of the non-violent resistance to occupation," Mast says. "And to register my protest as an American at what is happening here." Last week, in perhaps the most dramatic incident of its kind, the group turned up at the West Bank village of Al-Khader to remove an Israeli roadblock made up of rocks and two carbonised buses that was preventing villagers from driving to their fields.

"We eventually got the Palestinians to understand what we wanted to do and an 11-year-old boy turned up with a JCB digger," Zelter says. "He was very brave and very professional, and I think the other Palestinians were afraid. But we formed a human shield and he moved the stones and pushed one of the buses to one side and the people could then take their vehicles to their fields. Some Israeli soldiers were watching from a hill. An army truck moved towards us, but stopped."

At 2am the next day, the Israelis returned and re-erected the roadblock. Then the group returned to play football on a field the Israelis had deemed "forbidden" because it overlooked a road for Jewish settlers -- though not close enough for a Palestinian to throw a stone even with a slingshot, as one of the women explained. Again, the Israelis watched. An army jeep drew up, then retreated when the driver saw that Westerners were playing in the football game. Al- Khader are football champions in this part of the West Bank.

IIt's easy to dismiss the "internationals" as a bunch of do-gooders out of their depth – "ageing hippies", as one Western journalist called them. But the message is all too real for the Israelis. Israel refuses to allow international monitors to police the Israeli- Palestinian war. But the men and women of this solidarity campaign are proving that they can throw a blanket over the sparks, persuade Palestinians to play football rather than throw stones.

Perhaps a real monitoring force – disciplined and without political leanings – could do even better. It might at least take its cue from the last words of Nurse Cavell, which Ms Zelter remembers: "Patriotism," the English heroine said as she faced a German firing squad in the First World War, "is not enough."