Sheikh Jarrah and Israel's Emerging Human Rights Movement

The East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah has received a good deal of attention over the past year. The Palestinian residents of the neighborhood, located just outside of the walls of the Old City of Jerusalem, live in constant fear of having their homes demolished or being evicted from their homes, sometimes watching helplessly as Israeli settlers move in. Provocative Israeli actions in East Jerusalem, particularly in the neighborhoods of Sheikh Jarrah and Silwan, have drawn criticism from the Obama Administration, which is wary of actions that could spark open conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. Since November 2009, however, Sheikh Jarrah has received attention for another reason: it is being credited as the site of the emergence of a more robust Israeli peace and human rights movement.

Every Friday since November, a few hundred Israeli activists have gathered in Sheikh Jarrah to protest the eviction of Palestinian families and demolition of Palestinian homes. These demonstrations draw hundreds as opposed to hundreds of thousands of activists, but they are a welcome sign to many who bemoan the rightward shift in Israeli politics. Jeff Halper, director of the Israeli Committee Against Home Demolitions, recently told AAPER, “What’s good about Sheikh Jarrah is there’s a lot of young people involved in that, that aren’t affiliated with any organization. There’s a whole life amongst young people of the left that isn’t defined with one organization or the other, and they bring out 300 to 500 people per week.” These young, independent activists, says Halper, were never dependent upon the success of the political peace process in the same way that organizations such as Peace Now were. For that reason, “We’ve never died. We’ve always been very active.” While their numbers are admittedly small in comparison to the Peace Now of the 1980s, he says it is the lack of coverage by the mainstream media that is primarily responsible for the perceived notion that the Israeli left had disappeared altogether.

The Sheikh Jarrah protests are drawing media attention in part because they are finally beginning to bring in participants from a much wider segment of the Israeli population. Rabbis, academics and members of the Knesset are in regular attendance, thus lending legitimacy to the movement that has been missing for many years. In addition, Sheikh Jarrah’s location makes it difficult to ignore. Halper explains, “You have all the European consulates on one side and the American colony [neighborhood of East Jerusalem], where all the journalists stay on the other side – it’s like a theatre, which makes the protests visible.”

Besides being smaller and less politically dependent than the “Israeli peace movement” of the 1990s, today’s peace and human rights movement is more collaborative and connected with the nonviolent Palestinian movement taking place in the occupied territories. Halper notes that many of the Sheikh Jarrah activists are the same people who participate regularly in the weekly Palestinian-organized demonstrations in the West Bank villages of Bil’in and Nilin, which are held to protest the wall that Israel is constructing on Palestinian land. For example, on February 25, hundreds of activists, including internationals, Palestinians and Israeli activists, converged upon Shuhada Street in the Palestinian city of Hebron to mark the massacre of 29 Palestinians by an Israeli settler and to call for an opening of Shuhada Street, which runs through an Israeli settlement and which has been closed to Palestinians since 1994 despite its importance to Hebron’s economy.

The emergence of an Israeli peace and human rights movement is exciting, but there is still much work to be done. And given the popularity of the hawkish Netanyahu government and the overall move of Israeli society to the right, the movement has its work cut out for it. Halper recognizes that the movement, which has taken to the streets, cannot stay in the streets forever. Political engagement is a necessary counterpart to grassroots activism. This veteran human rights activist says, “One of my criticisms is the activists aren’t really engaged politically, inside Israel or internationally, so the action is limited. You protest and protest and protest, but you’re not really changing policy. I would like to see people out with me speaking. I would like to see more speaking as well as the protests on the ground.”