February 2, 2007

In the winter of 2005, Elik Elhanan and a group of soliders refusers found themselves riding the back roads used by the settleres on their way to Bethlehem. The group had been invited to dialogue with former fighters from Fatah at the home of Suleiman Al-Himri, but it is forbidden for Israelis to travel to Palestinian cities.

"We had to wait in an olive grove in the dark for cars to pick us up," Elhanan recalled. "We were afraid. I remember thinking we were doing something that was just incredibly stupid. We were not at all sure we would come back alive. I later learned the Palestinians were also afraid the meeting was a trap, and they would be arrested or killed."

Inside Al-Himri's house, the two groups struggled at first with their antipathy. Then the Palestinians began to tell their battle stories, and Israelis began to tell theirs. Able to recognize parts of themselves in the stories of the other; everyone listened, and out of their listening came an opening. At the end of the evening, no one was arrested and no one was betrayed.

"We continued to meet every two or three weeks," Al-Himri said. "we grew little by little. We decided to name our group Combatants for Peace. We are completely committed to working for peace together."

The group has grown to more then 200 members. They protest the demolition of Palestinian houses. They protest the wall at Bil'in. Recently, they protested the building of a new settler road at Beit Umar, whose mayor is from Hamas. They stood alongside the Israeli-Palestinian bereavement group, Family Forum, and the Israeli-Palestinian peace group Ta'ayush to bear witness against a planned road that will be foribidden to Palestinian drivers on Palestinian soil.

Invited to New York by Brit Tzedek v'Shalom (the Jewish Alliance for Justice and Peace), a liberal Zionist group opposed to the occupation, Elhanan and Al-Himri told their stories to Jews at two synagogues on Jan. 10 and 11.

Elhanan grew up in Jerusalem, on the edge of the West Bank. Despite its proximity, he said, "The West Bank was a distant country I had no idea there was an occupiation. I knew nothing about the Palestinians. I had no idea we were doing something wrong."

Al-Himri smiled ironically at his young friend. He is 40, and greying. Elhanan is a boyish 29. Such illusions weren't possible on Al-Himri's side of the Green line. When he stood in his doorway as a boy, he saw a Jewish settlement and Jewish soldiers.

"A Palestinian kid like myself could tell you everyting about the Israeli soldiers. We could describe their uniforms, their appearance, their behavior. We saw everything."

In his teens, Al-Himri became a Fatah street fighter, throwing stones at soliders and tanks. At 16, he was imprisoned for a year and a half in Hebron. Six years later, he was placed under administrative detention and held at Ketziot prison in the Negev for three years without trial.

He estimates that he and his brothers have logged 25 years in Israeli jails. His father, also a Fatah member, was imprisoned for nine years for throwing a grenade at a jeep in Jerusalem.

"My whole family agrees with what I am doing. They ave suffered a lot. They are pro-peace. Like myself, they don't want to see that same suffering brought to the next generation of Palestinians.

Al-Himri reaches out within Fatah, especially to fighters and former fighters. Elhanan talks to any solider willing to talk to him. The Combatants for Peace logo shows a fighter from each side stepping toward the other, throwing away their guns.

Al-Himri has invited members of Hmas to meeting, but thay have not accepted the offer.

The two men also go to Israeli and Palestinian schools and community centers to speak. "We will speak to even three people in a room if they want to hear us," Elhanan said.

Elhanan served three years with an elite unit in Southern Lebanon in the mid-1990's fighting Hezbollah. He did shorter tours of duty on the West Bank fighting Palestinians.

A student, like many Israeli soliders of the absurdist wisdom of Catch 22, he applied Joseph Heller's logic to his situation in Lebanon.

"I am fighting in Lebanon fighting Hezbollah because they shoot at us. They shoot at us because we are in Lebanon. Take us out there, and they will have no one to shoot at." He observed that Hezbollah did not shoot at Israeli civilians unless the Israelis shot at Lebanese civilians.

It took two suicide bombers from Nablus on a morning in early September 1997, to detonate the last of his illusions. His 14-year-old sister, Semadar, had wandered too close to one of the suicide bombers on a downtown Jerusalem street and was killed instantly.

"The attack that killed my sister did not promote in any way Palestinian interests. The violent actions I committed as a soldier did not promote in any way the security of Israel. Seeing that brought about a change in me."

Like Al-Himri, Elhanan has the support of his family. His parents participate in Combatants for Peace actions, and his brother is a group member.

It's not hostility I encounter, but indifference, which I find harder to deal with. What many Israelis object to, even some freinds of mine, is that I am doing something. It's fine I have resist the occupation, but why do I have to do it so loudly? Why bother the neighbors?

The incident that transformed Al-Himri happened in 1993 at Ketziot: Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin came for a vist and told Fatah prisoners that he regarded them as the "real leadership" of the Palestinians, and he wanted to negotiate with them.

"Rabin was known for his violence against the Palestinians during the first intifada, which was nonviolent. I saw then that it was possible for an Israeli leader to change. It made me think that another way out of the conflict was possible, that dialogue with the Israelis was possible."

A law was passed recently that turns the screw tighter on such dialogue: Israelis are forbidden from taking Palestinians into their cars on the West Bank. It was announced as a security measure.

"The Israeli government," said Elhanan, "sees dialogue between Israelis and Palestinians as a menace, as something to be prevented. They want to make Israeli-Palestinian joint resistance to the occupation as difficult as possible. Our members have their phones tapped. We are harassed at the checkpoints. Whenever we have a joint meeting, the area is declared a closed military zone."

It all makes him feel a bit like an outlaw - a role he was not trained for, and a role Al-Himri was born into.

Robert Hirschfield is a freelance writer in New York.

More information available at CombatantsForPeace.org