Gandhi of the West Bank.

• Author: Hirschfield, Robert
• Position: Abdullah Abu Rahma - Essay

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Abdullah Abu Rahma is a child of the First Intifada, an orphan of the Second Intifada, and a man central to the rebirth of Palestinian nonviolence on the West Bank.

This thirty-six-year-old high school teacher in Bil'in, a town on the West Bank, organizes weekly nonviolent protests against Israel's separation wall. Every Friday for the past three years, Palestinians--together with Israeli dissidents and young solidarity activists from overseas--have been climbing the hillside where Israel has erected its fence. Soldiers routinely turn them back with tear gas, stun grenades, and rubber bullets. Abu Rahma estimates that 800 people have been wounded since the protests began.

But this has not deterred the protesters, who keep coming back. Once they came with a bride and groom in tow, who took their marriage vows as resisters of the wall. Another time they taped their mouths shut and on their bodies they had written the names of countries whose governments condone the wall.

Except for periodic stone throwing, reminiscent of the First Intifada, the protest in Bil'in is remarkable for its discipline.

After one Friday protest, featuring a squad of bikers all the way from Tel Aviv, the demonstrators gathered on the ground floor of Abu Rahma's house. He managed to slip away from the crowd to a quiet upper room.

He does not draw you in with any magnetism, but his quiet defiance exerts its own power.

What Anne Lamott said of Grace Paley in Traveling Mercies applies to him: "She reminds me of a durable desert shrub that the wind just can't blow over."

Abu Rahma is quick to point out that the nonviolent resistance at Bil'in is very much in the Palestinian tradition.

"During the '36 uprising, workers staged a general strike that lasted six months," he says.

Then he discusses the First Intifada. "Workers refused to go to their jobs in Israel," he says. "Students went on strike. In Belt Sahour, people refused to pay taxes to Israel. There was a boycott of Israeli textiles. Nonviolence gave Palestinians a chance to get involved in the resistance in many different ways."

That has changed now, he laments: "To be a part of the Second Intifada, you have to be a part of some militia."

But not in Bil'in.

Its creativity has proven vexing to the Israelis.

"On May 4, 2005, the Israelis told us that they would uproot our olive trees in the morning," he says. "We defied them by chaining ourselves to the olive trees, saying to them, 'If you uproot...