Fadi Quran - The Palestinian Freedom Riders (2011)

Speaker 1: Palestinian activists are trying peaceful protests to bring about the sort of social change they've seen succeed in neighboring Egypt and Tunisia.

Fadi Quran: Inspired by the Freedom Riders of the civil rights movement, a group of Palestinians have attempted to catch an Israeli-operated bus in the Palestinian West Bank. ABC correspondent Michael Vincent reports.

Speaker 1: The Freedom Riders of the '60s set out to prove that black people were treated differently to whites. In the West Bank, this group of 5 men and 1 woman are trying to show that Palestinians don't have the same rights as Israelis Even in the Palestinian territories.

Fadi Quran: And even though I was flagging one of them down, they just kept going.

Speaker 1: Finally, a bus stopped, and the Palestinians and their entourage were able to board.

Fadi Quran: Not civil rights. We deal with terrorists.

Speaker 1: That's all. It was only a short ride on the bus, which is provided for Israeli settlers who live in the Palestinian West Bank. It was stopped at a checkpoint to West Jerusalem, a place where Palestinians cannot enter without special permits. This settler traveled on board.

Fadi Quran: It's a provocation. Provocation? Exactly, 100% provocation, yes.

Speaker 1: As an act of passive resistance, it's now lasted several hours. What was originally a 10-minute journey on the bus to a checkpoint down the road, they've now been brought here to be arrested. Palestinians stayed on board, awaiting the inevitable.

Fadi Quran: They're always throwing up these excuses of security. We're obviously not a security threat. We're sitting here peacefully, saying we want to go to Jerusalem. We have a right to exist and to be here and to ride the bus here.

Speaker 1: When night fell, the police moved in. An Israeli security official says the group were arrested because they didn't have the correct paperwork. Organizers say they've made their point and hope others will join their peaceful protests.

Fadi Quran: So, thank you all for being here. It really means a lot to me to have you. And hopefully we can have a very honest discussion between us. Before I begin to speak, I want to thank everyone here. I want to thank Omar, because my freshman year here, my family told me, listen, you're coming from Palestine. Don't get involved in politics. Just focus on your studies. And this is the guy that got me into Politics on campus, at least. So I want to thank him. I wanted to thank Mr. Jones for many things. He had a lot of contributions to humanity, but one thing meant a lot to us as Freedom Riders. He wrote an opinion piece in the Huffington Post on the Freedom Rides and the relationship between what's happening in Palestine and what is happening and happened in the U.S. during the civil rights movement. He wrote this piece prior to the Freedom Rides themselves. We were all, all of us were under a great threat of being imprisoned. No one knew who we were except the Israeli intelligence agencies and ourselves. And had that opinion piece not been written and our idea, our movement not been given coverage beforehand, I am certain we would have all been arrested and physically abused. So thank you very much for that time.

Speaker 1: Thank you.

Fadi Quran: And I want to thank Professor Weiner because I actually use a lot of his research and the stuff I learned in class in our community organizing, especially the barriers to conflict resolution, that type of approach to dealing with other people when you're meeting with them. And when we— a lot of times when we're having our group meetings, the youth movement in Palestine, we use that approach to get through difficult obstacles by using the steps delineated. So thank you all, and it's really a great honor to be here amongst you. So this is how I want to go through this talk, and again, I'm going to try and make it as short as possible so that we can interact with each other. The first thing I want to do is speak about our moral compass, what guides us, what helps us move forward, and what we are trying to achieve. After that, I'm going to speak about the freedom rights. I'm going to speak about Where the idea came from, why it was necessary in Palestine, what we were seeking to achieve, and then a little bit about what happened. And I'm going to end by giving you a small summary picture of what the basically popular resistance or youth movement in Palestine is doing today on the ground and how, you know, how it looks, what it plans to do, and how I think the future will look, the future of this movement. Thank you. And so let me begin. Our moral compass is based on three things, three objectives or principles is a better word. The first is freedom, and by freedom we mean that we refuse to be forced to follow any laws, rules, or regulations unless we are all as Palestinians given the right through a fair and just process. To participate in putting those laws in place. What that means is if there are military orders that say, for example, Palestinians are not allowed to have any political events that have more than 10 people, and if they do, we're going to arrest them, we believe that's wrong. We believe that being forced to follow these type of oppressive laws is wrong. And the second principle we're guided by is the principle of justice. By justice, I think we broadly understand justice Justice. Justice in 2 types of terms, 2 types of ideas. Justice in the first sense that everyone deserves equal rights, that there are basic sets of human rights, basic sets of rights that should be given to everyone equally, you know, freedom of movement, freedom of free speech, and so forth. So equality in that sense. And the second meaning of justice as we understand it, which is that those who are worse off in society Yes. Need to be given the opportunities to achieve their full potential, their aspiration. What that means is at least everyone should be given equal access to education, equal access to healthcare, and that those who have suffered injustices in the past should be given a safety net so that they can move forward towards those aspirations. And the final thing is human dignity. And human dignity, I think we all I don't intrinsically understand what human dignity means. I think the best way to know whether or not you're treating a person in a way that can be called— when you're treating a person in a dignified way is that you know that you're complying with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, for example, that you are not humiliating the person across from you, that every person is given equal opportunity to pursue their potential, to pursue their happiness.

Speaker 1: Right.

Fadi Quran: So that's our moral compass, and my assumption is that everyone has a similar moral compass. Am I correct?

Speaker 1: Yes.

Fadi Quran: All right, that's good. So we're off to a good start, at least. So we all agree on where we want to go, then. We want to establish a social system or a social contract that provides everyone— everyone regardless of their ethnicity, regardless of their religion, regardless of their beliefs, regardless of their gender, Their gender, with these 3 things: freedom, justice, and dignity. The question is, how do you move towards achieving that goal? There are clearly many power structures in the world today, and specifically in Palestine, that are preventing the Palestinian people from living a life with freedom, justice, and dignity. And it's a challenge. It's a challenge because the power structures are very complex. The imbalance of power is large. And I think there's not enough time to go through all the different power structures and so forth. So I'm going to focus on one simple idea that sought to challenge one simple aspect about the power balance within the West Bank. And that's the freedom rights. So the idea of the freedom rights, I'm sure most of you here know what the freedom rights are, how they began in the US during the civil rights movement. African Americans and white Americans decided to challenge the segregated— segregatory laws in the Jim Crow South by boarding buses and traveling through the South together and basically challenging these laws, the civil disobedience. And they were arrested. In one case, a bus was— they attempted to burn the bus while these Freedom Riders were inside. In other cases, they were arrested. And actually dozens of Freedom Riders were arrested. But in the end, that struggle led to the ending of segregation on public transportation in the South. It was a big success, and it was something that a lot of people participated in, regardless of their ethnicity, regardless of their race. And it's something that was also started by young people. You know, it wasn't something that was done by the older generation. It was something that college students participated in.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Fadi Quran: Planned and were the main fuel of. So, and it was the 50th anniversary of the Freedom Rides when we had our own Freedom Rides. But the situation in Palestine, although there is segregation, it's not similar. It's not the exact same. It's not a copy. What exists in the West Bank now is what I would like to call a matrix of control. This matrix of control can be seen from 3 different perspectives. A legal matrix of control. What that means is that there are about half a million settlers living in the West Bank and close to 2.3 million Palestinians, but they both are forced to follow different legal systems, different legal structures. So for example, the settlers, they have Israeli laws, they have rights as Israeli citizens and so forth, whereas the Palestinians in the West Bank are forced to comply with Israeli military orders. The system of occupation. And military orders are simply orders given by the military general that's running the West Bank. And so, for example, there's a Military Order 101 that I mentioned previously, which says that Palestinians are not allowed to organize protests or political gatherings of more than 10 people. And if they do, then they will be arrested, that, you know, that the military can arrest them for doing that.

Speaker 1: Okay.

Fadi Quran: And they could, of course, get— be put under administrative detention, which means they could be held for 6 months, 12 months, 2 years, 5 years, so forth, without even having— without knowing what they're being accused of in prison. One of my close friends, a mentor of mine, from a village called Nabi Saleh, his name is Bassem al-Tamimi.

Speaker 1: Mm-hmm.

Fadi Quran: And Bassem al-Tamimi has been arrested now for a year. His trial is still going on. And one of the things he's accused of is violating this military order. And I'm going to take a quick side note now, which is to say that the Palestinian nonviolent movement is not a movement that started yesterday or that started with the Arab revolutions. It's literally more than a century old. And there are a lot of— there have always been many cases of Palestinians using nonviolent resistance dating back, I think, the first recorded protest by Palestinians for their rights against the colonial regime was in— and against the Ottoman Empire in some cases and its policies— was recorded in 1909. And so it dates back a long time. And people forget also when they speak about the Oslo Accords and the whole— all the negotiations that happened at that time, those negotiations did not happen because, as, you know, current— the current media says and a lot of the current literature says, It happened because the Palestinians were in the process of the First Intifada, which was largely a nonviolent revolt to achieve their rights. And it put the leaders, all the leaders, you know, it put them under pressure so that they can come and reach this agreement. Of course, the agreement that they reached wasn't a just agreement, and it didn't lead to peace, as we all see right now. But the fact that it brought them together, the fact that That it led to change was that Palestinians were using popular nonviolent resistance. So to go back to the matrix of control, a legal matrix of control, A. B, you have a matrix of control based on infrastructure. So anyone who has visited the West Bank knows that there are settlements on top of hills that overlook Palestinian populations. These settlements are built on areas with a lot of water resources, the best agricultural land. And the best water. And they— it's a violation of international law, of course, to move a population of one country to the occupied territories of another country. But that's what settlements are. And these settlements have infrastructure between them, like roads, like public transportation buses, that we Palestinians don't have access to. But it's not just that we don't have access to, it's that they prevent us from one thing that we all agreed on in the moral compass, which is the freedom of movement. So a lot of Palestinians, because of where the settlements are located, can't move freely throughout the area there. And so we thought how— and finally, the last form of control is, of course, military presence. So other than the settlements, other than having these settlements located everywhere and having their own infrastructure that only Israelis have access to and abusing the resources of the Palestinians, you have the Israeli military, and it's present in the West Bank. And of course, you know, I don't need to explain how a military can coerce people. So how do you challenge this system?

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Fadi Quran: So how do you challenge this system? Well, we were watching The Freedom Rides, a documentary that was produced by PBS about the history of the Freedom Rides because it was the 50th anniversary. And we said, okay, let's— there are buses that we see passing around our cities. That can go into areas such as Jerusalem, but they're apartheid buses. In essence, they're segregated buses. The whole system that exists there looks eerily similar to apartheid in some cases, such as Desmond Tutu mentioned. And we said we're going to challenge this system nonviolently by boarding these buses and saying that, number one, we have a right to move freely on our own territory, on our own land.

Speaker 1: Right.

Fadi Quran: We don't want to be encaged in these small, what we can call, bantustans. The second goal we were trying to achieve was to say we have a right to travel to Jerusalem. So we boarded a bus heading to Jerusalem. Palestinians living in the West Bank are largely prevented from entering Jerusalem. And, of course, the last thing we were trying to say was we wanted to put attention, global attention, onto these bus companies. So one bus company It's called Eged. It's an Israeli bus company, but they have contracts in the Netherlands. They have contracts to run buses in Poland. And we wanted to say, as long as these buses violate basic human rights, as long as they violate international law by working within these territories, these occupied territories within the settlements, we want other countries to understand these violations and to, in essence, divest from them. And there's another company. Called Viola, which also runs buses in the West Bank and also runs the Stanford Marguerite, unfortunately. I realized the other day as I got onto the bus. So I was about to have freedom rides on the Stanford Marguerite. You know, and these companies, it's important to put pressure on them because in the end, you— when as a nonviolent activist you want to achieve 2 things. The first thing is that you want to show the other side that you're human, and you want to show the other side that you are seeking objectives, you are working to achieve values that are values that all humanity hold dear. The second goal of someone who works in civil disobedience is a more tactical goal. It's to make the oppression of another side costly. So when you refuse to participate, to accept the oppression that's being imposed on you, suddenly oppression becomes costly to the other side. So for example, if you refuse segregation on these buses and you begin riding them, and these buses can't move through checkpoints because they have a radioactive Palestinian on them, basically, then you make the system costly because it costs to run these And of course, the final goal that we were seeking to achieve through the Freedom Ride was getting the attention of people like all of you, American citizens who in some way or another don't understand the— what's happening, the violations of human rights that are happening within Palestine. And we also hope that on the Israeli side, that many Jews living in Israel would see these types of violations of people's rights, would see how we were treated as Freedom Riders and say, we don't believe in this system. This system violates our moral values. And so we decided to get on the bus. And this was actually— it's not as simple as getting on a bus.

Speaker 1: Mm-hmm.

Fadi Quran: The first thing is that most of the settlers living in the West Bank are armed. So we have to actually— before we had the freedom rights, we had to scout out a few bus locations we wanted to get on. And there were bus locations where literally 100% of the settlers getting on were carrying machine guns. And of course, that's a risk. We were willing to die to achieve our rights, but we wanted to make sure that we were taking the minimal amount of risks. So we found the location near a settlement. Now, the second challenge, of course, is, like I said, A lot of the infrastructure, the roads, the streets, you have a wall. It's difficult to get to these bus stations. But in the end, we found a bus station that we could go to. When we got to— and we traveled, we decided the first Freedom Ride were going to be done by 6 people, 6 people who had a lot of experience in nonviolence, people who understood how to get hit and not respond, people who knew the law so that if we were imprisoned, we could We be released. And we were going to go to the bus station. knew what our rights were. And we also wanted to do this as a test, so that we know in the future, when we begin recruiting more people to participate in this type of movement, what we could ask them to expect, because we really didn't know. We— there was a chance that one settler would take out their machine gun and basically take us all out. There was a chance we would be sent to prison for years, you know, spend 2, 3 years in prison. We're just trying to get to Jerusalem. And we were not prepared for that. And we got on the bus. So when we got to the bus station, we also tried to make it as obvious as possible that we were Palestinian citizens. And so when we got to the bus station, there was some verbal abuse from settlers and so forth, but we were lucky to— we were lucky and we knew that we needed to have cameras around. So that made the situation safer.

Speaker 1: Thank you.

Fadi Quran: And the media attention that the Freedom Rides got, thanks to Mr. Jones's op-ed and other things, ensured that we had enough media outlets covering the story for it to be— you know, for it to be shown. So, when we stood at the bus stop, 4 buses passed us by and refused to allow us to ride on the buses. And, of course, by that time, the Israeli military had shown up, but they didn't— they were confused, because they didn't know what to do. We were just asking to get on the bus.

Speaker 1: Right.

Fadi Quran: Essentially, and they wanted to arrest us. But in the moment while they were planning, the settlers were getting very irritated because they also wanted to get on the buses. And so many of the settlers, you know, began complaining to the soldiers, to the Israeli border security and so forth, saying, stop a bus for us, let us get on. And they stopped a bus far away from the bus stop where we were, but we had anticipated that, and so we ran and got on the bus.

Speaker 1: Yay!

Fadi Quran: And when we got on the bus, the bus driver was, you know, confused. He tried to tell us to go down. We said, we are here nonviolently. We believe in X, Y, and Z. We believe that all people should be treated equally. And we sat down. And at that moment, as the bus began driving away, we realized that we were surrounded by about 7 Israeli Humvees. Each Humvee has 6 soldiers.

Speaker 1: Wow.

Fadi Quran: soldiers in it. So we knew that we weren't going to achieve our objective of entering Jerusalem. We knew that we were going to be arrested. They stopped us at a checkpoint about 15 minutes away from where the bus left out. And at that checkpoint, because of the media presence, what happened is they took us to an empty parking lot, and they kept us in the bus for about 5 to 6 hours until it got dark. And they began giving all the—

Speaker 1: Orders.

Fadi Quran: Vehicles that had press inside of them parking tickets. They told them, you're not allowed to park here, so they gave them parking tickets. And a lot of the media began to leave, but a few remained. And when it did get dark, they turned off the lights in the bus, and Israeli soldiers boarded the bus and said, you are under arrest. And one of my fellow Freedom Riders asked them, what are we under arrest for? What are you doing?

Speaker 1: Yes.

Fadi Quran: And he didn't know what to answer. And they kept us— and they began then violently pulling us off the bus. After pulling us off the bus— and this is another aside of the importance of using social media— one of the things we did is that we livestreamed the whole event. So, online, there were about 10,000 to 20,000 people watching our arrest live, as well as 150,000 people who had signed a petition You know, for our release or supporting us. And this was even before the actual event had happened. And they took us to a military, basically, prison, and they were interrogating us. I was interrogated by the Israeli intelligence forces, and the Shabak, they're called. And eventually they saw this nonviolent approach, this popular— Palestinian Popular Resistance. They saw it as a big threat to them, to the type of system that they want to maintain on the ground. And it's because we were not only disrupting the physical system or the legal system, it was also because we were disrupting the morality of how this conflict is viewed abroad. We were disrupting the moral system. We were— our moral compass.

Speaker 1: Right.

Fadi Quran: Through an event like this was so clear that it was hard to argue with us. And eventually, due to political considerations, about 8 hours after our arrest, they got a call from someone high up. And since this— our freedom rides were getting so much media attention, they decided to release us, to kind of minimize their losses, their diplomatic losses.

Speaker 1: Thank you.

Fadi Quran: And so that was the Freedom Ride, and more Freedom Rides will happen for sure, and more acts similar to the Freedom Ride will happen until we achieve our eventual goal of freedom, justice, and dignity. But what is this movement? What is this movement that's rising up in Palestine? The first thing to understand about this movement is that it's very organic. It's not a hierarchical type of movement. Palestinian communities all around the West Bank, Gaza, living within the borders of Israel, even in refugee camps, there's a new generation of Palestinians that's rising and they're beginning to refuse to accept this status quo. And they're beginning to challenge the structures of power that exist within their communities. And this has been happening on and off for a long period of time where Palestinian communities Every new generation of Palestinians begins to challenge the status quo, and we're beginning to network with each other. It's very difficult for Palestinians to communicate with each other because of all the physical barriers that exist between us. If you're a Palestinian living in the West Bank in Ramallah, it's very difficult for you to get in touch and reach a Palestinian living in Hebron because of the checkpoints and the matrix of control. Mind you, it being impossible to It's very difficult to communicate directly, at least physically, with someone living in the Gaza Strip, which is suffering from a long siege. And it's even more difficult to go to Lebanon and communicate with Palestinian refugees living in Lebanon. But now, at this period in time, all these different communities, all these small groups of people who are struggling for their rights, whether in small rural villages like in Nabi Saleh, Budrus, and Fil'ayeen, whether in refugee camps like Ain al-Hilweh or Shatila in Lebanon, whether living in Gaza or living in cities in the West Bank. Now we have a new virtual world to communicate within, and we're beginning to coordinate with each other. And this movement, it's beginning. Like I said, popular resistance, nonviolent Palestinian resistance is very old. It's a tradition that has been present within Palestinian society for a long time. You know, farmers living in the village of Beit Jada in the first intifada Hidden cows from the Israeli soldiers for about 3 months. And they did that because they wanted their own milk. They wanted to be— they didn't want to have to depend on Israeli milk, in many cases, which was sometimes used to kind of put pressure on society, Israeli goods. So they bought cows and they're raising cows so that they can sustain themselves. And there was a warrant for the arrest of these poor cows. And this I'm talking about 1988. And eventually, I think one of the cows was arrested.

Speaker 1: That's it.

Fadi Quran: But that cow is a political prisoner and we demand its release. And this leads me to my last point. So this movement is coming to the fore, this movement is seeking justice, this movement is led by the values of popular resistance, the values of nonviolence that are— that not only did we learn from Martin Luther King and Gandhi And other struggles that we are creating in and of ourselves, you know. And we're also learning from the Arab revolutions, and we're learning from our own traditions. And what's going to happen tomorrow, which is Palestinian Political Prisoners Day, is that 1,600 Palestinian political prisoners are going to go on hunger strike to demand their release. And I think in the last about 4 months, 2 Palestinian political prisoners Khader Adnan and Hanaa Elshelebi went on hunger strike. Hanaa, which is a woman, was on hunger strike for 50 days, and Khader Adnan, who's still being hospitalized, was on hunger strike for 66 days. And through this nonviolent tactic, they both succeeded in achieving their release. And now, as this movement begins to expand, as this movement begins to move one step closer to freedom, justice, and dignity for One important thing, the Palestinian people, I'm sure, will achieve their goals. As I quote Martin Luther King, the arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice. But I think we can make that arc a bit shorter, that path to justice can become a bit shorter if we all, as Americans, regardless of what our nationalities, ethnicity, or belief are, we stand with the Palestinian people, because your support is important. Your support is significant to the struggle. Thank you.