Yellow Gates and Olive Trees: Unarmed Civilian Protection in the West Bank
In this episode of Nonviolence Radio, hosts Stephanie Van Hook and Michael Nagler explore what it means to stand in the “light through the fog” of violence. Through a wide-ranging conversation with Sheila McCarthy of Meta Peace Team (MPT), we’re taken into everyday life in the occupied West Bank: families trying to harvest olives under threat, villages now marked by bright yellow gates that can be closed “like a cage” at any moment, and communities struggling to survive as tourism and livelihoods collapse. Sheila shares how unarmed civilian protection teams are invited by Palestinians to offer protective presence, document abuses, and help make it possible for people—especially children—to remain safely on their land.
The show situates this work in a larger story: the worsening conditions in Palestine since October 7, the role of U.S. policy and weapons, and the deep parallels with settler colonialism and Indigenous resistance in the United States. Stephanie and Michael also lift up the growing ecosystem of nonviolent protection—from Meta Peace Team to UCPiP (Unarmed Civilian Protection in Palestine)—and reflect on the inner resources needed to face such realities without becoming numb or despairing. This episode is both a witness and an invitation: to learn, to travel thoughtfully, to support unarmed protection efforts, and to recognize that our choices, wherever we live, help determine whether those yellow gates close—or open toward a different future.
With gratitude to Elizabeth High for this beautiful transcript.
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Stephanie Van Hook: Good morning and greetings, everybody. We're just going to slide right in here to Nonviolence Radio. I'm your host, Stephanie Van Hook, and I'm here with my co-host and news anchor of the Nonviolence Report, Michael Nagler, and we're from the Metta Center for Nonviolence in Petaluma, California.
And our show is about exploring nonviolence in its myriad forms from the science and the activism to the practice of nonviolence with oneself and one's relationships and then obviously politically as well. Our sense is that nonviolence is really an opening to our human evolution and to this next phase that we have to get into politically for anything to work.
As we were thinking today coming to the studio, how since 2020, in particular with COVID, it just seems that there's one massive stressful event on our system after another. And actually, I want to even say a little bit before COVID, because we had the Me Too movement prior to that. So it's just that things are just happening so quickly, and it's almost like the system can't hold conflict anymore, and that we're in this time and space where we need to really be thinking about how did we get here and how are we going to get out of this? Because we can't go back to the same old. Because as we see, the old system is crumbling, it's not working. It's not solving our problems for us. And so as we're out there doing work for humanity in whatever way that you're doing that work, we have to be thinking about how do we create the new; what's going to lead us into a future that works for everybody?
And the other way that we were thinking this morning is there's this beautiful blanket of fog all the way over the hills coming into Point Reyes Station from Petaluma, where we were coming from, just thick fog where you can't even see the back of your hand. And so he said, this is a metaphor. This is symbolic, the way that violence and this view of human nature is like a fog that we can't even really see ourselves in it. And then we had this beautiful truck leading us forward in the fog that all we could see were their lights and we said that's a bit like the leaders in nonviolence or the people doing the beautiful work and we can start to make out the hills a little bit and so nonviolence is this kind of light through the fog and it's just fun to sometimes think of that and i'm talking too here with an old classics professor and I think that probably reminds you a lot of Socrates, Michael.
Michael Nagler: Almost everything reminds me of Socrates.
Stephanie: I'm sorry, Plato. Let me be more specific: Plato's Allegory of the Cave.
Michael: Oh, the Cave Allegory, yeah, book seven of the…
Stephanie: Oh, yeah, I forgot which book that was.
Michael: Yeah, He allegorizes us as sitting in chairs chained in such a way that we can only look ahead. And ahead is the back of the cave. And behind us, there's a fire which is casting silhouettes of shadow puppets onto the wall in front of us. And we see these puppets fighting each other,
And we think that's the only reality there is. But every now and then, a person thinks to turn around and get up out of the seat, get out of his cave, out of his chains, and even walk out of the cave and look at the sunlight where all this shadow fantasy of violence and hatred is coming from. And those are the great leaders of humankind.
And one of them has passed away recently, and that's Dr. Jane Goodall. And I have a wonderful sentence from her that I'd like to have kind of the headnote to our talk today. “We should be kind to animals because it makes us better humans.” Yeah, literally, it makes better humans of us all, that's Jane Goodall. And what an appropriate observation on Halloween. I have made the disturbing observation over the years that gradually In the course of my long lifetime, Halloween has encroached on Christmas in its importance and the amount of display and the parties and the ghoulishness and what have you. Because Christmas is, after all, a celebration of life. Christmas is the birth of life and the death of winter.
Stephanie: For some traditions, yes.
Michael: Ours.
Stephanie: No, you're Jewish.
Michael: Passover, of course, is tied also to a historic event in the history of the Jewish people, which is celebrated…
Stephanie: The thing that made me laugh the other day is that you were walking through Petaluma and you don't live in Petaluma, but you live in the countryside on a ranch. And so you were seeing all of these death and skeletons. And you came back and you were like, “people are really in this kind of death mentality and it's disturbing.” And then you realized that Halloween is coming up and that's why all of those decorations were out there. But I think that for sensitive people who have experienced death and trauma and violence, that some of this can be very triggering imagery for sure and that's why other people celebrate harvest or Dia de los Muertos.
There's other ways of celebrating this kind of harvest time without getting so deeply entrenched in murder and violence and blood, which is also very much a part of the Halloween decor, right?
Michael: It is now. Of course, the original meaning of Halloween was the celebration of all the saints, but then it fell together with a pagan holiday, both Greek and Roman. It was called in Greece “Anthesteria.” And that was said to be a day when the souls of the dead, the psychai, ton thanonton, souls of the dead would come back, and people would have all kinds of celebrations to protect themselves and not honor the dead, and then at the end of the day, they would say, “get out of here, souls, It's not Anthesteria anymore.” And they'd go back to normal. And I think it served a number of functions; reminding us of the continuity of life if we're really sensitive,and also putting to rest that tendency to dwell on morbidity. So this is why it's been bothering me to watch Halloween get more and moreelaborate and expensive, people outdoing one another in decorations…
Stephanie: Not to be a wet blanket on people. We don't want to wet blanket this too much, but it is something to think about. And especially because we do work in a field of nonviolence and violence. And so when we see the celebration of death and violence around us in a way thatdoesn't feel necessarily respectful to death, in a way that honors that we do all die and that murder is unnatural because we're constantly working with people who are being confronted by murder and death and bombs, and it's not something that feels good.
So that said, we just had a conversation with an activist–I don't want to call her an activist, let's say a concerned citizen of the United States, who is concerned about the safety of people in the West Bank and in Gaza. And she joined an organization called MPT, which stands currently for Meta Peace Team, that's Meta with one T. You can find their work at metapeaceteam.org. And she joined an unarmed civilian protection team for one month in the West Bank to provide protective accompaniment and protective presence and witness for Palestinians in the West Bank to protect them from being attacked, murdered, and killed by the Israeli military and Israeli settlers who come onto the land that doesn't belong to them, set up outposts, and then start harassing people who have already lived there to try to get them to leave.
And Sheila just got back, she was back for about three days before she had the interview with us. And so she had a lot to say about her experiences and what she saw and what motivated her to go, and we'd really like to share that with you today. One thing that she said that I wanted to bring up…Michael, you have your hand up, I see. Why don't you say what you say while I'm going to pull up?
Michael: I want to reach out. I want everybody to be able to reach out with their prayers and good wishes for our friend Mel Duncan, who was the co-founder of Nonviolent Peaceforce, which is playing a large role in UCPiP, Unarmed Civilian Protection in Palestine. He was actually attacked by settlers, and he is still in hospital.
Stephanie: This work does carry some risks.
Michael: There's risks. People have lost their life. Nowhere near as many people as lose their life doing violence. Yeah, but good luck and good wishes for a speedy recovery, Mel, and may everything you stand for thrive.
Stephanie: And for all the people, and he's just embodying in the American body what's happening to Palestinians on a daily basis. And I think Mel is deeply aware of that, too. We will be interviewing people, other groups who are over there doing this work, including friends from UCPiP, UCP in Palestine as well. But today we've talked with Sheila McCarthy, and she wanted to say that peace will prevail, but not in the ways that we might think. So let's turn now to our interview with Sheila.
Stephanie: So can you tell us about the organization MPT and the work that they do?
Sheila McCarthy: Yes. Meta Peace Team formerly known as Michigan Peace Team. provides a peacemaking presence, both domestically and internationally, at gatherings, at protests, at any place where a peacekeeping presence is requested, then they are available to go. So they've been in Palestine for many years. And then with COVID, went back last year for the first time. So I was on the second delegation since COVID that they've had.
Stephanie: And how did you train for deployment to Palestine?
Sheila: Yes, we met weekly for several months throughout the summer in preparation to go in the beginning of fall. So a lot of training in how to be a peacekeeping team, of managing one's emotions, of reading situations,
of how to deescalate. and building trust as a group so we could function together as effectively as possible in the field.
Michael: I just want to cycle back to something you said, Sheila, that you only go where invited.
Sheila: Yes, exactly. In Palestine, we were invited to be a protective presence for families who have been threatened and who have largely been, all of them have already been attacked by settlers at illegal Israeli outposts. And they're very fearful. So they welcome international visitors to come and stay with them with charged devices ready to record anything that might occur, because their testimony wasn't enough. It's very similar to the case of in 2016 and again in 2020 with police killings in the United States. Of course, those had been going on for many decades, but it wasn't until there's video evidence that you can really see the situation
that people are in and are faced with. And it's very much the case in Palestine, too, that the Palestinians feel like it's not enough for their own testimony of what the army is doing and what settlers are doing, that they invite internationals to come and witness it as well. So that's what we went to do.
Michael: Good for you.
Sheila: And yeah, it was my first experience providing protective presence in this way. I run a low barrier homeless shelter in Northern Indiana, and so we do a lot of de-escalation all day long, a lot of relationship building to build trust. I hadn't done this exact sort of work before, but I found it very much helped because it's made me attuned to reading body language, to how to stand in ways that are not escalatory. We were tasked to just stand with the Palestinians, to not approach settlers that are trespassing on their land or destroying their property, but just stand beside the Palestinians and film without getting involved. And it can get very tense in that situation, someone trespassing and maybe being intimidating, or there's often violence, to remove yourself from getting worked up by the situation,
then I was glad for all of the preparation that MPT had done with us. So, that wasn't the case.
Stephanie: So can you bring us into your experience in the West Bank? I know that you can't name villages or partners or people for the safety of those people and villages, so forth. But just paint a picture for us about what's happening in the West Bank, and then we can go into more of your own experiences as well. Politically, what's taking place? It seems that the violence is rising in the West Bank. The world's been focused on Gaza.
There's been a ceasefire. Bring us into that a little bit politically, what's taking place in the West Bank.
Sheila: And I have to say, first, there's less violence in the West Bank than there is in my American city. Guns are prohibited in the West Bank, and so there's rarely shootings unless it's by the settlers or the army towards Palestinians. And of course, when it is, it's devastating. When I was there, a nine-year-old boy playing soccer was killed by the military. And it's just this sort of senseless violence. It's all to make the people feel unwelcome,
to make them feel that they should leave as soon as possible. In 1948 and in 1967, as Israel took over more territory, many Palestinians fled to Jordan and fled to Syria. And they would much prefer, I think, largely that as many Palestinians as possible would leave.
The sort of curious thing about Gaza is people were prevented from leaving. So thus the charges of genocide began to be made more and more forcefully because there simply wasn't a way even to leave. Now, so far in the West Bank, there is one exit. And in fact, when we came, it was closed. So for a few days, it was a situation like Gaza that Palestinians could not enter or exit this one bridge, the Allenby Bridge or King Hussein Bridge coming from the Jordan side. So without that way to get into Jordan and therefore the rest of the world, then everyone was trapped in the West Bank. It is not possible to leave the West Bank otherwise because it's walled in, because there is an Apartheid Wall that surrounds it.
But even more than this wall, what I found is that so much of the West Bank has already been annexed. The West Bank was split into area A, which is cities, area B, which is just outside of cities, and area C, which is the vast majority of the West Bank, more than 60% of it. And what I found being there, it was devastating to see that to be in Area C is like you're in the rest of Israel. To be in East Jerusalem is like you're in the rest of Israel. Everything's in Hebrew, people walking that are not Palestinian, but are Israeli. And so Israelis are able to be in the West Bank and remain as citizens of Israel, but Palestinians in the West Bank are not able to become citizens of Israel. So it's very difficult for them to go out. After October 7th, the number of work permits was slashed drastically, so even having mentioned you can't escape otherwise, so that was really curtailed.
So it's very difficult to leave if you're Palestinian. And what I found in renting a car in East Jerusalem and trying to drive around the West Bank and out to Nazareth; it's very difficult even to get around the West Bank because of this annexation that ended up being enshrined by Oslo. Oslo was meant to be a transition to a Palestinian state, but instead it seems to have just codified the annexation of Area C such that the experience of renting a car in East Jerusalem, trying to drive to Ramallah, so it was on these roads, which is in Area C, I could not get back into Ramallah in Area A because the roads were blockaded. It was like it had been closed for many years, it was so closed off. So it took quite a while to go from East Jerusalem to Ramallah, there's only really one way you can go that's through there. Gave me an idea for a great TV show to bring comedians, to try to have them go through checkpoints, to have them go through roads and just see the challenges that people face all the time. And you can put on the map where they are.
Because it's impossible to understand, even having lived there for over six months before, over 25 years ago, I thought I understood what the Apartheid Wall meant, that it wasn't on the green line that it was in. I thought I understood what it meant to have area A, B, and C, and then living out that reality in front of me, I was not prepared. It is very difficult to communicate what's going on, and I urge anyone who's able to to travel there to go.
When I was there before in 1999, it was before 9-11, it was before the Second Intifada. So a lot has happened since. It was before the Apartheid Wall. And seeing how the old city of Jerusalem, you could just swing your arms around. You would hardly see people at all. And when I was there previously, you couldn't move without touching at least three people at once. It's become very localized; we tried to go to a restaurant we had read had good reviews, of course from over two years ago because no one has come to visit since October 7th, and the place the restaurant was had become a toy store and we said we're looking for this whatever the name of the restaurant was and he said yes that was me that was my restaurant it was very good restaurant but I had to go into toys. I had to become a toy shop because toys do not expire the way food expires, and no one was coming to my shop, there's no visitors anymore. And it was so heartbreaking to see that the way it's shifted so many people's lives and livelihoods, the lack of stores in Bethlehem, even worse in both places, in the old city, places that used to have so many visitors now are a place you can get haircuts or maybe get some cooking culinary goods or like a Goodwill equivalent. It's gone very local because there's just no visitors.
And it was very stunning to me. And people tell me this happened some time ago, but one instance of this: Manger Square outside of the Church of the Nativity where Jesus was born has become a parking lot. When I was there before, it was filled with vendors, with carts, and selling things to visitors, and just a beautiful atmosphere of the specialness of this place, the uniqueness of the place, of the whole globe. There's only one place Jesus was born, and it's in Bethlehem. And to see the Manger Square, the manger where Jesus was laid, is a place for people to park was so devastating to me. Yeah, so that's just a few examples of the differences.
Stephanie: When Michael and I had the chance to go some years ago, isn't there a mosque around Manger Square, too, somewhere?
Sheila: Yes.
Stephanie: And I remember people were actually out there praying. Is that mosque still there, or...?
Sheila: The mosque is there. I didn't see anyone praying outside, but inside, yes. And in fact, many of the people parking, it was to go to the mosque or to the church or things like that. But it was like not possible to do that when I was there before. It was just, it would only be tour buses filled with people. I was telling our group, the Meta Peace Team, there would be, the leader would carry an umbrella that he or she would raise above their head because you otherwise wouldn't be able to find them.
It was so packed with people. And now, yeah, we saw probably less than, gosh, probably 50 tourists total across everywhere in a month. We were there a month. And of course, we were mostly in the South Hebron Hills, which has never been a tourist area, except it does invite internationals for protective presence, but is not a traditional tourist destination.
Stephanie: Areas A, B, and C. For our listeners, can you describe the areas and I felt that there's a bit of dehumanization in those categories as well of Palestinians. So if you could just help people understand what that means and what that reality is like.
Sheila: Yes. Outside of an area A, which is all of the cities, so Nablus, Jenin, Ramallah, I'm sure there's a few others, Hebron is its own category, but outside the major cities are signs that say it is illegal for Israelis to enter here. And outside of area B, which is the mixed jurisdiction of area B; so area A is at least nominally in control of by the Palestinian Authority aren't available in area C which is under the jurisdiction only of the Israeli military. So if you need the police, and you live in Area C, you have to call the Israeli police or the military. And it's often the military that's causing the issue. And you can imagine the Israeli police or the military are not really going to do anything about the settlers that are there that are causing the violence. So it's a difficult situation.
Outside of Area B, there are signs that say “this area is dangerous,”
And to only go with great caution. And it's just such a shame, such a travesty, because inside of it are the most generous, welcoming people, that really Israelis are prevented from getting to know. Israelis aren't taught Arabic in their schools, they have to serve in the military, so they're trained up in this way of seeing this perpetual enemy. So they are really prevented from getting to know delightful people. Now, so the majority of people providing protective presence are indeed Israelis. So there are a large number of Israeli activists that understand the situation quite well and are present with Palestinians and do their best to send settlers back in the direction they came, at least in the moment, if they come to trespass or other things. So there's, yeah, so there's hundreds of activists that are doing that from ‘48.
Michael: Sheila, is there nonviolence training or educating going on either side at any degree?
Sheila: Yeah, I think most of the resistance is, nearly all of the resistance is nonviolent because it's really anything that's even the smallest bit violence, rock throwing is met with bullets. And not just with arrests and even arrests, even time in Israeli prisons has met with such abuse of prisoners and starvation and really has stopped the resistance. When we got there, we were told there really aren't demonstrations in the way there used to be because it's simply too dangerous. So there's very few people willing to risk that.
The most they may be willing to risk is harvesting olives, which shouldn't be a dangerous activity. It's like our Thanksgiving. You go back to where your family lives. You gather all together. You go out together for what's meant to be a lovely day, working on your family's land, your kind of ancestral heritage. And just once a year, you go and knock all of the olives to the ground, laying out blankets or tarps or something to catch them all.
And it's quite physical, the labor involved, ladders or sticks to knock the branches. And this year, more than any other has been met with so much violence. So it really is, most people are not going out, are not doing this with their family. They're too scared. They don't see it's worth it. And they say, oh, it was a drought this year anyway, and there'll be so few olives.
And so it makes you realize like what nonviolent resistance is; simply living as a Palestinian is an act of resistance and just trying to go to school,
trying to go to work through check points that show up randomly. And it's all meant to make life impossible in a hundred tiny ways. So even this activity with your family is – they’ll just appear and say, “this is now a closed military zone,” you can't be here just all of a sudden. Or if it's near a settlement, and “near” means like within a mile or so near a settlement,
then it's threatening the security of the settlers. So some of our group was met with live fire while harvesting olives. There were some Palestinians that went towards us, some internationals and Israelis providing protective presence, also went towards the soldiers and settlers. The rest of our group were with Palestinians, wanted to move away from that and were glad to move away from the shooting. So they ran. So yes, just simply living life is nonviolent resistance.
Michael: MPT has tried to provide protective accompany for people doing olive harvesting?
Sheila: Three of our group, three of the five of us, we were split into two teams. So part of our group went on the olive harvest, just the way the numbers worked out and the needs. And you say the olive harvest, but of course there's, I don't know, hundreds of them probably, that are happening. But there's a request for presence because they know it can be a dangerous situation. So the networks invite internationals to come and say, okay, this is where this will be, we'll help get you there to be with this family. So it's impressive, the creativity, the self-possession of Palestinians in the face of this increasing tightening of a noose or it's just crowding, crowding them in.
As one Palestinian described it, Israelis come into your house and say,
you can live on the second floor. And then they say, you can live in this one room. And they say, you can live in the closet. And it's like, just to say no to that, or just attempt to say, I'm going to stay in this room. It's really, yeah, it's something that we do have an example of it with our own indigenous people here. And that's probably how I best can understand it. I live in Indiana, which was called such because it was the place all the indigenous people were moved to from eastward, from Ohio, east of here. And that was the case for a while until it was then needed. And then, so I think we're familiar with the Trail of Tears in Indiana. And from this town, from South Bend, it was the Trail of Death. Hundreds of people, Potawatomis, marched to Kansas with death and disease on the way. And it's marked and you can go see where things happened. It's definitely worth doing. And there's a lot of impressive native history, also a resistance in Indiana, but it's not one that's largely known or taught. We just see this happening in the West Bank, that this is the future they're facing is to be colonized completely.
Michael: Yeah, there's a theory that people will tolerate repression and impoverishment up to a certain point. But when it gets to the point where they just basically can't live anymore, they will frequently rebel because the options are worse. It's rebel or be exterminated. And I'm wondering if things get to that point, which does not seem unlikely, is there organization? Is there planning? Is there understanding on the part of Palestinian activists that there's a way that they can do this and they have no choice at some point?
Sheila: I think it's been a full rebellion that's stepped up in different moments, but certainly this century, I think has been one of finding ways to still exist. There’s the book “What Happened to You?” and it’s a question of curiosity that I think whenever there are moments of violence from Palestinians towards Israelis, there's just no curiosity or sense of what might have led someone to act in this way. Whereas from the ‘48 side, like it's a full indoctrination of your whole life. So, I feel for them and not being able to step outside of it because really you have no choice of where you're born or who you're born to and what you're socialized into.
Michael: What about Neve Shalom? It's a school that's been teaching both Palestinian and Israeli kids for a long time now and giving education so they can understand one another as people. And I've been watching to see whether that generation is numerous enough to make a difference, capture the imagination.
Sheila: Do you know where that's located? In Haifa or Jaffa, I would bet. Yeah, so here's the curious, fascinating thing is 20% of the state of Israel, so excluding the West Bank and Gaza, but 20% are Palestinians who were not moved off their land. who either refused or Israel wasn't trying to take that particular village for whatever reason at that moment and were eventually offered citizenship. So that's an interesting dynamic too,
because it means like one in five Israelis are Palestinian. And I kept trying to wrap my mind around why are they treated so much differently? And it doesn't seem like there's all this fear and it doesn't seem like there's all
this repression. Of course, there's some racism, lack of opportunities, other things, but it's not worse than an apartheid like it is in the West Bank. And all I could come up with for an answer is that they really just do want this land, Judea and Samaria. As a Christian, like I'm for preserving holy sites, but it's a nation state. But yes, I appreciate what you're saying, and I think within Palestine, for the Palestinians within Israel, then that's who that's geared toward.
When I studied abroad there many years ago, I ended up befriending an Israeli soldier who became a conscientious objector and introduced him to my Palestinian friends and got him to walk in Bethlehem. He was very nervous about it because of everything he'd been taught and trained and all that. They really are indoctrinated to think they'll be immediately attacked, killed or kidnapped or something. And I was like, “No, these are very friendly people. We can have tea in the shop. We can talk.” And that was the case. I don't know that it would be different if I wasn't there or much different, but it's, as I mentioned, a lot of the protective presence is by Israelis and they don't seem to have any problems.
My best idea, and it's not even for lasting peace, but more in the kind of vein of what you're suggesting of teaching the children together from both sides is I was really struck by the young men from both sides, the kind of 12 to 24 year olds on both sides. And seeing the way the teenage settlers like to be, yeah, a bit destructive and especially destructive with property that's not theirs that belong to neighboring Palestinians. And then even seeing, we were staying with a family in a very remote area, like very beautiful under the stars. And there was, I think he was 15, our 15-year-old Palestinian host. And he was having a good time lighting aerosol spray on fire and creating the flames and all that. Palestinians who are in Israeli jails are almost entirely men. It's very few women, something like 11,000 to 60 is the ratio. So it's, yeah, much less than 1%. And I'm not sure it's still the case, but when I was there before, like men were in the military for three years, I think, and women just for a year and a half. So it's double the time. So my best idea for peace at the moment is to take 12 to 24 year olds from both sides, let them destroy things together, light things on fire, smash things, throw whatever, destroy things for a good week, and then maybe spend two weeks building something together. And of course, our presence there was less than a drop. But I do agree with you that humanizing the other is essential.
Stephanie: Do you have any messages that people wanted to send back with you that they want those listening to know about?
Sheila: Yeah, thanks. Yeah, I was surprised to hear people say that this is the worst it has ever been, and they expect it to get worse than this. You don't go to Palestine for a good time, but it is a great time. It's very beautiful, very peaceful, very lovely people. Lots of tea with sage or mint, excellent olive oil, za'atar. We heard this repeatedly, a sense that this is just since October 7th, so much has changed since then, but every Palestinian village is now equipped with a big yellow gate, a big yellow swing gate that's just been installed in the last two years. That is almost always left open, but is a gate that can be closed and locked whenever the Israeli army decides it should be. So it's an extra stress of restriction of movement that's threatened. And so they're bright yellow color.
Stephanie: And Israel gets to decide when that's open or closed, like a cage?
Sheila: Correct. Like a cage, precisely. Like a cage. Yeah, so they all anticipate a time where they will be largely closed, or maybe something would happen that would result in them all being closed, that they have no control over, like how many mass shootings do we have in the U.S.? What if we were all held accountable for that? And our roads shut down because of it.
Michael: Good idea
Sheila: Yeah, maybe that would change it. That'd be useful. But this kind of collective punishment has been the case for so long. And what's shocking to me really is that there's not more violence because it's a
very difficult situation. So it really is, yeah, that Islam is a religion of peace,
of deep love of family and deep belief in community. That really is what holds people together. When I was last there, it was so long ago, Speaking of mass shootings, I was there during Columbine, one of the first big shootings in the U.S. And my classmates at Bethlehem University could not conceive of violence that was not political. It didn't make sense to them. So they reached for an explanation of political violence, that this must be an organization that has political aims. And we had to tell them, sadly, no, these are lonely kids that would kill themselves, but got it in their head to be an anti-hero and take down a school with them. And they just really couldn't comprehend even what a loner was because they told us, they said, in our culture, no one is, if someone goes off by himself, we will go get him and bring him back. That's stayed with me with every mass shooting since then, which has been very many over these 26 years.
That simply doesn't happen. It simply doesn't happen in their culture because the real connection of family and community is such that people aren't allowed to go off on their own in these different ways.
Stephanie: That's a really interesting perspective. And another thing I wanted to also just make sure to bring out as you talk about how the youth and adults from the settlements, they do go out and attack and intimidate villages near them. First of all the settlements are illegal and then they're harassing, murdering, harming people near them, and also the systemic violence of stealing the water.
Sheila: Making life impossible, destroying homes, destroying wells.
Stephanie: And it seems to be the case that Palestinians aren't going over to the settlement to attack them. It's not the case that Palestinians from those villages who are just trying to live their life, go to school, are going over and intimidating.
Sheila: No, they're not. Yeah, which is the surprising thing to me, that it's, they really aren't, it doesn't go the other direction. It's the sort of violence ratios have always been 10 to 1 of overwhelming violence from Israelis towards Palestinians. And in the last two years, it's really been more than a hundred to one, including Gaza in that, of course. But it's shocking to me that there really isn't, and doesn't seem to be an interest in, despite their incursions, people just want to live.
So it's very different than the picture we get here. It took some refocusing, even having been there, even being very pro-Palestinian, just where people would say there, Israel is the daughter of the United States. And whatever the U.S. says, Israel will do. So just as a ceasefire was only possible because Trump said, stop for now. Biden had, of course, in January, had a successful ceasefire for over a month. We'll see if we can get this to last at least that long.
Then it really is all the entire project, it's such an American project. Netanyahu lived, grew up in part in the United States in Philadelphia, went to college in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Speaks English perfectly because he went to high school here. So there's, it puts the agency back in our laps. I was going to say that the refocusing is because the U.S. is so pro-Israel that really all we're presented with is more of an equal struggle. If it's not, I think that kind of initial is, oh, Israel needs security from the Palestinians. And then you look at it and then maybe the next level is, oh, it's equal struggle. they both have claims to this land. And then it's really rare to get the history of what's really happened here with settler colonialism. But it mirrors our own. That's the curious thing of it, that the U.S. was created as the new Israel. And Israel is created as the new America, really, in both situations, the native peoples being pushed into smaller and smaller areas.
And their way of life isn't possible anymore. So we were providing protective presence mostly to shepherds. And I thought, oh, this will be nice to go on walks. Of course, this was a sort of danger, but to go on walks in this beautiful hillside. The [shepherds] did not want to go out grazing with their flocks because of the violence, because it is not worth it for them to have their sheep stolen, to have their sheep killed, for them to be injured themselves. So looking at the whole calculus of it, they kept them very close, basically just in their yards or even in a larger pen from where they would be normally. They can't be shepherds anymore. It's basically like a petting zoo now. So this way of life isn't possible so much like our own indigenous people had required larger stretches of land for their way of life that then wasn't possible. So their whole way of life is shifting and has had to shift. The few people that we stayed with, their children have largely moved to the city, to Area A, to not have to deal with this violence. They're worried about their parents still, left as the last holdouts.
You become an activist simply by staying on your land, simply by refusing to give it over, you become, by default, an activist. That's the amazing thing in the U.S. I think that does often happen. It's like when companies come in and destroy your water or your air or something, and you say, hey, wait a minute, this isn't good. Much more than it's, oh, you learn about an issue and you want to get involved, and so you get involved. And there it's simply, nope, just I was just living my life, and now you're making it almost impossible, and I refuse to be pushed off. And I'm not going to respond violently, but I'm going to still try to live my life as I've known. Yeah, so the South Hebron Hills is an amazing example of resistance.
Michael: Sheila, it was like 25 years ago I had Johan Galtung come and give lectures at Berkeley. He was a very famous peace researcher. And his whole talk was about the stunning parallelism between the encroachment on the lands of the Native Americans here and what is on over there and the ideology that supports both. That this is Manifest Destiny. A friend of mine has challenged me recently, talking about ideas and ideology, to come up with a different word than settler. Settler implies people without land for a land without people. But this land was not without people. They had a lot of people.
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Sheila: Yeah, It's true.
Stephanie: I've heard them being referred to as like a wing of the military, really.
Sheila: Yeah, the settlers have been armed with guns from the United States by the military, that's correct. So could you say they're a paramilitary like the Proud Boys or something? So those, they're basically suburbs, gated communities. Think of any gated community in your state. It's very similar to that. And you think, are these the people that are coming to light cars on fire? And so maybe...some of their teenagers or something, but really it's the outposts, so that's where the finance minister Smotrich lives, Ben-Gvir lives in an outpost. So outposts are more, I think out there, Colorado, they call them caravans, but we'd call them trailers, just like very remote from the settlement, some distance away. So it's a way to stretch a tentacle out from the settlement and have this outpost. And that's what's new.
The outposts are basically new, but I think every settlement itself started as an outpost. So it's a way of just claiming the land, which Israel really learned to do, yeah, in their conversations with the British, because the British plan for division included not where the numbers of Jewish people lived but where the location where they lived so by stretching out as far as possible they received the most land and that's continued to be their strategy is okay how do we spread out here really as a strategy of taking over which I don't know if that's the case in the United States in the same way of course claiming as much as possible and then you have William Wallace trying to take over Nicaragua and make it a slave state and taking over Sonora, Mexico. And so we certainly have people that have made that their strategy.
But it's, yeah, they are armed, the settlers are armed. And it's, I don't know what the strategy is with them, really, or how that, I think for Israel to follow its own laws around legality and what's illegal by their own laws, then they shouldn't be there, but they're not enforcing that. So if you're not enforcing what your laws say is illegal, is it really illegal? Yeah, that's where that stands. And the army won't enforce, yeah, it won't stop the attacks, really.
They're not there to protect. I think in times past, there were stories of over the last maybe 15 years, the army would walk Palestinian children to school in Area C to avoid the attacks of settlers. That's not the case now.
Stephanie: You encouraged people to visit the area, visit Israel-Palestine. We know from experience that you have to prepare for that, that you can't just go over and say, I want to go to Palestinian villages in the West Bank, or I want to go to study nonviolence, or I'm here because there is apartheid and I want to understand it better. You have to be able to get into the country without upsetting the military who will point guns at you at the airport wondering why you want to go. So tell us, what advice do you have for people?
Sheila: Yeah, I think reaching out to MPT is a great way to encounter Palestine and Palestinians. I do think it's important to be part of a group,
but it can be a group that you didn't know ahead of time. I only knew one member of the group before going. Yes, that they will prepare you. It does require some preparation, but it's a beautiful place and an important place. And I think the thing to share as you go across the border is to say the things that you want to see, the historical sites, the religious sites, the places that are meaningful to you if you're a person of faith. Or if you're not a person of faith, there's a lot of dance clubs and beaches and other great hiking to do. So there's other ways to come and enjoy the area. And then to make sure, of course, you do those things. So we were glad to go to Nazareth and the Sea of Galilee and reflect on, to read the Sermon on the Mount of Beatitudes where Jesus preached it was very special. So to be, yeah, to make all those places come alive is a unique thing that I'm sad that people have felt they could not go in the last few years. So I do want to encourage people to go and spend your money with Palestinians. And yes, that does involve having to go through Israel to do that. But again, there are things to see and do within ‘48 that is important to share at the border
that you're headed to do those things.
Stephanie: That was Sheila McCarthy talking about her experience as an unarmed civilian protection agent, part of Meta Peace Team, MPT,
metapeaceteam.org, that's Meta with one T. And she was in the West Bank for about a month providing protective presence. And all of that was just unloading some of the experiences that she had and processing what she saw. I think the most shocking part of what she said was the gates on the Palestinian villages, the big yellow gates that have been installed by the Israeli government/military that can just close when they decide that they have to limit travel for Palestinians in more ways. It's just such a dehumanizing situation. Already villages have things over in Palestinian villages say, you're entering this area. I forget if it's A, B or C. I think it's A. You're entering this area if you're Israeli. You could be killed if you go in here. It's so divisive and dehumanizing and now putting up gates. I felt that was, for me, the most shocking thing I heard, Michael.
Then also, as we look at the way that tourism has been impacted, because so many Palestinians rely on tourist business in the Holy Land to fund their lives. And so the fact that there's so few, she said she saw maybe 50 tourists the whole time, this is a big problem as well. So visiting, they suggest, is a good idea. But as we know, Michael and I know, that it is hard to get into the country if you are going there to study nonviolence in any way. You do have to be prepared. There are groups like MPT, but also UCPiP, Unarmed Civilian Protection in Palestine, U-C-P-i-P, You can look them up. You can find it also on our website, https://www.mettacenter.org/whatsnew .You can see the invitation. They're looking for volunteers to go and participate in joining UCP teams, unarmed civilian protection teams in the West Bank. They will train you. They will pay for your expenses. And you do have to have some experience, I imagine, in order to be selected for that. Not just anybody can join these teams like the way that seems like just anybody is joining ICE in the U.S., for example. But yeah, this is really serious work and we are really big fans of it. Michael, I wonder just in these last few minutes, what was the most surprising thing that you heard in that conversation or what struck you?
Michael: Well, Stephanie, I was also struck by the yellow gates. Having been there, having gone into those lovely villages and now seeing them walled off in that way, it just seemed to me such a concrete symbol of separateness. And when you get into a violent situation, you're constantly blaming the other side for being violent. And yeah, there have been violent outbreaks, but they're pretty understandable. And I almost have the feeling that we're building up to what they call a nonviolent moment where there will really be a confrontation between the forces of nonviolence. And there's an assessment report from UCPiP on the feasibility of implementing unarmed civilian protection. And one cohort has completed a three-month deployment, and their presence has been a vital source of support. People are able to stay home, and no one in the village was injured. Another cohort has finished their training. It's now hard at work in Ras Al Auja, where they will be until December. And there's a beautiful image here. One indicator of success comes from every morning when we see the children walking peacefully to school. And they are now building up their teams for 2026, as far as funds allow. They'd like to see at least 100 highly trained UCP personnel strengthening the existing organizations in Palestine.
Stephanie: Yeah, this is really awesome work, and you can find out more on their website, also MPT. And I know that the various groups are coordinating and working together, but definitely something to learn more about.
Now, at the end of our interview, after I pushed stop recording with Sheila, she said that one thing that people said to her while she was in the West Bank was that today is worse than yesterday, and we know that tomorrow will be worse than today. And so there's this sense that we have to be in the present moment because at least we know that it's not going to be as bad as tomorrow. Now, just put yourself in their shoes and think about what that's like.
We want to thank everybody for joining us today on Nonviolence Radio, it's been great. Thanks to our mother station, everybody listening. Until the next time, please take care of one another. Bye.