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The Tel Rumeida Circus for Detained Palestinians

By Katie Miranda and Jonas Moffat, December 2006

International Solidarity Movement volunteers Katie Miranda and Jonas Moffat recently finished a speaking tour of the San Francisco Bay Area. The purpose of these engagements, “Witnessing Palestine,” was to report back from Occupied Palestine and to raise funds in order to return and continue their work in the West Bank.

The work of ISM in Hebron is extensive and complex to say the least. The situation is unlike any other place in the West Bank because Palestinians live literallyside by side with Israeli settlers.

As a result of their close proximity to each other, the Israeli military has set up a variety of restrictions that make life for
Palestinians perilous and humiliating. This is in conjunction with violence from settlers whose purpose is to push the Palestinians out of Tel Rumeida and fulfill what they believe to be their religious destiny to control all of Hebron and eventually the whole West Bank.

The district of Tel Rumeida contains two Israeli settlements. Palestinians are not allowed to drive cars of any kind. This includes taxis, buses, fire trucks and ambulances. If a Palestinian is too sick to walk, they must be carried to another part of town where ambulances are “lawful”. People have died while being transported to an ambulance. Israeli ambulances will not serve Palestinian residents.

The police and security forces in the Tel Rumeida district are Israeli only and exclusively serve the Israeli settlers. Complaints made by Palestinians to the police are ignored. International volunteers are given the same treatment. In the year that ISM has had a permanent presence in Tel Rumeida, no settler has ever been arrested for violence towards an international or Palestinian member of ISM despite innumerable assaults accompanied by video or photographic evidence.

Palestinians are subjected to IOF house invasions where soldiers enter homes at night, kick the family out or lock them in one room and destroy property or beat people. The IOF will also frequently and arbitrarily detain young Palestinian men at checkpoints for hours for no particular reason.

ISM and the Tel Rumeida Project have joined forces with the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) in a legal campaign to open the roads to Palestinian vehicular traffic. ISM and TRP have been conducting video interviews of Palestinian residents of Tel Rumeida about the hardships they have faced as a result of being prohibited from driving cars. This testimony will be used in a forthcoming legal case by ACRI.

ISM and TRP volunteers accompany Palestinian children on their way to and from school as they pass in front of two settlements and are frequently attacked by both settler children and settler adults. Palestinian families in Tel Rumeida call ISM and TRP volunteers when their houses are invaded by IOF soldiers.
Volunteers with video cameras use their international privilege to document both forms of violence. It has been well documented that IOF soldiers will not beat residents or destroy property if they know they are being filmed.

Katie and Jonas both learned the art of fire dancing and came to Palestine from San Francisco. Although we did not know each other before Palestine, we were pleasantly surprised to learn that the other had brought our fire dancing equipment (poi).

Sometimes we would become weary and exasperated from negotiating or arguing with soldiers regarding Palestinian men being detained at checkpoints. One day we saw a few of our neighbors being pushed around and verbally abused by Israeli soldiers, soldiers who were young enough to be their children. Rather than contributing to the bad energy, we decide
to contribute to the absurdity of the situation.

Jonas took out his juggling pins and Katie took out her poi and we announced that there was going to be a circus performance at the checkpoint. As we started performing, the soldiers stopped abusing the Palestinians and started watching us. During our show, the men were released. This was the start of the Tel Rumeida Circus for Detained Palestinians.

We at TRCDP have since expanded our focus to include the following activities: 1.) drawing the attention of the IOF away from Palestinians detained at checkpoint and onto us, 2.) entertaining detained Palestinians, 3.) giving weekly night time fire performances to the residents of Tel Rumeida, and 4.) teaching circus arts to the kids. If you would like to donate to TRCDP
in order to help further non-violent resistance through art and circus, contact joeskillet@riseup.net.

Jonas resides in San Francisco and has volunteered with the ISM in 2003 and 2006. He will move to Palestine in 2007. Katie Miranda has been living and working in Palestine over the past year with the ISM and the Tel Rumeida Circus for Detained Palestinians.