‘They’re Trying to Gaza-ify the West Bank’: An Interview with Mark Colville

The following interview transcript has been lightly edited for clarity and length. For instance, filler words and false starts have been omitted, as have off-topic conversational interludes. Colville reviewed the transcript before publication and made several minor transcription corrections and added some comments, which are presented in square brackets and italics. The second part of this interview, in which Colville discusses the situation at the Amistad Catholic Worker in more detail, will be posted at a later date.

Roundtable: You were part of a Christians for Ceasefire delegation, and you just returned from that?

Mark Colville: I returned on Wednesday, and yeah, it was actually, to be more specific, it was Rabbis for a Ceasefire and Christians for a Ceasefire, and we also ended up having Buddhists and Hindus for a Ceasefire, so it was a real interfaith delegation. Most of the folks coming from the U.S., although some have dual citizenship in other countries like India, etc. Yeah, and most of us didn’t know each other. You know, connected to the Catholic Worker Movement—Eric Martin, he was the one who actually reached out to us, Beth Brockman and I, among others, to join it. So the three of us were, I suppose you could say, representing the Catholic Worker Movement on the trip.

Roundtable: And what kind of work did you do over there? Did you do any nonviolent direct action? Did you just do accompaniment work to sort of provide a buffer?

Mark Colville: Pretty much all of the above. There was a heavy emphasis on accompaniment presence and protection in terms of the understanding that international presence is really critical for the immediate safety of folks there. Because of the endless encouragements from the IOF—I used to call it the IDF, the Israeli Occupation Forces—supporting these crazy settlers who are, you know, they’re burning cars, they’re terrorizing children.

So we had some pretty, you know, front row experiences of people who are suffering under that. And it’s hard for me to say anything else except, you know, Israel is a deeply, deeply sick society. And that sounds like a radical statement if you never put foot over there. But, you know, once you do it, it becomes crystal clear.

Roundtable: What part of the West Bank were you in?

Mark Colville: We were all over the place. We actually were staying in a hotel in Jerusalem called the Christmas Hotel. So that was sort of our base in terms of where we were leaving and returning to every day.

But we made it all over the place. South Hebron Hills, we made it down to the whole Jericho region near the Dead Sea. There’s lots of sheep farms out there. And again, the families who have been operating those literally for centuries are being terrorized and slowly evicted.

We were all over the West Bank, really. A contingent of us went to the Al-Aqsa Mosque, which is obviously a big point of contention now for the fanatical Israeli and Christian evangelical, you know, ideologies. You can’t call this religion. It’s not religion.

Part of my own motivation in making this trip was to try to bring home the experience to our unhoused leaders here that really what we’re dealing with, it’s all rooted in the same oppression, you know, which has to do with the denial of land as a means to the denial of personhood. And we certainly, in our own neighborhoods here in New Haven, have kind of experienced that. And in fact, some of the large numbers of the students on the Yale campus who have been working in terms of Palestinian solidarity have kind of crossed over and helped us in some of our public actions here to try to claim space for unhoused people that are criminalized.

And so, this trip for me was kind of an extension of that experience of trying to show up for Palestine and at the same time, recognize the same oppression in which everything seems to be rooted.

Roundtable: Is there a moment that really stood out for you or crystallized things?

Mark Colville: Well, those moments happened really on a daily basis. Again, our emphasis was on trying to accompany these communities and the reality on the ground now at this point is that the strategy of the Israeli government is to divide and conquer, which is to say that, you know, the Palestinian territories have been so overrun by illegal settlements at this point that, really what (the Israeli government) is trying to achieve, in terms of the army, is they’re trying to make sure that Palestine is no longer a contiguous community. OK, so what you have now is pockets of Palestinian territory that they have not yet managed to evict all of the people.

And so these little pockets of Palestinian land are connected by roads, which the army seals off at whim. They blockade everything. And so, we would show up at some of these and most of them were like cooperative farms that have leaned on international solidarity in order to be able to stand their ground.

I guess what stood out most prominently to me…is the absolute nastiness of this whole project. And I guess what hit home for me is how how completely separated from religion this is at this point. This is not about religion. This is evil. Zionism is an evil ideology that is literally driving Israeli society insane, in my opinion.

And actually, this was my second trip to the area. I went there with Catholic Worker peace team in 2009. And again, in terms of experiences that stood out, there’s this (Palestinian) neighborhood just outside the walled old city of Jerusalem called Silwan, where there’s like a population of about 40,000. And what they’re doing there is a systematic kind of slow-roll expulsion process. Israel is weaponizing the law against Palestinians, you know, trying to expel people by legal process, by demolishing their homes.

You know, back in 2009, I recall that that they were claiming at the time that these are archaeological sites and that they needed to take them by eminent domain in order to excavate. You know, so that was sort of the excuse 15 years ago.

Now, it’s just an outright land grab. In fact, it’s so bad that the man—his name is Fakhri—whose home had just been demolished, and they they had set up a little makeshift dwelling and are now rebuilding, he was saying that, literally, the government actually goes to the people ahead of time and advises them to demolish their own homes because, a) they’re going to lose in court and b), when they do, they’re going to have to pay all the court fees and the demolition expenses. So they’re kind of offering them deals, you know, to just kind of give up and walk away from their property.

So all of this, it’s essentially ethnic cleansing that’s going on, when you when you put in all the violence and the direct attacks on farming communities in the countryside. Just a very frightening reality, and yeah, it’s hard to wrap one’s mind around the experience.

Roundtable: You said you did some direct action work. Tell me about that.

Mark Colville: Yeah, well, we actually drove all the way out to one of the border crossings into Gaza, to Rafah, which is, you know, the border town there with Egypt. So we went all the way down there and we held an interfaith public prayer protest—this is one of the only spots where food aid is being permitted to go in. It’s the one that the one location that seems to be kept open most often. That being said, the next day, I believe, after we had done this prayer service, one of the convoys of trucks was attacked and killed a bunch of aid workers.

Mark Colville: And then, in terms of direct action, it was the next day or the day after that that we went to the U.S. embassy in Jerusalem and we had sort of a red hand, “blood on our hands” action, which, again, we posted on social media. You know, I think the group was heartened by being able to take that symbolic action after what we had witnessed together. This is just a genocide. It’s ethnic cleansing. It’s everything we did to the indigenous peoples here in the United States.

And again, I’m drawing this connection because it’s so important in terms of what we’re trying to do to counter the criminalization homelessness. You know, I think the only thing the that’s missing in terms of putting this kind of oppression in full operation here is that we haven’t yet directed the weaponized drones toward our neighborhood. OK, but it’s certainly clear to me based on what we’ve experienced here that that’s where we’re headed as a society. I can see very clearly, you know, within the next couple years that we have checkpoints going into some of the neighborhoods where—if I have my way anyway—where Catholic Workers and low-income people are going to be standing our ground. You know, that’s become clear to me.

This is exactly the sort of critique that I’m trying to raise within the Catholic Worker Movement—that our traditional way of doing hospitality, while it’s been extremely beautiful and continues to be transformative for many of us, not only the folks who we take in, but ourselves as well—while all of that remains true, you know, I can’t imagine Dorothy Day being alive right now and not calling for Catholic Workers to be directly involved in this kind of accompaniment work. Again, nonviolently standing our ground and resisting the—you know, the people are being pushed to the margins, and then they’re being criminalized there, so that’s where we need to go, and we need to decriminalize those spaces and make them safe.

[Mark added after the interview: “In fact, this is the kind of community we’re building at Amistad right now. We have a coalition of good people- unhoused activists and backyard neighbors; student organizers dedicated to Palestinian freedom and solidarity; street medicine healthcare advocates, and even a few Catholic Workers!- all of whom come to the table with a personal and collective commitment to helping people assert this basic human right to take refuge, to be recognized as persons, to stand their ground against state violence, eviction, expulsion and victimhood. Our power base remains located in the daily practice of the corporal and spiritual Works of Mercy. And so, I’d be remiss if I didn’t use this forum to invite folks to consider joining this experiment as part of the intentional Amistad Catholic Worker community.” amistadcatholicworker@gmail.com (293)645-5417 (call or text)“]

Roundtable: So, the accompaniment work you did, who in particular were you acting as sort of a buffer for? Who were you protecting?

Mark Colville: Yeah, so we’re down in the region of Jericho, which is near the Dead Sea, and there was a whole bunch of sheep farms run by families. And when we were there, we went to one of those.

First of all, the bus that we were in drove around to and went up on hilltops all around and then turned around and went to the next one just so that we could publicize the international presence.

And as we were doing that, you could see up on top of many of the hills, you’d see either Israeli flags planted or or even like graffiti with the Israeli flag on it. And those were intended, as our guide Omar (Harami, director of the Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center) was telling us, to mark targets for the settlers who were terrorizing the people. And Omar was telling us that in that region, it’s only about a half dozen people who are actually doing this work of terrorizing the farms and all and that they are Israeli soldiers who have PTSD that’s not being treated. And the violence that they’re doing on the people is being backed up and supported by the military, and the soldiers break open the gates for them and then they stand guard while the people go in there terrorizing the folks. It’s very scary.

Anyway, we went to three Palestinian farms in which people have been able to stand their ground. The others have moved into the local town called Tuba, which I just noticed yesterday that the Israeli IOF went in there and shot a bunch of people yesterday or the day before. So anyway, we got to this one farm and…the mother there told me that she had woken up suddenly about two a.m. to a couple of these crazy veteran soldiers screaming epithets right above her face. The children were terrorized, they burned a car—we got some photos of that.

So then, we just decided to hang out there for several hours. You know, a soccer game quickly broke out, people were getting on a donkey and stuff.

I was sitting there along with one of the retired Methodist ministers who was on the delegation named John. We were sitting with a young kid who was on medication for anxiety based on what he had experienced from being terrorized by the settlers. He also has a developmental disability. Actually, John was really good in terms of being able to draw the kid out after a little bit, playing hand games and stuff.

Then suddenly the kid, as he began to relax, kind of looked up and asked a question in Arabic which was translated. He was asking why we came, “Why did you come here?”

So I immediately took out my phone and I showed him the wallpaper photo of my grandson, who just turned two years old.

I said, you know, I want to tell him, “This is my grandson. His name is Josiah.” He’s actually a Jewish kid married into a Jewish family. Anyway, I showed him the picture. I said, “You know, I would like for my son, my grandson, to know about you. I really someday would like for him to come and meet you.” So it kind of became a good exchange there, as the kid really started to relax.

As we were kind of chilling there and his mom was there, we were all talking. Then suddenly the kid, whose name was Yusuf, by the way, he went into a mild seizure. Apparently he has epilepsy as well. They just kind of took it in stride. His mom kind of put some water on his face and laid him down on the floor that we were sitting on.

But, yeah, I mean, it was just, you know, you get a sense of the fragility of these folks—and yet their unmitigated strength. You know, the Army is literally just standing by waiting for somebody to beat the crap out of one of these settlers or something.

The commitment to act in nonviolence, standing our ground there, was humbling and amazing to me.

In terms of other accompaniment visits, we were at a place called Makhur—it’s in the mountains—which is part of Bethlehem. This is literally, as I was told, the only Christian village left in Bethlehem at this point. They have an international solidarity tent there that we visited over land that they pointed out down below that had been confiscated from them based on the military setting up a firing range and a small military base just on the other side of this hill. So these folks are literally just hanging on by a thread, and it’s the international presence that is keeping them there.

However, just yesterday—again, a lot of stuff sort of blew up after we got home—that international solidarity tent was dismantled, was destroyed by the illegal settlers, and there was an immediate call to go and rebuild it, and actually, a few of our delegation members had decided to stay on a few extra weeks, and some of them were going over to help rebuild that tent.

So, there was this other place, a cooperative farm called [Umm Al Khair International Community Center], which was just overflowing with children when we showed up. There’s a big playground there and several little farmhouses and buildings and stuff. And they were doing chicken farming and a lot of growing vegetables and stuff there.

Anyway, one of the people who was speaking with us and kind of giving us an orientation to us, he pointed to all the buildings that we could see on their land, and he said that every one of these buildings has been demolished by Israel. In fact, he pointed to one building, he said, “That one has been demolished five times.” So these folks have been living under the harshest conditions; they’re having everything taken from them, and then they’re slowly putting the pieces back together—in many cases only to have it done again to them.

And so, the other place was called the Tent of Nations, which is just outside of Jerusalem, and it’s considered to be a very geographically strategic point, because if the settlers and the army manages to take over that particular place, that would disconnect Palestine from the West Bank. [Mark clarified after the interview: “The Tent of Nations farming community is critical because its annexation by Israel would disconnect Palestinian territory in the West Bank from Jerusalem.”] It’s very important, very critical that they hold their ground there. This is a farm, a cooperative farm, that has received a lot of international presence and solidarity.

It’s literally since the sixth century that this farm has been in this family, right? And Israel tried to confiscate the land by demanding that they have papers. I mean, where are you going to have papers from the sixth century, right?

Well, as it turns out, during the Ottoman Empire, there was an edict that went out that went out into the countryside where everybody was supposed to register their land with the empire. And most people just ignored that order. But lo and behold, the ancestors at the time, they actually did file the papers.

So, in the past decade or so, the Israeli government was trying to confiscate land by claiming that people didn’t have a legal title to it, and they were able to go and find these legal papers that gives them title to the land, which has really thrown a monkey wrench in Israel’s plans to disconnect Palestine from the West Bank.

And so, then the Israeli government produced fake papers indicating that the other ones were invalid. Well, that failed.

One of the owners was explaining to us said that the most recent thing was that they actually gave them a blank check they said, “You write the check.” In fact, they were basically saying they would pay any price. They said, you and your family can go live as super rich people for the rest of your lives, and generations to come. “You write the check, and we’ll pay you.” And they’ve refused. So that’s the kind of resistance that’s going on there.

Part of the strategy with the Palestinians now is, because there is basically zero chance of these Palestinians getting any kind of a building permit on these lands—they’re not allowed to build anything on their own land—so a lot of them are like, digging caves now, and they’re living underground.

Roundtable: I’m wondering whether you ever felt personally in danger. I know Cassandra Dixon from Mary House Catholic Worker in Wisconsin was attacked a while back by settlers. And then, of course, we have the news this morning about the American woman who was shot by Israeli soldiers while protesting over there. Did you ever feel in danger?

Mark Colville: No. I mean, I felt unsettled and nervous because the situation was changing rapidly. In fact, in many of the places we went, the violence came right behind us.

And I’m not suggesting that it was our presence that spurred any of that. But the fact is, while we were there, Israel had started to make some serious moves in terms of trying to turn the West Bank into Gaza. They’re trying to Gaza-fy the West Bank. It’s become a military assault now on the West Bank, which even like six months agoas far as I understand it, that would have been fairly unthinkable that the Israeli military was going to turn their full force towards the people in these occupied territories. But that’s sort of a new escalation in the war, if you want to call it that, because it’s not really a war.