Courtesy Standing Together
Activists with the Humanitarian Guard stand next to trucks carrying food to Gaza that were able to safely pass through the Tarqumiya checkpoint.
“No food should go into Gaza,” said the Israeli far-right activists who blocked aid trucks carrying food supplies to the besieged Gaza Strip. These violent West Bank settlers formed militias that coordinated attacks on the aid trucks, setting them on fire, beating the Palestinian drivers, and destroying bags of flour, rice, and other badly needed necessities.
The aim of these groups is to deepen and prolong the mass starvation of the civilian population of Gaza, where there is an unfolding humanitarian catastrophe. And they do so acting with complete impunity, as Israeli soldiers and policemen stand idly by, allowing them to block roads and raise havoc. They’ve actually received support for their actions from government ministers, including Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir, who is in charge of the police.
Tarqumiya checkpoint, near Hebron—which is the main border crossing that connects the southern part of the occupied Palestinian West Bank with Israel—is where the majority of aid trucks pass en route to Gaza, carrying humanitarian supplies that come mostly from Jordan. As most of the trucks pass there, it became the site of the settlers’ violent attacks.
Following these recent attacks in Tarqumiya, the Israeli grassroots movement Standing Together, of which I’m a founding member, announced the formation of what we call the “Humanitarian Guard.” We called upon people in Israel to sign up for daily shifts at Tarqumiya checkpoint to deter the settlers, document what is happening, alert the police, and demand that they do their job. More than 900 Israeli citizens signed up for this initiative, taking shifts, establishing a daily presence there.
I was there the first day, on May 19. We were around 40 activists, who mostly came by a bus we rented from Tel Aviv, with a few coming in their cars from Jerusalem and Beer Sheva. Within a few minutes of our arrival, the far-right settlers left the checkpoint, since they were grossly outnumbered. We counted around 30 trucks carrying food that passed through the checkpoint while we were there, some honking to us as we cheered. For the first time in more than a week, they were passing unhindered.
We were monitoring the WhatsApp group chats that the extremist settlers use to coordinate their attacks, and learned that they had ambushed a truck in a nearby junction. Our activists quickly deployed to the scene, discovering the settlers had already blocked the truck and started destroying food supplies. Upon our arrival there, the policemen present became aware that we were documenting the scene with our phones and cameras. At that point, they removed the settlers from the road, allowing the truck to pass. Our activists collected the food packets that had been dumped at the side of the road and loaded them onto another truck. All in all, it was a successful first day.
Ilia Yefimovich/picture-alliance/dpa/AP Images
Vandalized humanitarian aid trucks near the Tarqumiya checkpoint, May 13, 2024
Since then, this has been a daily routine, with dozens of activists arriving each day, deterring the settlers and enabling the trucks to pass. At times, the confrontations with the settlers almost became physical. But our Humanitarian Guard enabled the trucks to pass day after day.
Eventually, the settlers simply stopped coming, as they understood our presence hindered their efforts. On May 31, the three far-right organizations—Jewish Truth, The People of the Land, and Victory Youth—that coordinated these attacks announced they were “taking a temporary pause,” to allow themselves to “regroup and rebuild.” Behind these nice words stands the stark reality of their failure to continue to pursue their violent actions. After they announced they were suspending their activity, we rightfully celebrated a victory.
For us, our presence at the checkpoint with the Humanitarian Guard was not only our way to allow the food to reach the starving population in Gaza, but also to be a part of the fight over the moral fabric of our society: We refuse to allow our society to be overrun with messianic zealots, who pillage, vandalize, and starve others, and for this to be the only voice heard. We insist on building an alternative on the ground, one that unites both Jews and Palestinians around shared mutual interests, with a vision of struggle and hope that includes safety, security, freedom, and independence for both peoples.
This message is at the core of the political project of Standing Together: We organize and mobilize both Jewish and Palestinian citizens of Israel against occupation and war, against racism and discrimination, against the ruthless economic order in which we live, and for social equality and climate justice. Our theory of change is very simple, yet stands in contrast to what currently passes as common sense when reflecting on Israel: We believe in the possibility of building a new majority inside Israeli society that would allow us to advance toward peace, equality, and social justice, and we work strategically to draw together diverse communities around their shared mutual interests, through political campaigning and grassroots organizing.
The example of the Humanitarian Guard, and how this on-the-ground effort was able both to appeal to a large audience as well as to out-organize the far right, is a case in point about the progressive potentialities that exist within our society. Based on this assessment, we took it upon ourselves—following October 7th and the outbreak of the war—to build public support inside Israel for a cease-fire agreement that would stop the killing of innocents in Gaza and bring back the hostages alive. Eight months into the war, support for such a deal now has majority support in Israel. As the option of a cease-fire deal that would end this war is currently on the table, we continue to push forward toward that goal. And if we could beat the far right when it tried to block the aid trucks, we can sure as hell fight them when they try to block the cease-fire deal.
