Israelis given 'bitter taste of occupation'

Tel Aviv: Civilians shuffle in line at a checkpoint, waiting nervously in the bright sun to get to the end of the fenced-in tunnel.

When they do, they find themselves confronted by M16-wielding soldiers who tell them they're not allowed to pass - they don't have the proper permits.

"We need to go through," pleads a Palestinian man holding his wife's hand.

"No permit, no entry," an Israeli soldier replies.

"Haven't you had enough of this -"

"Move back!"

Rifles are raised, tensions are ticking, voices vault.

This is not a scene one would ever witness on the average day in a Tel Aviv that is far-removed from the daily tremors of the West Bank. But it is one that is played out daily at border posts inside and on the borders of Israel's occupied territories in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

So on Tuesday, the 40th anniversary of the beginning of the Six-Day War, peace activists set up a mock checkpoint here in an effort to give Israelis a bitter if symbolic taste of what it means for the country to hold onto the territories it has occupied since 1967.

"We want people to know that this occupation isn't just bad for the Palestinians, it's destroying Israeli society," says Chava Lerman, a middle-aged mother who is active in Machsom (border post) Watch, an organisation of women who go out to West Bank border posts to witness and record the treatment of Palestinians by Israeli soldiers.

Such strong sentiments about the impact of Israel's presence in the territories represent a certain slice of the political spectrum. On the religious right, other Israelis view the outcome of the 1967 war, in which Israel seized control of lands that have been parts of Syria, Jordan, and Egypt, as a sign of divine providence, even heralding a messianic era.

But in between these two poles is an amorphous Israeli middle that is uncertain about what was right then and what's to be done about it now.

Huge mortgage

"We realised that homeland comes with a huge mortgage, and no one's willing to pay it," says Michael Oren, a historian and author of Six Days of War.

"I think Israeli society is a lot less polarised than it was five years ago," says Oren, a senior fellow at the Adelson Institute for Strategic Studies at the Shalem Centre in Jerusalem. In the middle, Oren explains, is the average Israeli, who won't show up to express outrage in a protest in Tel Aviv, but is keen to make compromises if it's for making peace.

The war's anniversary week will be full of protests, marches, and rallies, many of them held jointly by Israeli and Palestinian activists. While the Tel Aviv demonstration continued, a big-screen live feed came in from Anata, a Palestinian village outside Jerusalem.

Bassam Arramin of Combatants for Peace, an organisation of Israeli and Palestinian men with military backgrounds, addressed the crowd and implored them not to go home and feel satisfied.

"We are victims of the occupation, both of us," he says. "It has made us all into fighters. But I don't want to be occupied by you, and you don't want to be a state of occupiers."