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TEL AVIV — Skittish at first, then wide-eyed with delight, the women
and girls entered the sea, smiling, splashing and then joining hands,
getting knocked over by the waves, throwing back their heads and
ultimately laughing with joy.


Most had never seen the sea before.

The women were Palestinians from the southern part of the West Bank,
which is landlocked, and Israel does not allow them in. They risked
criminal prosecution, along with the dozen Israeli women who took them
to the beach. And that, in fact, was part of the point: to protest
what they and their hosts consider unjust laws.

In the grinding rut of Israeli-Palestinian relations — no
negotiations, mutual recriminations, growing distance and
dehumanization — the illicit trip was a rare event that joined the
simplest of pleasures with the most complex of politics. It showed why
coexistence here is hard, but also why there are, on both sides,
people who refuse to give up on it.

“What we are doing here will not change the situation,” said Hanna
Rubinstein, who traveled to Tel Aviv from Haifa to take part. “But it
is one more activity to oppose the occupation.

One day in the future, people will ask, like they did of the Germans:
‘Did you know?’


And I will be able to say, ‘I knew. And I acted.’ ”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/27/world/middleeast/27swim.html?_r=1