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Israeli authorities and politicians have been implementing particularly violent policies in an attempt to quell recent escalations in Israel, East Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank.

But the spirit of oppressed peoples is impenetrable--resistors always have resisted and always will. In 67 years of occupation, Palestinian resistance has emerged in many forms, a constant force against a restrictive and discriminatory judicial system and illegal colonialism.

Shadia Sbait, coordinator for the Iqrit Community Association, a group fighting for the right of return to their village in the Galilee, maintains that the Palestinian struggle cannot be deterred.

“You know, we live in a place where there is a lot happening on a daily basis. We finish one Intifada, we start a war with Lebanon, then with Iraq; we are always living in this situation,” Sbait said.

But the recent uptick in violence, which according to Middle East Monitor has seen Israeli authorities kill 42 Palestinians since the beginning of October, is altering the priorities of Palestinians in resisting Israeli occupation.

“Keeping the struggle, 67 years active with activities on the ground is very important,” Sbait said with resolve.

“When something like this happens,” she said, referring to the renewed violence, “it turns you back like 7 or 10 years, like a huge vacation, and you need to start from the beginning; to raise awareness, to discuss this, to lobby, to talk about this, to convince people that this is the first solution. And we will do it. Unfortunately we had to do it so many times, and we will keep doing it again.”

Iqrit’s residents became refugees during the Nakba in 1948, along with some 700,000 other Palestinians, many of whom were forced to neighboring countries like Lebanon and Jordan. The fledgling Israeli army evacuated the residents under the presumption that they would be allowed to return. Despite two high court rulings in July and November of 1951 guaranteeing the resident’s legal return, the Israeli army demolished the village on December 24, 1951, in a move denied by then Prime Minister David Ben Gurion.

Community members and descendants of the village have been presenting the legal case for return until today, a right guaranteed under international law. Their efforts have thus far proved fruitless.

This hasn’t stopped activists like Amir Toumie, a 3rd generation Iqrit resident, who is defiantly initiating the right of return to his village. Along with twelve other community activists, Toumie has made his home for the past year a church on Iqrit land.

With a truculent smile, Toumie said “we declared our return, we returned. Me and the other guys.” A right understood by the international community for refugees to return to their places of origin is too often paid only lip service in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Toumie is an example of nonviolent direct action in this context, and perhaps a product of the monotonous years of waiting for justice that Palestinians everywhere have experienced.

The practical aspects of return to Iqrit are streamlined because the village remains empty. The residents asking for return pose no demographic threat to the state of Israel, because all 1,400 are already citizens of the state. The ancillary objective, and the place where Toumie truly shines, is making the right of return a conceptual and palatable act.

Not only are Toumie and his fellow activists living in Iqrit, they are developing the village as the center of a community of displaced peoples.

“We are working to prepare the other people, the village, the community, that some day they will also return.”

Iqrit speaks to the profound sense of justice that all human beings share and the model of Iqrit should be implemented across the state of Israel. The story, the veracity of its characters and the symbolism of return carries enough weight to shake the earth, let alone pass through some Knesset chambers. As Israel ramps up its attacks on Palestinians, its collective punishment of Issawiya in Jerusalem or Nabi Saleh in the West Bank, as it encourages and rewards its soldiers for shooting children--whether armed with a knife or not--I hope Israelis and Jews and the American diaspora connect with the pervasiveness of Iqrit. I hope anyone longing for home, their gut kneading, heart aching for the familiar, might stop to think of Iqrit.

As Toumie explained, “In the country, you know with all the clashes and everything, people just go back because they don’t want to be part of it.” But Toumie insists that despite arrests and detentions by Israeli authorities, “the struggle is the most important thing so we go on with it.”

“We don’t have anything to lose, I mean we already lost everything. So when you don’t have anything to lose you just go on with the struggle to the end.”

Toumie is resilient. Let’s live by his example.