Operation Dove / Operazione Colomba is the Nonviolent Peace Corps of the Comunità Papa Giovanni XXIII Association. Since 2002 it has been carrying out unarmed civilian protection and accompaniment in Palestine, at the beginning in the Gaza Strip and then in Masafer Yatta (south of Al-Khalil/Hebron).

During these 21 years, hundreds of volunteers from Operation Dove have lived 24 hours for 365 days a year standing by the Palestinian civilians and those communities who chose nonviolent resistance to fight the human rights violations perpetrated by the Israeli army and settlers.

During these 21 years, we have observed, documented and reported these violations by thousands of hours of video footage, hundreds of press releases, dozens of meetings with Italian and international institutions, dozens of articles on national and foreign press, thousands of public meetings.

During these 21 years, we have built strong trust and friendship relations with hundreds of Palestinians and Israelis. Together we are helplessly witnessing the events with deep concern and immense pain, mourning the dead ones. Their request for ending decades of Palestine’s occupation to achieve a just and stable peace is now more than ever unheard and silenced by the deafening noise of weapons.

We now feel that these 21 years efforts are at risk of being definitively crushed and betrayed by the violence of weapons and the arrogance of those who have never acted to stop it, even though they could.

It saddens us to witness this distorted media attention, which talks about the Palestinian issue only now that bloodshed is happening causing an increasing number of deaths day after day, on both sides. Media are not telling that the humanitarian catastrophe for the Palestinians in Gaza has been persisting for decades, it did not start today.

Now and as long as necessary, we keep on staying where it is right to be that is exactly where we have been during these 21 years: alongside those who suffer and stand against violence.

Operation Dove / Operazione Colomba

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[ESPAÑOL]

[Foto: Yahya Hassouna/AFP]

I have been expelled from the country.
Israel decided that I was unwelcome, and they sent me packing.
The Ministry of the Interior declared that I did nothing illegal, I have not broken the law, yet “we do not want you in the country, you must go”.
Why? Because Israeli settlers, who live in illegal settlements, who attack and commit atrocities every day against people who simply try to lead a normal life, have written a report on me and they have sent it to the immigration office.
At the airport they were waiting for me.
“You have breached an unwritten law and got the attention of the wrong people”, these are the words they told me.
Soon before leaving, a Palestinian – a dear one for me – told me “Sooner or later everyone pays the price of their choices”.
Indeed, and I have paid the price for mine. Choices that I would make again, regardless of the pain I feel daily.
But I don’t want to talk about me, I want to talk about those who pay the price every day.
Because three hours by plane from Milan there is an entire community who fight every day to keep living in their homeland; to farm their lands; to build a road, a house, or a bathroom; to gather olives; to go to school.
They fight for living.

 These words are written by Mohammed Hureini, a Palestinian activist from Masafer Yatta (South Hebron Hills), after he was unjustly arrested on August 5th, 2023, while grazing on his land.

I was grazing our sheep when a group of illegal Israeli settlers invaded our land and started harassing me. They also had some sheep that they unleashed to graze in our land. When I tried to stop them, they called the Israeli army, who immediately came. The army had already prepared a military order entailing that our private land is a closed military area before they joined the settlers. To enforce the military order, which only applies to us, the Israeli commander notified us that we have to leave the land within a few minutes.
I refused and insisted that the settlers should leave our land first. Israeli soldiers responded by handcuffing and blindfolding me. The Israeli commander tightened the handcuffs to hurt me and tried to humiliate and provoke me. I shouted at him and said, “What are you doing? I am not a toy in your hands to treat me like this.” He replied, “Shut up!”
At around 8.00 PM they took me to the military base near the village of Susiya. I could find out about this through a hole that was in the piece of cloth covering my eyes. When we arrived in the military base, they threw me in a yard, where there was a soldier watching me.

Operazione Colomba, the years spent in Lebanon, Humanitarian Corridors and the solidarity shown in these years have taught me a lot and opened many new paths.
They taught me a unique way to live certain situations and when to give space to others.
I saw a world of tragedies caused by human violence, but also the solidarity and closeness that grows within them.
Twenty days ago, I heard of a big shipwreck, 750 people left Libya and only a hundred survived, a hundred corpses were found, while the others... were lost at sea.
Shortly after I talked with a friend who arrived years ago in Italy from Lebanon through the Humanitarian Corridors: his cousin Mohamad, 24 years old, was on the ship.
He is among those unaccounted for.
Several friends intervene to help and one of them accompanies the relative of the missing person in Greece to search for answers.
There, along with the volunteers from Operazione Colomba, information was exchanged and listened to in order to see what can be done.
In the meantime, I have arrived in Lebanon and learned that Mohamad’s parents are here, living just a couple of hours by car from where we stay.
They are our friend’s uncles, parents of a desaparecido in the deadliest border of the world, refugees in a country that barely hosts them while they can’t return to their country of origin.
Operazione Colomba is what can’t make you flee facing other people's pain, but instead it whispers “get closer, try to feel even a small fraction of what they are feeling, don’t run away, even if it’s painful and even if you don’t have an answer”.

I left to try to give a concrete Peace response to the war.
Here, after more than a year, young people are tired: they were resisting and looking for a different way but now they are giving up, they think it's not working, they don't see great results and they believe that the only thing left to do is to enlist.
To fight, so that the war ends as soon as possible or just to avoid being pervaded by a sense of futility.
So, I asked myself what the next step was, how to help them not to give up.
What concrete step can they take against the war?
Actually, they are already doing it, they are taking big steps against violence, but they need to be told!
The part that is missing is mine.
We alone do not see things; the other people make us see.I have to tell their life, and tell them that I see it, that their resistance is the great cry that they want to live and they do not want war.
They are living and not fighting with weapons, and that is right!
They are living by sharing what little they have in their destroyed villages.
They are seeking Peace, they have already created it, they are living it.