It also began sending delegations to Davis, Santa Barbara, and Los Angeles to train other UC students to set up similar movements. More delegations are planned for the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, Columbia University, and possibly Harvard University. Last month we arrested a girl who lured an Israeli boy via the Internet to Ramallah, where he was brutally murdered. It took us 30 days to get a confession out of her. If we had been allowed to apply physical pressure she would have confessed after a couple of hours.
Physical pressure saves time and sometimes life.
Force was routinely used by the security services until 1984, when two Palestinians were murdered during a Shin Bet investigation. Even when their position was far from being popular in their community, and there were those who accused them of collaboration, they called for cooperation with Israeli peace forces which opposed the occupation. In the eighties, I acquired, like many others, my political education in the way of civil and democratic struggle from the young and idealistic lecturers of Bir Zeit. There is no doubt that Bir Zeit had an important role in the triumph of the spirit of compromise and reconciliation within the Palestinian society, at the eve of Oslo, when the Palestinian people extended their hand to peace with us, with hope and faith. Last week, Bir Zeit too returned to the claws of the military administration.