What were you doing on June 21? I was enjoying an internship and a summer away. Many of us were taking summer classes, studying abroad or working at the local mall.

No such luck in Palestine. On June 21, Israeli Occupation Forces were imposing a complete military curfew on the city of Nablus. The largest city in the West Bank and home to more than 150,000 Palestinians, Nablus was besieged, and was to stay that way.

One hundred eleven. The city has been under 24-hour military lockdown for 111 days. With the exception of about 80 hours of relief sprinkled in form of a couple hours every 10 days or so, all Palestinians are forced to stay in their homes.

Tanks and armored personnel carriers growl through the streets, and families sit around, hour after excruciating hour.

Economy? Employment? Education? Forget about it.

The reason? The current Israeli government believes that the curfew is necessary to stop attacks on Israelis by Palestinian extremists. After all, extremists are responsible for the deaths of Israeli soldiers and civilians alike. Has it done its job in stopping attacks? No, that is evidenced by criminal attacks committed since the curfews.

Some Israelis, however, have a different perspective. In Israel’s peace camp, it’s a commonly held belief that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s military curfews are designed to make life so miserable that Palestinians will willingly “transfer” to neighboring countries.

Friendly language, isn’t it? Transfer. There is a little phrase in the English language for such an insidious term.

It’s called ethnic cleansing.

Ethnic cleansing Slobodan Milosevic-style. After all, it would indeed involve the forced flight of a people based on their religious or ethnic background.

As nauseating as talk of this ethnic cleansing is, I prefer to concentrate on hope for Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation.

This hope lies in creative, nonviolent, direct-action disobedience to Israeli occupation. For decades, other violent avenues have been taken to the aid of extreme Israeli governments and to the peril of many innocents.

No way, you say — Palestinians living in contained, inhumane conditions will always resort to deplorable acts of violence. Nonviolent direct action simply can’t take place when people have no choice.

Well, it’s already happening. Despite its convenient omission from most major corporate news organizations’ information for American eyes and ears, Palestinian creative resistance is alive and growing.

Two weeks ago, at midnight in the Palestinian town of Ramallah, hundreds of residents risked death by turning on the lights of their houses and walking to the town center banging on pots and pans, making a deafening sound. The frantic wail of Israeli occupation troops’ sirens attempted in vain to bring order to the city.

Out of frustration, soldiers fired live rounds into the air.

More examples. Since the start of school August 31, schools in Nablus have rarely been allowed to open. Children sit at home. Accordingly, “popular schools” have sprung up in neighborhoods in which kids defy curfew to attend classes in the living room of a nearby apartment.

In a Sept. 18 New York Times article on the schools, 20-year-old Nablus college student Jamila Mabruk said, “We’re fighting them with the ABC’s … They want us to be ignorant and backward. We say no. We want to learn.”

These schools are a form of resistance. The curfew of occupying forces does not allow for the educational process, so teachers and volunteers took matters into their hands and opened their own schools.

In another case, citizens of Nablus opened the fruit and vegetable market in open defiance of the curfew, because the food had run short at home.

Soldiers didn’t know what to do when thousands of hungry residents poured into the streets to open the market.

We do not live in the choking grind of occupation. It is easy for us to say that nonviolence is the answer from our comfortable chairs here in the United States. But the truth is that nonviolent direct action is already taking hold as a method of defiance.

Since June 21 the city of Nablus has been at a standstill. For the process of peace in the Holy Land to begin, we as Americans must join others around the world in supporting efforts of Palestinians and Israelis seeking a sustainable, just peace, built on the solid foundation of nonviolent direct resistance.

As principal financiers of the Israeli occupation, we owe it to Israelis and Palestinians, but we also owe it to our conscience as members of the human family.

Omar Tesdell is a junior in journalism and mass communication and technical communication from Slater. He is the online editor of the Daily.