Perhaps from fear of being stereotyped as fire-breathing young radicals, ISM leaders point out that their volunteers range from Israelis of high school age to 75-year-old grandmothers; from "young, anti-WTO types" to conservative Republicans. But it is an undeniably youthful movement: Roughly a third to one-half of the volunteers are in their 20s, says Arraf. Activists are present in the territories year round, but they are particularly visible during the summer, when college kids use their school vacation to work with the ISM.

Still, despite the smattering of danger rangers, egotists and revolutionaries, most ISM volunteers are more traditional liberal-to-radical peace activists; the kind of seasoned organizers you'd find running nonprofits or organizing demonstrations back in the States. In fact, many volunteers, like Harmony Goldberg, say that their interest in human shield work sprang from march fatigue.

At a deeper level, many activists are driven by a sense of personal responsibility: They feel a duty to help rectify a situation that they believe their government, as Israel's staunchest supporter in the world, has helped create and perpetuate. As Matt Horton puts it, "I feel like I owe the people there a lot as a citizen of the United States. The U.S. basically enables what's happening to the Palestinians to happen."

Volunteers who come back from the occupied territories express a sense of wonder at being able to walk through the streets without fear during curfew, while the locals cower inside. "Your life is more important than theirs, but why? It's a conflict sometimes, but one you have to use," says Arraf. "It's surreal to walk in a big city without a single soul in the street, with people looking at you from their windows frightened to come outside. And you're not, only because the powers that be consider your lives more important than theirs. There's a sense of security."

For high-minded young progressives like Horton, even identifying as an American is problematic. Horton, the child of a law professor and a corporate attorney who had a privileged private-school upbringing in San Diego, has long refused to think of himself as either "white" or "American." "Whiteness and white identity is basically a union of various light-skinned people from Europe to suppress and attack nonwhite people. So I don't consider myself white, though the world system of oppression and dominance does consider me white," he declaims. "But now the situation for Palestinians is so bad that it doesn't matter, these stupid abstract ideas; if you can do anything to help people live it doesn't matter whether you're using white privilege or not."

It's difficult to measure the effectiveness of human shield work, because its success is defined by a negative -- events that didn't happen, shots that weren't fired, people who weren't killed. Most volunteers can point only to small victories: An ambulance getting through a checkpoint faster and perhaps saving a life. A local who was able to go to the market for a loaf of bread during curfew hours without being shot at. A house that wasn't demolished while they occupied it. As Jordan Flaherty puts it, "We can't say, 'Tonight the soldiers didn't come because of us,' but we can say that soldiers have never come and demolished homes while we were there."

"Often the soldiers were confused by us," says Horton. "A lot of times they would stop doing what they were doing for a little while because we confused the hell out of them, they didn't expect to see us, or know what we were going to do; and they are under orders not to kill internationals. They would check our passports and talk to us, and go back to shooting afterwards, but hopefully in a less dangerous way or something."

Levine, himself a political delegate and activist, believes that the human shield work has had a measurable impact. "The presence of someone like Adam Shapiro in Arafat's compound probably saved [Arafat's] life," he says. And even if human shield volunteers aren't always stopping bullets or bombs, Levine says, their simple presence, and their nonviolent message, inspires and educates Palestinians. "They are having a very important impact on Palestinian society, showing Palestinians that there are people from outside Palestine who are willing to risk so much to help them -- but without violence. This gives credence to the Palestinian people that they need to work on nonviolent alternates to the intifada."

From a political point of view, activists' reporting to the outside world what they have seen may be more important than slowing down a few Israeli patrols. Some activists have succeeded in publishing stories about what is happening in the occupied territories, although mostly in small or left-leaning publications. Still, with Israel increasingly making it difficult for outsiders, including journalists, to get into the occupied territories at all, activists feel that any news is better than none. A Dec. 12 editorial in the Israeli daily Haaretz noted, "Police at the borders are meant to prevent terrorists, criminals, illegal aliens and those unlawfully seeking jobs from entering the country, but lately those police systematically harass innocent visitors -- and, of course, anyone who wants to get a first-hand impression of what is happening in the territories."

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Undiscouraged by their unwelcome status in Israel, some human shield volunteers are looking elsewhere to make a statement. Iraq, where the potential of American invasion continues to build, is the latest focus of human shield drama. Voices in the Wilderness, a nonprofit organization that for six years has coordinated delegations to Iraq to record the impact of economic sanctions, is ramping up a full-time "solidarity presence" in Iraq. Since September, 100 people have signed up to go over, says Gabe Huck, a 61-year-old veteran delegate.

Because the danger in Iraq is vastly different from that on the streets of Palestine -- bombs dropping from the sky, as opposed to shots fired from guns or tanks -- the utility of human shield work there will be dramatically different. An American can't exactly stand in front of a house to protect it from a bomb; he can, however, strategize to get his eyewitness testimony about the Iraq situation in his hometown papers in hopes of swaying public opinion.

"I think people are very realistic about what can be done; most of us would understand that this is one small piece of what might deter violence," says Huck. "This is not a bunch of martyrs." But he still pauses, and adds, "Make your will before you go."

The threat of danger fails to discourage most volunteers, many of whom are anxious to go back after initial forays, mostly to Israel. For his part, Horton is eager to return, though he says he's committed to doing grass-roots mobilization in the States until he can raise money again. In fact, most activists testify vociferously that their human shield work has changed their lives: Not just because they learned the meaning of fear, and witnessed life in a war zone, but because they worked so closely with the Palestinian people. There is great psychological weight in exchanging your own body for another's, they say, in vicariously living the dangers of war; and there is also great guilt at knowing that you can go home any time.

Which is why, Jordan Flaherty observes, a lot of human shield workers need therapy when they get back to the States. "It's hard, really hard to get back to life here, it really transforms us," he observes. "It's really traumatic: traumatic to be shot at, and traumatic to be able to leave. That's your ultimate privilege: We choose to go there and put our lives on the line, and then choose to leave. But people there can't leave, they aren't choosing this because they are radicals. It is their everyday life."

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