Category: Journals - Page 103 - International Solidarity Movement

Normal Life, Destroyed Homes, and Israeli Apartheid

by Schlomo Bloom

The other day, I got a tattoo. Actually, I should say that I got another tattoo, as it is not my first, or for that matter, my last. The day I got my tattoo, was more or less like any other; I got to work by my usual bike route (uphill, unfortunately), had my morning latte, and fortunately got off of work early. Of course, there were the occasional daily annoyances, my daily cup of coffee, anxiety about the tattoo (yes, this one hurt!), but for the most part, there was nothing terribly abnormal about my days events; so what the hell, let’s call it a ‘normal day.’

On February 14th, I received confirmation through a CPT report, that the homes of friends of mine in Palestine were destroyed. In one sense, this is also normal, as they were not the first, and won’t be the last homes destroyed in Palestine by Israeli soldiers (or Palestinian homes destroyed in Israel for that matter). But truly, how can the demolition of your home by an illegal military occupation ever be considered normal? How can such brutality be carried out by human beings who are just following orders, without some semblance of reflection and disgust? And how do my friends, and countless other Palestinians, find the strength to survive such violence, and not only carry on, but rebuild and hope for the future?

In a moment, I’ll be going through the pictures, both from my trip and the current destruction, but first a few more words. I wrote about the community that has suffered this outrage before, in a diary called Close Encounter of a Settler Kind . It is the village of Qawawis, and the residents have endured numerous acts of violence over the years, the main aim of which is to remove them (and other small villages in the area) from the land.

If one looks at the many maps available, they will show you the logic of the occupation in this area; the less populated (by Palestinians) South Hebron Hills have been targeted for annexation by the Israeli settlers for decades, as opposed to the more densely populated Palestinian areas of Yatta, Samu, and Hebron nearby (that said, Hebron is another story). The villages of Qawawis and many others like them are a problem, not due to ‘terrorism’ or ‘security’as such, but due to their repeated refusal to leave, and their rootedness in the land.

Adi Ophir wrote in an article in the Book, Against the Wall that the occupation is defined not as much by overt acts of violence (although they do occur from time to time), which he calls kinetic violence, but by violence in small bursts, or even more, violence suspended, always there and threatened, always possible, but held back for the present. This is one of the reasons that conveying the terror and violence of the occupation can be deceptive to those that do not understand the way occupation dominates the daily life of Palestinians. But in the time I spent in Qawawis, I witnessed so many small and large examples of violence, it is hard to list them all. Just getting to the village requires a circuitous route replete with checkpoints, backroads and some on-foot traversing; then there was the morning we found 6 olive trees cut down by settlers, the surprise visits by the army, the countless visits to the village by armed and violent settlers. And then there is just the physical setting; Qawawis is ringed to the north, south and east by 3 settlements, and one major highway cuts it off from the village of Karmel. Two more roads branch off the main highway, completing the pincer which surrounds and attempts to choke off any ability to survive for the villages of the region. On top of that, in addition to the Apartheid Wall which passes close to the Green line, they are building an inner wall along the Highway, which will completely seal off the villages from Karmil and Yatta. The Supreme Court ordered the IOF to remove this wall over two months ago but this hasn’t happened yet.

Now I don’t just know this because I read Jeff Halper’s Matrix of Control article, which describes this basic policy and strategy of control and suffocation that the IOF employs, and is certainly applicable to Qawawis and other parts of Palestine. I know it because I lived it when I stayed in Qawawis. When we would take the goats and sheep out to graze, we could go only so far as the lack of roads and settlements would allow us (to give you some idea, I traverse well more than twice that distance during my 20 minute bike ride to work). And when we would be near the roads, we would be in constant threat of soldiers and settlers, due to military orders which say that they need to stay 200 meters from the roads. Some days, the army jeeps would drive by and ignore us, and some days they would try and force us to leave. Some days, the settlers would ignore us (you can always tell who they are by the orange ribbons, a holdover from the disengagement), or some days they would honk their horns at us, or shout from their cars. And, some days, they would do more, as my previous post explains.

But on February 14th, the suspended violence gave way to a full-scale explosion, in the form of home demolitions, in 3 villages in the South Hebron Hills. First, here is a portion of the Haaretz article that discusses it;

Security forces demolish seven houses in Mt. Hebron villages
By Mijal Grinberg, Haaretz Correspondent and Haaretz Service

Security forces destroyed seven illegally constructed Palestinian houses and 13 other structures Wednesday on the southern slope of Mount Hebron in the West Bank.

The demolitions took place in the villages of Manzal, Umm al-Khir and Gawawis.

The Civil Administration said, “Twenty illegal structures were destroyed after demolition orders were issued, and offers were made to the owners to pursue the available options before the planning organizations. The supervisory unit of the civil administration will continue to operate against illegal building activity in the area, and to implement the steps mandated by law against this illegal activity.”

And if you would like to see some of the reuters pictures of that day, go here

And here is the CPT report, which was emailed to me by Joe Carr & posted on the ISM site, and is fully approved for reposting;

CPT: Israeli military demolishes seven Palestinian homes in south Hebron district

Israeli soldiers demolished homes in three Palestinian villages near bypass road 317 on February 14, 2007. Starting in Imneizil at around 9am about forty Israeli soldiers with two bulldozers demolished one home, an animal pen and a stone bake-oven. At noon the soldiers moved to Qawawis where they demolished the homes of five families and one bake-oven, then on to Um Al-Kher where they demolished one home and damaged a wall of another home.

At Imneizil several young children were in their home eating when the Israeli military arrived; the soldiers gave the family time to get out, but did not give them time to remove their personal belongings. The animal pen was demolished with a few animals inside; two lambs were injured. The Palestinian family began immediately to build a makeshift pen for the animals as the majority of the sheep were just returning from grazing in the fields.

In the village of Qawawis one of the demolished homes was over sixty-five years old, and sheltered two families. Photos of the families amid the rubble are on the CPT photo gallery: www.cpt.org/gallery/view_album.php?set_albumName=album93

The Israeli military, in concert with Israeli settlers, has been trying to force the Palestinian residents of the south Hebron hills to leave their homes for years. Due to harassment from the nearby Israeli outposts several of the young families of Qawawis moved to a nearby town; when the Israeli army then forcibly evacuated the remaining families, a court ordered that the families could return to their homes. According to a lawyer representing the families, the Israeli army now claims that this court ruling allows only the last inhabitants of Qawawis to return, not their children who earlier fled the assaults of the Israeli settlers.

“Our children need homes,” said one villager. “What do they want us to do”?

The Israeli army said, “Twenty illegal structures were destroyed after demolition orders were issued, and offers were made to the owners to pursue the available options before the planning organizations. The supervisory unit of the civil administration will continue to operate against illegal building activity in the area, and to implement the steps mandated by law against this illegal activity”. The Israeli military made no provisions for shelter for the families whose homes they demolished. The families asked the International Committee of the Red Cross to provide them with tents.

The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions said, “A building permit is unavailable there [in the south Hebron hills].” The preceding day three Israeli peace activists and two internationals, including CPTer Sally Hunsberger, joined approximately fifty Palestinians in working on their land near Imneizil. The Palestinian men, women and children planted 600 olive trees in fields that they had afraid to walk on for the past four years due to threats of settler violence. During the action, soldiers and settlers watched from a distance, but did not interfere with the tree planting.

Now, I would like to walk through some of the pictures, which consist of the day’s destruction, and my own pictures that precede it. It was especially painful to see these pictures, as these are people that fed and took care of me, in whose homes I slept and ate, and whose children I played with.

First, here is a picture of Qawawis from sometime bin 2004-2005, with the house of Hajj Khalil in the center. The land is farmed for olives, almonds and figs on the hills, and elsewhere for wheat and grazing for livestock.

Next to Hajj Khalil’s house is the smaller structure that the internationals would sleep in. It is made of stone, mud & cement, with a tarp for a roof (after the rain, the water would collect in bunches and we would have to take sticks to push it out). The winter was cold there, but we would always gather in Hajj Khalil’s house for sweet tea to warm us up.

And here are the remains of the home I stayed in, stones, tarp & all.

In the center of this picture is my dear friend, Hajj Ibrahim, and to his right, his wife Hajja Amne. Of the homes there, only Hajj Khalil’s, seen behind them, still stands.

Now, this is a picture of my lame attempt to put together a family tree of the families of Qawawis, and I show it to you as my excuse for not remembering everyone’s names in the photographs; the families are big, and it has been some time since I was there last, so my apologies!

Here I am in the home of Ibrahim, son of Hajj Mohammed who lives in the nearby village of Karmil. In the center is Ibrahim’s son Mohammed, who lives and works in the nearby town of Yatta and teaches English. He was very welcoming, his English was excellent, and I enjoyed spending time with him there. One of the great things about staying in Qawawis was that it really forced me to learn some Arabic, as few spoke English, but when he was there, I luckily had some help!

The taller boy is Salah, and the younger one is either Eyal or Lohai, I honestly forget! I remember playing soccer with them & I twisted my ankle on the rocky terrain (that said, one of the kids was playing barefoot!)

Here is Ibrahim, sitting with his family in the ruins of his home, the one in which I took the previous pictures. To this day he bears an injury to his leg from a confrontation with soldiers years back (he was audacious enough to take his flock by the highway, can you believe that?).

The house is shared with his brother Abed, whose wife Mariamme is here in front of the tire.

some of their possessions that survived the destruction.

Here is a picture of Hajj Mahmoud from last year. He was a funny guy and fed me many times in his home. He also was a bit impatient with my steep Arabic learning curve; as soon as I would figure out a word or an expression of the most rudimentary sort, he would jump straight to full-speed Arabic! I had to learn how to say to him “slow down, I know very little Arabic;” needless to say, I forgot how to say even that.

Here is Hajj Mahmoud after the destruction of his home, with his wife Aisha and his son Ziad, who’s wife was pregnant and has since given birth to their first child. Now they are all homeless, from the newborn to the grandfather.

Here I am in the home of Hajj Khalil with Mahmoud’s son Ziad. Khalil and Ziad had just come back from Karmil after voting in the January 2006 election, fingers purple and all. Hajj Khalil was truly kind to me, and I look forward to seeing him and his family again; who knows, maybe I can help with the rebuilding of their homes, as rabbis for Human Rights and others have pledged to help them rebuild.

This is Hajj Khalil, just minutes before the settler came and attacked us, as described in my diary Close Encounter of a Settler Kind . The man is over 80 years old, and despite everything, both he and his family will refuse to leave their land.

Who is the Terrorist?

Again/Still

by Amy, February 1st

It’s my third time visiting Palestine, and not much is different. I was just commenting to my co-volunteers on how I’ve already written about such and such issue, I can’t do it again… but my housemate here pointed out the truth: repetition is life here. If reading the same stories over and over feels exasperating, imagine living it.

A few days ago, we were called by Maher, a town leader in a village in the north of the West Bank, very close to the actual 1967 green-line border of Israel. In fact, it’s right next to an Israeli town where 70% of this Palestinian village population worked before the intifada (or “uprising”) began and Palestinians were no longer allowed entry inside Israel. When we arrived, Maher led us to a home and explained how, as the family was religious, we would be visiting with the women and a family member would translate for us. We entered a room where 50 women sat on floor mattresses against the wall. It was the final day of the three day mourning period in which family members and neighbors sit with the father, brothers, sisters, spouse, and mother of the deceased from morning till night. We sat next to the mother and wife of Omar, a 28-year-old Palestinian man who was assasinated while walking with his wife and 30-day old baby from his brother’s house next door after an evening visit. Plain clothes officers jumped out from the entrance way in his apartment building and shot him 3 times, put the baby in his arms and told his wife that if she screamed, the baby would die as well. They ran towards the road where military jeeps stood waiting.

Did the family contact a lawyer? They said no. See, Omar’s brother is in prison. After a long period of hiding from the military police, he was finally imprisoned last year. Omar’s family knows he has been tortured and fears even more retaliation if they initiate a legal battle with the Israeli military.

Almost EVERY single Palestinian family has had a few people imprisoned in Israeli jails and few people die from Israeli bullets. Where would your anger lie?

Nkwenkwezi Bil’in: The Star of Bil’in

by Abdullah Abu Rahme, Coordinator of the Popular Committee Against the Wall in Bil’in. Translated By Nasir Samara, February 3rd

Throughout the history of the occupation, Palestinians have sought every means to resist, to make their voices heard to the world, and to raise international support for the Palestinian struggle for freedom and independence. One of these means includes promoting solidarity with Palestine through international volunteers, whom we consider as ambassadors for our struggle in their own countries.

Yet the lives of these volunteers also bring inspiration to us. Take the story of Anna Wicks, 30, as an example. Anna fought against discrimination in her native South Africa, and came to Palestine with the International Solidarity Movement on five occasions to stand with the Palestinian people in their struggle against the occupation and the Apartheid Wall, one of the most visible forms of open discrimination in the world, one which separates citizens from their lands and which prevents them from moving freely in their own homeland.

Anna stood with farmers and citizens of the villages of Nas’ha, Budrus, Jayyous and Bil’in. She participated in demonstrations and direct actions against the Wall, and accompanied students in Hebron in order to help them reach their schools. She stayed awake with the Bedouins living in caves in Khirbat Qawawis in South Hebron in order to protect them from settler attacks. She also acted as a human shield to protect civilians from Israeli military attacks. When the Israeli army tried to arrest one Palestinian youth, she and her friends exerted all their physical energy to secure his release. Her life was endangered many times in this way, and she herself was injured and arrested in Bil’in, and eventually deported from the village by the Israeli military and prevented from returning.

The last time she came here was one year ago. Israeli immigration authorities tried to deny her entry at Ben Gurion airport until she presented them with documentation proving that her visit was not political, but humanitarian in nature: Anna had come to donate one of her kidneys to a three-year-old Palestinian girl, Lina Fareed T’aem Allah, from the village of Qiri.

She was allowed to enter only under the condition that she did not return to Bil’in. The transplant was carried out successfully and Anna’s act of generosity has saved Lina’s life.

A few days ago, Anna gave birth to a little girl whom she named Nkwenkwezi Bil’in, “the star of Bil’in.” So while she cannot physically be with us in Palestine, Palestine will always be with Anna in the form of little Nkwenkwezi Bil’in.

Exit Denied: An Escalation in the Campaign of Ethnic Cleansing

by Noura Khouri, January 26th

At around 12:30 am this morning I was heading back to Bethlehem, by myself, from Ramallah so as to avoid the early morning delay at the dreaded Qalandia terminal. At night there are very few cars, so I thought I’d take advantage and avoid the waiting and anxiousness to cross such a barrier causes. On some level, everyone must confront the mental and emotional anguish brought on by such confrontations.

At this time, I was driving confidently towards my destination, armed with my American passport and newly issued visa in hand. I was prepared for the journey.

Or so I thought.

I pulled up to the first gate, where they rarely check ID’s since this is the first passage, the further scrutinizing is normally done at the following point.

Regardless, I held up my passport, as I always do to show the soldier my precious piece of blue laminated cardboard and paper. Then, instead of the regular nod of the head and lifting of the gate, came the sanctimonious voices from above, in Hebrew, from the loud speakers. I looked more closely to see what was going on, but through the bullet-proof windows, gates and darkness of the night, all I could see were the heels of shoes kicked up, and the burning butt of a cigarette being smugly smoked.

I asked the soldier what was going on, and what the problem was. He replied in his perfect British accent, “Just because you wave around your American passport, you think you can get through here?!”

Yes, of course I do. That is how it is supposed to work!

After about a five minute standoff an exercise in patience and breathing techniques, I asked in the calmest voice I could, what his name was. He told me, “Daniel”. I asked Daniel if I had done something wrong. He repeated the bit about waving around my American passport.

My responses clearly did not satisfy him, and I am not sure anything I said would have. So I began on – about occupation, and collective punishment. As the queue was growing quite long behind me at this point, I asked if he was holding us here for security. Then his African counterpart chimed in. She said, “yes, they are all terrorists!” in the only English words I heard her utter. Then I asked them if they had ever heard of international law. Daniel asserted, “Here, this is my law”.

Then he spoke into his walkie-talkie, and let me though.

Immediately as I pulled forward, there were three soldiers lined up in a military formation. When I pulled up in front of them, the female soldier, who later told me her name was “Suzanne”, yelled at me in Hebrew to reverse, and go back. After doing so, she went on to attempt to intimidate me with her mean looking snarls, and loud voice. When she asked, I showed her inside my trunk, to prove that I do not have a bomb. It was then that she told me to empty the contents onto the ground…that is when I told her that I would not empty the books that I had in there, and she got really angry. So I told her if she wanted my books on the ground, she would have to put them there, as I would absolutely not.

This did not satisfy her insatiable appetite for meanness and oppression, so then she began mocking me, making fun of my name and told me that I was not allowed to pass through the checkpoint, and I must return to Ramallah — as she threw my passport at me.

If one feels the slightest bit of indignation and sense of injustice by stories of such ongoing and clear ABUSES OF POWER, and the suffering that is caused by the checkpoints, it is not even possible to begin to imagine the feelings of rage, degradation and trauma one is left with after such first hand experiences. And the treatment I received was just the tip of the iceberg.

Apparently, it is not even certain that these were soldiers. Similar to the like in Iraq, OCHA recently announced that “Private Security Companies (SC)” had taken over the manning of this checkpoint – and that others will be soon to follow suite. These private contractors are illegal according to international law, because they are accountable to no one!

Watching as these armed thugs behaved with me, with complete immunity, I am afraid to see how they treat the more vulnerable among us. These soldiers, or whoever they are, are now making up their own laws and rules. They no longer even have to uphold a pretense of a chain of command, army rules to follow or respect for international law.

And yet, this is just the beginning of the IDF’s stepped up attack on travel and freedom of movement, and intimidation in the West Bank. The IDF has recently announced that the permit system which makes it impossible to travel to Gaza, which gives Israel ‘carte blanche’ to impose its deadly policies, will become the norm in the West Bank. Thus, it is clear that Israel is stepping up its planned campaign to create Qalandia as this international border of entry into the Palestinian islands of prisons. Accountable to no standards of law itself, the IDF unabashedly admitted that the 44 roadblocks they supposedly ‘eased restrictions’ of, never even existed!

Simultaneously they are working 24-hours a day, 365 days a year, to expand the existing settlements for the likes of immigrants such as Suzanne and Daniel who are taking their cues from the Israeli government, who, in turn, are in the process of completing 24 tunnels for Palestinians to drive underground in – which will connect this prison of Palestinian islands – and cement the 56 settler-only roads above ground, for Jews only to travel on!

While Palestinians hope for a political solution to ease the sheer insanity that Israel has imposed on them, creating every possible misery in their lives; it is the Israeli government’s hope and future vision to bring Gaza to the West Bank. We can not possibly begin to imagine what this will mean on every insidious level.

The map is drawn. The underground tunnels for the Palestinians are being dug. The settler-only roads are already in place. All they need to do now is connect the dots – that will be our dear Palestine. It is just a matter of time.

Occupation Police Benevolence in the Jordan Valley

by Peter, January 25th

Recently, I was able to accompany three Palestinians on a drive through the Jordan Valley. The more scenic aspects aside, a trip through the area revealed the slow, destructive siege of the Valley.

Movement restrictions have effectively sealed off the Jordan Valley from the rest of the West Bank. For example, the north of the Jordan Valley in the Tubas region (a two hour drive at minimum from Ramallah) should be 15 minutes from Nablus. However, the Occupation has restricted Palestinian access to this area to those registered in the villages of the Valley; to reach the northern West Bank from the north of the Valley without Jordan Valley ID one must travel down to Ramallah before heading north. This effectively makes what should be a short trip into a day of driving, 8 hours being a conservative estimate, accompanied by an equivalent rise in the cost of petrol. To put things in a more concrete perspective, our own trip from Ramallah to the north of the Valley and back cost around NIS 150 in petrol.

Additionally, harassment of Palestinians at the hands of soldiers and police occurs on a regular basis. “Heightened surveillance” signs mark much of the highway running from Jericho to the the north. Palestinians will be pulled over for driving too quickly (or too slowly) and detained under a number of pretexts. Not only does this further restrict movement, but also it often proves to be very expensive. On our drive, we were pulled over by Occupation police. After being detained for a half hour, we were issued a fine of NIS 250 for not “driving quietly” and failing to wear seatbelts. The driver of our vehicle informed the police that we were in fact all wearing our seatbelts (“driving quietly” is a bit harder to contest, as it makes little logical sense), but this complaint was ignored. Instead, the police informed us that they were in fact exercising restraint; in their benevolence they had only fined us NIS 250 as opposed to a more drastic fine of NIS 1000.

Thus, a day drive into the Jordan Valley cost NIS 400. Compare this with the average income of a family in the valley (NIS 1000 per month), and it should become quite clear that movement is financially impossible for most of the Palestinians trapped in the valley.