Volunteers with the International Solidarity Movement are encouraged to write personal reflections about the work they engage in with Palestinian communities, the events they experience, and the people they meet. These journals offer the human context often missing in traditional reports or journalism. These articles represent the author’s thoughts and feelings and not necessarily those of the International Solidarity Movement.
Last night Israeli forces invaded Ramallah Old City around midnight, occupied a family home, blindfolded the twenty-year old son, banged his head against a door and refused to allow the grandmother suffering from diabetes to use the bathroom.
Several jeeps, a hummer and an APC invaded Hizbe Al Qadim Street in Ramallah Tahta around midnight and demanded entry into a family home by banging with rifle butts on the front door. Forced with complying or having their front door blown open, the family opened and several soldiers were seen entering with large bags. Once inside the soldiers imprisoned the family in one room, blindfolded the son and started interrogating him about his political affiliations as well as banging his head against the door. Soldiers also damaged the walls with rifle butts.
Whilst this was happening other military vehicles continuously shone their searchlights on the windows of neighbouring houses, focusing particularly on one flat. After around an hour the military vehicles left with the soldiers still in the house. Intermittent shooting including automatic gunfire was heard and about an hour later the IOF returned to pick up the occupying soldiers. No one was kidnapped.
In the morning some neighbours identified blood on the walls. This event doesn’t seem to have received any local media coverage, as scenes like these are played out several times nightly across the West Bank.
“Israel is a democracy and a friend and has every right to defend itself from terror.”
George Bush, May 2004
I had a tour of Hebron today going a bit further than the Tel Rumeida settlement. But we did pass through this area – it turns out that the soldiers often ban the residents from repairing their houses, hence the fact that many have moved out. Many more moved out after the massacre in 1994 by Baruch Goldstein and the Israeli government imposed a curfew for their own ‘safety’. This curfew stopped them going outside for days at a time or visiting shops.
The settlers have also invaded a number of Palestinian homes. The most ‘amusing’ story I heard from one activist is when a group of Palestinians saw an Israeli leave a satchel in a field nearby. The police investigated and found it contained food – it transpired that the Israeli Jews had decided that they would come and throw rocks and stones in the village but because of Shabbat cannot carry food. Locally they have also burnt down olive trees that date from the Roman or even Byzantium era.
A local house has also been turned into a closed military zone but local Jews are often observed going here for illicit affairs and for drinking alcohol. But when the locals return they are often harassed by the soldiers.
The most shocking thing I think I saw today was the sign pictured above, which is written all over the place in Hebrew and as pictured in English. The fact that some Jews want to perpetrate a Holocaust is awful, especially as the fact is the state of Israel was largely created due to the Holocaust.
Although there were no egg throwing incidents (we quite blatantly kept a camera trained on the window that they have been coming from) two settler children did attack some Palestinian boys with sticks. The soldiers intervened, but told the Palestinians off.
Another interesting thing is the fact that for a long time there has been a Palestinian Jewish presence in Hebron and we were shown the old Jewish cemetery and for years they lived peacefully with the Muslims. Again I heard I don’t want all the Israelis to leave Israel but I want the settlers to leave my land. And also the fact that although people don’t condone suicide bombing they are not surprised when it happens. One email I had from a friend asked if they don’t condone it why don’t they stop it. But its not that easy, as on can see in my home country, a large majority was against the Iraq invasion with many demonstrating against it but even in this democratic country we couldn’t stop thousands of soldiers going. So why should we blame the majority of the Palestinians for the actions of very few.
I’m starting to feel quite angry and helpless here and can fully understand the motives behind attacking the Israelis. Palestinians say they have all served in the army (OK not quite true but a large percentage have) and so they are all complicit in the crimes of the settlers – we were told of numerous court rulings that allow them to go to various places or use various roads that they cannot get enforced. Whilst the settlers break various rules but they cannot get them prosecuted – if they try and film they are often harassed and attacked by the settlers and soldiers.
As I’m finishing this off there are some settler kids wandering the streets with music blaring out, they just walked past two soldiers who did absolutely nothing. I’m now going to go looking for quotes from the Bush administration that state the Palestinians, and their democratically elected government, have the right to defend themselves from terror. If anyone can provide me with one I’d be most grateful.
There have been four occasions in the last two and a half months when the Israeli army and police have helped and encouraged Israeli settlers to trespass on Palestinian land. This is against Israeli law. The aim is probably to help Israeli settlers establish a bridgehead on Palestinian land so that in the future they can insist that they have been using the land.
Yesterday, at 12.30pm, I was ill and asleep when I had a call from an international human rights defender (HRD). She said that Palestinian children were being stopped returning home from school. Israeli settlers were on Palestinian land, being protected by soldiers, who said that Palestinians would not be able to pass for 5 hours. This was a particularly serious offense for a number of reasons. Three of the reasons are as follows. Firstly, there has been an Israeli court order that Palestinians must be allowed go to their homes. Secondly, the police (who admitted the first reason) would not come and help. And thirdly because the Israeli army insists that Palestinian families, who live near their base, may not use the road but must pass this way. The trespass on Palestinian land is also an offense.
So I got out of bed and went out. I asked the soldier at the crossing what was happening. He said that I knew what he thought about this but that he could do nothing. So wheezing loudly, I went up the very steep hill to Abu Hekel land where there was an army jeep and many other soldiers. The officer in the jeep was a captain and seemed of high enough rank to be some help. I said that they were breaking Israeli law and threatening the safety of Palestinian children and that it was the army who insisted that the Palestinians pass this way. It made no difference. I stood by his jeep to stop him from leaving and rang the District Coordinating Office (DCO-the Civil Administration wing of the Israeli military in the West Bank). I do not have my telephone, which was lost and found in West Jerusalem and, being deaf, could not hear well on the substitute.
Israeli settler children were being allowed on to Palestinian land but Palestinian children were being turned away. Then two young women with babies were turned back by the soldiers. I rang the DCO again. She said to call back at 2pm. I looked at my watch. It was 1pm and all the children were out of school. So, this was totally unacceptable. I tried again to get the officer to let the children through and to protect them. But to no avail. One soldier told another HRD that he would be too frightened to try to escort Palestinian children past these violent settlers!
Then the police arrived. I said that they should be protecting the Palestinian children and complying with Israeli law. Instead they decided to detain me. I said that they had a responsibility to the children. They said that they would take me to the police station and then go back. But they lied. They stayed at the police station. After four hours, I was let out into the cold even though they knew I was ill. I had to promise that for two weeks, I would not stand outside my house, go to my rubbish skip, visit neighbours across the road or up the street, go to the community centre or go to the only local shop. How petty can you get? I can scurry round the corner, where I can stand and talk to Palestinians or sympathetic soldiers or go down to the checkpoint.
The Palestinian children waited for another half hour and were finally led away by soldiers to go another way that was very rough and would take them at least twenty minutes. I do not know what happened to the mothers with babies.
On Sunday October 8th, the Israeli army invaded H1, Palestinian administered Hebron. That is, most of Hebron. They forced shops to close. Then the checkpoint for Palestinians was closed. This meant that people could not come home from work or shop for food. After much telephoning, it was opened spasmodically. Israeli settlers arrived at the checkpoint and blocked the way for Palestinians. At 3.30pm, about thirty soldiers escorted the settlers through the Palestinian only checkpoint and it was closed – until 7pm we were told. This was very bad because in Ramadan Palestinians eat at sunset. They needed to cook their food for a meal at 5.45pm. And workers needed to get home to eat it. There is another way, which is a ten minute taxi ride, which many can’t afford. The reason for the invasion was to take the Israeli settlers into a Palestinian house without permission. They wanted to see the Cave of Otneil Ben-Knaz. This was both trespass and invasion.
On Friday November 17th, about 100 Israeli settlers and their visitors went onto Abu Hekel land right next to their house. They were accompanied by two Israeli policemen, while three soldiers watched from behind a fence. They stayed for ninety minutes saying prayers and having a speaker. The family was naturally very frightened. They have been attacked by settlers on many occasions and also by soldiers. The following Friday this was repeated with forty settlers and police.
The other day as we were travelling through Zatara checkpoint between Ramallah and Nablus, I witnessed a particularly disgusting display of power by the Israeli army. An extremely public humiliation of a woman, who was taken out of a shared taxi and had her ID and phone removed. She was fighting back the tears, trying to retain her dignity, but was clearly distressed. Everything about the soldiers interaction exuded contempt for her. One in particular was clearly getting something from “punishing” her. We were prevented from speaking to her, which made our ability to intervene somewhat limited. What we were able to do was remain present until she was released. Most of the time I do not feel very effective; the most I can do is be present.
Apparently her ID did not “allow” her to travel to another part of the West Bank. Apart from being extremely punitive, excessively controlling and frankly wrong by any book, it is also arbitary. The rules of the game change. I have been in shared taxis with people who have been turned back…. ‘last week’ they could make that journey, ‘yesterday’ they could make that journey, ‘next week’ they ‘may’ be able to make it, but today “NO”. After a while I feel like I can never hear the word “LO” again (Hebrew for “no”), it is barked and shouted countless times a day, controlling so much of day to day life for Palestinians.
After an hour, on this bitterly cold day, the soldier returned the woman’s ID. He simply took it out of his pocket and gave it to her. Clearly she was not a “security threat”. Detaining her, frightening her, and publically humiliating her, were blatantly intended to make sure she would not attempt this journey again. I was enraged. The soldiers are boys with guns and egos. They have so much power in a situation that is impossible for them to understand with their conditioning and youth.
At this same checkpoint, in this same period of time, another situation was unfolding. It was hidden away and not for public view. I became suspicious and approached a soldier and border policeman; it was then that I saw a boy of around 15 years, sat hunched behind a concrete bollard, hidden from view, his face wet with tears. He looked petrified. He has good reason to be.
Every single person in Palestine will know someone who has been arrested or detained. Ill treatment is commonplace, and torture is far from being eradicated. I have no idea how long the boy had been held for. He was in tears as the soldiers were speaking to him, but fortunately he was “allowed” to go.
Recently I was travelling through Nablus to a nearby village, the taxi driver pointed out a street where, just half an hour before, the army shot dead a man. Apparently a targetted assasination. Five other people were injured, one seriously. “Normal life” (whatever ‘that’ is living under
Occupation) continues just a few streets away.
My time here is coming to a close, I am in a quiet, reflective mood. From all the conversations I have had, with countless people, two things are screaming out for attention. One is the overriding sense that things are getting worse. And worse. And worse. I was not here during the bloody years of the Intifada, but I think it is absolutely vital to understand that although the bloodshed and violence is less, the situation is worse. The oppressive control, which works on every level, mental and physical, is steadily going to new levels. One of the women I am working with grew up under Apartheid in South Africa. Along with several other South African activists who are here in the West Bank, she says that Apartheid here is ‘even worse’ than it was in South Africa. This has not been said lightly. The other thing I am forever requested, “tell people what is happening”.
Today we had a trip down the Jordan valley which didn’t start too auspiciously for our Palestinian contact – he had just been delayed for two hours at a checkpoint. A soldier on the way through a checkpoint had drawn a star of david in the dust of the car. When they returned the soldier wanted to know who had wiped it off and held them for two hours demanding to know.
We started at a farm near the Bisan checkpoint in the north where Palestinians now find it very difficult to take their produce through to the markets they once used, and therefore now have to go to markets elsewhere. However with problems at checkpoints this is often problematic and adds huge costs to their journey making their products less competitive as Israeli trucks are allowed to use settler-only roads and bypass the checkpoints.
Despite the fact that this is the Jordan valley the Israelis do have farms out here, which occupy almost all the agricultural land, and many Palestinians are angry at the amount of land that they have taken off them. Israeli settler-colonists who want to move here are given 70 dunnums of land, a house and long term loan of 70,000 USD.
Companies providing electricity, telephone and water services are obliged to give them discounts of up to 75% . This obviously makes their lives much easier out here despite the fact that this is well into the West Bank. Many soldiers seem to ignore this little fact – when checking our passports one soldier said “Welcome to Israel – I hope you enjoy it here”.
However it is not the case that although these settlers pay 75% less than the Palestinians, in fact the Palestinians pay nothing for these utilities. Why? Because they are not available to them – we passed a large number of houses often next to huge water tanks and electricity wires that they are not allowed to connect up to. Many Palestinians only build plastic houses or corrugated metal houses as otherwise the Israelis knock them down.
In fact even these can be knocked down. Last year 22 houses were demolished in one day while around half the land in the Jordan valley is no longer available to Palestinians – it is close to Israeli colonies, environmental reserves and military training areas. Now, as an environmentalist I would normally applaud the opening of environmental reserves but actually these people live very sustainable lives and there is no reason why these areas should be, in particular, protected. This has led to the population to drop from 300,000 pre -1967 to 52,000 last year, including the Jericho urban area.
Planning permission for new houses for Palestinians is impossible to get, a new school built in Al Jiftlik village is threatened with demolition, attempts to generate power are stopped.
Bardala has been waiting years for permission for a water tank but the nearby Israeli colony, built without planning permission, has services described in the paragraph above. A clinic in a tent has also been deemed illegal in the past and knocked down – despite electricity lines going right by it and some more ‘permament’ buildings they are not electrified.
But it isn’t in just these respects that the Israelis control the local area, they even try and control the sun, one Palestinian joked. A community project with NGO support enabled a few households to purchase solar panels to generate electricity. One man was arrested and put in prison for three days for ‘stealing’ this off the Israelis, despite the fact he had documentation to demonstrate how he had come to acquire it. He was fined 300 NIS and put in prison for three days without even being able to call relatives to help out while he was away. Israeli colonists then came and looked around the house while he was still in prison.
When visiting another farmer we saw the electrified fence, where the English reads, danger electric fence, but the Arabic says warning: potential death. The farmer’s daughter touched it and received a shock.
The land that is fenced off was once his but was taken in around 1970. The Israelis steal this by saying that land not used in three years can be taken and redistributed, the fact that many of these people were unable to return home or were prevented from accessing their land is not important. He finds it difficult to get water all year around as the Israeli settlers get the water from the Valley, in fact he has to drink bottled water.
Again the message I got was all these people want is their rights to be respected his family had lived in this area since 1920. The farmer accepted that the Jewish must live here (in Israel) but they did not have the right to take his land. He can’t see an end to this situation as both peaceful and non-peaceful means have both failed. The more time I spend here the less likely I think there is going to be peace anytime soon. Certainly if any peace deal does not remove the Israelis from most of this land and if the wall is at least not rerouted out of the West Bank then it certainly won’t be possible.
At checkpoints where we were stopped we often just handed our passports to them and they handed them back a few minutes later without checking them. Often however Palestinians are forced to wait much longer than we are.
