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.
29st October 2018 | International Solidarity Movement, Ramallah Team | Gaza, occupied Palestine
Last Friday, nearly fifty Israeli and ISM protestors demonstrated at the Gaza Border in solidarity with nearly 15,000 Gaza protestors heading toward the border. This action was in conjunction with the weekly Right of Return March.
As the activists were confronted by a couple of Zionists counter-protestors and the Israeli Occupation Forces on the 48 border side, the IOF opened fire on the Gazan protestors marching to the border. The Palestinian and Israeli activists spoke on the phone via a loudspeaker from opposite sides of the border. During the conversation, a Gazan protestor was shot in the leg.
There were so many mixed emotions going through my head. This was my first trip to the Gaza Border and it was totally different from how I imagined. The area is beautiful despite the circumstances. I’d always thought Gaza was a desert area. This assumption was totally wrong. Everyday that I’m in the Occupied Territories, the more I’m seeing:
Most Israelis are living in a false reality. This was hammered in my head from the ride to the boarder. The Zionists have made an effort to “green” inside the 48 borders thus why they call the border the ”green” line. They’ve planted European landscape that is foreign to the Middle Eastern terrain. This effort has wasted valuable water resources, while there are daily water shortages inside the Occupied Territories.
Once we reached the military zone and park yards from the Gaza border. It was smoke in the air caused by the burned tires and missile strikes coming from Gaza. I noticed hundreds of crows flying in the air. Not sure what this was about, maybe the smoke threw them off path.
Gunfire and smoke in the background, I couldn’t believe that people were walking their dogs and a family of 4 was coming to the park like nothing was going on. Mind-blowing!!!!! These are the two realities: Palestinian and Zionists.
Later, i would find out, 5 people killed and close to a hundred killed in a non-violent protest. Palestinians resist occupation with violence, they’re met with heavy handed military force. Palestinians resist occupation with non-violence, they’re met with heavy handed military force. It’s a no-win situation.
August 31st 2018 | Kristin Foss, International Solidarity Movement | Ramallah
I woke up feeling sad today. I’m just so sad. I’m crying now, I started crying in the supermarket, I cried a little when a farmer refused my money for grapes. I think that today, I’m just going to cry. Maybe I need it.
Yesterday, I was called by a friend to ask if ISM could spare some people to come to a place I can’t even remember the name of now. There are too many places, too much need for assistance. I wrote about it earlier though. Ras Karkar, the village is called. I remember now. The Israelis are going to build yet another illegal settlement there. Their village is already surrounded by three: in the North, in the South, in the East—and now the Caterpillar machines and the soldiers have arrived to block the West; to build yet another illegal settlement, trapping the villagers. It’s illegal according to international law of course. But, what is international law? It doesn’t apply in Palestine. The Israelis know it; they’ve never had to comply. The US has made sure of it, and the rest has accepted it.
The man who alerted me is my age; he has a professional job, a nice car. But he spends his free time alerting people, travelling to places where he is needed and getting beaten up by 20 year olds with machine guns. He does not get to go home and have a nice dinner with his wife or play with his kids. I guess he could. But then, will his kids even have a country when they grow up?
A man who is sending me live videos is my dad’s age. I’ve been watching the videos, videos of normal people, new friends I have not even met yet, although I recognize a few. Normal people, being brutally pushed over by young soldiers from God knows where, but from this land they are not.
I’ve watched videos of men trying to push heavy machines with their arms. I can feel the desperation. I want to be there. But today it’s only me here and I can’t go alone. I guess I could, but I don’t dare today. I need a time-out. Maybe my fear is stronger than my solidarity. I don’t want to die.
Rachel Corrie died. She was in ISM too. I don’t think she could have imagined that they would actually do it. That they would run her over with a bulldozer, as she was visible to all, standing in front of it, but they did. They killed her with a bulldozer. Her solidarity was stronger than her fear. The Israelis got away with it. They got away with it, and they call her Saint Pancake. She was 23, and they ran her over with a bulldozer for trying to stop a house from being demolished. She was American, and the US did nothing. Palestinians remember her still, with respect and dignity, gratefulness and immense sadness. The Israelis make fun of her. Most Americans don’t even know her name.
I’ve been reading comments that people have left in the comment sections of interviews with me, some say “third time lucky,” or “if she is there knowing the risks it’s her own fault, she deserved it,” etc. Then I think of what these same people say about my Palestinian friends: that they are an invented people, there was never a place called Palestine. If a nurse gets killed tending to the wounded, she is Hamas. If a school or hospital gets bombed, then Hamas was storing weapons there. If a child is murdered, his parents are using him for sympathy. It’s inexplicably inhumane. I have never witnessed anything like this, people denouncing a whole people. It is so unspeakably evil. How does it feel for Palestinians to read this; to read that they don’t even exist? To be faced with this evil? When all they did was to be born on their own land, and all they do is try to live under an inhumane occupation.
The thing is that the people who make these comments are the ones with the power. They are on the current winning side. Obama, Trump, Theresa May, Macron, Trudeau, Erna Solberg… these are the people that are on Israel’s side, and pour money and support into its government. They have the power, they have the money, they have the media and they have the politicians.
My own government doesn’t even care that five Norwegians were brutally beaten up, threatened with murder and arrested after being illegally boarded in international waters, or that I’ve been shot twice. I think they find us a nuisance. They blame us for being here; that we should not be here, that it’s the Palestinians who need to reconcile. I don’t even know what that means. They say that dialogue is the only way, and the Palestinians have to reconcile. There is no dialogue here, it’s all pretend. There is only violence, oppression, murder, land theft and politicians keeping up the facade that there is dialogue, while the press helps keep this game of pretend going. The Palestinians must reconcile… I think they mean that Palestinians must forgive and forget, get on their knees and hand over the keys they have left. I asked the representative for Norway what they meant with reconciliation—she did not know.
But there is another side. On this side there are the Palestinians, the people of this land, and some of us, international and Israeli activists who stand with them in solidarity. All we have is truth, dignity and humanity. We have this, but no power, unless everyone gets involved. Now, after getting shot twice, they talk about me, only because I’m a European woman—and thank god I videoed it. There are so many, just so many who would speak better than me, Palestinians, whose fate is incomparable to what happened to me. I’m a bit ashamed, but I will try to use it. If they all got the attention I got, would people care then? I would like to think so.
I still believe in humanity. I don’t believe there is any left in Israeli politics, but there is enough in Palestine to make up for their lack, when Palestine is free. But where is the global humanity, where are all those who say that we must never forget? Don’t ever forget, but don’t ignore what is happening now, because this too will have a horrible end if people do not react. This is not a history lesson, this is today and this can be stopped, before it becomes another shameful period of human history. Palestine can still be free. This cannot go on, it cannot!
Kristin Foss is an ISM volunteer who was shot twice in one week with rubber-coated steel bullets by Israeli soldiers in Kafr Qaddum. The first time with her hands raised, along with another female ISM volunteer from Iceland, and the second time while standing up against the wall of a shop. Below, see an interview with Kristin on Russia Today:
13th August 2018 | Kristin Foss, International Solidarity Movement | Northern Jordan Valley
I lost my flight.. On purpose.. I was pretty sure I would though, when I left for Palestine. To be honest, I don’t think its gonne make it easier to leave later. The more I know, the more people I know – the more involved I get. And how, I wonder, am I going be able to get on a plane and leave, when my new friends aren’t even able to leave the West Bank. They can’t leave and they can’t live. Are some of my new friends gonne be arrested when I’m gone? Will I loose some? It does not bare thinking about..
Yesterday I came home from the northern Jordan Valley, knackered.. Stayed one night, sleeping under the stars next to a guava grove. Almost a full moon, nice breeze. Accompanied by my Icelandic friend and fellow volunteer Anna, and a very nice new Palestinian friend, Rasheed. Sounds lovely right? To the right we could see the lights from Jordan, separating us was the Jordan river and to the left, the so called holy land.. Still sounds pretty nice? Well, reason for being there was to wait for the Israeli soldiers who had announced that they would arrive the next morning to tear down the green houses of local farmers –claiming they have been stealing water. A.k.a – the water Israel is `legally`taking from the farmers.
The local farmers do not have access to the water under their farms, there literally are Israeli waterpipes under their land, going to illegal settlement – and they themselves – do not have access. They are at the mercy of the Israelis who charge them the some of the highest water prices in the world.
The day before Israelis soldiers, heavily armed, had come to the village to inspect the pipes.. To see if anyone was stealing their stolen water. In the neighbouring village the soldiers welded shut two connections, and broke a pipe. Cutting farmers off from their water supply. In the past two months this has been happening aggressively. Israelis breaking pipes, Palestinians desperately trying to get water back.
This is farmland. The bread basket of Palestine it was known as– due to the immense underground water reserves. 4 times a year they could harvest. But, already the Palestinian population is down from 320.000 to 56.000. The ones left live in refugee camps, in caves (!!), many in tents (they are not allowed to build – one man has had his home demolished 34 times..So I guess living in a tent is just practical for obvious reasons) – and some still remain on their farms… To exist is to resist … I saw this written on many walls.. To exist is to resist… Who is the terrorist?
Thankfully the soldiers did not wake us up.. I had one scare, when there was a commotion in the bushes not far from my make shift bed… Rasheed was up like a flash and checking with his flash light…in The end he excitedly called me over to reveal a pig.. I never actually saw it though, so I’m not sure if it was a language thing or if it was a pig on the loose… Anyway… Thankfully soldiers did not arrive.. But that’s not to say they wouldnt arrive today, or tomorrow… Not so thankfully we discovered that the water pressure that supplied the Guava field we were next to had been cut off.. Its a communal field. So Rasheed rushed off, us in tow, trying to find the problem… As they only get 2 hours of water for this field.. In the end they gave up… The 2 hours were up anyway… And if the Israelis stop the water, well then they stop the water... I asked, and apologised for asking, if there ever is a possibility of calling the Israelis to see if there is a problem that can be solved with the water they are actually allowed to take… I’m sure you can imagine the answer.
Before heading back to Ramallah. Our friend took us on a drive. It was depressing… And beautiful, good conversation, good music, for a bit it almost felt quite normal, pleasant.. But mostly depressing. The Jordan river behind a security fence, Israel having declared it a security zone. Illegal of course, but its Israel… River beds have run dry. Quite often we would drive past green oasis, and lush fields – illegal settlement, to where the water is diverted… At one point an illegal settlement was right opposite the refugee camp. The water lines for the settlements, goes under the camp. In the camp they have water tanks and they have to pay to have them filled.. I’m not making this shit up!! Its unbelievable!! I don’t why anyone would want to live like this – and I’m talking about the illegal settlers. Apparently many are poor people from Russian and Eastern Europe – enticed to come here where they get land and water.. – and live like kings, behind barbed wires … Staring at refugee camps where the ethnic population lives…. And should they wish, they also have the opportunity to shoot some people with out consequences (no joke)…
For the animal lovers.. Of course this is also affects the wild life.. I did not even consider this.. But the gazelles, the dears….we saw 3 gazelles… They are cut off from the water too… Israel is killing the holy land, if it ever was. But for sure there are legends born and legends dying in Palestine every day. How they manage to continue living, not to give up, to find solutions when Israel finds a new way to oppress… Its just… I don’t know… I’m witnessing the most extreme human greatness… The capacity to make a life in the most difficult of circumstance… When Palestine is free, which I hope will be soon.. We can all come here for holiday, and how I would love to bump in to Palestinians on holiday abroad, not as refugees, but as holiday makers.. If they are this great under occupation, I cant imagine what they will be like when they have their freedom
Please go to the pages of the Nordan Jordan Solidarity group, for more information, or if you would like to get involved: http://www.jordanvalleysolidarity.org/
26th July 2018 | Steve Dhiman, International Solidarity Movement | Khan al-Ahmar, occupied Palestine
An ISM volunteer describes his experience of being arrested and almost deported by Israeli forces
On Wednesday, the 4th of July, I began training with the International Solidarity Movement, an organization where Palestinians and Israelis, Jewish people and Muslims work together in non-violent and peaceful resistance to Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine. There are supposed to be two full days of training, but at the end of the first day, there was an urgent situation we had to respond to. Therefore, any new recruits were invited to join, provided they felt up to it, and I volunteered myself.
We travelled to the Palestinian village of Khan al-Ahmar outside of Ramallah late in the evening. The Israeli court had ruled that the village should be destroyed and the children’s school there along with it. They were bringing in a digger to make a path for the bulldozer to come through.
They had started the day before, and online I had seen terrible scenes of violence inflicted by the Israeli soldiers upon defenceless Palestinian women and children that were protesting the destruction of their home. We knew it would be more of the same, so we had to go there. I stayed awake all night and was on look-out, because they had arrived at 5 A.M. the day before. I smoked cigarettes and contemplated how horrific the situation was until the sun came up.
They arrived around 7.30 A.M. Me and ten other activists, one of them Israeli, made a human chain with actual chains. Our arms were linked and our hands were chained together as we saw the soldiers around us approaching, along with a huge digger. A senior soldier came over and smiled while slow clapping at us, and then went away to decide what to do about us.
We went directly in front of the massive tyres on this big machine and sat down in front of it in an attempt to stop it in its tracks — which luckily worked. It’s was a very scary moment.
I was at the end of the human chain, so the soldiers started with me. Three of them jumped on me, one of them stamping on my arm, almost breaking it. Another soldier came at me with a huge pair of bolt cutters and jammed it into a gap in the chain to cut it, almost cutting my thumb off in the process.
In the chaos, while they were focusing on me, a brave fellow young 20-year-old American activist named Liam Wheeler actually jumped up onto the digger and chained himself to it. At this, the Israeli soldiers went crazy and jumped all over him, yanking him away with everything they had while he was chained. Again, they could have broken both his arms but luckily, he only got a sprain on the inside of his elbow while mine is just bruised and tender with the skin still healing.
They dragged us over to their vans and trucks. I’d heard another one of our young activists screaming so I knew they had done something to her. It turned out she had been arrested as well. This was the 21-year-old Canadian Michaela Wheeler.
Up against the truck, one of the soldiers tried to snap my thumb back. Once arrested, we were calm and peaceful, so this was just to put me through pain. My thumb went back as far as it could without snapping and was held like that for about a minute while I just stood there in pain.
An older, senior soldier came over to me and started shouting. I told him were peaceful people and that this was a non-violent and peaceful protest against the demolishing of these people’s and their children’s homes. He looked me dead in the eye and said, “YOU’RE PEACE, I’M WAR”.
They then humiliated us. The soldier who arrested us proceeded to drag us one by one, bruised and shaken, our hands bound with cable ties which my wrists were bleeding from. Meanwhile, all his friends got in a circle around us, took out their smartphones and commenced to photograph us while laughing. It was like an animal trophy hunting shot. I could take it, but seeing it done to these 20 and 21 year olds cut me pretty deeply.
They then forced us into the back of a van. Not in the back seats, but down on the floor with virtually no spare room, so we were basically in the fetus position. They kept us like that for an hour.
At this point my nerves started to go a bit. I looked to the left of me and the saw these brave young people taking it in their stride and remaining dignified. I drew inspiration and strength from them. I then saw the digger go straight through into the village, before they took us to a police station in the nearby illegal settlement.
They then cut the cable ties, which had been fastened as tight as they could so they cut our wrists and had slowly began cutting off my blood circulation. Quite remarkable given the fact that we hadn’t been difficult with them, just calm and still. However, we still got thrown around.
They then sat us in a room with them all around showing each other the videos of everything that had happened, they were just laughing and loving it.
After a few hours of the same of thing they put us in a cell, me and Liam together and Michaela in the next one. The cells, as disgusting as they were, weren’t as bad as the treatment we received. They starved us of water throughout the whole day. Internationals in this heat need around 2-3 litres of water a day, but they would give us one tiny plastic cup, nowhere near enough to quench our thirst, and then we would have to beg for an hour or two before we would get another tiny plastic cup. I probably had just five of those from about 9 A.M. up until 9 P.M.
Throughout this time our interrogators were always trying to make us sign things, sometimes in Hebrew, which we didn’t understand. I later learned they would have used this to expedite the deportation orders of us back to our homes. Israel doesn’t want internationals here who are even sympathetic to what is happening to the Palestinians, let alone people who stand by their side.
As it approached 8 A.M. and getting dark outside our cell window, we got worried about where our lawyer was. We reasoned with ourselves and held firm, trusting that our case was being worked on.
Around an hour later there was a bang on the cell door. This time they said that our lawyer was here and took Liam out of the cell. 10 minutes later, they switched us and there was an amazing Jewish Israeli Human Rights lawyer waiting for me. She explained that she had been on the case for us all day and was planning to meet us in court the next morning, telling us that they were planning to deport us. This was our biggest fear. She said my consulate was putting pressure on Israel to allow them to visit me, using that to complicate things for them and delay them moving us to the Russian compound. In the nick of time, another Israeli supporter of Palestine signed something for us in Tel Aviv and with that we were being released. I couldn’t believe it, relieved that now we could stay and do more work. If they had decided to deport me, it might have taken a day or two and I could have ended up missing England’s World Cup Quarter Final game against Sweden!
They took me back to the cell and I shouted to Michaela that were out of here. We were all really relieved, but as international activists, we must be prepared to stand alongside the Palestinians when Israel are committing these crimes, and yes, that means we must be prepared to be arrested when necessary. For us internationals, we can be sure that we will appear in front of an Israeli court judge within 24 hours, and the worst thing that can happen is that we get deported. However, when a Palestinian gets arrested for the same thing: protesting against the destruction of his house, his water supply, his land or lack of free movement, whatever it might be, that’s it — he’s gone. It could be a year, or it could be five. We must stand firmly in solidarity with Palestine and the Palestinians. We must pressure our governments to stop selling arms to Israel and to recognise Palestine as a full UN member state.
I wish Israel would say “OK, we have enough land now”. But they keep expanding the settlements, it never stops. It’s time to take a stand.
Upon going back to Jerusalem with my fellow activists and then on to Bethlehem not far from the beautiful Church of Nativity, I found out we had won a temporary injunction from the Israeli High Court against the destruction of Khan al-Ahmar village. I was elated, as this will hopefully allow for more international activists and media to gather and bring attention to the case.
The day after my arrest, my Norwegian friend was arrested in a separate location near Hebron. It’s not even occupied yet; some settlers have just decided they live there now and have started ploughing the ground that belongs to the Palestinian community there. I would say it’s unbelievable but it’s not, it’s entirely typical
These are just small examples of what Israel is doing and how they’ve occupied almost the entire country of Palestine with systematic repression and brutal force. It’s important to remember that one side has all the power, all the money and all the guns and artillery, and that the other side is near defenceless.
I appeal to international activists to join the Palestinian cause now, to come over and get involved. If activism isn’t for you, then take a non-activist and perfectly safe trip to Palestine, both to learn, and because it’s a beautiful place with some of the most kind, helpful and caring people I have ever met — and I’ve been to many places.
Mahmoud Sawalhi is an 11 year-old boy from Gaza who was shot in the head and the shoulder with live ammunition by an Israeli sniper on the 14th May Great Return March protests. A bullet passed through his eye and out of the top of his head, and he lost both his eye and part of his brain. His heart stopped twice in the ambulance on the way to the hospital in Gaza, and he fell into a coma for 6 days. You can watch this short video showing Mahmoud in hospital the day after he was shot.
Mahmoud in hospital in Gaza in the first days after he was shot. Image given with permission by Mahmoud’s family
Three days after he was shot, Mahmoud was transferred to a hospital in Ramallah, where he has some cousins, but he doesn’t know them very well because of the travel restrictions between Gaza and the West Bank. He had only met his cousin Samar once before when she visited Gaza for a day a year or so earlier. He didn’t recognise many of the faces he saw around him when he regained consciousness. Mahmoud’s immediate family were not allowed to travel from Gaza to the West Bank to be with him at the hospital and so he was parted from his parents and close family for over two weeks while his condition was critical. The process of getting permission to cross from the Israeli authorities was difficult, and at first Feda waited 7 hours at the Erez crossing before being turned back, despite having a permit for travel to the West Bank. The Israeli authorities then eventually allowed Mahmoud’s mother Feda to travel to be with her son in hospital, and she is still here with him.
Last Wednesday Mahmoud had an operation to remove the remaining part of his eye in the socket to prepare for a possible replacement from a donor. His condition during and after the operation was critical, and the medical team knew there was a high risk of infection. He suffered from a fever after the operation, but has since stabilised and his condition is now better. ISM visited Mahmoud and his family in hospital a few weeks ago and again today. His mother told us ‘I just want him to be a normal boy again, I just want him to be a normal child again.’ Mahmoud is doing much better than when we saw him last, but he is likely to have severe brain damage and need a great deal of support during his long-term recovery. We asked him what he wants to do when he gets out of hospital and he says ‘I want to go to the beach’. Before he was shot, Mahmoud loved to swim in the sea.
Mahmoud in his hospital bed in Ramallah in the week before his operation.
Given the conditions in Gaza where medical services have been overwhelmed with injuries deliberately inflicted by Israeli forces, Mahmoud was lucky to be transferred for treatment outside of Gaza. A WHO report for April showed that only around a third of those injured by Israeli forces in the Great Return March demonstrations were allowed to cross to Palestine, much lower than the general approval rate of 60% for medical crossings earlier this year. In 2017 the approval rating for medical exit permits from Gaza was the lowest since 2008, at around 54%, and that year 54 Palestinians died after the denial or delay of their permits by Israel.
Since the Great Return March protests began on 30 March this year, over 135 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces in Gaza. Head of government hospitals in Gaza, Abdullatif al-Haj, has told press that there are severe shortages of medicines. The total number of injuries is reportedly over 13,000, with over 350 seriously injured, and over 2000 children injured. Israeli forces have also been targeting medical personnel themselves. On the day Mahmoud was shot, 17 medical personnel were shot with live ammunition by Israeli snipers, and one was killed. On Friday 1st June a 21 year old medical volunteer, Razan al-Najjar was shot in the chest while treating the wounded near the fence. The sheer number of injuries in Gaza has overwhelmed the already troubled hospitals, which is why many of the seriously injured apply for a medical permit to be treated in East Jerusalem or the West Bank.
Mahmoud was one of these cases to be allowed to cross to Ramallah, but he will be forced to return to Gaza with his mother Feda as soon as his critical treatment is over. Mahmoud’s family are worried about the treatment needed for his recovery and rehabilitation longer term. It is likely that he will have lasting brain damage and psychological problems caused by his injuries. At the moment he can speak and interact, but in a limited way, and he is not expressing himself well. His family are particularly worried about his chances for rehabilitation once he returns to Gaza, because of the poor resources and medical capacity in the occupied Gaza strip.
Mahmoud’s family are appealing for international support to help in his long-term medical treatment. Maybe you can help with the following:
• His family would like advice from anyone who can offer medical consultation on the best course of rehabilitation for Mahmoud now. • If he has to return to Gaza, his treatment will suffer, and his family do not have funds to support the complex rehabilitation he needs. Specifically they are asking for financial assistance to help cover the costs for rehabilitation equipment and treatment. • Please contact Mahmoud’s cousin Samar: samar.sawalhi@hotmail.com if you can help in any way.
Mahmoud resting during our visit today. His family are worried about his long term recovery, particularly the brain damage he has suffered, and prospects for his rehabilitation.
