Category: Journals

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.

Jenka’s Journal: The City of Jenin

I woke up two days ago to the news that a Palestinian had blown himself up in Tel Aviv, killing eight Israelis and himself, at the bus station. I thought, as I always do, of the victims…..limbs torn apart, the children crying, ambulances rushing to the scene….so terrible, terrible, terrible…….

It reminded me of a similar scene in Gaza last week, a family bombed in their home by an Israeli air strike….a little girl’s body in pieces, the rest of the family with limbs blown off……

The only difference is: that attack never made the American news.

Israeli writer Gideon Levy wrote a powerful article about it:
http://www.imemc.org/content/view/18108/1/

He says: “The continuing imprisonment of besieged Gaza is precisely the opposite policy that should be applied to serve Israeli interests. The current policy only strengthens support for the Hamas, just like the terror attacks within Israel always strengthen the Israeli right. A nation under siege, its leadership boycotted, will have far more determination and resolve to fight to its last drop of blood. It is impossible to break the spirit of a desperate people. Only a nation that sees a light at the end of its desperation will change its ways.”

As long as there are young men and boys who see no reason for living, and who see no future for themselves in the prison that has been made of their country, there will be bombers willing to give their lives to avenge the injustices they see every day living in Occupied Palestine.

When I saw the picture of the kid who did the bombing yesterday on the television- so young, so terribly young….he looked no more than 16. Then I heard that he was from the city of Jenin. The irony just struck me, as the words of a song by folk singer David Rovics entered my head….it is a song, ironically enough, about a suicide bomber from the city of Jenin — the site of a massive Israeli assault that lasted two months in March and April of 2002, and resulted in nearly 800 deaths, and the complete flattening of a vast portion of the city. Here are the lyrics of the song:

Jenin
——-
Oh, child, what will you remember
When you recall your sixteenth year
The horrid sound of helicopter gunships
The rumble of the tanks as they drew near

As the world went about it’s business
And I burned another tank of gasoline
The Dow Jones lost a couple points that day
While you were crying in the City of Jenin

Did they even give your parents warning
Before they blew the windows out with shells
While you hid inside the high school basement
Amidst the ringing of church bells

As you watched your teacher crumble by the doorway
And in England they were toasting to the Queen
You were so far from the thoughts of so many
Huddled in the City of Jenin

Were you thinking of the taunting of the soldiers
Or of the shit they smeared upon the walls
Were you thinking of your cousin after torture
Or Tel Aviv and it’s glittering shopping malls

When the fat men in their mansions say that you don’t want peace
Did you wonder what they mean
As you sat amidst the stench inside the darkness
In the shattered City of Jenin

What went through your mind on that day
At the site of your mother’s vacant eyes
As she lay still among the rubble
Beneath the blue Middle Eastern skies

As you stood upon this bulldozed building
Beside the settlements and their hills so green
As your tears gave way to grim determination
Among the ruins of the City of Jenin

And why should anybody wonder
As you stepped on board
The crowded bus across the Green Line
And you reached inside your jacket for the cord

Were you thinking of your neighbors buried bodies
As you made the stage for this scene
As you set off the explosives that were strapped around your waist
Were you thinking of the City of Jenin

————-
you can listen to the song here:
http://www.soundclick.com/util/DownloadSong.cfm?ID=756970&ref=2
————-

Mansour’s Journal: Yesterday I was denied entry to my village Biddu

Where should we go then?

After twenty days of being away from my family, I decided to go and spend two days with them. (By the way, my work is in Ramallah city and my village is 30 minutes away to the south of it)

A few weeks ago, the Israeli government closed Qalandia check point in the face of West Bank Palestinians.

Now we have to seek alternative roads to our homes and families.

I went by a road that passes through Al Jib village. Four Israeli border police stopped me on my way and asked for my ID, but after that I would have to go through two gates to reach the services that only carry the Israeli plates.

I showed the soldiers my ID and they started their interrogation: What’s your name? Where are you going? What were you doing in Ramallah? etc. At the end they gave me my ID, and they asked me IF I HAVE A PERMISSION to my village, which I don’t have because I spent time in prison 3 years ago.

All of that was okay to me, but the strange thing is that their answer was that I am forbidden to cross to my village. I was denied entry to my village. That’s what I never expected to happen to us. They confiscate our land, imprison us with their Apartheid wall, and now deny us entry to our own homes and village.

Where should we go?

-Mansour Mansour

Karsten’s Journal: 5 days in Qawawis

I arrived in the village Tuesday 11th of april.

12.4.06 In the morning I go with Hadj Mahmoud, who takes his sheeps for grazing on the hillside opposite the settlement of Susya. After some time we see a settler car on the road gong up to Susya and he is probably watching us. After 20 minutes the car drives down on the main road together with an army truck. 3 soldiers walk the about 70m up to us. I go a few steps towards them and say ‘welcome’. A soldier asks me what I am doing here, and I tell that I am a guest in the village and that I have come from Denmark to tell the truth about the Muhammad drawings. They seem a little confused and talk together for a minute or so. Then the soldier says that I should tell Mahmoud that he is not allowed to graze his sheep on the side of the hill turning towards the Susya. I say that he was only on the ridge and the soldier answers that I just should tell him that he has to stay on this side, because he is not allowed to come so close to the settler road. (The distance was about 300 m), I say Mahmoud only speaks Arabic but I will try to explain it to him. The soldiers leave. The settler drives his car back to the same place and continues watching us for the next half hour. Then he leaves.

A little detail that tells something about the psychic element in the situation. Mahmoud has discovered some rusty peace of iron in a bunch of soil and stones (a demolished stone house?) about 30 m on the forbidden side of the hill. He looks carefully around and then sends me to get it. When I brought it back he ordered me to hide it between the stones. At a time without any traffic he told me to run quick over the main road and put the iron piece between the olive trees. When we walked back to the village he threw it on he ground every time a private car or soldier car passed.

13.4.06 Nothing to report. Well for Ziad it was an eventful day as he had a daughter. I asked if they should celebrate it, but he informed me that it was a daughter, so no big party.

14.4.06 I am with Hadj Ibrahim who grazes his sheep near the main road where the illegal settler road goes to Kfar Ja’ir. A ‘hummer’ arrives and takes position at the next cross, by the road to Susya. They are watching us for some time. It seems not to be a checkpoint because nobody is stopped. After some time they just leave.

In the afternoon the shepherds go into the valley where they say there is never any problem. I decide to go another way to the valley to get a panoramic photo of the valley. I take the route towards Kfar Ja’ir, and half way up I see 5 young people in the fields of the village. They are dressed in white kippa and white shirts. When I walk up to them they walk away. When I speed up, they speed up. When they cross the illegal settler road and go towards Susya they shout something at me, and I just wave my arms and shout ‘hello’. I did not know if this could mean anything, but I think they were just party dressed young guests in Susya and they wanted to have a walk in the area.

15.4.06 No problems. Everything quiet. In the afternoon a UN jeep turns up with 2 people from UNWRA and 2 from Amnesty International. They took photos of the structures that are ordered to be demolished and had talks with the families about medical needs. They told me that some other villages in the neighbourhood are harassed by settlers and that there is some jealousy about the fact that Qawawis got internationals and they do not! They stress that it would b good if more internationals would be there.

16.4.06 A rainy day. In the afternoon I walk to Karmel – well the last 500 m I am invited to join a farmer to sit on his donkey.

Israel’s uber-wardens and the story of my friend B.

By Laila El-Haddad

A friend and neighbour of mine, B, recently got accepted to get her masters in engineering in Bir Zeit University in Ramallah. She is around 30 years old. After numerous attempts, B had to withdraw her standing (after paying one semester’s tuition) because Israel kept denying her permit based on … you guessed it…”security reasons”.

B has also not seen her sister who lives in Ramallah for 5 years now because of the travel ban. The most they can do is exchange photos through her personal family blog and talk on the phone-even thouh they are only one hour apart, the moon may as well be closer! This is the case for almost all Gazans.

B. She came with her family during the “Oslo Days” with many other Palestinains who lived outside, in her case, from Syria. After years and years of exile, they were able to obtain permits and eventually ID cards (issued by Israel) in a deal that allowed many Palestinians to return to Gaza. Now, says B, she went from being in one prison on the outside, unable to live in her homeland, to another internal prison, unable to move, study, or visit her family.

B also had to drop all her dreams in one fell swoop of her continuing education there because of Israel’s…”uber-wardens”.

“The soldier at the checkpoint or behind the Civil Administration counter…the Israeli uber-wardens… is the last, least important, link in the thicket of restrictions and limitations…implanting the jailor mentality in thousands of Israeli young people, soldiers, clerks and policemen – an intoxicating mentality of those who treat those weaker than they with impunity,” explains Amira Hass, in another gripping article where she describes every so eloquently the matrix of Israeli control over Palestinians.

“a thicket of physical, corporeal barriers of all types and sizes (checkpoints, roadblocks, blockades, fences, walls, steel gates, roads prohibited to traffic, dirt embankments, concrete cubes) and by way of a frequently updated assortment of bans and limitations.”

Periodic bans supplement permanent wants, and in the end, none of it is “news”, Hass says, because the asphyxiation of Palestinians, the rupture of everyday Palestinian life has become so routine.

Gazans, such as myself and millions of others, cannot enter the West Bank. Palestinians, including residents of Jericho, are not permitted to be in the Jordan Valley. Palestinians residing in East Jerusalem cannot enter West Bank cities (except for Ramallah). Citizens of Arab states, like my husband, (not jus refugees, and any state really, since Israel controls family-reunification permits) married to Palestinians are prohibited from entering the West Bank and Gaza.

In Gaza’s case, the West Bank is a mere 70 kilometres away. But hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who have family in the West BAnk have been unable to visit them in YEARS, and many many others who have been accepted to study in universities there cannot, because, to quote a recent (January) Israeli high-court ruling, made in response to the appeal of 10 Gaza students to study Occupational Therapy (there is only once licensed Occupational Therapist in all of Gaza, and 25, 000 injured people) in Bethlehem, “West Bank Universities are breeding grounds for terrorism”…and “Gaza is a foreign entity for which the state of Israel is no longer responsible”

…control without responsiblity, the true formula of disengagement, the recipe for ultimate disaster.

Occupation? What occupation?

Two Bil’in Teens Arrested During Night

By Jane

Just when I thought I was in for a quiet night, saying good bye to the resisters in Bil’in, the Israeli army came into the village and arrested 2 young men, Yassar aged 16 and Tariq aged 19.

It was a beautiful warm night at the outpost. R and I arrived just after dark. We tried to collect some wood and we built one of the smallest fires the outpost has witnessed. As we finished our supper of aubergine dip, yoghurt and bread the shebab begun to to come out of the night in two’s and threes. Ali arrived in his truck bringing his young son. They got the fire going and the kettle on. A typical outpost night of being taught arabic words, sweet tea, rich coffee, cigarettes, sunflower seeds and loud stories of which I could only understand the final burst of laughter. The full moon shone and we came out from under the shelter to bathe in it’s light.

At midnight I pulled myself into the cab of Ali’s truck. Shebab climbed into the back and we left R and 2 young men from the village behind. We took the slow, bumpy ride back to the village. Through land belonging to Ali’s family, now piled with stones and rubble, 300 year old olive trees uprooted and gone. Onto the security road by the fence, up the hill, round the fence and down to the gate and the site of the Friday demonstrations. Along the old tarmac road, unmaintained, pot holed, passing fields then houses. They dropped me outside the ISM apartment. We called goodbye, they told me to bring all my family to visit Bil’in.

I read till late and finally turned out the light at about 1.30am. No sooner had I closed my eyes than Abdullah was banging on the door. Soldiers are outside. I grabed my camera, bag with notebook, pen and cigs, stuck my feet in my trainers, pulled on another top and I was out of the house. Abdullah was standing in his red pyjamas, two armed soldiers next to him. He was demanding they leave the village. There were 3 or 4 military vehicals in the street. It was hard to see behind the glare of their headlights. Soldiers with nightsights and guns pointing at roofs, round walls, at trees and shrubs. Abdullah went up on his roof, “Get off the roof” yelled two soldiers, “No I won’t, this is my house, what are you doing here, we don’t want you here , go away”. I’m walking up and down the street, between soldiers. Soldiers emerge from a building, they all climb into vehicals and drive past the mosque and up the hill. It’s only now that I can see a group of shebab and a camera man by the mosque. ” Hello Jane”, I recognise a few of them. “Did they take anyone” they ask me. “No I didn’t see anyone with them”. We start to follow the military vehicals up the hill.

Five hundred yards and the soldiers have stopped again. I look at the cameraman and we go forward. Again I’m walking in among the soldiers asking what are they doing, why are they here. It’s the middle of the night, the occupying military force is armed and on the streets of a small West Bank village and I’m walking around in the middle of it all. It’s very strange. Then from a track soldiers are bringing a young boy, Yassar, he is frightened, he’s a child. On his face are the tracks of a few tears. His eyes, like headlights, beam out fear. “What are you doing with that child, let him go, let him go, he’s a child, why have you got a child, let him go”. They try and put him in the back of a vehical. There’s me shouting and getting in the way and a whole lot of big soldiers but my white skin, my english voice means they hesitate. At one point I managed to get my arm round they boy and we begin to walk away. For a split second I think they will let us go. Hands get hold of us, they start to pull us apart, we are holding onto each others arms and hands, the distance between us gets bigger and bigger till we can’t hold onto eachother any more. A soldier twists my arm behind my back. “You are interfering with our operation, go away”. “Yes I am interfering with you trying to take away a child”. A woman in a nightgown appears, she is pleading with the soldiers. A man in his night time clothes approaches. We are in a chaotic bundle around the child.

So many soldiers. Were there 16, 18, 20. I don’t know. They took the child. Later I found out he was 16 years old. In the night, surrounded by soldiers he looked about 13.

As the door of the vehical closed on the boy the stones started flying. Soldiers fire teargas at the shebab. Stones seem to be coming from all directions. I find myself crouched behind a wall with a soldier. The vehicals start turning, the soldiers run to them and off they go, stones bouncing of the metal and scattering across the road.

The shebab congregate back at the mosque. Abdullah appears in his pyjamas. News comes that Tariq, 19 years old, has also been taken. The soldiers drive through a couple more times and are met by stones raining down from behind every wall and gate. The stones of the shebab are shouting “get out of our village, get out of our village”.

Bil’in has been targetted by the Israeli military because of it’s continuous non violent resistence to the annexation fence/apathied wall. This week, in addittion to Yassar and Tariq, 2 children were arrested whilst tending their goats. ISM supports Bil’in’s ongoing struggle by standing side by side with the villagers, trying to prevent arrests, witnessing, media work and legal support. This legal support is expensive as it costs 1000’s of sheckles to get villagers released from Israeli detention.

The ISM urges all its supporters to continue raising money for the legal fund, so that we can continue to support non-violent protest against illegal occupation and theft of Palestinian land, and continue to free jailed children.

To donate see the PayPal link at palsolidarity.org