Category: Journals - Page 117 - International Solidarity Movement

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

Just another Gaza Friday

By Laila El-Haddad

I’ve always loved Fridays in Gaza. In the mornings, save for the lone garbage collector futilely sweeping the abandoned streets and Municipality park, littered with plastic cups, watermelon seeds, and strangled straws from the night before, the hustle and bustle of the city comes to a standstill.

It is a serene if lethargic time, an escape from the sea of chaos, uncertainty and violence that grips our lives each waking day and night. For a few hours, things seem ordinary in a place where ordinary is an illusion. And it doesn’t seem like anything can disrupt those moments, as if some force is saying to the madness that envelopes us: “come back another hour!”

Slowly, the streets come to life again as evening takes hold. This is Yousuf’s favorite time. He likes to go out to the balcony, as we did yesterday, and “people watch”-just take in the incongruent and cacophonous sites and sounds of another Friday in Gaza.

In the park in front of us, children boisterously played football, women licked ice cream cones and chatted, and wedding motorcades ( “zaffit sayyarat”), which, no matter what the season or situation, you can always except to hear on Thursday and Friday evenings like clockwork-made their way to beachside hotels and lounges. They tirelessly honked their horns in sync with live wedding dabke music, blaring out from portable speakers or played by live for-hire bands seated in the back of rented pick-up trucks decorated with carnations.

Boys and relatives clamored for a standing space in the back of the trucks, dancing and clapping feverishly along with the music. Young children chase them down the street to join in the fun. If the wind is just right, the sky becomes a showcase of homemade kites, dancing and flirting with each other, challenging the physical bounds imposed upon this battered area’s residents, reaching to places they can only dream about, allowing them to navigate freedom, no matter how purposeless, for just a little bit.

In the distance, the ubiquitous double-thuds of artillery fire could be heard exploding a few kilometers away, increasing in number and intensity, it seemed, as the evening progressed, only to be drowned out ever-so-slightly by the cacophonous symphony of Friday blitheness, as if to say-“not today! Today, you will not steal our moment.”

The evening passes, the clock strikes midnight, and suddenly, the carriage tranforms into a pumpkin again. The magic dissipates. And 6 people are dead.

Just another Gaza Friday.

posted by Lailaumyousuf @ Saturday, April 08, 2006

Balata invasion journal Part 1

By Jane

On the morning of April 6th I had a call saying the Israeli military have invaded Nablus, would I join 3 others and go? During military invasions the role of ISM is to go with medical teams, try to approach houses the military have occupied to speak with the families held there, bring them food and medicines.

We were not allowed to pass the checkpoint into Nablus so we walked over the mountain, a wonderful hour and a half walk thru beautiful hills. By the time we arrived the military operation was over. It left 12 injured. We went to the hospital to get the details of the injuries. Crumbling plaster work, half unpacked boxes, people on sat waiting on the stairwell, sad faces, a young man crying. A 17 year old boy was critically injured by a rubber bullet entering his head. Two were injured running from jeeps. One 45 year old woman had shrapnel in her leg, one 25 year old was shot by a live bullet in the abdomen. The others were hit by rubber bullets in the legs and back.

Mohammed A., the ISM Co-ordinator told us that arrests are intensifying and he thinks another big invasion, such as the one a month and a half ago is about to happen. Two women were arrested 3 nights ago. The Neighbors said that they were bought out of their house naked, beaten in the street and taken to a military base. Listening to Mohammed speak about Nablus and Balata refugee camp is hard. What can you say to someone who shows you photos of his friend, head half missing, guts spewing out, corpse blackened by the explosion?

During the night there were two explosions and gun fire. At 8am in the morning the mosque load speaker system announced the death of the young man killed in the previous days violence.

Jane