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.

Close Encounter of a Settler Kind

(Israeli settler after assaulting a Human Rights Worker. Behind the car is the settlment of Suseya)

by Jon

Qawawis is a village in the south Hebron Hills, very close to the green line, and surrounded by settlements and settlement outposts. In Qawawis are about 5-6 families, all of whom have roughly 10 kids (the kids, however, are scattered about the region depending on their age & schooling; some are close to home, some in Yatta or Al-Khalil/Hebron). They have been tending their sheep and goats their for generations, carving and digging from the rocks of the hills caves & wells, which they use for shelter and sustenance for both themselves and their flocks. Some of them, such as my dear friends Hajj Khalil have built small homes for themselves, and Hajj Mahmoud has a clay walled home. But Hajj Ibrahim, he lives in one of the caves, which is a great place; the light almost always seems to be filling the cave, no matter what time of day. And aside from their kindness and hospitality, the people of Qawawis are renowned for their sweet tea; and oh so much of it! I have never drank so much tea in my life!

Within the last two years the people of Qawawis were evicted from their lands and homes, only to return after a year due to an Israeli court ruling & the support they received from organizations such as Taayush and the ISM. Since their return, we have tried to keep a near constant presence of internationals in the village due to the presence of numerous violent and unpredictable settlers in the region. On my last visit, December 12th, we found that 6-7 olive trees had been cut down in the night by settlers. The most basic tactic of Zionism, at just about every stage of the colonization of Palestine, is to acquire as much territory as possible with as few Palestinians as possible. One sees this pattern very clearly in the South Hebron hills, with small villages such as Qawawis being surrounded by expanding settlement blocs while being terrorized and harassed by the presence and impunity of the settlers and the army.

So, despite what has been weeks of either bitter cold or rain (or both), I went to Qawawis via Al-Khalil/Hebron, along with a new ISM volunteer from the bay area. We did the usual, packed up with food & essentials such as candles for the required nighttime reading once the lights go out, and off we went. To get there, one takes a service/bus from Al-Khalil to Yatta first, but this time we had to take a different route. Previously, we had been able to pass through the Al-Fawwar refugee camp, but that route, most likely due to the elections, has been closed, so instead you now take a bus about 15 minutes down the road until you reach a truly ridiculous Israeli-made assemblage of large rocks, dirt and concrete. Its only purpose is to block direct transit between Al Khalil and Yatta, making life just that more difficult for Palestinians.

So, we cross the wasteland barrier of sorts, get another service ride, and luckily, this one takes us all the way to Yatta & beyond the next town of Al-Karmil, which is cut off to the east by a settler highway. We go down the hill, cross the highway, and that’s it, we are back in Qawawis!

I was slightly nervous about our reception there, because it has been difficult to keep every place we have committed to covered with an international presence, and Qawawis has been on its own lately. This is a truly critical area that is obviously coveted by the Israeli settlers and government; the first wall route planned cut off almost all the villages east of the settler road, annexing numerous settlements and outposts into Israel (for a great map and report on the area, go to http://www.btselem.org/English/Publications/Index.asp ). Qawawis is hemmed in by the road, and a number of settlements, such as Suseya, Mizpe Yair and Avigayil; seriously, you can stand in front of Hajj Khalil’s house and see all three of them, and the road.

But, with their usual hospitality and welcome, I was home again with no worries. They did relate to me some incidents, mostly having to do with being too close to the road and the army yelling at them, but no one had been hurt and no property had been damaged, so all was good. There are three brothers that rule the roost, and they are Hajj Khalil, Hajj Mahmoud, and Hajj Ibrahim (and of course, along with their spouses, the Hajjas; Hajja Aime, Hajja Fatmi, and Hajja Aeshia). Then there and the sons, the daughters, just so so many kids! While we were there, the kids of Ibrahim and Aime (different Ibrahim) were there, tending the goats, making meals, playing marbles, you know the usual.

Yes, I’m back in Qawawis, drinking insane amounts of sweet tea and getting up at the crack of dawn to take out the goats and sheep for some walking and eating. The land seems more green since I was last there, possibly due to the fact that we haven’t been around as much, so they haven’t taken them out much for grazing. With the loss of so much land due to settlements and roads, they have to bring in food for them to eat.

The first night back, we are in our room but cannot sleep; from the nearby settlements we can hear the sound of rifles firing, and loud noises and people speaking. I’ve heard similar things there before, but the shooting, that is something new in my experience of this area.

So, the first morning, I am up at around 6 am, I take a few pictures, talk with Hajj Khalil, drink some tea, and then wander over to the house of Ibrahim, who is taking his goats out at that moment. But, in the distance I see Hajj Khalil taking his sheep up the hill, right near the settler highway leading to Mizpe Yair. Being an area prone to confrontation with settlers, I asked the other ISMer to stay with the other sheep in the village while I catch up with Khalil.

So off I run, trying not to twist my ankles (again), and I reach Hajj Khalil. We take the sheep up the hill, and he does his usual combinations of clicks, whistles, commands and grunts to tell them where to go; and when that doesn’t work, just throw a rock at them, no problem!

While we are walking with the sheep, we can hear more of the rifle noises we heard the night before, this time coming from Mizpe Yair. After about nine-o clock, I noticed a white van sitting at the intersection, which is closer to Suseya settlement, but didn’t think anything of it. A little later, I saw a person slowly walking up the road from the intersection, on his own, and walking very slowly. He was heading in our direction, but at that point, I had no idea what to expect. Then, I noticed that Mahmoud was bringing his goats near to where we were, and the other ISMer was with them as well. I was really hoping that the man would pass up harassing them, which he did, but then he started to get close to where I was. He immediately turned off the road and headed straight for Khalil’s sheep, yelling at them and kicking them. He had a kipa on, so he was obviously a settler, but thankfully he had no weapons. So I did what I thought was best, I moved between him and the sheep stating calmly “sir, this is not your home, please leave, this is not right,” and such. He screamed at me “Go back to Europe!” and shoved me a couple of times with his shoulder.

Being a bit bigger than me, I was knocked about a few times, but not hurt, and the sheep were able to take care of themselves. But then the man turned from me and headed straight for Hajj Khalil, who is about 80 years old. He got right in his face, screaming at him, while Hajj Khalil simply replied “Marhabah, Ahlen Whasalen,” that is, hello, welcome. It was a remarkable sight that I wish could have been photographed; this young, unstable, angry bully face to face with a man old enough to be his father’s grandfather, that stood his ground, not moving an inch, and returned his insults with nothing but kindness and a firm rootedness in his place, his home… his land.

So, without thinking, I rushed over and got myself in between the two of them; one body check to Khalil and he could be seriously hurt. So I got shoved a again, at which point I repeated the things that I had already been saying, along with “I am calling the police.” I don’t know if that worked, but then the man turned back towards the road, where there was a white car waiting for him.

At this point, with the threat of violence subsiding, I took some pictures, as did the woman driving the car; she also screamed at me “Nazi,” Nazi dog!”

As I got closer, I noticed two small children in the back seat. Hmmm… is this a settler family outing?

After getting into the car, they drove away towards Suseya, while I spoke to the police. They came back, stopped the car for a minute, and then drove to Mizpe Yair. Then after five minutes, a police jeep shows up, with 2 men in the front and 1 in the back. I walk over to them, as they declined to get out of their jeep, and I described the incident. I showed them the pictures, 2 of which had the car’s license plate on it. In an incredible display of unprofessional police work, they looked up the number on their computer in front of me and said out loud the name it was registered to. After that, they told me “you must go to the Kiryat Arba police station and file a report.” I said, “ok, maybe I can go tomorrow, it is far from here,” to which they replied “NO, you must go TODAY!” Ummm… ok! Even worse, the police inform me that the land of that area “belongs to the people there,” as he pointed to the settlements, which of course are all illegal under international law.

Now, just stop and think about this for a moment. I was attacked, and Hajj Khalil was threatened with violence by a settler that is only there because the Israeli government subsidizes his residence and provides the military force to make it possible. But when this person is to be reported for an act of violence (as if his presence in itself is not enough violence; road construction, land confiscation, occupation, etc), one must go to the police, who happen to be located in one of the most extreme, racist, and violent settlements in Palestine. Sometimes, when confronted by such ugly realities, I think that Kafka and Orwell must be either laughing or weeping in their graves; probably both.

The police leave, and I talk with my fellow ISMer and the others, but as soon as they leave the army arrives! Yes, a humvee and about 7 soldiers or so arrive and could not care in the slightest about the settler attack. All they want to do is enforce some arcane military order which says that the sheep must be 200 meters from the road, end of story. So, I talk to them, try to stall them, keep the situation de-escalated, while calling anyone and everyone I can. I’ve already called Hamoked (human rights group), so I call Ezra fro Taayush (Israeli/Palestinian anti-occupation group) to see if he knows what to do next; although the settlers are more unpredictable than the army, the army can arrest people, and a lot more too. Ezra answers the phone saying, to my surprise, “I’ll be there in a few minutes.” Oh, this is going to get good!

Ezra arrives just in time, as more soldiers and other military functionaries have arrived, and he does what Israeli peace activists do best; scream and yell at the army in Hebrew!

It is really just a joy to watch, and it allows me to be the good cop and stay cool, because there isn’t really much I can do at this point. If they want us back from the road, we’ll probably do it, but we will put up a fuss. The minutes ensue with either Hajj Mahmoud arguing with the soldiers in Arabic, along with Ezra, who tells me in front of the soldiers “You should be here every day by the road, make them work, hell, make them arrest you if they want!” Hmmmm… ok, Ezra, I’ll see you at my deportation hearing!

After the scene begins to settle, I query a few soldiers as to why they need large guns to deal with the oh-so dangerous sheep of Qawawis. Then I get a ride from Ezra north to the Kiryat Arba police station… or at least close to it. We stop once in Tuwani, another village in a similar situation, and then they leave me at a checkpoint where I take a taxi through the surrounding towns.

I am left at what I assume is a building, although hidden behind blocks of concrete, fencing, and walls. There is a phone to call in, but the instructions are in Hebrew, and there is a water fountain turned towards the fence; but the fence makes it impossible to use, unless one shoots out the water into one’s hand, and then slurps it from there. When I get there, a Palestinian man and woman are already there, to get information about a friend who has been arrested. When another man leaves the police station, he explains to me that he was there to sign a statement swearing that he has no intention to kill a certain settler… who had filed a complaint saying that this man was going to kill him… ahh, it’s good to be the king! (sarcasm alert, part II) He asks me why I am trying to get in, and I tell him the story; he waves his hand and says to me “don’t bother, these people (the settlers) are above the law.”

Finally I am let inside the compound (after calling a few times) and I wait a bit until I am called in to file my report. I could list the details of this, but the important thing is that it was so surreal. The (I assume) detective, had no idea what or where Qawawis is or was, or the name of the smaller settler outpost Mizpe Yair, or even what I could possibly be doing there. The whole recounting of the event was dealt with as if I was describing my latest foray into the jungles of the Congo. But it was right in his backyard, I mean, he’s the police, shouldn’t he know that?! That, however, is just part of the apartheid reality of this place; many different peoples and communities, all of the living in close proximity, but according to very different rules, with the threads of connection between them tenuous, if there at all.

So, after writing many facts down, they ask for my pictures of the man. I show them, and then they want to take my camera to copy them, which I decline to do. After some haggling, it turns out they don’t have the right connections to hook up my camera anyway, so another police man says, “come back tomorrow with the pictures.” The last thing I want to do is take all day to come back to this place when I could be drinking tea with my dear friends in Qawawis, so I leave the station trying to think of what to do. After a bit of walking, I realize that I am very close to Baba Zawya, in Hebron, and I know a great photo store there that could probably burn the pictures to disc. Soon enough, I am there, getting the pictures copied and burned, seeing some friends, eating a bit, and heading back to the station.

I get there, and to my dismay, the same Palestinian couple that were there hours earlier are still waiting outside the fortress of gates, fences & disembodied voices. When my cop comes to let me in, I say to him, “could you please see that these people get some help, they have been here all day.” They talked a bit, and then we went inside. I have no idea if I helped them at all, but it is so excruciating to see just how thoroughly degraded and humiliated a Palestinian can be by just about every facet of the occupation. I, on the other hand, have white skin, speak English, have one of those Euro-american passports, and can pass for the Chosen People, which makes all the difference.

Back in the station, they fill out more paperwork, and I am asked at least 12 times if all 6 pictures are on the 1 disc. Yes, they are I say…again. Then they have me look at a book of pictures to see if I can id the man.

While waiting, I find myself looking at the display of pictures behind the desk of another cop. There is the usual combination of friends and family, along with other ones of a quasi-military nature. One of them I can still remember; there he is, in a t-shirt, green army pants, and wearing sunglasses. In the background are sheep, and slung around his shoulder is a large rifle. I still wonder whose sheep they are, where he was & what he was doing. Could it be his friend’s kibbutz in Israel? Or maybe he was in one of the many Palestinian villages and stopped for a photo op. Was he in the army? Or as a policeman? Or, dare I ask, policing the natives on his own initiative?

So they put the book of Jewish Israeli settler felons in front of me and I peruse. I really don’t think that I have seen such a collection of maladjusted, freaked out & scruffy people in my life. Half of them were staring into the camera with a confused malaise of anger in their eyes; of just wanting, needing, to let loose and project some serious violence. The other half smile like it’s their yearbook picture, kind of “look at me mom, it’s my first arrest! I’m a real settler now!” After looking through 2 books of these pictures, I had had enough, and more importantly, I could not identify the settler.

So, that was that. There was a brief discussion of getting Hajj Khalil to come and testify, but that was just ridiculous. I told them, why don’t you just drive your shinny jeeps 30 minutes down your settler highway and talk to him yourselves? I also was unwilling to put him through the humiliation of the Kirayat Arba police station, all in regards to a complaint that won’t be followed up by the police anyway. At one point, a cop was talking to me and seemed surprised when it was clear that I didn’t think they would do anything to follow up my complaint. He said to me “Do you think that we just take our salaries?” No comment, sir (sarcasm alert, part III, in 3-D).

Soon enough, they were done with me and I was on my way back to Qawawis via Al-Khalil. This time, the service driver from Yatta got some bad directions from my fellow travelers, and I was dropped off near the village of Tuwani. Now, as the crow flies, it’s not far from Qawawis, but the sun was going down, and the terrain is very tricky. I had to manage walking near the highway, but not too near so the army jeeps driving down wouldn’t notice me. Also, I had to make sure to give a wide berth to the outpost of Avigayil, so they wouldn’t see me, and keep an eye out so that any Palestinians I would see would not think that I was a settler going out for a night time stroll. All in all, a great time and place for a relaxing walk!(sarcasm alert, part IV, the Final Chapter)

After making it through, I was back in Qawawis, exhausted, physically and mentally, but missed by the village. But finally I was back, and the day’s ordeal, which really wasn’t nearly as bad as it could have been, was over.

The next few days at Qawawis were calm, no problems or events to report. I’ve been away for a little while now, but I am already feeling the need for some sweet tea and the company of Hajj Khalil… and his sheep & goats, of course! See you soon, Qawawis inshalah, inshallah.

Life in Tel Rumeida; “It is clear who are the terrorists around here.”

by Katie

The city of Hebron (al Khalil) is divided into two areas, one controlled by the Palestinian Authority (H1) and the other controlled by the Israeli military (H2). Tel Rumeida is a Palestinian majority neighborhood in H2 with two illegal (under international law) Israeli settlements named Tel Rumeida and Beit Hadassa. The settlers of Tel Rumeida pose a daily threat to the Palestinian residents of this neighborhood. These settlers would be on the extreme right side of the political spectrum, more to the right than your average Zionist. In addition to harassing Palestinians, some of them have squatted in currently unoccupied Palestinian homes, refusing to leave. There is supposed to be an evacuation of these squats in a market in the old city on January 28th.

Recent acts of violence against Palestinians include physical assaults on children going to and from school, throwing light bulbs filled with red paint at children, rioting, shouting insults and threats, and throwing rocks and garbage. The settlers kids here are absolutely out of control. Saturday the 21st was my first day in Tel Rumeida, and group of boys called us anti-Semites bent on destroying the state of Israel. They usually get away with their violent behavior because the IOF soldiers are reluctant to get involved in violence against Palestinians because they are here only to protect the settlers.

Why are they behaving this way ? They believe the state of Israel has forsaken them by removing settlers from the Gaza strip. They feel that the West Bank is nothing more than Judea and Samaria, part of Western Ertez Israel (the Land of Israel). Having the state of Israel within pre 1967 borders apparently is not enough. American Jews are being recruited by the right here to come and be settlers all over the country. We ran into a group of them the other day and they called us pieces of shit, prostitutes and said they hoped we get raped by the Arabs.

Why is ISM here? There has been a need for international observers and accompaniers to record harassments and violence against Palestinians and act as escorts for children coming to and from school. Our presence is intended to give Palestinians some sense of security, so they can go out and their children can play in the street, and to pressure the Israeli Military to respond to and prevent settler violence against Palestinians.

Today was my first day working on the school route. It was quiet for the most part, aside from some Americans coming to visit the settlers who told us to go home, and some other people asking me what I was doing. I met a Tel Rumeida resident named Hashem who invited myself and another ISMer to his house for tea and occupation stories. Hashem’s home is located directly underneath the Tel Rumeida settlement and he took us for a tour of settler damage to his property. He showed us where settlers had put up barbed wire and razor wire around his house,

where they had cut his olive trees in half,

dumped garbage into his yard,

threw a washing machine at him,

broke windows, (he had to put up the metal window covers you see in this picture),

his nephew Yousef is holding up a rock wrapped in a kerosene soaked cloth which was set on fire and thrown at the olive trees.

We watched several video tapes of settler mobs vandalizing Palestinian property. Gates were kicked in, property was smashed and thrown on the ground outside, rocks were thrown at windows. In the video the military was standing around doing nothing.

I asked Hashem what international volunteers can do for the situation. He said that the best thing we can do is to educate Americans about what is going on. He said most Americans believe Palestinians are terrorists but, he said, “it is clear who are the terrorists around here.”

Hashem said that at one point he asked his neighbors how they could have peace with each other. His neighbor told him that they could have peace if Hashem moved to Egypt, Jordan or Iraq and that Hashem’s house and land was promised by God to the Jews. There’s no arguing with that.

are these the Palestinians your government warned you about ?

more info: www.telrumeidaproject.org

A Human Rights Worker Writes of her Christmas in Israeli Detention

By Shireen
In a prison cell, the few times a day when the door opens are an event. On the evening of Christmas Day, when the rattle of keys was followed by a soft Scottish voice asking cheerfully, “is there a bed free in here?” I didn’t know whether to be happy or sad. It was Theresa, and she, like me, was attempting to attend December’s International Nonviolence Conference in Palestine.

I was very glad to have a colleague join me, but her arrival in my cell meant that she too had been refused entry into Israel – which controls all the routes into Palestine. Already three of us were spending our week in the detention cells at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport, and beginning to think if we never saw another piece of white bread again, it would be too soon.

I had never actually met Theresa before her appearance in the prison, but we have a lot in common. Over the last few years, we have both regularly come to volunteer for human rights work in Palestine. Army training and years of propaganda makes it hard for an Israeli soldier to look at a Palestinian and see an equal human being, someone whose life should be respected. The presence of Internationals can mean that Palestinians move more freely and safely through their neighbourhoods than would otherwise be possible.

Theresa, and I, along with South African Robin (in the next door cell), and Italians Vik and Gabriele (who had been refused and put back on a plane within hours of his arrival some days before) had all come many times to Palestine to do this work. And therein lay our problem.

By 2002, the Israeli “Defence” Force was faced with increasing numbers of Internationals who kept turning up at inconvenient moments with cameras and quotes from the Geneva Convention. During 2002-2003, Israeli soldiers were alleged to have deliberately wounded at least twelve foreign human rights workers with live ammunition, and killed several others, the best known being Rachel Corrie, Tom Hurndall, and UN worker Iain Hook. The international outcry that resulted appears to have protected internationals to some extent. But recently human rights organisations based in Palestine have realised that there is a more subtle weapon being used: the “Banned List“, or, as the Israeli court calls it, the “Inclusion List”.

Though my friends and I were coming with personal invitations to an internationally recognised conference, it was the fact that the Israeli immigration computers apparently recognised our names from this list, that carried the most sway with the airport authorities. We each experienced several hours of grilling by a representative of the Ministry of Defence, who set our teeth on edge with his very unconvincingly friendly “I’m sure everything will be cleared up and you’ll be very welcome” routine. None of us were surprised when a young woman came to announce that, for the usual mysterious “security reasons”, we were all being refused entry to Israel (“Did I ask to go to Israel?” Robin muttered resignedly.) and that we would be escorted to the Detention Cells overnight.

We comforted each other with the reminder that it was all part of our cunning plan. At least, Plan A had been to sail through immigration and attend the Conference, but Plan B was that we would sit tight in prison, and our lawyer would take our case to court. This would require a presentation of the evidence against us and a chance to argue our right to enter.

None of us was allowed to call our consulates. Luckily friends contacted our lawyer on our behalf because we weren’t allowed to call her either. Six days later, when a friendly bloke from my consulate called the prison to speak to me, he was still rather startled. “Heard about you on the news!” he said. “The usual ‘security reasons‘ line, eh? Yes, means absolutely nothing to us either.” When Theresa arrived, our lawyer took the opportunity to demand to speak to all of us, and that was a relief, because I was very worried about Vik.

We had known that the agenda of the authorities would be to send us back to our own countries before we could go to court, that our lawyer could eventually get a halt on this order, but that there would be a short time lapse before this, during which only our lack of co-operation with this agenda would keep us in Israel. At 4am the day after our arrival, we were all simply shouted at when we refused to get ready to board a plane. Then, at 4pm the same day, a group of police entered Robin and Vik’s cell and announced they would be removed by force. Robin and Vik stated our lawyer would have obtained an order to allow us to wait for court by then, and repeatedly asked to speak to her. When Vik demanded a call to the Italian consulate, a policeman responded by kneeing him in the groin.

Once they had Vik (who has a heart condition) on the ground, he clung to the bed frame, so they commenced to punch and kick him, violence that continued within my view after they dragged him into the corridor. Despite my pleas, this ended only when they realised they needed to take him to hospital. Vik told us later that he feared he was having a heart attack, but this turned out to be pain from torn chest muscles. He spent the remainder of the week in CCTV-monitored solitary confinement.

On day 7 we went to court. It was a huge relief to be able to speak to Robin and Vik, who were handcuffed together. During a court case entirely in Hebrew with no translation, with an hour of “secret evidence” given about us which neither we nor our lawyer could hear, the judge came to the conclusion that he would uphold the refusal for us to enter.

His two main reasons appeared to be that we had, in the past, been with Palestinians holding non-violent demonstrations against the Land-Grab Wall (as a human rights observer and a medic I am invited by Palestinians to attend in both these capacities) and that two of our own governments had informed Israeli security that we were anarchists! In true “Life of Brian” style we have been fighting ever since about which two of us – “I’m definitely one of the anarchists.” “No, I’m the anarchist!” Since in my case, my anarchism involves a belief that people can co-operate together without leaders, but generally means I do a lot of community work, I’m surprised that I’ve managed to frighten two governments, but there you go.

While in the prison, we took the opportunity when we could to talk to the guards about the reasons we were there. A young guard, working to fund his studies, responded to our descriptions of the Israeli army regularly firing upon unarmed men, women, and children, with the disbelief I often hear from Israelis uninvolved in the peace movement. “No,” he said, “Jewish people wouldn’t do that.” “I have seen it, many times; it is an accepted policy,” I told him. “No,” he repeated, “there must have been some mistake, or you didn’t understand.” What I find interesting is that when people respond in this way, they don’t try to suggest that I am lying, but they never ask for any more details. It is simply that it does not fit with what they wish to believe about their country, and therefore, the less said the better. Working alongside Israelis and Palestinians who have faced up to the truth and found courage and comradeship on the other side of it, I wish I knew how to present this truth so it would be heard by young Israelis like my guard.

As I write this, a countryman of Theresa’s, Andrew MacDonald remains in the detention cells. Andrew has done similar work to us, been deported, changed his name to return, been arrested, and held again. What makes Andrew different is that he is still resisting his deportation, stating that he cannot co-operate with the removal of human rights workers, and he has now spent months in prison, with little hope of release back to Palestine. (“He resists how? Do they only kick me?” complains Vik.) [Update on Andrew below.]

After we left, Theresa was held until the conference was over and the day she had to fly back to return to work came up. But she already has her time off work booked for this year’s Palestinian Olive Harvest. We feel that our thwarted attempt to return to our friends in Palestine is not the end of the battle, but just an early skirmish in the fight to overturn the Banned List, which so far appears to include more than 200 people, and possibly a much larger number. Under the “Access for Peace” banner, we hope that many more human rights workers like ourselves will refuse to accept “No” for an answer.

Update as of January 21st:
At 3:00 in the morning of January 15th, ISM-activist Andrew Macdonald was forcefully deported from Israel, 7 weeks after being abducted from Palestine by the Israeli Border Police. He was carried on to the plane and accompanied by two Police Officers on the plane from Tel Aviv to London. [Read more]

On Thursday January 19th, David Parsons, a Human Rights Worker from Canada, was arrested by the Israeli Police in the Tel Rumeida neighborhood of Hebron and taken to Kiryat Arba Police station, and is currently awaiting deportation at Ben-Gurion Airport.

On January 20th, Theresa MacDermott’s Member of Parliament, Mark Lazarowicz, tabled two questions to Parliament, as follows

  1. To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, if he will investigate the case of Theresa McDermott who was detained by the Israeli authorities on her arrival in Israel on 25th December 2005 and thereafter deported.
  2. To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, whether he has made representations to the Israeli authorities on the operation of a blacklist of persons not allowed to enter the occupied territories.

A Gun in one hand and the Torah in the other

by Caroline BOSTONTOPALESTINE

HEBRON – From January 11 to 15, I was about an hour south of Jerusalem, in the city of Hebron, where four hundred settlers of the most extremist militant ideological faction of the settler movement live amongst more than 120,000 Palestinians.

The once bustling historic old city remains eerily quiet, covered in racist anti-Arab graffiti. A fence ceiling lines the narrow streets, placed between the shops and the settler-occupied apartments above because of the constant showers of garbage aimed at the Palestinians and streets below.

Many of the Palestinians who once lived and worked here have fled. Since the IDF protects the interests of these heavily-armed fundamentalist settlers, Palestinian families who live in the old city and the near-by neighborhood, Tel Rumeida are often virtual prisoners in their home, subject to violent settler attacks and destruction of property.

The Israeli High Court has recently ruled that eight settler families must be evicted from the Palestinian-owned whole-sale market in Hebron starting on the 15 of January. This resulted in the appearance of a few hundred more of Israel’s most militant, ideological settlers in Hebron.

International, Israeli, and Palestinian Human rights workers and activists also gathered to observe and document the situation, as well as intervene when the safety of Palestinians was in danger.

Although most settlers despise the presence of international observers and media (numerous members of the media and human rights workers were attacked and harassed), I was approached by a few curious settler girls the day before the protests were scheduled to begin. One, who had immigrated to Israel two years ago from the United States, told me that Hebron and other Palestinian land belonged to her. “Just read the bible,” she said. She told me that she wanted all Palestinians to “leave”. When I asked her where all of the Palestinians should go she responded, “There are thirteen other Arab counties”. Another young girl said that “Arabs only came to these lands when the state of Israel was declared”, indicating her belief in the right-wing cultural myth that no one lived in Israel when European Jews began to immigrate.

Over the course of the weekend, mobs of teenaged settlers (some wearing black ski masks) roamed the streets of Tel Rumeida and forcefully entered a closed Palestinian part of the old city. These mobs attacked many of the Palestinians and human rights workers they encountered with spit, paint bombs, insults, and physical force. I spent much of the days accompanying Palestinians returning from the Mosque or the old city to their homes on a route that these settlers were also using to move back and forth between the site of the eviction and the temple.

It was truly disturbing to see scores of teenaged boys walking freely with a gun in one hand and the torah in the other with faces and eyes that carried expressions of utter hatred, which I am struggling to properly describe. Perhaps the most difficult thing to cope with was the fact that we are all human and capable of this sort of hatred. These children have been taught to hate just like the Palestinian children I escorted have been taught to flinch at the sight of a settler. I don’t know how far we have come since slavery and Nazi Germany and I wonder if any of this will ever stop. I don’t think it is enough to educate. We must fight harder. We must not turn away from these horrors. We must not forget the oppressed and acknowledge our roles as oppressors.

Caroline works at Haley House soup kitchen in Boston and with the Boston Direct Action Project. She is now working with the International Women’s Peace Service in Haares, Palestine.

The Occupation Will Not Be Sugar-Coated

At the entrance to Qalandia checkpoint there is a sign with a big flower on it that says “the hope of us all.” The insanity of this cheerful phrase in front of an illegal checkpoint was not lost to an Israeli Jewish activist friend of mine. It reminded her of the Nazi slogan “Arbeit Macht Frei,” meaning “work will set you free” which was posted at the entrace to concentration camps in Poland. She thought it would be a great action if we spray painted “Arbeit Macht Frei” on the Qalandia sign; so I made a stencil of it and bought a can of spray paint as soon as I could. I met her at Qalandia today and by chance ran into another American Jewish activist friend of mine. We were a little bit afraid we would get arrested but there were no soldiers in sight and I was feeling a little bit giddy like a kid who knows she’s about to do something bad like eating a whole tub of ice cream before breakfast. We quickly painted it and handed out flyers in Arabic and English to onlookers explaining what we were doing. Then we left without so much as a single IOF gun pointed in our faces.