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.

Reflections on a Deportation

by David

Deserted Al-Shuhada Street in Tel Rumeida; Beit Hadassah Settlement visible at the end of the street.
Deserted Al-Shuhada Street in Tel Rumeida; Beit Hadassah Settlement visible at the end of the street.

In six days I will be deported by the state of Israel.

I am a human rights worker. I have been working to prevent and document violence against the Palestinian residents of Hebron in the West Bank. Attacks on Palestinians by violent Israeli settlers occur on an almost daily basis and range from insults and spitting to stonings and beatings; these attacks take place in an area heavily patrolled by Israeli police forces and often happen immediately in front of complacent soldiers. The presence of international human rights workers, like myself, sheds some light on the abuses that settlers and occupation forces commit, and on the crimes that police consistently fail to prevent, pursue and prosecute.

***

On January 19th, I was standing on Shuhada Street, in Tel Rumeida, after escorting some Palestinians safely to their homes. It was 20 minutes past 2 o’clock when an Israeli police jeep rolled up to where I was on the sidewalk – I recognized the police officers in the jeep. A police officer in the passenger seat leaned across the driver and asked me, in Arabic, “What is your name?” Within minutes I was inside the back of the jeep, under arrest and leaving Tel Rumeida.

Before going to Ben Gurion Airport, I made a brief stop at the Kiryat Arba police station where I was paraded – trophy-like – in front of Hussein Nabia, a police officer who previously arrested me on false charges of failing to identify myself and assaulting a soldier, and who has tried – without warrant – to break into the ISM/Tel Rumeida Project apartment. The officers who arrested me brought me into an office where Nabia was seated, “David!” he said, and the officers brought me back outside.

***

Tel Rumeida, a small neighbourhood of Hebron, is sandwiched between two small settlements. The settlers of Beit Hadassah and Tel Rumeida Settlements are some of the most extreme and violent in the West Bank; the founders of the settlement movement are among them. These settlers, with the support of the Israeli Military, aim to make life intolerable for Palestinians – with the goal of driving Palestinians from their homes, from the neighbourhood and, ultimately, from Hebron itself.

The victims of these attacks range the gamut of Palestinians in the neighborhood with no one being immune – old women and young boys, businessmen and university students.

***

At the airport I had a hearing with a member of the Ministry of the Interior (MoI). I had been waiting outside her office with police officers and just before I was summoned into her office, I received a phone call from a friend. Just as we began to speak, the police physically pried my telephone from my fingers, and took it away; I was told, “It is rude to talk on the phone when you are in someone’s office.”
My tourist visa has expired, but before it did I went to the MoI office in Jerusalem and asked for an extension. I was given, instead, an appointment at which I could officially apply for an extension. I explained to the official whom I met with, that my visa would expire before this appointment; “No problem,” she told me, and gave me a slip of paper explaining that I had an appointment at the Ministry of Interior. I explained this to the official who then issued a deportation order against me.

***

There was questioning and there were forms to sign. An oversize three-ring binder held copies of form after form, deportation order after deportation order, each form a different pastel colour, and each form translated into an array of languages.

During my hearing a police officer interrupted asking me to sign a form he held out to me. Among other things, the form was a waiver, and my signature would indicate that I was refusing my right to pick up my belongings (which remained in Hebron). To paraphrase: I recognize that it was suggested to me that I go to my place of dwelling, accompanied by police, and gather my personal effects.

“This wasn’t suggested to me, and I don’t want to waive my right to gather my belongings,” I explained in English. The MoI official translated the sentence into Hebrew for the police officer.

“In fact, lets go and get them right now,” I made to stand up from the chair, having visions of a police escort and me walking into the apartment after dinner. “Will you take me now to get my things? It says here,” I gestured to the form, ” that you will accompany me to get my things.”

More translation and then the MoI official asked, “Where are your things?”

“At my home.”

“Where is that?”

“Hebron.”

“Hevron?” incredulous. “You live in Hevron?”

“Yeah,” I replied. “So? Can we go?”

Again some translation and discussion before, “No one is going to take you to Hevron. Just sign the paper.”
I explained that I wasn’t going to sign a form saying that I waived my right, when in fact I was being denied said right. “Sign the form,” they replied.

I didn’t sign the form.

***

I was held in a room near Ben Gurion Airport for three days. The room had two windows, six beds, one toilet, two sinks, two showerheads, two chairs, one table and one television.

On at least two occasions I am convinced that the guards forgot I was there. One evening guards turned out my lights at ten-thirty P.M. It was not until after five P.M. the next evening that the lights came back on. That same evening a guard opened the door around half-seven, “Do you need anything?” he asked.

“Dinner?”

The guard threw a sandwich, wrapped in plastic, onto the table. These sandwiches were the staple food served to me at least nine times in three days. White bread – baguette-style – halved length-wise, three slices of white cheese, some pieces of iceberg lettuce and two cherry tomatoes.

A guard searched me – marking the fourth time I was searched that day – when I first arrived at the airport “detention centre”, before he put me into my cell. Looking at two marbles that I had in my left pant pocket – gifts from a child in Tel Rumeida – he asked, “Do you need these?”

“They’re mine,” I told him, and he let me keep them.

On the third morning of my imprisonment, I was sleeping when a guard came into my cell. “Hey!” he yelled at me, “Get up. It’s time to go!”

***

At Ramle Detention Centre I was searched again – grand total: five times. This time my marbles were confiscated. My lip balm was also confiscated. What was not confiscated was the razor – now broken – that I had been given in detention at the airport. The head came unattached in such a way that the two blades became removable. This remained in my custody throughout my time in prison.

During the three days that I was held at Ramle, I learned a some of what life is like there on a daily basis for the refugees and economic migrants who are imprisoned there – most for much longer than me.

Just before half-past six A.M. every day, loudspeakers blasted a wake-up warning up and down the halls of Block 4, second floor. Shortly thereafter, guards would enter every room and count the prisoners; everyone was expected to be on his feet. This marked the first such count, there being often six or more per day – wake up from your nap, stop your card game, get off your top bunk; stand up when the guard enters the room; wait while the guard counts each man; relax when the guard leaves.

Economic migrants spend time in Israeli “deportation centres” (read: prisons) awaiting their deportation, or awaiting a new job.

Most of the economic migrants I met in jail await deportation, and their stay in jail is punishment for having worked in Israel without a valid work visa. These people spend between one week and four months in jail waiting to be deported. Most of the prisoners I met who fell into this category had resigned themselves to the fact that they would be deported and were simply waiting to go home. Unlike me (if I had agreed I would have been on a plane the evening that I was arrested) these people often have to wait weeks or months for their deportation.

On the morning of the day that I was released from Ramle, guards came into my cell and told another inmate, Get ready. You leave today. The Thai fellow, who slept on the bunk next to me, had been four months in prison and the first notice he received of his departure was this warning, less than two hours before leaving the prison.

I met a Nepalese fellow who had a valid work visa. He had been imprisoned because he lost his job.

His employer was ill and suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. A turn for the worse in his employer’s disease left him without a job. For this, he was jailed until he was able to find a new job; after one week in prison he had a new job in Tel Aviv and was released on a Wednesday afternoon to prepare for his first day of work that Sunday.

***

If the economic migrants have a rough time in Israeli prison, the refugees have it worse. With not even the hope of deportation – having fled their home countries seeking asylum – the refugees at Ramle have no way to know how long they will stay in prison.

For the refugee men with whom I was imprisoned – from Ethiopia, Sudan, Liberia and other, mainly African, countries – each day is much like the other. Months pass without any change in their situation. Human rights workers come to meet with other prisoners, and tell the refugees they cannot help them. UNHCR meets with them and says, “We’re sorry; we know you are refugees, but unfortunately, we cannot help you.”

Tyson, from Ethiopia, has been nearly two years in prison, he showed me copies of letters written on his behalf – the return addresses are Canadian. One is from a group called Welcome Place in Winnipeg, and the other from a Canadian Member of Parliament. Both letters call on officials at the prison, and officials in the government, to release Tyson and the “70” Ethiopian refugees in his position.
Welcome Place wants to sponsor Tyson and the other Ethiopian refugees and bring them to Winnipeg. Most of the legal work has been done, what remains is for the refugees to have an interview with a Canadian official in Israel. The letters petition the government to please release them to allow them to fulfill these final requirements. This has not happened. Both of the letters are dated 2004.

“We are not criminals,” Tyson said. “We all have one thing in common. We are refugees and we are looking for safety.” Israel has shown them only imprisonment. “Israel should not forget it’s past. It was a nation of refugees.”

Looking out a window, barred with three separate layers of steel, Tyson pointed to a series of small huts arranged around a central courtyard with benches, palm trees and a small garden. “Those are the criminals,” he says, explaining that in those huts are Israelis who have been convicted of crimes and are serving their time. “Their doors are open 24/7 and they have a 41-inch TV.” These prisoners – convicted criminals – can walk freely in their courtyard, while Tyson and his fellow refugees are allowed outside for one hour daily, except Tuesdays when they remain inside all day. The refugees and economic migrants I was imprisoned with do not have a television; there is no common room – people socialize in the hallway near the bathroom or in their small cells.

Refugees like Tyson wait in prison with few ways to entertain themselves, extremely limited access to fresh air, and with no way of knowing how long they will be held in jail. Compared to theirs, my lot was quite easy.

***

After six days in prison, I was released on bail.

The MoI judge set bail at one thousand sheqels. Fifty thousand sheqels is considered a high bail, and fifteen thousand can generally be considered low. With white skin, and a Canadian passport, my NIS1,000 bail demonstrates the institutional racism that pervades all aspects of Israeli Bureaucracy that I have had the opportunity to witness.

The two conditions of my bail were that I leave Israel no later than February 10th, and that I not participate in any “International Activities” in Hebron.

As an “international,” I have wondered what might constitute “International Activity” in Hebron, and my conclusion is this: anything I might do in Hebron, witnessed by the Israeli police. Eating breakfast, visiting friends, drinking tea on the street – indeed, even walking on the street – in a nation (Palestine) which is not my own, could be viewed as a type of this activity. As such, I have not been back to Tel Rumeida, and have not seen my Palestinian friends, since I was arrested.

But: I am free.

***

I felt bad leaving Ramle. I breezed in and out of there with my blue passport, staying just over three days, while hundreds of other prisoners – who have committed no crime – remain for months. Tyson and the others didn’t feel bad; they were genuinely happy for me. No one should be in there, they believe that, and that included me.

***

I was arrested because Israeli police in the Palestinian city of Hebron know who I am; because they know that I am a human rights worker, and because human rights workers in Hebron often have to do the work of police officers: intervening in attacks to protect civilians from settler violence.

Instead of prosecuting or even – pursuing – the settlers who have maliciously attacked their Palestinian neighbours, the police of Kiryat Arba (Hebron) harass and arrest international human rights workers, who strive for justice alongside the Palestinians. If the state of Israel is interested in peace, then she should allow human rights workers, and international observers to work for justice; deporting those who work for justice cannot be seen as part of any “peace process.”

***

And so, in six days I will be deported. I paid for my ticket. I was planning to leave on this date. I will go to the airport on my own. Security guards will not carry me onto the plane – I will walk. This will be my deportation: quiet, and with a stopover in Budapest.

Strange Ride Through Palestine

by Xander

I recently had an existential mental breakdown. I no longer comprehend the difference between dreams and reality. The first symptoms appeared on Christmas Eve when I was trying very hard to get out of Nablus. Hundreds of people were crammed into the exit terminal of Huwara checkpoint. Many of them, like me, were attempting to visit Bethlehem for the holiday celebration. They were quick to tell me that the soldiers had closed the checkpoint hours before my arrival. The air was close to freezing and it was one of the heaviest rainy days thus far. It was a cold, frustrating, messy scene. Many began to chant “God is great” and made victory hand signs.

Israeli soldiers ran guns-first into the crowd, pushed the people onto the side walls and pressed automatic weapons against chests and faces. They grabbed six young men and slammed their bodies against a solid wall. One of them struggled and he was kicked and spat on for good measure before the group was taken into detention to wait for the border police to come and make arrests. The Palestinians got rowdier. Kids threw tantrums. The soldiers shoved and shouted the people into two rows that were so crowded that I was squished between all the people around me to the point of great discomfort. There was no space to set my travel bag on the ground, there wasn’t even enough space to move my arms without a massive struggle. My luggage was heavy and I had to drop it in a puddle, the only place available.

I first started noticing the collapse of normal reality after about three hours of being in this position. Strange phenomena began happening without clinical explanation. They let the first person through the turn style. We watched as a single soldier gave a slow body search, checked the man’s bags and scanned him with a metal detector before he was allowed to continue on to the identity check and questioning. It became time for the next person to pass through. Everyone was pushing towards the front and soldiers barked at people to watch their mouth and to stay within the ridiculous margins. I was too consumed by the physical discomfort to notice at first but there was a slightly audible “BAAAH”, “BAAAAAAAH”. Three of the people in the line opposite to me, whom were apparently of a creative persuasion, were making sheep noises. The satirical gesture was ingenious if you would rather be beaten in public than take another daily humiliation quietly.

This episode of my life, traveling in Palestine, Israel and Jordan, has sent me to the brink of madness and paranoia. There is even a clinical term for people who go wacko here and start to believe that they are the messiah returned. While I haven’t gone quite so far as to be diagnosed with “Jerusalem syndrome”; I need you to help me determine if I should actually admit myself to the Bethlehem mental hospital or if it’s the environment around me that’s actually crazy. Or maybe I am experimenting with magical realism in order to demonstrate something intangible about the whole situation here that can’t be explained by mere journalistic prattle. I don’t know. Only you can choose. In any case, my life has been comparable to a high speed hamster experiment ever since I arrived that first night in Amman and buildings started blowing up. I have been in Nablus for considerable time and my life and work there has occupied a space between an emotional powder keg shared with dear friends and the weird feeling of waking up nearly every night to the sound of the army shelling the refugee camp. But that’s a comparably small source of internal confusion at this point.

I got a real education when a German journalist friend took me to the American Colony hotel bar in Jerusalem for the sole purpose of watching highly paid members of the foreign press get drunk. The experience answered some of my burning questions about why the world spins and I recommend a night at American Colony to anyone with a strong stomach for other people’s moral compromises and personal failure. We caught the good people who bring you the evening news loudly reenacting their childhood problems and making passes on highly powdered young assistants, clinging to their own seats after too much southern comfort. The stereotypes about journalists are true, they mostly just hang out in hotel bars, international events play out in dry sarcasm and modern wars like Iraq are primed for family entertainment. The holy land is always on film and that is a strange place to be, a place where news creates itself and a lot of people do loony things just for the attention.

The other week some friends from Olympia received a visit by militants in Rafah whom explained that the whole group was to be kidnapped to pressure the Palestinian Authority to release an al-Aqsa brigades leader. The parents of Rachel Corrie happened to be around, they had what was certainly an awkward conversation which miraculously ended with the armed people leaving and being somewhat polite and apologetic about the whole incident. The seven Olympians had to be driven out of the Gaza strip in a siren blasting convoy of Palestinian police vehicles. The event was indicative of the chaos in the Palestinian areas and the near-impossible job of the PA when armed factions empowered during the heat of the uprising hold the balance of power in some places, especially in lock-down Gaza, although that is nothing compared to the difficulty that the PA faces when Israel blockades and violates the areas they are supposed to control.

I had to cancel my own trip to Gaza because of the chain of foreigner abductions, even after completing the time consuming security clearance process with Israeli border authorities. There was similar problems in Nablus when the al-Aqsa brigades, an armed Fatah offshoot, declared that international elections observers would be abducted if they did not leave the region. They marched through Balata camp shooting in the air, which would be normal, except that they were tearing down posters of candidate Mustafa Barghouti having declared him an enemy of the refugees. The Israeli occupation and it’s response, the intifada, has left the West Bank and Gaza militarized, emotionally traumatized, economically destroyed and ghettoized. The elections and their subsequent drama play out in some complicated ways under these circumstances. I was in Nablus when Hamas swept the municipal elections on December 16th. Hamas won an overwhelming victory in Nablus in particular. They held a thousands-strong rally in the city center after sweeping up seventy three percent of the vote.

It was a typical Hamas performance in most ways but on this day the people decked out in green had a look of jubilence that you usually don’t expect. They were so jubilant in fact that a man with green Hamas ribbons and religious markers grabbed my crotch and bolted into the crowd before I could kick him. It was a weird testimony to things underneath the surface amidst a hugely religious scene with people jumping up and down and chanting on cue. The Hamasniks listened to the newly elected municipality leaders speak and to a musical act, with a quite uniform women’s section in the back corner. “Mahmoud Abbas must respect Islam as the choice of the people” was a major message and of course there’s the call and response slogan “Islam is the solution” that echoed through the streets in downtown Nablus all evening long. Hamas is making major inroads on the dominant Fatah movement because people are clinging to any alternative to the PA bureaucracy that is removed from the Palestinian street. Because people think Hamas will make sense out of the internal chaos in Palestine and because they appear the most uncompromising in the face of continued Israeli suffocation of the territories.

The movement responsible for most of the suicide attacks during the Intifada is running on a “law and order” ticket and dropped the parts of their charter calling for the end of the Israeli state out of their election platform. The irony isn’t lost on anyone and it might be especially confusing to people who get their information from Bill O’reilly. Hamas makes contradictory statements all the time about whether or not they want to recognize the green line, but at the very least they are cooling off a bit for the election campaign. Some leaders are saying they are willing to talk to Israel and the group has taken it’s armed people off the street for the time being. Either way, people are definitely latching on to the Islamic upstarts for the moment, people are frustrated that the situation is not improving and a lot of people have left Fatah because of the timid leadership of Abu Mazen and because of the headache of the internal split.

No one knows exactly what’s going to happen next. All the militant factions have called off the cease-fire. In America we never hear the context in which such things happen. Many people believe that we’re John Wayne chasing down the terrorists who want to behead our children. They hate us for our freedom and our macaroni and cheese and Johnny charges into the sunset with Aaron Copland’s Fanfare for the Working Man on soundtrack. It’s all crazy, but the news people keep running around in stationary wheels in glass cages with three and three quarters cups of extra soft sawdust.

Four hours after my arrival at Huwara checkpoint it was finally my turn to go through the turn style. I walked up to the soldier posted on the far end and he asked me questions. Straight to the point, “what the hell were you doing in Nablus?”, he asked and I told him that I had been visiting the university. He shouted at me that no one is allowed to enter Nablus without military permission. The soldier asked a few more questions and I gave him a few more answers and eventually I moved on to the next soldier who searched my soaking bag. Another soldier checked my passport and my visa status and typed some things in a computer after asking me the same questions all over again before waving me through. Final it became time to cross through the checkpoint and I walked out through the lengthy fenced exit with barbed wire decor. I walked into the rain pour in an exhausted and delirious state. I eventually had to cross through five more checkpoints to get to Jerusalem [never quite made it to Bethlehem], but before I was able to do that, I had the strangest experience of my entire life.

My head was feeling light and my eyes were bulging just slightly out of there sockets. Bits of sparkling dust were falling out of the sky, and I looked up. My jaw dropped when I saw the majestic swirling pattern of light, mostly red and blue. My mind struggled to make sense out of the intricate pixels. They gradually formed into a human-like figure. A messenger of the lord. There was no doubt about it. An angel of mercy. I was paralyzed by the sight of the angel. Its face was innocent and its hair was perfectly groomed into one completely linear swishy. There was no trace of abuse or otherwise human influence in the hair. Each individual strand was carefully constructed and gelled with attention to possible gnots and split ends. It was this moment when I heard the most dangerous, possibly the most disturbing words that I have ever heard in my life to this point. “I have come back to you and i’m here to take you on a ride you won’t soon forget” and he stared straight into my most excruciating thoughts.

I couldn’t believe my eyes or his, but I recognized the guy from a strange experience from last year. The name jogged bad memories. It was James Reynalds, a mideast correspondent with the British Broadcasting Corporation. I remembered that swishy and traced it back to the summer of 04 on a maddening afternoon in Balata camp. Five army jeeps were parked on the main street. They were shelling at buildings and people on the street, which was a kind of weather in those days. Palestinian kids were ducking in and out of alleyways to toss stones and sometimes to flash the flag of their nation-to-be. I was trying to figure out what was going on with some elderly folks who were being held hostage in their home by soldiers. James Reynalds and a blonde woman with an expensive-looking camera walked up and interrupted my friend’s cell phone conversation with the cred crescent society.

“You guys have no business here”, he said while pulling out a professionally printed BBC handbook. “I have a handbook”, as if to say ‘I’m whitey the great hero so leave the monkey business to me’. “Do you have a handbook? Then get out of my way”. Both characters had absolutely well-groomed hair and everybody noticed it. My friend pointed out that the army was shooting at civilian children and damaging property, to which dear James coughed “we” are not here to cover clashes. At that we never heard from the the guy again. He disappeared with his blonde camerawoman into the occupied house that we were trying to gain access to for over an hour. The soldiers opened the door for the pair without much questioning. The whole game is about access, my children, access is the thing.

Later on I read an al-Jazeera news item about this one brave British reporter that got abducted in an occupied house in Balata. It was totally staged but a brilliant career move nevertheless. If my memory is working, a photograph prominently featuring James’ swishy became a small fad for a few seconds in the attention span of the media circuit. It brings us back to the moment where the merciful angel is staring me down with something like black tar heroin in his eyes. The thing knocked me half-conscious with the largest chainsaw imaginable in this year of our lord. James put me under his wing and dragged me through time into a purple vehicle with removeable roof. “This here is God’s sacrilegious Cadillac”. He got out to pimp his ride and the machine went flying when he climbed in the front seat and pressed a few buttons. That’s what my relationship with journalists is often like, for the record. They represent a bit of the individualistic grit that I admire in people and I can’t seem to avoid hanging around them in this corner of the world, but i’m held captive to their scumhood.

And there I was. Held captive in the rear seat of God’s sacrilegious Cadillac, my should being slowly sucked my a person accountable only to the large sums of cash being wired in from a prestigious news organization. The merciful angel whispered something horrible into my ear. “Look at yourself” he said although I was confused and I wanted to go home. “Look down”. The car had stopped at an intersection between life and death and the ground beneath us was a scene from my life. It was from a month ago and it hurt to watch. The center of Nablus. ‘The circle’. Hundreds of young men crowding in the streets. They tossed pieces of rubble, burning bags of garbage, old flower pots at the armored military vehicles that were rushing up and down the streets. More than twenty jeeps. The unmistakable crack of machine gun shells in rapid sequence. “Watch yourself freak out as the kid next to you gets shot”, James coughed again, “because that is enlightenment”.

It guy on the ground doing a half-crouch was me. Bullets were hitting the building opposite to me. There was a pause and I realized that the jeeps were around the corner and they could not see what they were shooting at. Two guys on the street ahead of me fell to the ground, one after the other, and a medical crew dashed towards them. Next it was a kid only a few feet in front of me. Blood exploded out a hole in his stomach. I moved to help carry him into a red crescent ambulance. Three or four minutes went by before there was another gunshot sequence. A boy in his early teens was shot in the groin and he screamed all the way into the stretcher. I watched my one month younger self panic, there being no way out of the situation when soldiers started shelling the same street from both directions. The tear gas and the machine guns didn’t seem to discourage the shabab from running into the line of fire for the chance to put a dent in an Israeli jeep with a piece of rubble. That’s how desperate the people are. That’s how serious the place gets.

James Reynalds extruded a scaly tongue that split into three split parts. He hissed like a rich maniac after twelve cups of instant coffee. “This whole country is holey hell” he asserted, forgetting his manners. I wanted to say it isn’t true but he started force feeding me American dairy products. The merciful angel pried my mouth open with cheese genetically enhanced to make children grow up depressed. I resisted with a blunt object but the toxicity of the dairy destroyed my defenses and I dropped into a coma. The normal world melted almost entirely and my mind was transported into another recent memory. I watched myself yell at some Palestinian children – “hallas” and “achterem halak”. Five boys were beating a younger one senseless. They had backed him into a wall in Balata. They were laying it into his face with open hands before I intervened with my friend.

The younger one was covering his face with his arms, too embarrassed from crying to respond to my efforts to comfort him before running away. As it turns out, the kids were playing a game akin to Cowboys and Indians. The kids playing the “Israelis” tracked down this “Palestinian” kid and beat him as a test of will. He was to gain some special social status if he could take the blows without freaking out. As it turns out again, as things often turn out exactly the way we do not expect it, the boy was embarrassed by my intervention in the situation. Balata kids reenact the theater of war and social constipation that occurs daily in their environment. The biggest problem with the whole bad show is that it destroys all the actors from the inside. When you have had over twenty of your best friends die, as with my friend Mohammad Ayyesh, you will never stop smoking.

In Balata there are women whose husbands keep them captive indoors because the live where the clashes happen and there are always nasty weather reports forecasting soldiers. The youngest generation in the camp, especially those born in the last five years, is rife with signs of mental retardation and malnutrition. The world became like a weather chart or a blue screen and James was pointing out all the nasty shit with a tantrum stick. Israelis ethnically cleansed the whole scene in 1948 and the untouchables were put in overcrowded camps that began as tent grids. The 1967 six day war resulted in military occupation and cowboy settlements. The whole Mideast has since been a chain reaction of bad news and television broadcasts. I have spilled hot tea on my pants.

James whipped out his chainsaw. “This that and the other thing” – the machine with the words ‘oversize load’ screeched – “is God’s way of letting us know that we are cockroaches”. I was at my mental limit at this moment and my arm reached for the angel’s hair-swishy. I wasn’t thinking about it. I had long given up the idea that i’m in control of my own life by the time my fingers had, like, totally messed with the fine British hair. I screamed although my voice was scratchy and my soul was zonked from whole milk. I remembered that the universe was subjective and that grammar has ruined everything. Five words shot up from instinct when my throat couldn’t take any more screaming. “Cockroaches can survive in space”.

It was my turn. Before either of us could understand anything [at all] I had already taken the tantrum stick and the car keys. “Ariel Sharon is on his way out and that’s the final sign that the rapture is on its way”. God will take the entire political and intellectual leadership of the world and put them all in a small chamber where they will be served nothing but cheap wine in Turkish bathrooms with fluorescent lighting. A couple weeks ago in Balata “a three year old I had barely met handed me a plastic ring and it was the most beautiful hand-me-down I have ever received”. I have met introspective people on each side of the green line that understand that politics is a waste of breath and that we all breathe the same air. The morning after I returned to Nablus I was overwhelmed by how many people remembered me. My friend Homad was brought to tears, it was a happy moment even though he hasn’t been able to leave Nablus for years.

My squabbling came from some deep ridiculous place. I have seen Arabs and Jews hold hands in the same high grade tear gas in Bil’in, with the same determination to free the ghetto. I know of humans who are hunted by the Israeli army who have never touched a gun but they spend half their lives evading capture. Yet they show up at their buddies’ wedding parties and help with the clean-up. In the most desperate places in the world there are people who never give up living life and that’s called faith. I’m here with friends I know from Olympia and Bellingham and from all over the world. We are the neo-postmodern puppy litter of David Bowie. We’re here to work and intermingle with the puppy litters of Fairuz because all of us know that history is progressive, that borders are disappearing gradually, that races are forged in toothpaste and that we are not enemies. Laugh at it all, once in a while. We have to keep living and laughing in our hearts.

The streets of Balata camp are lined with posters. Faces of the some three hundred and sixty martyrs of the camp from the past five years. The angel of mercy and I stroll up the main street and wonder about it all. Why can’t we be honest with ourselves when we want to know why there are people in the Mideast who have lost it and would hijack an airplane or blow themselves up on a public bus. No number of metal detectors will help us with this one. Maybe some day in the future we will consider asking ‘what up’ before biting all the abused children on the playground and threatening them with Guantanamo. That evening all the residents of Balata crowded around the purple Cadillac parked outside the martyrs’ cemetery. We took turns wrapping up the defective angel in colorful yarn and sent him away. He departed in the back trunk of God’s sacrilegious Cadillac, which drifted in good time to the place where angels are repaired. Later I purged the dairy from my system like it was the residue of high school education –

-which brings me out of the long nasty trip and I spent half a week in a nice bed in Haifa trying to get over it.

(Xander’s postscript sent a day later…)
I checked my email today and I was flattered to discover that a small handful of people actually took my email seriously. I’m enjoying the thought that several people thought that I had actually gone psychotic and had an angel of mercy come to me at a checkpoint in the form of BBC correspondent James Reynalds.

Everything in the piece actually happened – except for the whole mental breakdown and the angel taking me on a ride and so on and so forth. But my experience of this place has been crazy in its own right. The place is weird. I bring you to a not-so-subtle cue that I gave you guys ahead of time that there’s something coming up that’s not real. Most people caught it. I got about forty emails expressing delight about how satirical the whole thing was. To my continued amazement, twelve people took it the story literally and advised me in heartfelt sincerity to jump on the next possible flight home.

Paragraph four. Sentence four. “…maybe I am experimenting with magical realism in order to demonstrate something intangible about the whole situation here that can’t be explained by mere journalistic prattle”. If you didn’t catch that, it doesn’t mean you are a horrible person, but you could familiarize yourself with Gabriel Garcia Marquez. This could be one of those “war of the worlds” situations like when H.G. Wells got cut off when explaining that the alien invasion is not really happening.

Someday I will take my new found skill to new levels and incite massive panic in westlake center. In any case, I assumed that even people who miss the warning would understand the satirical nature of “Strange ride through Palestine” as soon as the angel of mercy starts force feeding me “American dairy products genetically designed to make children grow up depressed” or when he takes me on that first ride in “God’s sacriligious Cadillac”.

I’m having a strange moment, realizing that no matter what I write, no matter how rediculous it is, people will believe it provided I am in this corner of the world. That’s because American perceptions of the Middle East are dead serious. My Israeli and Palestinian friends who read it thought it was hilarious and recognized it instantaneously as satire. Funny that. There’s tragety going on everywhere, for sure. A lot of people really do go crazy here but I don’t think anyone hallucinates themselves into the captivity of television journalists with tongues that split into three sections.

People in Palestine are dealing with the tragedy by laughing. Often it’s the only option that people have. It’s what people do to keep themselves from going crazy. The situation is redundant. I am a little bored of writing these reports every time I happen to be around when there is an explosion, an invasion, a shooting here, an enclosed ghetto over there… And I feel like that’s not really showing you the true madness of the situation. The “Holy Land” is so screwed up, so essentially weird, that there might as well be BBC journalists coming to checkpoints in the form of angels to abduct foreigners and take them on rides. Oh well. I love you all.

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.