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.

IWPS: “I am getting tired of occupation now.”

Marisol’s Blog
Originally published by the International Women’s Peace Service

On the second day of the bombing in Gaza, Mahmoud Al Zahar, a leader from Hamas, made a call to end rocket attacks on israelis. Even so, israel has continued to assault Gaza, from the air and from the ground. Today marks the second day that thousands of people are without electricity. The school that was bombed by an american f-16 was targeted because it was founded by Sheik Ahmed Yassin, a Hamas leader. ( what do the kids have to do with that?)

The Palestinian authority is joining israel in blaming Hamas for the explosion in Jebalya Refugee camp almost a week ago. Witnesses have said it was clearly the work of israeli military forces. A twelve year old boy has passed away from the injuries he suffered that day.

The massive raids and arrests continue, now totalling over 400 people, last night, adding 12 more to the prisons- from Bethlehem, Jenin, and Nablus. 2 men were shot in Burqin as they tried to resist the military invasion of their village with arms.

Yesterday, the IOF focused on ” Islamic Charities and Schools” in the West Bank Area. In one of the schools near Hebron, the english teacher says the occupation forces took all 25 of their computers.

The soldiers did come to our area, we met with family members of two of the young men taken. Like many who are being taken, they are not political party candidates or even old enough to vote, so part of this mass arrest is business as usual for israel, under the cover of “seeking out militant party leaders”.

The events in Gaza, combined with the raids and arrests in various places in Palestine, come just before elections- smaller scale elections, then larger scale ones are coming afterwards. It seems as though neither P.A. or Israel wants to see success any political party who supports military-type defense in response to military attacks (although of course the means that anyone has in Palestine do not compare with the 4th largest military in the world). Judging by what I think I see, some of these parties that are currently being targeted were actually getting a fair amount of support from people. (Maybe they are tired of getting attacked and abused while their leaders shake hands with their oppressors?) I don’t know, and it’s not really my place to comment……….

Two days ago I had the opportunity to participate in a very inspiring march against the aparthied wall, with a contingent of women and girls (young girls, like 6,7,8, with their little fists up in the air;). After we got to the point of facing the soldiers directly, some of the women defiantly told them, taile, (come here!) and motioned to them to come on over towards us. Throughout, women and young women were chanting on the bullhorn, like the woman I told you about who got her wrist broken by the soldiers a few months ago.

I am getting tired of occupation now, so I cannot even imagine more then 50 years of it. It’s nauseating and infuriating. Thanks for protesting on Sept. 24. Seriously.

Peace to you all.
Marisol

Closed Military Neighborhood

Internationals challenge Israeli repression in Tel Rumeida

by Joe Carr

Due to the effectiveness of our work in Tel Rumeida, the Israeli military and police have increased their efforts to rid the area of internationals. Volunteers from a variety of international organizations have been doing full-time accompaniment, documentation and physical intervention work to deter constant settler violence in Tel Rumeida, a Hebron neighborhood colonized by around sixty of the most fanatic Israeli settlers.

Volunteers from the Tel Rumeida Project and the International Solidarity Movement have been especially targeted for violence by settlers, and harassment by Israeli military and police.

Israeli Police detained four international volunteers on the evening of Sept. 9 while they were documenting and intervening in Israeli settler attacks on Palestinians. At the Kiryat Arba Settlement police station, officers said that they weren’t arresting the internationals, but wanted to make it clear that they would not allow internationals to live in Tel Rumeida anymore. After two hours, the police agreed that they could spend one more night in their apartment but could not go out. “If I see you in the street again, I’ll arrest you” an officer threatened.

When they arrived back at the house, they found two Israeli soldiers blocking the entrance. The soldiers took their passports and demanded that they unlock the house and let them search it. The internationals refused, and then four soldiers began banging on the doors and windows trying to break in, so they began yelling at them to stop. The soldiers stopped abruptly and left.

This morning, we went out at 6:45AM as we do every day to help protect Palestinian girls on their way to Cordova School, located right across from an Israeli Settlement. Afterwards, we began our usual patrols around Tel Rumeida, being especially vigilant because it is Saturday, the settlers’ most violent day. By 11AM, every group of internationals had been stopped by Israeli police and military and threatened with arrest if they didn’t leave immediately. They explained that nearly all of Tel Rumeida had been declared a “Closed Military Zone”, which only residents are permitted to enter. Our house falls within the closed zone, and we tried to argue that we are residents, to no avail.

Around noon, Tel Rumeida Project volunteer Luna and I went to buy food from a store located next to a military post. The Israeli police were there waiting for us, suddenly excited that they’d finally get to arrest us. However, when the commander came and we explained that we were only trying to buy food, he let us go assuring us that we’d be arrested if we went out again.

We must continue to document and protect Palestinians from Israeli violence and we refuse to be banned from Tel Rumeida. Three volunteers from the International Solidarity Movement (two Swedes and one Brit) decided that they were willing to challenge the ban by getting arrested and taking it to court. We decided I would videotape from a nearby hill, and the three would do a patrol in an area near soldiers and refuse to leave when threatened with arrest.

I positioned myself on the hill with the camera as the three set-off. “May the force be with you” I hollered, right as a passing Israeli military patrol came strolling down the hill. They noticed me of course, so I waved and showed them my video-camera so they wouldn’t think I was a sniper. The six soldiers all came up and detained me of course, while I noticed the other three disappear around a corner down the hill out of sight. “What a great plan” I thought.

Turns out, the other three had gone to intervene in a situation of settler violence down the street when they got a call informing them that tomorrow is the change-over of power in Gaza and the media will be very distracted. They aborted their mission and headed back up the hill to find me surrounded by soldiers. Eventually, the police came and again explained that this area is closed and I’m not allowed to be in it. I maintained that I misunderstood and thought that I just couldn’t be in the street, so they let me go after 15 minutes.

We stayed the rest of the night under house arrest, planning to go out again the next day as the Closed Military Zone order expired at midnight.

On the morning of Sept. 11, four internationals set off to Cordova School to protect the children, while Luna and I went up the hill to patrol another area of constant settler violence. The police arrived after about 10 minutes. An officer I recognized from the day before pointed at Luna and said “I’m arresting her now, she knows she can’t be here.” We protested that the Closed Military Zone order had expired and that we could legally be there, but the officer threatened to arrest us anyway. Luna warned him that if he arrested her illegally she would call her lawyer and file a complaint against him personally, and the police then got significantly less aggressive. We tried to walk away, and the officer yelled and ordered us to stay. We waited while he talked on his radio, and then he said we could go but warned that he would arrest us if he saw us again.

The four internationals at the school had also been hassled, but the police admitted that there was no current closure order but they were going to get one. By 9AM, they had the new closure order which they said was good until 6PM tomorrow (normally they’re only for 24 hours but this was a special one).

Meanwhile, teachers and students from Cordova School refused to pass through the recently fortified Tel Rumeida checkpoint. Palestinians entering Tel Rumeida have been forced to pass through an armored trailer with electric sliding doors and metal detectors for about two weeks now. Fed up with the inconvenience and humiliation, around 25 Palestinians demanded that they be allowed to go around the checkpoint. Israeli soldiers said they’d allow the children and four pregnant women to go around, but not the others. The group decided they would not be divided and all sat down and refused to leave until school ended. School let out early because three armed Israeli settlers parked outside the school in a pickup truck, which terrified the young girls.

Three internationals decided to violate the new closure order and join the teachers protest from the Tel Rumeida side of the checkpoint, and to accompany them to school if they got through. After around a half hour of threats, the police finally arrested the three. They are currently being held in the police station at Kiryat Arba Settlement in Hebron.

The arrested internationals will likely be held for several days and be pressured to sign conditions that they will never enter the area again (or possibly Palestine at all). ISM lawyers are working on it, and I will keep you updated. Meanwhile, we will remain under house-arrest and have to sneak in and out to get food and internet access. But we will not be intimidated into leaving, but only double our efforts to support Palestinian resistance to Israeli colonization.

Does this deserve a “Sh’hechiyanu”?

by Lawrence Zweig

Here is a prayer that traditional Jews say when they do something for the first time in any specific year, and even in their life.

Last Friday I got my first dose of tear-gas and sound-bombs. It was at a demonstration against the occupation, the wall and other inhumanities, in the West Bank Palestinian village of Bil’in which is near the Israeli town of Modi’in, the Israeli colony of Modi’in Ilit and west of Ramallah.

The Bil’in protests in this form have been going on for over 8 months now, every Friday and sometimes during the week. My luck was that the soldiers decided (were ordered) to march into the autonomous Palestinian village before the demonstration could begin.

The demonstrators come from Bil’in, but are backed-up with international activists from the International Solidarity Movemant (ISM), the International Women’s Peace Service (IWPS), Israeli Anarchists Against the Wall, and Women in Black among others.

The provocative actions (occupation, wall, presence in the village) of the soldiers escalated to the point that drew reactions which, as the soldiers know in advance, means defensive actions on the Palestinian side such as stone-throwing (the Israeli system leaves them with almost no other way to defend themselves). The internationals try their best to defuse the situation by confronting the soldiers with demands to leave the village, lower their weapons and end the provocations, but were met with rubber bullets, tear gas, sound bombs, detentions, beatings, and the threat of even more drastic measures.

Once the soldiers introduced the violence, it was difficult to stop. The Israeli protesters often took the front lines shielding the others and confronting the soldiers with chants and yells of “go away”, “go home”, “stop this violence”, etc. in Hebrew and tried to put themselves between the soldiers and the others.

The soldiers, having no legitimate grounds for being there, pulled back. This gave the demonstrators the chance to come together and decide what to do, which led back to the “normal” Friday demonstration. These demos almost always end in violence directed at the villagers from the Israeli military to the protesters and the villagers.

I decided to say the last half of the prayer, leaving the first part that mentions God out.

Namaste

Tel Rumeida – Stones & Struggle

By Joe Carr

The Tel Rumeida neighborhood of Hebron is a major flashpoint of tension between Palestinians and Israeli colonial settlers. Around forty Israeli soldiers protect over sixty of the most racist and violent of Israeli settlers, forcing over one thousand Palestinians (whose families have lived in Tel Rumeida for hundreds of years) to live in a virtual prison. Fences, walls, and checkpoints block every entrance to Tel Rumeida, and there are Israeli soldier posts throughout the neighborhood. The closures make commerce virtually impossible, and it is difficult for any non-residents to visit their Tel Rumeida friends and family. Many families have moved out for this reason alone.

Even more troublesome than the constant prison-camp conditions are the fanatical settlers who regularly harass and attack their Palestinian neighbors. Palestinians live in a constant state of terror from being beaten, stoned, robbed, and threatened with guns but they refuse to be forced out of their homes or let it interfere with their daily life.

Several international activists from the Tel Rumeida Project live fulltime in Tel Rumeida. They work with volunteers from the International Solidarity Movement, Ecumenical Accompaniment Program for Palestine & Israel, the Christian Peacemaker Teams, and a variety of Israeli groups to accompany, document, and physically intervene to deter Israeli attacks and pressure authorities to better protect Palestinians and prosecute criminal settlers. Israeli soldiers and settlers regularly harass, threaten, intimidate, and stone the international and Israeli activists, but Palestinian children say they now feel safer playing outside their homes.

Even more encouraging, is the potential for a progressive change in the climate. Unlike other accompaniment groups, the goal of the Tel Rumeida Project is to support and empower Palestinians as they stand up against this colonial oppression.

For instance, last Saturday we got a call that settler children were throwing rocks at Palestinian passers-by. When we arrived, we found five 9-13 year-old settler boys hanging out in the Israeli military post. Palestinians immediately came out of their houses to tell us how the settler boys had just stoned them while the soldiers watched. The settler boys started throwing more rocks, some from inside the military post, and we began arguing with the soldiers that they should protect the Palestinians (supposedly a part of their job). The soldiers argued with eachother about what to do while we supported the Palestinians, including a mother and daughter, as they confronted the settler boys. Palestinians yelled at the settlers and soldiers for putting them through all this, and the Israelis were visibly intimidated. More settler children came out and began throwing stones, so we stood in front of the Palestinians. I got hit pretty hard in the leg, but the soldiers started trying to stop the settler boys, which made the soldiers a target for their stones. The situation escalated, but our presence supported the Palestinians’ expression of their outrage and prevented Israeli soldiers from repressing this Palestinian resistance.

Cordova School is a Palestinian girls’ school located directly across from Israeli settlement apartments and a settler school. Settler children often harass Palestinian students and teachers as they pass by. Yesterday was the first day of school for Palestinians, so we brought a team of internationals and media to accompany the children. Two Israeli military jeeps and a police jeep arrived shortly after us. All in all, there were 25 internationals, 12 soldiers, and four police officers to get around 100 Palestinian girls to school.

There were fewer internationals and soldiers for the girls’ afternoon walk home, and the settlers escalated their attacks. They threw stones and eggs from their apartment windows, while others hollered insults and threatened us. The Israeli police (who’s job it is to arrest settler law-breakers) also became a target of the settler violence, but they did nothing to stop it. We continued patrolling the area for the rest of the day, trying to have a presence in all the areas where settlers and Palestinians interact. “We’re like human security cameras,” one activist commented, “we never let the settlers out of our sight until we know another international can see them”.

A little before 2pm, several internationals had to leave and we went out to meet their replacements. On our way back in, we got stopped at the recently upgraded Tel Rumeida checkpoint. What used to be a green tower with concrete blockades is now a fortified trailer with metal detectors and electronic sliding doors. They’ve even tried to make it prettier by painting it to look like the white stone of the surrounding ancient buildings. An Israeli soldier at the checkpoint said that they would no longer allow in any internationals that are part of organizations, “Only tourists and residents” he said. We tried to explain that we are residents and have a house in Tel Rumeida, but because he had seen us doing accompaniment and documentation work he refused us entry. To go around the checkpoint, we had to wind through back allies, scale a wall, and crawl under grapevines.

During this time, a group of settlers took advantage of our absence and attacked several Palestinians. We found a 13-year-old Palestinian boy with cuts and bruises on his arms and stomach. He said a group of around 20 settlers in their late teens had surrounded him and beat him with sticks for around ten minutes. Other settler youths threw large stones a group of Palestinians, injuring an older Palestinian woman’s leg. We accompanied the Palestinians to file reports with the police, and then became more diligent with our patrols.

Things came to a head around 5pm, when a large group of settler children, some in masks, (observed from the hill by their parents and other settler adults), began throwing large stones and other debris at Palestinians, internationals, and Israeli soldiers in the area. One international was injured on her hand when she blocked a sharp rock from hitting her head. When the police arrived, the settlers briefly dispersed but then quickly regrouped. They began intensely stoning the police, who did nothing but videotape and stay in the protection of their armored jeeps. More police arrived and drove into the settlement area, and eventually an officer grabbed a settler boy. A small riot ensued, and settlers attacked the police officers.

Later in the evening, Palestinians reported that settler boys intensely stoned two Palestinian homes. Saturday, the Jewish holy day Shabbat, is a busy day for settler religious fanatics.

All in all, we hope that the settlers now know that their days of terrorizing Palestinians with impunity are over. Though the Israeli violence continues, Palestinians are now armed with international and Israeli activists, cameras, video-cameras, potential lawsuits, and contacts with the international community. I feel privileged to be able to stand with Palestinians in their struggle, it’s an honor to be stoned along side them.

Read Joe’s blog, Lovinrevolution.

Qawawis and the mustawtaneen

Qawawis is a small village with big problems. After an Israeli court ruled that villagers had the right to live on their land, settlers have harassed them with humiliation and violence. ISM and other organizations have kept a constant presence in the village.

Here’s an account from one of the volunteers who recently stayed in Qawawis. — via thismuchicansayistrue, an ISM media coordinator’s blog.