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.

A Family from Saida

By L.

We met with a family from Saida at the home of one of their relatives. Here, we were filled in on the situation. They recounted that the Israeli army had occupied the house of Sharif Abdul Ghani four days ago. Whilst stationed there, some of the soldiers came further into the village and raided the house of Sharif’s brother Shafik, a martyr who was killed by the Israeli Occupation Force two months ago. It was midnight when they woke up his widow and their four children. The soldiers searched everywhere in the house. In the clothes cupboard was a packet containing US $4,624 that was being saved for the son, a two year old boy, to have an operation on the hole in his heart when he is old enough. As the soldiers left, they warned the woman not to talk to anyone or to use the phone. She was scared, and when she discovered that the money had been stolen she waited until about 5am when she called people to tell them what had happened. She went with her brother’s wife to the occupied house to complain about the theft, but the soldiers laughed at her and told her she was lying. She called the Palestinian District Co-ordination Office, which takes people’s complaints to the Israelis. She also informed B’tselem, an Israeli human rights organization, in the hope that they will be able to follow up on it in her behalf.

We were in the village of Saida, outside Tulkarm, which has suffered tremendously under the Israeli military. Soldiers have occupied the same house repeatedly. We listened as the family told us their tragic history: two brothers killed, one in prison.

The family wanted us to go to the house, speak to the soldiers about the money, and to try to persuade them to let one of the family members go inside to get some belongings. They also wanted a chance to confront the soldiers about their being in the house in the first place. We set off with a group of about twenty men, women and children.

When we arrived at the bottom of the driveway of the occupied house, the soldiers started yelling at us to go away and fired into the air to try to scare us off. Obviously they did not anticipate the indomitable spirit of the old mother who was with us, who slowly made her way towards the house regardless of the yelling and shooting, accompanied by we four internationals and her son, the rightful owner the house.

The soldiers were edgy and not at all happy about the group of people half hidden behind a bush at the bottom of the driveway. At one point the soldiers announced that they would fire at the floor to try to make the people leave. Luckily they refrained. The old woman shouted up at them in Arabic, which at least two of the soldiers appeared to understand well.

Eventually the group below us disappeared and the man who remained was permitted to go inside and collect the things he wanted. He also made the soldiers follow him as he fed the pigeons. Fantastic. At this point, a photographer who was present tried to take some photos of the man, flanked by two soldiers. He was told by the commander not to, because “It looks bad….One man with two soldiers.” I couldn’t quite get my head around this statement. Of course it looks bad. The whole thing looks bad. It is bad!

The most laughable quote of the day, though, came from an American soldier from New York. When we questioned them about the stolen money he replied: “Israel has the most ethical army in the world. We would never do that.” We refrained from listing countless atrocities, not least the occupation itself…

I am wondering whether there is any way to raise the necessary money for the baby’s operation. His mother was with us for the afternoon, and she was a person that I felt an immediate affinity with. On the way to the house she showed me the spot where her husband was killed. The car he was in remains wreckage on the hillside below. On the way back she pointed out to me the place where her husband used to sit with his friends, on a terrace underneath some olive trees. How does she cope with seeing these things whenever she walks through the village?

Sharing Each Others’ Pain

By Peggy Gish
CPT Hebron

“A donkey was stolen by an Israeli settler from the Karmel settlement, and we saw it inside the settlement compound. Please come with us to photograph it for evidence when we make our complaint.” two Palestinians asked the CPT and Operation Dove team in the South Hebron Hills village of At-Tuwani.

Two days after an Israeli soldier and a settler told a Palestinian family they were not allowed to use their land either for their sheep or for raising vegetable crops, team members watched nearby while three Palestinian children continued to let their flocks graze.

Another day, the team videotaped Israeli settlers combining and hauling away wheat planted by a Palestinian family on their land, while Israeli soldiers watched and did nothing to stop them.

By mid-June, an unofficial tally counted at least 57 adult and 46 young sheep and goats from the villages of At-Tuwani and Mufakara have died from poison Israeli settlers spread on Palestinian grazing land in March and April of 2005.

As I leave the West Bank tomorrow to return to work with the CPT team in Iraq, I can’t help but think of the differences and similarities between life under occupation in both places. In Iraq there is an inadequate supply of medical equipment and medicines, while in the West Bank, the people are blocked when they try to reach clinics or hospitals. In the West Bank the water is allocated in an unfair proportion favoring Israeli Jews. In Iraq, the available water is mostly impure. In Iraq there isn’t the overt confiscating of the homes and land, but their economy is hurt by U.S. economic policies that allow for systematic takeover of natural resources and exploitation by international corporations.

Palestinian families in At-Tuwani tell us, “Yes, we have our problems but the problems in Iraq are much greater.” In turn, Iraqis tell me, “The Palestinian occupation is the ‘mother of all problems,’ and needs to be resolved in order to have peace in the whole region.” I am impressed by the ability of the Iraqi and Palestinian people and many other compassionate people around the world to look beyond their own troubles and be able to care for the sufferings of others. In both places, we are encouraged by organizations and individuals who take significant personal risks to work non-violently.

Visiting Ramzi

By Philippe Eli Fabrikant

Today three of us went to visit Ramzi Yasin in Muqassed Hospital in the Intensive Care Unit. Ramzi was shot in his head by a rubber bullet on the Friday demo in Bil’in. It eventually caused an internal brain bleeding. He was operated and moved from Ramallah to the Jerusalem hospital. The hospital is very well equipped, but Ramzi’s family cannot visit him, so he is alone. He is under strong sedetion, unconsciouss and, due to the medications, cannot breath by himself. The doctor we talked to said his situation is still unclear. We left him a note, wishing him to get better fast signed by his Israeli friends from the Bil’in demo. It was really horrible to see what a rubber bullet can do. Let’s hope he will get better as soon as possible and will get back to his family.

Qawawis

End of June, 2005
By M.

Settlers brought their sheep to graze on land belonging to Qawawis. The villagers called the police who did not seem interested. After about 40 minutes a jeep with 5 soldiers showed up. Some men in the village started to talk with them but the soldiers refused to speak with them. They then asked me to speak with them. I asked them why they had come and what they were doing there. They were not happy to speak with me. They pretended not to know English but two of them did.

They first just answered stupid answers like “we are here because it is nice to be in the sun”. Then they said things like “this is Israel, our country, we are here to protect the settlers” and they even said that the people of the village were terrorists.

I’ve got the feeling that they wanted to show their power to do what they want and their contempt for the villagers. They seemed to enjoy seeing the people of the village worried.

After about 40 minutes two settlers came by car. They had a video camera, and were filming the people and the village the whole time.

I went into the house and took some pictures of the soldiers and settlers from there.

The soldiers left a few minutes after they had arrived, and they said they would come back later, but did not say any reason.

Justice?

By Marcie

Yesterday I woke up early and headed for a small village in the West Bank, outside of Ramallah, called Bil’in. I arrived earlier than I had expected so I wandered around trying to see where the new portion of the Apartheid Wall will be built to encircle this town and imprison its inhabitants. I asked a small boy to show me the Annexation Wall and he took me up to the roof of his home to photograph it. Afterwards his mother came out and asked me to sit down in their courtyard so she could make me breakfast. She brought out an enormous steel bowl of dough and proceeded to make fresh bread on their tabun outside. I finally understood why the pita bread is so fantastic here. The tabun is a big stove with stones in it and they place the dough directly on the stones. She brought out some zaatar and I had a lovely meal—stuffed beyond belief.

About an hour later, after speaking with her neighbors and children, the rest of the crew from ISM and various Israeli groups such as Gush Shalom and Taayush arrived and many of the villagers we congregated at the town’s main mosque to walk as a group to the site of the demonstration. The people in the community created an enormous justice scale with a coffin beneath stating “Rest in Peace.” On the heavy side of the scale was a globe wrapped in an Israeli flag and on the lighter side was just a globe, symbolizing Israel’s continued practice of thumbing its nose at international law. We walked down the hill to the site where the Annexation Wall will be built–there were around 100-150 people present, including media like Al Jazeera) most of whom were equally Israeli and Palestinian non-violent protesters. The demonstration began with the Muslims in the group praying and then we spent 1 1/2 hours chanting peaceful slogans in English, Arabic, and Hebrew. When we arrived at the bottom of this hill we were met by the IDF (Israeli Defense Forces) who were in full riot gear in a line in front of us. They had their weapons pointed at us and there were also quite a few filming us and photographing us. This protest in Bil’in is a weekly occurance, but because today is the 1st anniversary of the International Court of Justice’s ruling that this Apartheid Wall is illegal, there were many more people and it lasted much longer than normal.

(See my editorial in today’s Idaho Statesman for more on the legalities of this ruling and what you can do about it: www.idahostatesman.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID==/20050709/NEWS0503/507090310/1055)

After about 1 1/2 hour of a non-violent protest, in the blazing hot sun, the demonstration became violent. The IDF states that one of the protesters threw a molotov cocktail at them: this is entirely unfounded. Even soldiers there who knew some of the Israelis we were protesting with received calls confirming this lie. Nevertheless, the entire time it was clear that the IDF was looking for an excuse to attack us. The next thing I remember was loud blasts, fires, and smoke all around me. The tear gas made it impossible for me to see and the sound grenades (which were strong enough to set off fires all around us) made it impossible to hear. As I began running away back to the town, I found lost my shoe (stupidly I wore flip flops) and had to run back into the line of rubber bullets. I tried running without my shoe, but the dry grass here is prickly and there are too many stones. Someone finally handed me an onion, which is used to combat the tear gas, so I could try to open my eyes again. It was very scary being fired at and one of the Palestinian youths with us was badly wounded by the rubber bullet, he is in critical condition –although it’s made from a different substance so it doesn’t explode once inside your body, they are still very lethal. There were many other injuries, mostly to Palestinians youths.

After the demonstration there was a discussion between the Israelis and Palestinians. It lasted for 2 hours and was fascinating–the desire to collaborate on future non violent protests, the desire to bring more Israelis to see the reality of the Occupation up close. But one of the main issues that some Israelis had was the fear of the youths throwing stones. There are some who say some youths off to the side of our group began throwing stones and this is why they began to fire at us. However, I was in the front and did not see any stone throwing until later in the day. But the Israelis made a good point: the stone throwing keeps some Israelis from joining in and also it takes to focus off of why we are here: to protest the Annexation Wall. Because there was a violent clash, the stories in the media became stories about the clash and not what we were doing there and why we were there. Moreover, as one ISMer observed, the youth throw stones, the IDF film them, and then the IDF uses that footage to hunt down and jail those kids. It perpetuates this endless cylce of imprisonment and violence. All of the Israelis admitted that they understood why the stones are used, but they worry that it will keep this movement from growing and from being a non-violent movement, as well as the stories that will be altered as a result.

The day left me really debilitated and traumatized. I saw Ramzi Yasin (Read More), and in fact filmed, him as he was wounded and taken away in the ambulance. It is not clear if he will survive. For the first time I witnessed with my own eyes the aggressiveness of the Israeli military Occupying a land that they have no legal right to be on.