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.
On Saturday May 19th, over twenty soldiers escorted armed settlers through the souq
Every Saturday, Zionist settler tours take place in the narrow alleys of the souq in Al Khalil’s (Hebron). These guided tours usually last for about an hour, and settlers are always accompanied by armed Israeli forces, intimidating local Palestinians who are trying to make a living by selling their goods in the market.
The tours began in 2008. At the moment they are usually made up of 50 or more settlers, accompanied by around 30 armed soldiers and border police.
Palestinians often have to stop and wait as the tour makes its way down the narrow streets of the souq. If they are allowed to pass at all, pedestrians are forced to walk through a crowd of settlers, soldiers and border police. Businesses in the souq are affected, as shopping streets are brought to a standstill.
On recent Saturdays, ISM volunteers have seen small children attempting to get past the tour, but repeatedly being told to wait by the army escort.
Each week international volunteers from ISM, the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme for Palestine and Israel (EAPPI) and Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) walk ahead of and behind the tour, in an attempt to monitor and observe the situation. These observers often face harassment from Israeli forces. For example, on Saturday 5th May, after the tour had finished, six international volunteers were surrounded and detained by 13 paratroopers. The commander of the group demanded IDs from the internationals, and threatened that if they ‘made problems’, they would be imprisoned for one month, barred from Al-Khalil, or from entering Israel in the future. This is one small example of how the Israeli military works to prevent any scrutiny of its illegal occupation.
One shopkeeper in the souq told ISM, “We don’t know the settlers’ intentions in coming into our streets, why do they have to come here? Perhaps they are wanting to take over this area.”
Another shopkeeper told us, “I really feel distressed and unsafe during the tours. Even though they have army units with them, some of the settlers carry shotguns. I think they come here [on the tours] because they think think this is their city. It puts a lot of pressure on us Palestinians. I have even seen the people on the tours spitting at international volunteers.
We never know when they are going to come, sometimes they come late afternoon. Sometimes, when there are hard times here, they even come at night.”
18th March 2018 | International Solidarity Movement, al Khalil team | Occupied Palestine
Two years ago Dima al-Wawi woke up for school feeling sick. Her throat hurt and her lymph nodes were swollen. Her parents were already out of the house, on their land that is split in two by the illegal settlement Karmi Zur in Halhul outside of al Khalil / Hebron.
Dima al-Wawi, present day, in her room in Halhul
Dima’s parents have faced many problems with settlers from this illegal settlement who tried ceaselessly to prevent them from entering their land through the main checkpoint. They took their case to Israeli court and miraculously won access through the checkpoint to both sides of their land sandwiched between the illegal settlement on the East and West side of the Al Wawi’s land. The family remained cautious due to settler harassment and thought that only the adults of the family should enter through the checkpoint as violence is always inevitable.
Dima, 12-years-old at the time, didn’t think so cautiously that morning innocently wanting her mother to take her to the doctor. This day would be the first time she attempted going through the checkpoint onto her own family’s land.
Immediately Israeli soldiers and border police accosted her, blindfolding and handcuffing her behind the back (an action deemed illegal under international law). At 8 a.m., the soldiers shoved her to the ground and commenced beating her and kicked her in the back. Dima was then taken to the police station in Kiryat Arba, another illegal settlement in al Khalil/Hebron.
12-year-old Dima on the day of her arrest
Scared, confused and traumatized, Dima remained calm thinking she would be released that evening since she had done nothing criminal. Through several hours of questioning, her interrogators never asked her if she would like to phone a lawyer. Since the subject of a lawyer never came up, she didn’t know to ask for one unaware of her rights. In the end, she was given a four-month sentence and carted off to notorious Hasharone Prison in between Haifa & Tel Aviv on the charges of carrying a knife. It is worth noting that this act is also illegal under international law to transfer an occupied person from the West Bank into Israel.
Dima with her sisters and mother in their home in Halhul
The al-Wawi family is cheerful and welcoming beyond belief. Meeting the whole clan two years later, one would not think such intense trauma existed within their home. Dima’s disappearance and arrest caused the family many sleepless nights. All of them applied for permits to visit her in prison and only her mother was granted access and only twice.
Dima with her parents on the day of her release 24 April, 2016
Two and a half months passed and Dima was released early with an 8000 NIS bail. Her memories of prison are brief, recalling her many mother figures, the cold iron cells and falling out of the top bunk bed once. She still wakes from nightmares of prison guards counting her endlessly. The media attention surrounding her case was vast, as the Israeli occupation forces falsely claimed Dima carried a knife to the checkpoint with violent intentions. The family resents this cover-up story as well as the amount of media attention, claiming it makes their family vulnerable to settler harassment in the future.
Dima’s personality is fiery, friendly and cunning. It seems she has room for one emotion at a time; she catches everyone’s attention in any given room. Now Dima is 14-years-old, a grounded young woman despite the knowledge that she could be sentenced to five years in prison if she has another incident with occupation forces.
The Karmei Tzur checkpoint is a constant source of violence against Palestinians, not only to 12-year-old girls but also to many teenage boys. Just last month, a 19-year-old was martyred there leaving his family in complete disarray. After leaving Dima’s, we visited the Zamara family just three weeks after their son entered the illegal settlement with a knife and was fatally shot and beaten as a result.
Hamza Yousef Zamara served two sentences in Israeli prisons before his fateful and early end. First in 2014, 16-years-old he spent one week in prison, released on a 3000 NIS bail. Second time, also 2014, this time for 14 months. 45 days of this sentence was spent in intensive torture, Hamza came out a different person, a changed man.
His weeping mother, dressed in black, described his personality after incarceration as withdrawn and psychologically damaged. Hamza’s health was in steady decline and he was severely underweight. His experience and trauma brought him to seek revenge against the Israeli occupation by way of bringing a knife to the checkpoint. According to Israeli sources, Hamza “very lightly wounded the guard in a stabbing attack in Karmie Tzur.” His attempt at violence was met with severe beating, stabbing and four shots fired fatally killing him.
It is custom in the Islamic religion to bury a body within 24 hours of death. However, Hamza’s body was held by Israel out of spite for 10 days in the freezer. When finally released, Israeli soldiers invaded the family’s home interrogating his family, detaining his father, Yousef Zamara, and deeming Hamza a terrorist directly to his family. Israeli forces also threatened the family “that they would pay for [Hamza’s] actions.”
Sadness cannot begin to describe the collective emotion of his family and friends. All dressed in mourning, Hamza’s photograph was quietly passed around and tightly clutched by his loved ones. His mother, Arwa Zamara, remembers identifying Hamza’s frozen body as “the most difficult moment.” Arwa and Yousef have two other sons imprisoned by Israel.
When asked how she has the strength to go on after losing her child, Arwa mentions the overwhelming support from her neighbors and community. Her daughter chimes in, “we are one body;” no one is alone in the brutality of the Israeli occupation.
Dima, a child, and Hamza, a young man, did not deserve the brutality and injustice they experienced by the Israeli legal system and occupation forces. The worst part is they are not alone, and their stories are not uncommon. All Palestinian civilians are tried in military court, even children, with a conviction rate of 99.7% while Israeli civilians are tried in civil court.
Palestine is home to countless administrative detainees, political prisoners and martyrs. Internationals and Palestinians wonder when this will stop. When will the international community take responsibility and halt their support of Israel’s unjust legal system and illegal occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.
We wish the al-Wawi and Zamara families well in recovering from their trauma and hope their families have peace within their homes.
28th December 2017 | International Solidarity Movement, al-Khalil team | al-Khalil, Hebron, occupied Palestine
The South Hebron Hills is one of the battle zones against the ethnic cleansing of Palestine. This area stretches along the southern border of the West Bank. The villages of At-Tuwani, At-Tuba, Mufaqarah, and Sarura are located in the South Hebron Hills. These villages lie between a line of Israeli settlements along highway 317 and an Israeli military firing zone to the east. Effectively the local villagers are caught in-between the Israeli army and Zionist settlers.
We met with Fawaz, a local community leader from At-Tuwani, at the Sumud Peace Camp site. Here local villagers have been re-establishing the village with the help of international activists.
#We are Sumud – Illegal outpost of Havat Maon in the background.
“Just living life in this area is ‘big resistance’”, Fawaz told us, “but the villagers decided they had to take further action”.
Sarura is another village in the South Hebron hills. In November 1999 all the villagers of Sarura were evicted and the village was destroyed. Since then Israeli Peace groups have assisted local villagers in the project of rebuilding Sarura. Peace Now, Rabbis for Human Rights and other organisations assisted the villagers to take their case to the Israeli courts. Their success put pressure on the Israeli government.
After this success, meetings in the villages were organised to find effective ways of resisting the occupation without the use of violence and thereby giving the Israeli military an excuse to react with excessive force. Through these meetings the villages in the area organised new initiatives, actions and activities. One of these initiatives was to make stone throwing forbidden. The meetings have been a big success and they are still held today.
These villagers were amongst the first Palestinians that did weekly demonstrations against the wall. The military administration started to cut off the area from the urban centre of Yatta. In response the villagers of the area arranged weekly demonstrations and after 18 months of protest the wall that would have cut off the south was declared illegal.The villagers paid a high price in arrests but they succeeded in preventing the extension of the wall.
In spite of the victory of having the wall along highway 317 declared illegal, a month went by without it being dismantled. Again the villagers demonstrated and blocked off the road and again the court ordered the government to remove the wall. This was a great victory to all the men, women and children that were involved. They had forced the occupation to recognise them as a village with a master plan!
A Battle for Education
In 1998 a school was built in At-Tuwani. As could be expected, a demolition order was issued soon after. The villagers ignored the order and took the fight to court. There was an attempted demolition. To prevent the demolition women stayed in the school during the day and the men at night. More demolition orders came. The school in At-Tuwani is the only one in the area. So now, the children from the surrounding villages now have to come to At-Tuwani to receive their education.
The children who live in the villages surrounding At-Tuwani have often been subjected to settler attacks on their way to school. Due to the violence against the children the route has had to be changed. Ali Awad from the village of Tuba used to be able to walk to school in twenty minutes. At one stage, the journey he had to take to avoid the threat of attack took him two hours. To avoid settler attacks Israeli soldiers have been assigned to walk with the children by a committee for Human Rights in the Knesset. However there have been many incidents where the soldiers have shown up late or left early. The inconsistency of the military presence meant that the escort was not effective in preventing the settler violence. Therefore, organisations working in the area arranged in 2004 to have international activist supervise the military’s escort of the children.
The second day the internationals started walking the children to school, the settlers attacked the children and the activists that were walking with them. One of the internationals was stabbed in their lung from the back and the other had their leg broken.
Sarura
In 1997, armed settlers attacked Sarura and the village was abandoned.
Twenty years later on May 19th 2017 a project was launched and the Sumud Peace Camp began to rehabilitate the cave dwellings of Surura to begin to breathe life into the abandoned village again.
Activities and resistance initiatives were brought into action in order to encourage the local farmers to come back. The villagers needed Palestinian encouragement to overcome their fears or they would be afraid to return. The initiatives in Sarura led to the beginning of reconstruction in one section of Sarura. Among the tasks that have so far been accomplished in Sarura are the planting of trees, the building of a community centre, weekly workshops, a gathering place for the people of the village and the enlargement of the caves.
The villagers of Sarura face many problems from the Israeli soldiers and the settlers in the area. ”For two months they beat people, arrested people and destroyed things mainly at night. But we are bringing back life. Now we have a puppy and geese!” Fawaz says.
Among the activities that are planned in the Sumud Peace Camp in the near future is a New Years event. This was planned to celebrate the progress in Sarura. The celebration will include a daytime meeting with invited speakers, an evening concert and fireworks!
Fawaz tells us, ”This event is needed – it’s so important – 7 months holding this place in this condition has been difficult. Children have been arrested. The young people have become tired. We need to bring more and more people. This event should breathe new life into the sumud (stedfastness) against the occupation.”
“Non-violence is not an easy choice. They are pushing you every day. Just as a human being it is so hard.” Fawaz
19th December 2017 | International Solidarity Movement, al-Khalil team | al-Khalil, occupied Palestine
Most of us are plenty used to absent minded scrolling our Facebook feeds. After all you can find just about anything you want and not have to read anything in particular. However, you can also come across a post saying that two kids have been arrested the day before in Al-Khalil, the city you’re living in. It’s a big city, but not enough to prevent you from seeking out the school and getting a direct report. If you have just come to Palestine for the first time, you might not believe such an egregious story, so trying to verify it for yourself is a natural reaction. Today, we decided to try. The post on Facebook said that the two kids were arrested in front of the school down by the Ibrahimi Mosque, so we decided to start from Ibrahim school.
We reached the school around 11 AM, while many students were in the hall having their break. Soon after, the headmaster joined us in his office, where an assistant had told us to wait. It was easy to read on his face how difficult it is to have his job at a school in H2 – the Israeli occupied section of the city, where illegal settler homes and those of native Palestinians exist side by side. The headmaster didn’t waste time and after a polite welcome he asked us what we want to know. We didn’t waste time either.: “We know that a student from this school has been arrested yesterday morning. Could you tell us more?”
“First of all, to be provided this information you must have a permission from the Ministry of Education,” he clarified. It was clear he knew that letting the world hear the news of the mistreatment of his students was the right thing to do despite official protocol. “But,” he continued on, “the situation is terrible here and we have big problems.”
In a few minutes, he listed a series of problems. A few days before, a settler had thrown stones at some of the Palestinian students and followed them to the playground. Kids are scared by the checkpoints surrounding the school. One morning, a soldier suddenly blocked the turnstile and a boy was hit in his face. He arrived to school with a wound to his head and instructions not to tell anybody what had happened. The headmaster himself is checked every day.
“They check me every morning and I have worked here for years. They ask me to take off my belt and shoes. Once I asked a soldier why he does that, even though he knows perfectly well who I am. The soldier replied, ‘Just as your job is to be the headmaster, my job is to check you.’” The army disposes the closure of the school for Jewish festivities, preventing the schools’ activities. He also tells us that yesterday some soldiers attacked some students putting them in arrest. Attacks happened this morning too, but they didn’t affect kids from his school.
We thought we were done finding out what happened. The fact had been verified. But he kept going. “By the way, the kids in the video you have seen are not the ones I’m talking about. They’re not from my school. They are from another school I think the UNRWA school or Al-Khalil school.”
So, we hadn’t finished yet. The two kids, that we could see in the video held by two big guys, twice their size and holding weapons, were not the ones we had just heard the story about. So still we had another place to go to.
After a five-minute walk, we passed through the Salaymeh checkpoint. Another than the Qeitun checkpoint just mentioned by the headmaster. We’re out in the H1 area on Tareq Ibn Zeyad Street and after a few meters we reached Al-Khalil school. The office of the Principal was very crowded. We’re welcome, they say. So, we stared once more, “We know that a student from this school have been arrested yesterday morning. Could you tell us more?” We understand that our interlocutor will be an English teacher. He tells us about the surprise attack. While he speaks, I can picture the scene in my mind.
A bunch of young guys in their twenties, armed with a plethora of dangerous and expensive weapons, stationed behind a wall, waiting for some kids to pass in order to trap them. The scene seems to be very funny. The dumb antagonist clumsily trying ambush the smart little protagonist like a scene in a children’s book. It could make you smile – unless you think of what has just happened. Today is one of several episodes of harassment, a continuous form of violence and pressure over the new generations in Palestine. It tries to mould their spirits with the idea that they are inferior people whose rights and dignity won’t be guaranteed, creating a rage no kid should know.
The teachers mention all the videos they can show in order to prove all the abuse the kids and they themselves frequently undergo. Videos upon videos, images upon images. It’s not the first time I heard it. And each time the tension rises, smartphones and video cameras rise out of the crowd and everywhere you can see arms lifted, holding them like magic wands. In Palestine, like everywhere people are oppressed, filming is a way to prove that what you claim is true and that the self-indulgent alibis and counter-versions of the oppressor are lies. One of the teachers we met during the morning said that one day he’ll make a film with all the material collected through the years.
What they have just told in this office is not that different from the story we heard in the previous school. We know about some more kids arrested, but still the initial question remains unsolved: where are the kids of the video? They tell us that they might be from another school: UNWRA school or Khadija school.
So, we say goodbye and go out to keep on with our research.
We took right through a little alley. Behind a blue and rusty gate, we found Al-Khalil School. The Headmaster was very polite and welcoming (I start thinking it must be a quite common quality here in Palestine). He invites us to sit on the sofa, so we sit and start again. “We know that a student from this school has been arrested yesterday morning. Could you tell us more?”
We soon find ourselves in a classroom. The English lesson stops for a second, just the time to call two kids to come out with us. We’ve already been informed by the headmaster about the dynamics of the arrest. Some soldiers suddenly entered the school gate and arrested one kid. Then they detained him and they assaulted him. They only released him after three hours and the father had to sign some papers. The headmaster doesn’t really know what they were about. One of the kids is the one arrested, the other the one who managed to escape from the soldier. We joke a little bit with them. They smile. We wonder if he was scared or not during the detention. It doesn’t seem like it. They giggle like the game was fun. Actually, the headmaster revealed to me that he was actually really scared.
Before we leave the headmaster leads us behind the building. He wants to show us something. There is a little space of a few square meters with dust and stones. “I’d like to find the money to make a garden here”. That’s our goodbye. While we step out of the gate where the soldiers had entered to catch the kid, we take some pictures of the area. As soon as the students leaving the school notice us, they start gathering around us and posing. They keep on laughing and asking us to take pictures.
We walk toward the UNRWA school. We have just found out about another kid arrested but we still haven’t met anybody who could provide us any information about the video that Facebook generically showed that morning on our wall. Eventually, in front of the UNRWA school, we will find what we want. A person working nearby (who asks us not to mention his name or any possible hints to identify him) will tell us that yesterday two kids from that school have been arrested and detained from the soldiers. This time nothing had happened in front of the school but at the checkpoint. Nevertheless, like the other kids, the pattern was the same: soldiers accusing 10-12 year old kids to throw a stone and arresting them. No matter what really happened in this specific situation, this is neither the first nor the last time that something like this will occur.
So here we are. We left our apartment today looking for two kids and we found almost ten stories. But what was most impressive? We came across the chronicles of a population of young Palestinians who tried to go to school each morning and had to go through a war scenario. What for the most of the kids all around the world is a natural and simple step of the day, is a struggle here.
We discuss it while we pass through the checkpoint back to H2 and head to Prayer Road. We yet haven’t finished with visiting schools today. We are going to Mutanabi school for the school run. We will stand in front of the gate while the students go out to check no abuses or assaults by soldiers or settlers take place. During the last days, we were considering to stop monitoring here, as recently nothing bad has happened. Unfortunately, some days ago, some soldiers decided that the morning could not start peacefully. So, they blocked the road and forbid the headmaster and his assistant to enter it. Once more a kid (an unidentified and unnamed kid) was accused of stone-throwing. While the headmaster was talking with them, another two teachers reached the place. The soldier accused him of interfering with their work and put them under arrest. One of them has been detained in the police station for two hours. There, the police put a razor in his pocket and threatened him that they would say that he tried to attack them. That next time they will shoot him.
11th November 2017 | International Solidarity Movement, al-Khalil team | Um al-Khair, Occupied Palestine
Last month in northern Palestine brought stories of Israeli settlers from the illegal Yitzhar settlement that, however horrifying, all suffered an important shortcoming: the scope of the stories lent to individual scapegoats, and in doing so provided a vivid, but ultimately penny-deep look at the Palestinian condition. Today’s news is flooded with such dramatic examples.
This past month, I lived in and began to learn the story of Um al-Khair, a Palestinian Bedouin village in the South Hebron Hills. Again the case presented a challenge of conveyance – perhaps even more so. While it’s certainly every bit as troubled as the villages in the shadow of the Yitzhar settlement, Um al-Khair’s story is much less made for TV than the photogenic, headline-grabbing brutality of physical violence.
There’s no getting around it: it’s a small village, and reversing the injustices there wouldn’t move the needle on injustice in Palestine a whole lot.
However, it does offer itself as a worthy placeholder – an exemplary microcosm for the nation of Palestine, and what happened, is happening, and will happen to it if nothing is done.
Tariq (left) and Eid Hathaleen, with Tariq’s nephew Muhammad in his arms. Tariq’s house, which he shares with his mother, has been demolished 3 times already (’08, ’12, and ’14). Eid recently had both of his cars, one less than a week old, confiscated by the Israeli army. A tattered – but still standing – Palestinian flag waves behind them.
This isn’t to say that tragic physical violence doesn’t occur there. One of the first stories new visitors hear is that of a resident who, as his brother Tariq says, “lost his life without losing his life.” About 17 years ago the young man, Muhammad, was herding his goats and – so claimed a settler – ventured onto a far corner of settlement property. An Israeli soldier chased him down (after the fact and within his own village), and beat him most of the way to death for it. Today, the man who would’ve been one of the leading breadwinners for the village walks the roads mentally handicapped, unable to contribute to the survival of the community. As the soldier was leaving the village that day, he turned and pointed at Muhammad in the dirt – the young man already having left his body for the last time – and shouted “Look at your brother, let him be an example! I’ll make every single person in this village handicapped!”
As it turns out, the soldier didn’t have to. Seventeen years later, the pen would prove mightier than the sword, and the true kneecapping of Um al-Khair would come not in the form of an excessively forceful soldier, the optics of which might provoke international outrage, but rather bureaucratic, pseudo-legal land-grab policies.
To that end, in the 17 years since the martyrdom of Muhammad, by far the most high ranking targets of the Israeli army in Um al-Khair have been peaceful, inanimate objects – their traditional Bedouin oven, among the kind of objects Pierre Nora coined “les lieux de mémoire” in 1989, as well as a proposed community garden – the first of which has been built or rebuilt and subsequently destroyed 3 times over, and the other disallowed before construction could even begin (though there’s an international campaign to support it anyway).
As Tariq, a budding community leader, said, “The soldiers that try to break us aren’t enemies of terrorism. They don’t like us, but even they know we are not terrorists. They are enemies of life. They are enemies of our presence here. Look at the oven, the garden.”
The future of Um al-Khair. Their demands are simple: to live in peace, which means an end to the ongoing demolition of their homes, as well as an end to settler violence against them during the night.
Clearly the real threat isn’t any one person, but anything palpable for Palestinians to hold on to,and with it the motivation to continue resisting.Homes, homelands, even ovens and community gardens are brought to ashes – as Israel admits with shameless candor – to make room for people of a different ethnicity.
Taken together, what happened to Muhammad the individual and what’s happening to Um al-Khair’s lifeblood structures span the spectrum of violence, from physical to structural. Though they’re specific to Um al-Khair, they speak volumes about the post-1948 Palestinian story.
The notion that a bread oven or community garden could be threatening should be preposterously silly and, at the same time, make all the sense in the world when the very acknowledgement of a Palestinian people is threatening to an ideology whose implementation required their ethnic cleansing. After all, one of the most repeated go-to’s for stewards of Zionism – that Palestine was “a land without a people” – reveals itself as the only option short of confronting the question of what happened to those people, and who was responsible.
The result was that incorrect and racist revision: pre-1948 Palestine – a rich bastion of culture, cuisine, art, music, academia – was really a land of zero cities. After all, it didn’t even have a people.
Suleiman Hathaleen, the elder in Um al-Khair, himself 6 years older than Israel. Born in Arad, Palestine (now Arad, Israel), he was made a refugee in 1948, and has lived in Um al-Khair since.
Of course, any rational person knows that Palestinians do exist, and that they didn’t come to Palestine simply to meet the arriving Jewish immigrants with weapons. Sentient, living evidence for this – for the bustling Palestinian society and what happened to it – exists in refugee camps in- and outside of Palestine to this day.
Since 2007, roughly 20 families from Um al-Khair have joined them, after the State of Israel – not a rogue extremist, not an individual settler, but the real-life manifestation of Zionism – has come to their village to make them homeless. This, unfortunately, is what defines the struggle at large for many indigenous Palestinians –to stay and survive at all under the threat of expulsion and extermination. There’s been virtually no evidence even of an attempt to maintain a second-class, exploitable Palestinian population, making this – what’s occurring in the West Bank and Gaza as opposed to the State of Israel – not apartheid, but unvarnished ethnic cleansing.
The ruins of a family’s demolished home in Um al-Khair.
And so, ceding for a moment the possibility that Um al-Khair’s situation is controversial, the fact remains that the international community has yet to be told what justifies it. What justifies the fact that the people with the deed to the land, who’ve lived completely without sin and within the law, are forced to stand there crying out for help, physically weak from humankind’s deepest sadness – the gutting, emptying kind that you feel in your body – as a Caterpillar D9 military bulldozer thunders to life and starts towards their home.
