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.

Experiences in Violence vs. Kindness

by Megan

Ok… here is what happened in Bethlehem.

I went to Jerusalem, to the Damascus Gate, and took a cab to a side route into Bethlehem because the town was under curfew so no one could enter or leave. I hiked up a small rocky hill and to the other side where the cabs waited to take the people who were sneaking back in to their homes. I was met by the trainers of the group I am working for and not long after went to the house where I was staying. We had made signs at the office announcing that international presence was at the house in hopes that if the military came back they would attempt to evacuate the house before destroying it.

The military had broken into the house at midnight the evening before and tore it apart, broke all the windows and told the family they would be back to demolish it as an extra punishment for one of the sons who had lived there who was now in prison. The family spent the night moving their belongings into neighboring houses and distributing the women and children to other houses in the refugee camp. At this point I would like to point out that it is illegal to punish the families and friends of prisoners and suicide bombers and to come in and destroy their homes to punish someone who has already been punished. I stayed in the home with another observer listening for tanks. The military never showed back up. They often don’t. They come into houses and scare the families and cause them to evacuate and then wait for months to take any action. For the most part when they really intend to tear houses down they just arrive and shoot into the house and give the family a few minutes to leave before they tear it down on the spot. What they did the other night to this family was just for the sake of terrorizing them.

I spent a lot of time with the women and their children. I can’t help but think what it must be like for a child to grow up with this. In a discussion with one of the men of the camp I apologized for my horrible – and I mean horrible – Arabic and he said “they don’t teach Arabic in your schools, they teach English in ours so we should be able to talk to you but half the time our towns were under curfew and we couldn’t go to school and that’s why our English is so bad.” This man was in his late thirties… This has been going on for years. Will the children here ever be able to go to school regularly? I spent a lot of time with the school kids in the house helping them study their English, going through their school books with them.. I wish I had been there long enough to have really helped. I left Bethlehem after two days with the family. They asked me to return before the end of my trip but I doubt I will have time.

I am now in Tulkarem, also in the West Bank. The trip here took a few hours. They had raised curfew in Bethlehem from 10am to 4pm. This is not for the sake of being kind to the people who live there but to give the people they are looking for a chance to return to their homes so when curfew begins again they will have a better chance of catching them.

On the bus ride to Tulkarem we were stopped and all the men had to evacuate the bus and wait in the rain for the military to check their id’s. After they had done that a soldier entered the bus and checked out all the seats and the women. He pointed his gun at all of us as he checked our seats then he left. The path into town was covered in mud, horses and mules splashed mud on everyone in their attempts to get up the hill. One woman fell in a large puddle but as is the custom here everyone stopped and helped her and held her hand the rest of the way.

I will write more about my experiences here in Tulkarem later, but would like to take a second to point out the immense kindness of everyone I have met here. Everyone knows who we are and why we are here and are thankful for it. The economy here is in a horrible state of affairs because people cannot go to work outside of town and often with curfew people cannot open their businesses yet when I go to the market to buy fruit and vegetables they don’t want to accept my money. Anytime I have looked even close to being lost, which has been a lot, yet not as much as I expected, people are rushing to help, to walk me or drive me to where I need to go and oddly enough for what they have to deal with here on a daily basis they are always smiling and laughing.

The mother of the house I stayed at in Bethlehem gave me a pillow covering she embroidered and apologized for not having time to make one personally for me but having to give me one she made months ago. Her daughter embroidered my initial in it and hers as well. I tried to say no but it is rude here to not take what is offered to you. I am unfortunately unable to express the immense effect this kindness has had on me, I am just amazed at the love these people have for anyone not attacking them after generations of violence and abuse.

Thousands of Palestinians Regularly Rendered Homeless

by Kristin Ess

Last night 30 invading Israeli soldiers tore through a house on the edge of a Bethlehem refugee camp. Arriving in 12 heavily armoured jeeps with blue lights flashing at midnight, they took measurements of the house, home to several units of the same extended family, and the house next door.

That house is small, someone’s grandmother’s home. She is sitting in a chair in her leafy garden in front of the house. She is staring to the side, not speaking, not crying. The larger house, which Israeli soldiers will blow up the grandmother’s house in order to get to, has a roof that many nights during curfew people meet on, making a barbeque in an old can. It is impossible to meet in cafes or restaurants, most are closed because of curfew and there isn’t much money to spend anyway.

In the night after the Israeli soldiers left, people from the camp came out from their houses to help the families carry out their salvageable belongings. A replica of Al Aqsa mosque, a half smashed television, blankets, suitcases, a little girl comes out of the door with a backpack holding hands with a friend. She must find a new place to sleep, as must everyone. Friends from around the camp were shaking hands, one walked up to me and shrugged. The one whose house it is said, “thank you,” and “if God wills it.” Today women are lined up in chairs across the narrow ally street from the house accepting handshakes and kisses on the cheek from neighbors who come to offer condolences. They are all homeless now.

The Israeli soldiers said they would be back to blow up the houses. Maybe now, maybe later. No one knows as is normal in this campaign of psychological warfare that the Israeli military government is waging against the Palestinian people. They did the same thing in Deheisha camp 4 months ago and the people are still waiting, outside of their house, because at any moment Israeli soldiers might arrive to destroy it.

Israeli soldiers dug up the main road out of Beit Sahour, creating a roadblock higher than two cars atop one another. An old woman there tells me that her flower garden used to be so beautiful, that the stone fence in front of the road was so beautiful. There are tanks in the hill behind and jeeps driving past a road now gone to mud. My friends here keep telling me that tomorrow is Valentine’s Day.

One Hundred Rounds of Warning Shots and a Very Long Walk

by Carla
Read Carla’s first journal from Mawasi here.

The next day we did accompany Palestinians down the road that used to lead into Mawasi (that now stops at a checkpoint guarding the new settlements) carrying medical supplies. At least one hundred rounds of warning shots hit the ground around us as we slowly made our way forward. A very long walk of only a quarter mile. One reporter, a Palestinian, was shot in the head (he was taken to the hospital and survived as the wound was superficial), but the group decided to continue forward. The task of those of us who were internationals was to protect the Palestinians (the reporter had been taking pictures to the side – very exposed). We walked in front and on the outer edge of their group, with them in the center, using the privilege of our international status (we hoped) to shield them. I had moved to the back of the group on the same side as the guntower in order to shield the women and I have not ever paid so much attention to absolutely every step I took. I was hearing sharp cracks of bullets on the ground next to me. A lot of them. Sprays of dirt kicked up by the bullets hit my cheeks. Each step became a shear act of will. The Palestinian women next to me must have been living the same struggle, but they were here to try to go home after two years, and I was here to accompany them as far as they were willing to go.

Carrying a cardboard box of medical supplies (everyone else had see-through plastic bags) I was acutely aware of how they would have the excuse of saying they couldn’t see what was in the box –”there could have been a bomb”– if I were to be hit. I opened the top, carrying it at an angle to demonstrate there was nothing to hide. Palestinians from Mawasi had not walked this road in two years without being shot at. This obviously was no different, however we made it close enough to the guntower to be able to negotiate with the soldiers, closer than anyone had done previously. Encouraged by the negotiations, we took a few more steps forward, eliciting more bullets, this time silent bullets. That was truly eerie – the only sign we had that we were still being fired on was seeing (and feeling) dirt kicked up by the impact of the bullets. Unheard bullets were more terrifying – and luckily only a few were fired – those who had more experience with soldiers in Gaza announced that it was time to retreat, as the use of silent bullets meant serious business. We did not make it past the checkpoint that day, but two days later a group of Palestinians and internationals did go those last few feet to the checkpoint and negotiated getting the medical supplies into Mawasi. A small victory.

Amazing to me was how quickly I got used to gunfire. The first day I was in Rafah I went with Molly to see the family she had been staying with. Their home had been demolished that morning and the family was gathering what it could salvage. We had to run for cover as a tank fired on what was left of the house. By the time I went to the Mawasi checkpoint I had been staying in Gaza in Palestinian homes for a week. Every day and almost every night I experienced shooting from the tanks that rolled by the edge of town, into the neighborhoods where the houses were located. Gunfire was (is) a daily reality on the southern perimeter of town bordering Egypt. Here Israel has plans for a “security” wall designed to keep Palestinians from leaving Gaza. The goal was (is) to wear down the resolve of families to stay in their homes that are on the periphery of town near the future wall.

Neighborhoods are repeatedly assaulted by gunfire from tanks until families leave. Sometimes a tank will target a house with mortar fire, as was the inhabited house next to where my friend Molly was staying. (Let me make it clear these are unarmed civilians, families, non-combatants). Once homes are abandoned, Israeli soldiers will first dynamite, then bulldoze the houses, and begin to assault the homes of families that are newly exposed, homes that had laid behind the now demolished ones. Slowly they are eating away at the edges of Rafah.

That is all I have to share for now, except to add that my experience of Palestinians is of a people to whom family and land mean everything. I will hold in my heart forever the smiles, the eyes full of kindness, the humor, and the generosity of each person who has contributed to my first memories of Palestine.

In Solidarity, with Love,
Carla

Majd in Military Court

Ed Mast

Palestinians in the Occupied Territories are not allowed to visit their relatives in prison, so hearings in Israeli military court are the only opportunity for many families to see their sons, brothers and fathers. Linda and I were able to sit with Lutfiyeh and Mahmoud at such a hearing for their son Majd, arrested along with all other males in his building last spring. Majd is in urgent need of ear surgery, and it was our hope that this hearing would gain Majd access to the medical care which the prison system has so far refused to allow him. His parents had not seen him in several months.

The courtroom is in a prefab building the size of a small trailer, with about 15 chairs for family and witnesses. Prisoners are often tried in groups of three or four or five. The judge and all the court staff are uniformed soldiers. Behind us – families seem to be barred from sitting in the front row of chairs – sat two more parents waiting to see their son. More families came in and out as various prisoners were brought in and tried.

They don’t bring witnesses into military court. They don’t debate or discuss or rebut. The prosecutor, who stands near the judge, simply speaks, at some length; then the defense attorney, when there is one, speaks at somewhat less length; then the judge decides what will happen. Mostly what happens is: decisions are postponed to a later date, while the prosecution gathers evidence.

As would happen in any court, we sat for three hours waiting for Majd to appear. Lutfiyeh often stepped outside and looked through little cracks in the fencing, hoping to get a peek of her son as they brought him from the detention cell. When Majd’s lawyer entered the court and indicated Majd was next, Lutfiyeh quietly picked up a chair and moved it front and center, as near as possible to the tiny prisoner’s dock. Two days earlier we were with Lutfiyeh when her mobile phone rang with Majd’s number from prison. There is apparently a contraband mobile phone in prison which prisoners share, so Majd is able to make a phone call every few days for a couple of minutes. When his call came that day, we happened to be in a part of Ramallah where there was no reception on Lutfiyeh’s phone. We scurried with Lutfiyeh from street to street, looking for reception. We didn’t find a place in time; the ringing stopped. We sat down with some friends we had planned to meet. After a moment, Lutfiyeh began to sob. Lutfiyeh doesn’t like to cry. She prefers to laugh when she can. We all tried to comfort her. A young man who worked in the little restaurant seemed to know her situation. He spoke to her in Arabic, saying “You should not cry that your son is in jail. You should be proud.” There were other mothers at the table with us, and at least one of them frowned with disapproval at this comment.

In some ways, says Lutfiyeh, it’s harder when Majd calls. “As soon as he says Hi Mom, my heart breaks.”

I was expecting that Lutfiyeh would start to cry when she saw Majd. She did not. When Majd was finally brought in to the little courtroom, Lutfiyeh smiled at him, and she sat beaming as if she were witnessing his graduation from college. Majd had grown a beard since she saw him last, and Lutfiyeh turned to us and mouthed with pride and surprise: “He’s a man!” Same with Mahmoud: when his son came in, Mahmoud started smiling and giggling as if someone had given him a wonderful unexpected compliment or gift.

As it happened, Majd was in the prisoner’s dock along with the son of the couple behind us. They touched our shoulders and pointed out their son to us. They were smiling and beaming too.

No talking is allowed in the courtroom, so all chat between families and prisoners must be furtively mouthed and signaled.

Prosecution and defense spoke briefly and Majd’s case was postponed for six weeks. The judge had not read the materials about Majd’s health crisis. The judge did at least rule that Majd should be examined by the prison medical officers. I was taken aback that this had not already happened; Majd has been in prison since April. The ruling may be a positive step, though Linda points out that these prison medical officers are same ones who are routinely charged with assuring authorities that prisoners are healthy enough for further torture.

After the prisoners are led out, the families leap up and step outside. There are chain link fences covered with green tarp material, but the tarp has some tiny rips and cracks. If the soldiers are in a kind mood, they may linger outside with prisoners, and the families may talk for a moment through tiny rips in the green tarp. This day’s soldiers were in such a mood, so Lutfiyeh and Mahmoud and the family behind us were able to crouch down and exchange a few sentences in Arabic with their respective sons. Then the young men were led away. Linda and I were able to reach up over the fence and wave and call “Bye Majd!” Then we followed Lutfiyeh and Mahmoud as they ran over to another section of fence beyond another building, where they were able to peek through another tear in another piece of tarp and catch one more look at their son being led away, back to the bus and back to Ashkelon prison. Then the young men were gone, and everyone hugged, and we came away with the mothers and tried to comfort them in their tears.

God Bless Our Home

A Calm Day in Gaza
by Ed Mast

We sit on the floor of a pleasantly-colored cinderblock apartment, one of a row of buildings painted in bright Santa Fe colors, in Rafah near the south end of the Gaza Strip. There are rugs on the floor and the ubiquitous pads that serve as beds by night and seats for guests by day. The woman of the house has invited us into her home and is serving us tea. This is daytime, there are no gunshots, and children play and follow us without fear.

These homes are a little squeezed together, with no space between or around, but otherwise one might imagine that the inhabitants have little to complain about. This is, however, the woman’s third home. She came here two months ago, when her other home was demolished, along with 96 others, because the Israeli settlement near Rafah wanted to expand. Everyone in these houses was driven out at the same time. They were awakened in the night, without warning, by bulldozers. This woman has been driven out of two other homes previously: in 1973, and in 1990, during the first Intifada. She does not at first mention the earlier home of her family, in Ashdod inside what is now Israel, from which her family was expelled in 1948.

On her wall is a clock with needlepoint stitching below it saying “God Bless Our Home.”

Outside we are cautioned not to walk too near the corner of the street. By night, gunfire from settlers and soldiers is common there, and it sometimes happens by day. We walk to an SOS orphanage, and see the pockmarks of rifle and tank shells in the walls.

We go to the southeast and southwest corners of Rafah. On the one corner is the border with the Israeli settlement which has been expanding and confiscating land. I take a few steps to look closer, and am again warned to step back. They point out a distant tower from which soldiers customarily shoot. Again, it’s daytime, and mostly the shooting happens at night.

On the other corner of Rafah, a high opaque metal wall is being built, to seal off the border with Egypt. The purpose of the wall is apparently to prevent the smuggling of weapons across the border, so Palestinians are to be walled in as well as out. “Rafah is a prison” one says to me. A swath of homes several miles long and maybe 100 yards wide must be demolished on the Gaza side of this wall, to leave a no-man’s-land border zone. We walk through what are labelled Block D and Block G and Block O, areas where these demolitions have taken place. They look like bombsites. This is a refugee camp, so the buildings are mostly made of concrete blocks, and easily pushed over. The sides of buildings look like sponges or coral reefs, so covered with bullet and missile holes. We pick our way through a landscape of rubble to see this. Several houses with whole sides shorn away, and one house tilted halfway to the ground, crumbling slowly before our eyes as if there had been an earthquake. A three-story house that is mostly still standing, battered with gaping holes and pockmarks, turns out to be the house where our friend Molly and the children of her host family were awakened in the night by Israeli gunfire penetrating the walls. (People ask us if we know “Maaaly?”) The family doesn’t live there anymore. No one lives in these crushed homes.

“This is our life” people tell us.

I climb up on one pile of rubble to look at the wall. People call to me: Get down! I hear tanktreads over near the wall behind some of the rubble. Even in the daytime they must stay out of the army’s sight.

We leave the area without incident to travel with our friends back to Gaza City, in the north of the Gaza Strip. Our friends came to Rafah that day to deliver a workshop on storytelling techniques for kindergarten teachers. We were able to come to Khan Younis and Rafah without any trouble in the morning, but in the afternoon the Khan Younis checkpoint is closed. 500 people are already waiting when we arrive at about 3:00. Linda and I walk up to the front and talk to the soldiers. We are able to negotiate the passing of one ambulance, but nothing else.

At about 8:30 that night the checkpoint opens and our friends, the early child education specialists, are able to drive us the 15 miles to their home in Gaza City. The night before, they got home at midnight. They are supposed to deliver workshops in Khan Younis and Rafah the rest of this week. This is the first income they’ve had in some months