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.

Claiming three bodies in Sarra

by Gattu Marrudu

The two taxis full of volunteers proceed slow and scared along “the most dangerous road of Nablus,” climbing up the hill in dusty and tight curves. At each curve stays a local “sentry”, who warns any hazardous wanderer of coming tanks. I guess it’s a job too; like the taxi drivers’, not accepting to stay at home during the curfew without doing anything to do. So they risk as much as they can, raising the price for the run. I guess they feel a little bit like Israeli bus drivers. You have to find the ones who agree to take you there, because not everyone dares to.

The volunteers’ job is simple: three people (maybe relatives or friends of activists – who knows?) have been shot in the village of Sarra, 20 km east of Nablus, and the soldiers won’t let the relatives pick up their bodies. It’s not a new thing: sometimes they kill people and then “arrest” them, bringing their bodies to Israel, putting them in refrigerators and then negotiating with their relatives for their “liberation.”

Denying the burial of a body is always been the most brutal sign of despising the enemy. Ancient Greeks used to let enemy bodies be eaten by dogs and crows, so that the soul would wander under torments, and the Romans wouldn’t let the relatives pick up the bodies of crucified people for burial, letting them rot on the cross. But trading on dead bodies is the ultimate offence to human dignity and definitely a violation of human rights. We just don’t understand why IDF are getting deeper and deeper in this suicidal situation.

The twelve volunteers from the International Solidarity Movement also don’t understand why but they go ahead on foot, from where the taxi can’t go anymore. They’re well trained for such situations: they decide who is willing to get arrested and to stay in first line to make pressure on the soldiers. They arrive in the Tel village, welcomed by the mayor and by dozens of children running, shouting and whistling from all the corners.

The Tell people escort the volunteers until the end of the village, and then we’ve got to go alone. We encounter an Israeli police jeep, inside which are three soldiers, all very young. One speaks Arabic, the other Russian and the third won’t even approach us, standing near the jeep wearing dark glasses and looking away with crossed arms and a tough expression.

The soldiers make signs to go back. The volunteers advance, shaking their hands and saying they want to talk. The soldiers appear quite bored, tired and nervous from a bad day, looks like they would just let us in but they have orders. And they try their best to look as rude as possible. There’s a very short moment in which they even appear to want to negotiate, and ask us where we come from. They look almost scared by those twelve people, mostly older than them, claiming for three corpses. In fact, after a few minutes comes another jeep with four soldiers inside, advancing at full gas on first gear and with its headlights on, making a lot of noise. Such Hollywood film scenes don’t impress the volunteers very much, who just draw instinctively to the sides of the street. The soldiers get out of the jeeps, angry and nervous, and begin to push. A soldier loses two chargers from his pocket while he does this. Some volunteers laugh. It’s a ridiculous scene, they just pretend to beat us. After pushing us back for some hundreds of meters they go back to the jeeps. The volunteers sit down on the street, the second jeep leaves. We receive a call from the ambulance in Tel, they say there are still five people wanted in Sarra, the place is going to get hot. It’s pointless to try again, the volunteers withdraw. The soldiers stay there eating their sandwiches, soon they will end their duty. Hope the ghosts of the three bodies won’t give them too many bad dreams tonight.

On the next day they try it again. Soldiers are all around the hills between Nablus and Tel. They say we’d better not go ahead because there’s shooting everywhere. The people they have shot yesterday aren’t the ones who they are looking for. But these soldiers are nicer (or maybe they’re just allowed to be, as we’re still far from the hot zone) and let us pass. One group stays with the ambulance, the others stay there and wait to be picked up on the next journey. We arrive in Tel, welcomed as usual by kids surrounding us. They want to be photographed. They hold a little bird in their hands, passing it to each other, putting it in their pockets and pulling it out again. Mika and Ethan, two of the volunteers, slept in Tel, and made it to Sarra this morning, though they didn’t manage to let the ambulance in and take the bodies. We wait for the other group to come. The kids are playing again with the little bird, this time without its head.

We wait for hours. The ambulance was stopped by the soldiers and can’t pick the other group. It’s getting late, we decide to head back.

On the way back we encounter the other group coming toward us. The soldiers have arrested some farmers in the surroundings and their donkeys were still around, with their heavy load on their back. The volunteers decided to bring them back to Tel. They still couldn’t pick up the three dead people, but saved ten living donkeys. Let’s call it a good day.

The smell of death

by Bob of the New York Solidarity Delegation

It is Friday. I am writing from inside the Deheisha refugee camp. My body is sore – less from the sun or the walking, or the lack of water but from holding this truth that I see and feel and hear.

It smells here. If you were in New York mid-September you remember it smelled pretty foul. On the 2 train, the first time they opened the stations below Brooklyn Bridge, those of us from Brooklyn rode into Manhattan with a nervous silence. Most of us were pretending to read our books, papers, morning prayers… it was still in that amorphous time when New Yorkers were crossing their previously un-crossable lines and it seemed like maybe the change was still to come. The doors opened at Wall Street or Park Place and we were completely quiet. Waiting, waiting, and then it hit.

The stench. Some of us retched. I made eye contact with a woman across the way. Me in my big headphones, her in her head wrap, and we knew and we said it out loud although it came out like a moan, it came out like a whisper. Death smells like burnt plastic, like stale smoke, like moldy water, like smoldering paper, like burning hair, like excrement, like flesh, like mortar, like bones.

I walked through the camp with a guy about my age. He generously explained life in Deheishe to me. Perhaps because I might be the one who will tell the story loud enough, to the right person, to the wrong person, to no one. The adults nod salaam and the kids holler hello! or shyly wave.

The outer walls of homes serve as corridors through the camp. The homes which house over 14000 people, the homes on top of each other, like precarious bricks, never meant to be permanent residences.

They were tents in ’48 when they came mostly from Zacharia, Betateb and J’rash. They built nothing, waiting to go home. Then the UN built these structures in the 1950’s maybe 8 feet tall (generous) maybe 20 feet X 10 feet (generous still) – one room with kitchen and bath for families under 6, two rooms for more, indicating the wait might be less then temporary, their towns renamed K’far Zk’harria, Bet Shiamish, Jrosh.

14,000 people live within the 750 sq. meters of the camp. 55% of them are under the age of 15. There is 24-hour curfew so technically no one should be outside at all. Ever. When you get caught by a tank, a jeep, a helicopter, you get shot or jailed. Young men, probably my brother’s age walking around missing hands or legs.

Pictures of martyrs line the walls, alongside arrows spray painted by the Israeli military so they know how to get out when they come in.

I will write more in a minute. I need to walk away.

The Effect of Closure on the Village of Iraq Bureen

by Ellen O’Grady

Since July 26 I have been living in and witnessing the effects of the Israeli military closure on the village of Iraq Bureen and its 900 inhabitants. Iraq Bureen is located three miles outside of the city of Nablus on top of a terraced mountain 880 meters above sea level. Since the outbreak of the Al-Aqsa Intifada and more forcefully since the Israeli invasion into the West Bank, Israel has imposed a closure on Iraq Bureen which impedes movement into and from the village. The closure of the village, which is implemented through military outposts, checkpoints, road blocks, physical barriers, tanks, planes, and helicopters, enables the Israeli army to completely control and restrict movement of people and goods.

The road leading from Iraq Bureen to the surrounding towns and the city of Nablus is closed by a six foot tall rock and dirt barrier constructed by the Israeli army. The road and the surrounding valleys and mountain paths are constantly watched over by an Israeli military camp and military posts on the neighboring mountains. Those who risk breaking the closure by walking around the roadblock or through the valleys risk both being arrested and being shot at. Many take the risk in order to care for and support their families. For example, people break the seige in order to transport food to Nablus for the needed income, to work in neighboring villages for the needed income, to transport water and food and fuel from Nablus to Iraq Bureen, and to go to Nablus to receive medical care.

MEDICAL CARE DENIED
Over 70% of the Palestinian population live in rural areas, such as Iraq Bureen, which do not provide hospital services. Closure therefore severly restricts the population from health care facilities. The inablitity for the people in Iraq Bureen to reach hospitals and clinics has severly affected pregnant women, sick children and people requiring treatment for things such as cancer, kidney failure, and diabetes.

On the night of August 6 Hiyam Q’s baby died while she was in labor in her home. It was a late pregnancy, the baby was very big and could not be delivered vaginally. Had she had access to a hospital a ceasarean section could have been performed and most likely the child’s life would have been saved. (The UNWRA reprts that among its patients there has been a 58% increase in the number of still births since the military closure. Other medical organizations reprt a 100% increase in home deliveries.)

In the past two weeks I have accompanied Palestinians breaking the closure in order to help them reach medical care safely. I have walked with three sick children and their families to reach hospitals and clinics in Nablus. And with Salwa an old woman with sores on her hands and face who is suffering from untreated Diabetes. Doctors at St. Luke’s hospital in Nablus report a 49% decline in general patients, a 73% decline in specialty services, and a 53% decline in surgeries.

KILLED FOR BREAKING THE CLOSURE TO WORK OUTSIDE IRAQ BUREEN: THE STORY OF ADNAN AND MAMOUD
After six months without any work two laborers from Iraq Bureen, Adnan and Mamoud, and a friend and co-worker of theirs from the village of Tell broke the closure to work in a town North of Nablus. They worked for two weeks painting and putting down tile. Before their expected return Adnan called his sister to tell her they would be leaving the next day and be home in two days. The day after the phone call was made the three men were shot and killed by the Israeli Occupation forces in a field in a nearby town. They lay in the feild for two days without being discovered. On the third day the Israeli media reported the killing of the three men, claiming in the report that the three were suspected terrorists, a claim that has no evidence to support it. An ambulance was permitted to reach the three bodies and take them to a hospital in Nablus. The bullet holes were as large as fists suggesting they were fired upon from a plane or tank. Adnan had a large hole through his stomach and eight bullet holes through his right leg. Mamoud had a bullet through his mouth and the top of his head had been cut open. Both of their faces were blue and pocked with gravel from being dragged from the location of the killing. Nothing supports the claim that the men conducted violent activites against Israel. All evidence supports that they were laborers returning from work. I visited and sat with the two families in Iraq Bureen. The family of Mamoud showed me the interior decorating work he had done on their home, including a relief of painted roses on the ceiling and a border of flowers painted on the wall.

The families of Mamoud and Adnan fear that the Israeli military will soon come to destroy their homes. Since 1967, the Israeli authorities have partially or wholly demolished close to 10,000 Palestinian homes. Often these house demolitions are used as punitive measures (e.g., against the families of suspected terrorists). Nearly every day in the past week we have heard the explosions and demolitions of homes in Nablus and the village of Tell. There has been increased tank activity around Iraq Bureen; people here fear there homes will be next.

AGRICULTURE UNDER SEIGE
The majority of the people in Iraq Bureen depend on the sale of cactus fruit, milk and yogurt to support their families. These past eleven days the cactus fruit should have gone to markets in Nablus. Because of the closure and a strict curfew on Nablus there has not been access to markets and much of the fruit is beginning to rot. The small amount of fruit that has reached Nablus has been carried in buckets by farmers and their donkeys who were able to evade the military blockade. This is getting more and more difficult as the presence of tanks and military blockades around Iraq Bureen and Nablus has increased over the past two weeks.

I have spoken with nine farmers who had been trying to get to Nablus with their cactus fruit this past week and who had been stopped by Israeli soldiers and forced to sit with their faces bowed down to the ground for more than four hours in the hot sun and never permitted to sell their fruit.

I have spoken with seven farmers who in the past four weeks have been detained by the Israeli occupation forces for attempting to transport milk, yogurt and fruit to Nablus. Two of those detained, Mohamed and Said, brought me to the place they had been taken by the Isreali soldiers and showed me the broken glass yogurt jars that had been thrown to the ground and broken by the soldiers who had detained them.

From the top of Iraq Bureen I have watched tanks stop and turn back farmers and their donkeys on the road leading to Nablus.

HUNGER AND MALNUTRITION
As a direct result of the closure there are families in Iraq who have no food or money and are surviving on olive oil. I sat with the mothers of two families, Iman and Miriam. Iman has a husband who suffers from a mental illness (dissociation) that is treated through medication. However since the closure he has not been able to recieve his medication. Since the invasion the medication is not even available in Nablus, only in Israel. As a result he has been mentally unstable and unable to provide for the family. The husband of Miriam also suffers from a mental illness. Until the seige, the family of her husband had been providing for her. Now, the family of her husband has little money for themsleves and so Miriam’s children go without food and sleep much of the day to try to escape their hunger.

Many families in Iraq Bureen are getting by just on bread and olive oil and are suffering from malnutrution. The Palestine Bureau of Statistics recently relased a survey on nutrition and found that 63.8% of those surveyed faced difficulties on food supply since the outbreak of the Al-Aqsa Intifada. 45.5% are suffering from chronic malnutrition. 36.9% are suffering from mild chronic malnutrition.

WATER UNDER SIEGE
Iraq Bureen is one of many villages suffering from a severe water shortage as a result of closing the Palestinian territories. There is no water source in Iraq Bureen so the village depends on water tankers to come and fill people’s wells. Normally water tankers come every week during the summer months. Under the closure they cannot reach the villages. This forces people to break closure, bring donkeys down to a river and collect what little water they are able to with plastic containers.

POWER SHORTAGE
Iraq Boreen is one of over 130 West Bank villages that has electricity supplied for only a fraction of the day. Electricity in IB is generated by a motor powered by benzine. Normally the motor runs for seven hours. Under the seige there is often only enough diesel fuel to run for three hours a day.

*********************
Closure is in direct violation of internationl humanitarian law. Under the conditions incurred by the closure, people of Iraq Bureen and throughout the occupied territories are suffering from a lack of access to food, fuel and water and access to basic health care. Breaking the closure puts people at risk for being detained and arrested as well being shot at and killed. The people here are in a state of emergency. We must do everything we can to end this seige and the Israeli occupation of Palestine.

Ballad of a Small Victory

by Karl Dallas

The Battle of Nablus
tune: English traditional, “The Bold Princess Royal”

On the last day of June in two thousand and two
In the city of Nablus the pleasures were few
The Israeli army had invaded the town
And the people were terrorised by the tanks roaming round.

We were ten internationals come into this land
To see what was happening and perhaps lend a hand.
We were Christians and Muslims and atheists and Jews
And all were determined to see what we could do.

For eight days a curfew all day and all night
And anyone on the streets could be shot on sight
But the people determined to reclaim their streets
And so we marched with them the curfew to beat.

Next day in the morning we woke from our dreams
To hear that the army was invading the homes
Of many brave fam’lies who had done nothing wrong
And so we decided to see what could be done.

We went to a house where the soldiers had gone
And twenty or so people they confined in one room.
We found a way in and we banged on the door
Saying we come in peace and in the name of the law.

Outside in the street while the folk gathered round
Some more of our number from all over the town
They gave us a warning that a tank was in view
So they sat down to stop it and they saw what they should do.

All the time in the house we persisted to try
To speak to the soldiers but they gave no reply
Instead they fired tear gas and exploded grenades
But our comrades were steadfast Though none could came to their aid.

They were only five people, brave vessels of light,
Confronting without weapons all the enemy’s might
The soldiers took hold of them and dragged them away
And one of their number was taken that day.

At length in the house the soldiers did say
We will take our leave if you’ll go away.
We consulted our comrades to see what to do
And at eight in the evening we decided to go.

Despite this small victory we should never forget
That the invading army oppresses them yet
Even while all our hearts with joy did abound
They were killing two young men elsewhere in the town.

The statesmen are weeping salt crocodile tears
At the plight of this people for so many years
But remember the teargas and the tank on that day
All carried the trademark: Made in USA.

International Activists Reach the Door of the Church of the Nativity

By Larry Hales

We walked right in to Manger Square–“right through the front door.” The writer in me wants to create some suspense, but I am ecstatic–my heart continues to beat at the rate it was when we were walking through.

We were planning the night before and were planning around another demonstration led by clergy. Our plan was to walk to the checkpoint before Bethlehem and protest. This morning we decided to participate in this action but to also continue on if the participants of it were stopped.

Well, we were stopped and the clergy weren’t so much interested in pushing through as they were in just challenging the checkpoint.

After this action, which lasted only about 30 minutes we decided to take a route through a monastery. No one expected us to get through this way either because the soldiers were very close, and if they were looking, would be able to see us. But, they didn’t and we continued on into Bethlehem.

The city was a ghost town, it was on curfew and it was almost completely quiet–at first. As we walked on, people began appearing at their windows and cheering us on. It was very powerful to see these people looking out and throwing up peace signs, children and elderly people. Our presence gave them hope and as we continued we began to see more and more people, mostly children coming out of their homes. They wouldn’t come out on the streets but they were coming out.

We stopped after having walked for quite awhile, and we began to plan for the march on the Church of the Nativity. No one thought that we would have gotten as far as we did. We planned and planned and waited and planned; finally, some of us decided to talk to some families that had gathered just in front of their homes, a few of them were fluent in English.

They were entirely full of gratitude–they let us into their homes and served us coffee–these people are resilient. Their lives are being put on hold by an occupying force; they can’t go to work; their children can’t go to school, yet, they were so willing to share with us. Some even invited me to stay with them.

Time began to get short; so, we had to go with the plan we had, which was for five of us to cross the barricade with water and food but we didn’t think that we would get through; and so, we were considering that the action would be symbolic at best. We waited some more and finally set on our way with a box of water and a bag of rice–meant to be symbolic of course because in the church there is barely any water, let alone a way of cooking the rice.

People began coming out more. I guess the word had gotten out. There was a group of Palestinians just before the barricade and some walked to it with us, holding down the barbed wire so that we could walk over it.

When we saw Manger Square we thought the siege had ended. It was empty except for an M1 Abrams tank. We walked on and at the halfway point, Israelis began yelling for us to stop. These soldiers doing the yelling didn’t have on their Kevlar helmets or their rifles–they were caught off guard.

We continued on through the yelling and made it to the door of the Church. When there we were instructed to sit by Huwaida. We did and the soldiers threw smoke canisters to block the press from seeing us. We knocked at the door and yelled that we had food; the soldiers looked on, the smoke rising. The tank moved so as to scare us. The media began moving so the smoke wouldn’t block their view. We held our hands up while yelling at the people inside to open the door, then, the soldiers moved towards us started pulling us up and throwing the food away from the door.

They were attempting to hold us but we were leading them more than them us. They tried to confiscate cameras, but we refused and they capitulated. However, they did drag some people. The soldier holding me was telling me how he didn’t agree with what was going on but that it was his job. He seemed to be a good man.

We were put in one area and Ted Koppel came over and interviewed Huwaida. He got the entire incident, all the cameras did despite the smoke. When he finished we came to the conclusion to walk out. The soldiers weren’t prepared for this. They tried to stop us but we defied them and kept on walking ’til we were clear of them.

The action was one of the most spectacular things I have ever seen, and the people I was with are some of the most brave people I have ever known. Tomorrow we will begin to try and get some people in Hebron and the Gaza Strip. I will be going to Hebron. More to come.

* Larry Hales is one of two members of the Colorado Campaign for Middle East Peace who have joined many internationals in Palestine to nonviolent resist Israel’s illegal military occupation of Palestine.