Category: Journals - Page 32 - International Solidarity Movement

Resistance and tear gas

21st August 2014 | Saeeda Al-Rashid | Occupied Palestine

It’s late May [2013], and the air is stifling. Heat sizzles from the pavement, and Khalili youth, though well-adapted to these conditions, can be seen wiping sweat from their brows as they trek home from school. A few trickle through Checkpoint 56 into the Tel Rumeida neighborhood, formally designated Israeli-controlled territory under the Hebron Agreement. Soldiers search their bags and detain one, but finding no reason to arrest him, release him an hour later, a routine form of harassment youth are all too accustomed to. At some point, a school-bus turns up the road. It’s labeled in Hebrew and English, “Air-Conditioned Video.” The school bus is only for settler children, whereas many Palestinian vehicles are not allowed to drive in Tel Rumeida.

The word “apartheid” is often used to criticize Israeli racism and the Israeli state’s policies of segregation. But on the street level, what does apartheid actually look like? While living in occupied Khalil under Israeli military occupation for a few months, I experienced only the beginning of the answer to those questions. The rest is in the lived experience of businessmen and women, school children, farmers and shepherds who have lived under occupation for forty-plus years.

Apartheid Defined

In his final report as UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the oPt [Occupied Palestinian Territories], Richard Falk called for an investigation into the Israeli practices, broadly referred to as hafrada meaning “separation”, that could constitute apartheid under the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid. Offenses that come in conflict with the Convention include the unlawful taking of life, administrative detention, and torture, and also the segregation of land and parallel legal systems in the West Bank that “prevent participation in the political, social, economic and cultural life of the country and the full development of a racial group” (18).

This invokes a flood of memories from my short time in Palestine, including a young couple in Masafer Yatta living in a former sheep pen because the Israeli Civil Authority won’t grant them a permit to build a house; shops forced to close down during Jewish holidays so that settlers can illegally pass into the Palestinian-controlled part of Khalil; a B’tselem caseworker laughing aloud when we asked whether any action would be taken after Abu Shamsiya documented Israeli settlers’ assault on his family and was himself arrested on false charges of spitting at the nearby soldiers throwing stones and a tomato, whilst at the same time an Israeli boy of similar age threw eggs at internationals and went unpunished.

Saeeda waits outside the IDF compound with the family of a child arrested for 'throwing a tomato' (Photo by Youth Against Settlements). — Saeeda waits outside the IDF compound with the family of a child arrested for ‘throwing a tomato’ (Photo by Youth Against Settlements).

Apartheid, as Falk points out, is not a recurrence of isolated crimes; rather, “the combined effect of the measures designed to ensure security for Israeli citizens, to facilitate and expand settlements, and, it would appear, to annex land, is hafrada, discrimination and systematic oppression of, and domination over, the Palestinian people.” Apartheid is in the rain that flooded the Khalil Souq (market), ruining goods that provide needed income for Khalili families, because Israeli authorities have prevented the construction of appropriate drainage facilities.

Women in Hebron shop flooded (photo by Women in Hebron).

Apartheid is in the rocky, rat-infested paths Palestinians travel on to climb the prayer road because the main roads are only for settlers. Apartheid is in the children who inhale tear gas nearly every day on the way to school, and every family stuck in the Qalandiya checkpoint during Ramadhan, barred from entering Jerusalem to worship. Apartheid is the reason ISM volunteers on the ground believe strongly in only taking actions led by Palestinians – this is their home, and their lives are impacted every day by apartheid years after we’ve flown home to our respective countries.

Resistance and Tear Gas

Richard Falk’s final report also pointed out that persecution of those who resist apartheid practices falls under article 2(f) of the Convention. Upon investigating the types of tear gas deployed by the IDF against peaceful protestors, from an organic chemistry perspective with the help of a leading chemist who was my professor, I unearthed a plethora of information on this vile substance.

The IDF principally uses CS gas (o-chlorobenzilidenemalononitrile). Exposure to CS gas has been implicated in a number of deaths in the West Bank as well as South Korea because it’s a potent Michael acceptor, making it able to inhibit many important chemicals in our bodies including the amino acid cysteine, which can be found on the TRPA1 protein channel that mediates our continued responsiveness to a wide variety of irritants and has been implicated in the prolonged sense of irritation experienced by some who are exposed to tear gas. (This is potentially the reason biting into an onion, a popular on-the-ground treatment for tear gas exposure, also counteracts the toxicity of CS gas – the inert sulfur-containing compounds in onions serve as alternate Michael donors).

Additionally, CS and CN gas produce methylene chloride, which as a nervous depressant and mild carcinogen reaches dangerous levels at exposure above 250 ppm by the constant barrage of intense tear gas deployment I witnessed at demonstrations. Finally, CS gas has been shown to be a mild mutagen (via intercalation with DNA) and thus it is also a potential carcinogen. Much has been said about the disparity in living conditions that results from the Israeli military occupation; prolonged exposure to dangerous chemicals for not only activists who resist the wall but shop-keepers and schoolchildren intertwines with the many different ways the system of apartheid and physical and legal segregation impact the daily lives of Palestinian people.

I believe this apartheid in and of itself is violence; there is no state of peace from which the more obvious forms of violence such as stone-throwing and shootings arise. There will only be peace when real justice is served – when apartheid is nothing more than a history lesson for our children.

Consequences of destruction

17th August 2014 | Charlie Andreasson | Gaza, Occupied Palestine

The military assaults on the Palestinians have been going on for over a month, and even if the war should end while I’m writing, the exhausting consequences of it will continue for some time. Concern for your own life, for your family members and friends, and that the house where you are in will be attacked and fall down, is easy to understand even when you watch the news hundreds of miles from the violent epicenter. But the consequences are so many more.

There is the feeling that the sky is pressing you against the ground and the noise of the angry buzzing of all drones overhead. How do you describe that to somebody at a safe distance?

There is almost no access to electricity now that Gaza’s only power plant was bombed. But electricity is so much more than the switch on the wall. It means that the clothes have to be washed by hand, scrubbing, wringing. There is no sorting of white and color or setting the degree; all items go into the same bucket. If warmer water is wanted it is heated on the gas stove.

There is still food available in shops and on street markets, but without power the refrigerators and freezers do not work, and in 30-degree heat the food soon goes bad. It has been a long time since I went to the butcher now. And prices have started to rise, not fast, but little by little. Add to this that the banks are closed, and factories, workshops and other workplaces have been bombed, leaving employees with no income. For all those who had to flee their homes without the ability to bring anything, and those that already literally stood penniless, life is even more difficult.

Before the war, water came, though salty and unfit for drinking, when I turned the tap. That is no longer a given. After I had to rush to the bathroom and realized afterwards that I couldn’t flush, I place an extra bucket of water on the side. But I’m lucky – hundreds of thousands of people are cut off from the water supply. This presents problems even with the washing bucket, and it is difficult for people to keep themselves and their children clean.

Our great dependence on water is understood only when there is nothing, and outside the small stores where stainless steel water tanks are formed and people sometimes queue to buy filtered groundwater – if there is anything in the tanks. Even the more expensive bottled water runs out sometimes in the stores, though hardly anyone would use it to take a shower in it, let alone flush the toilet with.

That brings us to the sewage system that does not work in many places since the pipes and pumping stations have been destroyed. In some places small streams of untreated sewage are flowing through buildings, across roads, and down towards the sea. And in 30-degree heat, where food cannot be kept chilled and with inadequate access to water, one can just wait for the outbreak of diseases.

Families have done what they could to house relatives, putting hospitality and solidarity to the test over more than a month, shared their clothes, food, and water, and sacrificed their private life. But what happens when these long-term guests cannot return home? Are they still welcome to curtail the living space when the violence of the war ebbs? And what of those who pitched tent-like homes in the park behind the al-Shifa hospital and elsewhere, who have no access to food, water, sewers, electricity? Where should they go? How will their children be able to study under these conditions?

It is discerned among the ruins in Shujaja and other areas along the buffer zone, that life must somehow go on. Some are lucky and their houses can be repaired, if they can get hold of building materials, and if they can pay. But far too many others have not been that lucky. Where their houses once stood are now collapsed concrete piles or deep craters. Tarpaulins have been spread among them, forming open tents for protection from the sun. Here and there the smell of something dead under all the layers of fallen concrete is perceived. It may be from an animal, or from something else. And amid all the destruction people are trying to find their possessions that are still in one piece, children are playing amongst the rubble, and some are making tea over an open fire.

The consequences of war are not just death and blood, dismemberment and pain. They is so many more. And they do not end when the soldiers return to their barracks.

Journal: Clashes in Hebron

9th August 2014 | International Solidarity Movement, Vern | Hebron, Occupied Palestine

As ISM volunteers were heading back from al-Masara village yesterday, we were dropped at off at Bab Al-Zawiye, the city center of Hebron. We observed a clash between Palestinian youths and the Israeli army. Youths were throwing rocks and were gunned down with rubber coated steel bullets and live ammunition.

We observed a Palestinian demonstrator shot in the leg. He fell down, and others dragged him to the ambulance. A few minutes afterwards, we observed a man being rushed away by his friends; his body was laid on the top of a car. He was shot in the chest. His name was Nader Muhammad Idris. We learned later that he died.

At least 40 people were wounded that day.

The brutality of the Israeli army never ceases to amaze me. When people appeal to the soldiers, they are ignored. When they peacefully march, they are tear-gassed, deafened with stun grenades or arrested. When they throw rocks, they are shot.

Israel cries that it is a victim of “terrorism”. Yet the terrorism of the occupation in Palestine leaves behind it a regular trail of wounded, maimed, and murdered people.

Returning to Beit Hanoun

8th August 2014 | Charlie Andreasson| Gaza, Occupied Palestine

We went back to Beit Hanoun almost two weeks after the Israeli military held us captive in the hospital and shelled it for 13 hours.

It was the second day of the 72 hours ceasefire, and there was far more traffic on the roads and streets than there had been during the last four weeks, and there were far more people visible. Rina Andolini, a British volunteer, and I made out way to the now closed hospital and were immediately recognized by some men outside the gates. Men who when I last saw them was completely exhausted and dressed in their green hospital fatigues.

I gently asked if there was any chance for us to enter to view the devastation again and a key was immediately in one man’s hand, the thick chain was removed, and the door was opened for us.

Everything looked the same since the morning when we finally were able to leave, nothing seemed to have been removed. The glass was still spread out over beds and floors, the grout likewise. However the corridor where we spent the long night now felt desolate. The faces of all the women with their eyes closed were no longer there, the kids on the mattress in front of my feet were gone. Just dirt residue.

Upstairs, however, someone had taken the mattress that was on the bed under the smiling elephant on the wall, a cat was meowing among fallen plaster and shattered glass. But the gaping hole in the wall was still there, and standing in its opening I measured with my eyes the distance from where the tank must have fired the grenade. 30 meters. Not much more.

Photo from July 26th of Beit Hanoun hospital, by Charlie Andreasson

Right next to the hospital, with just a children’s playground in between, is a cemetery. It was clear that it had been under heavy fire. Remains of projectiles scattered and war dust covered the few gravestones that were still in one piece. In the far end some men were digging. I took a shovel and helped them to uncover the stones two feet under the ground, helping them to lift them up. Another body will be laid there. Close to two thousand bodies have been, and still will be, laid to rest in the ground.

We did not attend the funeral, we went instead into an adjacent mosque. The large chandelier was in the middle of the floor amongst the dirt, dust and, as everywhere else, shattered glass. We went straight through the mosque, there was no need for a door, and met a couple carrying their baby daughter over the ruins of what had once been homes. They invited us into their house, that on the inside looked remarkably intact, but there were no electricity, water or working sanitation. We were served tea by people who barely have anything; they themselves drank nothing and said almost nothing. What was there to be said, that cannot be seen?

Some young men searched through the ruins of what had once been their home. I climbed up and picked up some drinking glasses that miraculously were not broken. There was not much else that could be saved.

Another family stayed not far from there, with a flatbed truck with belongings. They patted me on the shoulder when I carried belongings for them, into an apartment that still needed be cleaned from all the dirt and debris that lay scattered around. But there was no time for it, they could not stay longer where they were. I was given some water, and they asked me to tell what I had seen when I return back home.

But there are no words that can describe all the destruction these people are forced to return to, it must be experienced. And there are no words that can describe the vulnerability and exclusion from the world society these people live in. But perhaps more people will not have to experience this devastation before we understand that depriving people of their human rights cannot contribute to securing the safety of others. And to deny other people their dignity is not worthy of free and enlightened people.