Category: Journals

Volunteers with the International Solidarity Movement are encouraged to write personal reflections about the work they engage in with Palestinian communities, the events they experience, and the people they meet. These journals offer the human context often missing in traditional reports or journalism. These articles represent the author’s thoughts and feelings and not necessarily those of the International Solidarity Movement.

A Normal Day in the Lives of My Palestinian Neighbors

Paulette S. | Christian Peacemaker Team

Our neighbor Haniya shrugged her shoulders as she spoke in a disheartened way: “This is all normal for us now. What can we do anyway?” Yet, when I see armed Israeli soldiers on the rooftops, and when I witness Palestinians going through checkpoints to go to the Mosque, I see this Occupation as an ongoing, huge human tragedy.

It’s been a long 40+ years now that the Israeli Occupation has ruled a huge section of the West Bank. Here Martial law governs thousands of people’s lives in almost every aspect of their days: travel: to their families, to schools, to health services, to their farms or to their stores.

My friend Fatima lived in a small outlying village, but due to lack of money, she moved to H2, Hebron, where she could work in a small shop owned by her sister. Fatima’s 7 children are now all teens, and one daughter is married. The two sons, though certainly bright enough, have quit high school. The reality of finding a good job after schooling is almost nonexistent, they reason. Because there is no mandatory schooling for Palestinian children, the children roam the streets, smoke, or help their family. Two times in the recent past, the Military snatched two of these working young men. One of these boys was using a cutting knife to help his father unpack boxes of store goods. The other boy was sent by his father on an errand, but the child’s coat resembled a policeman’s coat. The Military took him and questioned him for hours while his father reasoned with the soldiers.

Fatima, like many shopkeepers, opens her shop each morning very early, hoping that tourists will buy a dress or an embroidered pillow case or small purse or shawl that day. She and her sister have plenty of women who want to embroider for them, but Fatima barely makes enough money for her own family. Since her husband is not able to work, the family depends entirely on Fatima’s scant income. She and internationals constantly assure visitors there is no need for them to fear entering the Old City. Visitors see guns and soldiers throughout H2, but they soon learn that only the Palestinians are the target of M-16’s.

Fatima, like most parents, tries to live through the day as “normally” as possible with a good sense of humor. Already, one of her two sons, 15 years old, has been accused of throwing a stone at a soldier and despite all his insistence and those of eye witnesses who said he did not throw the stone, he served 2 1/2 months in an Israeli prison. Like many other families this family too borrowed and paid 1200 shekels on the release of their son. Israel makes a fortune from the “stone throwing” accusations dished out to young Palestinian men.

The day isn’t over when it’s over for these people. Parents with teenage sons rarely sleep soundly. Like a mother with a newborn baby, they worry that the night will bring soldiers breaking into their home, awakening everyone, locking the family into one room and then taking their teenage son with them to a prison. CPT’s 1st. year University friend, grabbed from his home at 1:30am, served 6 months in prison with no official charge against him. I ask myself: “How can anyone, any country not hear the cries of these people for compassion and justice?” Don’t they deserve a truly normal life also?

The price of dignity

08 February 2011 | International Women’s Peace Service

By Kim Bullimore

Currently there are more than 11,000 Palestinian political prisoners locked up in Israel’s jails. This week, I found out that my friend Hasan* (*not his real name) is one of them. When in Ramallah, I mentioned to a mutual friend that I had planned to ring him to let him know I was in Palestine. Our mutual friend informed me that Hasan was being held under “Administration Detention” and had been in prison for three months.

I last saw Hasan more than a year ago, when I was last in Palestine. A year previous to this last meeting, he had emailed me to apologise for not answering my phone calls and emails when I had tried to contact him when I was in Palestine. Unfortunately, he apologised, he had been in prison for seven months held without charge or trial by the Israeli military under an Administrative Detention order.

When I met him last year in a local Ramallah coffee shop, he looked the same but different. In his early to mid-twenties, Hasan, who I had met him several years before, had always had a lean but strong build, but now he was more thinner than I remembered him. He was also smoking more and his demeanour was different. He was still as politically sharp as I remembered him, but his youthful, upbeat enthusiasm had been tempered and he was much more cynical and world-weary than before. I could see that the seven months he spent in Israel’s prisons had taken a definite toll on him. Hasan told me that he had been repeatedly tortured while in prison but it had made him stronger and more committed to his people’s struggle.

Hasan with wry humour, also recounted the toll his imprisonment had also had on his family, particularly his mother. An atheist himself, Hasan, comes from a Christian Palestinian family and upon his release from Administrative Detention; he came home to find that his mother, a believer, had hung a crucifix on his bedroom wall and left a small crucifix on his study table. For the first few weeks, he told me, he out of love and deference for his mother he allowed the Cross on the wall to remain but would put the small one on his table away. However, every time he returned home from being out, he again would find the small cross had reappeared on his table, placed there by his concerned mother. Our mutual friend, when she told me of Hasan’s re-incarceration, also recounted to me that his mother after his release from his first imprisonment woke at 3 am every morning, the time the Israeli military had raid the family’s home to kidnap Hasan. His mother, terrified that the Israeli military would again raid her home and take either one or both of her sons, woke at this time each morning to check they were safely in their beds.

Hasan’s imprisonment, our mutual friend informed me, came at a time when he was finally getting over the horrors of his first imprisonment and torture and was much more like his “old-self”. As I write this article, I worry that my friend is being tortured and that his family is suffering, like so many other Palestinian families who are experiencing the same horrendous situation.

Since 1967, more than 650,000 Palestinians or twenty percent of Palestinian population of the Occupied Palestinian Territories have been detained by Israel [1]. According to the Palestinian prisoner’s support and human rights association, Addameer, most of those detained are male. Addameer notes that this translates to more forty percent of the total male Palestinian population of the Occupied Palestinian Territories being incarcerated since 1967.

Since 1967, when Israel illegal seized and occupied East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, more than 1500 military regulations have been issued by Israel’s military to “govern” the West Bank, while more than 1400 have been issued to “govern” the besieged Gaza Strip[2]. These military orders can be issued on the whim of an Israeli military commander and do not need to be publicised. As a result, the Palestinians and the wider public, including the media and legal services, only become aware of the existence of such orders when they are implemented. In 1970, Israel issued Military Order 378, which authorised the military commanders of regions to issue “Administrative Detention” orders [3]. These orders allow Israeli occupying forces to detain and arrest large numbers of Palestinian civilians without charge or trail. In 1988, Military Order 378 was amended by Military Order 1229 in the Occupied West Bank and Military Order 941 in the Gaza Strip, with these amendments allowing military orders to be issued for Administrative Detention without designating a maximum period of time for incarceration without charge or trail [4]

According to the first paragraph of Military Order 1229: “If a Military Commander deems the detention of a person necessary for security reasons he may do so for a period not in excess of 6 months, after which he has the right to extend the detention period for a further six months according to the original order. The detention order can be passed without the presence of the detainee…” [5]

Under this regime, 22% of persons held under administrative detention are held for less than 6 months, while 37% have been held between 6 months to 1 year. Another eight percent have been held for 2-5 years. The longest period an individual has been held under administrative detention without then being charged is 8 years [6].

Israeli human rights group, B’Tselem notes that the highest number of Palestinians held under administrative detention was during the First Intifada, with almost 1800 Palestinians detain in November 1989 [7]. During the early to mid 1990s, between 100-350 Palestinian political prisoners were detained under administrative detention at any given moment. By the second year of the Second Palestinian Intifada, approximately 1000 Palestinians were detained under Israel’s regime. B’Tselem notes that as of August of 2010, 189 Palestinians were being held under administrative detention.

B’Tselm points out that while administrative detention is allowed under international law, it “can only be used only in the most exceptional cases, as the last means available for preventing danger that cannot be thwarted by less harmful means” [8]. B’Tselem notes, however, that Israel uses administrative detention in an arbitrary and regular manner in order to detain Palestinian civilians, denying them proper legal recourse, which is in violation of international law. Not only are Palestinians, who are detained under Administrative Detention orders, not charged with anything and denied the right to a trial, both the detainee and their legal council are denied the right to even know what the detainee is accused of. The detainee’s lawyers are also denied the right to access the military ‘evidence’ against those detained under the Administrative Detention regime. Addameer notes that the use of administrative detention by Israel is such a manner is in contravention of Fourth Geneva Convention, as well as other international and human rights law.

Nearly all Palestinian political prisoners, both male and female, as well as adults and minors, have suffered torture at the hands of their Israeli captors. According to Addameer, “Physical and psychological torture against Palestinian and Arab prisoners has been a distinguishing factor of Israeli occupation since 1967”, noting that “torture has taken different shapes throughout the period of occupation” [9]. According to Addameer since the beginning of the first Palestinian intifada in 1987, at least 30,000 Palestinians have been tortured by Israel.

Many of the Palestinian political prisoners detained under the Administrative Detention regime are minors. In the last week, the village of An Nabi Saleh, has been raided almost nightly and at least four Palestinian minors have been kidnapped by the Israeli military, including an 11 year old off the streets of the village. Under Israeli military law, Palestinian children age 14 years and over are tried as an adult in Israel’s military courts [10]. In practice, however, children as young as 11 and 12 have been brought before these courts and held under Administrative Detention. According to Defense for Children International, 213 Palestinian children are currently being held in Israeli prisons as of December 2010 [11]. The majority of Palestinian child political prisoners report that they have also been tortured by the Israeli military.

The children kidnapped and detained in An Nabi Saleh are now being imprisoned under the same barbaric and illegal regime that my friend Hasan is imprisoned under. Their freedom is denied and the Israeli military will attempt to break their spirits and their resistance to the brutal military occupation which Israel is intent on perpetuating. While the Israeli state and its military machine may break the bones and tear the flesh of its captives, it will fail to break their resistance because these young boys, men and women understand the struggle in which they are engaged is not just a struggle for a homeland, but a struggle for human dignity, equality and freedom. And no man or woman or child, no matter how hard pressed by their oppressor, will ever give up the struggle for such basic and inalienable human rights.

Another young stone-collector is killed in Gaza

20 January 2011 / International Solidarity Movement, Vera Macht

It had been only eight days since the last innocent was killed. People die here one after another, killed one by one, without consequences, without justice, without an outcry in the media. Innocent civilians trying to make a living amidst the stifling four-year siege. Palestinian civilians, whose lives become only an entry in the statistics: “So that’s what I can do: register it in my notebook. It is registered, and there is an empty line after Shaban’s name. That is for those who they kill tomorrow,” wrote the American writer Max Ajl after the farmer Shaban Karmout was killed. It took eight days, and the place was filled. Amjad ElZaaneen was 17 years when he was killed on Tuesday.

Amjad collected stones that morning, the 18th of January, as he did every morning with his three cousins and his brother, the youngest of whom was eleven. Five boys, children, with a horse and a cart full of stones, about 300m from the border with Israel, and near to the village of Bait Hanoun. They had just loaded their cart full as they saw Israeli tanks and bulldozers coming to invade the land for an unknown reason. A group of resistance fighters approached the area, including fighters from PFLP and the Communist Party, to push them out and prevent them from again uprooting the land. It was a symbolic action: the country has been destroyed hundreds of times before by tanks and bulldozers, and the resistance the fighters can sustain is nothing in comparison to the brutal force of the Israeli army. Amjad and the others ran for their lives and arrived safely home.

But the horse was still there in the field, along with all of the stones they had collected with such difficulty, risking their lives to have some income that day. So they returned, thinking the situation had calmed down and that the tanks and bulldozers had withdrawn from Gaza’s land after flattening it one more time. But when they reached their horse, Israeli soldiers fired a shell at them, and Sharaf Raafat Shada, 19, was hit by a piece of shrapnel in the chest. Amjad, the oldest, tried to pull him away, to lay him on the cart to somehow take him to the hospital, but Sharaf was too heavy for him. So Amjad made the decision to try to reach Bait Hanoun in order to get help. He hadn’t gone far when a shell directly hit him into his belly, leaving a wound so large that he bled to death within minutes.
The young boys broke out in panic and ran off to get to safety. Ambulances and people living nearby arrived to try to rescue the boys, waving white flags, but that didn’t stop the shooting. It was a long time before they managed to reach them.

Ismael Abd Elqader ElZaaneen, 16 years old, is now in hospital in Bait Hanoun with bandages on nearly every part of his body. “We ran in all directions, but they fired about ten artillery shells at us. I got shrapnel deep in my back and smaller pieces all over my body. But I kept running nevertheless, until I got to the main road from Bait Hanoun.” Even the injured Sharaf somehow managed to reach refuge at the main street without being hit by the shelling again. The eleven-year old Abdel Qader Oday Elzaaneeen was slightly injured by shrapnel to his cheek. He was standing in the hospital and crying, visibly in shock, his cousin is dead, and his brothers are injured severely. “I have no idea why the Israelis have done this,” he says quietly. Amjad was too young to die today, by a grenade that has torn his stomach apart.

As his mother heard what happened, she collapsed in the hospital. Even as she regained consciousness, she continued lying down silently, her eyes closed. How can the world be still there if her son is no more.

The uncle of Sharaf, who is standing next to his bed, says: “The Israelis are committing crimes every day here. None of us civilians can enter his fields anymore. The brutality is escalating dramatically in recent times—farmers, shepherds, stone collectors—we are all murdered. They don’t have mercy on anyone, neither the elderly, nor children. People out there must begin to help us, because every day, every week and every month we have to mourn new injuries and deaths. Since 1948, we are suffering and it’s getting worse and worse. We don’t get support from anyone. But we need help. All Palestinians are potential targets. All of us. No one is excluded, no one is safe.”

Each of the relatives, waiting in the hospital, could be the next victim: as a farmer on the field, as a shepherd, or collecting stones. Today Amjad ElZaaneen was the next name on the list of innocent deaths, of senseless killings. On the long list on our laptops, on all of our consciences.

Life and death in the buffer zone

16 January 2011 | International Solidarity Movement, Vera Macht

Death comes quickly at a place like this. On sunny winter days, when the smell of the night’s rain is still in the air, as if it would have brought some hope for the raped, barren land of Gaza, overrun hundreds of times by Israeli tanks and bulldozers. The land between the foothills of the village of Bait Hanoun and the Israeli border, guarded by watchtowers, soldiers, snipers, helicopters and drones is a land in which death is a regular guest.

But despite all that, the 65-year-old Shaban Karmout probably had something like hope when he woke up on that winter morning. His house is in the 300 meter wide strip of land in the so-called buffer zone. He built his house 40 years ago, in 1971, when Gaza was already occupied by Israel, and yet he thought to have a future there for himself and his family. Shaban began to plant fruits, his land was full of palms and trees, lemon, orange, clementine and almond trees were growing there. He had a good life.

But in 2003, just at the time of the almond harvest, the Israeli bulldozers came in the middle of the night. It took them three hours to raze the work of 30 years to the ground. Since the Israeli attack in 2009, he could no longer live there, the buffer zone had become too dangerous, where his home was, which has now been declared a closed combat zone by Israel. He had since lived in a small rented concrete house in the middle of the refugee camp near Bait Hanoun, in Jabalia, cramped in a tiny apartment with his large family.

He went back to his land, every morning, and worked there until the evening. He and his family had to make a living from something, after all. And so this morning, in the morning of the 10th January 2011, he woke up with hope, around 4 o’clock, and left for his fields. Full of hope he was because he and his neighbors had recently received a new well, their old one had been destroyed by an Israeli tank incursion. The Italian NGO GVC had built the well, it was financed by the Italian government.

On that day he was visited by an employee of the organization, to see how his situation had improved. She had an interview with him, and he asked her to come into the house, as it would be not safe outside. As she left, he advised her to rather take a short cut, you never know. He told her that he himself still had to go into the garden once more to tie his donkey. The NGO worker had just reached the village of Bait Hanoun, as three shots fell. One hit Shaban in the neck, two others in the upper part of his body. He was dead on the spot.
“It’s like a nightmare,” the Italian said, stunned. “I will never see him again. From here to the morgue in two hours. ”

In the interview that he gave shortly before his death, he told me about the unbearable situation in which he had been living. “It felt as if someone had ripped out my heart,” he described the night in which he lost all his land under the blades of eight bulldozers. And he told how he and the farmers from the neighbor fields had risked planting yet again, you have to make a living from something after all, and had grown wheat. When it was ready to be harvested, it was burned down by the Israeli army. And he told how he and the farmers from the neighboring fields yet again had the courage to plant, the children have to eat something after all, and tried to grow wheat. When the workers went to the field to sow, they were fired upon by Israeli soldiers.

What he now makes his living from, he was asked. “I collect stones and wood, and I grow some crops in my garden,” he replied. Crops, for which he had recently gotten water, thanks to a donation of a well from the Italian government. Shaban therefore probably looked somewhat optimistically into the future, the well could have restored the income from his garden to him. This was his only income since it had become too dangerous for him to enter his fields. “At any time the Israeli bulldozers can come again to destroy my house, you never know what they do next,” he said. Whether he isn’t afraid to be there, the employee of the NGO asked him. “No, I don’t mind the shooting too much,” he replied. “Even if something happens to me, humans can only die once. And only God knows when I am going to die.”

His nephew, Mohammed Karmout, stood a bit apart from the morgue. “The Israelis know my uncle very well,” he says quietly. “He’s there every day, and the whole area is monitored by cameras and drones. They know he lives there.”
And so it is quite doubtful that only God alone knew that Shaban would die at that day, while he was tying his donkey, by three shots in his upper body.

Shaban Karmout is the third civilian being shot dead in the buffer zone in the last month. At Christmas, the Shepherd Salama Abu Hashish, 20 years old, died by a shot in the back while he was tending his sheep. Since the beginning of last year, about a hundred workers and farmers have been shot by Israeli snipers in the buffer zone, 13 of them died.

“Soldiers, settlers, and the police are the occupation”: Hani Abu Haikal’s life inside the Tel Rumeida settlement

9 January 2011 | International Solidarity Movement, Ramona

Hani Abu Haikal and his family live in Hebron’s H2, which is under Israeli control. They are part of the 30,000 Palestinians that live among 500 settlers in this part of the city. Life for Palestinians inside H2 is extremely difficult, with many of them facing settler harassment, movement constraints, and a large military and police presence serving settlers’ interests, even if most attacks are directed at Palestinians.

Hani and his family have to deal with all these issues, in addition to the fact that they live deep inside the Tel Rumeida settlement, surrounded by settlers on all sides. Only around five Palestinian families remain inside, while many have left because of the troubles they faced. The situation got especially bad during the second Intifada, in 2000, when there was a curfew imposed on Palestinians for three years. This meant that Palestinians could not work, or go to school, among other much needed activities needed to survive.

Many restrictions continue to exist for families inside the settlement. They cannot have guests without getting prior permission from Israeli authorities. This includes family member and friends, and even ambulances and doctors. Israeli authorities reject around 60% of their requests for visitors. This makes life for Hani’s family very difficult, especially for his mother who is very sick and old. She cannot walk, so she needs to have doctors come inside the settlement to visit her.

There are many other restrictions that Hani’s family has to deal with. Palestinians have no permission to own cars so they have to walk everywhere, and carry everything to their home. Settlers on the other hand, can have as many cars as they want. Palestinians inside the settlement live under martial law, while the Israelis live under civilian law. Palestinians constantly face harassment at the hands of settlers. Settlers have beaten up Hani’s son, without any repercussions. In the past, when Hani was able to own cars, settlers burned more than six of his cars. Settlers have also repeatedly damaged and burned his land.

Recently, an empty Palestinian home was taken over by settlers. The Palestinian owner of the house has an Israeli Supreme Court order to evacuate the settlers, but the police have not followed the order.

On Wednesday, January 5, Hani had a visit from the recently appointed Hebron governor, Kamil Hamid as well as Palestinian Authority doctors, who came to visit Hani’s sick mother. As is the case with all people coming to visit his home, he had to get special permission from Israeli authorities to allow the visit. It took two weeks to get the permission. It was also promised that the military would protect the governor from settler attacks.

Things did not turn out so smoothly, however. The governor faced settler verbal and physical attacks, without any protection from the military or police. Baruch Marcel, the founder of the extreme right-wing Jewish National Front party, who also lives in the Tel Rumeida settlement, lead and gathered all the settlers. The Israeli military and police stood by while the attacks were happening, and Hani and his body guards had to rush over to protect the governor.

After the governor, the doctors and Hani were able to get inside his home safely, they were trapped inside for three hours while the settlers’ mob remained outside. Soldiers tried to get the governor to leave the building from the back, but he refused, and said “I am a governor, I am not a thief. I come with special permission, under Israeli protection and I’m supposed to come back as I came in.”

For Hani, this incident was indicative of the troubles Palestinians face in Hebron’s H2. “I liked what happened because the governor saw what our real lives are like here” Hani said. It was an opportunity for the governor to see the unfair treatment that Palestinians receive from Israeli authorities. Even with all the preparation that went into having the governor visit Hani’s home, he was still not provided with the protection he was promised. This shows that the Israeli system is unjust in its treatment of Palestinians, even if they are high government officials.

According to Hani, the occupation’s strength comes from soldiers, settlers, and police working together to uphold the occupation. There is a misconception that the Israeli soldiers and police uphold the system of law and justice, and protect everyone equally. He says. “Anyone who lives here like me knows that the soldiers, the police and the settlers are a team that work together.” he says. “The settlers, they attack us. The solders give settlers protection. And the police arrests us.” This team works together to implement and enforce Israel’s efforts at population transfer of Palestinians from areas Israel wants to control. Life is made so difficult for Palestinians that they often have no other choice but to leave.