Category: Journals - Page 94 - International Solidarity Movement

The story of Sima – Female Political Prisoner

Sima is a 35 year old Palestinian woman who was released approximately four months ago following two and a half years in an underground Israeli jail. She has four young children who were left without any parents during her stay in prison, as the Israeli army had assassinated her husband a little while prior to her incarceration.

On the eve of Sima’s wedding, her brother and cousin were out buying some jewelry for her as a wedding gift. The shop was quite a distance from the house so they hitched a lift with a man who was unknown to them. Soon after they set off, the Israeli army blew up the car. The driver as it turned out, was apparently connected to a militant wing of the Fatah organization. The army had been targeting the driver even though they had no confirmation of who the other two men in the car were. As a result, Sima’s husband vowed to gain justice for the incident, but was assassinated as he was coming out of a mosque.

The Israeli army then invaded Sima’s house a number of times during the night to arrest and question members of the family. They arrested one of her brothers and came back a couple of times to look for the other brother who was only 15 years old at the time. The final time they took Sima and when the family questioned the soldiers about the fate of her children, one soldier replied that there were many orphanages the children could go to.

For the first two weeks, Sima was kept in solitary confinement in a room only 2 meters by 3 meters, in complete darkness. After two weeks of this, she was connected to a polygraph machine every day for one week from 8am-5pm with electrodes attached to her fingers and forced to sit with her hands spread out and body hunched over. As a result of this, she has now developed a type of arthritis in her neck. Interrogators told her she would not be able to wash or take a shower unless she admitted to helping her husband collaborate with militants. She was beaten a number of times, and eventually she was moved to a tiny cell with five other prisoners. The food was so terrible she couldn’t eat properly for two months after being released. Sometimes there were insects all over the food but they had no choice but to eat. At one time the prisoners staged an 11-day hunger strike.

Some of the prisoners became quite ill but medical attention was slow and sporadic, especially dental treatment during which the same instruments were used in many different patients mouths without being disinfected. One of the other prisoners who was just 18 years old had a serious gum infection and was refused dental treatment which resulted in her teeth falling out.

Another time, Sima witnessed one of the prisoners who had been bitten by a scorpion and was refused medical treatment even though she was in obvious pain. Another common occurrence, Sima told us, was money for the prisoners from their relatives being stolen by soldiers. Each time the money would be collected in a tin from relatives especially if visitation rights were withdrawn which they often were on a regular basis and being emptied by the soldiers before the empty box being presented to the prisoners.

The soldiers would also spray the prisoners with cold water if they felt their spirits were too high and then spray them with tear gas. As water causes teargas to stick to the skin, this served to heighten the gas’ effects. They would also make the prisoners crouch in a line and then proceed to play “leapfrog” over them.

In the cells in winter the soldiers would bring in air conditioners and in summer they would bring in heaters as a form of torture as well as making the prisoners climb up and down stairs in their already weakened condition.

Sima was moved twice to two different underground prisons during her incarceration. Her brother is currently in an underground prison, the location of which has never been made known to her for the last 13 years. She is overjoyed to be reunited with her family however it is evident to see the trauma and scars she has had to bear. During the interview she remained relatively stable but broke down into tears on a couple of occasions. She is now trying to raise her four children and to turn her experience into something positive and recently attended the recent meeting in Shufa with Combatants for Peace.

Epilogue: Get Out and Stay Out

By Katie

This is the “and Stay Out” part.

Friday morning I left Ramallah for Egypt to see Jonas in Sinai and to give him some of his stuff. I road a bus from Jerusalem to Eilat and was going to cross the border from Eilat, Israel into Taba, Egypt. I gave Jonas a ballpark time of when I would be there, because you never can tell what will happen at these border crossings. The first time I ever crossed the border from Israel to Jordan, I was delayed there for 3 hours because of a bomb scare. That was back in 2001, my first Israeli “security” experience. I was simultaneously scared and intrigued at the same time. “What kind of god-forsaken place is this,” my 25 year-old-self wondered.

So there I was at the Eilat border crossing, wondering how long I would be detained this time. The border policewoman punched my passport number into the computer and I watched her face turn from almost-pleasant to suspicious and hostile. She made phone calls and I waited for the stone-faced security to arrive and tell me “Please come with us.”

“Please come with us,” they told me.

I followed them to the metal detector where they ran both my bags through the x-ray machine and made me walk through the metal detector twice. On the other side of the x-ray machine they began opening one of my bags. My sketchbook with my cartoons and drawings was in this bag. I had debated taking this with me or not, knowing it might cause a problem. But hey, Israel is a country of freedom of speech, right ? I should be able to draw as I please without being a threat to security, right ? So I took it, and now I was watching a bunch of pissed off border police flip through and ask me why do I draw like this ? After they thoroughly searched one bag, they asked me if all of the stuff with me was mine. “Some of it is my friend’s stuff that I am taking to him in Egypt.” The border police looked at each other with raised eyebrows. “But don’t worry; it’s all been with me, at my house, for the last 3 months. I know what all of it is and I can show it to you. He stayed with me, left some of his stuff and now I am taking it to him.”

At that point they took me away from my possessions and put me in the strip search room. I was thoroughly strip-searched and when I was allowed back out, I began to realize something was very wrong. All at once, after being alerted to something, about 8 of the security people all freaked out and ran off somewhere, quite an unsettling thing to see. I asked one who was still me what was going on. He told me not to worry and that everything was ok. “How can you tell me not to worry when 8 of your people just freaked out like that?” I asked. No answer. I waited for a while and then I was given one of my backpacks and my passport. At this point, if I had wanted to, I could have just left the terminal and gone to Egypt. Nothing and nobody was preventing me. But they had the other bag and I wanted to wait for it, of course.

I was made to wait inside the entrance to the Israeli side of the terminal. There were about 8 border police blocking the door. They would not let anyone in or out. I asked one of them about my other bag, he said the police had to come and check it but I could have it back after they checked it.

I waited. Other people crossing from Egypt to Israel were lining up to leave inside. The border police would not let them leave. I saw a police van outside. At first there were maybe 15 people waiting inside. Then 30, then 100. There was a public announcement in Hebrew and English saying there was suspicious package that the police were checking out and that this was the cause of the delay. I heard an explosion. I began to feel uneasy. Then I heard another one.

Neta called me. I told her “Neta, the police have one of my bags. They aren’t letting anyone leave the terminal, there’s a police van parked outside and I just heard two explosions, I’m afraid they exploded my bag. “Don’t worry,” she reassured me, “if they really thought you had a bomb, they would have arrested you by now.” She’s right, I though… I have my passport; I could just leave if I wanted to. No one spoke to me; no one asked me a single question about where I was going or what was in my bag.

After about an hour, a police officer informed me they had exploded my bag.

“YOU WHAT ? YOU DIDN’T ASK ME ANYTHING, I WOULD HAVE OPENED THE BAG AND SHOWED YOU EVERYTHING INSIDE IT, ALL YOU HAD TO DO WAS ASK. INSTEAD YOU WASTED THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS OF AMERICAN TAXPAYER MONEY TO EXPLODE MY GODDAMED BAG WITHOUT EVEN ASKING ME WHAT WAS IN IT. YOU RAN IT THROUGH THE X-RAY MACHINE YOU CAN SEE EXACTLY WHAT WAS IN IT”

I was crying at this point. Some of the female border police began laughing at me.

The officer told me I would be reimbursed for the cost of the stuff that had been exploded.

“How do you know how much it was worth??? You EXPLODED It BEFORE YOU EVEN HAD A CHANCE TO LOOK?”

“Don’t worry,” he told me, “Just go to the Eilat police station and they will give you a report and you can get money back.”

Well there was nothing I could do at that point. There was some of mine and some of Jonas’s stuff in that bag. Some of my original artwork too that I was giving him as a gift.

I made a list of everything:

Laptop
Ipod
Original art
Rainbow kuffiya
Watch
3 books
Tea
Fire poi
Bike light
3 shirts
Cds
Lens cap for camera
Sandals

I’m sure they feel like they thwarted a terrorist plot. All they did was waste a lot of people’s time and money. Maybe it was because they didn’t like my cartoons ? I don’t know.

Jenin: Army Harrasment on the Streets of Jenin Camp

A Ordinary Afternoon in Jenin Refugee Camp, 9th August 2007.

It is 5.00 pm at the Jenin Governement hospital when the first rumours are spread that the IOF is once again on its way to Mukhaiyem Jenin, the Jenin Refugee Camp. Ambulance drivers jump in their cars, make their self ready for what usually happens when the Israeli Army enters the town.

Half an hour later they arrive. 7 Israeli military jeeps and one caterpillar power shovel, coming from the north through Haifa street, enter the area around the hospital. They drive along the streets, sometimes stop for awhile, disappear and come back after a few minutes. The more laps they take, the more Palestinians enter the area. In the end more then 500 Palestinian men and kids border the street, turning the area into a this typical Palestinian battlefield, that is a stone rain against Israeli soldiers, sitting well protected behind some centimetre of bulletproof steel.

Out of tiny portholes muzzles of Israeli M16 rifles can be seen, when the first shoot are fired. The IOF shoots directly inside the camp, responded by single shoots of the Islamic Jihad fighters. 14.000 people live here, crowed on not more then one squarekilometer. The risk of killing somebody by randomly shooting inside this massive populated area is enormous.

But for the Israeli army it seems to be more a chance then a risk. Nobody of the Palestinians knows why they came this time and perhaps not even the Israeli soldiers would have good explanations. In the end it was just another example of the daily humiliations and provokations, the inhabitans of Jenin Camp have to bear. None of the soldiers made a single attempt to arrest or targeted kill somebody. It was just another episode of showing the Israeli supremacy, showing that the IOF can go everywhere, ausing massive violence without any reason, even in one of the last strongholds of Palestinian resistance. And finally it was another degradation of Fatahs al-Aqsa Brigade, who recently agreed with laying down their weapons and a mutual ceasefire and who didn’t fire a single shoot since this time.

More then three hours later the tragic game is over. The Palestinian kids go back to their houses, leaving back a street, covered with stones and garbage. Another time the IOF caused unprovoked and unnecessary violence, just because they are able to. The ambulance drivers return to their station, forntunatley empty-handed, knowing that it won’t take long until they have to come back.

Tel Rumeida: Detention and Harassment for Children on Camp Trip

Saturday July 22nd, the Tel Rumeida Summer camp was to go on a field trip to the nearby villages of At-Tuwani and Qawawis. The theme of the summer camp is “solidarity and friendship,” and the purpose of this trip was to let the kids meet children from other villages and to learn about the similar problems they face both from the army and from the Israeli settlers. See this article for more info on that subject.

We took 100 kids in two buses to the village of At-Tuwani. The village is about a half kilometer walk from the road and our two buses were parked very much on the SIDE of the road, in no way obstructing traffic as you can see in the following photo:

A short walk took us into the village where we learned that the children from this village need an army escort to go to school every day because of attacks from settlers. Christian Peacemaker Teams and
Operation Dove, two international organizations both work in this village to document cases of harassment from settlers but are not allowed to actually intervene.

There were about 20 bottles of water which we pretty much went through by the time we were ready to leave Tuwani and go to Qawawis, which was just down the road where the plan was to make and fly kites.

After returning to the busses, we saw that an army jeep had parked itself between them and when we spoke to our bus driver we learned that he was being detained by the army because of a problem with his driver’s license. I never really understood what the problem with this was, but the army commander said that he was going to call the police in order to “check” the buses. “Check” them for what I never
figured out. Issa spoke to the commander in the jeep and learned that apparently it is illegal to be parked on the side of the road, despite the fact that the buses were not blocking traffic, were behind the yellow line on the shoulder or the road, and there were no signs saying “No Parking.” The commander said both drivers would be fined 1000 shekels each. This is about $250 which is about half a month’s salary for many people here.

While all this “checking” and arguing was going on, I started to make some phone calls to Israeli and international human rights organizations because we could all see that this had the potential to turn into a disaster: 100 kids, 85 degree F weather (29 C), no water.

An hour passed. The police showed up. We asked the police, for the love of god, bring the kids some water or just let us go. They refused. The kids had a demonstration, they held hands, surrounded the police and army jeeps and chanted “Bidna rouweh, bidna rouweh !” which means “we want to go, we want to go !” Here is a video clip:

I have to hand it to these kids, they were so brave. No one cried, there were no tantrums, they mainly
stayed in the buses or played quietly on the side of the road and chatted to each other. Sometimes they would ask me what was going on or if I had any water which broke my heart. We were all noticing how
well they were dealing with the situation and someone remarked that as Palestinian kids, they probably don’t have very high expectation and that something like this, is, well “normal.”

But it is not “normal” to punish children like this and it is just plain harassment however you look at it. The army and the police could have let us go and just detained the one driver. We could have taken the kids down the road to get some water and finish the field trip. But no, everyone had to be detained.

Many arguments with the police and the army ensued and we were on the phone with the Association for Civil Rights in Israel and Ta’ayush trying to get someone to help us to be released. Eventually Lina called the Red Cross to ask if they could bring us some water. The Red Cross was closed on Saturday (?!) but they promised to try to call someone else. After two hours of waiting I called the American Embassy in exasperation and explained that there were two American citizens detained in the middle of 85 degree weather with 100 Palestinian kids and some adult chaperons, no water and would they please intervene and help us all. Just as I was about to pass the phone to the police officer so the lady at the embassy could speak to him, we learned that we would be released. It had been two hours.

We drove about 10 minutes down the road to the village of Qawawis where the villagers let the kids drink from their well. Unfortunately it was too late to make kites and fly them but the kids had a good
time running around in the village, remarking in amazement that the people there are poorer than they are and live in caves with no electricity or running water.

Jerusalem: ICAHD Continues to Rebuild!

July 17th, 2007. The below report was written by Summer Camp participant: P.R.

The decision was made. We as the summer camp now officially have two houses to reconstruct. We all woke up this morning with a day of brick setting and cement pouring ahead of us. Some of us woke to the sound of mosquitoes in our ears, others to the splash of cold dew dripping down from the tent tarp between their noses. We moved on to the building site after breakfast and did exactly what we were meant to; Setting bricks into walls. But before we could pour the cement Meir received a phone call and asked if we’d like to accompany him to see a demolition in Jerusalem. Many of us went with him and as we watched the green army jeeps leave the Israeli base we realized that they were headed toward Anata. It was quite a scare. I myself was in the van where people feared that the demolition team was coming to destroy our in-progress home.

Back at camp however, the family panicked and some tears were shed in the thought of once again losing their house. The workers had already abandoned the site by the time we had arrived. Meir clarified that our house was not in danger of demolition but the house just down the hill was about to be torn down. He warned us not to approach the demolition site as to avoid attracting attention to our project.

We all climbed to the upper floors of a large apartment building and watched as the bulldozer inched toward the little house. Soldiers surrounded the entire house and even went as far as placing soldiers amongst the crowds of Palestinians and internationals watching on the hillsides. Watching the demolition really made me question my own opinions. I don’t consider myself an optimist, but I know that there is a considerable amount of Israeli’s who do oppose this government and its policies. I believe in the good of men. It is moments and atrocities like the one that I witnessed today that make me doubt my own beliefs. We all stood on the balcony, some of us filming, some of us taking pictures and a lot of us discussing. But all of us had the same feeling of disbelief and hopelessness. For a single moment I thought that many of us in this camp lost our sense of hope.

When I finally went down and closer to the house and the soldiers, I continued to watch. Some of the Palestinian kids were staring at the soldiers. One of the soldiers asked in Hebrew “What are you looking at?” and approached the child. The kid’s older brother took to his defense and the soldier told him to shut up. I guess it never escalated because of our presence as foreigners. But it was appalling for me to see people just a year or two older than me seem so heartless. I never was keen on the draft, and this reminded me why. The soldiers left and we saw the children throw their stones and down came the tear gas canisters. We left to avoid getting caught in the crossfire.

Jeff Halper had returned from the United States and when we got back to Beit Arabiya he, Salim and Meir debriefed us about the whole event. Why the house was demolished and the events that led up to it. The family was not even home, but they have to come back to a pile of rubble. We decided as a whole to continue both our current project and give hope to the newly distressed by also reconstructing their home. And so the decision was made that this year, we will have two homes to dedicate, two hopes to restore, and two families to rebuild.

To view the photo of the day, please click on the below link:

http://www.icahd.org/eng/news.asp?menu=5&submenu=1&item=464