Today in Izbat Tabib, in the Qalqiliya region, over 250 Palestinian, Israeli and international activists successfully removed a land mound road block in order to open a crossing for commercial and pedestrian traffic. Despite the military and border police’s excessive use of tear gas and sound grenades, activists were successful in holding a non violent demonstration, and worked in solidarity to remove the concrete blocks, boulders and gravel with their hands.
Izbat Tabib is a small village of 300 inhabitants near Qalqiliya. It was established in 1920 and in 1948 it received an influx of refugees from Tubsur, which stood where Raánana is now. The residents of the village are all recognized as refugees (by UNRWA) but the village is not recognized as a refugee camp by Israel. The Israeli government has issued demolition orders for most of the buildings in the village which has motivated the community to organize.
Around 11am, residents of Izbat Tabib along with supporters met for a rally which was disturbed, when two Israeli border police armored jeeps drove through the area provoking the crowd. Following the rally, the attendees marched through the village towards the road block, and though several tear gas rounds were fired into the village, after a brief pause the marchers proceeded peacefully.
The marches reached the earth mound road block and quickly began dismantling the site. Some used hoes to chop rocks and move dirt, while others used small rocks to dig and shovel. While some were digging, others attached straps to the hefty concrete barriers and joined together in large groups to pull the barriers down. Though it took several hours to clear the large concrete blocks, they were successfully dragged away through the strength of many. The demonstrators worked together for hours to remove the rocks, shovel the dirt and drag the concrete blocks until the road block was opened large enough to allow for car traffic. When they were finished, several cars triumphantly drove through the road block.
During the action, approximately 30 Israeli soldiers and police stood watch and occasionally harassed the crowd. In order to prevent military violence a large team of internationals formed a human wall between the soldiers and the road block. This helped to prevent the soldiers from firing into the crowd in order to disperse the demonstrators.
After the road block had been removed, the soldiers began to move quickly towards the workers and opened fire with sound bombs and live ammunition. The soldiers attempted to frighten the demonstrators by aiming some machine guns at the demonstrators while other shot into the air. Despite their efforts, the demonstrators remained steadfast and slowly returned back to the village having accomplished their goal. During the military assault, one international activist was injured when shrapnel from a sound grenade struck him. Despite the Israeli military’s attempts to prevent activists from reaching the action through the use of ‘flying’ checkpoints, Palestinian supporters were able to reach the action and work in solidarity.
Approximately 90 minutes after the demonstrators had left the road block, the Israeli military used bulldozers to reestablish the obstruction and closed the entire crossing. When news of this reached the village, international supporters returned to the crossing and forced the military to allow pedestrian traffic through the crossing through negotiation, observation and accompaniment.
Outside the Faisal Hostel opposite Damascus Gate/Bab’al-‘Amoud, there appeared to be about one cop for every two Palestinians. There were regular police, along with the dreaded and despised Special Units and Border Police, who are well-known for “breaking” pesky troublemakers. They looked like they were prepared for war.
There is a small square where Palestinian men who can’t get into Al-Aqsa often pray on Fridays. It had been taken over by some police on horseback who were forcing anyone standing around to move. The horses were defecating all over the square, making it impossible to pray and it seemed to be almost a deliberate tactic by the authorities to add insult to injury by not letting the Palestinians pray even outside the walls of the Old City. Horseshit was everywhere and people were complaining. Sunbula and I began taking pictures of the mounted special forces strutting around. I walked up to one of the police on horseback and calmly asked him, “Hey, people pray here, are you going to clean up this shit?”
Of course I didn’t expected to get trampled for mouthing off to a cop, but he grabbed the reins and jerked the horses head so that it hit my head and the horse barged straight into me causing me to fall over backwards and under the horse, which stepped on my foot.
Somehow I wasn’t seriously hurt. Sunbula began screaming at the cops and about four of them jumped on him and started pushing and hitting him even as he tried to photograph them misbehaving. We were both screaming at them to leave us alone and fortunately some guy showed up snapping pictures which I think caused them to stop being violent. We left as soon as we could get away.
We were really shaken and stopped on a grassy area under the wall of the old city to rest and make a few phone calls and decide what to do from there. There were men gathered there to pray with a volunteer imam and volunteer muezzin so it was a small consolation at least for us. After crying for a little while together and for this stupid, messed-up war, all the people who have died, and the inhumanity of Zionism as it convinces the whole world that it is the victim, we decided to continue our errands.
We went to the post office and noticed about 50 cops surrounding some men praying in the street from all sides. It may have been a demonstration or maybe it was because they couldn’t go to the mosque to pray. The street was cordoned off by barriers and every male going in and out was having and ID check and being searched – a most ridiculous sight…
The post office in East Jerusalem was closed so we decided to go to the one in West Jerusalem. The surreality of the contrast between Arab East Jerusalem and Jewish West Jerusalem was even more astonishing than it usually is. There was hardly a cop in sight in this upscale neighborhood filled with American tourists sporting Israeli Defence Force tshirts. We passed one girl wearing a tshirt which read “Everybody Loves Jewish Girls,” and “Don’t worry, Be Jewish.” A bunch of teenagers were playing the guitar and blowing bubbles in Zion Square while people half a kilometer away down the hill were living under apartheid. The post office in West Jerusalem was closed too, as was the camera shop.
Sunbula wanted ice cream, fresh homemade ice cream and there was none to be found anywhere. It seemed as if nothing we wanted today was going to be granted to us. Ok, we give up now. enough, ok ?
Well, not yet…
We ended up at the American consulate where I decided to file a complaint against the police in Jerusalem as well as against the police in Hebron for failing to do anything about the settler assaults on us (the US citizens working in Tel Rumeida). The people there were pretty nice, one of the security guards was a Palestinian originally from Hebron and he sympathized with the situation there. I did end up feeling a bit silly for making a fuss about this when people in Israel, Palestine and Lebanon are being arrested, assassinated, kidnapped, murdered and bombed.
An employee at the consulate asked me, “Where are you staying in Israel?”
“Hebron,” I replied.
“You know there is a State Department travel advisory against Americans traveling to the West Bank ?”
“Yes, but I live there.”
She was kind enough to give me a printed copy of the travel advisory, a paragraph of which is quoted below:
“In recent months, citizens of Western nations, including Americans, involved in pro-Palestinian volunteer efforts were assaulted and injured in the Occupied Territories by Israeli settlers and harassed by the IDF. Those taking part in demonstrations, non-violent resistance, and “direct action,” are advised to cease such activity for their own safety.”
Of the three security guards hanging around, two were Palestinian and one was Israeli. Oddly enough, they were laughing and joking with each other and slapping each other on the back. I asked them how they found the situation in Jerusalem today. They said with confidence that they felt very safe in Jerusalem, no one was going to bomb it because it was the holy city for the three religions. This statement seemed in such contrast to the tension just a few blocks away. I for one certainly don’t feel very safe there. But then again, I thought to myself, I don’t have a cushy job in the confines of the American consulate.
We were both exhausted and angry and decided to go back to Hebron. On the bus back, a Palestinian guy saw Sunbula reading Nizar Qabbani and started talking to us as most Palestinians have here, wanting to know the low down on who we are and what we do. He kept teasing us by asking “Don’t you like the Jews?” and “aren’t the settlers in Hebron wonderful? I think the Arabs are lying about them!” Neither of us had the energy to get into this discussion not really due to our part Jewish origins, but due to exhaustion. Sunbula being the better Arabic speaker had to keep him entertained and field other interesting questions such as “do all of the foreigners sleep together in the same room in your apartment?”
After arriving back in Tel Rumeida, we heard some really loud fireworks across the street that sounded more scary than the sound bombs in Bil’in. Someone was apparently very happy about their exam results, but the settlers and army didn’t want to partake in the happiness. Instead they came skulking down to Tel Rumeida street to “investigate” what was going on by barging into a family’s house opposite our apartment and going onto the roof. We had the privilege of witnessing the appearance of Mrs. Baruch Marzel herself who called us “dirty nazis” and said we doing Hitler’s work here. She’s apparently forgotten that he committed suicide in 1945. We followed the soldiers into the terrified family’s house and stayed there as they hung out on the roof for a few minutes. Not finding any terrorists up there, they left fairly quickly.
It’s now approximately 10pm at night but our story is not quite over yet. As if enough already hadn’t happened in one day, we got an urgent call from the Abu Haykal family near the olive groves – soldiers had come into their house and made everyone go outside, confiscated their cell phones, in order to “look for photos” (?) What photos? That is a “military matter”. The family wanted us to come over so we did and began filming and questioning the soldiers about what they were doing there. One of the soldiers in a slow frat boy drawl told us to go back to America to our homes and said we wanted to help the people who kidnapped Israeli soldiers at the Lebanese border. We told them that we are invited here whereas they aren’t and that this isnt their land. They apparently didn’t find what they want and left after about 20 minutes, threatening they would be back. Three of our volunteers stayed the night in their house in case of any late night mischief.
My Kung Fu teacher taught me an Arabic proverb saying something like the most miserable things in life are the funniest ones. This day was both miserable and hilarious for us, a small microcosm of how absurd life can be sometimes in occupied Palestine.
12th July: The ISRAA is a small, community based organisation working with the poorest children and their families in the town of Jericho in the West Bank, providing funding for underprivileged students. They run two kindergartens, one for children age 0-3 and one for those age 3-6, catering for around 150 children in the same building. On the 2nd July 2006, this building was raided by the Israeli army, who left with four computers and a scanner.
The raid came at 2am. The director of the centre, Sheikh Zayed, told us approximately 30 army jeeps carrying 200 soldiers arrived at the building. Some local youths tried to stop them approaching the kindergarten, throwing stones at the jeeps. The soldiers responded by firing both rubber bullets and live ammunition. Five Palestininians were injured; one, who was shot in the stomach, is still in hospital over a week later.
When the army reached the kindergarten, they set up lights so the local residents could see what they were doing. Then they blew the front door off the hinges. Fortunately, at the time, the children who usually live there were all away with their families. The soldiers were in the building for around two hours. When they left, they took with them four computers and a scanner, most of the files in the building and around 70 videos and cassettes, documenting things like graduation ceremonies and children’s parties.
As we walked through the building we could see the damage that was done. Six doors had been smashed open, with two more being blasted right off their hinges. Filing cabinets were bent where they had been forced open with crowbars. The photocopier had been burned. A noticeboard that used to display photographs of the children was ripped bare. We are shown a photograph of one of the children holding rubber bullets and a tear gas canister found after the raid.
The ISRAA serves around 1500 families in the Jericho area. They used to recieve funding from the government, but are now reliant on private donations. Sheikh Zayed is keen to make the point that the organisation is in no way affiliated to any of Palestine’s political groups. When asked why it might have been a target for the Israeli army, the only reason he could give us was to weaken the Palestinian community in the area.
Without the computers and the information in the files taken by the soldiers, the work of the organisation has been paralysed. They are desperately trying to find a way of funding more computers, but in this time of sanctions against the Palestinian government such money will be hard to come by.
11th July: Near the villages of Az-Zubeidat and Marj Na’ja is the farm of Abu Rhader, 49 years old. ISM activists met with the farmer, as well as his neighbor, Abu Jamal, 48 years old. Abu Jamal is one of many teachers and civil employees to be left unpaid for five months following the US-led economic sanctions pressuring the new Palestinian government.
Basem Ahmed Abu Rhader was born in Tobas, and his lifetime has seen twenty-nine Israeli settlements built in the Jordan Valley, while life for farmers is put under ever greater pressure. He is one of the last significant landowners, his peers having been gradually “persuaded” to surrender their land, while settlements grow verdant orchards on all sides. While these colonies grow, Abu Rhader is prohibited from making the simplest renovations, let alone new buildings. His farm is located 400m inside the 1967 borders of the “green line.”
As well as annexing land, the Israeli authorities use other means to pressurize his operation. He is an able businessman, and he knows that he cannot grow more than he can sell in the West Bank or in Israel. However, the long journeys inflicted by checkpoints and terminal closures mean that his produce may simply rot before it can be sold. He has no access to processing plants that could make the produce more long-lived or marketable. If the produce reaches Israel, he may yet be charged 200 NIS for the pleasure of being told it is unsuitable to sell, which is an insult to any farmer.
This means that many of his green houses stand empty and fruits rot on the plant, because it would cost too much to produce at full capacity. Abu Rhader grows numerous types of vegetable and some citrus fruits. Soon he will begin harvesting his corn. How much will be able to reach markets remains uncertain.
In the historically fertile land of the Jordan Valley, this predicament is not only one for the landowners, but for whole communities. Abu Rhader has been losing approximately $1,000,000 per annum for four consecutive years. Thus, where he once regularly employed fifty to sixty workers, now he retains between seven and ten only. He cannot offer homes to workers or their families, and those that come must be able to afford to come by road. As with so much of Palestinian life, the occupation is straining agricultural society to its limits.
As well as economically strangling the farms, the Israeli military is also guilty of general harassment and intimidation, which they conduct with impunity. He gave this example: an Israeli bulldozer may appear one day and destroy a tract of land, destroying $1,000 worth of crops. He has the option of suing for compensation, but legal representation would likely exceed $10,000.
From the roof of his farm building we surveyed the tracts of empty land. Abu Rhader’s son is studying Human Rights Law in Sydney, Australia. He will perhaps be well-equipped to write his dissertation on some of its failures.
The Jordan Valley: Background Information
The Jordan Valley region starts north of the Dead Sea going north all the way to the city of Bisan and is surrounded by the east by the Jordan River and on the west by the mountain ranges of the West Bank.
“The only logical and obvious source of water for the residents of the Jordan Valley is the Jordan River, but it has become virtually impossible for the residents to reach this source of water due to the electric fence that blocks most of the river from Palestinian residents (Green, Lena; Apartheid and Agrexco in the Jordan Valley; The Electronic Intifada).”
In order to finalize the annexation of the Valley, Israel has invested $24 million for “development” in 2004 and 2005, with a further $19 million slated for 2006 to 2008. Of the 2,400 km2 of land in the Valley, 455.7 km2 is considered “closed military areas,” 1655.5 km2 will be controlled by settlements, and 243 km2 has been confiscated along the border with Jordan, This leaves only 45 km2 for Palestinians (Juma, Jamal; The Eastern Wall, Closing the Circle of Our Ghettoization).
Plans for the eastern section of the Wall to run through the Jordan Valley will isolate over 20 villages while additional barriers will encircle Jericho into an isolated prison. Thirty kilometers of the 45 km stretch from Salem to Taysir are currently under construction. The Ministry of Defense states that this section will be completed by the end of this year.
The eastern wall will lead to a complete encirclement of Palestinian land – and the effective creation of three Bantustan areas
Orit Arzieli, head of the Jordan Valley “communities board”, said Israel may be limiting the expansion of the Palestinian communities in the area: “This is true, they should not be here. There is a constant trickling of Arabs from Nablus who want to populate the valley,” she told AFP. “The Jordan Valley must stay under Israeli control.”
Two successive big explosions wakened me up, Sondos jumped quickly to my bed , frightened, shivering and covered her head, with the blanket. It was two big explosions ,but not sonic booming, I am an expert now. The power has been off, it was a great blessing last night we had it for 5 hours. I switched on the local radio, the Islamic university building was hit, as well as the Foreign Ministry building, 200 meters from my place. I decided to write in the morning, my daughter was too frightened, and I felt strong enough to stay by her side.
Yesterday the Palestinian Ministry of health officially declared that 82 people had been martyred and 271 injured from 30 – 6 – 2006 to 12 – 7 – 2006. Among the martyrs are 22 children. The number is expected to increase because there are still casualties in the intensive care units
My visit to Attar Family 11.7.2006
I feel emotionally strained after visiting the Attar family, in Beit Lahia village North of Gaza. It was my second visit, I went there with 2 of my colleagues with some little presents for the kids. 50 kids received little parcels donated from MECA for peace (USA people).
The Israeli army reoccupied the village for continuous 3 days as part of its military operation in Gaza, and during these three days the army made great damage into this family 3 storey building, before occupying it, to use the roof as a base for snipers. 40 members of this extended family were kept in one room, unable to go out for 3 continuous days, with no water and no electricity. I was told that the whole family were forced to get out of their house, and made to stay in the very hot afternoon sun for 4 hours at least, standing in front of their house, Then they were put into the one room for three days. I met 40 children, 5 at least are infants, and feeding those babies was a big problem.
I met seven members of this family, who had visual impairment disability. It broke my heart, when I asked the grandfather of this extended family, why do you think they have chosen your home? He answered me simply, I only have children and people with special needs, I am a soft target. He did not know that his house position is a strategic location for snipers, it lies on a hill that overlooks the whole village, it is just right place for snipers.
One of the small girls hold my hand, and said: look there, we were in the sun for long period, next to the donkey place, it was hot, I was thirsty, my baby brother was crying, and I was terrified, I wet my pants.
What happened with this family is happening every day in Gaza, with different shapes. Those children will suffer from PTSS, and waiting for years ahead to be healed, as an outcome the hatred will grow, inside themselves, with painful memories.
I handed the gifts to the kids, telling them it is from American people who care, and thinking of you, they are not the American government that helps this army to have free hand in our country.
I always think of the safety of the Israeli kids and civilians, and I am totally against hurting civilians, but I do believe that the comparison of suffering is unfair, and not objective. I have an offer for Israel to send 1.5 million Israelis to live in Gaza, under those circumstances! Any way both of us suffer, it is an outcome of injustice and the occupation.
