Video from Bil’in: Olive Tree Chaining

Residents of Bil’in village, together with international and Israeli activists, chain themselves to olive trees that are to be uprooted to make way for the Israeli apartheid wall. The wall is currently being constructed in many areas of Palestine. For Bil’in it will result in the annexation of 2,400 dunums of land (600 acres) – over 50% of the land belonging to the village. This will facilitate massive Israeli settlement expansion east of the Green Line. Bil’in has carried out a series of non-violent protests against this land theft, and demonstrations are held at least once a week, usually more. The Israeli military has used excessive force against the demonstrators, regularly firing tear gas, rubber coated metal bullets, sound bombs and live ammunition at unarmed civilians peacefully protesting. Many people have been injured and arrested. In other areas of Palestine people have been killed because they have protested against the wall, including two children who were shot dead on the same day that this video was filmed, a short distance away in Beit Liqya.

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May Day Demo, 2005

by Lena

May day in the West Bank, and as a village marches in protest against the wall that will cut them off from over 50% of their land, the digger continues, picking away at the hillside relentlessly. Bil’in is one of the places that has protested vigorously against the wall – demonstrations are held here at least once a week, usually twice, and the pattern seems well established. A combination of villagers, internationals and Israeli activists and peace groups march from the mosque in the middle of the villiage to the destruction site. They are dispersed before they reach it and spend the day getting shot at – usually by tear gas, sound bombs and ‘rubber’ bullets (which are actually metal coated with a thin layer of rubber). The Palestinians retaliate with their weapons of resistance – stones – and have had ample opportunity to perfect their catapulting skills. I’m telling you, if catupulting was a new olympic sport they would be certain of a gold – if only they had a state and were allowed to compete.

On Sunday there were about 150 Palestinians, 8 Israelis, 9 internationals, loads of photographers and a film crew from Al Arabia. The view on one side of the track leading to the site is beautiful – rolling hillsides of olive trees and farmland with a couple of villages and some scattered houses. On the other side there is a massive quarry supplying, no doubt, materials for the wall and the settlement which is visable next to it. It is one of eight, and apparently they are going to be joined up to make a huge city, once the wall has annexed the neccessary land. The settlements look horrible – I just can’t get over the uglyness of what is being done in Palestine. It’s obvious when the Israeli apartheid machine has got a bit of land in it’s clutches because it’s covered in concrete. Criminal, literally.

As we approached the site we were met on the track by big kids with guns, who were unable to produce the neccessary documentation to prove that the area was a ‘closed military zone’ and that they therefore, apparently, have the right to disperse the protestors. Needless to say, this didn’t stop them and within twenty minutes or so the explosions of sound bombs were ringing in our ears and mists of white tear gas were rising from canisters shot into the crowd and the trees. No stone-throwing had taken place before they started firing. Everyone scattered, and a few minutes later I was on the other side of the hill with one other international and a few ‘shebab’ (the stone-throwers) choking, eyes and nose streaming, face stinging, head pounding. Its been two and a half years since I’ve felt that disorientation, at a demonstration against the wall in the West Bank village of Jayyous, which is now cut off from its land and has lost trees, greenhouses, water sources, access to family members outside… All that time the wall has been being constructed, crushing the Palestinians into open-roofed prisons. Meanwhile, the international community has done nothing – apart from ruling it illegal at the court in the Hague, but who is Israel to take any notice of international law? We need sanctions. It worked for South Africa.

Most of the day was spent hanging out at the top of the track by a house (poor family) while the Palestinians around us and in the olive trees played their crazy game with the stones and the soldiers and the tear gas and rubber bullets. Our job was to witness and record what was going on, make sure that injured people could get to the waiting ambulance, know what was happening if people were arrested. At one point we came out into the track with our hands up shouting “Internationals! Don’t shoot!” in order to put out a fire that had started on some dry grass after a gas cannister or sound bomb had exploded there. And then suddenly the stakes of the game changed and in amongst the gas and rubber bullets live ammuntion was being fired. And everything carried on, just as it was. Perhaps most of the younger shebab – aged six or so upwards – had gone home by then. A couple of the ones around us commented on which rounds were potentially lethal (I think i can probably tell the difference in the sound by now) and then carried on catapulting stones. Apparently its unusual but not unheard of for them to use live bullets at these demonstrations.

At about five o’clock the army retreated closer to the destruction site and we moved forwards. There was a lull in the procedings as Palestinians who had been working on the settlement finished their shift and walked past us along the track. The man I was chatting to, who was part of the local Committee Against the Wall which organises the demonstrations and keeps a track of whats going on, told me that they are all people from outside the village, from other parts of the West Bank. There were quite a lot of them, most of them looked a bit shifty as they passed. Some greetings were exchanged.

Not many shebab were left by this point, although it was quite hard to tell as they were mostly in the trees. Most of the internationals also left; i stayed on with a two others. Some of the Palestinians started shouting and laughing – a soldier had got really wound up and had taken off his gun and helmet and was offering to fight one of the shebab – ‘man to man’, no doubt. What had they been calling him? Coward? The other two internationals disappeared into the trees somewhere and i started filming a few young lads who were messing about playfighting. They couldn’t have looked less like terrorists if they tried. When the other internationals re-appeared J said to me “I’ve been hit”. They had been standing under a tree as a soldier was firing about 200 meters or so away. Something had hit J just above his groin, it had pierced his skin but had not ripped his clothes and was not a serious injury. The boy standing with him had also been hit, in the head. He had disappeared with someone else. J was trying to work out what had hit them, and thought perhaps it was a piece of the tree which had splintered off as a rubber bullet hit it. He said his ears were ringing from a loud noise. It was only when we got back to the ISM flat that someone told us the round had been live.

J went back to where it happened with another international and they found fragments of lead in the trunk of the tree. A couple of people went to the hospital to see how the boy was. He had fragments of lead in his head. That night we ate in stunned silence, J struggling to digest what had happened to him.

Two others were taken to hospital that day – one had a tear gas cannister fired at his head and the other sustained a leg injury, possibly from rubber bullets. There were eleven injuries in total.

There was a big demonstration three days earlier, during which soldiers were using gas-powered guns not previously used in the West Bank. They fired rapid rounds of plastic bullets filled with a white powder that caused intense pain to the people shot. The powder is currently being analysied. Two Palestinians were arrested and beaten up whilst in custody. They tried to charge one of them with attempted murder, apparently because an undercover Israeli special forces agent fell and hurt his head. The Palestinian has a good lawyer and now faces a lesser charge.

Letter from Nablus

by Lena

Nablus has the historical reputation of being at the heart of Palestinian resistance. The Israeli government apparently claims that this is still the case and the conditions of the occupation have been harsher here than elsewhere.

After the start of the second Intifada in September 2000 residents of Nablus were forbidden to leave the city and non-residents were forbidden from entering. People who needed to pass the checkpoints could only do so in ambulances and even then they would be delayed for extended periods of time.

About a year ago people under the age of 45 were allowed out of the city and this was then reduced to 35, then 25, until two weeks ago when people of all ages have been allowed to cross the checkpoints on foot. Vehicle access is almost non-existent.

Within the area of the surrounding checkpoints the population of Nablus is about 200,000, which includes four refugee camps and six or seven villages. A number of other villages lie outside the checkpoints, but these are regularly cut off from the city.

Curfews in the villages and closures at the checkpoints have rendered it exceptionally difficult for the villages to provide Nablus with the food upon which it once depended. Although these days it is easier for people to move around, there are still big problems getting agricultural produce in, and apparently the situation now is that a significant proportion of fresh fruit and vegetables are being supplied by the settlements. It is perhaps difficult to appreciate just how messed up this is unless you have a bit of an idea about the general situation here.

In 2001 a huge trench was built between Nablus and four neighbouring villages which was then filled with sewage from the settlement of Elon Mora. Thereafter all movement between the city and the villages was funnelled through two crossing points – one also houses an occasional checkpoint and the other is just a pipe crossing over the open sewage: only recommended for people with good balance.

Settlements and military bases are on top of most of the hills around the valley in which Nablus is situated. The settlements are distinctive by their location and the uniformity of the buildings – red rooftops on white square buildings. An extensive network of roads serves the settlements, which are out of bounds to the Palestinian population and carve up the entire West Bank and Gaza strip.

Once the settlements are established they expand and spread “like a cancer”, as a Palestinian friend once described to me. As well as the area of land that they cover, the surrounding area is also out of bounds to Palestinians, regardless of whether they own land there or not. In one place that I visited the last time I was here this was a radius of about five kilometres from the settlement. If Palestinians enter this area they risk being shot at, either by the army or by the armed inhabitants of the settlements. These people are scary: In many settlements they form a civilian militia made up of people who are fanatical religious fundamentalists. The settlements are paramilitary communities.

Things in Nablus are much less dramatic now than when I last stayed here in November 2002 – I haven’t seen a tank yet (what have they done with them? Lent them to the United States for use in Iraq? Perhaps they were on loan in the first place). Buildings have been rebuilt, the roadblocks – huge piles of rubble which would appear overnight turning busy streets into dead ends – have been cleared and all the shops are open. Curfews in the city haven’t been imposed for extended periods this year; sometimes they were enforced for months on end. In one village near Nablus they have spent one year out of the last five under curfew, if you add up all the days. The last major military incursion into Nablus was in September last year, although there are small scale incursions almost every night, particularly in the refugee camps and the old city.

The psychological impact of the occupation has been acute and the economic impact is still crippling. Since September 2000 per capita income in the West Bank has decreased from $1600 to $700, and this does not take into account the escalation in prices bought on by scarcity and the risks involved with transporting produce. In Gaza the figures are even worse: from $1400 to between $300 and $400 – about level with countries in Sub-Saharan Africa that are in the throes of conflict.

I have been staying in Balata refugee camp, the largest in the West Bank in population terms with about 35,000 people, but an area which is only 800 meters by 500. Refugee camps in Palestine are long-established places which house people who were evicted from their land in what is now called Israel, either in 1948 or 1967. Yesterday I met a woman who is over 80 years old who still lives in the house which the United Nations built for her when she arrived in 1948.

Meeting people in the camp is like being taken on a tour of human tragedy. We spent an hour or two yesterday in a family home and as they bought out coffee, juice, biscuits and fruit we listened to the stories of the people in the room. One woman had lost a son who was killed by the military a year before, whilst her other son was in jail serving a sentence of sixty years.

A woman of about 25 had herself spent two years in prison, and had lost her hearing in one ear as a result of one of the beatings she received. She described the conditions of solitary confinement and the actions of the prison guards who, sometimes high on drugs, subjected them to humiliating treatment.

Next to me was a woman who smiled and joked with me as she fed her two year old child on her lap. When she was seven months pregnant a soldier had thrown a sound bomb between her legs, and the pressure of the explosion meant that she had had to have an emergency caesarean. The child was born two months premature and will probably never be able to walk. One side of his brain is not working properly and half of his body sags, devoid of any strength. He had operations on both of his lungs, and he sat wheezing on her lap as she gestured towards the child and her heart. Her husband translated: “Her heart is bleeding for this one”, he said.

Throughout the period of the ‘ceasefire’ the military have continued to enter Balata camp at night-time, shooting down the streets at the young boys throwing stones, who never agreed to stop their resistance. To begin with, the fighters did not retaliate: they wanted to get their lives back, to stop running down the narrow alleyways of the camp, to spend a night with their families and not expect the next bullet to be headed towards them. As far as they understood, the ceasefire would mean that they were no longer ‘Wanted’ and could continue their lives as ordinary people. However, the army killed two people from the camp about a month ago and a couple of weeks ago they came in and arrested six people. As a result a young fighter from the camp ran through the streets, shouting at people to end the ceasefire. That night, when the army came into the camp, a big clash ensued – the first in months. No-one was killed then, but the next day Special Forces – a branch of the army – came into the camp undercover, lured the man who had shouted in the street out of his house and shot him. He was taken to Huwara military base where he bleed to death and his body was then returned to the camp and dumped in the street for medics to collect.

Last night one of the three international women in the flat where I am staying had a phone call at 9.45: Special Forces were in the camp. We put down our bowls of half-eaten food and rushed out to meet the local Palestinian ISM co-ordinator and an international who is working on some projects in Balata. They were in the middle of a crowd of young boys, and explained to us that two boys had been taken by special forces and then released. Our friends had walked down the road near the building that special forces were in, and shots had been fired from it in their direction, possibly to scare them off. It was unclear where Special Forces were and what they were planning on doing. Before long an army jeep pulled up on the opposite side of the main street to where we were standing. The boys with us started shouting and ran to grab stones from the floor as a second jeep pulled up nearby. We heard that there was also army at the graveyard at the other end of the camp. A phone call told us that there were fighters behind us and that they intended to resist the incursion. In this situation there is nothing that we can do – the last place for us to be is between armed Palestinians and the Israeli military. We formed a line and began retreating down the street at right angles to the main road, which is one of the three main streets of the camp. We held our arms out to indicate that we were unarmed and tried to look as ‘international’ as possible.

Back at the flat a series of phone calls updated us on the situation – the army were stationed at all entrances of the camp; in one place there were about 10 jeeps. We agreed that if someone was injured and the medics arrived and wanted us to be there we would leave the flat and accompany them. There were also Special Forces in the camp, a fact that worried the long term international that I was with because it seemed to indicate that one or more assassinations were about to take place. Possibly they were after one of the teenagers that we had seen earlier that day, walking through the camp with their automatic weapons over their chest (which one?). I saw nothing like this the last time I was here. We spent a couple of hours trying to distinguish between different noises and working out where the gunfire was coming from. Some of it sounded pretty close and a loud explosion happened nearby. Eventually we went to bed, not knowing what to expect this morning.

Thankfully, no-one was killed or injured last night and no houses occupied. We learnt that settlers had come to pray (??????) at a place called Joseph’s Tomb, which is across the road from the camp in Balata village, between the camp and Nablus itself, near where we initially saw the army jeeps last night. This evidently entailed a large military operation and explains why they surrounded the camp, preventing anybody from leaving or seeing what was happening.

Hellish Compounds in the Holy Land

by Lena

Dear all,

At Abu Dis, a small village on the outskirts of Jerusalem, the wall brings the road to an abrubt end, blocking what used to be the main route between Jerusalem and Jericho. About 9 meters high and solid concrete, it extends into the distance to the South, a huge snake carving up the hillside. To the north it pushes up the hill for 50 meters or so, after which there is a metal gate and then the wall of the compound of a building – a normal wall. Between the gate and the next wall there is a gap about a meter from the ground. I started to photograph a woman who was passing a small baby through the gap to someone waiting on the other side.

After a little while a landrover pulled up and one of its passengers got out to speak to someone on the pavement. It looked like an army vehicle but “Police” was printed on the side. I later found out that it belonged to the Border Police – a particularly nasty branch of the Israeli security forces. They are army but police as well and therefore have the authority to arrest internationals. I shifted the camera to include in its frame this addition to the scene. The border policeman started gesturing towards me angrily. I was aware that he wanted me to approach the vehicle but for some reason I didn’t move, just stood staring at him holding the camera to my chest. He walked up the hill towards me and as he got closer shouted at me to produce my ID. I told him that i did not have my passport on me, and had to repeat this a number of times. He made me follow him towards the vehicle before taking my bag and emptying it on the pavement to search it. I told him the name of the hostel i’m staying in and that in England we don’t all have to carry identity cards. He said that it is forbidden to photograph the security forces. I apologised and said that I didn’t know that, I didn’t know i had to carry my passport all the time, I’m just a tourist. He told me to go back to my hotel and get my passport and then i could come back if i wanted. I agreed and the vehicle drove off along the road that shadows the path of the wall.

On the curbside i replaced my things in my bag and looked at the concrete monstrosity towering over me. Grey monotony was peppered with grafitti, including messages of solidarity from people from around the world. In a prominent spot were the words “Friends cannot be divided”. As I sat there a number of communal taxis pulled up and deposited groups of women and children on the road in front of the wall. They walked past me up the hill and towards the gap. I hurriedly changed the film in my camera and by the time i reached the gap there was a group of about 25 people huddled round, waiting to climb through. 5 o’clock: rush hour. Young people waited as old women struggled to gain a foothold.

“Salam al eykum,” I said to a group of teenage girls who were standing at the edge of the group. “Shalom,” one of them replied, the Hebrew equivalent. Both greetings mean “Peace” – how ironic is that? By this point i was unable to hold back my tears – it was my first experience of the wall this trip – so i turned around and started walking up the hill away from them. After a short distance i realised they were following me and i stopped and turned around again. I just about managed to say “Majnoon!” – Arabic for “crazy” – gesturing towards the wall. They smiled widely at my tears and started speaking quickly in Arabic. I could only understand one word – “Yalla” – which means “Lets go”. It was enough. I followed them back towards the gap.

The group was smaller now but people seemed more impatient and a few young men had climbed onto the wall of the compound. Before long the Border Police pulled up again and this time the driver spoke to me, asked me the name of my hotel and then told me to have a nice day! But the guy who had initially spoken to me, who was black and therefore probably an Ethiopian Jew, was in the passenger seat closest to me and kept demanding that i go back to my hotel and get my passport. There wasn’t much else i could do, so I walked back down the hill towards a communal taxi and stood beside it, waiting for more people to fill it up. The landrover drove past and stopped a short distance away. I looked back towards the group and took one last photo as a young girl waved at me. No doubt, if i had made it through the gap, i would have been taken to the home of one of the young lasses and given tea, perhaps food. A neighbour who spoke English would probably have been found, and we could have exchanged information about ourselves. It wasn’t to be. I was experiencing the powerlessness of having to bow down to a higher authority – granted by whom? God? – that Palestinians must feel all the time.

When I looked back at the taxi I realised that the driver was waiting for me so I climbed on board. “Yalla,” I said and he grinned at me as he started the engine.

Today i felt, for the first time, the desperation that i was expecting from the moment I stepped off the plane in Jordan and have grown accustomed to from my experience of ‘developing’ countries. I had just passed through the Bethlehem checkpoint, which was the first that i encountered on my first trip to Palestine. I remember, back then, being confused, because we were passing from Palestinian territory to Palestinian territory and were not crossing any borders. Of course, it quickly became apparent that checkpoints are everywhere throughout the West Bank and Gaza: that is the reality of a military occupation. Anyway, today the beautiful young soldier with an automatic weapon draped across her chest told me to “have a nice day” after she checked my passport. I started walking down the street towards the wall – near the Bethlehem checkpoint it looks much the same as it does in Abu Dis – massive, solid, impenetrable. I waved to a group of boys who shouted a greeting to me from the opposite side of the road, and one of them got up and ran after me, trying to sell me a small bag. I didn’t want the bag but he persisted, saying he was hungry. We had reached the wall by the time he gave up, but his efforts were replaced by those of a man in his thirties, trying to sell me necklaces. “We are suffering”, he said, gesturing towards the wall. Next came the taxi drivers, driving next to me down the street as i walked towards my destination which i knew to be a short distance away. “Please. Business is bad…”

I’m not sure if this desperate persistence is a new thing or not, as the last time i was here i only came to Bethlehem once, at night, and there was no-one around except the military. I’m guessing that it is. The wall divides families, cuts people off from their land, blocks trade routes, discourages tourists. As C, a local Christian coffee-shop owner, kept saying to me “Everything has changed”.

…And yet… C refused to accept any money for my much-welcome coffee. A communal taxi driver also refused my shekels and was disappointed that i declined his invitation to stay with him and his family. It seems that the generosity of the Palestinian people cannot be defeated by humiliation, degredation, poverty. Yesterday i marvelled at the way people circumnavigated a huge physical obstacle and just got on with their lives regardless. Today i’m starting to appreciate the strength of character that that involves.

After the wall at the Bethlehem checkpoint you have to turn left and take a detour of about 15 minutes by foot. It is not possible to continue straight down what used to be the main road, as there is another section of wall further down. Between these two sections of wall there is Rachel’s Tomb, an important religious site for Jewish people. It looks as though it is buried somewhere in large military complex, although I did not visit it this time, preferring to ease my way into the occupation gradually.

My trip to Bethlehem ended up at ‘Shepards Field’ – the place where, legend has it, the shepards saw an angel. Father Michel has been guardian of the site for the last 15 years. On hearing that I’m from Britian, he told me that Blair is no good. “Bush and Blair”, he said, grinding his feet into the dusty ground, indicating his opinion. And Sharon? “War criminal.”

I wondered how many pilgrims have heard this message.

Haaretz: Rachel Corrie’s family sues Israel, IDF

By Amos Harel, Haaretz Correspondent

The family of Rachel Corrie, a pro-Palestinian activist killed by an Israel Defense Forces bulldozer in Rafah two years ago, sued the State of Israel and the IDF for damages in the Haifa District Court on Tuesday.

The 24-year-old Corrie was killed on March 16, 2003 when she tried to block an IDF bulldozer from demolishing a Palestinian house near the Philadelphi Route, the strip of land in the Gaza Strip bordering Egypt.

An IDF investigation ruled the incident was an accident and that the driver did not see Corrie, and the military prosecutor’s office decided not to press charges in connection with Corrie’s death.

Corrie’s parents, brother, and sister, who are represented by Umm al-Fahm attorney Hussein Abu-Hussein, argue Corrie was killed despite the fact that she was wearing bright clothing and had identified herself as an activist with the pro-Palestinian International Solidarity Movement.

Corrie’s family argues that the bulldozer driver intentionally used unreasonable force. According to the family, there was no fighting in the area at the time and there was no threat to soldiers’ lives.

The family has asked for roughly $324 thousand in direct damages, as well as punitive damages. They also said they have yet to receive all of the material from the IDF investigation into the matter.