Letter From Budrus

By Mark Sorkin
Originally published in The Nation

The van drops us off at the top of a hill and rattles around the bend. It is the middle of the afternoon in Budrus, a tiny village in the occupied West Bank ten miles northwest of Ramallah, and the neighborhood seems deceptively quiet. A few boys and girls linger outside their homes, picking at cactus bushes. Others peek out from second-floor windows to watch the visitors walking by. A dirt road winds down to an expanse of olive groves that stretches for about 700 dunams (175 acres) to the Green Line, the internationally recognized border with Israel. It’s a bucolic scene, violently interrupted by the razor-wire fence on the outer edges that threatens to tear through the middle of the groves. If construction here continues, the 1,200 residents of Budrus–the vast majority of whom depend on agriculture for work–will lose a large portion of their fields. An Israeli bulldozer has already carved a preliminary path, and uprooted trees lie in its wake.

According to the official map released by Israel’s Defense Ministry, the proposed route of the separation barrier will not only pass through this patch of land but will also loop around to encircle Budrus and eight nearby villages, creating a closed enclave with a population of 25,000. Once the area is sealed, access to fields, offices, construction sites, university classrooms, friends and relatives outside the enclave will be restricted. Even those who need emergency hospital care will be subjected to the caprices and bureaucratic diktat of the soldiers guarding the gates. The Israeli human rights group B’Tselem estimates that the completed barrier will create eighty-one such enclaves and will expropriate almost 1 million dunams east of the Green Line, affecting a total of 875,600 Palestinians, or 38 percent of the population in the West Bank.

Many residents in Budrus fear that conditions in the enclave will become so dire that they will be forced to abandon their land. This alarming possibility has prompted them to mobilize en masse, and they have succeeded so far in stalling construction and calling attention to the dubious legality of the plan. They’re not alone: Since the first bulldozers broke ground in August 2002, thousands of Palestinians throughout the West Bank have teamed up with Israeli peace activists and international humanitarian groups to stage nonviolent demonstrations against the barrier (which, it must be noted, is built as a fence in some areas and, elsewhere, a monstrous wall made of thirty-foot concrete slabs). Confrontations between protesters and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have become increasingly chaotic, leading to hundreds of injuries, detentions and at least seven deaths. But the residents in Budrus haven’t taken up arms, nor have they appealed to the Palestinian Authority or other factions for support. Doing so, they believe, would only strengthen Israel’s claims that a barrier is necessary to deter attacks. Instead, they have organized an autonomous, highly disciplined campaign to prevent construction until Israel agrees to build on the Green Line.

Anticipating a struggle in their area last fall, village leaders got together and formed the Popular Committee Against the Wall. By the time the IDF arrived on November 12, the committee had developed a strict set of rules: Everybody in the village was expected to participate in the protests, and nobody was allowed to throw stones. “The soldiers were prepared with their weapons,” says Ayed Murar, 42, head of the committee. “But when they saw all our people sitting peacefully on our land–old men, women, children, everyone–they turned back.”

Ayed’s brother Muhammed, a thin, mild-mannered sheik, invites me into his home to talk. We’re sitting in his spacious living room, which is furnished with two couches and a dozen plastic green chairs arranged in a circle. The space seems to double as a play area for Muhammed’s children, two of whom hover timidly in the corner, and a conference room for committee meetings. As cups of coffee cool on the table, Muhammed explains, “To have a confrontation locally, you want it to be totally apart from the politicians. We didn’t want to wait for instructions from the PA in Ramallah. The threat was so great that people were prepared to move from their houses to live in the fields. When we saw a bulldozer, we wanted to be able to move immediately.”

The IDF returned at the end of December and declared Budrus a closed military zone. Demonstrations continued on a regular basis for the next few months, often in defiance of curfews. Ayed and a third brother, Naim, were arrested in early January following Israeli intelligence accusations of “terror-supporting activity,” but the charges were dropped once they were determined to be baseless. According to a report in the Israeli daily Ha’aretz, the military court issued a statement upon Ayed’s release, declaring, “It is out of the question for the military commander to use his authority to order a person’s administrative detention [arrest without trial] only because of his activity against the fence. This is a mistaken decision that does not stem from security considerations.”

Over the course of about thirty demonstrations, more than 100 people were injured by batons, rubber bullets and tear-gas inhalation. Some youths, after seeing their parents wounded, tried to fight back with stones. But the committee leaders discouraged this activity through a series of public discussions and lectures in the schools, insisting that they would lose the struggle if resistance turned violent. “There was a constant discourse about nonviolence and a tight sense of control,” says Max Shmookler, an American peace activist who lived in Budrus for seven weeks as a volunteer with the International Solidarity Movement. “The general prohibition on stone-throwing was well understood and respected.”

Protests came to a halt on March 3, when the IDF presented a revised map showing that the route of the fence had been moved to the Green Line. But in early May, leaflets appeared in homes and on shop windows around town with a foreboding message. Muhammed pulls a piece of paper from his pocket, unfolds it and begins to read: “We are calling on the residents of Budrus to be present tomorrow at a meeting with officers of the civil administration.” Later I stop to talk to a cluster of men standing outside a small grocery store, where the same message is taped to the window. They are concerned that activity in the area is scheduled to resume and that construction will, in fact, cross through the olive groves. The rumors are confirmed the next day, and protests resume immediately.

“Instead of taking 1,200 dunams, now they want to confiscate something like 200,” says Ronit Robinson, a human rights attorney representing Budrus. Robinson filed a petition to Israel’s High Court of Justice on May 23, claiming that there is no legitimate reason to cut through the groves. This will buy some time for the residents of Budrus–once the case enters the system, construction will stop until the court reaches its decision–but generally speaking, matters involving the occupied territories haven’t fared well for Palestinians in the past. Nine petitions regarding the barrier have already been rejected (five have settled, two were withdrawn and seventeen remain in process).

Rachel Naidek Ashkenazi, a spokesperson for the Defense Ministry, insists that the path has been suitably adjusted in response to the citizens’ complaints. “The new route is in Israel’s territory prior to the ’67 war, a change that necessitated uprooting of an Israeli forest in the area,” she explains. Does this mean that the precise location of the Green Line is in dispute, or that Israel is reluctant to recognize it? Ariel Sharon’s highly publicized meeting with President Bush on April 14, during which Bush assured the Prime Minister that a final peace agreement would not require Israel to withdraw to its pre-1967 borders, suggests an answer to that question. As envisioned by Sharon’s Likud Party, the barrier will not only deter suicide bombings by preventing Palestinians from entering Israel but will protect settlements as well. The current map reveals a tortuous line wrapping around these “new realities on the ground,” folding settlements and strategic resources into an expanded Israel.

As the International Court of Justice considers the case against the barrier, Israel’s security claims are being weighed against potential violations of international law. Indirectly, the ICJ proceedings could strengthen the case in Budrus, an area without a noticeable concentration of militant resistance or any geographical rationale for encroaching beyond the Green Line. “We’re now in a sort of post-Hague stage, where humanitarian issues are very much in the spotlight,” says Ray Dolphin, a fence analyst with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency. “Civil groups are getting involved, Israeli communities are joining in and injunctions are successfully causing the construction to be rerouted or delayed.” All these things combined, Dolphin adds, could pressure Israel to adopt a more delicate approach toward villages like Budrus.

Robinson is holding out hopes that the High Court will rule in the village’s favor, but she is skeptical about the likelihood of rerouting that section of the fence a second time. Residents, meanwhile, are bracing for another confrontation with the IDF. Ayed says he is prepared to keep struggling, peacefully and with international help if a new round of protests becomes necessary. “They decided to build this wall in order to protect themselves,” he says. “But now they need twenty soldiers just to guard the wall.”

Leaving Biddu

by Mark

I have been in Biddu for three days without internet access as there has been a general strike in Palestine. Three days ago we had a pretty bad day there even by normal standards.

I only came to Biddu to deliver a bag. Two hours later and the shebab had saved me from a probable beating and certain arrest.

I arrived in Biddu as the protests against the murder of Rantissi were taking place. I quickly found the group of international activists among the villagers and they told me that during the demonstration the construction workers had moved into the village and started working on the “wall”. As soon as this demonstration was over the villagers were going to go down to the worksite to protest about the construction. There has been a terrific increase in community led non violent demonstrations in recent months as communities have once again engaged in the true spirit of the intifada. Budrus, a nearby town, has succeeded through protest and petitioning to have the wall moved back to the internationally recognised border. Other villages inspired by this victory have been busily protesting the sections of wall that cut deep into their land. In Biddu they have never had trouble with either soldiers or the nearby settlers. If it wasn’t for the wall being built on their land the intifada might almost have passed them by. If you think what we are doing is illegal it isn’t and the military courts have criticised soldiers for trying to prosecute arrestees. The court declared that protesting against the wall is not a criminal offence. Internationals who have been arrested have only been cautioned not to return to the demonstrations.

At about 2pm I found myself walking down a long road towards the sound of heavy machinery. As we rounded a corner I could see the diggers and the bulldozers flanked by a row of military jeeps. We could also see soldiers up on the roofs of the most distant buildings. These aren’t the IDF though but the Border Police a force much more brutal and with the power to arrest internationals. We were hundreds of meters away from the work site and hadn’t even begun to assemble into any demonstration when I heard the first crack of the tear gas guns. The multi shot canisters landed in front of us behind us and to the side of us so we moved out towards the fields and away from the Border Police. As we choked on the tear gas kids who kid read Hebrew read to us what it said on the containers:

“Not to be used within 50 yards of civilians”

We moved across a field which was difficult terrain and attempted to move again towards the site to re-assemble for the demonstration. Something that looked suspiciously like mounted police came into view and several people stopped to assess the situation. They were indeed mounted soldiers but we thought they might be used for crowd control if there was violence so we continued to move forward. No-one in Palestine has ever seen or heard of soldiers on horses being used in the territories before. The toxic tear gas was starting to take its toll and my eyes were streaming. Minutes later and I saw Palestinians running towards me. Generally if you see Palestinians running it is a good idea to run yourself, these people aren’t easily scared. As I turned to run I saw that the villagers and internationals were being charged by the baton wielding mounted soldiers.

I learned quickly, though perhaps should have already known, that a horse can run much faster than me, especially over roughly ploughed fields. The shebab (the word means youth but is frequently used as term for the young stone throwers) had lit fires on the hill to disperse the gas and I thought that if I ran through the fire the horse wouldn’t follow. As my tear gas filled lungs filled up with acrid smoke from the bush fires I wondered if this was such a good tactic. The horse hadn’t followed me but this may be because it was brighter than me.

Other horses thundered past me and the soldiers brutally lashed out with their batons at the fleeing villagers. I was stood just yards away as one of these mounted robocops smashed a middle aged villager over the head at the same time ramming him to the ground with the horse. I heard the crack and the thud as the blows landed and I heard the old man cry out in pain. My eyes streaming and lungs gasping I was torn between going back to help the man and risking arrest or to keep moving. The man got to his feet somehow with blood gushing from his head and the rider circled round him towards me. I backed away steadily, not running, but I could see another rider coming up beside him and several others to the side of me lashing out and beating the villagers with their big sticks.

I had time to think that it was like a scene out of Planet of the Apes and I would probably have been done for at this time but several of the older shebab who had already run to safety flew back down the hill and started hurling huge rocks at the Savages-sorry-Soldiers on horses. They threw them hard and fast and accurately hitting the rider and the horse making the soldier double up in pain and back up. As they continued to hurl the rocks they shouted at the soldiers “Just fuck off, just fuck off, leave us alone, go away!” In that split second I understood how the stone throwers felt, what motivated them and I wanted more than anything to stand and throw rocks with them against these horrible violent bastards on horses.

Naturally I didn’t throw stones but the badly bleeding Palestinian and I gratefully took our opportunity to leave and ran. By this time there were more border police on foot and they pointed something shiny and black at three of us internationals. “Come here” they shouted to us. Two of us decided against it and kept running. The other international, a Scottish woman, was arrested as was the beaten Palestinian who could run no more.

As they took away the only two people they had managed to catch the rest of us moved ever further up the hill on the other side of the valley where work is being carried out and sat and rested. The horses were gone and the soldiers were busy with the younger stone throwing shebab who somehow managed to stay in the street despite the vast volumes of tear gas they were enveloped in.

We sat for maybe 45 minutes watching the brave young kids fight tear gas, and by now rubber bullets, with stone after stone. Ambulances came and went as some were overcome by the gas and others were shot in the head by rubber bullets. And then it happened.

We were sat high up in the hills almost half a mile away from the soldiers and shebab sitting and chatting about how we can peacefully protest in these conditions when we heard a whooshing noise. None of us could place it at first but we thought it might be a bullet. We dismissed the idea as we couldn’t hear gunfire and what on earth were we doing to deserve being shot at? There are no armed militants in the village let alone the field.

After we heard the whooshing noise a couple more times we get nervous and walked up the hill another field to a big house where several villagers were sat. Five minutes later and the noise came again, closer this time. Now the Palestinians looked nervous. That is definitely bullets but where are they coming from? We can’t hear any shooting. We moved closer to walls and trees and looked around but we were very exposed up here and we had nowhere to go.

I guess it wasn’t until the Palestinian in the field below dropped to the floor that we knew for sure. Clutching his chest 24 year old Diyya Abed Al Kareem fell to the floor. He has been shot in the chest. They were shooting at us. Somewhere amongst those soldiers was a sniper and he was using a silencer. Against villagers and internationals sat in a field long after being violently dispersed somehow they felt they had to shoot someone?

An ambulance was called and Diyya was rushed to Ramallah and then East Jerusalem hospital. A villager came and guided us all off the hill and through side streets to safety. Everyone here in Biddu is getting sick from the tear gas, some people here having been taking it for months. No one has ever witnessed such a high level of violence against peaceful protestors. Lethal force used against a man standing under an olive tree. Live rounds fired over the heads of internationals doing no more than observing. Every day I am in Palestine another aspect of the occupation continues to shock me and the violence against the Palestinians increases.

At 22.00 we heard from the hospital that Diyya had died from his wounds. The bullet had exploded in his lung destroying it and taking his life with it.

There is only one clear aim of the occupation here and that is to violently subjugate any peaceful protest. Normally the protests here are made up of locals, internationals and Israelis. The Israeli group is known as Anarchists Against the Wall but today we didn’t need the Anarchists. We had the Israeli army cause Anarchy for us…

On the bright side I learned a) that I cant run faster than a horse b) Its never ok to run in to a fire and c) horses are much brighter than me.

If you are interested the story continues on www.rafahkid.net

Remembering Rachel Corrie

by Adam Shapiro
Originally published in The Nation

On March 7, 2004, an Associated Press photographer in the West Bank village of Beit Dukou captured an image of a Palestinian woman during a protest against the wall Israel is constructing in her village. The image is simple, but it evokes a power beyond words.

This woman, dressed in a headscarf, long peasant dress and sweater, stands with her arms folded in front of her as if she is slightly cold or perhaps waiting for a tardy child. Her head is tilted slightly downward but her presence dominates the scene. What is particularly striking about this woman is that she is standing between the two treads, and directly in front of the cab, of an Israeli army D-9 bulldozer–the kind that has destroyed homes, uprooted trees and even killed an American woman. After a moment of disbelief over the image of a “covered” woman confronting this huge machine, you might then look again and realize that she stands there in defiance with her back to the machine, as if to say, “I will remain here on my land and will not acknowledge your brute force.”

The image of this woman immediately reminded me of Rachel Corrie. Rachel is the American woman who was crushed to death by an Israeli D-9 bulldozer in Rafah, Gaza Strip, on March 16, 2003. The bulldozer, like all the bulldozers used by the Israeli army, is manufactured by Caterpillar–an American company–and sold to the Israeli government as part of its military aid package. Rachel was defending the home of a Palestinian physician, with just her body and her defiance, when the driver put the lever into gear and drove forward and then backward, crushing Rachel beneath the blade not once, but twice. Immediately, allegations of tunnels under the home were used to malign Rachel’s extraordinary courage. However, no tunnels were ever located. These facts did not stop the Israeli army from demolishing this house two months ago, along with dozens of other homes in Rafah, in the latest wave of home demolitions carried out by US-built Caterpillar bulldozers.

Following Rachel’s death, many of us expected the US government to investigate what happened and to work to bring those responsible to justice. After all, just a day after Daniel Pearl’s kidnapping in Pakistan, FBI agents were dispatched to Karachi to help with that investigation. But the US government remains silent, as neither the FBI nor the State Department nor Congress has mandated an independent investigation. This despite the more recent deaths of three American security agents in another part of Gaza when their car ran over a roadside bomb, prompting the State Department to threaten to withhold money from the Palestinian Authority until those responsible are brought to justice.

In the case of Tom Hurndall, the British civilian shot by an Israeli sniper in Gaza a couple weeks after Rachel was killed, the British government has pushed for an investigation and a soldier is already being prepared for trial. The initial story about Tom’s killing by the Israeli army was that he was an armed terrorist. The soldier who shot him has now admitted to lying about the incident. British pressure undoubtedly has played a part in generating this mea culpa and reversal of narrative. Why have there not been similar efforts by the US government, upon which Israel is dependent for more than $6 billion per year in total aid? Why has Rachel’s killing gone unchallenged? Why has such a tremendous act of courage and defiance been ignored by much of the media in the United States?

Like Rachel’s family and friends, we at the International Solidarity Movement wonder about the answers to these questions. And we have to wonder what lessons are learned from allowing the Israeli army to bulldoze and kill a young woman without reprisal.

However, I do know that acts of courage like this Palestinian woman in the village of Beit Dukou and the brutal toll the occupation takes on Palestinians every day are what inspired and outraged Rachel to refuse to be intimidated on that fateful day last March.

Adam Shapiro is an organizer with the International Solidarity Movement.

Solidarity Against Occupation

by Stefan Christoff

I travelled to Jordan from Montreal, Canada, at the end of November with plans to cross the Israeli controlled border into Palestine to work with the International Solidarity Movement (ISM). I was refused entry into Israel after being held for more than five hours, and deemed a “security threat”, according to information provided to border officials by the ministry of the interior. I had planned to work in Palestine with the ISM, a Palestinian-led movement which brings together Palestinians and internationals from all over the world to work on the ground in the occupied territories and stage campaigns of nonviolent direct action against the Israeli occupation.

The ISM has brought hundreds of internationals to work in Palestine to confront the daily workings of the Israeli occupation. During the summer of 2003, the ISM organised the Freedom Summer Campaign, which focused on confronting the current construction of the Israeli apartheid wall. Palestinian and international activists working with the ISM took part in non-violent direct action to tear down sections of the internationally condemned wall. The wall, deemed a “security measure” by the Israeli state, is clearly an effort to steal more Palestinian land. The Palestinian Environmental NGO Network has estimated that upwards of 50 per cent of the West Bank land will be plundered by the completion of the wall, which is not being built on or near the 1967 Green Line and at points reaches 16km deep into the heart of the West Bank.

Thus, the ISM, through direct confrontation with the colonial realities of the Israeli occupation has become an important facet of resistance to the occupation. The fact that the ISM operates outside of the confines and regulations of international institutions, such as the United Nations, is one of the reasons why the organisation has been effective on the ground in Palestine and throughout the world in bringing to light the terrible realities of life, and death, under occupation.

The ISM has been so effective that Israel is barring activists from participating in the organisation’s work on the ground in Palestine. In the past year, the Israeli military has raided the nonviolent group’s offices, confiscating computers, documents and equipment a number of times.

Grassroots organisations like the ISM are needed at a time when the international community has, through the United Nation and its countless resolutions, condemned many practices and policies of the Israeli state, such as the current construction of the apartheid wall, without doing much on the ground to take action or to change the devastating situation. It takes real action led by Palestinians directly affected to change the situation.

That is why the ISM, like many other resistance groups and organisations in Palestine and throughout the world, is becoming a tangible threat to Israel’s racist and genocidal policies against the Palestinians.

It must also be mentioned that the ISM has been targeted in many more devastating ways by the Israeli state. Two of its members, Rachel Corrie and Tom Hurndall, were killed last spring. These two deaths sent shock waves through Palestine and the world, but until now, the Israeli state or military have not been reprimanded for the deaths in any tangible way. This continues the Israeli military’s tradition of killing with impunity.

The deaths of two ISM members must also be held up in contrast to the fact that between Sept. 29, 2000, and Rachel Corrie’s murder, members of the Israeli army and associated Israeli settler paramilitary units were responsible for the killing of 2,181 Palestinians and the injuring of another 22,218. Palestinians are murdered almost on a daily basis by the Israeli military.

Although there has been a handful of international activists murdered as well, it must be remembered that Palestinian civilians are dying at an extraordinary rate, without outrage or concrete action from the majority of the international community. This fact reinforces the idea that Palestinian life is less valuable than other life and that the world should remain silent in the face of a genocide being perpetrated against an entire nation.

Despite the fact that I was refused entry to Palestine at the Israeli border, my work in support of Palestinian liberation continues, along with that of many millions of others. The work of pro-Palestinian activists throughout the world, especially in nation states such as Canada, is essential. It is often the nations where we find home that are in many ways responsible for the continuation of the apartheid policies against the Palestinian population. For instance, Canada signed the Canada-Israel Free Trade Agreement (CIFTA) on July 30, 1996. The Canada-Israel pact removed tariffs from industrial products of Canadian or Israeli origin, and in essence gives a boost to the Israeli economy. Thus, it further justifies the actions of the Israeli state against the Palestinian people as it implements, in the form of an economic agreement, Canada’s acceptance of the genocide and colonialism on which the Israeli state is based.

The state of Israel, since its creation in 1948, is directly responsible for the ongoing crisis of millions of Palestinian refugees scattered throughout the world.

The writer is a member of the International Solidarity Movement and an independent journalist working with CKUT Radio Montreal & Free Speech Radio News in the US. He contributed this article to The Jordan Times.

Seven Year-Old Boy Killed By Israeli Soldiers

Military jeep blocks ambulance

[Balata Refugee Camp, Nablus] – Saturday morning an Israeli soldier firing from inside a military jeep shot dead seven year old Khaled Maher Walweel. When shot, Khaled was in his home near a 2nd story window. The bullet pierced the window hitting the boy in the neck. In the street below two military jeeps were making their way out of the camp under a barrage of stones.

Moments later the boy’s uncle was seen carrying a severely bleeding Khaled into the street, where he first held the boy up at the window of an army jeep and then walked towards a waiting ambulance. As the uncle walked towards the ambulance, approximately 20 meters away, one of the jeeps attempted to cut him off. The uncle was pinned momentarily between a shopfront and the jeep. As the ambulance approached, it too was blocked.

One jeep maneuvered behind the ambulance while the first jeep moved to block the ambulance’s front. Khaled was able to be slipped inside the ambulance, but the two jeeps in the narrow street blocked the ambulance from leaving the scene. Soldiers clearly were intent on blocking any movement by the ambulance. As the ambulance driver attempted to move around the jeeps, the jeeps themselves moved so as to continue blocking the ambulance’s departure.

Eventually the ambulance, with the assistance of the surrounding crowd, was able to maneuver from between the jeeps. Paramedical workers with the Union of Palestinian Medical Relief Committees performed CPR during transport to Rafidia Hospital in Nablus but the boy was pronounced dead upon arrival.

Earlier that morning the same two military jeeps were present at the northern entrance to the camp, before driving around the camp to its southern entrance. There the jeeps waited for approximately half an hour. During this time they were pelted by stones and began firing tear gas and concussion grenades into the groups of boys throwing stones.

At approximately 10:00 am, the two jeeps moved into the center of the camp firing live bullets into the crowded streets and into the air. Three more jeeps soon arrived at the same entrance. Local camp residents reported that a group of Israeli soldiers had occupied a home in the center of the camp during the previous night along with two other houses near Jerusalem Street on the camp’s western edge. The two jeeps were presumably in the camp to evacuate the central group of soldiers. After several minutes at least four soldiers were seen leaving a house and entering the back of one of the jeeps. Shortly afterwards, the barrage of indiscriminate shooting from the two jeeps into the camp intensified and Khaled was killed. No armed Palestinian fighters were present in the area during the incident.

The occupation of homes, the killing of children, and the blockage of emergency vehicles while in performance of their duties all constitute grave breaches of International Human Rights Law. The Israeli military’s attempt to block an ambulance carrying a dying child is particularly disturbing.