Budrus Has A Hammer

By Kobi Snitz
Originally published in Zmag

Last afternoon, the Israeli army invaded the village of Budrus during the course of a wedding at which most of the village was present. Many shots were fired, three injuries were suffered and one youth was arrested. Concerned for their friend, a group of people left the village and followed the jeep which took him away. When they were unable to retrieve their friend, the people took out their frustration on the fence which comprises part of the Israeli separation barrier. As a result, about 150 meters of the fence were dismantled and two victory parades were held in the village on the following days. Confidant that world is watching, the villagers addressed themselves to it: “no to the wall” in Hebrew, their trademark “Budrus, we can do it” in English, and in Arabic, they praised the strength of god: “Allah hu akbar” but also sang about their own strength.

This is not the first time that parts of the fence are dismantled. On several occasions, Palestinians supported by Israeli anarchists and by international activists managed to dismantle parts of the fence in meticulously planned actions. However, this time it was different, the young people of Budrus did not wait for Israeli or international activist support or even for the village elders to plan or approve the action. Furthermore, the amount of fencing dismantled goes beyond the symbolic level which often passes for direct action.

Spontaneous action, by which people directly dismantle the structures which oppress them, is often the stuff of songs. Most of the time though, the singing is done at a safe distance from political relevance. For example, American media has romanticized the struggle against legally sanctioned segregation to the point that the singing of its movement songs has become a “hallmark moment”. At the same time, current, relevant struggles are either ignored or demonized. It is probably the case that the words “Palestinian civil rights movement” or “Palestinian non violent demonstration” were never combined on American mainstream media.

Much has been written about the popular resistance to the Israeli separation barrier and about Budrus in particular. Over the last year Budrus has become the most successful example of Palestinian popular resistance, leading some to talk of a renaissance in the popular struggle, reminiscent of the first Intifada. For several reasons, the current demonstrations cannot match the incredible levels of participation in the first Intifada but the current popular intifada has seen important advances. First of all, in several cases concrete gains can be attributed to the resistance and secondly, international and Israeli activists have finally joined Palestinian demonstrations. Indeed those visitors who are able to see the Budrus struggle for what it is, felt lucky to be there to see the people of Budrus tear down the wall. For the few Israelis activists present, it felt like their private version of 1989 at the Brandenburg gate. Back in Tel-Aviv however, it seemed that the celebration will remain a private one. The military censors forbade the Israeli media from mentioning that the fence was dismantled, one mention slipped by in the Saturday evening news and the indymedia carried pictures and reports.

Several months ago, army commanders had informed the village that no more demonstrations would be permitted. In order to make this point the village was essentially put under curfew for two weeks. The people of Budrus are very familiar with the toll that the army can extract, in the course of over 50 demonstrations 212 people were injured from rubber bullets alone in a village of 2000 inhabitants. The number of people hurt from tear gas inhalation is too large to keep track of and last year a, 17 year old, Hussein Mahmoud Hussein Aweideh from Budrus, was shot dead at a demonstration in Beitunia. It is expected that the army will want to retaliate against the village for the latest action with more invasions and perhaps more administrative detentions of village leaders. Another possibility, the one that the Israeli censors must be afraid of is that Budrus will in fact turn out to be Palestine’s Brandenburg gate, the place where the wall began to fall.

Captain, Please Use The Door!

by Robin

All around the Old City of Nablus, the operations are taking place. Large groups of heavily armed soldiers with their involuntary human shields, dart around corners and down alleys. The phone rings continuously with yet more reports of occupied houses and detained medical volunteers.

Someone of one of the families who live in the building comes downstairs looking worried, “Soldiers are making a hole in the wall on the roof,” she tells us. A group of Internationals and medical volunteers climb up to the roof to investigate.

On the roof there is a chicken coop. She points at it. I peer through the mesh, and sure enough, there is a small hole in the wall, and through it I can see the knees and gun of a soldier. I yell out: “This is a medical clinic, there are Internationals and medical volunteers here”. There is no response from the hole.

Further down the wall, a window opens, and people see, briefly, a soldier on the other side, before the window is pulled shut, to obscure him again. We sit down near the window, and ask to speak to his captain. We attempt to engage him. I tell him that this is a clinic, that there are Internationals and volunteers present, that the door is wide open, and that they are welcome to come through the door. Volunteers and Internationals try various lines, but there is no response. Time ticks by, coffee arrives and we sit there, seeking to engage the soldiers, sipping the sweet black coffee out of intricately patterned tiny cups. Around the city we hear sound bombs, machine gun fire and the occasional explosion.

Fifteen minutes later, we get a response. A Palestinian man from next-door pops his head over the wall. He tells us that there are 32 people locked in a single room in the house, and the soldiers say that if we do not leave immediately, they will make an explosion in his house.

Bloody charming. We talk quickly and decide to leave the roof, as we don’t want the explosion to occur. I go and sit with the family. We can hear the chipping at the wall resume. I start making phone calls. First it’s “Physicians for Human Rights”, they listen and promise to get back to me soon. A friend is phoning Hammoked, an Israeli Human Rights Group. Then I phone the media office and ask them to start the phone banking. “Get people to phone the IDF and ask them to USE THE DOOR”, I ask.

The mother of the household, a teacher, tells me that the house has been entered three times in the last 12 months by soldiers breaking in through the wall on the roof, running down the stairs, faces painted black, locking the family in a room, and turning everything over, destroying many things. The kitchen is still being repaired after the last time in October.

I get a call from Mutaq, the Divisional Command in Tel Aviv. They are responding to the calls that have started coming in. I tell them who is in the building, what the building is, that I can hear the soldiers chipping away, that the door is open, that we know they’re coming, and that the door would be the most appropriate method of entry if they need to search the building. He “will see what he can do”. After a while the chipping sound stops. I am called away to deal with other matters, and leave for the evening.

At 7.15pm my phone rings. An Italian International is on the other end. He tells me that a group of about eight soldiers came to the clinic, knocked on the door, entered, asked if they could search the building, allowed him to accompany them, turned on a few lights, opened a few doors, checked the ID of a 10 year old boy before shaking hands with him and his brothers, thanked everyone and then left!

At 9pm another group of soldiers comes knocking at the door, they are less polite, and do not allow an International to accompany them, they check the IDs of all the Palestinians, search a few cupboards and then leave, leaving no mess behind them.

It’s a hollow victory. Hundreds of homes have been violated throughout the area, by soldiers bursting in through freshly made “entrances”, scaring the kids, locking up the families, turning the place over, exploding the insides of many homes so that hundreds are homeless, and then leaving through yet another freshly made “exit”. For many families it has almost become a routine. Many men are arrested, interrogated, tortured, released. Till the next time.

Many doors are exploded, many shops are searched and then left untended as the soldiers move on in to wreak havoc on another home, another shop, another family, another screaming two year old.

The next day they are still there, systematically wrecking, torturing, beating, and violating. Many homes are ransacked; valuables and money go missing all over. Terror has hit the streets of Nablus again.

No one is left without a tragic tale to relate. We interrupt many break-ins in progress. Sometimes the soldiers are embarrassed and behave; sometimes they are totally uncommunicative, sometimes a sound bomb tells it all.

Two Internationals end up spending hours with a family whose home is done over, at first they are detained, then they refuse to leave. It pays off, the damage is minimal in comparison to the many awful ones we witness everywhere, as distraught people call to us from the streets to witness their tragedies and losses.

I feel drained. Witnessing this level of terror, this number of attacks on these many families, is harrowing. Sleep has been hard to get.

The next morning they are gone. We debrief, we are all stretched, and shocked and disgusted.

I do a news search on the Internet; at most the story was a by-line in reports of the Gaza operation. Mostly the terror campaign in Nablus is completely ignored.

Susan Barclay says thank you to supporters

Susan issued the following statement today:

I just wanted to write a very quick note to let people know that I am indeed fre’ and beyond happy. I just wanted to say an immediat’ incredibly sincere THANK YOU to all the people who worked so very hard to support me. I can not tell you how much it means. I have been very busy and will be meeting with my lawyer tomorrow to discuss various legal possibilities and then I hope to find the time to write an account of exactly what happened. THANK YOU AGAIN.

Salaam,
Susan

At the time of writing, Susan’s story still has been conspicuous by its absence in the American press although other media concerns in the US have taken up her story. The British press has not overlooked her case as you can see if you read the following story in ISM in the Press: Foreigners bring in the harvest and the wounded

Please e-mail any American newspapers that you know of and ask them why this story is not of any interest to them? Do they wish to be complicit in human rights abuses of their own citizens? It is particularly surprising that the press in Washington state has been very quiet on the fate of one of its citizens.

Guardian: Foreigners bring in the harvest and the wounded

by Chris McGreal
Originally published in The Gaurdian

Among the most active groups organising foreign volunteers in the Palestinian territories is the International Solidarity Movement, which brings hundreds to the region every year.

They have worked alongside Palestinians harvesting olives under attack from Jewish settlers, and joined sit-down protests to block construction of the 250-mile “security fence” along the West Bank which separates Palestinian villages from their land and virtually encircles whole towns.

Israel is deeply suspicious, often stopping its volunteers entering the country, or deporting them. The latest to run foul of the authorities, Susan Barclay, was arrested at a Nablus checkpoint last week and told to leave on “security grounds”.

She is on bail after lodging an appeal.

Volunteer groups say the presence of foreigners can calm things down, and encourage Israeli solders to moderate their behaviour.

Last year, during the Israeli reoccupation of West Bank cities, Shane Dabrowski, a 30-year-old paramedic from Alberta, volunteered to help the Palestinian Red Crescent Society rescue people from Jenin.

“I wouldn’t say I was scared, I was just overtly aware of my chances of being whacked,” he said.

Volunteers with medical experience often go to the Union of Palestinian Medical Relief Committees, which offers healthcare to those prevented by checkpoints from leaving their villages, and takes the wounded and sick to hospital.

The union says that simply having international volunteers on its ambulances and mobile clinics often enables their emergency teams to get into areas otherwise impossible to enter.

This weekend a ship carrying food, medical supplies and clothing provided by British volunteers for for Palestinians in Gaza is expected to dock at Ashdod.

A Devon couple, David and Sue Halpin, put up £95,000 for the mission, although donations have offset some of it.

Human Rights Abuses & Looting in Nablus

David Watson

Two ISM activists from the USA heard horrifying reports from residents regarding human rights abuses in Nablus as Israeli Occupying Forces continued their offensive on the old city.

The house of Mr. Ayman Badia Abdul Hadi received a visit from the military at 4.00 am Monday morning. He and his family were reportedly made to stand in the street without any food, water or access to a toilet for the next sixteen hours. No exception was made for any of the family’s children, the youngest of whom has a baby which was held by Mr. Abdul Hadi and his wife throughout the ordeal. The soldiers gave no reason for the family’s harassment merely asking, “Where are the terrorists?”

When the family was unable to give a response the soldiers proceeded to ransack the family house.

The two ISM activists had come to pay a visit to the family in the morning but had been sent away by the military presence.

In a separate incident a deaf man’s house in Qarayoun Square was visited by Israeli soldiers on Monday morning. Mr Auni Mansour has six children, three of whom are also deaf. After making a search of the house the soldiers focused their attention on a locked cabinet holding family valuables. They blew the lock off the door and stole the money and gold possessions lying inside.

However they wanted to leave the family with a reminder of their visit. In a final act of petty spite they found four hearing aids belonging to Mr. Mansour and his three deaf children and laughed while they stamped them into pieces.