Tag: Bethlehem

Israeli soldiers attack children in Bethlehem

by Kristin Ess

Over 1000 children, aged roughly between 8 and 12 years old, gathered today in Manger Square in front of Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity to demonstrate in support of the Iraqi people. The kids were holding hand-made signs and banners.

Manger Square is not near an Israeli imposed checkpoint, nor is it near an illegal Israeli settlement. It is the center of an Area A Palestinian town under Palestinian Authority control (before Israel’s invasion). According to numerous eye-witnesses, two Israeli jeeps drove up and began throwing sound bombs, firing tear gas at the children, and shooting into the air.

These kids came from the Bethlehem area, from Beit Jala and Beit Sahour, from Azzed, Aid’ and Deheisha Refugee Camps. The Israeli soliders injured three of the children who are now in the hospital.

One of the directors of Aida Camp’s Lajee Center says, “The children were crying, you know, because they were scared. Some threw up from the gas.”

Bethlehem nabbing

by Kristin Ess

Yesterday Israeli soldiers were standing in the middle of baba skak (the main intersection in Bethlehem) pointing guns at school children and screaming at them to go home. All the little kids here wear uniforms to school, and all the kids are just so short in these little dresses and sweaters. A foreigner who lives in Hebron told me he asked Israeli soldiers why they were pointing guns at school girls the other day, preventing them from going to their elementary school. They answered him, “because they’re terrorists.”

A young women named Neda wrote “Midnight Victim” after talking to her friend just now, the girl in Beit Sahour who just got out of Israeli jail. Israeli soldiers abducted 3 young women from Bethlehem – one from Deheisha Camp, one from Beit Jala, and one from Beit Sahour – two nights ago.

Midnight Victim

by Neda, Beit Sahour

It could happen very simply to any girl of us, and without any consideration to any international law or any humanitarian sense, one girl of my classmates was arrested while she was drowning in her innocent dreams, and has not any single political relation, in the middle of the night a tremendous number of Israeli soldiers, tanks and all kinds of weapons swept over Fida’s house.

Fida, whose mother died many years ago and lives with her old father, was arrested in justification that she is planning to a suicide bombing. They searched the house and turned it upside down while there is nothing to find accept some canned food which they kept for war [in case of curfews]. Fida and her old father were blindfolded in a very windy night and it was raining very hard. They didn’t allow her to take any jacket or blanket; they didn’t take care about anything and treated her like animals. She couldn’t hold on to all the awful things that were happening to her and her old father.

After they put her in jail with other two girls with same reasons they brought her one female soldier to deal and investigate, but it didn’t work and they couldn’t communicate despite there is many soldiers that speak Arabic – they intended to bother them as much as they could. Fida was already sick with the flu and sick physically besides the nightmare they brought to her and after one day they let them go and told them that they mixed up with other Fida…they think.

And this could happen to any Palestinian girl, and we are supposed to take it easy.

Experiences in Violence vs. Kindness

by Megan

Ok… here is what happened in Bethlehem.

I went to Jerusalem, to the Damascus Gate, and took a cab to a side route into Bethlehem because the town was under curfew so no one could enter or leave. I hiked up a small rocky hill and to the other side where the cabs waited to take the people who were sneaking back in to their homes. I was met by the trainers of the group I am working for and not long after went to the house where I was staying. We had made signs at the office announcing that international presence was at the house in hopes that if the military came back they would attempt to evacuate the house before destroying it.

The military had broken into the house at midnight the evening before and tore it apart, broke all the windows and told the family they would be back to demolish it as an extra punishment for one of the sons who had lived there who was now in prison. The family spent the night moving their belongings into neighboring houses and distributing the women and children to other houses in the refugee camp. At this point I would like to point out that it is illegal to punish the families and friends of prisoners and suicide bombers and to come in and destroy their homes to punish someone who has already been punished. I stayed in the home with another observer listening for tanks. The military never showed back up. They often don’t. They come into houses and scare the families and cause them to evacuate and then wait for months to take any action. For the most part when they really intend to tear houses down they just arrive and shoot into the house and give the family a few minutes to leave before they tear it down on the spot. What they did the other night to this family was just for the sake of terrorizing them.

I spent a lot of time with the women and their children. I can’t help but think what it must be like for a child to grow up with this. In a discussion with one of the men of the camp I apologized for my horrible – and I mean horrible – Arabic and he said “they don’t teach Arabic in your schools, they teach English in ours so we should be able to talk to you but half the time our towns were under curfew and we couldn’t go to school and that’s why our English is so bad.” This man was in his late thirties… This has been going on for years. Will the children here ever be able to go to school regularly? I spent a lot of time with the school kids in the house helping them study their English, going through their school books with them.. I wish I had been there long enough to have really helped. I left Bethlehem after two days with the family. They asked me to return before the end of my trip but I doubt I will have time.

I am now in Tulkarem, also in the West Bank. The trip here took a few hours. They had raised curfew in Bethlehem from 10am to 4pm. This is not for the sake of being kind to the people who live there but to give the people they are looking for a chance to return to their homes so when curfew begins again they will have a better chance of catching them.

On the bus ride to Tulkarem we were stopped and all the men had to evacuate the bus and wait in the rain for the military to check their id’s. After they had done that a soldier entered the bus and checked out all the seats and the women. He pointed his gun at all of us as he checked our seats then he left. The path into town was covered in mud, horses and mules splashed mud on everyone in their attempts to get up the hill. One woman fell in a large puddle but as is the custom here everyone stopped and helped her and held her hand the rest of the way.

I will write more about my experiences here in Tulkarem later, but would like to take a second to point out the immense kindness of everyone I have met here. Everyone knows who we are and why we are here and are thankful for it. The economy here is in a horrible state of affairs because people cannot go to work outside of town and often with curfew people cannot open their businesses yet when I go to the market to buy fruit and vegetables they don’t want to accept my money. Anytime I have looked even close to being lost, which has been a lot, yet not as much as I expected, people are rushing to help, to walk me or drive me to where I need to go and oddly enough for what they have to deal with here on a daily basis they are always smiling and laughing.

The mother of the house I stayed at in Bethlehem gave me a pillow covering she embroidered and apologized for not having time to make one personally for me but having to give me one she made months ago. Her daughter embroidered my initial in it and hers as well. I tried to say no but it is rude here to not take what is offered to you. I am unfortunately unable to express the immense effect this kindness has had on me, I am just amazed at the love these people have for anyone not attacking them after generations of violence and abuse.

Thousands of Palestinians Regularly Rendered Homeless

by Kristin Ess

Last night 30 invading Israeli soldiers tore through a house on the edge of a Bethlehem refugee camp. Arriving in 12 heavily armoured jeeps with blue lights flashing at midnight, they took measurements of the house, home to several units of the same extended family, and the house next door.

That house is small, someone’s grandmother’s home. She is sitting in a chair in her leafy garden in front of the house. She is staring to the side, not speaking, not crying. The larger house, which Israeli soldiers will blow up the grandmother’s house in order to get to, has a roof that many nights during curfew people meet on, making a barbeque in an old can. It is impossible to meet in cafes or restaurants, most are closed because of curfew and there isn’t much money to spend anyway.

In the night after the Israeli soldiers left, people from the camp came out from their houses to help the families carry out their salvageable belongings. A replica of Al Aqsa mosque, a half smashed television, blankets, suitcases, a little girl comes out of the door with a backpack holding hands with a friend. She must find a new place to sleep, as must everyone. Friends from around the camp were shaking hands, one walked up to me and shrugged. The one whose house it is said, “thank you,” and “if God wills it.” Today women are lined up in chairs across the narrow ally street from the house accepting handshakes and kisses on the cheek from neighbors who come to offer condolences. They are all homeless now.

The Israeli soldiers said they would be back to blow up the houses. Maybe now, maybe later. No one knows as is normal in this campaign of psychological warfare that the Israeli military government is waging against the Palestinian people. They did the same thing in Deheisha camp 4 months ago and the people are still waiting, outside of their house, because at any moment Israeli soldiers might arrive to destroy it.

Israeli soldiers dug up the main road out of Beit Sahour, creating a roadblock higher than two cars atop one another. An old woman there tells me that her flower garden used to be so beautiful, that the stone fence in front of the road was so beautiful. There are tanks in the hill behind and jeeps driving past a road now gone to mud. My friends here keep telling me that tomorrow is Valentine’s Day.