Update: Ibrahim Burnat, (Wageeh’s 26 years old son) was shot with live ammo in the thigh yesterday during the demo, and was evacuated to the hospital in critical condition due to massive blood loss.
The bullets, apparently 3, who pierced through his leg ripped an artery, a vein and cause some yet uncertain nerve damage. After being operated on for about three or four hours, Ibrahim was moved back into the intensive care unit at Sheikh Zeid hospital. It is still uncertain if he will be able to walk on the leg again. Ibrahim’s brother, Rahme, was paralysed on the first day of the 2nd Intifada after being shot by the Israeli army.
By Friends of Bil’in
Today a young man from Bil’in was shot with live rounds during the weekly Bil’in Protest. Ibrahim Burnat who was shot in his right thigh was taken directly to Sheik Zaid Hospital in Ramallah and was described by doctors as being in critical condition.
Ibrahim posed no threat to Israeli soldiers who shot him with live rounds for attempting to damage the illegal apartheid wall.
The protesters were shot with tear gas, rubber coated steel bullets, and finally live ammunition as the protest wound down.
One Israeli activist was wounded and another more seriously injured from rubber coated steal bullets. In addition dozens were treated for tear gas inhalation.
Locals where joined by international activists this week to protest against the apartheid wall and the expansion of Israeli settlements. The weekly protesters raised the Palestinian flag and slogans against the occupation. The signs demanded the dismantling of the apartheid wall, land confiscation, and the expansion of Israeli Settlements.
The protesters also demanded an end to Israel’s killing of unarmed Palestinian civilians, the closure of roads in the West Bank, and large scale imprisonment as a form of collective punishment.
In other news, earlier this week the Israel Occupation Army arrested Bil’in resident Ashraf Mohammed Al-Jamal Tafwik Al-Khatib. Ashraf was passing through one of the many checkpoints on his way to work in Jericho when he was arrested. No reason was given for his arrest.
Ashraf was active in the weekly Bi’in peaceful protests and villagers believe this was the reason he was targeted, in a continued effort by the army to silence the people of Bilin. The Occupation Army had previously harassed Ashraf and his family by making unwanted visits to his family’s home in previous failed attempts at arresting him.
In a high-profile ruling of 4th September 2007, the Israeli Supreme Court concluded that the already built Separation Barrier in the West Bank village of Bil’in is illegal. The Court noted that the existing route was designed to accommodate plans for the future expansion of the settlement of Modi’in Illit and for the construction of a new 3,000 housing-units neighborhood therein, despite the fact that some of these plans require further approval before they can be realized. The judges ordered the State to redraw the barrier, so that the new route shall not take into account planning schemes not yet finally approved. In the ruling, the Court emphasized that “in light of the continuous harm to the residents of Bil’in… the respondents should consider, within reasonable time, an alternative route” (underline added).
More than eight months since the Supreme Court ruling had been released, the barrier declared illegal has not been dismantled. Worse still, as of early May 2008, the State has not even presented its plan for the amended route. In other words, the Israeli government has been bluntly ignoring the ruling of the highest juridical authority in the Israel. Furthermore, recently construction has resumed in the new settlers’ neighborhood. If a decision on the new route is not taken soon, the settlers will likely establish irreversible facts on the ground, so that upholding the Court’s ruling will no longer be possible.
We, co-partners in the long-lasting civilian struggle of the people of Bil’in against the theft of their lands under the guise of security, call upon your Excellency to employ your influence and pressure the government of Israel to do what it is required to do by law – to adhere to the ruling of the Supreme Court, to dismantle the Separation Barrier in Bil’in and to return to the village a considerable part of its lands now on the “Israeli” side of the route.
In order to provide further essential details about the case of Bil’in and the Court ruling, we ask that you meet with us at the time and place convenient for you.
Today, once again, the Israeli military lied to its citizens and the rest of the world.
In an article published on the 6th June by Ynet, the online version of the Israeli mass daily Yedioth Ahronoth, the Israeli military claimed that it was justified in attacking an anti-wall and occupation demonstration, in which an Irish Nobel Peace Laureate and the Vice President of the European Union participated, because demonstration participants were “rioting” and “throwing stones” at the Israeli military [1].
In the YNet article about the weekly non-violent demonstration against the apartheid wall and the illegal Israeli occupation in Bil’in village located near Ramallah in the Occupied West Bank, the Israeli military claimed that “about 70 Palestinians and left-wing activists took part in the protest and hurled stones at security forces, who used crowd dispersal means in response”. They went onto state that the IDF “regretted the fact that ‘week after week large numbers of security forces need to deal with Israeli rioters, who turned public disturbances into a regular occurrence’.
As a non-violent and peaceful participant in this demonstration, I completely dispute these claims made by the Israeli military. For the past three years, Bil’in village, has become a model for non-violent demonstrations against the wall and Israeli occupation. This week’s demonstration took place at the end of the 3rd annual international non-violent and grass roots resistance conference held by the village. The conference which went for three days attracted well over 150 participants, the great majority from around the world. It also had the support from across the Palestinian political spectrum, including the Palestinian Authority.
At the conclusion of the conference and prior to the weekly demonstration, a friendly football (soccer) game was held about half a kilometre from the wall. The match was between teams made up of Bil’in residents, Israeli anti-occupation activists and international solidarity supporters. While the match was taking place, a few Palestinian teenagers from the village approached the wall but they did not throw stones. From the other side of the illegal apartheid fence, Israeli soldiers were stationed on a hill and they immediately began firing tear gas at the children. The football match came to a quick end as the wind carried the teargas across the field, causing some players and spectators, including an elderly Palestinian man, to collapse.
The conference participants who were at the football match regrouped under a tree. Shortly, we were joined by many of the residents of the village who at the end of Friday prayers, marched to football field. The villagers were joined by around 30 Israeli anti-occupation activists.
More than 200 people, not 70 as the Israeli occupation forces claim, took part in the peaceful, non-violent demonstration. We marched from the football field, down the wadi (valley) to the illegal barrier. The Israeli Occupation Forces were stationed approximately 50 metres away, behind concrete barriers on the opposite side of the road, behind the illegal apartheid fence. We stood standing and clapping peacefully. As we stood there, the conference declaration, which highlighted the necessity for non-violent struggle against the illegal Israeli occupation was read out.
Participating in the non-violent, peaceful demonstration were the Vice President of the European Parliament Luisa Morgantini and Irish Nobel Peace Prize Laureate. Mairead Corrigan-Maguire, as well as a delegation of Italian law makers, along with delegations from France and other European countries. While there were a considerable number of young people in attendance, in reality the great majority, who were from the various international delegations, were aged between 45 and 60 years. Throughout the demonstration, we – the demonstrators – repeatedly held our hands up in the air – palms open – towards the soldiers, who clearly see us, to show we were unarmed and peaceful. No-one from the crowd threw stones at the soldiers, no-one was armed and there was absolutely no threat to the Israeli military by our presence. However, despite this, the Israeli military opened fire, directly into the non-violent peaceful crowd, with no warning.
Under Israeli law and under Israeli military regulations, Israeli soldiers are not allowed to fire directly in to crowds who pose no threat to their safety. According to Israeli military regulations, a solider must only use a weapon in the event of immediate “danger to life,” and when it is impossible to effectively defend one’s self from the assailant other than by the use of the weapon.
In 2000, a report issued by the Israeli based Physician for Human Rights (PHR) revealed, however, that the Israeli military consistently violate Israeli law and their own regulations on a regular basis. According to PHR, the Israeli military use “live ammunition and rubber bullets excessively and inappropriately to control demonstrators, and that based on the high number of documented injuries to the head and thighs, the soldiers appear to be shooting to inflict harm, rather then solely in defense”. The PHR’s analysis of fatal gunshot wounds also revealed that approximately 50% of them were to the head, revealing that the Israeli military were specifically aiming at people’s heads. In addition, they also noted that there were numerous head and eye injuries as a result of “rubber and rubber coated steel projectiles” [ie. rubber coated steel bullets] which revealed the “frequent misuse of these weapons, such as firing at a range of less then 40 metres at the upper part of the body”. As a result, PHR noted that the events on the ground showed that the Israeli military not only violated their own regulations but it was “allowing soldiers to fire when they were not acting solely in self defense” [2]
Over the past four years, during my various stays in the Occupied West Bank, I have regularly witnessed the Israeli military open fire on and into crowds of unarmed, peaceful demonstrators. At the last Bil’in demonstration that I attended approximately four weeks ago in May, the Israeli military also opened fire directly into the peaceful, non-violent demonstration. At this demonstration, however, they were also using rubber coated steel bullets and live ammunition. Although I have been in demonstrations in the Occupied Palestinian Territories where rubber bullets and live ammunition has been fired at the crowd before, this was the first time I had ammunition fired directly towards me.
In 2004, at a peaceful, non-violent demonstration in the village of Budrus, against the apartheid wall, I was hit with a teargas canister fired by the Israeli military from a distance of around 150 metres. At the time, myself and others, were attempting to lift a young Israeli woman, who was an amputee with a prosthetic leg, into an ambulance. She was injured when she attempted to protect a group of young Palestinian girls, who the Israeli military opened fire on. The young Palestinian girls had simply been clapping and chanting slogans against the wall.
As we lifted the Israeli activist into the ambulance, I was hit in the upper thigh by a super-heated teargas canister traveling at high velocity. Despite wearing jeans, I suffered burn scars and intensive and deep bruising, which was around 30 centimetres in diameter. For more than a week after being hit by the canister my entire body was in acute pain, as it went into shock from being hit with such intensity. At the time, I was extremely grateful that I was not hit in the head by the canister.
Today, however, myself and my IWPS team mate, just avoided being hit by super-heated, high velocity teargas canisters being fired directly into the crowd at chest and head level by the Israeli military. One canister went whizzing by me like a missile and hit in the head an older European man who was about 4 metres in front of me. I saw the teargas canister hit him in the head and his hands fly to his head in order to protect himself. I later found out that the man was the Italian judge, Julio Toscano, mentioned in the Ynet article. Other non-violent demonstrators were also hit.
As people started to regroup and move back to try and aid those who were injured by the Israeli military’s barrage, soldiers once again began firing into the unarmed and peaceful crowd. Again teargas canisters went whizzing by me at chest and head level. My team mate was hit in the back. Luckily she was wearing her back pack which took the intensity of the hit. The bag, made of nylon, however, was visibly damaged and melted due to the impact of the canister.
Today in Bil’in village there was no riot. Today, there was once again a peaceful non-violent demonstration. Today in Bil’in, once again, the Israeli military opened fire on unarmed, non-violent demonstrators, violating not only Israeli law but also the Israeli military’s own operational regulations. And today, once again, in order to justify their brutality and illegal behaviour, the Israeli military is lying to its own citizens and the rest of the world.
Kim Bullimore is currently living the Occupied West Bank, where she is a human rights volunteer with the International Women’s Peace Service (www.iwps.info). She has a blog www.livefromoccupiedpalestine.blogspot.com and is a regular writer on Palestine-Israel issues.
[1]Waked, A., (6 June, 2008) Top EU official hurt in Bil’in protest
On the 30th May, around 150 people from the village of Al-Ma’sara demonstrated against the building of the apartheid wall on their land. As usual the demo started from the middle of the village ad continued towards the construction site where the Israeli army are building the wall. The majority of the participators were from the village and were joined by a group from the Anarchists Against the Wall and members of the Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT).
As the demonstration reached the entrance of the village, Israeli soldiers closed the entrance of the village with razor-wire. Protesters tried to remove the wire in order to continue to reach the land of the village, but the soldiers attacked them. Two of them were injured and moved to a near clinic to be treated. After that the Israeli soldiers arrested two people, one from the Israelis and the other from the USA.
Then Mahmoud Zwahre, director of the Popular Committee Against the Wall in Al-Ma’sara village, made a speech about the Palestinian Justice Day. He pointed to all of the faces of the occupation in Palestine, especially in Al-Ma’sara village, making clear that the occupation has developed a policy of apartheid and declaring a ‘Summer Against Apartheid’, that will start next week. Then another speaker from the village Popular Committee talked about the behaviour of the Israeli solders against civilians, made clear when the soldiers fire sound bombs at the protesters. He also focused on the future situation of the village after the wall and the effects of the wall on the area. He then asked all of the internationals and local people to participate in the next demo which will take place on the 6th of June on the anniversary of Naksa .
After that a group of the participators a Christian group conducted a special prayer in front of the wire and soldiers asking for peace.
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Bi’lin:
By Ghassan Bannoura, published by IMEMC on the 30th May 2008.
To view original article click here
Villagers from Bil’in, located near the central West Bank city of Ramallah, supported by international and Israeli peace activists conducted their weekly nonviolent protest against the illegal Israeli wall built on the village’s land on Friday.
The villagers called for the removal of the of the Israeli wall, settlements. Like every week the protests started after the mid-day Friday prayers were finished in the local mosque.
Protesters marched towards the location of the Wall which is separating the village from its land. Immediately after the protest reached the gate of the Wall, soldiers showered the protesters with tear gas and rubber-coated steel bullets. Scores of protesters were treated for gas inhalation, and three were injured by rubber-steal coated bullets.
One local activist was kidnapped by the Israeli army during the protest
Iyad Burnat of the local committee against the Wall and Settlements said that the soldiers used a new army vehicle that fires tear gas at protesters. “It can fire 30 gas bombs in one go.” Burnat told IMEMC.
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Al-Khader
Around 200 villagers from Al Khader village near Bethlehem, in the southern part of the West Bank protest on Friday the Israeli wall and settlements constructed on the village land.
Supported by 50 international and Israeli peace activist the villager held the midday prayers on the settlers road near the village then marched towards the nearby Israeli road block. Several hours later the action was finished peacefully.
A number of the village activists today took a group of internationals who took part of today’s action for a tour on the village land that is annexed for the wall and the Israeli settlements.
By Hazem Jamjoum, published by Electronic Intifada on 29th May 2008. To view original article click here
Photos from Electronic Intifada
Most Nakba commemoration events this year focused their attention on the 1948 War and the plight of the Palestinian refugees. Rightly so, for that war was in fact the implementation of a Zionist political and military strategy to forcibly remove the majority of Palestine’s indigenous inhabitants to pave the way for the creation of an exclusively Jewish state, creating the largest and longest-standing refugee issue in the world today. In commemoration, and as US President George W. Bush sang his messianic “happy birthday” speech to the Israeli Knesset, 50,000 or so demonstrators calling for the rightful return of the Palestinian refugees crammed into Ramallah’s Manara Square. Just a few meters away from the mass demonstration, where Ramallah ends and the twin city of al-Bireh unnoticeably begins, the Baladna Cultural Center opened its contribution to the Nakba commemoration events: a three-day exhibit entitled From the Scent of Bil’in’s Wall. The exhibit closed on 17 May, and we were the first guests that day.
The exhibit is the work of the Bornat family from Bil’in. The main artist is Ibrahim Bornat, a 24-year-old who eagerly greets us at the door of the Baladna Cultural Center. He graciously ushers us into the building, explaining, “eight years ago, at the start of this intifada, I was shot in the leg and shoulder by rubber coated bullets and decided to keep the two bullets as a sort of souvenir.” As the intifada progressed, he was shot at and injured many more times, and so were so many others. “I count 78 injuries in total,” he states, explaining that “one of the more recent injuries is a live bullet that entered my forearm, and another a gas canister that was fired from a distance of about 30 meters and landed in the middle of my forehead, fracturing my skull and causing sporadic memory loss.” The gash in his forearm is hard to look at and the dent in his forehead is hard to miss. Ibrahim’s bullet collection is the main material from which his artwork is created.
One of the people injured on the first day of the second intifada was Ibrahim’s 28-year-old brother Rani Burnat. He was shot in the neck with a dum-dum bullet (a kind of bullet that expands in the body once it penetrates the skin, and which is internationally banned according to Declaration III of the 1899 Hague Convention). After six months in a coma, Rani miraculously woke up, but is almost completely paralyzed, retaining only the use of his left arm and his head. He continued his struggle against the occupation by training himself as a photographer. His expressive photographs are scattered throughout the main exhibit. “The only picture I have displayed that Rani did not take himself, is the picture of Rani walking through a line of soldiers on his wheelchair,” Ibrahim says pointing to the first picture we encounter.
Four years ago construction began on the Apartheid Wall on the lands of Bil’in, a small Palestinian village of 800 people, cutting the villagers off from 2,300 dunums of their lands (about 58 percent of the village’s original land). Israel has annexed the land for its Modi’in Elite settlement block. In response, the villagers formed the Popular Committee to Resist the Apartheid Wall which has organized weekly nonviolent actions to stop the construction of the wall since May 2005. The actions have caught a fair bit of international attention, and the villagers of Bil’in won back 1,100 dunums of their village lands in a September 2007 Israeli high court decision that has yet to be implemented. The demonstrations continue, and are notorious for the Israeli army targeting journalists and internationals, weekly injuries and arrests, and, most relevant to Ibrahim’s exhibit, large amounts of rubber bullets, live ammunition, tear gas, and other Israeli munitions fired onto the protesters. These have become the raw materials of Ibrahim’s art. The way he sees it, “we Palestinians can create life out of their instruments of death,” as he points to a bouquet of dried wheat crowning a gas canister.
He chuckles when we ask if he has counted how many munitions he has collected, and whether the hundreds of bullets and bombs scattered throughout the exhibit are his entire collection. “No, I kept the first two bullets I was shot with hidden with the clothes I was wearing that day; also I have buckets full of these things at home, tens of thousands I guess, I didn’t have the money to transport them all to Ramallah.”
Although vehicle and body searches are mostly done at random, we wonder how Ibrahim managed to get all of this to al-Bireh/Ramallah. “There are no checkpoints between Bil’in and Ramallah,” he explains, “I’m actually not allowed to go through Israeli checkpoints at any time, with or without my collection because I spent time in jail.” Ibrahim spent 60 days in interrogation at the Moscobiyye or Russian Compound prison in Jerusalem, followed by six months in administrative detention, which entails a renewable six-month prison term without any implementation of the right to know what one has been charged with, or disclosure of any of the evidence against oneself. At any given time, over 1,000 Palestinians are held in administrative detention by Israel.
Since his first injury, Ibrahim began collecting all the gas canisters, live and rubber coated bullets, sound, gas and light grenades, as well as barbed wire and spike strips that he could lay his hands on. His collection also includes a few unexploded bombs and canisters and a broken M-16 magazine, presumably discarded by a soldier. “Every bullet fired against a Palestinian, or someone standing on the side of Palestinians’ struggle for freedom, is a bullet fired against me,” he exclaims, picking up a rubber bullet from a pile on the ground. He peels away a thin layer of rubber to reveal the shiny silver metal below saying, “there are many Israeli myths out there, but the idea that these bullets are made of rubber is as ridiculous as any of them.”
Ibrahim estimates that the first two days of the exhibit attracted around 2,000 people. More guests started pouring in, demanding his attention to ask things like “are you the artist?,” “if I pull the pin out, will this grenade explode?” and “why don’t you melt these and make something out of them?” So we decided to wander around the building with its old stone walls, large halls, and a rooted sense of history, stumbling across the Executive Director’s office.
The Baladna Cultural Center
Sawsan Mashni is quick to tell us that she only recently became the director of al-Bireh’s Baladna Cultural Center. Her unripe tenure does not prevent her from knowing the history of the building since, as we soon find out, the story of the building is intricately tied with the life and struggle of the people of al-Bireh/Ramallah.
Artist Ibrahim Bornat welcomes his visitors to the Baladna Cultural Center.
The building was constructed over a century ago by the Ottoman regime to house the district’s administrative center. After WWI, the British occupation, or “mandate” as it is officially referred to, also used the building as the administrative center for the district. Change came after 1948, when the neighboring kingdom of Trans-Jordan was given control of the West Bank for its collusion with the Zionist leadership during the plunder of Palestine. Al-Bireh and Ramallah were part of Jordan’s reward, and the building was transformed into a secondary school for boys, carrying the name of the Jordanian ruling family.
The Hashemite Boys Secondary School (al-Hashimiya) was the only school in the district that offered the scientific stream (‘ilmi), which requires high marks. As such, the school became the place of learning for many of the brightest young men in Ramallah and its surrounding area. As the towns of Ramallah and al-Bireh grew and geographically blended into one another, the location of the school at the meeting point of the two population centers also increased its importance as a community space, with sports fields, and important public buildings like the police station and the land registry included in its direct surroundings, the school became a meeting place for students and non-students alike.
With the 1967 Israeli occupation of the West Bank, the act of meeting was politicized, and the centrality of the location meant that the school soon became the de facto launching point for most of the demonstrations and civil actions against the occupation. Israel immediately set about to impose its own educational system on the Palestinians. Students across the 1967 occupied Palestine, al-Hashimiya pupils among those at the forefront, immediately set about protesting the new education system, culminating in a series of student strikes that forced the Israeli department of education in Jerusalem to back down and reinstate the former curriculum.
Much of the early resistance to the occupation in the 1967 occupied territories was carried out by grassroots voluntary work committees led by community-based Palestinian municipal councils that operated as alternatives to the various Israeli military and civil authorities. The leaders in the municipal councils were known to be strong sympathizers with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). Abdul Jawad Saleh, the mayor of al-Bireh elected on the eve of the June 1967 war, was prominent among these municipal leaders, and was a leading figurehead in the formation of the Palestinian National Front, a political force that advocated nonviolent resistance to the occupation, and the build-up of Palestinian community capacities by building and protecting schools, libraries, clinics and other social institutions.
Israel realized the importance of crushing the organization of Palestinian civil resistance, and targeted the community-based municipal institutions throughout the 1970s. When Israel deported Abdul Jawad Saleh and seven other municipal leaders to Jordan on 10 December 1973 (incidentally, the 25th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights commemorated as International Human Rights Day), the response was student riots in the streets, led by the students of al-Hashimiyah. The riots did not bring back the deported leaders, but this would not be the end of Saleh’s involvement in the future of al-Hashimiya.
“The 1970s was a time like the first intifada, when Palestinians everywhere were rising up to fight for freedom in different ways, especially with the rise of the PLO,” Sawsan explains, “it was also the time that my brothers attended al-Hashimiya, and I went to high school at the nearby girls’ secondary school.” The regular gathering of students to protest the occupation at al-Hashimiya prompted the Israeli military administration to station a number of soldiers at the gates of the school, in an attempt to stop the young students from getting out during school hours. “That didn’t really stop us,” Sawsan continues. “When we needed to demonstrate, the girls would rush to al-Hashimiya and storm it, bringing the boys out with us. We always started by burning tires and rolling them to where the soldiers were stationed so that they would scatter; and eventually the boys would just wait for the burning tires and storm out themselves!”
The Israeli campaign against Palestinian civil resistance continued, including the systematic arrest and deportation of popular municipal leaders, the attempt at replacing them with Israeli controlled “village leagues” in the late 1970s, and culminating in simultaneous car-bomb assassination attempts of three Palestinian mayors; Bassam Shaka’a (Nablus) who lost his legs, Karim Khalaf (Ramallah) who lost his right foot, and Ibrahim Tawil (Saleh’s successor in al-Bireh) who received word of the other assassination attempts and narrowly escaped a similar fate.
Palestinian civil resistance reemerged in full force with the launch of the 1987 intifada. Recognizing the important role played by al-Hashimiya in Palestinian civil resistance in al-Bireh/Ramallah, Israel relocated al-Hashimiya to a newly built building on a hill in the distant outskirts of Ramallah, alongside the Palestinian Jinan Elementary School. Atop the hill lies the Israeli settlement of Psagot, one of the settlements encircling Jerusalem, and dividing it from Ramallah. “The students knew why their school was being moved, and for a whole year they organized a student strike but were unable to reopen their original school building,” Sawsan tells us. “The new school is a really dangerous place because of the settlement. The hill has many encampments for Israeli tanks which have fired on the school. In 2001, Naser Abid, one of the al-Hashimiya boys, was shot dead by an Israeli sniper while playing in the sports field, another year three children in the elementary school were killed.” Today, visitors of the Jinan Elementary School see a rose garden called Hadiqat al-Shuhahda’ (Garden of the Martyrs) that is tended to exclusively by the school children.
The intifada ended with the signing of the Oslo arrangements. One aspect of Oslo, which deferred the status of Jerusalem to fictional final-status talks while Israel consolidated the ring of settlements encircling the Palestinian capital, was to recreate Ramallah/al-Bireh as a Palestinian economic and political center in an attempt to wean the West Bank from the centrality of Jerusalem. One of the many destructive aspects of this has been the tearing down of many of Ramallah and al-Bireh’s historic buildings to make way for expensive office buildings, shopping centers, and apartment blocs. This process of rapid gentrification continues until today.
Abdul Jawad Saleh, the former mayor of al-Bireh who was deported in 1973, was able to return to his beloved city as a result of the Oslo process. Recognizing the impending threat on the al-Hashimiya building, he quickly set about to find the funds to renovate the dilapidated building, and together with a group of committed residents, turned it into a thriving cultural center open to all. It was renamed it the Baladna Cultural Center (“baladna” meaning “our country” in Arabic). Over the course of the 1990s, they set up a computer lab, meeting and exhibition spaces, as well as outfitted it with audio-visual equipment for presentations, film screenings and cultural performances. They also set up the Development and Environment Association, partly to push for green community spaces in the concrete jungle that has become Ramallah/al-Bireh.
The second intifada began on 28 September 2000, the day that Ariel Sharon, accompanied by hundreds of heavily armed body guards, decided to take an intentionally provocative stroll through Jerusalem’s noble sanctuary, and the day that Rani Bornat was shot in the neck with an illegal dum-dum bullet. The uprising was met with devastating Israeli repression. Sawsan, a social worker at the time, was brought back to al-Hashimiya, now the Baladna Cultural Center, as one of the councilors helping Palestinian children overcome the trauma of the Israeli violence they were being subjected to on a daily basis. This was part of the center’s services to the community.
In 2002, the Israeli military imposed a 28-day curfew on Ramallah and al-Bireh, during which time Israeli soldiers entered and ransacked the offices and buildings of all Palestinian civil society institutions in the twin cities. By the end of the siege, very little remained of the Baladna Cultural Center’s contents. As Sawsan tells it, “even the old plaques and trophies that the students of al-Hashimiya had received over a 40 year period, and which had remained in the old building when the school was moved, had been looted.” The team of volunteers picked up the pieces, and reestablished the center, which is now largely self-sufficient thanks to regular membership dues, donations from Ramallah and al-Bireh townsfolk living abroad, and small municipal contributions.
Violent Israeli military attacks are one of many sources of devastation. In 2003, Israel began construction of its suffocating wall, which reached Bil’in two years later. Israeli restrictions on Palestinian mobility became a defining aspect of everyday life, affecting every Palestinian. “My husband and I used to go to Jaffa to sit by the sea and eat fish almost every week,” Sawsan tells us, “now with the wall and the checkpoints, we barely dare to dream of the sea. I recently did a presentation to a class of fifth graders and asked the children if any of them know what the sea is. One child raised his hand and told me he had seen the sea in Bir Zeit. He was referring to a tiny swimming pool in the nearby landlocked town …” And added, “You can see why we chose Ibrahim’s exhibit as our Nakba commemoration event; the Nakba did not end, it is continuing every day. Ibrahim’s exhibit expresses this very clearly, and shows that Israel’s crimes are committed with international backing; you only need to see the ‘Made in USA’ print beside the ‘not for indoor use’ stamps on the tear gas canisters. All of us have suffered from this Nakba, refugees and non-refugees. I was hospitalized because the soldiers saturated the air with tear gas at a demonstration, the blood vessels in my lungs burst, and my blood could no longer absorb oxygen.”
Emerging from Sawsan’s office, Ibrahim informs us, “you didn’t see the shop.” He takes us into the room beside that of the exhibit, lined with tables on all sides showcasing Palestinian traditional handcrafts made by Ibrahim’s mother Intisar, and his 17-year-old sister Alaa’. There are traditionally embroidered purses, bookmarks, and bracelets, olive-wood key-chains, as well a CD compilation of Rani’s pictures and olive oil from Bil’in. These items were put together by the family to help cover the financial costs they incurred putting the exhibit together.
Following standard practice in such interviews, we decide to ask Ibrahim to tell us if there is any message he would like to share with the outside world. He tells us, “First, my family should not be the one carrying the expenses of such an exhibit, when a Palestinian attack targets an Israeli bus, an attack that is not carried out by a state military and that is not part of any kind of official Palestinian policy, the bus is toured around the world as if it proves that all of us are terrorists, while the daily Israeli terrorism against us that my exhibit shows, which is a tiny part of official Israeli policy, and that is committed by an official state military is largely ignored by the Palestinian Authority. I would like to call on our leadership to take care of such initiatives, and at the very least to ensure that people in Palestine see it if we are unable to show it anywhere else. To the world I would like to say that even though we are commemorating 60 years since the Nakba, the Nakba never ended, everyday it continues, and this exhibit is just one small proof of what we go through everyday.”
As we are about to leave, we notice that the Bil’in olive oil being sold is packaged in Israeli juice bottles. When asked why, Ibrahim answers, “Many people objected, but I wanted to make a point about the way the world looks at us: on the outside they see Israel, but on the inside it’s really Palestine, and always will be.”
Hazem Jamjoum is the Media and Information officer of the Badil Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights and can be reached at mediaenglish A T badil D O T org.
All photos by Dina Awad, a Canadian of Palestinian origin who is currently living and working in Ramallah.
Ibrahim Bornat can be reached at: bornat_83 A T yahoo D O T com, or by calling +972-598-534-717. The Baladna Cultural Center can be reached at +972-2-295-8434/5.
