Tag: Nablus

The day after

ISM Nablus
July 4th

It’s several days since the Israeli army’s large daylight invasion of Nablus and the surrounding refugee camps. While there is much speculation, there has been no official word on the reason for the operation.

What can be said with certainty is that it was clearly not within the terms or the spirit of the ceasefire. Further, the scale of the invasions shows that it could not have been an abuse committed by a single group of soldiers. To mobilize tens of ground vehicles, a drone, apache helicopters and F-16s requires the authority of somebody relatively senior. Someone with rank and responsibility, someone aware of the consequences of invading a town in the heart of the West Bank of Palestine. Someone who knew they were audaciously and conspicuously breaching the peace in front of television cameras. Someone with a mind like that of Ariel Sharon, who once stood at an Islamic holy site willfully provoking Palestinians. Sadly, the lack of response from outside powers shows that the Israeli tacticians and their troops have also, once again, acted with impunity.

While the world ignores the wrongs committed against them, the people of Nablus are continuing to live with the hardships to which they have become accustomed. This town has suffered terribly. While there has been no respite from the nightly incursions, the arrests and assassinations, the harsh socioeconomic sanctions or the indignity of the checkpoints, the full scale military attacks have abated since the Sharm Al Sheikh talks. Although there were no killings and no home demolitions in this invasion, the effects were real and lingered beyond the time the troops withdrew.

A whole generation, in a place where children are more than half of the population, is being raised with one experience dominating the formative years, that of witnessing death and destruction at the hands of an army invading their streets. According to a survey of the relatively privileged Bir Zeit University students, 18% had personally witnessed the killing of classmate by the Israeli army. In a place like Balata refugee camp, all the children will have seen homes turned to dust by missiles, bulldozers or explosives. Many will have seen charred bodies in the rubble, or classmates gunned down in their homes or schoolrooms, or brothers martyred or parents imprisoned. All will have seen the adults in their family humiliated by teenage soldiers. After this latest invasion we heard our neighbors’ children crying all night as those memories were reawakened. The youth of this society, its future, is scarred.

The adults too are deeply affected. When the army came, everyone stopped work and fretted about a resumption of the big invasions. “All this is not for nothing,” we heard people repeatedly comment on the presence of scores of soldiers, “This is a big operation, they will kill lots of people.” or, “They will shell us tonight,” they speculated. We waited, watching jeeps and hummers for five hours, tense and alert, preparing for the attack. When they left, we thought of the apache still above and wondered if it would fire. We waited and worried, only occasionally actually assisting medics and the sick. Mostly we all just waited, thoughts and feelings dominated by the lurking army. The next day, anxious and sleep deprived, residents were dazed or fractious. Violence between youths noticeably increased.

The damage is long lasting. If the people are not now given respite from the military harassment or the resources to rebuild their society, the damage will be irreparable.

Israeli Army Invades Nablus

Scores of Israeli army vehicles invaded Nablus today. Surely there can be no claims of a ceasefire on the Israeli side now.

Israeli armed vehicles entered Nablus just before 1pm, speeding around and firing randomly. Newly arrived international visitors, unused to the thunderous echoes from town’s rocky hillsides thought they were under full scale military attack. Apache helicopters whirred overheard, their conspicuous presence preparing residents for an assassination. F-16 fighter jets screeched across the sky (Fighter? The Palestinians have no anti-aircraft weapons, let alone an air force).

International visitors stood dazed in the surreal atmosphere of giant war film set. But we soon felt real fear too. This town has been bombed from the air before. As we stood and tried to track the movement of the Jeeps and Hummers through residential areas, phone calls came in from friends in other places. The army was shooting in El Ein refugee camp. Jeeps had arrived at the Balata refugee camp. Homes were occupied on the hillsides. By the time we arrived to join the medics the army had left, like a cartoon chase.

Our usually unshakeable Palestinian friends from the medical volunteers became nervous, speculating on the reason for the huge military presence. Aircraft, helicopters, a drone and tens of ground vehicles are not for nothing, they reasoned. Perhaps they have already filled the city with plain-clothes Special Forces to arrest or kill people, or perhaps this is just the first phase of a huge military attack on the town like the invasions of 2002.

Some news stations reported that two plain clothes Israelis, Special Forces, had entered the city and were lost presumed taken by Palestinian fighters. Allegedly, the Israeli army had given the Palestinians two hours to hand them over before a full military attack on the town. The usually boastful resistance fighters denied involvement or knowledge. The story seemed implausible. We spoke to a captain in the Palestinian Authority forces who also disbelieved it. “If two Israelis were in here, the Israeli army would contact us to ask the fighters to hand them over.” No such contact was made. As is so often the case, the first casualty is truth.

When we reach Balata refugee camp, ten jeeps and hummers are on the main street outside, with more on the other sides of the camp. No one heard the Israeli occupation army actually announce a curfew but it makes little difference. Roads are closed to all Palestinian vehicles, shops forced to close too, and most residents have locked themselves inside their homes. Children wander around the camp with spent tear gas cans and “rubber” bullets (metal cylinders coated in rubber) as souvenirs. Medics and journalists try to cross the army line into the camp but the soldiers aim their M16s to stop them and don’t explain why.

Doubtless the Israeli media machine will ignore today’s events and more neutral agencies play down the significance as there is no graphic footage of blood and destruction. Don’t think the Israeli forces exercised restraint today. For no disclosed reason, in response to no reported Palestinian action, hundreds of troops enter a town in the centre of the West Bank and subject civilians, already suffering from years of attacks, to a day of fear and anxiety. Medical volunteers were harassed and hampered in their work. Ambulances were
not allowed into the camp. People had to carry acutely ill residents to the gate and pass them over to paramedics under the scrutiny of army jeeps and hummers. Even when medics and international peace
activists accompany a sick amputee to his home along a street outside the camp, soldiers tail and harass them all the way.

Unprovoked, the Israeli army hurls gas grenades into the camp. Palestinian teenagers laugh as inexperienced international peace activists scatter and abandon phones, bags, and expensive cameras. Dutiful kids return the items and offer onions (that help relieve the effects of gas) and water while the visitors compose themselves. Small children lean out of windows to shout greetings to the foreign visitors, far more interesting and unusual than another army attack. A whole generation has grown up to think that being shot at is more normal than seeing a pale skinned stranger. Later two foreigners, one an international journalist, are cornered in a shop front by a gas grenade thrown at them. Trapped in a cloud thicker and stronger than the tear gas fired from canisters, one foreigner suffers mild facial burns.

The drone and a helicopter are still overhead but the ground vehicles began to withdraw at 5:30pm with no clear objective attained from the operation. What happened here today? No arrests or assassinations reported and nothing seized.

As frequently as we report these abuses, we hear from people outside that things seem better here now, as though the only troubles are petty squabbles between two equal opponents. When will the media report this conflict fairly? When will the world see that Israel is the aggressor here?

Tonight few people in Nablus and Balata will sleep well and instead fear the start of a new campaign against them. It is the responsibility of the International Community to curb Israeli aggression.

by ISM Nablus

Letter from Nablus

by Lena

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Letter from Balata

by an International Women’s Peace Service volunteer

Today is the day after the international day of action against the Apartheid Wall. In Jenin 35 internationals and 25 Israeli anarchists backed by dozens of locals cut down a 12 metre hole in the fence there, while the army watched in amazement.

I wish I could say that that good news is the defining event right now, but no. In Nablus and Balata camp three Palestinians have died in the last couple of days including a father of five who was doing nothing against Israel or Israelis. Last week at 38 year-old woman was shot while exiting her house in the middle of the night in the Old City; she was cooperating with Israeli orders to evacuate the street. Another man died in the hospital after being shot in the leg a few days ago.

Last night the army appeared, searched two houses in Balata, and arrested nine people in the middle of the night. In each case the guy they were looking for was not there, and in one case I was told by the family has not been for six months. The army shot up every room in the house for good measure after putting the family outside from 2:30am in the rain and cold for three hours.

M-16 were shells visible all over and holes in closets and walls.

They also poured cooking oil all over the floor of the kitchen and actually shot a hole in the main gas supply risking burning the whole house down. And the obligatory wrecking of the water resevoirs on the roof.

In another Balata house the son sought wasn’t there so soldiers contented themselves with shooting a 17-year old brother in the stomach and then arrested him and threatened to return and blow up the house if the family don’t produce the suspect by tonight, a standard empty threat.

Much of this is in response to a suicide bomber being from a nearby neighbourhood in the city proper called Rafidia.

This morning i was just getting a cup of tea to my lips when it was time to move. Jeeps all over the entrances to the camp, greeted by the shebab, the street kids with rocks. The main throughway had couple of jeeps at either end and we split the team into two groups. In the main intersection internationals began inserting themselves between the jeeps and the rockthrowers, as per usual. Soon we were joined by a massive tank that four of us made a sad attempt to blockade on the road; it was ignored and Joey was the last to jump out of the way plus 12 inches from a tread.

That was seen to be a new level of aggression hitherto unseen here. Also new was the firing of a large ballistic projectile filled with rubber bullets. Mika got hit by one of them in the elbow stepping into a soldier’s line of fire. Not hurt. 73 year old Welshman Ray, on his seventh time here, took flak from live ammo fired at point-blank into the ground. This guy is calm as Buddha. A cut shin, no worse for him.

Likewise for Kelly, who marched at one point right up to between a jeep and a tank in the middle of the large intersection and had a soldier firing his rifle right past her head while she stood her ground and argued with them. Later one of the same riflemen was playing chicken and laughing while pointing his barrel at us both when he could risk opening his door to fire our way. At that point our way included half-a-dozen kids who’d been bringing it all morning from a storefront, one of them with a slingshot. Two of the younger kids made a point of standing right behind me.

Also unprecedented was the accidental appearance of a UN delegation that was simply here to see a school or some such thing. Ray and my Swedish buddy seized the opportunity to talk to them. Apparently they were Canadian parliamentarians and were quite interested, totally supportive, and got the fuck out of there right quick, hustled away by their handlers. But they got a photo or two first before they left.

The shebab were chucking lime-based paint in bottles as well today and my Swedish buddy came away looking like a milk bar-fight casualty, as did the tank and a jeep. One kid nailed a jeep side-mirror, which is always extra points as it restricts the drivers’ surveillance capacity. The whole three hour engagement left me with a distinct feeling of over-exposure, not least of which a result of taking a sound bomb at five metres. A bloody nasty interruption second thing in the morning.

The reality of living in a prolonged zone of conflict has made these refugees into some very tough people, and its beyond me to understand their tenacity. I think its beyond the Israelis as well who’ve no other response but endless rounds of collective punishment.