Resident of Palestinian village forced to empty his home to accommodate over 20 soldiers for some 15 hours supposedly to carry out observation. Palestinian claims soldiers ‘just went to sleep’
A resident of the Palestinian village of Salem near Nablus was forced to accommodate 20 soldiers for 15 hours in his home, after they broke into his house in order to rest.
The soldiers claimed that he had to empty rooms for them in his house, for a security mission.
Mudayen Jbur, a resident of the village, told Ynet that “just before morning prayer, at around 5 a.m., I heard hard knocking on the door. The soldiers shouted, ‘it’s the army, open up, open up’.”
Jbur asked the soldiers to identify themselves, for fear of burglars. When he realized they were soldiers he opened the door and, according to him, “immediately after I opened the door 20 or more soldiers barged in. They said that they were here on a security mission, to observe the road around the Alon Moreh settlement, to make sure kids from the village don’t throw stones at the settlers’ cars.”
Once in a while, Israel Defense Force soldiers carry out an operation in which they evacuate residents from their homes or certain rooms in their homes, and take charge of the area for an unlimited period of time, for security purposes.
Mudayyen’s home is the most external house in the village and that is supposedly why it was chosen by the IDF to carry out the observation mission.
‘These acts deepen loathing, hatred’
However, according to Mudayyen, the soldiers did not carry out any observations whatsoever during their stay in his home.
“The soldiers put me and my wife into one of the rooms and posted a soldier outside to guard us. They even said that if we needed anything, we were allowed to ask. But they did not carry out any observations. They spread out in the rooms of the house and simply went to sleep. It seems they were looking for a place to rest. They didn’t even open one window, they didn’t move any curtains, so what observation are they talking about?”
Mudayyen told the soldiers that lately, for almost over a year now, not one stone has been thrown from that area towards vehicles on the road, “but apparently the stone throwing matter was just an excuse, because they didn’t do anything, they just slept in the house.”
In the afternoon Mudayyen’s parents, who live nearby, began to worry since they had not heard from him. They tried to search for him, but they too were stopped by the soldiers.
“First my parents sent my brother to check on us. The soldiers saw him near the house, stopped him and threw him in me and my wife’s room. My other brother came and they stopped him too. My parents also showed up to search, not only for me but also for my brother who had disappeared – and the soldiers threw them in the room. In a short time we found ourselves to be eight people in the room, for no reason and without the soldiers doing anything,” he said.
Operation’s Coordinator in the Palestinian Authority for the Rabbis for Human Rights Organization Zachariah Sida managed to contact the IDF’s Coordination and Liaison headquarters, and over 13 hours after the soldiers took over the house, he managed to convince the army to get the soldiers out of the house.
Sida told Ynet that this was ‘gang behavior’ and that “the activity had no security purpose, it was simply bullying, which only deepens the loathing and hatred between the two sides; IDF will not achieve security in this way.”
Military sources told Ynet that “In this case, the claims about the restriction of the house’s inhabitants from being able to move freely are untrue. The family was permitted to move freely about the house and eat, and after a few hours the forces left the space after evaluating the situation.”
The other day as we were travelling through Zatara checkpoint between Ramallah and Nablus, I witnessed a particularly disgusting display of power by the Israeli army. An extremely public humiliation of a woman, who was taken out of a shared taxi and had her ID and phone removed. She was fighting back the tears, trying to retain her dignity, but was clearly distressed. Everything about the soldiers interaction exuded contempt for her. One in particular was clearly getting something from “punishing” her. We were prevented from speaking to her, which made our ability to intervene somewhat limited. What we were able to do was remain present until she was released. Most of the time I do not feel very effective; the most I can do is be present.
Apparently her ID did not “allow” her to travel to another part of the West Bank. Apart from being extremely punitive, excessively controlling and frankly wrong by any book, it is also arbitary. The rules of the game change. I have been in shared taxis with people who have been turned back…. ‘last week’ they could make that journey, ‘yesterday’ they could make that journey, ‘next week’ they ‘may’ be able to make it, but today “NO”. After a while I feel like I can never hear the word “LO” again (Hebrew for “no”), it is barked and shouted countless times a day, controlling so much of day to day life for Palestinians.
After an hour, on this bitterly cold day, the soldier returned the woman’s ID. He simply took it out of his pocket and gave it to her. Clearly she was not a “security threat”. Detaining her, frightening her, and publically humiliating her, were blatantly intended to make sure she would not attempt this journey again. I was enraged. The soldiers are boys with guns and egos. They have so much power in a situation that is impossible for them to understand with their conditioning and youth.
At this same checkpoint, in this same period of time, another situation was unfolding. It was hidden away and not for public view. I became suspicious and approached a soldier and border policeman; it was then that I saw a boy of around 15 years, sat hunched behind a concrete bollard, hidden from view, his face wet with tears. He looked petrified. He has good reason to be.
Every single person in Palestine will know someone who has been arrested or detained. Ill treatment is commonplace, and torture is far from being eradicated. I have no idea how long the boy had been held for. He was in tears as the soldiers were speaking to him, but fortunately he was “allowed” to go.
Recently I was travelling through Nablus to a nearby village, the taxi driver pointed out a street where, just half an hour before, the army shot dead a man. Apparently a targetted assasination. Five other people were injured, one seriously. “Normal life” (whatever ‘that’ is living under
Occupation) continues just a few streets away.
My time here is coming to a close, I am in a quiet, reflective mood. From all the conversations I have had, with countless people, two things are screaming out for attention. One is the overriding sense that things are getting worse. And worse. And worse. I was not here during the bloody years of the Intifada, but I think it is absolutely vital to understand that although the bloodshed and violence is less, the situation is worse. The oppressive control, which works on every level, mental and physical, is steadily going to new levels. One of the women I am working with grew up under Apartheid in South Africa. Along with several other South African activists who are here in the West Bank, she says that Apartheid here is ‘even worse’ than it was in South Africa. This has not been said lightly. The other thing I am forever requested, “tell people what is happening”.
Katie Miranda’s “postcards” create visual dispatches to the American people of life, death, and innocence demolished in Palestine
Two young men, backs turned, wrists bound, heads hanging – paired with anger, a mouth stretched wide open in rage and spewing hate. “You are disgusting Arabs and you should be beaten like animals and stay in jail”.
You don’t look at Katie Miranda’s work. You feel it, a punch in the gut that sucks the wind out, replaces it with incredulity, then knocks you down again as you struggle to get up. Yet her pieces, reflections of life in occupied Palestine, are anything but hyperbolic. Both an artist living
in the West Bank city of Hebron and a volunteer in the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), Katie Miranda has walked the streets of the West Bank alongside Palestinians, drank the same water, protected their children, broken bread with their families – and her paintings reflect it. Her “Postcards from Palestine” series is an eternal testimony to a wounded people. The ongoing collection of paintings of people she has met comes with a message to the American people, exactly like a postcard – although instead of margaritas, sunsets and dolphins, the paintings reflect the violence committed against Palestinians by the IOF and settlers in the territories.
“I wanted to use my artistic ability to tell the story about what’s happening here,” says Katie, a 31-year-old San Francisco native. “I’m an illustrator by trade, so creating pictures that tell a story is what I was trained in… I just decided to interview people about their life and paint about individuals and about situations I witnessed.” As a human rights worker in the West Bank, she has a deep reservoir of stories; most burst with acts of hatred, moments of irony, wisps of humour. “A good deal of the violence is perpetuated by children because of an Israeli law that allows them to be free from arrest and prosecution if they are under the age of 12,” explains Katie.
In one postcard, the innocence of children is portrayed in the hopeless eyes of a girl holding a stuffed rabbit, her father killed by IOF soldiers and her house demolished, which are juxtaposed with a carefree boy playing with a ball, a cigarette dangling from his mouth. It’s difficult to imagine humans so jaded so young. But again, they have never known an unoccupied Palestine, freedom of movement, or simple justice for their friends and family slain during four decades of war.
Katie recalls an incident when life and art collided. It was the day after she arrived in Palestine, back in May. The ISM was called to the Balata refugee camp because the IOF had invaded and, the reports said, were killing people randomly. “ISM helps with medical evacuations in these situations,” Katie explains. “Sometimes when a person is shot or injured, the soldiers refuse to let the ambulance leave, so we try to negotiate with them to allow the ambulance pass. Right before we got there these two kids were killed.” Best friends Ibrahim Issa and Mohammad Natoor, both 17, were drinking tea on the roof of their apartment when they were shot by a sniper. Katie documented their funeral in one of her postcards, and in her message to the American people noted what they loved and how they smiled – and just how young they were. She transcribed the words of Ibrahim’s brother:
“Anywhere you see him, you will see Mohammad Natoor with him and anywhere you see Ibrahim and Mohammad, you will see them smile at you and say ‘hello, how can we help you?’” Mohammad was killed by Israeli forces on his 17th birthday.
The pair are immortalised on one of Katie’s postcards. “It was such an emotional experience because they were just kids, you know, they hadn’t done anything wrong,” says the artist. “And no one will be held responsible. It was a meaningless death. I couldn’t get the image of those kids’ faces out of my head for weeks. So I dealt with that and the trauma of being in a place under siege by painting the picture of Ibrahim during his funeral procession that wouldn’t leave my head.” She later painted a picture of him from a photo studio portrait. “When I gave it to the family it was really emotional. I could tell they were really touched and really liked it – but of course it also reminded them that their son or brother was dead. It was hard for me to look at his brother’s face when I gave him the portrait.”
In another postcard, a fairly innocuous image, a young boy is shown with his mouth gaping open and a few teeth missing. But it is rendered appalling by the explanation – a settler woman had filled his mouth with rocks and slammed his jaw shut, shattering his teeth. Another postcard elevates a Palestinian man, now paraplegic after a shot to the neck by an Israeli sniper in 2000, by painting him at a sharp angle, facing upwards, with the colours of the Palestinian flag bursting behind his head. Katie hopes this empowers the wheelchair-bound former karate champion.
The “Postcards”, though, are only her latest artistic project in Palestine. Katie, who estimates she has been attacked by settlers and soldiers around 50 times since arriving to Hebron in May, originally wanted to paint over the settlers’ anti-Arab graffiti. In one case, she covered up the words “Die Arab sand-niggers” with a mural of children playing in the sun. “When I first saw that graffiti it really disgusted me,” she says. “I wanted to get rid of it and I thought a nice cheerful mural of kids playing would be a good solution. It’s the idea of fighting hate with love.” “The mural is still there, but it has been defaced by the settlers, which I knew would happen. But it doesn’t really bother me because I was expecting it and it’s just another example of how hateful these people are.” She also wanted to obscure another spray-painted slogan, spread over two metal doors, that read “Gas the Arabs.” The Palestinian residents opposed the idea, explaining that the racist graffiti should stay precisely because it is so shocking. “When tourists, journalists and NGOs come into the area they are so shocked and horrified that they write and talk about it,” says Katie. “It’s also a great opportunity to see visual evidence of the disgusting nature of these people who live [in the settlements].”
While in Palestine, Katie also painted on what is becoming the largest canvas in the world – the West Bank wall. Her politically relevant reinterpretation of Michelangelo’s Pieta remains on the grey concrete near the Qalandia checkpoint. Eyes shut, palm upturned – in resignation, desperation – a woman holds a dead husband/brother/father/son who is slumped on her lap. “When I got the idea [in 2004], I knew that it had to be painted on the apartheid wall,” she says. “But I never imagined I’d actually be able to get it together to go to Palestine and do it.” She also painted a Soviet-esque angular figure of a man in black and white swinging a sledge-hammer into the wall – denting it but not yet breaking it down. “I hope [the murals] are destroyed when the wall comes down, inshallah,” says Katie. Her creativity enhances her non-violent resistance to the Israeli occupation. Along with an ISM colleague, Katie performed “fire circuses” in Hebron. “No one had ever seen anything like it before and it was a big hit, especially the kids… We’d start performing when we’d see soldiers detaining and harassing Palestinians. It’s just such an absurd situation to see a bunch of teenage punks with guns start acting disrespectfully and physically aggressive towards women and old men for no reason at all. We dealt with that absurdity by adding to it… it had the effect of drawing the soldier’s attention away from the Palestinians and also entertaining the Palestinians while they were being detained.”
One of the greatest challenges of living in Palestine, says Katie, is having to accepting that my tax dollars as an American go towards funding the Occupation and the violence. “Americans grow up learning the values that everyone is equal and everyone, in theory, has the same rights. “To see that this is neither true in theory nor in practice in Palestine turned my world upside down – it’s like all of a sudden someone tells you 1 + 1 = 3 and you just have to accept it.” As Katie asks in her blog, also entitled Postcards from Palestine “Is this apartheid yet?”
More of Katie’s artwork can be seen on her website: www.theopticnerve.com
She also maintains a blog at: moomin13.livejournal.com
Occupation Hazards
Katie shares with Skin her top altercations with the IDF:
1. Water supplies being poisoned by Israeli soldiers
Our water is kept in tanks on the roof of our apartment building. The IDF soldiers occasionally use our roof as one of their outposts. One day we discovered some creepy-crawly things in the water coming out of the kitchen sink faucet. We went up on the roof to investigate and discovered that our water tanks had been turned into an IDF garbage dump. The garbage included forks, spoons, knives, army netting, unexploded bullets, paper, plastic, glass, bricks, broken pipes, pudding containers, an extremely outdated, unopened yoghurt package, and plastic trays on which soldiers’ meals are served. The water on the bottom of the tank was completely black but the water on the top was clear. When I smelled it I felt like I was going to throw up. Since we get the water on the top of the tank first, we didn’t notice a problem until we noticed wriggly things in our water. After we made the discovery I went to the doctor who found that I had some kind of gnarly amoebas living in my stomach. One volunteer was diagnosed with tapeworm.
2. Being trampled by a police horse
There were some Israeli mounted police who were allowing the horses to s**t all over this area in Jerusalem where Palestinians frequently pray… I went up to one of them, asked them if they had any intention of cleaning up after their horses and the cop jerked the reins of the horse so the horse’s head knocked my head and then the cop ran the horse into me, causing me to fall over. I wound up under the horse that then trampled on my foot. When my friend came to my assistance and started screaming at the cops, he was beaten. We were really lucky in that neither of us were hurt badly.
3. False accusations of assault on a settler
I was taken to the Israeli Hebron police station on suspicion of assault after a settler accused me of scratching her as I escorted a woman past a group of settlers who had been taunting, harassing and throwing rocks at Palestinians. The Israeli police present did nothing to rein in the settlers and did not see me assault anyone because of course I didn’t. But nevertheless I was taken into custody and interrogated.
On Sunday the 4th of December, a group of Israeli residents of Yitzhar colony attacked farmers from Urif, a small village south of Nablus, while they were harvesting their olives on land adjacent to the village itself. This area is not normally considered to be a high-risk area due to its close proximity to Palestinian houses but this did not deter the colonists who, brandishing rocks and sticks, proceeded to yell insults and chase the olive pickers down the hill. Fortunately, no injuries were sustained.
Israeli police were not present as the area is, as mentioned, not considered a security priority. On Monday, there were also no police in the area despite the recent attack but two solidarity workers – one international from ISM and the Palestinian coordinator for Rabbis for Human Rights – accompanied the families to their fields. Visibly frightened, the farmers flinched and started rolling up their tarpaulins at the slightest sight of the Israeli colonists patrolling the perimeter of Yitzhar at the top of the hill. Luckily, the day’s work proceeded without incident and the villagers estimate that they will have finished harvesting in a few days.
The checkpoint commonly known as “Sabatash”, named after the Palestinian security forces that used to maintain a presence there, has been closed indefinitely for all civilian traffic bar humanitarian transportation such as ambulances and medical supply deliveries. This turn of events was suddenly announced a little more than two weeks ago to the residents of Asira Ash-Shamalia, located on the far side of the checkpoint from Nablus city.
The checkpoint is located in a sharp bend in the main road to Nablus; a thoroughfare used daily by- and crucial to university students and workers. It has developed from a makeshift checkpoint consisting of a muddy trench and a few cement blocks to a permanent terminal with a watchtower, walls and two vehicle lanes. Palestinians have been humiliated, stripsearched, made to stand in a meter of cold ditch-water, beaten and shot here every day since the beginning of the Al-Aqsa intifada. Although notorious for its extremely violent soldiers, the checkpoint has still been the preferred route for most Palestinians, as walking around over the mountains is even more treacherous. If spotted by Israeli soldiers, one runs the risk of being shot or detained for many hours.
One villager was detained by soldiers a rainy winter day a couple of years ago. He can hardly hold back his tears as he tells the story of how he ventured over the mountains in order to buy warm winter clothes for his son. On his way back, soldiers ambushed him from behind some bushes, very nearly shooting him dead. After making sure that he was not carrying any explosives, the soldiers calmed down and their commander started talking politics for over three hours, all the time in a civil manner. All of a sudden, the commander’s attitude changed and he ordered the man to be handcuffed. The soldiers then proceeded to beat, spit and pee on the man as he lay defenceless on the ground. The commander ordered the Palestinian man to undress, produced a video camera and told the man that he would be let go if he said on tape that he is a dirty Palestinian who does not deserve to live, to breathe oxygen or to drink water.
The man agreed to testify on tape and, shivering in the cold, proclaimed that “I am proud to be Palestinian and to be walking home to my family in my village breathing my air. I was under the impression that you were a civil man, commander, but I am afraid I was mistaken for you have lost your humanity and therefore lost everything.” The commander then attacked him, thrusting the butt of his rifle into the man’s naked stomach. The man was then forced to lie down on the ground with his head ten centimeters away from the chains of the tank. Revving the motor, the commander explained to the man that they will now run him over. The Palestinian man asked for one last favour before he was to be killed – for the soldiers to deliver the warm clothes to his son and wife. The soldiers then took the clothes and burned them in front of the man as he lay naked on the ground.
After more than 12 hours of humiliation, the soldiers pushed the handcuffed man down a steep slope, cutting his skin on thorns and rocks. Nearby villagers rushed out to take care of him as the soldiers left and he eventually returned home, with both arms broken. This is but one horrific story out of many experienced by the citizens of Asira Ash-Shamalia. About one month ago, 25-year old Haithem was shot with live ammunition at close range for daring to protest against the soldiers’ treatment of a group of young women at the checkpoint – forcing them to run their hands tight along their own bodies. He is still in hospital being treated for the wounds sustained that night.
Now, the checkpoint has been closed indefinitely. Instead, the villagers are forced to travel in a 40km arc around the checkpoint to get to Nablus. Flying checkpoints are set up by Israeli military along this road, meaning the journey can take anything from 40 minutes to several hours. Despite contacting various human rights organizations, legal experts and military commanders, the villagers have not been able to find out why the road has been closed.
It could be an incidence of collective punishment due to the village’s successful olive harvest campaign. A committee of ten dedicated villagers spent the autumn months encouraging villagers to tend to their lands, even those close to the nearby military base and to stand their ground in case of confrontation with the military – “just try to have a calm logical conversation with the soldiers. The words will come naturally to you. After all, it is your land!” They also organized the removal of close to one hundred roadblocks scattered within and around the village, so as to allow for the passage of tractors and other heavy equipment needed during the harvest.
Greatly empowered by the committee’s work, the people of Asira Ash-Shamalia have this year harvested olives from land that has lain idle since the beginning of the first intifada. Furthermore, there has been a revival of old harvesting traditions, with young and old congregating in the fields to work, sing and eat together. In the past, a couple of adults from each family used to sneak to their fields and hurriedly pick as many olives as they dare before rushing home – almost as if “stealing” their own olives. This year, the harvest has been an open, joyous event, despite repression in the form of teargas and gunfire from soldiers manning the military base on the mountain Ebal.
The Israeli military have tried all sorts of measures to control the village’s newfound sense of self-determination. In the evenings, they would come and try to grab individual villagers from the olive press factories. After wrestling men to the ground and dragging them out of the building, the soldiers were forced to see themselves defeated as villager after villager struggled to get free and returned to the press. Whatever the reason for the sudden and unexplained closure of Sabatash checkpoint, this will not quench the spirit of resistance and invention in Asira Ash-Shamalia.
