27th November 2015 | International Solidarity Movement, al-Khalil team| Hebron, occupied Palestine
We, the undersigned Palestinian political forces and organizations, appeal to local and international institutions, human rights organisations and democratic forces for immediate and decisive action concerning the execution of Palestinian children by Israeli occupation forces and settlers. To date, 18 Palestinian children have been killed and executed in cold blood at the checkpoints and on the streets since the beginning of the current Palestinian uprising. Dozens of Palestinian children have been injured, arrested and brutally interrogated by Israeli forces.
These practices carried out by Israeli occupation forces and settlers rise to the level of war crimes and require confrontation and a response to halt this murder of Palestinian children.
We therefore request from human rights and humanitarian groups, as well as social movements, trade unions, democratic parties and concerned individuals throughout the world, to take responsibility and work to halt these crimes, which represent a flagrant violation of international conventions and treaties.
Signed (in alphabetical order):
Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Hebron
Hebron Defense Committee
International Solidarity Movement
Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Hebron
26th November 2015 | International Solidarity Movement, al-Khalil team| Hebron, occupied Palestine
Sunday 22nd November 2015, two international solidarity activists were arrested by Israeli forces on the allegation that they were ‘staying in a closed military zone’ in occupied al-Khalil (Hebron).
One German human rights defender passed a checkpoint manned with a group of half a dozen soldiers with two Palestinians and another international. They were not stopped on their way by the soldiers and were allowed to pass without any problems. After visiting a house in the neighbourhood however, they were immediately stopped by soldiers when stepping on the street only twenty minutes later. Soldiers immediately questioned them about what they were doing and ordered them to walk down the hill instead of up, the direction they were headed. When the internationals asked for a reason, soldiers called the police, but allowed the Palestinians in the group to leave. An American activist was also allowed to leave as she was Jewish, whereas the German was detained by the soldiers and not allowed to leave. According to the soldiers, the detained activist was ‘the reason for everything bad in the world’ and ‘should go to Syria’ to die there ‘as the world would be a better place without her’.
Another group of internationals was going to a shop in the same neighbourhood. The three of them were yelled at by soldiers, and one out of the group was ordered to come towards the soldiers whereas the other two were ordered to leave immediately or they would be arrested. Even though in the beginning the international argued that then she would be entering a closed military zone, which she wasn’t allowed to do, soldiers kept insisting. In the end the French activist did approach the soldiers as they kept requesting her to do so – only to be arrested for entering a ‘closed military zone’.
Both the French and German activists were held at the Givat Ha’vot police station in the illegal settlement of Kiryat Arba for in total nine hours. In contrast to two Palestinian prisoners held at the police station, they were treated well. One Palestinian youth, only 18 years old, had already been at the police station for 16 hours when the internationals were taken there. He was visibly shaken and told the internationals that he would be taken to Ofer prison. Another Palestinian youth, about 16 years old, was walked past the internationals hand- and foot-shackled, visibly in great pain, trying to hold his stomach while walking bent over in extreme pain. No medical aid was given to him, instead he was forced to sit on the ground outside.
At one point, everyone including the two Palestinian youths, the two internationals and an Israeli prisoner were made to leave the only at least slightly heated room and forced to sit outside in the cold for about an hour as soldiers and police was bringing food and drinks and were audible enjoying themselves inside. Any requests for blankets or being allowed back inside were completely ignored or denied. When the internationals asked for food they were only given some bread and a tomato.
The Israeli settler, clearly psychologically disturbed, kept talking about the ghosts talking to him, all because of a spell that a Rabbi put on him. Still, he was released after a few hours. The two internationals were released after about 9 hours only when agreeing to sign conditions barring them from the ‘Tel Rumeida area’ of al-Khalil for 15 days. Even though they were released in the middle of the night around 2 o’clock they were from staying in their respective homes as they are in the are signed for. Unfortunately, nothing is known so far about the two Palestinian youths held at the police station. What can be said for sure though is that in Israeli military courts they will not even have the chance of a fair trail or at anything even distantly related to justice.
November 10th, 2015 | International Solidarity Movement, Huwarra Team | Ramallah, Occupied Palestine
In the early morning of November 2nd 2015, Ahmad Nasser was kidnapped by Israeli forces from his home near Ramallah. He was accused of attempting to kill soldiers by throwing stones and molotov cocktails, and was released without charge 15 hours later. He was repeatedly assaulted during his arrest and suffered broken ribs and further injuries. It is Ahmad’s belief that the arrest was directly related to his work as a medic and humanitarian activist at demonstrations. Just 60 hours before his arrest he was acting as a medic in a private ambulance service, administering medical aid to demonstrators injured at a Friday clash in Beit El. Along with journalists and other medics, he was directly targeted in his work on the day and prevented from tending to a demonstrator run over by an army jeep. Israeli forces threw a sound grenade at the group, teargassed the ambulances and then proceeded to viciously pepperspray press and medics. The media surrounding this, coupled with his work in previous weeks tending to those shot with live ammunition in clashes near Ramallah, are likely reasons he was chosen for arrest as another victim of the recent increase in intimidation tactics being used against Palestinians, especially young men. As he states: “they try to accuse me of some charges but they cannot – if they had some real evidence that I threw stones they would never release me, but they didn’t – they just want to punish me for my work.” This is his account of his arrest and assault: just one story in the daily narrative of the occupation.
Israeli forces attacking journalists and medics (Ahmad) at clashes near Beit El Oct 30 – Photo credit Fadi ArouriAhmad in his work as a medic at demonstrations near Ramallah in October. Blood is from a man wounded in the chest with live ammunition shot by Israeli forces.
On the night of the 2nd of November I got home around 2 in the morning. Five minutes later I heard the Israeli army jeeps stopped outside my house and I took a look from my window to see what was going on. I didn’t know they were looking for me, and I saw the soldiers go to my neighbor’s house and start to knock on the door. When someone answered they questioned him and asked about who is living in the building. The neighbor, an old man, said that he didn’t know, so they started to beat him – they struck him with the end of the gun and they hit him and they took him with them to check the other houses and they entered his house with his family inside.
Then they knocked on my door and I opened it for them and I saw a lot of soldiers, about 60, standing there with their guns and ready to shoot. I saw the hatred and anger in their eyes and one of them asked me “who are you?” so I told him my name is Ahmad so he asked me “Ahmad what?” so I said “Ahmad Nasser.” He checked his phone and asked me for my I.D. but I didn’t have it at the time so I gave him the number of my I.D. He told me to stand on the side outside our front door, and to take my jacket off and give it to my mother. My mother and my brother, who was recently released from prison, were both in the room. My mother was very scared – you know, she is a mother. They kicked my kitten because she was playing around them, and they started to check me and he asked me again about my I.D. number to confirm it.
After that they went through my house and started to look and search for something and the soldiers outside were asking me if I have guns so I told them I do not. One of them asked me to take my shoes off and he checked it and after that asked me to put them on again. He told me to face the wall again and put the zip-tie hand-cuffs on my hands, behind my back. I told him that I have a problem in my right hand from an old injury and he said okay, but he tightened it more. They blindfolded me and asked me to sit on the stairs, with my arms back behind me, and after a few minutes they came out off my house with some personal things they had taken, and they told my family not to move or they will shoot them. They told me to walk and one of the soldiers grabbed me in a bad way and told me “MOVE!” and I told him that there is stairs but he pushed me down the stairs so that I fell onto my knee and slid down.
He started to say bad things about me and my family and started to beat me up until we arrived to the jeep and he shoved me into the edge of the front door. After that they pushed me against the side of the jeep and then against the back door and another soldier told him that there is no space in that car, so he took me to another jeep and hit me on the back door and start to punch me and hit me with something from metal, I think the end of the gun. This is when they broke my ribs. There were many soldiers around. I heard one shout at my brother “GO! Or I will shoot you!” because he was trying to film from inside.
I was on my knees in front of the back step and a soldier put all his weight on me and after that he tightened the zip-tie (hand-cuffs) again but this time more strong. He told me to sit but I couldn’t do that because I don’t see a thing so they just pushed me inside the jeep and after a few seconds grabbed me out again so that the soldiers can sit and pushed me again inside the jeep on the ground. I was in a bad position until we arrived to the Ofer military base near to that area. After that he opened the door and grabbed me again and one of them helped me to stand and he was holding me in a bad way and another one came to me and he started to ask me if I throw stones at the Israeli soldiers. I said no and he told me that I am lying and said bad things to me and hit me in my stomach again and pushed me until we get to the arrest truck and he told me there is steps. I got into the truck and a female soldier asked me to sit and to shut up so I told them that they should take the hand-cuffs off, because they were so tight that my hands were swollen, but they didn’t listen to me.
When we arrived to the clinic to check me one of the soldiers was fighting with the zip-tie trying to take it off and that hurt me more but in the end he took it and the doctor checked me. They took the blindfold off inside the closed room and asked me questions, like if I am sick, if I am taking medication, if I have had any surgery, if I have any problems with my health. He checked where I was sore but said “you are fine.” They put the blindfold back on me and they took me out and I was waiting for 20 minutes until some soldiers came and took me to the truck again. I was waiting in the truck for a few minutes and they brought another prisoner from my town. I knew he was there because I heard them say “watch your head” but it hit against the truck, and I knew him from his voice. When we tried to talk to each other the soldiers shouted at us to shut up and they start to move and they took us somewhere, we didn’t know where. After a while driving they stopped and we got out and they told us to sit and it was so cold and windy, and we just had to sit out like that for a few hours.
Medical certificate which Ahmad initiated after he was released, when Israeli forces medic had said he was “fine” directly after beating. Report reads: “The patient came to the clinic 2/11/15; He was suffering from – Pain on the left side of his chest and back, caused by beating by the Israeli occupation forces. Patient has been X-rayed and broken ribs found on the left side, number 8 and 9. He has been administered treatment and this report on request.”
When I was talking to the other prisoner, a female soldier came and told us to shut up and said we couldn’t talk. I asked why and she said “I am treating you as a human being, just stop talking.” So I told her “it’s boring for us! So I will talk to him…and if you are treating me like a human being, for the first place I shouldn’t be here, and for seconds, you should bring me a jacket and a blanket and water and we should be sitting in a warm room, not outside.” So she didn’t know what to say and she said, “just stop talking,” and she left. After about one hour, they brought me a jacket and a blanket and they left. After about 3 hours, another soldier came and took the blankets from us. A few hours later again, around 7am, he came again with the blanket, put it on us, and he left. In the morning, around 8.30, we told the soldier who was guarding the gate that we wanted to go to the toilet, but he didn’t listen to us, and after we hassled him for a few minutes, he went to check whether there was another soldier to take us. He came back and said there is no-one to take you, so you can’t go. So, we kept annoying him for one hour, and after that, a female soldier came and she said “the toilet is closed, so there is no toilet” and she took me to a spot, behind the jeep. She would not give us any privacy. After that, they put us both on chairs and they left again for about half an hour.
Another jeep came with three soldiers, they put us in the jeep, and they took us to the Ofer military prison again. We stayed there for half an hour, and then they took us to Sha’ar Binyamin [illegal settlement] police station. They put us in a room with another 2 prisoners and we stayed there for a while, sitting on the ground until the investigator (police) came and took us to interrogate us. It was only at this point that the blindfold and handcuffs were taken off…all the time before that, I was blind. He started to ask me questions. He told me “we suspect you – you were throwing stones and molotovs, and you tried to kill soldiers with stones. What do you say about that?” So, I said “about what exactly?” He said “about what I told you” I told him “you are imagining that….nothing like this could happen” And he said “OK but we have evidence.” I asked him “who told you that?” He said “just, we have evidence” so I demanded that they show it to me. They showed me a photo of another guy, someone I don’t know. I told him “this one is not me and I deny what you are saying and I want to talk to my lawyer,” so he called my lawyer. This was the first time I had been allowed to contact my lawyer, so many hours after I was arrested.
I talked to my lawyer for a while and after that he told me “stop talking and give me the phone.” He started to ask me if I have ever thrown stones or molotovs, and do I know people who throw stones or molotovs and if I join demonstrations against the soldiers or if I am thinking to join a demonstration. So, I told him “I don’t join demonstrations, and I would not do that, because when I go to a demonstration I go as a medic and work as a humanitarian mission.” And they said “but you still don’t want to tell me if you know anything.” So I told him, “I don’t know anything, and I deny everything that you have, and your evidence is fake.” So he decided to take my DNA and fingerprints and they also took photos of me. Another investigator, he asked to see my hands, so I showed them to him and he said “these hands are not throwing stones…these hands are throwing molotovs.” I started to laugh and told him “you are dreaming” and he said “OK, what is your name” so I gave him my name and he told me “we have been looking for you for a long time.” I said “really? I am in Ramallah…and you are 10 minutes away, and you could take me any time..so don’t make fun of me.” He said “OK, go down” and when I was about to go into the elevator, he showed me his hand, with 4 fingers, and he asked me “how much is it?” So I told him “it’s four.” He said “no, it is five.” I told him, “no it’s four.” He flipped his hand around, and said “no, like this it’s 4,” he flipped his hand again, “and like this [with a bent thumb on the palm side], its five.” I told him “if it’s four or five it’s your problem, I see four.” They told me “OK, just go.”
So, the other policeman took me to the room where I was sitting with the soldiers and the other 3 prisoners and they kept us there for about 2 hours. It must have been about 3pm by then. Three policeman came, and they said “these 2 guys [pointing at the others, from Jalazon camp] – to Ofer.” And me and the other guy, “to the custody room.” We stayed there around one hour before the policeman came and opened the door for us. He said “we have nothing against you. So, you can leave. And, do you know how to go out from here [the police station]?” I told him yes, but when I got to the main door I said to him “you didn’t charge us, but your release us inside a settlement, and we might get killed here” He said “no, you are fine, just leave,” so we left. They try to accuse me of some charges but they cannot – if they had some real evidence that I threw stones they would never release me, but they didn’t – they just want to punish me for my work. And I am free now. Thanks for everyone who tried to help me, in any way. I appreciate it.
***
Ahmad’s room having been raided and items taken by Israeli forces
The Women’s Center for Legal Aid and Counseling (WCLAC) estimates that approximately 1,350 night raids are occurring annually in the West Bank, with that number having escalated in the tensions of recent months. Most of these raid occur between 2:00 and 4:00am “and commence with aggressive banging on the front door. In some cases the door is simply kicked in or blown off its hinges.” While night raids are used extensively as an arrest tactic, the WCLAC explains that in fact in the majority of cases no arrests are made, and it is moreover a “strategy of mass initimidation of the Palestinian civilian population.” According to the Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association, in October alone, Israeli occupation forces arrested 1,195 Palestinians including 177 children, 16 females and 23 after they were injured. Among those arrested, 128 were placed under administrative detention, 31 of whom were arrested for alleged “incitement” including through social media, 3 of whom were children from Jerusalem. This brought the total number of Palestinian political prisoners to 6,700 by the end of October. They state that the “Israeli occupation authorities have publicly declared that these mass arrests as well as other measures taken against Palestinians in the occupied territory are aimed at suppressing the recent uprising, clearly indicating that the mass arrests are a form of collective punishment and political oppression aimed at forcing Palestinians to submission.”
According to another source, The Prisoners’ Affairs Authority affiliated to the Palestinian Authority (PA) documented 800 cases in which Palestinian minors were arrested during the past months, mostly in Jerusalem. This equates to the average number of Palestinian children’s arrests by Israeli forces annually.
24th October 2015 | International Solidarity Movement, al-Khalil team| Anata, occupied Palestine
“Some people think being jailed is a destiny. I say freedom is a destiny.”
In Heather Christle’s stirring poem, Self Portrait with Fire, bending to conceal flaming legs, (s)he sets the grass on fire. On this day, sitting with Khader Adnan, Palestinian freedom fighter, it is hard not to imagine everything in contact with the intense and pensive man beside me catching flame.
Khader Adnan, a baker, a student of economics, a father and a former captive of Israeli occupation prisons has brought himself to the brink of death by starvation twice in protestation of the illegal system of jailing of occupied Palestinians termed Administrative Detention.
During the latter of the two strikes, the sight of the world sharply dove in freefall to one hospital bed in one Israeli hospital to one prisoner who was in critical condition but with enough wherewithal to persist in his fight- he set the grass on fire.
In the chaos of the recent escalation of violence in the West Bank that frequently comes to flash fever pitch crescendos punctuating Palestine’s days and her nights, Khader Adnan speaks. “Let me ask you a question,” he begins, referencing the allegations of Palestinian knife attacks on settlers and Israeli occupation soldiers, “Why would an educated young person with so much ahead of them take a knife and attack someone only to be immediately killed but for the pressure, the frustration and hopelessness of the situation they are forced to live in?”
Khader Adnan looks in a mirror at himself at his home
Hopelessness. His words bring to mind the gut wrenching twitter post from the young Palestinian martyr, Ihab Jihad Haninni (20) who was shot and killed on Friday, October 16 by occupation forces at Beit Furik checkpoint, “Perhaps tomorrow will be better than today, God willing.”
The space between Ihab’s tweet and this day has been filled with tomorrows that were not better; tomorrows that were increasingly worse.
It is a shared devastation that settles heavily over the Palestinian landscape littered with the places the young have gasped their final breath.
For Ihab and the many others who were martyred before him- and for those martyred since, Khader’s lionizing words honor them, “The best houses in all of Palestine are the houses of the martyrs.” Words that flow in direct inverse of the Israeli government’s currently enacting illegal collective punishment procedures against the families of the martyrs by delivering their homes demolition orders; some which they will fill with concrete, some they will smash into with bulldozers.
Khader Adnan Poster: “If the people of the world had a heart for the suffering of Palestine, this would be the photo of the year.”
For a state with no organized military force by land, air or sea; a state webbed by the ever developing strands of illegal settlement and industrial blocs, by siege, by rabid, occupational government sanctioned racism, by hopelessness; hunger strike has been the Achilles heel of the mighty apartheid state delivered in what Khader termed the battle of the empty stomachs.
Having so little left and seemingly being ignored by the mainstream world media, it is through refusing what little remains which succeeded in allowing the hands of Palestinian suffering to touch the outer world. Hunger striking works. “Some think being jailed is a destiny but I say freedom is a destiny and you attain freedom through hunger strike,” Khader affirms.
Indeed, it is likely the only reason he sits across from us with his young daughter, still jailed within the occupation of the West Bank yet free from the jail within the jail.
Khader’s hunger strike was, “for the purpose of freedom. I didn’t strike to change anyone’s attitude about the situation here. It was for freedom.”
His hunger strike’s both came after enduring multiple stints on Israeli administrative detention which both involved what Khader called, “hideous and aggressive treatment” by his captors. During his July 2014 arrest, an arrest which was executed against the backdrop of a brutal bombing attack against the already besieged Gaza strip, Khader was subjected to humiliation and brutality.
“They cursed my honor as a husband and a father. They made sexual comments about my wife, cursed her. Cursed my religion, threatened my children. They rubbed their hands on the bottom of my shoes and rubbed the dirt on my face. I was slammed against the wall until my nose was bleeding. They blindfolded me. They pulled hair out of my beard.”
Is there any reason that this type of abhorrent treatment is completely allowable for Palestinians, including young children who frequently report these types of abuses, yet are protected against in the western world? Are we quantifiably more human? Unless the answer is yes, this should stir the world into mass resistance.
Amidst a hypocrisy so shrill, a terrorism enacted so horrendously as last summer’s Operation “Protective Edge”, Khader was again placed on administrative detention for nearly the tenth time. “They thought then was a good time to arrest me because everyone was so busy paying attention to the bombing in Gaza that no one would care about another Palestinian going to jail, especially one who was known for hunger strike.”
“I told representatives in the west bank that I was going on a hunger strike. I did small hunger strikes. I did a 7 day strike- to hit the alarm.”
And predictably, the unchecked Lord of the Flies like behavior of those made mighty with guns and global funding escalated in violence and antagonism, “Once I went on hunger strike, treatment was worse. Abuse was worse. They escalated so I escalated. I refused to eat, I refused to drink and now I refused to speak. Not speaking was an escalation. They interrogated me and I said nothing.”
And inside of the hospital room where Khader Adnan, whose condition was becoming critical once his strike climbed into the high forties in days, lay weak and shackled, refusing to allow visitation by physicians after being told that he would not be granted visitation unless under the watchful eye of Israeli military personnel. And though weak and near death, antagonism from the gleeful choir continued.
“It was an annoyance of no privacy, the Israeli guards and soldiers inside my room were constantly talking about military plans and thoughts while I laid there. They brought their food into my room, ate hot meals beside my bed and talked about delicious foods and spices, things to make me uncomfortable and hungry.”
Even more repugnantly, “There was a camera in my room filming me all day and night. This was not for my protection. They were violating my privacy and trying to humiliate me. I was told that photos and video of me was being broadcasted on Israeli television; that they were watching me like a live television show. Dehumanizing me.”
The extremist right wing Israeli Yesh Atid and Likud parties in response, finalized an earlier version of a force feeding draft law, a law that would involve the intravenous intrusion or gastric feeding tube insertion into an unwilling Palestinian hunger striking prisoner’s body to undermine their starvation protests against what is, in fact, a widely recognized illegality and violation of human rights.
The committee, headed by Likud MK Miri Regev, was blasted by many, including MK Ahmad Tibi (Ra’ am-Ta’al) who stated that “Today is a black day for the Knesset.” As well as another Arab Israeli MK, Basel Ghattas of the Balad party, who said the bill was an “idiotic law by an idiotic prime minister.”
When asked about whether he feared that he might be subjected to what is tantamount to torture, Khader stated, “I did not think that they would use this tactic on me because I was under 24-7 observation.”
As for the law itself, “I see it as a failure for the Israeli government. This was and is a failure in them knowing how to deal with this process. And of course, this failure faces the success of the process as a whole- how hunger strikes gain awareness, how they raise empathy for those inside occupation prisons.”
“Without hunger strikes, prisoners do not get released. The propaganda and lies coming from Israeli and the western world is something people have to break away from. Come and visit Palestine. See the situation for yourself. See the real crime happening here and who is committing it.”
Khader’s father who watches over the interview and walks us through the streets of the village Arraba as the sun falls on another day in occupied Palestine leaves us at the taxi with these words, “Tell the truth. Tell the people what Israel is doing,” before abruptly walking away. This man, this elderly man who has spent his life grappling with a force that has, with entitlement, claimed all he ever had, including his son who nearly lost his life twice resisting it.
Christle’s poem occurred to me throughout the interview, an interview with a beloved son of a beloved land. The poem referencing, in regards to the person on fire, the adoration of the people; “Obviously they loved me, were warm and pink and vocal on a promising spring day…”
Inshallah the spring day is soon coming. Promisingly so.
12th October 2015 | International Solidarity Movement, Al-Khalil team | Hebron, occupied Palestine
Sun streams through the bedroom window of Amira, an elderly woman in her mid 70’s who has spent a lion’s share of her life living inside Palestinian refugee camps. Amira, who cannot speak and is completely immobile in her bed, shifts her emotional stare to her daughter Nisreen as she speaks about their lives inside of Dheisheh Camp after Amira and her husband’s 1948 forced displacement from their village Az-Zakariyya.
Az-Zakariyya was just one of hundreds of Palestinian villages terrorized by Zionist gangs in the 1948 Nakba, the ongoing catastrophe that originally displaced over 700,000 Palestinians. The village had a population of 1,180 on 15,320 dunums in 1945. Named in honor of the prophet Zachariah, most of its indigenous residents fled to the nearby hills, after Israeli forces executed two residents. The next two years saw the finalization of the forcible “transfer” of Palestinian’s from their homes in Zakariyya to make way for the illegal movement of Israeli settlers onto the land- and into homes still occupied by the belongings of the rightful home owners who left everything they owned, believing they would quickly return. Most of them settled in Dheisheh refugee camp. All of them are still waiting to return.
Amira sits immobile in her bedroom which frequently has teargas shot by Israeli forces seeping inside the windows
Recently as a sharp escalation in violence has swept across the occupied Palestinian territories, an escalation which has martyred 25 young Palestinians and injured nearly 1,500, Israeli forces have mostly turned their attention away from the camp which until recently had nightly raids, shootings and violent attacks by the occupying army. “Before the escalation began, they were here every night, every day. They fire teargas here at the entrance to the camp and it comes into my mother’s bedroom through the windows. She cannot move to get away from it.” But this is only one transgression in a long and tragic list of horrors that Amira’s family has endured since their village was violently depopulated.
Nisreen holds the keys to her family’s home in the depopulated Palestinian village Zakariyya
Amira’s 9 children have all been touched by the occupation, as have all Palestinians existing within occupied, besieged and apartheid-ruled Palestinian territories, including inside the green line. Three sons and six daughters. “All of my brothers have been arrested and placed in Israeli prisons, one of my sisters as well,” Nisreen relays. “One of my brothers was arrested on the day of his marriage after the army attacked the wedding and then jailed him for three years. My mother is so tired now because of all of this. She would leave for Naqab prison to visit him at 4am, only to arrive and be told by the soldiers that she wasn’t allowed to see him that day.”
Amira’s husband, deceased after a battle with cancer, returned to his village with a German documentary crew in the late 1980’s during a film project they were making about the Nakba. He was in his early twenties when his village was violently stolen. As most who leave a familiar space, he returned with a heavy nostalgia for the density of memories of sights, sounds and smells. The elderly man was not long on his land before an Israeli woman rushed out throwing stones at him and the film crew yelling at them to get off of her land.
Village Zakariyya, evacuated violently during the Nakba, circa 1926.
Nisreen’s brother Firas endured similar humiliation when he visited the village with the assistance of a permit he obtained through his work. “I saw my family’s home. The people who are living there now ran out and yelled at me to leave. I told them this was my family’s home and they said as a joke, ‘When you return, I will give it back to you.'” One might wonder about the immediate and boiling hatred conveyed by those who sit smugly inside of someone else’s home, on someone else’s land; wonder about the fury that must incite within the people who endure that hatred, yet Firas smiles warmly as he plays with his two year old son- one of his three children.
Firas, after thirteen arrests by the occupying forces, has lost more than four and a half years of his life to Israeli prisons. “I was once interrogated for 18 days straight. The soldiers arrest you, they start beating you immediately and then all the way to the jail where they bring you. It is very rare to find interrogators who use psychological tactics on you. It’s just beating and violence. That’s all they have.”
Firas didn’t finish his high school education until he was in his twenties. “Because the Ministry of Education is related to the Civilian Administration, which is ruled by Israel, after being imprisoned you cannot get permission to return to your school unless you become a collaborator working with the Israeli government. Because of this, many do not return to school.” Another transgression against Palestinian’s whose lives they rule, streets they own, homes they steal and whose children they imprison.
Nisreen takes us through the part of the camp where her family lives. It is like most other Palestinian refugee camps, overcrowded and insufficient for the massive population existing inside of it. Dheisheh camp is home to over 15,000 registered Palestinian refugees, all living on less than one kilometer of land. Nisreen shows us a construction site spraying clouds of dust into the air of the narrow streets, “We cannot build out, so we build up.”
Deheishe Refugee camp
We spend an hour at LAYLAC at the entrance to the camp; the Palestinian Youth Action Center for Community Development. Its director, Naji Owda’s passion for the amazing things LAYLAC is doing- and has done since its 2010 inception, is vibrantly evident. “We have 40 volunteers currently. People come from all over the world to work with us. We work in public spaces. We make actions in the street to connect with the people.” LAYLAC has an impressive, if not overwhelmingly so, list of community actions, festivals and projects both in its wake and in its immediate future.
“We have a theater department, a department for social work, alternative education and children’s rights. Sometimes we don’t even have enough money for the basics to get by, but we manage, we always manage.” Members of LAYLAC will soon be traveling to France as well as locally holding theatrical actions at the Yalla Yalla Festival happening in Bethlehem on October 23rd. Owda, who was jailed in Israeli prison 7 times, has conducted hunger strikes both inside and outside of prison to simultaneously protest and better conditions for prisoners, as well as participating in solidarity strikes from the steps of the Red Cross building where he slept with others to show support for striking prisoners. “I’m not one to cry about the occupation. We do good work here. We tell our story. We don’t create anything. We teach about our lives. Our daily lives.”
LAYLAC community center in Deheishe refugee camp
Ending our stay at Dheisheh camp means sitting with Nisreen’s family who are all laughing and talking over hot tea with mint. Firas’s son is about to blow out candles on a birthday cake. “Its not his birthday,” Nisreen says laughing, “Every time we make a cake, we sing happy birthday to him.” In a room nearby, Amira rests silently after a lifetime of struggle that shows no sign of relenting. And Firas’s words rest heavily in the air, “The camp is our identity, but its not our personality. I belong to my village. The house I live in inside the camp is owned by the UN. Here I do not even own the tree in front of my home. But in Zakariyya, I have land, my father’s land. I have the documents that say I own all of the trees on our land. We never stop dreaming that we will return home. Every generation here, even the children, know about the village they’ve come from. They sit with the elders and ask for stories about where they are from. Our dreams were bigger than this. I never miss an opportunity to see my village, to see each stone, to see how each stone has been moved.”
