Jews Against the Occupation

Reports from Palestine

Index of July updates:

 

   

Listen to JATO member Naomi Braine interviewed by Amy Goodman on Democracy Now!:  http://clients.loudeye.com/imcny/dnix2002-0711.mp3

 

 

July 15, 2002
Report from Naomi

Daily, exhausting humiliation and uncertainty

 

My affinity group went to Hebron to deliver medicine to a hospital.  There was a possibility that we would stay for a few days and try to help some farmers who are
being prevented from harvesting their crops by settlers who want their land.  The farmers met today and told us to come back in two weeks or so, because that will be the next time they have a substantial number of crops ready.  The curfew was lifted in Hebron today for the first time in two weeks, and we decided to slip out just before curfew was re-imposed as there was no easy place to stay and nothing that immediately needed doing.

 

I came here braced to experience some of the dramatic horrors of the invasions periods, and have instead learned a great deal about occupation as a form of daily life.  This is a very different experience than the extreme violence and trauma of a massive incursion.  This is the daily, exhausting humiliation and uncertainty of trying to go about life under the whims of military authority.  You find out in the morning whether you can officially leave the house that day, and if you want to travel anywhere then you must find out whether your destination is currently open and how long that might last.  This is not like trying to find out if school is closed because of snow; there is no friendly, informative central number to call.  You look out the window to see if there are cars in the street, and if the shops look officially open. You call people at your destination to see what the signs are there. You listen to the obscure announcements blasted out of loudspeakers on top of army jeeps.  And then you make a decision and see what happens next.  Even when the city is officially open, you can be stopped on the street and asked for ID by soldiers according to their whims.

 
Getting from one place to another is when the game really begins.  It is half chess and half cat-and-mouse.  The taxi drivers run the show, and we are at their mercy.   If you take the main roads, you will have to negotiate official checkpoints, so everyone goes by the back roads.  The back roads are largely unpaved, as crowded as the side streets of Manhattan at rush hour, and often closer to vertical than horizontal.   Here there no checkpoints, but you move from roadblock to roadblock.  A roadblock is two huge piles of rock and dirt blocking a back road, usually with about 20 feet in between the piles.  A taxi drops you off at one roadblock, you walk and haul your stuff, and find another taxi after climbing over the second rock pile.  As we were leaving Hebron late this afternoon, we watched as a truck of furniture was unloaded and hauled across a particularly long roadblock.  It was really stunning to watch as four perfectly balanced armchairs were piled on top of a small wheeled cart and maneuvered over two huge piles of rock and dirt without tipping over.  We saw several large bookcases and some couches waiting to go next.

 

 

 

July 11, 2002

Report from Naomi

A checkpoint is confronted by Palestinians and Internationals

 

Yesterday, they opened up a checkpoint between Ramallah and Bir Zeit.  At 10:00 A.M. there were people on both sides; a girl had been shot in the head with a rubber bullet two days earlier at this checkpoint, so the internationals knew it could be dicey. 

 

Six internationals, including Naomi, walked there, and spoke with the Palestinians on the Ramallah side of the checkpoint.  They then talked to the soldiers, and asked why the checkpoint was closed.  They were told: those are our orders.  The army presence was an APC with five soldiers.  The six internationals and about 200 Palestinians, with women from Bir Zeit University in front, began to walk toward the checkpoint. Four of the women formed a half circle around a soldier and began to argue with him. The internationals videotaped.  He seemed to be disarmed by their boldness. 

 

The crowd inched forward on both sides of the checkpoint--about 200 people one each side.  The soldiers could have pulled out tear gas, sound grenades, and started shooting, but didn't. Two hours of boundary pushing ensued, and the soldiers repeatedly asked: why is the checkpoint closed?  One soldier shot over head of the crowd.  At that point, over 100 people had already crossed without permission, and another 50 with permission.  At the sound of the shot, people backed up three or four steps, and  two internationals got in between the soldier who had shot and the crowd.  Two internationals stayed on each of the two edgiest soldiers.  (The second edgy soldier has threatened to use teargas, but didn't use it.) 

 

The Palestinian people there were really empowered and the soldiers weren't out of control to begin with. The internationals were the enabling force; people felt safer with them there. The Palestinians on the scene interacted freely and assertively with the soldiers, especially young women students and older peasant women. Stunning. The soldiers were disrespectful to the older women at moments, and embarrassed at other moments.  Some of the older women just walked through the checkpoint in the midst of all the fuss-this clearly is an old game.

At noon, after two hours, a Jeep showed up with a senior officer.  He attempted to line up everyone single file, and opened the checkpoint until the re-imposition of curfew at 3:00.

Naomi don't know if there was retaliation today; Huwaida and Adam were out of Ramallah for an ISM training in Jerusalem.

Today, Naomi traveled to Hebron:  Five taxis, one checkpoint, and four roadblocks.   Hebron has been sealed under curfew for nine or ten days.  Only the Red Crescent can get in and out.

The city is patrolled by Jeeps, not tanks.  The curfew is lifted for a few hours daily.  No stores are open.  Hospital staff live at the hospital for days at a time; if they get home, they don't know when they can get back.  Those who live in Hebron work 12-14 hour shifts.

Naomi described the siege in Hebron as a relentless grind, rather than a melodramatic assault. Nothing moves.  People are always asking one another: Fii jeesh?  Fii jeesh? (Is the army there?)  Children can play in the street, but taxis can't drive, and stores can't open.  Every now and then a Jeep or an  APC comes by, they yell at everyone to get off the street, and everyone scatters.  It is an odd, brutal calm in which no one can live their lives, but people aren't being gunned down [except when they are, as ISM reports from Nablus indicate], and no one knows what's going to happen next.

The hospital is surreal.  It's the only neonatal ICU in all of the West Bank.   It's half closed, because there's no money, and no one can get there. There's a fully-functioning high-tech NICU with 5 babies, a step-down unit, and a birthing room for people who can get there.

Doctors spoke with Naomi about the damage the Occupation is doing to sick children.  Conditions become chronic because children can't be gotten from outlying clinics and hospitals.  If you don't fix certain conditions at birth, you can't fix them later. These are the invisible long-term consequences of perpetual curfew. Naomi and her affinity group will spend a day or so riding in ambulances, because they'll be able to get around faster with internationals in them.

The harvesting project is up in the air.  The settlers have been doing the shooting there, and settlers are a different kettle of fish than soldiers; they don't care about international incidents.  The last group of internationals got shot at.  The farmers are figuring out what they want from the ISM.

 

 

 

 

July 9, 2002

Report from Emmaia

Ambulances & EMTs under Israeli attack--Nablus

On walls in Nablus there's a shaheed poster--a poster commemorating a martyr killed by the Israeli army--showing a middle-aged man standing in front of an ambulance. We're told he was the head of the ambulance service in Jenin. During the reoccupation of Jenin by the Israeli army, when a convoy of ambulances went to pick up people who had been wounded or killed, the Israeli army energy-bombed the ambulances. An energy bomb is an incendiary device which vaporizes everything around it with fire. After the bomb, there was nothing left of his body. Palestinians, trying to explain it, point to the ashes of a cigarette.

Palestinian ambulances, ambulance drivers and EMTs are under constant attack by the Israeli army -- in spite of international law which says that people have a human right to health care, and that health care workers must be allowed to provide it.

Because of their protected status, ambulances are the only vehicles technically allowed on the roads during curfew. Especially under curfew, ambulances have become essential to every aspect of health care. People can't leave their homes to buy medicine, and they can't travel to the hospital for urgent outpatient care like dialysis. People who care for elderly or ill family members can't get to them. People who are discharged from the hospital after an illness can't get home. So ambulances have become the conduit for all health care, and they are constantly out on the road trying to make sure Palestinians survive. This is in addition to the continued need for emergency service, which is exacerbated by semi-daily shootings of Palestinian civilians by the Israeli army. (See Nablus reports on the army's random shootings of Palestinians during lifting/re-imposition of curfew.)

But every minute that a Palestinian ambulance is on the road or attending to a patient is dangerous. Although the Israeli army is forced to allow ambulances on the roads, soldiers take every opportunity to impede them, and to ensure that health care workers know they are unsafe. Every roving tank that crosses an ambulance's path stops the ambulance. At every checkpoint (which is not just one blockade on a road, but two, with the army controlling the space between), ambulances are stopped and may be delayed for hours, and then may be stopped and delayed again 100ft later at the other side of the checkpoint.

When internationals are present, stopping an ambulance means checking the ID of everyone on board, including patients; searching the ambulance; searching the EMTs and possibly the patients; and waiting. The ambulance can't move until the army says it can. Often, the soldiers just stand there, delaying it.

When internationals are not present, stopping an ambulance may mean doing all of the above, possibly strip-searching the EMTs, possibly beating them, possibly damaging the ambulance, and randomly delaying for hours.

These criminal violations by the Israeli army of the right to health care are only *part* of the incredible stress endured by EMTs. Many EMTs are young volunteers, in their early 20s, who have been living full-time at the ambulance depots for months, sleeping on mattresses on the floor between long shifts. Especially under curfew, there's little else to do -- no other work, no school, no place to decompress. So, in addition to spirit-crushing 24-hour curfew and the daily threat of violence directed at their bodies both as Palestinians and EMTs, they face the stress of being medics in a war zone, having no place to go "home for a break", no time for vacation, no foreseeable end to their tour of duty, witnessing daily military violence visited on their own community and land, and daily having to fight to get basic treatment to members of their community who need it.

To me, as an American Jew trying to understand how Palestinians are surviving this intense psychological and physical battering, it looks like amazing spirit of resistance combined with zombified carrying-on-with-life. But the truth is, I have no idea how they're doing it. We have the same questions about how Jews, queers and others survived in WWII concentration camps. How much deliberate crushing can a people take and still be alive? People survived the concentration camps, but not everyone came out whole. Although for some Jews that experience reinforced the need to fight oppression, others have clearly lost their sense of justice, turning to violence and conquest. Will Palestinians be like those survivors in 50 years, using past suffering to justify evil acts? I hope not -- they aren't yet.
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REPORTS FROM 2 AMBULANCE RUNS, NABLUS
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Ambulance is called for an older man having chest pains, at the top of a hill:
As we come up the hill, we see that the army has taken over (double-occupied) an apartment building and closed off the road with razor wire. There's no other way up the hill. The army does not let ambulances through road closures. The EMTs acknowledge that there's no way to get to the patient, but there's still a danger that the army will notice us. If they do, they'll stop us, search us (or worse) and delay us indefinitely. The driver quietly rolls the ambulance back down the hill until we're out of the line of sight, and breathes a huge sigh of relief.
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Ambulance is called for a Palestinian man caught by the Israeli army on the street during curfew, with reported trauma, possibly beaten: We turn the corner onto the street where the ambulance call came from, and are suddenly face-to-face with a tank. One soldier is hanging out of the top of it pointing an M-16 at us, and two are on the ground. We can't see the injured man, but the EMTs assume the army is hiding him behind the tank.

The soldier motions for us all to get out of the ambulance. I just met this tank 15 minutes ago riding in a different ambulance, so I've already shown them my ID and told them I'm a human rights monitor. They ignore me and tell the two Palestinian EMTs to lift their shirts, supposedly looking for strapped-on explosives or weapons. (On other occasions, soldiers have strip-searched EMTs.) They take the EMTs' identification cards, which they hold onto as a sort of threat- a Palestinian can't go anywhere without an ID card. Then they tell us to step away from the ambulance, and they start to search it. It's a totally meaningless search- they open the glove compartment, pull things out, and rifle the medicines. They tell the driver to start the engine, in case there's an ignition bomb. If there actually were any explosives in the ambulance, their search wouldn't have found them--it was just another half-assed, transparent method of delaying emergency health care and harassing  EMTs.

 

Five minutes have passed since we arrived on the scene. Now that the soldiers have moved us to the side, the EMTs see the patient's legs sticking out from behind the tank, about 25 ft away from us. They ask if they can go to him. The soldiers say no, that he's faking his injuries. They call me over, and closer to the patient, to ask me why I'm not doing human rights work in Israel. Now I can see the patient, propped up against a wall, holding his throat and struggling to breathe. They ask again if they can treat the patient, and the soldiers say no, he's fine and he's under arrest. I ask one soldier outside the tank if he's a doctor, and he says no. The other says he's an EMT.

 

I ask if he'd be willing to sign a paper saying the patient is fine, and point out that ten minutes have passed. The patient starts to throw up. Now the soldiers say I can approach the patient, but the EMTs can't. I tell them I'm not qualified, and after another minute they give in and let the EMTs come to the patient.

The EMTs come over and check out the patient, and tell the soldiers he needs oxygen. The oxygen hook-up is in the ambulance, so they ask the soldiers if they can bring the patient over. The soldiers say no, the patient is under arrest, and the EMTs have to bring the oxygen out of the ambulance. The EMTs say they can't, and the soldiers just shrug their shoulders.

The EMTs ask permission to walk over to the ambulance to get supplies. The soldiers say okay, and we bring out their supply box. They put a shunt in the patient's arm and prepare an IV. Just then the soldier in the tank gets a call on his headphones, and calls to the other soldiers. They get in the tank, hand me the EMTs' and patient's ID cards, and leave.

 

 

 

 

July 7, 2002
Posted by Emmaia

Double-occupied homes and denial of healthcare

 

This was written as a report on an ISM action, bringing food and medicine to Palestinians being held hostage in their home in Nablus because the Israeli army has commandeered their house.

But the imposition of curfew in Nablus complicates everything even more than usual. It's impossible to talk about double-occupied houses without also talking about how Palestinians inside and outside those houses are manipulated as the army lifts and re-imposes the 24-hour curfew; how the army has shut down the basic survival infrastructure of Nablus and the surrounding villages and refugee camps; how Palestinians risk their lives just by existing in a city patrolled by teenage soldiers who kill with impunity and have been taught to view Palestinians as subhuman; and how the presence of internationals--by reasserting that Palestinians have human rights and are resisting the Occupation in thousands of peaceful ways--enrages the army, and in that way puts Palestinians at risk for more vengeful violence.

So even though this was just supposed to be an action report, I've included a lot of context, and tried to break it up with headings. Sorry if I've made it more confusing -- it *is* complex. But it's not "too complicated for foreigners to understand", as Israeli pro-Occupation forces like to tell us. It is painfully clear what is happening here: the Israeli government takes Israeli teenagers and turns them into animals, so that they can carry out the bloody task of bringing Palestinian life to a screeching halt, and ultimately complete the project of making Palestinian survival impossible.

DOUBLE-OCCUPIED HOUSES
---------------------
The army announced that curfew would be lifted today from 9am-2pm, for the first time in 4 days. But in buildings where the army has taken over apartments and confined Palestinian tenants to a few rooms (or *one* room), the lifting of curfew doesn't necessarily mean that people can leave to get basic food and medicine. If one or two people are allowed to leave, the army may still refuse to let them, and the supplies they've brought, back into the occupied house.

So internationals planned this morning to to visit several double-occupied houses to check whether residents had been allowed out, to try to make sure they could bring supplies back in, and to minimize army harassment of Palestinians in the process.

LIFTING & RE-IMPOSING CURFEW
---------------------
By 9am, Nablus was packed with people and cars trying to meet their basic survival needs for at least the next few days--food, toilet paper, medicine, clothing, human contact. These things are simply unavailable when curfew is imposed. The hillsides above the city center were also filled with cars and people trying to get in and out of the city before 2pm, when curfew would be reestablished, as usual, by the arrival of Apache helicopters shooting live rounds indiscriminately into the streets, and patrols of tanks and APCs shooting on sight.

At 11am, when Nablus was nearly impassable with cars and pedestrians, the army arrived early with the helicopters and tanks, shelling and shooting--re-imposing curfew with no warning, 2 hours after lifting it, and 3 hours earlier than they'd announced. Concerned about reaching the families in double-occupied houses, internationals took a taxi halfway up the mountain to New Nablus.

DENIAL OF ACCESS TO HEALTH CARE
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The army has double-occupied many buildings in New Nablus, because of the neighborhood's vantage point over the city. In one particular building, isolated at the very top of the hill, the army has pushed 4 large families into 2 apartments and has refused to let them leave during curfew. Aside from the need for food and supplies for the 15 children and 10 adults living there, at least one of the children is sick and needs several medicines. The families have not been able to get them, since no one is allowed in or out of the house. In a major violation of the Geneva Conventions, the Israeli army even prevents ambulances from delivering medicine or basic health care to the residents of double-occupied houses.

We carried a day's-worth of food and some medicine, hoping to deliver it to the families trapped inside.

RISKS TO PALESTINIANS WHO RESIST PEACEFULLY
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The taxi driver drove us about halfway up the hill -- as close to the house as we felt comfortable bringing him, although he wanted to take us further. When a Palestinian is seen facilitating internationals in the act of protecting human rights or questioning the Israeli army's actions, he or she risks military reprisals which could take any form at all--beating, shooting, house demolition, etc. Also, by driving on the streets as curfew was being re-imposed, he risked being stopped, detained, beaten or shot.

"WARNING SHOTS" AND ARMY SHOOTINGS OF CIVILIANS
---------------------
As we got out of the taxi and collected ourselves, we heard an Apache overhead and showed our empty hands to it. It fired on us anyway, and then moved on to fire at Palestinians climbing the steep paths toward their homes. The shots fired during the re-imposition of curfew are generally called "warning shots", meaning they're fired into the air, the ground, or "nowhere in particular." But at least four Palestinians were hospitalized with bullet wounds by early afternoon. Two were hit in the leg by metal bullets coated with thin rubber, and two hit by live rounds--one in the chest/shoulder, one in the face.

IMPACT OF ARMY MOVEMENT ON CIVILIANS
---------------------
On our hike up the hill we found two buildings where windows are sandbagged and draped with camouflage, meaning they've been commandeered by the army. Residents told us that the army leaves during the day and reoccupies the buildings each night. Any time the army enters or leaves an area, it's a military operation, and residents are subjected to restricted movement, fear and/or physical violence by the army. The residents are clearly terrified, and asked repeatedly if we could stay with them during the daily reoccupation of their building.

THE REST OF THE STORY
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When we finally got close to the house we were looking for, we took a wrong turn and ended up on a road just below it. The families inside saw us and waved, and as we turned around to get to the house another way, the soldiers upstairs from them saw us and halted us. Two confused soldiers came out to ask who we were, then told us to wait. We waited, nothing happened, so we shouted again that we wanted to bring food and medicine to the people in the house. At one point we waited so long that we thought they'd forgotten about us, and we started to leave. They halted us again, but in that strange, confused, semi-respectful way that Palestinians never get but internationals sometimes do--"just wait, like 5 minutes, okay?"

Finally the soldiers said "okay, you can go", and we said "okay, we're coming around", and we went around the hill up toward the house. As we approached the house they never halted us, so two internationals walked the food and medicine straight into the house and took some information from the residents, while the other internationals kept watch outside. Although two APCs zoomed up the road to the house, they didn't stop for the internationals. After about three minutes, soldiers shouted for the internationals to leave--and since we were done, we left.

The family reported to us that they have been double-occupied since December 2001. They told us that, on 5 separate occasions, soldiers have come down from upstairs, entered the apartments where they've confined the 4 Palestinian families, and harassed them (details of harassment to be gathered.) The families were badly in need of supplies, and clearly starved for contact with the outside world.

 

 

 

 

July 4, 2002
Report from Emmaia
Menaced by settlers as well as soldiers: Settlers Road Block, Checkpoints, and Barak's "Generous Offer"

On Tuesday we stopped in rural Burin, a Palestinian village on the way to Nablus. Residents of Burin are under threat of violence and economic vandalism from three settlements which Israelis, Americans, Canadians and others have set up on illegally seized land nearby.  Burin residents told us that settlers recently stole a Palestinian house, ejecting the family who lived in it, and that they have regularly been stealing donkeys and sheep from Palestinian herds, totaling about 40 sheep so far.   

 

Firefighters in Burin told us that about a month after the house was stolen settlers from the same settlement came to a house deeper in Burin, put the  family in a room, doused the house with gasoline and set it on fire. The family escaped but the house burnt.  Other Palestinians' houses in Burin have also recently been raided by settlers, their possessions burglarized or burnt.

Although settlers are famous for shooting directly into Palestinian houses or fields, Burin residents, like all Palestinian residents here also expect attack along the road.   Residents told us that settlers throw stones at passing cars, and in that way recently caused a car crash that killed seven people.
 

Because settlements are heavily protected by the Israeli army as well as their own paramilitary, the roads to many settlements are guarded by Israeli army checkpoints.  This means that settler attacks on Palestinian villages are conducted more or less under the nose of the Israeli army. In fact, Burin residents told us that the house stolen by settlers is at the Yetshar settlement checkpoint.

It is not the army's job to police settlers who maintain their privileged status as "Israelis on Israeli land" even as they occupy land they have illegally confiscated from local Palestinians and even though a great many settlers are American.  However, it is the army's job to protect and provide security for Israeli settlers, so when Palestinians report the settlers' crimes to the army they are met with "It's not our jurisdiction."  But when settlers make charges against Palestinians, the army, which is encamped all around, intervenes with military force.

 

Palestinian vulnerability to violence by settlers and the Israeli army is increased by road closures.  Road closures are created either by roadblocks, where army bulldozers push impassable heaps of rubble into the street, or by army checkpoints, which limit or prevent passage.  The army controls passage on virtually all paved roads on the West Bank, and all Palestinians who travel on those roads, whether they are just a regular joe trying to get somewhere or an ambulance driver with a critically ill patient on board, are regularly held up for hours at each checkpoint.  Even after being searched, showing ID and waiting around for a few hours, they may not be allowed through.  While they wait they are always at risk of violence at the hands of the Israeli military. 

 

Though the placement of road blocks and army checkpoints on roads which can be traveled by car often forces people to walk on paths through open lands between villages, around Burin and neighboring villages settlers have seized high land where they have both a clear view and a clear shot at people walking throughout the entire valley. Settlers also have easy access to Palestinian farm land where they have menaced farmers and burned olive groves.  Anyone who walks the back paths may also run into the army.  Not only are there possible checkpoints at the entrances to rural villages where no main roads pass through, but soldiers have recently been seen by internationals simply lurking along the path.

The Israeli army has positioned itself as the local law enforcement authority, granting or denying passage, seizing Palestinians it suspects of activities which it has defined as criminal.  By controlling the roads and patrolling the back paths, it polices literally all local activity.  It has defined Palestinians as "foreigners" and settlers as "locals", so to avoid responding  when settlers attack, the Israeli army falls back on its official role as "army" rather than "police."

If there are still any questions about why Palestinians refused Barak's "generous offer" of keeping most of their land but surrendering the roads to Israeli control, these stories should answer them.

 

 

 

 

July 3, 2002

Report from Emmaia

Summary Assassination; live Ammunition fired at Children

Nablus has been under curfew for several days and today it was lifted for six hours.   The curfew locks people inside their houses 24 hours a day. Since it's rarely lifted more than once every few days, Nablus is packed with people trying to do a week's worth of conducting their lives: shopping for drinking water and food, visiting friends and relatives who need support, getting healthcare, etc.  

 

A funeral march and demonstration was held today was held today for two new shaheed or martyrs, allegedly Hamas members, who were killed by the Israeli army.   One man, instead of being captured and brought to trial, was burned by the Israeli military with an energy bomb (which is something grenade that disintegrates everything around with fire).  The second man was shot in the chest with an automatic weapon fired through a window.  The house they had previously been staying in was demolished by Israeli bulldozers.  The summary assassination of suspects or even combatants is violation of the Geneva conventions, as is the demolition of houses. The Israeli military regularly does both.

 

Nablus is built around a sort of sinkhole at the center of a ring of mountains with the middle of the city at the bottom and buildings spreading up the hillside.  The Israeli army has taken over the high points, building a military settlement on one mountaintop and commandeering over 15 Palestinian houses and apartments with good vantage points. From they observe peoples' movements everywhere in Nablus. 

 

Israeli snipers have a clear shot at anyone in the streets, and we often hear shots echoing around the valley.  They also patrol in Jeeps, armored personnel carriers and tanks. Tanks roar down city streets pointing their artillery toward anyone they see. The tanks are too heavy for city streets and they often take shortcuts over the sidewalk, so every street is rutted and torn up and the sidewalks crushed into rubble in the course of routine patrol.  

 

Higher up on the hillside, tanks can be seen moving up and down the road in huge clouds of dust, threatening to come down into the city, and then retreating over and over. This is simple harassment of Palestinian residents for whom coming outside, even when curfew is lifted, is a huge safety risk.

 

In the houses the Israeli army has occupied even the lifting of curfew may be meaningless.  Soldiers repeatedly tell us that they don't want people to be able to see their operations.  When they operate outdoors they try to send us around corners so we can't observe and when they are indoors in confiscated houses they create a ring of "closed military zone" around themselves to prevent anyone from seeing inside.   So when they have taken over apartments they have either removed the family living there or locked them in a room and forbidden them to leave. Residents nearby have also been totally imprisoned "for the safety of the soldiers."

Today groups of internationals tried to visit Palestinian families who are locked into their homes because the Israeli army has commandeered an apartment or building nearby.  In each case, the soldiers refused to allow access to the houses, even simply to make sure residents were safe. We walked the hour-long trip back into the city since no vehicles except ambulances are allowed on the roads during curfews. Anyone in a car runs the risk of being shot, whether at long or short range. What makes it a little less hard to take is the fact that, throughout the city, small groups of children resist the curfew by playing on the street, although they stay near enough to a doorway to run inside when tanks come.  

 

Walking back into the city we had just passed a crowd of small kids as we heard an APC coming up the street at high speed.  The children scattered and, as the APC came around the corner, it fired live ammunition into the street.  When it passed the kids came out again.   We weren't sure if we were heartened or sickened by their fearlessness.

Although some children may be injured to the situation, Palestinians in Nablus and beyond live now in terror under Israeli military occupation.  Even in areas not technically under curfew, any meeting with the army can easily result in detention, death or anything in between.  There really is no way to avoid contact with the Israeli army.  So every day, just being a Palestinian who is alive and present in the West Bank is a gamble and resisting the occupation increases the risk.

 

But resistance is still here even though small children throwing stones at tanks are met with live fire and organizers of every nonviolent march prepare for tear gas, bullets, tanks, arrest and long detention. People here recognize the pettiness of the harassments the Israeli army visits on them.  They understand the purpose is to wear them down, make their society fall apart, and turn them into animals struggling for survival.  Amazingly they are still incredibly warm, welcoming to us, and generous with each other in spite of the Israeli government's best efforts at destruction.

 

 

 

 

June 30, 2002

Report from Emmaia

Children used as human shields and "insurance"

 

We stayed last night in Ramallah, which has been under continuous curfew since 2pm yesterday. This morning we heard that soldiers in nearby Al Amri Camp at around 4:30am had started rounding up all men ages 15-50 living in the camp. About 25 internationals walked to the camp, which was guarded at each end of the main road by multiple tanks.

As we proceeded down into the camp, women came into the streets to tell us that the men had been rounded up starting early in the morning, and they expected house raids to follow shortly. They were scared for the men and asked us to go help them. We split into groups--a few internationals stayed in a house that expected to be raided soon, and two groups went out onto the main road to try to find where the detainees were being held. We found them being held in the field of a school which had been taken over by the Israeli army, about 250 Palestinian men (I counted) grouped under partial shelter but basically in the sun; most sitting and about 60 standing with no place to sit.

While the first group of internationals attempted to negotiate their way into the field, we (JF, Huweida, Emmaia) went around the back, ending up separated from the detainees just by a fence and plenty of soldiers. We arrived at 12:45 and stood there for about 45 minutes as the soldiers did absolutely nothing but detain the men, as they had clearly been doing since 5am. The soldiers refused to say what was going on, except to launch into political monologues about the need to detain all Palestinian men in order to "fight terror". They wouldn't say how long they expected people to be held, what was going to happen to them, or whether they would be released. There were also medical personnel either talking or being detained by soldiers. We also saw additional groups of men being marched in from elsewhere in the camp -- probably another 50 people; and more groups of men who had been rounded up at various places in the camp but not yet taken to the field -- probably another 20-30 people.

After about 45 minutes standing behind the field trying to figure out what was going on, the soldiers guarding us got more and more insistent that we should leave. Ultimately they threatened to arrest us, and we agreed to be escorted out of the camp. Our escort, a soldier who had been arguing with us, fired shots behind us to get us to speed up. As we exited, the soldiers gave conflicting instructions about where to walk, and attempted to arrest us, Huweida in particular, for not following their orders.

We various groups of internationals converged on a house the army had entered, where they were apparently holding a pre-teenaged boy on the balcony as "insurance" while searching that house and the house of relatives next door. They had arrested a mentally-incapacitated man. As we started asking questions, at least 7 soldiers moved him next door to his uncle's house for questioning. They gave various answers to our inquiries about what they were going to do with him--take him to the emergency room, take him nowhere, question him inside the house, do nothing... etc. The family asked us to stay outside to keep the soldiers from hurting him, but ultimately the soldiers trotted the uncle outside to tell us it was okay, and that if we stayed the soldiers would make trouble for them.

We (Amelia, Mike, JF, Emmaia) walked away from the soldiers and into the camp again. Soldiers were going from house to house, searching and marking each house, and dynamiting doors where no one was home. We found several apartments that the Israeli army had taken over, including one where soldiers were watching the World Cup on a confiscated television. In each of them the soldiers at first denied that anyone had been displaced from the apartment, then wavered in their story and simply said they didn't know where the resident families were, but we could "be sure they were safe."

Neighbors also confirmed in some cases that the apartments had been occupied (i.e. by people living there, not by the army) and that they were worried that the residents had been hurt.

We walked around the camp asking basic questions of soldiers we came across entering or occupying houses -- what's going on here, where are the residents, what are you looking for, do you have suspicions that are specific to this house, etc. In some instances there were acts that were illegal beyond the usual facts of the Occupation: in one case they attempted to use a Palestinian man as their "door-knocker" to gain access to another house; in another case they used a child as a human shield; in another case they detonated smoke bombs to flush people from their houses. In each case soldiers refused to identify themselves by name or by military unit.

As we stood watching the Israeli army search one set of houses, a new unit came barreling down the street toward us, grabbed John Francis and handcuffed him. It was the Lieutenant Colonel from the detention area behind the fields who had particularly hated us. He insisted that we were under arrest (the army cannot arrest us, although it can detain us) and that he would take our passport numbers and make sure we were kicked out of Israel. He also told Mike and Amelia that they were under arrest based on the warning he'd given at the detention field, although they had not been with us before. We attempted to negotiate with him, to leave without being taken into custody, to allow soldiers to walk us out of the camp, etc. He refused any negotiation, said that he had seen us laughing at him, etc. It would not be an overstatement to say that he was frothing at the mouth. He insisted that he would take us in a military vehicle to somewhere unspecified "outside Ramallah". Since John Francis was still handcuffed and it was clear we weren't getting away from him, we all agreed to get in the Jeep, squished in with two soldiers up front and one hanging out the door behind us.

They drove us out of Ramallah on the main road to Karandiya checkpoint. On the way, we saw three pre-teen boys outside who threw a rock each at the Jeep. They screeched the Jeep to a halt, and without a word to each other, all three soldiers began firing live ammunition back down the road toward the boys. We're pretty sure they didn't hit anyone. They started up the Jeep again and dumped us just outside of Karandiya checkpoint, without having seen our ID, saying "you can put that, what you just saw, that shooting, in your report."

We're in Jerusalem now... more later.