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[Excerpts from Ramadan in the West Bank, 2007, Eva Bartlett]
It is 10 pm and the blistering desert-like heat has dissipated into an evening cool which sees the residents of Palestinian Susiya, in the South Hebron Hills, wrapped under heavy covers on their sleeping mats inside weathered tents. Most went to bed two hours ago, and only the stars and the bright spotlights of the illegal Jewish colony over the hills compete for attention.
Across a horizon of cacti silhouettes, larger forms are moving, creeping towards the tents. From the shadows, shapes take form: 8 fully-armed Israeli soldiers from the neighbouring military base, bee-lining across the land of the family I am sleeping with. post continues
December 12, 2007
**[israeli army jeeps passing during one instance of “curfew” on a Palestinian village which lasted from 3pm until after midnight. No official halt was called on the curfew. This curfew, including tear gas, sound bombs, live ammunition, and harassment patrols –where late into the night army jeeps drive up and down the roads, blaring their horns and shining spotlights into the windows of residents long-since retreated to their homes –is a typical example of the sort of lockdowns Azzoun villagers have been under consistently for the last two months, and sporadically for years. Unpredictable harassment like this leaves residents wondering when the next ‘curfew’ will fall. A supply of frozen bread and canned goods is a wise idea…]
**[The effects of such a daylight curfew include disrupting school and shutting down businesses far in advance of closing hours. Given the dire situation of the economy, shutting down early can cripple an already ailing business.]
“Yesterday was the beginning of the pilgrimage to the Hajj, when all the people make pilgrimage to Mecca. At this time each year, all of the people come to the mosque to say goodbye before they leave for Mecca. They have permission from the Ministry, they have everything. But they go to the village’s front gate and there are the soldiers, blocking the gate. They don’t allow anyone to leave? Why? They are old, they don’t throw stones.
My father is old, 77 years old, and has problems breathing. When the soldiers came to impose curfew yesterday he was in the mosque. The soldiers said ‘get off the street, go to your homes,’ but I was afraid for my father and continued to the mosque. I found him inside, breathing very heavily, having troubles from the teargas the soldiers had shot on the street. It made him dizzy and hard for him to walk. There were over 250 people in the mosque, very crowded, because so many people wanted to say goodbye before the Hajj.”
–Azzoun resident on December 2nd curfew on the village.
**[Israel routinely fires tear gas in homes, as well as shops and in the street, during the invasions. The elderly man has had tear gas fired into his home twice in one month, the first time waking him violently from his sleep.]
*live bullets, used in home with sleeping civilians during Israeli army search for “wanted” man. The home in which these rounds were spent
* “rubber” bullet –a thinly-coated metal ball; routinely shot at close range, this weapon can be lethal
Azzoun, a village of 11,000, lies at an important junction between numerous surrounding villages and the larger western West Bank cities of Qalqilya and Nablus. It is an agricultural area, olives and olive oil, fruit and vegetables being the primary income-generating products.
After the days of recent curfews –when residents are ordered abruptly back to their homes by the israeli army with threats that they will be “badly punished” should they leave their homes, and with the understanding that they are fair game for the fully-armed soldiers, irrespective of age or sex –the Mayor of Azzoun related some of the economic and other problems:
“The situation in Azzoun is very bad, because of the curfews for 4 days and the on-going closures. We don’t know if it will continue or not. If you close the road from Azzoun, that means you close the whole area, directly affecting the 7 or 8 villages surrounding Azzoun. As a result, the economy is very bad: no one comes from outside and many shops are closed.”
These closures, as well as israel’s confiscation of land, has greatly devastated Azzoun: “The agriculture is suffering: people are frightened the IOF will cut down olive trees near the highway. Other people simply cannot get access to their land, to work the land, to pick their olives, to tend their trees.”
Azzoun remains a village besieged by IOF violence, daily and nightly invasions, arbitrarily-imposed roadblocks, and continual abductions and beatings of young teenage boys, imposed under an unending spate of terror by israeli soldiers and their unpredictable collective punishment. The people of Azzoun, although strong, are faltering: their economy is in shambles, and their work and study is continually disrupted by the ongoing israeli army harassment.
December 2, 2007, israeli army invasion and curfew on Azzoun:
video clip *if video doesn’t load, use this link
video clip part 2 *if video doesn’t load, use this link
**[Azzoun resident repairing electricity transister damaged during israeli soldiers’ November 26 invasion. The power outage lasted for about 1 hour before this lone man braved streets which israeli army jeeps still patrolled.]
**[Damage to the home of a man sought by Israel: bullet-riddled walls & doors; broken windows, mirrors, & cabinets; punctured clothing; puddles of spent bullets –evidence of firing in just one corner of one room. This form of collective punishment –the destruction of the wanted man’s family property –is commonly imposed, irrespective of terrified sleeping residents.]
Trying to Comprehend Fear:
During one late-night invasion, Israeli army jeeps park in front of the building in which I and other volunteers stay. Soldiers spread out, some heading for the old town streets, others milling by the jeeps, others disappearing around the sides of neighbouring buildings. They fire flares over the homes of sleeping residents, and then at the window of our flat, repeatedly, trying to intimidate us. It is terrifying, wondering whether the flares would come through the window, would progress to tear gas or sound bombs, whether the soldiers might try to enter the building to shake us up a bit more.
During another invasion and curfew, when Israeli army jeeps again prowl the streets, revving their motors in that aggressive way they do and stopping to loiter outside windows, I try to imagine the uncertainty and fear Palestinians might feel. Would their home be invaded tonight, and if so how much damage would be done to the house and their possessions this time? Would their son, father, brother be taken tonight? How many times would soldiers come back in the night? When could the villagers sleep again? I tried to imagine but couldn’t fully comprehend the daily horror of it all.
And that is the psychology of the colonizers: to always keep people on edge, never knowing if a raid is imminent, if a house is going to be searched and destroyed, a family member arrested and sent to prison… Never knowing if roads will be blocked, a flying checkpoint will be imposed, if permanent checkpoints will be open that day to allow passage to people trying to study, work, live…
Uncertainty and an always present nervous fear is the psychology of the occupation. Palestinians deal with it, as they must, and do so with a brave, humorous dignity. But it affects them nonetheless, affects particularly children and their study habits, their play habits. It makes kids grow old young, and necessitates a daily, ingrained patience in situations where most people living outside of Palestine would be outraged.
RELATED:
It was an opportunity too rich to pass: Christmas in Bethlehem. At this time, when Wars on Terror are rife and the people of Gaza and Iraq are dying, ignored, in unfathomable numbers, it was with great reverence in humanity that i stood with the two groups gathered to plead: End the Siege on Gaza. The plea extends to all of us from countries which implicitly or otherwise are supporting and prolonging this assault on an already besieged nation.
Listening to carols which normally inspire warm, safe, comfortable feelings and bring memories of Christmases and family times past, it was with immense sadness that Gaza stayed on my mind.
December 5, 2007
Mohammed, a youth of 16 from Azzoun village near the West Bank city of Qalqilya, has returned from his week-long stay in the hospital. He can move around more than one would expect for someone who was just 8 days ago shot by the israeli army during one of its regular invasions into Azzoun. The bullet entered his left side just two inches from his heart, passed through his lung and, penetrating his diaphragm, passed on just one inch from his spinal cord into his spleen where it lodged. The hospital report records all of this, adding that there resulted a dangerous amount of internal bleeding and jaundice. His spleen was surgically removed and he was attached to machine which pumped out blood from the internal bleeding.
At the time of his injury, he was outside the home of his grandmother, in the streets of the village’s old city quarter. It was after 2:30pm, kids had just gotten out of school for the day, the streets filled with their talk and play. Mohammed walked for about 100 metres then fell unconscious.
There are claims that boys were throwing stones from the area where Mohammed was targeted. He had not been involved, was dragged into the fray only in the sense that he paid the price for the accusations. Never mind that it is illegal under international law to shoot live ammunition at boys armed with stones.
Mohammed was shot from above. Unarmed. Even the rubber bullets, metal balls coated with a thin sheath of rubber, are already a breach of comprehension: upon impact, the metal inside often comes free of its candy-wrapper shell, inflicting serious enough damage.
An M-16 bullet –pointed and deadly –has no place in civilian areas against youths, certainly not against bystanders.
After his spleen was surgically removed, Mohammed spent until December 4th in the Qalqilya hospital. Back home, he now has regular visits from the doctor –for check-ups and to change the dressing of his bullet hole wound, which is still open and needing to heal cleanly. He will not attend school for at least a month, minimum. A relative confided that Mohammed now knows great psychological stress, particularly when he hears israeli army jeeps and soldiers, a regular presence in Azzoun. Further, he has no spleen. The function of the spleen is essentially to filter blood of bacteria and thereby keep the immune system strong. Without the spleen, one becomes vastly more susceptible to infection.
Mohammed’s injury isn’t the only tragedy in the family. For the last 7 months, his mother, Umm Shadi, has been attached 24 hours a day to life-supporting oxygen tanks, without which she would die. Her lung disease means that most of the family’s paltry income goes towards acquiring oxygen tanks and medication. It also leaves her room-bound, able to go only on short jaunts to the bathroom or around the house.
For the first 7 months, the family had to scrape together money to cover the cost of the oxygen tanks –averaging 300 shekels per month –as well as the electricity costs for a motorized oxygen filter –averaging 200 shekels per month. Bringing the tanks from Qalqilya can range from 40-80 shekels per trip, depending on whether on the presence and number of roadblocks and ‘flying checkpoints’.**
The power at Mohammed’s home went out during one visit. What is a minor inconvenience for many could be fatal for Mohammed’s mother. One oxygen tank –normally working in conjunction with the electrically-motored filter –depletes out after 24 hours without electricity, a third of the time as with the motored filter. If this should happen on a day when the two reserve tanks have been depleted and a curfew is on, a very imaginable scenario, she would soon after die.
In 2000, while biking to nearby Kafr Thulth village, Shadi was knocked from his bike by an israeli military jeep which approached from behind and continued without stopping. The fall caused serious head injuries, resulting in 7 operations during his 5 week stay in hospital. For the next 4 years, Shadi required medication to combat psychological problems which resulted from the incident and surgeries.
With an elderly father whose eyes are so poor that he also cannot provide an income, a critically ill mother, Mohammed’s medical expenses, Shadi’s ability to work only part time, and the generally appalling state of joblessness, this family is struggling to make ends meet, literally struggling for their lives.
It doesn’t help that their village, Azzoun, is regularly invaded and, for the last two months, has had full lockdown curfews imposed on average at least once a week, sometimes more. It doesn’t help that Azzoun’s economy is also on curfew, the roadblocks which regularly cut off access on all exiting roads also thereby cutting off means to support a business and earn a living.
Mohammed now anxiously awaits the doctor’s verdict: how he will survive without his spleen, how many doctors’ visits will be necessary, how much all of this is going to cost the family, when he can return to school to continue his education. He also waits, with dread, for the next zionist invasion. Based on the last two months, that should not be a long wait.
** ‘flying checkpoints’ are so-named as they appear suddenly on stretches of road, one or two military vehicles blocking the road and imposing a new, arbitrary roadblock. They are but one of the many means of interrupting and/or preventing Palestinians’ passage in the occupied West Bank.
During the Israeli army’s latest crackdown on the residents of Azzoun village, undercover police abducted a youth of 16 years for extended interrogation interspersed with beating.
The Azzoun teenager, Mahmoud Radouan, was riding in a friend’s donkey cart on road 55 just outside Izbat at Tabib just west of Azzoun, en route to the friend’s agricultural land in nearby An Nabi Elyas, when undercover police dressed in Palestinian civilian clothes and driving what appeared to be a Palestinian taxi stopped the two youths, pointing a handgun at them and forcing them to sit on the road beside the guardrail. After 30 minutes, Mahmoud’s friend was released but he was kept, the police reportedly telling him: “we have something on you; we know you make problems.”
The subsequent interrogation, in the police taxi and at the Ariel police station where he was then taken, revolved around accusations of stone-throwing at cars on highway 55 as well as at police and military jeeps when they invade Azzoun. Mahmoud was threatened repeatedly, interrogators telling him he must confess to throwing stones if he wanted to return home or else he’d be taken to court and fined. He was repeatedly threatened that the Israeli police would “make problems” for him and his family. He was further repeatedly cursed, profanities used against him and female family members.
Interrogators pulled Mahmoud’s jacket over his head, winding the sleeves around his neck and tightening them to choke the detained youth. He was then punched repeatedly in the abdomen, side, and head, as well as struck on his leg with the butt of an M16. He was interrogated thus for 2 hours, beaten each time he denied the allegations. Despite the beating which accompanied his interrogation, Mahmoud continued to proclaim his innocence, denying the allegations and declaring that he had not taken part in stone throwing.
The teen’s interrogators continued in their efforts to coerce Mahmoud into confessing by threatening him with solitary confinement and further threatening that he would be bound and hung from the ceiling and further tortured by 4 men.
Eventually, having failed to coerce a confession, Mahmoud was taken to a corridor where he was made to sit, one leg bound to the metal bench, for another approximately 4 hours. Around 10 pm, Mahmoud was led to a military vehicle and dropped off near the village of Harris, far from his own village of Azzoun. After an hour of waiting on the road near Harris, locals lent the youth a phone on which to call his family. Another 10 minutes later, Mahmoud was able to flag down a taxi heading to Azzoun, finally arriving near midnight. The ordeal, led on baseless accusations, lasted nearly 10 hours and exemplifies what many young Palestinian men undergo as a result of Israel’s policy of targeting youths without cause and evidence.
**see B’Tselem for downloadable detailed map of area
This is not the first time Mahmoud has been unjustly subjected to beatings and interrogation. Just one year prior, in winter, Mahmoud, then 15, was arrested in his home at 1 am. Israeli forces knocked on his family door, initially asking for his brother, Mohammed, but returning 15 minutes later to seize Mahmoud instead, taking him to Ma’ale Shamron settlement police station for interrogation. Two other youths, aged 14, from Azzoun were also taken for questioning at the same time. At Ma’ale Shamron, police began a file on the youths, then taking them to the Ariel settlement police station. During the nearly hour-long ride, soldiers beat Mahmoud with batons on his head and all over his body, cursing his family and making accusations of stone-throwing, the pretext for the detention.
At Ariel, Mahmoud was taken to the roof where 2 Israeli interrogators put a plastic bag put over his head, pushed him to the ground, arms handcuffed behind his back and feet bound, and subsequently kicked and punched him all over his body for approximately 20 minutes. All the while, the two men continued to accuse Mahmoud of stone-throwing and to curse his mother and family.
The youth was finally taken inside to a bench where he was made to sit, still handcuffed and feet bound, from 3 am until 6 am. Passing police would hit him as he sat, slapping him awake when he dozed.
When Israeli intelligence officers arrived after 6 am they began to interrogate all 3 youths separately. Mahmoud was 3 times taken for interrogation, lasting 30 minutes each time. During these periods of questioning, his interrogators would ask the same questions, lob the same accusations, and would repeatedly try to coerce Mahmoud into confessing to stone-throwing. “You throw stones. Where is your gun? Your friend said you throw stones.” These statements and accusations were likewise put to the other two youths, in attempts to trick them into confessing into actions they deny having committed.
At around 4 am, Mahmoud was taken to Qedumim settlement for another 20 minutes before finally being released near the village of Jinsafut, approximately 8 km east of Azzoun.
These two personal incidents are not isolated but rather illustrate on-going and systematic policies and practices which serve to vilify and terrorize Palestinian youths. Residents suspect that along with the ongoing imposition of curfews and roadblocks on Azzoun, interrogation attacks like these are another element of the long-term strategy to fabricate a history of violence in the village in order to justify the construction of a separation barrier blocking the main entrance to Azzoun and cutting off access to road 55.
While the world focuses on and waits for the outcome of the much-touted summit in Annapolis on Tuesday, Israel continues with its human rights violations and killings in Gaza and the West Bank.
Sunday saw the assassination of a young man, Mohammed Kosa, nicknamed “Azzalayim,” ready to be pardoned by Israel in recent agreements between the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority and Israel. Not the first such occassion, Azzalayim, 23, believed he had been granted amnesty and pardon, and was shot at a coffee shop near his Tulkarem refugee camp home Sunday afternoon. He believed this because he was told by IOF soldiers: “It’s okay, you are not wanted any longer. You can go home.” So he did.
This pardon not honoured echoes that of the Nablus former fighter who laid down his weapons in the deal and was consequently imprisoned, after his home and that of his neighbours was ransacked, the bottom floor of his own home bombed and destroyed.
This young man without a face from Tulkarem will not be missed by those outside his circle, family, and camp. Israeli media has reported his cold-blooded assassination as that “defending” Israeli soldiers have killed a wanted militant in Tulkarem. That, apparently, is sufficient. No more questions needed, nor facts clarified. Never mind the pardon, never mind the location, never mind the undercover siege by the Israeli special forces into this densely-packed civilian area.
His story is closed.
IDF soldiers kill wanted Palestinian militant in Tul Karm [Ha’aretz]
Like those of the many Tulkarem residents who themselves have been, currently are, or have close family members who are, imprisoned without charge or reason in Israeli jails.
Umm S sat in one corner of her well-kept home, relating the whereabouts of her 4 sons and 1 daughter: “One was martyred, one has been in prison for 6 years, another was taken 4 months before, after being shot in his leg and chest, then arrested in his home, and 1 was released after 5 years in administrative detention. The daughter spent a year and a half in Israeli prisons. She is 19.
The friend of the family acting as translator cited this one family as an example of families across Palestine: at least 2 in prison, usually in administrative detention (meaning that no charges have been laid and the incarcerated can be so kept indefinitely, for upwards of 5 years as often happens).
“In the 1st Intifada, the IOF took our sons and fathers. In this Intifada, they take anyone.”
Referring to Annapolis two days hence, he continued: “Israel does not take this summit seriously, but we do, because our brothers and sisters are in jail.”
The translator related his own family experience: “My son is in an Israeli prison. He is 16 years old and has been imprisoned for 1.5 years.”
That would make the boy 14.5 years old upon arrest. He himself was held in Israeli prisons for 4 years from 1984, and his brother is currently in prison for the long-term.
B, who also translated the stories, has his own story, imprisoned at 16 for 2 years. He had joined the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the Fatah-offshoot resistance fighters, at 14 after his cousin was shot and killed in front of him by the IOF. Sentenced to 5 years, he had an Israeli lawyer who got him out after 2 years and on 7,000 shekels bail.
He related his arrest: “I was caught leaving my home and taken to the DCO. The Israeli soldiers beat me on my kneecaps, then took me straight to jail. They never gave me medical attention. I couldn’t stand up to use the bathroom on my own for one month.”
Post-incarceration, B renounced participation in the Brigades, opting to pursue education: “I quit Al Aqsa because I wanted to educate myself,” he confessed with determination.
Given that he has lost friends and family to the Occupation forces, lost two years of his young life to the prison system, his pledge is convincing, though the future obstacles seemingly unavoidable.
Annapolis nears, but life in camps like Tulkarem continues to grind under Occupation, camp residents continuing to crawl through a mire of unfulfilled peace and amnesty pledges. Life on West Bank roads barely crawls, the number of “flying checkpoints” increasing as the summit nears, the length of lines increasingly in tandem with the hype.
And life in Gaza seems worlds away, unimaginable with the cut-offs of virtually everything needed for basic survival. Graciously, Israel has given advance warning of further electricity cuts scheduled for December 2nd, in order to ‘avoid a humanitarian disaster,’ goes the reasoning. That of course begs the question of how exactly Gazans are to be expected to prepare for these cuts when they can barely survive without these further strangulations. But perhaps we are not meant to question this, are meant instead to have faith in Annapolis and the representatives who don’t represent.
Huwara Checkpoint: Wire Fencing Erected to Obstruct Passage
The Huwara checkpoint controlling exit from Nablus is notorious for long lines and hours-long delays, particularly on holidays. This roofed and turnstiled checkpoint, in place since the start of this Intifada, governs traffic flowing to Ramallah, as well as to the many nearby villages outside Nablus. It is one of many checkpoints within the Palestinian West Bank which severs Palestinians from surrounding Palestinians, towns from towns. University students, workers, and people seeking medical treatment or coming for shopping must cross Huwara, many on a daily basis. It is an established routine for Israeli soldiers to close the checkpoint or greatly delay checking IDs of the many waiting to cross through. [see B’Tselem: Checkpoints and Forbidden Roads and Information on checkpoints and roadblocks]
On Saturday, November 10, leaving Nablus I arrived at Huwara, around 2:40 pm, to lines which crammed and extended metres beyond the tin-roofed checkpoint area. On a good day, the lines would run a third to half the length of the area. The side passage, between the roofed area and the wire fence, is normally reserved for women and children to pass through for ID checking.
Thirty minutes after I arrived, the lines of waiting Palestinians had not moved; instead, they had grown, extending yet numerous meters further. Palestinians reported they had been waiting since 12:00 to pass through the checkpoint. At approximately 3:10, I called Machsom Watch to report the checkpoint problems. About 10 minutes later, Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) soldiers began removing some additional wire fencing which had been strung across the outer passageway normally reserved for women and children. The fencing crossed from the outer wire fence to the iron rails of the checkpoint building itself.
After removing this fencing, this ‘flying checkpoint’ within a checkpoint, IOF soldiers finally began checking IDs of the waiting Palestinians. During the period between 12:00 and around 3:20, upwards of 300-350 civilian Palestinians were made to wait, some for 3 hours or more, their day disrupted by the arbitrarily-imposed blockage. The timing of the closure coincided with the return of many university students to their homes outside of Nablus, as well as the return home of those who had gone to Nablus for shopping and other needs.
The Significance of a Huwwiyye
Following the line-ups at Huwara, the taxi I rode in did as many taxis do when approaching further lineups like those at Zatara checkpoint less than 10 minutes down the road: it cut out of the Palestinian lane into the Israeli-only lane (a.k.a. the Express Lane) and then back into the Palestinian lane after passing some of the backed up cars. While this is a matter which would surely aggravate other drivers who had waited their turns in line, it is nonetheless a matter for those drivers to resolve or not. Instead, upon arriving at the soldiers’ booth, a soldier who had seen our taxi cut back in took all the huwiyyes (IDs) and, not returning them, ordered us to go back and rejoin the line at the end. With little choice, ID-less, the driver complied, returning about halfway then cutting back in. Again, upon arriving at the same soldiers’ booth, we were ordered aside, this time to the inspection lot (where cars are routinely disassembled in order to thoroughly search the vehicle and its contents). We were soon joined by two more taxis, then another, all having committed the same faux-pas.
The IOF soldier’s explanation was that driving in the Israeli-only lane endangered Israeli drivers and, thus, could not be tolerated. He refused to consider the reality of the long lineups, which plague the checkpoint daily, and their effect on Palestinians daily lives.
The Commander echoed the soldier’s explanation, also refusing the consider that these checkpoints which sever the West Bank at so many points serve the illegal Israeli settlements.
With my passport safe in hand, I had the freedom to leave if I chose, a freedom reiterated by the soldiers. Yet the Palestinians I traveled with had no such graces and were at the whim of the soldiers. The power of the ID, the ID not recognized outside of Palestine, is pervasive and an effective means of control.
**elderly man, ill, made to wait in the parking lot, a collective punishment for the taxi driver’s hopping lines.
I visited with a family in Nablus’ Balata refugee camp who awoke at 2 am to Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) soldiers’ firing from the street at the walls of their 3-story home. The November 7 IOF invasion of Balata left one two-story home destroyed by IOF-detonated explosions and another home damaged by random shooting and a grenade. Local sources further report that several homes in the camp were also invaded and ransacked by Israeli soldiers. Witnesses report up to 40 military vehicles having entered the camp, ending the siege with the detention of 25 Palestinians.
As with most of the homes throughout Balata, the family which I visited has suffered numerous IOF attacks over the years, evidenced by the grandmother’s testimony as well as the testimony of the walls themselves. The grandmother and one granddaughter pointed out deep pocket marks on the balcony off the living room, from the IOF shooting days before.
Similar bullet holes, even deeper, punctured the outer cement wall of a bedroom on the same side of the house. Off that wall, the balcony’s wrought iron railing was twisted, deformed from an IOF hand grenade tossed up from the road. The explosion further cut into the concrete side of the balcony.
Back inside the living room, a curtain pulled back from a window revealed a bathtub-sized hole in the neighbouring house wall, from 2002 IOF attacks. Aged newspaper stuffed into gaping holes in the wall betray further evidence of earlier Israeli attacks.
In addition to the collective punishment of the entire family, three of the grandsons have directly suffered at the hands of the IOF and the invasions. One grandson was imprisoned at 17.5 years old and kept for 1.5 years in administrative detention. This is a technical term for being kept in limbo, without being charged with anything. It is a form of detention which can last for years, the detained not even granted the basic rights prisoners are supposed to receive. The boy was finally released, still without charges. During his imprisonment, he was moved, suspected of being a leader in prison, and consequently kept for months in solitary confinement. When he was eventually brought before an Israeli court to again extend his administrative detention, even the judge saw the absurdity of his detention and thus, finally, ordered his release.
His younger brother walks with a limp, unable to completely bend one of his legs as the knee still suffers from being shot by an Israeli soldier years before, his entire leg bearing the marks of shrapnel wounds and broken bones from IOF shelling. A third grandson, arrested 17.5 years, is currently imprisoned for an unknown duration, accused of resistance activities.
Upstairs, the granddaughter pointed out where ISM activists had lived, where they’d stayed for years, a permanent presence which for one entire year served to prevent imminent demolition from IOF caterpillar bulldozers. One victory. At least 5 other homes that ISM activists were aware of were demolished in Israel’s ongoing policy of punishing families collectively for knowing or being related to Israel’s “wanted men.”
Buckling Walls and Homeless in the Rain
In the early hours of Wednesday morning, after 5 hours of searching and ransacking the house, the IOF exploded the back room of the ground floor, concurrently damaging two neighbouring houses’ walls, as well as the upper floor of the bombed house. The targeted home houses 15 family members, who are now homeless as a result of the collective punishment. They were lucky: they were herded out of the home at 12:30 am, at gunpoint, before the 5 am explosion which took out the bedroom and damaged the weight-bearing walls. The neighbours in the home 2 meters behind were still asleep when the bomb shattered their window and damaged their own wall.
The family, now staying in 3 different neighbours’ homes, have put up support poles in efforts to compensate for the weight-bearing walls which are buckling and cracked from the explosion. According to the family, it will cost a minimum of 30,000 JD [~=$42,355] to reconstruct the house. Appraising the 2nd floor rooms, also ransacked and damaged from the invading soldiers and explosion, the father admitted the house would likely have to be demolished and completely reconstructed.
The 30,000 JD to repair the house does not include the loss of furniture, appliances, belongings, all of which were either damaged and broken in the initial IOF ransacking or later demolition. The sons in the family work as laborers, taking what work they can get. Meeting their new financial demands will be a difficult task, one which they stand to bear alone.
The pretext for this collective punishment was the IOF hunt for one of the sons, 23, a student at university who has been wanted by Israel for the last 2.5 years for alleged resistance activity with Islamic Jihad.
This is the case with many such destroyed homes and collectively-punished families, as with the October 16th IOF invasion in a neighbourhood west of Nablus’ Old City, which ended with the assassination of three men –one a 70 year old resident at home at the time—and the damage and destruction to homes of numerous residents of the attacked area.
Upon leaving the Balata camp home destroyed three days ago, the owner similarly expressed his wish for the world to know, thanking me repeatedly for showing interest in his family’s loss.
His thanks echoed the sentiments of others I’ve met, who’ve suffered from too many IOF invasions and the destruction which comes with them.
My friend Abed was martyred.
Martyr is a loaded word in many Westerners’ understanding: it often has a negative connotation, or insinuation of an extreme ideology or lack of love for life. In reality, a martyr refers to anyone who has been killed while not sacrificing their beliefs, and in Palestine and Lebanon, these are people who have been murdered by the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF). Abed loved life, and this was evident in his words, actions, his dreams. He told me once he would love to sleep at night, to walk freely in the hills that surround Nablus, to travel to other countries…
He was one of Nablus’ resistance fighters, living in and defending the streets of the Old City. They do not receive the same glorified status as that of the invading soldiers, instead tagged with negative undertones: ‘militant, extremist…’ Yet, as the new commander of the al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades related in a recent Ha’aretz interview: “We don’t attack civilian targets, we aren’t dispatching suicide bombers. The army wants to get us mainly because of our actions against forces that enter the city. But it is our obligation and our right to hit soldiers who come to Nablus, and we will continue doing so.”
The Humanity of Abed
Sami had known Abed for years and held him like a brother. He later related to me some of the conversations they’d had. I asked Sami, an avowed pacifist with a vocal distaste for guns, whether he and Abed had ever discussed being a resistance fighter. They had, Sami questioning Abed about his pre-resistance-fighter days which had been just years earlier.
Sami: “I asked him: ‘you are a kind, beautiful man. Why do you fight?’ Abed told me, ‘I lost my cousins –two cousins –to the IOF, and I want to continue their resistance. My family and neighbours are constantly harassed and never feel safe. I have to do something; I’ll never feel good if the soldiers are always entering the old city and I’m not trying to prevent them from invading homes, kidnapping, and killing people.’”
Sami told me more about Abed. “He was a good man, the children in the old city all knew him and loved him. They used to make drawings and write letters for him: ‘Mohammed loves Abed. Please don’t die.’ Abed always asked about the poor in the area: Did they have food, milk…? He and Qadaffi were always on their mobiles saying: ‘If people need anything, they should go to my house.’ He wasn’t rich, but he cared about his neighbours.”
Sami told me Abed loved to meet foreigners, which perhaps explains why he was so quick to trust and get to know me. Sami said Abed was always telling him: “if you have a foreign friend, bring him to me.” We met before Sami could introduce us.
Chance Encounter
Months ago, during one of my first days in Nablus, having heard three building-shaking explosions in the late hours of the night, I went looking the following morning in the old city for the consequences of the night before. I had been told that the IOF had laid explosives at the concrete blocks barring IOF jeep entry to the old city streets. These blocks, so often seen barring Palestinian entry to Palestinian roads, in this case serve to hinder or delay IOF vehicles. So the IOF often bombs them.
I’d also been told nearby buildings suffered damage from the explosions, and so went to see. At the north end of the old city, I came to one bombed roadblock section. It was there that I met Abed, leaning against the concrete blocks with two friends. He explained that this was where the IOF had been the evening before, and we got talking, in broken attempts at one another’s language.
He wasn’t what one expects of a resistance fighter, after hearing the words ‘militant’ and ‘member of the extremist group X’ tossed about so freely, slurred, in the press. He was slight, average height, neatly bearded, well-groomed, handsome, and nearly always grinning, inevitably teasing someone.
In the course of my time in and out of Nablus over the months, I often met Abed and his family in their home off an Old City alleyway. They invited me continually to stay the night, but I was usually en route somewhere or had work to do later on. I shared some meals with them, Abed teasing, his little sister defiant and holding her own, his mother likewise punchy, his pretty young wife welcoming, gracious, translating our mixed Arabic-English efforts… In later meetings, their newborn boy was present, tiny, quiet, sleeping or being coddled by Abed or his wife.
He was keen to improve his English, and would try to speak in English with me, becoming shy when other Palestinians with a better grasp of English were around. Sometimes he’d type out English phrases on his computer, misspelled but discernible.
His mother always speaks in a loud voice, constantly defiant. That is her way. Once, discussing the effects of living in Nablus under constant siege, she described how she and her family were affected. Weeks would pass without seeing her son, Abed, he in hiding from another IOF kidnapping or assassination attempt. Abed’s mother pulled either side of her robes out like a fan, showing how spacious her dress has become because she’s lost so much weight. She is nervous all of the time, doesn’t sleep well at night, always worries about her son, Abed, and consequently has dropped many kilos.
His 11 year old younger sister, Laila, speaks French. Miraculously, she traveled outside of Palestine, taking part in an exchange to France one year, she being a bright student. However bright, her school efforts are now suffering, her attention ever-distracted, her energy fatigued like so many Palestinian children suffering from the trauma of occupation and invasions. Still, she is feisty and holds –held –her own with her big brother, Abed.
When the Army Invades…
I worried each time I heard the IOF had invaded Nablus again, worried about Nablus residents caught, collateral damage, in house searches and army random firing, as with the young woman struck by an IOF bullet, while in her home, during the same raid which killed “Qadaffi” and inevitably killed Abed. I worried about Abed and his friends, knowing they were the target of such raids. Worried also about their families, knowing they suffered house raids and relentless interrogation, irrespective of age, sex, or health.
Four months ago, we’d rushed from Hebron to Nablus, hearing the IOF had invaded again and imposed curfew. We’d met with volunteer medics and joined them on the streets to do whatever we could: deliver bread and food, negotiate passage and accompany people to off-limits homes. All the while I’d worried about Abed. The next morning, visiting houses which had been invaded, ransacked, and exploded, I came across Qadaffi in an alley, who assured me Abed was still alive, and passed to him a quickly-scribbled note for Abed, wishing he and his family safety.
Honouring the Fallen
A resistance fighter’s funeral is a morning filled with masses of reverent people gathered in the streets. The procession progresses from the hospital where the body, cleaned and dressed in a Palestinian flag, is carried on the shoulders of the closest friends, down the streets to the city centre, and beyond through the old city streets. With Qadaffi’s funeral two weeks ago, the numbers were quadrupled, the procession slow, and the air even more clouded with gunfire smoke. Shots are fired into the air out of respect, rapid-fire and deafening, filling the void with protest, an homage to the silenced fighter. Mourners sing songs about the fallen, songs about his strength and struggle.
As Abed’s procession moved, in my head I urged for more and louder fire, louder songs, to honour this young man whose life was cut off at 24, leaving behind a months-old baby and young wife.
The procession moved from the hospital. Sami had taken me to the morgue where Abed’s body lay blue-grey, his handsome face grotesque in death. Other resistance fighters and close friends guarded his body, as they had while still alive and in critical condition in hospital. I’d visited him two weeks ago, the day after he was hit by the Israeli rocket which tore apart Qadaffi and left Abed minus his left leg. They had been on an old city rooftop, resisting the latest Israeli army invasion, the IOF this time attacking a neighbourhood above the Old City in the early hours of the morning, in search of a man on their wanted list. [The man was also on their recently-pardoned list, included in Israel’s latest not-honoured gesture of goodwill.] Abed’s wiry frame, unconscious, was small and discoloured amongst hospital whites, unnaturally quiet amidst hospital beeps, and mottled with wounds over his chest, arms, face…
Sami, a volunteer medic, who had carried the slain body of Qadaffi, had witnessed the various stages of Abed’s deterioration, from post-rocket-strike to hospitalization, to being transferred in his last hours from hiding in the old city to a hospital anew. Three days after his injury and hospitalization, he had been moved underground from hospital care due to very real concerns of the IOF raiding hospitals in late night hours, to finish their assassination operation. With his sudden worsening hours before death, Sami was called with his ambulance to re-transfer Abed to hospital care, too late.
Today’s procession passed through the alleys of the Old City, passed the entrance to Abed’s home. I strayed from the funeral march to visit Abed’s family. Neighbouring women and female family members, in black, wept for the loss. Tough Laila sat with her mother and sisters in the dining area, Laila slumped in her chair and sobbing loudly, weak from despair. Abed’s mother sat stonily, miles away, eyes vacant and clouded with loss. Abed’s pleasant wife lay unconscious on their bed, passed out, briefly revived by concerned family, and passed out anew from grief. Their raw pain tore into me, past the protective barrier one begins to acquire when surrounded by Occupational tragedies.
Adnan saw me today in the same alley, reminded me of having met at Abed’s one day when Abed was teasing me, taking my phone and handing it off to his mother for hiding when I said that I had to leave to work. Abed had tried to coerce Adnan, a poet, to recite his poetry in English, but he’d declined, the translation too difficult, the meaning would have been lost.
He told me today that Abed spoke of me everyday; I had no idea that he valued our friendship so. Perhaps it was more the sense of a connection to the outside world, that people outside of Nablus were aware of and concerned about the IOF invasions and kidnappings of Palestinians in Nablus. This makes it all the more difficult to process Abed’s sudden death. While very aware of his night life and the associated risks, the reality of his assassination is too large to comprehend.
Recalling again our first encounter, Abed had seemed to test me at first, testing my political views, testing my thoughts on resistance. Did I think he was a terrorist? Did I support the media’s twisting of, ignoring of, the facts of the Occupation? What did I think of the hajizs (military checkpoints), or the Wall…?
He was quickly trusting, though, perhaps a detriment to a freedom fighter in a caged-in position where collaborators are rife and deadly, and where anyone could potentially be that collaborator. I was surprised, but pleased, now honoured, by his trust and friendship.
I was also surprised that he felt comfortable introducing me to friends and family. Having stumbled across Abed, I look back now grateful for this chance to know his humanity, the humanity of someone in his position, to glimpse a fraction of the desperation and loss Palestinians know so intimately. It will never be my own struggle, my own story, but knowing it is important, as is telling it.
Last Thursday, demonstrators successfully blocked off a major Jewish-only highway which cuts through Palestinian land in the occupied West Bank, severing communities and further restricting Palestinians’ movement. Palestinians living in the region must take circuitous routes, prohibited from traveling on the highway.
As per norm, we were arrested, beaten, and thrown aside by Israeli soldiers.
…Blocking the road to Apartheid: Palestinian nonviolent protestors are blocking highway 443
Demonstrators block highway closed to Palestinians
Protesters block Highway 443 to protest ban on Palestinian traffic
from Ha’aretz:
“Highway 443 is an example of what is taking place in the territories,” one of the demonstrators told Army Radio. “[The authorities] are expropriating land from the Palestinians in order to build a highway which is then declared off limits to Palestinian traffic.”
“There is a policy here of apartheid,” Hadar Grievsky, another protester, told Army Radio. “Highways are built on roads that were seized from Palestinians and is only permitted to Jewish drivers.”
Organizers of the protest said that 70 demonstrators participated, most of them Palestinian residents of nearby towns. Israeli Occupation Forces soldiers and police arrived at the scene to disperse the crowd approximately 10 minutes after the road was blocked. Seven people were taken into custody for questioning, according to Army Radio.
B’Tselem: Route 443 – West Bank road for Israelis only
maps:
To the west of Nablus, neighbouring the village of Jit and the illegal Israeli settlement of Quedumim with its neighbouring Israeli military base, Sarra sits on a crossroads between Palestinian territory and a militarily-annexed road and land. From Nablus to Sarra it would be a 5 minute drive were it not that the Israeli army designated the road “a closed military zone.” As a consequence, villagers must take a circuitous route, via Tell, along winding mountain roads, rendering the trip a 35-40 minute detour.
At the end of August, 2007, villagers came together with Israeli and international activists to remove the concrete blocks which bar entry onto the closed military road, a road which aside from being so-designated is a Palestinian road. The successful removal of the road-blocks was promptly followed by their replacement, with an additional barrier of earth piled on top. This was followed by the arrest of us activists.
Collectively Terrorized:
Sarra has long been a village collectively terrorized for a few reasons: its proximity to the road, one which is a main back entrance to Nablus when the IOF invades; its proximity to the illegal Israeli settlement of Qedumim and the military base neighbouring it; and recently, its defiance of IOF arbitrarily-imposed closed zones and harassment.
In 2000, at the beginning of the 2nd Intifada, IOF soldiers took over and occupied the top floor of one home for 11 months. The house sits on a hilltop overlooking the militarily-closed road and provides an excellent vantage point of the entire surrounding area.
The house residents said that after the Israeli soldiers had finally left, they could no longer recognize the 2nd floor apartment, which had been intended for a son and his new wife to begin their family life together in.
Cut Off From it All:
The hilltop house, amidst its expanse of agricultural land and olive groves, is in reality cut off on 3 sides: to the west, their lands and the road is off-limits by Israeli military decree, and to the north and northeast, roads are inaccessible, also by Israeli military decree. Villagers tending trees and farmland alongside the road are routinely interrupted and harassed by passing Israeli soldiers, who threaten villagers and order them off of their land.
Jit village lies approximate 2 km away from Sarra but might as well be 30 km away. Rather than being permitted to travel the militarily-closed road, or even the Palestinian land alongside the road, Sarra residents must travel back to Nablus, through Beit Iba checkpoint, and return back in the direction they have come from along a parallel road, a detour which amounts to an hour’s detour.
“This is my house, my land. Why can’t I go 2 minutes to my family’s home? I have to go to Nablus, go around.” The son’s question is valid: these are just normal people, who have family members and land down the road. Jit, in addition to sitting across from the illegal settlement, Qedumim, lies at the road leading both to Ramallah and Tulkarem, an additional reason banned access is a painful reality for Palestinians in the region.
*[Israeli army base near Jit and Qedumim settlement]
Even the Rooftop is Dangerous:
As he related the story to us, standing on the roof, the son suddenly moved back from the roof’s edge and asked us to do likewise: “Israeli soldiers told us if they see us on the roof, we will have ‘problems’,” he explained. The reference was clear, having heard about recent problems.
In the past three weeks, Sarra has near-nightly been invaded by the Israeli army, usually entering in the evening and harassing villagers. Between 6 and 8pm on October 18, two Israeli military vehicles, with approximately 6 soldiers each, entered via a dirt road leading from the militarily-closed road. Soldiers drove up and down village roads, chasing children and adults.
Israeli soldiers overturned a pan of hot frying oil on one restaurant owner, who was just barely able to jump backwards enough so that the oil burned his legs rather than his face and entire body. Another shop-owner reports Israeli soldiers entering and stealing candy and cola, while a Najah University Masters student was chased along a street by soldiers throwing rocks. Israeli soldiers also attacked and pushed a 10 year old boy to the ground.
Two weeks prior, in another Israeli army invasion, soldiers without reason shot at one villager’s car, deflating the tires, riddling the car body with bullet marks, and shattering the windshield.
Olives and Land:
This is a village surrounded by olive groves and agricultural land, much of which is inaccessible due to Israeli military orders and closed military zones. The District Coordinating Office (DCO), the Israeli body which deals with military-annexed land and related problems, this year gave permission for only 3 days of olive harvesting on lands cut off from villagers, for a task which should take nearly 2 weeks.
Harvesting olives should be a relaxed time of enjoying communal work, seeing the year’s efforts of tending trees pay off, picnicking between bouts of collecting, and relaxing on the land. The reality for the majority of Palestinians whose land lies near illegal Israeli settlements or military bases is one of harassment, of being attacked, and of rushing through work which should be savoured. That is if they attempt to harvest their olives. The intimidation of settler violence puts many Palestinians off of working or harvesting their olive groves.
A settler attack on Palestinians and internationals harvesting olives near Tell on October 16, during which one Palestinian was seriously wounded on his head, and numerous others suffered injuries from the pelting of sizeable rocks, resulted in the commonly-accepted spin of the facts: settlers reported that Palestinians came up the hill to their settlement, throwing rocks and attacking the settlers.
Even with four of us activists to corroborate the Palestinians’ account of the settler attack, the settler version still holds weight with the Israeli military and police. The following day, two Rabbis for Human Rights volunteers were accused of arson in the settlement, despite international and Palestinian witnesses who testified to their presence at the olive harvesting site.
The attacks, physical and legal, are designed to run Palestinians off their land, as is the case all over West Bank, as seen in Susiya, as successful in Susiya, and to deter international and Israeli supporters from defending the Palestinians’ rights to the land.
“A Palestinian farmer was seriously injured on Tuesday afternoon when a group of Israeli settlers from Yizhar settlement, south of the northern West Bank city of Nablus, attacked him while he attempted to harvest olives from one of his fields.
Palestinian medical sources stated that thirty-five-year-old Abdul Fattah Hindiyya, from the northern West Bank village of Tell, was wounded.” [source]
This, while accurate, does not convey the truly horrifying nature of violence and blind hatred the settlers showed, nor of the tragedy that even the simplest of tasks are sabotaged. The olive harvest should be a time of rejoicing in gathering olives, communal working… In Palestine it is a time of planning, fear, awareness of very potential savage attacks by colonists, and some desperation to get the job done as quickly as possible.
Just outside of Nablus, 6 masked Israeli colonists viciously attacked local Palestinians harvesting their olives. They slung, via large slingshots, hefty stones, whipped at our bodies and heads.
The attack lasted about 40 minutes.
One of the six attackers slung a large rock at me. Hitting my camera hand, the rock missed my temple. One of the farmers, on the other hand, was not so fortunate, with severe gashes on his head from multiple stone strikes.
At the same time, the city of Nablus was under yet another Israeli invasion.
Explosions began as early as 3 am, with the invasion of Israeli military jeeps and vehicles into the old city and surrounding neighbourhoods.
Early on in the morning, a key resistance fighter was killed, slaughtered by an array of metal bits erupting from a specialized shell. A Palestinian volunteer medic later confirmed his death, explaining his body had been severed in two by the force of the shell shrapnel. Two of his co-fighters, by his side, were injured, one losing a leg to the fire and suffering various wounds over his body, dying two weeks later.
These are men who have not chosen their fate; the occupation of Palestine has chosen them.
Discussing our mutual roles one day, one resister affirmed what I had said about my role here: “You take photos, I fight invasions, my mother is a mother, my sister goes to school.” A simple summary of the many roles we are given or put into, but further poignant by his declaration: “I want to sleep during the night and go for walks in the hills. I want to have a normal life.”
His little sister, 10 or 11 years old, is already a tough cookie, with a quick wit. Yet she is also a little girl, who surprised me one day carrying a Barbie like doll and acting in a girlish contrast to her normally defensive ways. I cannot begin to imagine what she has seen or how many times she has faced soldiers invading her neighbourhood, her home, in the city.
She also wants to live a normal life. In recent years, her mother told me, she has failed at school, despite her obvious intelligence, suffering like many Palestinian children from the stress, uncertainty, and trauma of living in an occupied land, in a city regularly under invasions and ‘curfews’.
The invading forces also chose an old man, a bystander, and shot him fatally. Neighbours confirmed that the man, 70 years old, had answered the knock of an Israeli soldier. Upon opening the door to his courtyard, he was shot directly with at least 3 bullets to his stomach. He died, shortly after, in his nephew’s hands.
The same house was ransacked, shot up, its contents destroyed. One young man explained how Israeli soldiers had entered the home around 2 am, entered shooting. Soldiers surprised the family in their beds, shooting in bedrooms occupied by sleeping residents. The approximately 25 residents in the multi-storied building, members of the same family, were eventually made to leave, sent to another location. Israeli soldiers searched and ransacked the house, then left and sent a rocket from a nearby rooftop through the window of the parents’ bedroom, hitting the ceiling.
The apparent reason was in hopes of killing the resistance fighter they sought, never in that house. The rest of the damage was inflicted by Israeli soldiers while conducting their room to room search.
A woman sitting in her home down the street was shot in her back, one of a spray of 20 bullets from Israeli soldiers outside the home, according to local witnesses. The bullet lodged near her heart, requiring her immediate transfer to hospital, according to a medic on the scene.
Returning from the olive harvest outside Nablus, we joined internationals already in the affected area as human rights workers, accompanying medical teams.
Our luck in getting civilians beyond barricades waned later on when, attempting to acquire permission to pass a military jeep stationed in the centre of the road, soldiers within instead unleashed a series of tear gas canisters and a sound bomb in successful efforts to disperse us. The same soldiers then prevented passage of an ambulance who sought to give medical aid to people trapped within the blocked off area.
One neighbour recounted how when told he and his mother to leave their home, he refused, protesting his mother’s ill health and difficulty walking. Eventually the soldiers’ order stood and he left, joining others from the floors above on the street. They were given no food or water, and were not permitted to use the toilet for most of the day.
In the aftermath of another Israeli invasion, talking with residents whose homes had been demolished by explosions, or greatly damaged by neighbouring homes’ demolitions, I recall the faces. The old woman who repeatedly gave thanks to God that she was still alive, though her home had been invaded again and greatly damaged yet again. The father who explained how his son had survived the imploding floor by hanging on to a window ledge still intact. Also, the young medic who was kidnapped, blindfolded and cuffed after escorting a woman to her home and subsequently giving his ID to the soldiers for inspection. They kept the ID, and him as well. His colleagues testified to his good nature, his non-involvement in politics.
Like the older woman from the previous invasion, Abdullah’s grandmother, surrounded by broken, shot, and damaged evidence of the IOF’s presence, made clear her feelings for non-Palestinians, non-Muslims: “After all Israel has done to us, we still just want peace.” She followed with a request: “We are not asking for financial support from you, just for justice, for people around the world to know the truth.”
Following the Israeli army invasion of Deir Istiya on October 7th, during which the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) imposed a curfew on the village, one which officially continued throughout the next day, we (ISM) visited with families who had been subjected to IOF house raids and arrests.
Not surprisingly, the families were welcoming and gracious as ever to visitors, despite all they had just been through and all that some are still enduring.
The IOF entered homes during this latest raid on the northern West Bank village of 4,000, an otherwise serene and impressive village with intact old homes and alleyways. In one home, Occupation soldiers entered the home and seized three children, ages 11, 15, and 16, taking them out of the home to a nearby schoolyard to interrogate them. The youths were accused of having thrown stones at the invading IOF forces from the rooftop of their home. An hour of interrogation, during which soldiers kicked the youngest boy, resulted in little more than harassment of the youths, the army realizing that they had no reason to hold the youths, returned them to their house.
The soldiers had arrived in three military jeeps, approximately 20 soldiers of whom remained outside while four soldiers proceeded to search and ransack the house, from bottom to top, before leaving.
The family reports that soldiers returned two hours later, parked in front of the home and waited for a while before again leaving.
IOF soldiers later went to both boys and girls schools, interrupting students in their classes. Although the schools were opened, the curfew was still imposed and officially remains so as of the evening of October 8.
As we visited with friends of a long-time International Women’s Peace Service (IWPS) volunteer that evening, the family reported hearing sounds bombs going off around 8 pm that evening, just an hour prior.
Earlier, we also visited families who had suffered from Israeli army violence just over a week ago when they invaded.
During that invasion, at least 3 youths were kidnapped by IOF soldiers.
One family recounted how approximately 20 IOF soldiers had come to their home 8 days prior after 1 am while the family was sleeping. One daughter had been sleeping in the front room when she heard noises outside. Calling her parents in the next room via her mobile, the family soon learned that their home was surrounded by Israeli soldiers. While the soldiers did not demand entry, they instead proceeded to throw stones at the two entrances doors in the front and the windows around the house. Later inspection revealed the IOF soldiers had broken a window in one front-facing room, as well as a window in the family vehicle around the back of the house.
After waiting for the soldiers to cease stoning the house, the father finally opened the door to ask what they wanted. The father and mother report that 4 soldiers entered the home, and beat the father and one daughter, 23 years old, and his wife all over their bodies.
The family of 8, including three children under 18, was made to leave their home and were kept outside, guarded by soldiers, while 4 soldiers searched and ransacked the home for approximately another 45 minutes. The father managed to gain entry into his home and accompany the soldiers as they went room to room, damaging the home and their possessions.
A tally of the damage and acts of IOF violence during the house raid includes:
• A side panel was ripped off of the computer and internal damage was done to it
• The frame of a bed was ripped apart
• Several cupboard and cabinet doors were broken and torn off their hinges
• Outer doors damaged by stones
• The cassette door of a stereo was ripped off its hinges
• Many items from the kitchen were broken; as well, many belongings and personal items were torn out of cupboards and off shelves, left broken or on floors
While these acts of collective punishment are common in occupied Palestine, adding yet further misdeeds to a litany of IOF misdeeds to civilians, the family’s greatest sorrow that day was the kidnapping of their son: the youth, 19 years old, is a student at Salfit University and is not involved in political activities. He was taken during this house raid, in his underwear as he had been sleeping. Soldiers would not permit his mother, desperate to clothe and help him, to give him a shirt and pants. The youth was taken blindfolded from the house and dragged down the street nearly a half kilometer away. At one point, the mother recalls, he was pushed from his standing position and kicked while fallen on the ground.
The family was given no information on the whereabouts of their son, and have since been making all efforts to locate him, without success. As one ISMer summarized, putting the family’s situation in real terms: “Our son was ripped from his bed in his underwear. And we haven’t seen him for 8 days, and we have no idea where he is.”
Not a great Ramadan event, or one for any other day for that matter.
Two other youths, ages 18 and 19, were also kidnapped by IOF soldiers that evening.
Another village resident, Dr. F, a professor at a local university, mentioned that it is common for the IOF to raid villages throughout the year, but particularly around Ramadan and the Olive Harvest season, when families are especially keen to avoid problems from either soldiers or settlers. He feels that the increase of attacks by both settlers and IOF soldiers is part of a greater plan long put into practice of dividing society at all levels, economically and communally.
The levels of occupation go deep. As referenced earlier, were it not for the repeated and ever-looming presence of IOF soldiers, Deir Istiya would be a charming and inviting village.
Domed roves and crooked alleyways beckon and flowers burst in colours and fragrances. Celebrating iftar with families was special, sharing food, tea, coffee, nargila, and even trying our hand at baking the round flatbread I grew to love so well in the South Hebron area of Susiya. Here, while the making is similar, the baking is an ingenious modification of a traditional taboon with convenience and necessity: an oil drum-come-wood-burning stove with a sliding shelf in the side serves the purpose. Stones are laid on this shelf, and the bread dough again spread over those stones as in a traditional oven.
And as down in Susiya, my efforts were better in intention than in result.
Such warm experiences mixed incongruously with the purpose of our presence in that village –the Israeli army invasion…
October 7th, 2007: Deir Istiya, West Bank
The residents of Deir Istiya, population 4,000, were sentenced to confinement in their homes shortly before breaking fast for the day. At around 5:10 pm, a convoy of between 10 to 12 Israeli military jeeps, manned with Israeli border police, entered the northern West Bank village near the city of Nablus announcing over megaphones: “everyone must go home. Deir Istiya is under curfew and you will endanger yourselves if you break curfew,” post continues
12/09/07
My first impressions of Ar Ram many months ago included nervous amazement at actually seeing the Wall on my first exploratory walk [including a tremendous feeling of repulsion and awe at this grotesque device used so well by oppressors to segregate, steal land, attempt to force into submission, and generally pour salt on already festering wounds –in the case of Palestinians, wounds from so many massacres, forced relocations, down-sized borders, arbitrary and sudden laws, international snubbing, Israeli-violated peace agreements, and appallingly slanted media coverage.]
Seeing the Wall in Ram, I traced it to its ends: one in the neighbouring, completely-enclosed area of Ar Ram near where I live; another to a cliff and concrete dead-end; another to a “checkpoint” [those innocently-termed tools of subjugation which leave the unaware media viewers and reading thinking that it comprises more of a toll both ordeal than the reality of checkpoints: a means to disrupt Palestinian lives on a dialy basis, obstructing passage to work, education, prayer, family… all in the name of ‘security,’ Every paranoid, self-serving, and completely contrived method of maintaining “security” in Israel and the US is just a façade for the purpose of demeaning, controlling, or is in some way related to monetary gain.].
It was on this morning exploration of humankind’s grotesque nature that I began the first of many encounters with humankind’s forgiving, curious, resilient, and generous nature: an offer to tea, followed by an invitation to lunch.
Lunch became breakfast as I arrived early and apologetically the next morning to explain I had a mid-day meeting. They hastily prepared a veggie feast of Palestinian goodies: yogurt, olives, fried vegetables, flatbreads, strong coffee, pickles…
Another Wall-tea encounter followed weeks later, a young teen waving down to me from his cliff-top position. His family rained questions down on me, amidst tea and plums.
Today, exiting via Qalendia, the bus took back streets and re-emerged just 50 metres beyond the Dahir al Bariit exit, the back exit that no longer functions as an exit except to VIPs. So everyone must trudge to the lines of Qalendia at the far end, in the opposite direction, and wait long periods, only to drive along this sham of a ‘security fence’ and emerge on the other side of where they might have started. This takes a minimum of 45 minutes, a conservative estimate –it could elapse into over an hour, over two hours depending on “checkpoint” lines—and involves taking 2 different servis/buses.
At Qalendia, 2 border police board the bus. If they haven’t seen me at a demo or in Hebron, they might buy my ‘I’m a tourist’ look and only glance at my passport, not even at my visa. Security.
Weary-faced older Palestinians [the young men must go through the turnstile system, where the delays can be atrocious] hold up their IDs when the command is barked and, depending on the mood of the soldier, are eventually waved through. We then face one more checkpoint before being allowed to continue on, either towards Jerusalem or perhaps to a house on the other side of the Wall, or on the other side of that back exit that can no longer be used by the majority of Palestinians living in the area.
[post-dated: 21/08/07 ]
After a day of walking the hills of Susiya, visiting with families spread throughout and suffering from the settlers and army surrounding, we are in the tent of Hajji Sara. She is a strong woman with prominent features: a strong, angular nose; defined cheekbones; a broad smile. She, like her deceased husband, takes on the arrogance of authoritarian soldiers with a fiery defiance. She doesn’t back down from their threats.
*photo: Eva Bartlett
Hajji Sara called us in from the road a few weeks ago. She called us for tea, but re-appeared with tomatoes, eggs, fresh flat-bread, cheese….One girl asked to take Hajji Sara’s photo. She stood up, grabbed a cloth, and fastened a lovely white embroidered scarf around her face, proud and wanting to look her best.
We sit around the gas lantern and banter. We are told of Hajji Sara’s husband, who was undaunted by the surrounding settlers and soldiers:
“Hajj Jaber was very strong-willed. He defied the settlers and police, defied the odds, and the Occupation as well.
He didn’t recognize “closed military zones” –areas off-limits to Palestinians –on his land and proudly marched around his sheep all over his land.
Soldiers took him far away, beyond Tuwani, and threw him out of the jeep. He came back on foot.
He made settlers and soldiers angry, he wasn’t afraid of them. He walked on the settler-soldier road cutting through Palestinian land, amongst his sheep, and when a settler car or military jeep honked for him to move, he defiantly told them it was his land and he would walk amidst his sheep.
They danced and cheered when he died. They clapped and celebrated his death.
He was 75 when he died.”
I go to sleep at the edge of the open-walled tent, beside a grove of olive trees and under a flurry of stars. A dog with a strange bark has finally called it quits, the pregnant cat has stopped rubbing against me, and a light breeze wanders through the trees and into the tent, brushing aside bugs and bringing fresh scents.
15/09/07
At Jamal’s, we rose later and ate more perfunctorily. Actually, Sanaa got up at 3 am, to bake fresh taboon bread and prepare things, then spent 15 or so minutes waking Jamal and us.
Breakfast was fresh taboon, left-over tomato and potatoes, and different home-made grape jams drizzled in olive oil.
Back to sleep, startling at every sound—Jamal’s tent is closer to the colony and to potential trouble-makers.
One small feat for resilient Jamal: he is grazing his sheep on the side of the hill, his hill, from which he is usually banned and chased away. The soldiers are asleep. He’s been doing this for a while, taking advantage of their sleeping habits, then grazing sheep lower in the valley when the soldiers awaken.
**[sheep grazing in Susiya]
At Hajj Khalil’s, his daughters and grand-daughters are cleaning a mass of freshly harvested grapes. From the pile heaped on a plastic sheet, they are transferred from one bucket to the next in a process of: removing bad grapes, removing stems, washing, draining, hand-pulping, and finally foot-pulping in a large vat before the pot of pulp is placed over a fire and left for half a day. Later, it will become a seeded grape jam or a watery jelly, both very sweet.
They offer us grapes, tea, and bread, but we decline, it is still Ramadan. M decides to taste the grape syrup, as he is not really fasting and is curious about this delicacy (I’d already tasted it on previous visits). He dips his finger in it while the ladies urge him to tip the bowl and drink. Hajj Khalil comes along and shows M how to do it, raising the dish high and taking a large slurp. A chaos of admonitions erupts and Hajj realizes what he has done, leaning over and spitting out the syrup as the rest of us laugh and laugh at his absent-minded lapse. I’m sure he is forgiven, his breach being more out of force of habit and accommodating guests than intentionally seeking out food.
Hajj returns to transferring water from his cistern to a tanker, via a rented-pump and long hose. The hose runs from the cistern and, supported by a ladder, across the forcibly-abandoned cave next to Hajj’s tent. There is a small leak in the hose and water sprays out and down into the cave. Ever aware of limited water, Hajj spends a few minutes balancing a bucket on a large tractor tire more or less below the leak, catching much of the spilled water, to re-use.
They don’t have the water to spare.
“The average consumption, per capita, in the West Bank, is 142 cubic meters per capita per year, while the average consumption for settlers is about 600 cubic meters per capita per year. Palestinians pay about 4 times more than Israelis for water in the West Bank, while we’re using the same resources and the same infrastructure. In other words, we consume 5 times less but we pay 4 times more.[Dr. Abed al -Rahman Tamimi, Palestinian Hydrology Group]
Shortly after 10 am, Saturday morning, a troop of 6 fully-armed Israeli soldiers, coming from the direction of the military base to the northwest, marched directly across the property of Mohammed Nawaja and his extended family. The soldiers marched from one end to the other of the property, continuing across the valley and up the next hill onto the neighboring property of Ismail Nawaja’s family. At the tents of this extended family, the soldiers altered their direct line march to instead weave all around the property, making their invasive presence felt everywhere.
For the last two days, an average of 8 illegal colonists from the Susiya colony have attempted to cross onto the property of Jamal Nawaja when his young wife Sanaa was alone with her children, only turning back when they saw a neighbouring Palestinian grazing his sheep nearby. One day, I arrived at the scene and continued to film these teenage “settlers” as they ran away and stationed themselves at the soldiers’ outpost, where they continued their verbal threats and harassment, including shouting charmuta [whore] at the young woman attempting to do her work.
Interestingly, the Israeli soldiers timed their Saturday mini-invasion to when UN aid workers were present and witness to the harassment: the roving medical clinic of UNRWA was visiting the Nawaja family and viewed the entire proceedings.
The Hebrew-speaking Palestinians present at Mohammed Nawaja’s tents later told us that they had heard one soldier instruct the other soldiers, in Hebrew, to not speak with us.
This is the second time in three days—the first being Wednesday night, before the start of Ramadan—that Israeli soldiers have invaded these properties. Wednesday evening they came around 10 in the evening, when most of the family had gone to bed, poking their guns in the faces of two young family members still awake, before continuing across their property towards the settlement.
It should be noted that there is a perfectly useable road which near-parallels the route the soldiers are taking across Palestinian lands, and which would render it faster and easier to reach their destination. It is clear that the Israeli army tromps across the Palestinian land is yet another form of menacing the civilians of the area, as if they haven’t been harassed enough.
Four forty-five and the morning call to prayer has just finished, marking the beginning of day 2 of Ramadan fasting. Following that last mournful praise of Allah, Muslims should not eat or drink until sunset.
While participating in the fasting aspect, I choose to drink water. Out in Susiya, where our role as international witnesses surpasses the desire to sleep and rest the thirst and hunger away, not drinking water is not a valid option. Much of our day is spent walking around under the hot sun, surveying the area, talking with the families in tents spread out across hills and valleys, and making our presence felt all around in hopes of deterring violent acts by settlers and/or soldiers. The area is vast, and staying put in one tent all day would not serve the purpose of being here.
Yesterday we walked to some tents far across the valley, near where we had heard settlers were working and preparing to cultivate Palestinian land. Before reaching that land, we stopped to chat with a family, as much as we could with limited Arabic. Normally, the family as any family here would offer us tea and food. This time, too, they did, also themselves fasting.
Being unable to lie about my drinking water, I admitted that I was fasting but still drinking water, at which point they again offered tea. Declining, I explained I was just taking water, at which point they repeatedly offered water. I still prefer not to drink water in front of completely fasting Muslims, out of respect, so I declined saying I had already had some and was fine. Although they could and would not take it themselves until sundown and the evening call to prayer and to break fast, they could not shirk their well-ingrained duties as host.
It is an admirable time, Ramadan. While not knowing the intricacies of Islam, nor even the real history behind Ramadan, I appreciate their appreciation of abstaining until the permitted time, of being truly grateful when allowed to eat and drink again, and of upholding this pact for 30 days. Certainly going without food and water is very taxing and requires quite a lot of will. Going without food is not so difficult, particularly when in an area like Susiya, where one’s senses aren’t seduced by street food and bountiful store shelves. Conversely, walking and seeing grape vines, fig trees, and smelling the taboon bread baking for the meal hours away is very challenging.
We rose yesterday at 3:10, keen to take in the day’s food before the morning call to prayer. That call comes now around just before 5 am, so there was ample time to eat, drink, smoke if wanted, and go back to sleep for a few hours.
Today I’ve decided to not go back to sleep. If I find myself crashing in late afternoon, that will be a helpful way to pass the hungry late hours when there is no work, when we have patrolled round, and when temptation to break fast is great.
I anticipate the end of Ramadan, not because the difficult days will be past, but because the feast and celebration, ‘Eid al Fitr, must be impressive, full of music, food, and I imagine a certain contentment by those having managed to fast for a month and done well for Allah, as well as at being able to resume a more normal lifestyle of continual tea, smoking and food.
[13th of September]
Around 5 pm Thursday evening, we were called running to Jamal’s tent. I had been helping chop vegetables in the kitchen, hungry and trying not to pick at them as the call to prayer to break fast was still two hours away.
Hearing instead the call “moostoutanin,” we ran down and up again to Jamal’s hilltop, where settlers on the next hill were running back up towards the military post. Three or four settler teens had been approaching Jamal’s tent, where his young wife prepared the evening meal and tended her three infants. Dissuaded by the appearance of Abed, the teens ran back towards the settlement, stopping for half an hour to continue cursing and taunting Sanaa, Jamal’s wife. post continues
[Handala]
oPt 