1-Report from Ewa "Riding Ambulances" "an interesting report that gives an idea on what it means to Ride Ambulances in the Palestinian Occupied Territories, this is one of the duties that ISM activists might be doing in Palestine" 2-About 120 American activists heading to West Bank to support Palestinians during olive harvest. " An article by Associated Press. with quotes from American activists joining ISM olive harvesting" 1-Report from Ewa "Riding Ambulances" I've been riding with the PRCS ambulances for four nights now, below is a report i started , er, three nights ago and have just managed to finally finish. Loads has happened since. Hard to do the situation here justice with writing. This is just a glimpse. Last night I rode with the ambulances of the Palestine Red Crescent Society (Hellel Ahma Falastini) - for all intents and purposes the equivalent of the NHS in the UK but smaller, decentralised, working on red cross/UN aid, much of it from Norway, Japan, and the Arab states, and minimising hospital admissions by carrying out emergency procedures in mobile clinics, Red Crescent Centres, and generally while out and about. Many of ambulance drivers and doctors are also actually highly qualified surgeons and physicians with ample experience and verve in dealing with all types of emergency and chronic cases. Started up in 1968 when the Palestine National Council gave it a mandate to provide the social health and welfare services for the Palestinian people, The PRCS relies heavily on medical volunteers, local and international, plus donations for its survival. It represents the largest Arab Red Crescent Society, constituting a vast network of more than 70 hospitals, 300 clinics and tens of health and social welfare centres. It also doubles up as a taxi service, fire-engine - when water trucks or fire engines are blocked and, since the Palestiian Authorty cops scarpered during the first invasion in March, local police service. Queeva, an Irish activist here who's fully intergrated into the camp, recalls the time when she was sitting with the docs and other volunteers, drinking shai when an emergency call crackled through on the heavy duty walkie talkie. After a flurry of urgent words everybody leapt up, tea cups crashing and following a burst of hurried co-ordination, darted into ambulances and zoomed off to treat the case. Queeva thought it was something horrific. Soldiers opening fire, or a gun shot or major organ failure victim. It tuned out a shop in the city was being robbed. The medics managed to chase the burglars away, empty-handed. I wandered into the local Jenin centre at around 3.30pm and didn't leave until 8am the next morning. For a good hour or so I just chewed the fat with Zeya* a tough, elegant muslim woman of 30 who welcomed me warmly, helping me improve my local Palestinian Arabic vocabulary while I wrote down Polish obscentites for her (she was adamant that she wanted to hear them, no doubt. Polish obscenties are remarkably creative in their vile, mysogynistic and misanthropic use of terms and images, which I won't go into right now) and Jamiel* the head of the ambulance service volunteers, a wide-eyed, animated, energetcic and irreverant 26-year-old who speaks fluent Russian and a bit of Ukranian. We jabber away to eachother, me to him in Polish, peppered with Arabic, and he back to me in Arabic, Russian, Ukranian and English. The centre is basic. Shaheed (martyr) posters of Dr. Khalil Suliman, 58, Head of the PRCS adorn the walls. Dr Suliman was blown to pieces in March when an Israeli tank fired a shell at the ambulance he, a driver and paramedic were riding in. The latter survived albeit with serious burns to their hands and arms. The IDF said the ambulance was boobytrapped and stacked with bombs. Everybody else in Jenin knows that they were attempting to reach the dying in the camp. Cream and white marble steps lead through open iron doors into a simple reception area. It consists of a grey marled marble floor, plastic white lattice stools and chairs, a marble and wood cream coffee table, oveused payphone, and a simple, bashed up and bandaged up 1980s emergency phone which recieves hundreds of hoax/lonleyheart calls every day. Volunteers sleep on mattresses on the floor of the office(laydies)or beds in a dormatory (the lads). The odd mouse skip-scuttles across the floor at intervals and people sit around, tired, drinking mini cups of thick sweet arabic coffee or amber coloured mint tea. A comfy old ripped out ambulance seat on wheels rests on the porch. Everyone takes turns in answering the emergency phone and ambulance shifts rotate, decided according to exhaustion levels. The operation runs smooth and loose. There are about 4 ambulances, tops, some old 1960's models (white van man vans) with creaky steel door handles and just a driver and passenger seat infront. Third bod gets the wibbly plastic stool to balance on in the middle. The other new model sports sliding doors, 3 seatsn in the front and a swifter, smoother ride due to the sophisticated suspension, steering and gears. The fleet of 4 serves 200,000 people, every night, according to a Red Crescent doctor. Usually however, there's just 2 in use. At night the drivers guide the ambulances fluently, slowing just in time to avoid or breach concrete speedbumps, tank-shot trenches, shell-smashed holes, bare end-of-the-tarmac drops and any other Occupation pushed hazard. Our first patient is a pregnant woman (all the pregant women attended to are either a month or more overdue or for whatever reason need a cesarian). Our ambulance, crew being me, Zeya and Hussein* have to go to a newly imposed army checkpoint on the outskirts of Jenin, on the road South to Tubas, and meet another ambulance, carrying the woman. I have to request permission for her to pass the checkpoint and walk her to the other ambulance. It's dark and balmy on the way there and we wind, windows down, elbows out, through clear, streets, lit warm by the lights of the odd garden shisha-pipe and coffee cafe or grocery store-come-drop-in centre. We approach the checkpoint - a tank and APC - located just infront of a broken-through road block - High piles of heavy limestone rubble and dust, manipulated into a narrow weave-through passage. The air is spiced with the smell of Cypress pines, craning from the scrub banks flanking the road. The tanks and APCs here are different to those I've seen in Nablus. The APCs are twice as big and the tanks are broader, more streamline, agile, new models, possibly Merkavas. The Merkava MK4 is the latest Israeli showpiece toy. It's specifically designed to enhance performance on difficult Golan Heights terrian - dominated by volcanic rock. The turret glides round and rises as if lubricated when reversing, the wheel-belt sports glove-fit traction and a thick layer of metal pannels curtain the front and sides. Merkavas make a higher pitched, ascendant sound when they move, like a race-car accelerecting into it's highest gear. And they move Fast. Palestinian fighters have still managed to blow two of the older models sky-high. I walk up to the tank. It and the APC are virtually invisible. Blending in to the arid landscape in khaki incrusted with sandy coloured dirt and dust. It's a darker than dark night, the moon is just a silver sliver. The smell of the pines makes me feel good, it's like cool caves and frankensense smoke. The tank shines it's searchlight squarely onto me. Shielding my eyes I say a really naff 'Shalom' - 'Peace', for chrissakes. The two first words of Arabic and Hebrew, greetings uttered everywhere a thousand times a day here, are 'Salaam (Aliekum) Peace (be upon you), and 'Shalom' - Peace, respectively. I am ordered to go to the APC. The APC mounted gun follows me. I have to explain to the APC and unit commander, an olive skinned, steely eyed man, that the woman in the ambulance 30 feet away from him really is going to have a baby and yes, it really is an emergency could she please pass? He asks me where im from, what im doing here, yadda yadda. I answer and throw the questions back at him. When reminded about the emergecy case of the pregnant woman needing to give birth, he flicks his hand as if to say, 'bring her forth'. She steps out, heavily, supported by her mother on her left side, walking gingerly and looking increasingly distraught as the tank and APC loom closer. The APC gun tracks her. The soldier doesn't take his eyes off her. 'Ma-ye, Ma-ye' she gasps, 'water, water', I think she must be thirsty and assure her there's water in the ambulance. She looks feverish and on the verge of collapse, stumbling along, gripping up one side of her marroon velvet dress. I take it up in my hand myself and feel it's soaking wet. Her waters have broken. The soldier lets us through eventually, after a 5 minute lecture letting me know that ambulances are regularly used by terrorists to transport weapons and suicide bombers. 10 minutes later we're back at the checkpoint. This time it's to bring across a young boy with a metal spike lodged in his throat. We're allowed through to bring him for further down the road to us. Coming back with him we have to stop and all pile out while they search the ambulance. They hop from their vehicles - 3 soldiers- clunky with all their equipment, all draped in camoglage olive green, and thoroughly check it and all our IDs. Next it's a boy suffering from a scorpion bite to his knee. Same checkpoint. The soldiers are getting angry now, it's the third time in about forty minutes that they've seen us. They thoroughly check the ambulance. The kid looks petrified. This time they're holding back his uncle. It's taking them ages to check his ID. My passport is subjected to extra long scrutiny too. Initially I refuse to let go of it. Me and the commander get into a bit of mini tug of war with it which ends with him finally gripping it, rock-still, and staring at me, darkly, and me letting it go. 'What exactly are you expecting to find there? (face of the Virgin Feckin Mary? - nearly say it but I don't, cos I'm scared) Why are you looking at it for so long?'. He looks at me and makes the grave 'Wait' gesture which both Israelis and Palestinians do regularly and which I've found myself adopting too. You put your thumb and the first two fingers of your hand together on one hand the way people do with both hands when they're meditating and just present it as if to say, 'Look. Wait. OK?'. It's very Mafioso-like. 'I'm just looking. I am slow. You know, I am from Golani'. It's odd he says that. It's probably the third time I've heard soldiers refer to themselves as slow or stupid. A Nablus commander said a similar thing to me a few days ago. Can't remember what we were taling about but he said, 'I am not so clever you know? I am a bit of a dumdum' It doesn't read like scarcasm, it appears to be genuinely self-deprecating. And they did come across as pretty slow. Maybe the self esteem lost by being told you're thick, you're slow, you can't think for yourself is recuperated by serving with a wider, unified force, bigger than the individual, which rewards and prides it's members on their ability to follow orders, carry out tasks efficiently, unquestioningly, in black and white, and which doesn't require them to think autonomously. Hussein says he's going to the hospital with the kid and asks the soldier to let the uncle start walking towards Jenin, he'll be back to pick him up. If the ID is clear then yes, says the soldier. I say I'm staying with the uncle. Hussein say's 'ok' and the ambulance, doors slammed shut, top lights revolving into life, speeds off. We watch the tailights melt from red to black. The pine trees emit their heady, sweet, musky scent. The soldiers start to talk to us. 'I do not hate the Arabs', says the commander. His voice is raspish and monotone. 'Really. I do not hate him (points to the Uncle), I do not hate you. I wish we could sit down and drink a coffee with him'. Myself and the uncle stand there. A younger soldier continues, 'I don't want to be here but it's my job. We do what Sharon tells us to. I don't want to be bad to people but every person here for us is a threat, we have to look at every person the same, that they might want to hurt us, attack us'. 'If you don't want to be here why don't you just leave? It could all be over if you just all left. If you left, if you withdrew, I think the attacks would stop', I say. 'We are here to prevent these attacks. If we left, they would be able to do what they want', responds the younger soldier. He has sandy hair and looks no older than 20. He's unflinching. Surly. 'Why is it that my family have to be afraid, every time they go out, every time they take a bus. They are afraid to go shopping, they cannot go and drink a coffee when they want, go to restaurants'. It's a relevant fear but as far as disabilities go, compared to not being able to step outside your door, go to school, get to hospital, access drinking water, go to work, actually walk down the street without being stopped, told to go back or get your ID stolen and sit on the blazing hot kerb for 3 hours, get teargassed or take a bullet, the disadvantage waged by fear of attack weighs heavier on Palestinians. The corrosion and intimidation Israeli social life is real though. The Israeli economy has been a steady decline since the beginning of the second intifada. The A recent International Monetary Fund (IMF) report said that Israel faces negative growth and rising unemployment. Figures released in may put it at was 10.5 percent, the last month for which data is available, from 9.0 percent a year earlier and is seen to be heading for an all-time high of 11.5 percent next year. That would translate into 300,000 jobless in a country of 6.4 million people. It is also predicted that Israel's gross domestic product will contract by 1.5 percent this year. The IMF also forecasts for Israel an inflation rate of 6.2 percent this year and 3.0 percent in 2003. Israeli credit rating has also taken a pounding as the New Israeli Shekel (NIS) declined against the US dollar after Standard and Poor's lowered its rating for two of Israel's top banks to BBB+ from their previous A- rating. Last month, the price of flour rose by 6 per cent and gas by 14 per cent. People are emigrating (no stats available, The construction and the high-tech manufacturing sector, reporting significant lay-offs, and the entertainment industry, are suffering from lack of foreign and domestic investment. People prefering not to go out, out of fear, mean businesses are feeling the pinch or going bust as they have to hire heavy security and tourism has been reduced to virtually zero,(although during the Church of the Nativity seige a group of Japanese tourists did potter up, take pictures, and ask for a guided tour). 'I am here because of my people', says the commander, 'My people, My life, is more important, that's how it is, Im sorry, that's why I am here. To stop these attacks'. 'But you can't', I say. 'You actually can't prevent them. Shin Bet (Israeli Counter-intelligence and internal security service) and Palestinian collaborators - that's who stops the suicide bombers, not you.' 'Listen' says the sandy-haired soldier, 'I am from Netanya'. He stares. It could warp the air. 'Right', I say, furrowing my brow. Netanya, a small Israeli seaside town, has been a key suicide bomber hotspot, suffering from numerous attacks both before and since the beginning of the Al Aqsa intifada. Here's a list: November 7, 1999, attack using 3 pipe bombs, 27 wounded January 1 2001 Suicide bombing attack with a car bomb at a junction. Hamed Saleh Abu Hejleh aged 24 from Nablus. Hamas activist. 54 Israeli cilillians injured. He died 7 days later from his injuries. March 4 2001 Ahmed Omar 'Alayyan. Blew himself up at Herzl St close to a gas station. 3 Israeli civilians killed. 68 injured. Hamas. May 18 2001 suicide attack. Mahmoud Ahmad Marmash blew himself up at shopping mall. 5 killed. 100 wounded. Hamas. May 30 2001 car bomb attack on school. 8 wounded. Islamic Jihad. September 9 2001 'Abed al FatahMuhammed Musleh Rashed. Suicide bombing attack with a car at Beit Leed- East of Netanya beach. Islamic Jihad. 4 Israeli civillians injured. March 9 2002 2 Gunmen Open Fire on a Promenade. Fatah al-Aksa Martyrs Brigade. 2 Killed, 50 Wounded. March 27, 2002 Suicide bombing at Passover seder at Park Hotel. 22 killed, 140 Wounded. Hamas May 19, 2002 Osama Bichkar (pron. Bushkar - the family of whom I have been staying with). Suicide bomb in Market. 3 killed, 59 injured. Hamas and the PFLP. 'Ok?' he says. 'Did you know people who were killed', I ask. 'I lost my uncle and my friend to a bombing there'. The words jut out. The stare is unbroken. 'That's really sad. I mean, that's really really awfull'. 'I am a paramedic' he says. 'I saw what was done. I say what they did'. I just nod. Grief is grief. The commander interrupts. 'I lost three of my men. Three. Here. I have to protect myself. I have to protect my men. I have the right to do that'. 'I've seen you kill unarmed children though, I say, 332 children have been killed alone this year by you or by settlers, who you protect. Total suicide bombing victims in Israel come to since this intifada is 294.' (the total number of Palestinians killed is 1,959, total Israeli 631). He changes the subject. 'We give them too much anyway'. 'What do you mean?' I ask. 'We have given them a lot, perhaps too much'. 'But like, if you steal something from someone, right, and then give them back a fraction of it. That doesn't really make things any better. Does it?'. 'Look', says the commander, ' We give them work. We let them come here and earn money. I don't hate the Arabs. I have an arab that works for me. I pay him well, very well'. 'But those jobs, the jobs you 'give', they're like slave labour jobs, Palestinians get the worst work, menial jobs on building sites or as gardeners, cleaners, getting paid a pittance, that doesn't change the social relationship. Just because a master is kind to his slave, gives him better money than other slaves, doesn't change their position. They're still a slave. 'I have relatives who clean the streets in Israel, who work bad jobs, what are you saying?, says the younger soldier, 'Are you saying you want to be the boss them, you want to be a master', pipes up the older soldier. 'I'm saying it's all bad. People shouldn't be locked in lowly, miserable jobs, it's about having a life, being in control of your productivity, creativity...'I pay my worker' interrupts the older soldier, Look Wait fingers up. '250 sheckls a week. This is good right?' he says to the uncle who has been standing beside me meekly since the argument began. 'Yes, it is', he concedes, 'Can I have a job?' he jokes, 'See?' says the soldier, 'This is good'. The ambulance with Hussein swings back into distant view. "okay so is the ID okay? Can we move', I say, trying to just end this all. 'Yes. It is. Tell me, what's you're name?, he asks, "im not telling you'. Hussein hops out of the ambulance. 'Hey, what's her name' asks the soldier, 'don't tell him!' I tell Hussein, 'Hanni' says Hussein ( a popular man's name here). 'Annie', says the Soldier. 'Hey, Annie'. 'Yes?', I say. A soldier passes down the uncle's ID card from the APC. The soldier hands it to the uncle. 'Thankyou' he says, warmly. 'Good night', says the soldier. He stretches out his hand to me. The tank starts to rev up it's engine (speeded up chopper), Hussein calls from the ambulance, the uncle's getting in. Everthing is suddenly very noisey and pertinent. I prentend I don't see it, the outstreched hand. 'Okay, take care' I say, waving wide with my handshake-able hand, turn on my heels and walk rapidly to the ambulance. Back at the Helel Ahma centre Jameil is sitting on an old round plastic wicker effect chair, feet on the edge of the coffee table, tapping his knee and singing a popular Arabic chart-topper. We all sit down, chill out for a bit. He answers a few calls - most of them hoax,'Hello?' he says (they say 'ello? here rather than Marhaba), 'Hello? Hell-OOO!' (SLAM). He's getting restless.'Hey, let me show you a picture' he says, brightly, and bounds off to get it. I doodle new arabic words in my notebook and listen to the sound of the walkie talkies crackle into talk and the volunteers respond. He returns as the phone ring, slaps the photos on the table and answers the phone. ''Ello?'. I take a look. At first glance I think it's a female patient, badly injured, with a doll by their side. A grown woman lying with a doll, a broken, rather creepy looking, dirt-covered doll. On closer inspection I see that it's a litle girl with the top of her head blown off. She must be about 6 or 7 years old. The top of her skull is gone, replaced by just a craggy, diagonal, jagged line sloping down to her right ear. Her mouth is slightly open, a long caked streak of blood stretching out of it, and her eyes are looking slighhtly down, not bulged in shock but just normal, slightly forlorn. Her and her mother's clothing are drenched and charred dark black-red. 'They were shot by a tank', says Jamiel, slamming the phone down, tapping his thigh, 'They were out picking olives'. This happened 2 weeks ago. The day before yesterday a woman was shot dead by soldiers from behind a bush as she was being driven in a car. Yesterday two supporters of Jihad Islami (of which there are many here, young and old, male and female, not bearded nutters, not reppressed, submissive or crazed women, palestinian and international) were executed, gangland style, up through the chin. I remember seeing the footage of the murdered mother and girl on Ali's video, a local journalist. I think I looked away. The whole video tape was one atrocity aftermath after another. I rememeber tiring and tiring, slipping into sleep. A man in the office where we watched it was crying, quietly at the sight of it. Later Queeva told me he was fighter and had been captured in the first few days of the April incursion and jailed. He hadn't seen the aftermath. The 350 levelled homes. The rotting corpses being dug out, the stench which carried out from the camp and hung over the city for days. Which everybody knew and recognised as death. The makeshift funeral of shaheed in a mass grave. The woman who couldn't be dragegd away from the sight of her dead loved ones, wildly singing an ecstatic song, going limp and loose in people's arms and then firmly entrenching herself in the rubble. The images were the first he'd seen since being released from prison just a few days ago. Queeva had been here in April. She had helped to dig out the bodies. One day, after pulling out and discarding rock after rock, debris chunk after debris chunk she pulled out what she thought was a rock. It was only when somebody said his name that she realised she was holding the head of one of her friends from the camp. She had met the man before the invasion. She had drunk tea with him and been particularly impressed by his passion and focus and warmth. They had talked avidly about the situation in Jenin and the neverending resistance. He had had an impact on her, she admired him. Later she told me that she had seen 12 of her friends die here, so far. 12. In 8 months. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 2-About 120 American activists heading to West Bank to support Palestinians during olive harvest. Associated Press 14 October 2002 NEW YORK -- Kate Rafael is leaving Friday for a month in the West Bank, joining about 120 activists who plan to heelp the Palestinians during the olive harvest amid reports that Israeli settlers have harassed and attacked Arab olive-pickers. "I'm going to try to increase the protection for the Palestinian people as they try to complete their harvest, which is incredibly important to their economy," Rafael, 42, said Monday. The Jewish woman from Berkeley, California, said she is opposed to Israel's "brutal" occupation and feels a "personal responsibility to take an active role in helping bring justice and peace" to the region. Most of the activists, who hail from the United States, Britain, Germany, Japan and other nations, are linked to the International Solidarity Movement and plan to be in the northern West Bank until mid-November. Activists from this pro-Palestinian group gained attention this spring when they tried to enter the besieged Church of Nativity in Bethlehem during the 39-day standoff between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian gunmen inside. Israeli police have confirmed that Jewish settlers have harassed Palestinians gathering olives or interfered with their work several times in the last couple weeks. On Oct. 6, a 22-year-old Palestinian man was shot and killed while harvesting olives near the village of Aqraba. Palestinians and B'Tselem, an Israeli human rights group, claim the shots were fired by settlers from the nearby settlement of Itamar. One settler was arrested after the incident and six others were detained and questioned, said Gil Kleiman, a police spokesman. Six weapons were also confiscated. The arrested settler was released a few hours later and no charges were filed, he said. B'Tselem claims that the day before the shooting, armed settlers from the Yizhar settlement beat and threw stones at Arabs harvesting olives in another area near the town of Inbus. In at least two incidents in early October, Palestinians found Jewish settlers harvesting the olives from Arab-owned property, B'Tselem said in a letter sent to Israeli authorities that was based on Palestinian eyewitness accounts and posted on the group's Web site. After Palestinians filed complaints with Israeli authorities, security forces came to the olive groves. But in one case, they didn't intervene for an entire day, and in another the settlers continued picking the olives as soon as the Israeli soldiers left, B'Tselem said. The activists hope their presence will prevent any more trouble or violence during the olive harvest, which runs through mid-November. Producing olives and olive oil is critical part of the Palestinian economy and culture and is a major source of income for many families. The activists also aim to protest the destruction of tens of thousands of olive trees by the Israeli military and settlers. Most of the activists will be living in rural areas near the cities of Tulkarem and Qalqiliya, according to Zaid Khalil, a New Yorker who has been in the territories since August organizing the campaign. Many will be staying with Arab families. Dunya A., a 39-year-old from Boston whose mother is Jewish and father Arab, said she is making the trip because she believes Israel's occupation is a violation of international law and inflicting great suffering on the Palestinian people. "I want to show solidarity with the Palestinians and resist the occupation in a non-violent way," she said, asking that she not be further identified out of concern that Israeli security officials may deny her entry into the country. Allowing the Palestinians "to establish a viable state is the only tenable future for that part of the world," she said. As an American citizen, Dunya also says she wants to register her dissent with the economic and political support the United States provides Israel, which receives more than $3 billion a year in American aid. Raised in a family with strong Zionist views, Rafael said her parents and siblings don't necessarily agree with her, but that none have tried to dissuade her from making the trip. "Maybe none of them agree with what I'm doing, but they realize that I'm doing it out of a deep moral obligation," she said. "The values that we were raised with are that what you believe, you had to act on. You can't just sit around."