I find
a few moments to write not because it is something that I even
have the time to do, but more because if I don't write now, I
am afraid to lose the precious, tragic stories and sights I have
witnessed in the last few weeks.
During
the past weeks I lay down to sleep between 2-4 a.m. to the sounds
of tanks clunking over the pavement, sporadic shooting –
noises of the night that Palestinian ears can distinguish in the
flash of a moment -- and a mind bursting with thoughts, scenes
and stories that keep me from unconsciousness even longer.
The morning
begins with laughter as a friend tells me that he likes to watch
Tom and Jerry because it makes him smile. “Why do people
watch Rambo? We see that everyday—here it is not TV, it
is real.” When Internationals first arrive they are often
baffled by the military machinery waging this war, but the novelty
wears off so very quickly; loss of appreciation frequently goes
hand in hand with habit, routine and repetition. Today alone,
I saw over 15 tanks, 7 apcs, a number of jeeps, 30+ soldiers
armed with M-16’s and a Land Rover full of commandos. This
is life here. Children 2-3 years old know the words for soldier,
tank, shooting, prison, and death; slowly and surely war creeps
into their beings.
The children
play “war” frequently. One mother told me the other
day—“The terribly sad thing is that they always want
to be the Israelis, no one wants to be Palestinian, to be controlled,
to be the victim. These little children know who has power.”
Another woman tells me of her discussion with a group of children
about life, saying that first children talked about problems they
are having—not sleeping, nightmares, constant fear—but
then the conversation turned toward dreams and desires. In the
midst of talk about parks, toys, and summer camp one girl raised
her hand and said: “We need some milk and bread.”
Despite their disturbing loss of innocence, children still manage
to help me leave the mental space of many difficult realities;
by playing with my hair, laughing at my Arabic, or simply sitting
on my lap, they help me continually find healing, rejuvenation
a! nd great hope.
The people
of this land are in dire need of humanization. As I become closer
to the Palestinians living in Nablus and simultaneously start
seeing the same soldiers and developing a rapport of sorts, I
can’t help but feel that the situation, this ongoing, long
going war is profoundly tragic.
One afternoon
we were attempting to get food and medical supplies to an occupied
house in an area where the Captain has threatened us with arrest.
There is an apc at the bottom of a small hill about 300 feet from
the house, where the soldiers demand that the Danish man and I
are to stay, while Doctor Rassem and Feras Bakri go to the house
to treat the child. Perhaps this is so we don’t see the
state of the home, or perhaps they suspect we are journalists,
or perhaps it is simply about power and control—in any case,
our goal is to care for the child and both Feras and the Doctor
feel comfortable going without us. I watch as the ambulance heads
up the hill and begin a conversation with the soldiers about “problems”
in Nablus and how they feel about being here.
These
two young men were insistent on the fact that they want to go
home, that they think over 95% of Palestinians are good, that
they want peace for their children: “I just don’t
want my children to ride the bus in fear” Michel says. They
talk about going out, dancing, not having showered in days and
sleeping on the floor. They say they only shoot armed people.
I ask about a recent death in Balata refugee camp where a 24 year-old
was shot in the head by soldiers in a jeep. Maybe he had a gun
they say; maybe rocks, I reply.
They
share hopes for the future and claim that there is a violent cycle
that is incessantly repeating itself here—suicide bombing,
invasion, bombing, invasion… I ask how they think they are
helping end the problems and they say “By being here—no
bombings in 20+ days.” “And when you leave?”
I ask. “Or do you plan to stay forever?” They seem
completely ignorant of their role in creating further bombings,
blind to the fact that they are only rendering a population more
desperate, more hopeless, and more deprived each and every day,
pushing people towards the “nothing to lose” state
that a suicide bomber has invariably reached.
And then
it is time to change shifts and three new soldiers pull up in
an apc and these two men, Michel and Avi climb into the new apc
and head into town to do I can imagine what. These interactions
put faces to these monstrous military machines; I think of the
apcs that only a few hours earlier terrorized an adjacent neighborhood;
during house searches soldiers took one man and beat him for over
30 minutes. I saw him this morning and now I see Michel and Avi
beating any one of my Palestinian friends and I am left in total
confusion. These are just young men beating, shooting, and terrorizing
other young men because they see the “enemy.” Seeing
humanity makes the destruction of life seems so senseless, so
unbelievable. I think that is part of our work here, each one
a tiny thread weaving humanity into hearts, souls, minds, and
moments and trying t! o shelter the remaining flickers of hope
from the wild wind of war.
One of
my dearest friends Khowla was walking by my side the other night,
discussing dreams and talking about her youth. “When I was
young I had so, so many dreams. I wanted to be a lawyer, to study
biology, to go to university, travel, and learn about everything.
But Susan, when you see the situation go from bad to worse again
and again and again, all your dreams get broken.” She is
only 21. There is still so much time, I say as I squeeze her hand.
The director
of the Ministry of Education, Juman Karaman, welcomed us into
her home a few days ago; she lives in a home adjacent to one that
is occupied, where we were headed. She explained how very far
behind the students were due to constant closures and called this
second term “a complete catastrophe”. Final exams
were scheduled for June 17th -July 4th, but Nablus was invaded
on June 20th; exams were put on hold and students have been in
the state of exam preparation ever since.
When
curfew is lifted for a few hours—which has happened for
a total of 30 hours in the 42 days (in Israeli prisons the detainees
are given more than an hour/day recreation)—students rush
to the school and take an exam. They are currently waiting for
another curfew lift, to finish their exams, studying now for over
a month, and never knowing what day they will have to perform.
Juman
believes that education is not really about how much time students
spend studying, but rather about quality. With the constant closures
and the closing of surrounding villages, teachers were habitually
confronting tanks, apcs, and soldiers en route to their schools.
She asked us to imagine the state of a teacher who finally arrives
at school, after having journeyed 1-3 hours in constant fear,
wading through life threatening circumstances; “How well
can this person teach?” As for the students, she added:
“After hours of shooting, nerves worn very thin, constant
uncertainty and fear, how can they possibly learn?”
Over
one month imprisoned in their homes—today is the 42nd day
of curfew; people are restless, frustrated, lethargic, angry,
humiliated, and saturated. They are using the small amount of
money they had, unable to make anymore, and the financial situation
is ever increasingly dire. I was having tea yesterday with a man
who mutters: “Maybe I can carry 10 kilos, 20, or 50, but
eventually I will break. Everyone has a limit.”
We are
in an occupied house and talking to the man now living in the
basement with 30 or so soldiers on the top three floors. These
30+ soldiers mean 5 apcs are parked out front, mesh covers the
windows like giant spider webs, and the night reverberates with
incessant shooting and loud music—the family has not slept
well in over 25 days. The soldiers ask his children how they are,
and the children say ‘Not good.” The father says to
me, “I want to tell my children about peace, but how can
I when we are living like this? They don’t believe it.”
During
the last week, the city of Nablus had been rather quiet during
the day and many people had been breaking curfew, coming out of
their homes to open a shop or buy a few things. The night is still
plagued by military operations, the sounds of tanks, gunfire,
and surreptitious movement. The villages have been the focal point
of the military during the past days, as they claim to be hunting
the “terrorists” responsible for this or that suicide
bombing or settlement incident. “They use the same stories
again and again, killing the same terrorists three, four or five
times,” the press tells me a few nights ago. The villages
lie to the southwest of Nablus, little clumps of homes nestled
in olive groves and rolling hills, accessible only by thin dirt
roads.
This
week, they spent three days going village to village looking for
anywhere between 3-8 men. They killed three men the first day
and denied the ambulance access to the bodies. A group of us went
out to Sara village and attempted to get the ambulance in just
to take the bodies but they told us we had to wait until they
had finished their operation. Our refusal to leave was met with
physical force: kicking, hitting and shoving 20 nonviolent activists
come to simply take the dead.
The next
morning I went with the ambulance to get the bodies, as the Israeli
army had finally given their okay. We wandered up a hill to an
olive grove and found a very large group of men there, being searched
and sorted into two groups. They had come to see the bodies and
help and ended up being subject to search and arrest. They were
separated into two groups, those 15-50 (over 75 men) and the very
young and very old (over 45 people). ID’s were taken and
the men all sat on the ground waiting as about 20 soldiers milled
about and the paramedics waited for the final okay to head up
100m to the bodies. As we watched this process, counting the men
and asking the soldiers questions, we saw another group of over
60 men being led down the hill towards the paved road.
We are
finally allowed to go get the bodies and as the medical team moves
up the hill, the men who had been sitting down get up and follow
en masse. We all arrive at three mounds covered by off-white tarps
that are removed by the paramedics. People crowd to see who the
dead are and chaos reigns as people move from one to the other.
One man has a large hole in his head and his brain is literally
oozing out. The second has no leg from the knee down and several
large bullet wounds in his chest and groin. A third has an enormous
hole in what was his forehead, and we all see that his brain is
completely missing. No one knows the men, thus they think they
must be workers who pass through the villages to avoid checkpoints
and soldiers; they are certainly not terrorists. I ride in the
ambulance to the morgue at Rafidia hospital, sitting in the back
next to the b! odies, overcome by the smell, by death. We return
to the Union of Palestinian Medical Relief (UPMRC) center where
I sit for a moment, trying to catch my breath and find a few words;
awoken from my somber silence by a call to tell me that soldiers
have left Sara and are now in Tell. We have to move.
During
this time, three internationals have gone with the men, the 60
or so, who were rounded up and kept on the paved road. They had
been led through the hills and back roads two by two, all their
ID’s taken and eventually large trucks come, handcuff and
take the men to a local military base. The three ask to be arrested
with them, but the soldiers don’t want any internationals
today. They return to Sara village on foot and while talking with
locals hours later, hear cheering and find that the large majority
of these men have come back. The leave to meet us in Tell, a village
1 km from Sara.
Tell
is in the same situation—foot soldiers wandering in the
fields, snipers on the hills, tanks, apcs, and jeeps patrolling.
I ask a soldier at a tank “What are you doing today?”
“There are three terrorists free.” “But you
killed three men yesterday….” “There are many.”
We continue down the road towards Tell and come across an apc,
two large trucks, and soldiers forcing handcuffed Palestinians
inside. This is the Tell round up….taking all the local
men for interrogation. We walk towards them, but they are leaving,
and so we deal with what they have left behind: 9 donkeys, dozens
of jars of traditional yogurt, and scattered possessions. We set
off with the donkeys and belongings towards Tell to meet the other
internationals and the medical team that has gone to deliver vaccinations.
The military operation in Tell seems to be coming to a close;
the jeeps and apc! s have left and so we return to Nablus, leaving
a few behind to sleep in the village.
The next
morning, we get news from the next village, Iraq Boreen, 1 km
from Tell, 2 km from Sara. The IDF is still looking for their
terrorists and has rounded up all the local men at a school/women’s
center in town. There are already internationals in the village
and those of us in Nablus head off to the village. We begin the
long walk out the small dirt path towards the village and see
dozens and dozens of soldiers wandering through the olive groves
below the village that sits on a breathtaking butte; we are denied
entry into the village by soldiers at a junction and told to wait.
We do wait, just until a bus arrives for some soldiers; we use
this distraction as a chance to walk right past them, despite
their echoing “Stop, stop.”
In the
village we find that the large majority of the men have been released
but the remaining men cannot get their ID’s back. It is
clear that one of the three jeeps is ready to leave with the ID’s
so volunteers sit on the ground to block its path. We are able
to thwart the jeep movements for a while and create quite a scene
that the Palestinians support, saying whether we go or stay they
will have problems, so we might as well stay. The jeep and soldiers
eventually manages to remove enough Internationals to pull forth;
they return the ID’s to the men and leave us talking to
the Palestinians. We split in two, some staying the village, some
walking back into Nablus.
We have
been doing a lot of roadblock removals during the last few days.
The Israeli army has closed every single village repeatedly and
the internationals staying in Iraq Boreen heeded the locals call
to remove these road blocks. A group of nearly 40 of us headed
out to Tell, Iraq Boreen and New Nablus and removed three roadblocks
one morning. It was incredibly beautiful to watch this simple
success—working for a few hours and then watching as water
trucks, vegetables and taxis begin to pass—encouraged by
the sound of our clapping and the smiles of resistance.
Palestinians
at the Iraq Boreen roadblock then asked us to come to Salem village,
where we helped remove three other roadblocks. We left a few people
in the village who called an hour or two later to say that an
apc and tank had come and a bulldozer was reported to be on its
way. We moved quickly and had internationals there in time to
block the bulldozer. 5 people sat on the ground and the bulldozer
was unable to re-do the roadblock; the jeeps however did come
and the soldiers began threatening arrest. After 30 minutes they
begin taking the men, one by one, quick cuffing each one (with
plastic handcuffs) and blindfolding them. They were put in the
back of an apc and taken to Huwara military base (released hours
later from Huwara after refusing to say anything). We stayed in
the area until they left knowing they would bulldoze during the
night. The day after we! came again to remove the road block and
will continue this resistance as long as the Palestinians want
to do so.
The quiet
has been replaced with the familiar sound of tanks, jeeps and
shooting again. The bombing yesterday at Hebrew University in
Jerusalem has led to a greater military presence and 4-5 people
were injured today from tank machine gun fire, one of them this
morning right in front of my eyes in Balata refugee camp. What
are they doing? One might think the Israeli army targets certain
people, or roams the city with a military aim. The reality is
that a very large part of their work is about terror.
This
morning in Balata, they came in jeeps and began tear gassing everyone
in sight for over an hour. Balata is one of the only places in
Nablus that actively resists the Israeli army and succeeds—the
children and young boys throw stones and impede the tanks from
entering into the camp regularly. Our role this morning was not
to negotiate or approach the tanks but rather to be witnesses,
and attempt to discourage shooting by putting our bodies on the
line. Two tanks are sitting in an open field at the southern entrance
of the camp; the children and boys are 50m from them with us.
We make ourselves visible and watch as the children and boys throw
stones and push the tanks back.
The tanks
play cat and mouse for over two hours with the youth, racing forward
and shooting in the air, rushing the crowd and letting out huge
smoke clouds, then pulling back as the children race back out
to throw stones. After over two hours of this we retreat back
3-4 m to some shade and sit as most the Palestinians mill about,
seeming tired of these games. All of a sudden there is tank machine
gun fire directly overhead us and shrapnel hits a 17 year-old
boy in the head. I turn and see blood pouring down this young
man’s face, 1m in front of me. Everyone runs with him to
a nearby clinic and the Internationals watch them go and turn
towards the tanks that begin to retreat. What kind of military
operation is this? All day they have been wandering the streets,
firing at will and terrorizing. Things are closed again despite
the fact that today marks the 14t! h day straight without any
lift of curfew—two weeks without even an hour to go outside.
Israeli,
American made F-16’s bombed Gaza and we watched Aljazeera
news, as the numbers of those dead and injured rose ever higher,
reaching over 170 (155 injured and 15 killed) by 2:30 a.m. when
the news broadcast ended. I sat with 7 young Palestinian men at
the UPMRC center watching the people shift through the rubble
looking for more and more bodies, and then flashes of the hospital
in total chaos. Horribly, graphic images flashed across the TV
screen, especially of children no longer recognizable as human,
but I was most touched by the young man next to me, as I watched
one tear roll down his cheek, and felt that I too, was going to
cry.
Israel
had agreed to pull out of the cities in the West Bank as part
of recent negotiations and Hamas and Islamic Jihad had just called
for an end to suicide bombings that night. Midnight rolls around
and Israeli forces bomb an apartment building without any prior
warning and with complete and total disregard for the lives inside,
with the very intention of destroying them. The morning after,
Hamas, Fatah, PLFP, and Islamic Jihad state loud and clear: Israel
is not ready for peace, does not want peace. Suicide bombings
are sure to follow. Can the world not see that Israel does not
want peace? I can only imagine how this horrible incident is being
spun in the U.S. Incessant stories about a Hamas member with little
to no mention of the entire BUILDING of civilians. I bet no one
in the U.S. saw the mangled children being shelved away at the
hospital morgue,! the father who went mad as he watched his son
die on the hospital bed, the young boy with a severely charred
leg, or the mother lying covered in blood, an oxygen mask over
her face and child on her lap. What kind of a war is this? “They
are trying to make life as unbearable as possible,” a friend
tells me yesterday, “Economically, medically, psychologically,
and physically.” That night we saw the creation of hell
on earth--hatred, evil, fear, and terror. “Where is the
peace?” someone says…..but everyone is silent.
This
adorable 70 year old man from a nearby village greeted me the
morning after. He asked me only: “Did you see the children?”
referring to Gaza. I say “Yes” and watch as tears
well up in his eyes and continue speaking for him. Imagine everything
that he has seen in this lifetime and yet still, the loss of life,
the death of innocent people, the killing of children makes small
streams of salt-water flow from his soul.
Sharon
and the Israeli government are not going to end this war; it is
not in their interest to do so, as they may actually be forced
to share this land. The cycle of violence seems to have no end
in sight. We, all of us in the international community, must put
pressure on our governments to TAKE ACTION NOW. There are many
ways for you to help wipe this man’s and this land’s
tears away. Make one call, send one email or letter today.
The sounds of machine gun fire, tanks and occasional explosions
echo through the windows from the streets in the heart of Nablus
as I go to send this—it is only 11 p.m. Don’t wait
until tomorrow to do something—the time is now. This simply
must end.
