We woke
up this morning, they lifted the curfew at 9:30am. All of a sudden
people were everywhere in the street. I realized that Ramallah
is a real city, and how dead it has been. We of course went out
to get groceries, along with everybody else in the whole city,
and came back to the hospital.
Then
we went out again because there was going to be a march/demo.
So we joined it, carrying flags and signs. There were lots of
Swiss and French internationals, and us. There were some people
from Ramallah, but not too many because they just don't have time.
Curfew is lifted for 4 hours in 5 days, there's no time to march
around; you have to run errands, get food and supplies. Then it
was ten minutes to 2pm, and curfew is re-imposed at 2pm.
Everyone
started rushing back. The city went insane, everybody just going
crazy trying to get home. At 2pm, if you're out on the street,
they'll kill you. Imagine if it took 5 minutes extra to get home
from work, and they killed you. That's all. This is a regular
city, there were families out getting groceries, getting ice cream,
and then running for their lives. Because at 2pm these soldiers
will come down the street in their tanks and kill you.
We've
been walking around with Huwaida, who tells us there is no such
thing as curfew. As internationals we are under international
law, not military law. Curfew is military law. With Huwaida, you
go out any time you want to. It's a serious action, just to walk
the streets, to break curfew. It's complicated because on one
hand you feel like an asshole being out on the streets when the
Palestinians can't be, but it seems to make people feel good to
see us in the streets, taking them back from the military. So
it's 4 o'clock, and Huwaida says, let's go to my house, and then
we'll go to the rehabilitation hospital. So we go. The streets
are dead. Everyone is inside because of the curfew, at their windows
looking and waving and yelling at us. They are so happy to see
us in the streets. "Come out, come out, these are your streets,
come with us," Huwaida shouts. Nobody comes. But they're
so happy to see us. "How are you how are you how are you!"
The kids come out when they see us, little kids, shouting "hello!
how are you! how are you!"
And when
they hear a tank or an APC they scatter. So we're walking, walking,
and the first thing we see is two tanks and two jeeps and a couple
of armored personnel carriers outside an apartment building. We
all walk up to the building.
The soldiers
come down, and they've got their guns out, like always. We go
up and talk to them. "Who are you. Why are you out here.
There's a curfew," they say. We
talk to them about how there's no such thing as a curfew, that
we're subject to international not military law. Then we try to
talk to them about how there seems to be a lot of military activity
outside of a civilian home. We want to see. We just want to make
sure everyone's okay. "You can't come in. You have to leave
now. There's a curfew." There's no such thing as curfew,
we tell them. They're getting annoyed. We're talking and talking,
and finally there's just an impasse. They're not giving anything.
They start getting really aggressive. "You have to go. You
have to go." So we end up
leaving. What can we do?
They
were taking over this apartment building, where people live, for
their headquarters. That means that the people in the building
can't move inside the building from apartment to apartment even
when the curfew is lifted. They can't leave their homes at all,
can't go out into the hallway of their building, even.
We're
still walking. I can't tell you how terrifying it is to break
curfew. The streets are empty. You hear tanks, and you can't tell
when they'll come down the street where you are. Tanks are really
scary. Really big. They tear up the roads. The cannons from the
tanks, they follow you with them. The soldiers see you and they
swivel this huge thing around, and follow you with it when you
walk. It's the most ominous thing I've ever seen, like a beast.
You don't know when one's going to come at you. It is so quiet,
so scary every second. But you can't look scared, because that's
the whole point of breaking curfew. Not just to be out in the
streets, but to look confident and sure, so that people, Palestinians,
will see you and feel good about it. And so the soldiers will
see you and suddenly they won't have the power anymore, because
they see that you are refusing to give it up.
The next
thing we see is a couple of jeeps that have stopped a fire truck
with its sirens on. The fire truck is on its way to a fire. We
happen upon it. That's how it happens: You're walking, and you
just happen upon it because there's no one to stop it from happening.
We talk to the soldiers. "Why did you stop this fire truck?"
We win that one. They let the fire truck go ahead. We're close
to the rehabilitation hospital now, and when we get there, Huwaida
wants to make sure the fire truck got where it was going.
Some
of us go down the road to make sure, the rest of us go in the
hospital. I go down the road with some others. Kids are coming
out of houses, "how are you how are you," kicking soccer
balls at us, everybody wants to play and hang out. And we walk
for awhile, and we don't see the truck, so we figure it got where
it was going. We can smell the fire. Then the ambulances, like
five of them, go rolling over the hills toward the fire with their
sirens on, and then some of them come back toward us, sirens off.
The soldiers stopped the fire truck on its way to the fire. There
were people inside that building. You see what I'm telling you?
Those people didn't have to die.
We go
back to the rehabilitation hospital. This is the hospital for
people with debilitating injuries, paralysis. All the people here
were injured in the first or second Intifada, they all have a
story, and they all want to tell it. We go from room to room.
We hear from a guy who had 240 of his olive trees cut down. When
he went to harvest the rest, he was shot. We hear from a guy whose
friend was shot in the street in Jenin. When he went out to try
to save him, to put him in the car and take him to the hospital,
they shot up the car, took the friend to prison, and he's paralyzed.
We hear from a guy who was caught in bombing on his way to work
in Ramallah, and is now
completely paralyzed. His wife has to stay there with him in the
hospital because of the curfew. They have seven children. We're
standing in the room with him and his wife and they wheel in this
boy who's 13. He's all smiles. He tells us that he's from a small
village outside of Nablus, and that he was standing on the road
watching the army roll in when all of a sudden the soldiers started
to shoot him. He's not sure, but from what they were saying and
the way they were laughing, it seemed to him to be a game: who
could shoot him, and how many times. He was shot five times. Once
in the hand, once in the arm, once in the neck, and twice in the
back. Really thorough. He's paralyzed now. He was smiling the
whole time we were there.
We start
walking back to the hospital. It's getting dark because we stayed
too long. It feels dangerous. All day we've been walking around,
half of the soldiers we've met have just let us go. We are so
obviously not who they want. In our backpacks, so white, so foreign-looking,
they just let us go. But it's dark now. We are going over the
hill to the hospital, and I can see the hospital. At this point,
it seems like home, and I'm so glad to see it. I feel like the
hospital protects me--but I'm supposed to be protecting the hospital.
It's a sanctuary. The soldiers aren't allowed in there. The tanks
park right in front of the hospital, and they check the ambulances
at the door.
Huwaida
tells us to keep walking. She says, if you hear shots, they're
just in the air, keep walking. The people at the hospital don't
see us coming, so they don't open the gate, the gates are closed.
Now the soldiers are coming, yelling, coming with guns, yelling.
We're whistling, trying to get the attention of the people inside
the hospital, trying to get them to open the gates. It's wrong
to be asking them to protect us, because we are supposed to be
protecting the hospital, but we're afraid, we're yelling for them
to open the gates.
But it's
wrong. The gates are not opening, not opening...then they open,
and the doctors come running out. We start to go in, but the doctors
are shouting, "Go out, go out!" because the soldiers
are coming closer. They need the soldiers not to come in after
us.
The soldiers
start talking to us. It's dark. They want to see passports. "Why
are you here?" Their guns are so big, this is taking so long.
It doesn't sound like much. I don't know how to explain. But we
don't see this here, in the U.S.; we don't know what it's like.
And the Palestinians live this every day. The soldiers are running
toward us, like a combat unit, and the gate won't open. And all
I can see now is them shooting kids for fun.
These
are the people running toward me with their guns, they looked
at this little boy and laughed. Shoot him for fun? This is not
the first time I've heard that kind of story. Nothing to do, the
soldiers yell insults in Arabic, get the boys to come out and
throw stones, and when they come out, they mow them down.
Right
now, I'm standing in front of a hospital keeping watch. I'm the
only one out here. Everyone is asleep. Or they're inside having
coffee and smoking. I'm out front and it's 1:30 in the morning,
and I am so tired. The thing about being here is that it doesn’t
stop. You don't get a rest. You don't go out to an action, then
go home to Brooklyn, tired and stressed out so you take a nice
long shower. It doesn't stop. Every second is being in an action.
And I'm going to go home. God willing. But people live here. This
is it. And it's not fair.
"We
just want peace," people tell me. "We just want to live.
You're going to tell them how we can't live." Yes. I promise.
I promise I'm going to tell everyone.
