Last
night about midnight we were out on the terrace of Ali's house,
one of the many friends we have made in the short time we have
been here Fara camp, when we heard a helicopter hovering about
the hillside. It seemed to drop something off, like landing lights.
We were intrigued but our Palestinian friends were more interested
in getting us to the table to taste the traditional supper of
watermelon and goats cheese. Such sinister events are commonplace
here and arouse little excitement in the camp where people are
striving to carry on their lives in as normal a way as possible
in these conditions, as much for themselves as for the thousands
of children who have nowhere to play and very little to play with.
So we went to sleep about an hour later and awoke in the morning
to find that the helicopter had dropped in Special Forces who
arrested and took away two young men aged 20 and 22 to god-knows-where.
The very
idea of sending in 'Special Forces' to a camp where the only weapons
are stones is so preposterous that I fail to find an analogy.
The first possible reason for such ‘covert’ and exaggerated
military action could be to avoid the incident being filmed or
eyewitnessed. The second possible reason as suggested to me today
by another ISM activist is much more sickening. She reminded me
that Israel must be seen to be fighting a 'war', and as such must
behave as countries 'at war' behave - using high-tech military
hardware and strategy, as much for its reputation as for the morale
of its soldiers. It is laughable, but it is also criminal.
So, feeling
very disappointed that we had failed to prevent the arrest of
these two young men, we took a short trip to the nearby villages
of Tubas and Tammun where the Israeli army had been making its
presence very clear in the previous nine days. There are no internationals
staying in these villages and I would like to think that if there
had been the level of destruction might not have been so intense
and of such a humiliating nature. We first visited Tubas, where
we saw the bulldozed remains of three Palestinian Authority buildings
and where the local school had been used as a 'detention centre'
by the invading army. If Sharon is so concerned that Arafat 'controls'
his people, why is he systematically destroying the very infrastructure
that would facilitates this authority?
In Tammun
the invasion lasted two days, during which the village was without
water, as they rely upon Tubas for their water supply (invasion
implies curfew). During this 'short stay' the IDF broke into the
school, town hall and health centre. The severest damage was done
to the health centre. During these two days the army used the
health centre as a detention centre for interrogation and beatings.
The viciousness of the vandalism is repulsive. In addition to
the crime of entering a health centre and using it in this way,
the compounded the horror by ransacking the building, including
the medicine room, where they mixed up tablets and made much of
the store unusable, and in the vaccination clinic, where they
opened the fridge and left it that way rendering the contents
ineffective. They defecated on the bathroom floor, pulled sterile
equipment out of cabinets and on to the floor, and broke some
of the doors down. In the town hall they broke through the front
door in spite of the presence of an employee who offered them
the keys. When they left the town they took 9 men with them, once
again, to god-knows-where. Tammun is a town of 16,000 people.
For this invasion, the army employed twelve tanks. The appropriation
of humanitarian centres for military use is as illegal as every
other element of this occupation.
The secondary
school in Tammun is being used as an exam hall for the local girls'
school also. They have a week of exams in the same hall where
they must stick a photographic ID card to their desks as part
of the regulations. During their occupation of the school the
soldiers took all these photos from the desks. The photos are
gone and the community fears that the IDF will digitally rework
these pictures to make culturally offensive pornographic images
with which to blackmail one or more families into collaboration.
It has happened before.
For us,
one of the most frustrating aspects of this situation is that
the media is not allowed to enter what has been classified as
a 'closed military zone'. In Nablus yesterday, two Palestinian
journalists were 'detained' (arrested) along with one of our fellow
ISM activists during a sit-down protest in front of an invading
tank. We are doing as much as we can to film the damage, interview
eyewitnesses and record events as they happen. We ISM activists
are the only international witnesses to these daily crimes.
