Today
was the day that the cleanup of 'ground zero' at the Jenin refugee
camp was finally to begin after over three months of false starts.
UNRWA had been in extensive negotiations with the Israeli army
to remove the debris as well as the unexploded ordinance that
still litter the site. The cleanup project will take three months
and involves coordination between Israel, the U.N and the Palestinian.
At nine
am this morning the U.N was informed by the Israeli army that
curfew was declared, effective immediately, due to `security reasons'
thus postponing the cleanup yet again. Today's development comes
as no surprise to anyone here.
Meanwhile, in the camp, the rubble (spanning about length of three
football fields and 30 feet high) lies untouched, children play
amidst the raw sewage that lies in open pools along street, there
is no running water, and the families that were living in the
160 demolished houses remain homeless.
The Constant Confusion of Curfew
One of
the daily deadly perils in Jenin is the constant confusion over
curfew. Although curfews here are usually announced on television
and radio late the night before, the Israeli army is notorious
for changing its mind with little or no warning. This has proven
deadly because the military has a habit of declaring curfew in
Jenin by means of driving through the town and camp using loudspeakers
punctuated by heavy fire aimed directly at civilians.
For example,
last night after 8pm multiple tanks rolled into the camp and then
the city to impose night curfew. There was heavy firing aimed
directly into homes in the camp. This was clearly visible to us
due to the use of night tracers on the bullets and flares in the
sky. At approximately 1 am the television announced that the curfew
would be lifted the following day from 8am to 8pm. Jenin's population
went to sleep believing that they would go to work, shops would
be open, and their children could attend summer camp in the morning.
Few people heard the jeeps, with their limited range loudspeakers,
drive through random neighborhoods at 6Am to say that indeed,
there would be curfew this day.
At 8 AM Jenin became a bustling city of shops, cars and pedestrians.
Although UNRWA was informed of the curfew at 9am, it was 10:30am
before a local summer camp was told to send all its children home
immediately as the tanks and jeeps were on their way in. Within
a half hour vendors in the open air market were scuttling for
cover and people rushed to get their homes as the tanks rolled
in to town.
Thankfully
no one has been killed in the past 24 hours. However, this curfew
confusion is exactly what precipitated the deaths of three children
and an elderly man, shot dead by Israeli tank fire in the marketplace,
when we arrived in this city a month ago.
A `Quiet' Week in Jenin
This
constitutes a `quiet' week for Jenin. Constant military presence,
shooting at civilians, children and ambulances is no longer worthy
of the world's attention. Of course it is not quiet and a war
continues to be waged daily against the population here. Families
are broken by the deaths of loved ones and the imprisonment of
Jenin's young men, fathers, brothers, and sons, held indefinitely
in administrative detention without charge. Ambulances have been
fired upon this week and continue to be held for long periods
at checkpoints while emergency patients await treatment. Two journalists
were recently shot, one killed and children are fired upon routinely.
