Once
again summer holidays for the children of Palestine are filled
with long hot days of lockdown, and danger. I arrived in the West
Bank a week ago to work with the Palestine Red Crescent Society
(observer member of the International Federation of Red Cross
and Red Crescent Societies), and in spite of the fact that I was
well aware of the situation I was walking into I never could have
imagined what I found. As I drove into Ramallah with the ICRC
(International Committee of the Red Cross), the city I once knew
as cosmopolitan and teeming with life felt like a ghost town.
Under curfew, people were imprisoned behind their closed doors
and windows, the streets were deserted, it was eerie and so still
that not even the air was moving.
Arriving
at the PRCS Headquarters, I could hear the sounds of children’s
voices coming from inside the homes and apartments in the neighbourhood.
I tried to imagine being locked into my home in Edmonton with
my 3 children in temperatures of 35 C for days on end. I tried
to imagine what it would be like to know that we were running
low on food and other essential supplies; what it would feel like
to be unable to refill my son’s ventolin prescription for
asthma; or unable to guarantee my children’s safety if they
went out to play in the yard.
But the children here are resilient; they
defy the curfew, and when the tanks and jeeps and guns are not
in sight they take to the streets in small numbers to scooter
and ride their bikes down the hilly roads unrestricted by other
traffic. When the soldiers come, they run and hide because everyone
knows someone who has been shot, or at the very least shot at,
for being out of the house during curfew.
In the evening, as the sun begins to set,
the children’s air force takes to the sky. Homemade kites
in the colors of the Palestinian flag fly far above their prisons
– dipping and diving in the evening sky. Leaning out the
windows or bravely taking to their roofs, the children send their
symbols of freedom soaring upward and for a moment they are flying
too. The kites look like guitars from the ground, with their long
tails trailing behind, and the sounds of the children who fly
them fill the air – like music. A small pleasure, a moment
of joy.
Yesterday they lifted the curfew for a
couple hours and the streets were full of people hurrying to buy
food, diapers, formula, medicine and other essentials. Things
seemed normal for a while. The Coordinator of Emergency Medical
and Ambulance Services in the West Bank and I needed to go to
Jerusalem for a meeting. At the Kalandia checkpoint, all illusions
of normalcy were shattered as I witnessed hundreds of men, women
and children being treated like cattle…no, worse than that…in
the scorching heat. A trip from Ramallah to Jerusalem that used
to take my family and I 15 minutes now takes two to four hours.
Of course, this depends on the mood of the soldiers and the day
of the week. Yesterday was particularly bad. As we stood in this
mass of humanity, we were yelled at and told to move, even though
we were surrounded by hoops of razor wire and there was nowhere
at all to go.
An American accent in an Israeli uniform
called out for foreign journalists: “Just show me your GPC
(government press card) and I can get you right through.”
His attempt to make the process appear humane. I thought to myself,
if you want to be humane let the children through. And then it
occurred to me: of course he’s clearing journalists, because
the last thing he wants is for a journalist to witness and report
the truth of this ugliness.
Women
fainted in the heat, small children cried, hot and frightened.
The Israeli soldiers thought nothing of pushing grandmothers and
young children or pointing their loaded and large automatic weapons
at us if someone complained too loudly or tried to plead their
case in an effort to get through sooner. The soldier up on the
lookout tower cocked and uncocked his rifle over and over as he
glared at us. Tension was building, and then one grandmother began
to shout. “Why are you doing this to us? We are not the
problem, we are just the people. Why?” I was angry and scared.
And then, completely unprovoked, they began to open fire. I was
stunned. Deafened for a few seconds, I tried to make sense of
what had just happened. For his part, the soldier simply scanned
the crowd with an intimidating glare and walked away.
I wonder how Palestinian children will
remember their summer holidays of 2002, unable to swim or go to
camp or run free in their yards like their Israeli counterparts
in the illegal settlements on the tops of the hills around them?
I wonder if anyone, anyone beyond the many shifting borders of
this place that is, even notices anymore, much less cares?
(Karen
Hamdon is a director of Humanserve
International, an Alberta based NGO. She lived in Ramallah
with her husband and 3 children in 1999-2000 and has recently
returned for a short posting with the Palestine Red Crescent Society.)
