NABLUS
TO BRISTOL - AN APPEAL FOR PEACE
Ringed by the mountains, with its narrow alleys of ancient stone,
Nablus is a beautiful city. Even with its shops closed up under
a nearly twenty-four hour curfew, where for most of the time only
tanks and ambulances move on the empty streets. The curfew has
lasted for nearly three weeks now.
We're staying in the Askar refugee camp, on the edge of Nablus.
After half a century of refugee life, Askar is a crowded little
village, nearly bursting with its 8,000 people who have nowhere
else to live. Four of us - three Swedes and myself - have volunteered
with the International Solidarity Movement, and are trying to
show what little support four very ordinary foreigners are able,
for a whole people living under occupation.
Four days ago we visited a family imprisoned in the ground floor
of their house by the Israeli army. The army often holds hostage
the people living in homes they occupy, as shield against a possible
attack. On this occasion, we were able to deliver urgently needed
medicines. Though we couldn't stay more than a few minutes, for
fear of being arrested, the hostages were delighted to have our
whirlwind visit.
The following day, we were less successful. A family of six had
been driven out of their elegant home, whose location at the very
top of a mountain makes it an ideal lookout for the army. We found
the evicted family, plus cooking utensils and a couple of mattresses,
in the unfinished house of a friend, lower down the hill. All
the family's possessions are left behind in their occupied home.
The oldest daughter, a university student, said the soldiers had
torn up her textbooks. The new accommodation has a giant pile
of broken cement in the middle of the open plan living room, and
no window panes. It will do for summer camping - but what about
when winter arrives? It snows in Nablus in the winter.
At the family's request, we went up to their home, to see if the
army would allow them to move back into one or two rooms of it.
As four of us trudged, ankle deep in white dust, along the ridge
leading to the house, gleaming white and perched squarely on the
mountain top, we saw the soldiers, moving on the verandah above
us. We knew that by then they had seen us, too. Arms hanging by
our sides, palms outward to show we held no weapons, we walked
forward slowly. The crack of a rifle shot stopped us in our tracks.
They were firing over our heads. Half a dozen soldiers, guns unslung,
came strolling down towards us. Half a dozen more watched us from
the roof. Here was our chance to plead the family's case. "We're
here to ask you if the family can come back into the house,"
the woman we had chosen as our negotiator said. "There's
nothing we can do," one of the soldiers answered. "Go
away now, and don't come back. If you try to come back here, you
will be arrested." That, as far as the army was concerned,
was the end of the matter. It was left for us to go back and break
the news to the despondent family.
Much of the work of ISM involves recording what happened here.
We have been into homes and photographed the holes, typically
three to four feet in diameter, dynamited in the interior walls
of houses during the invasion of Nablus in April. The Israeli
soldiers prefer this method to that of searching house to house
along the open street, where they might be exposed to snipers.
They work their way down a ground floor row, blasting their way
from room to room. Some of the families have money and skills
to repair these holes. One father proudly showed us the crude
plaster job he had done himself. In other, poorer household, repair
is not an option. A family member will pull back a curtain to
reveal the still-existing window between themselves and the neighbours.
We visited the parents of a seven-year-old boy shot this year
on May 17, behind the gates of his house, and fatally wounded.
Mohamed was waiting with his father for the tanks to pass by,
so that they could go out to the mosque. A passing tank blasted
bullets through the closed metal gates from the street side. After
hours of agony, the little boy died on the operating table. The
tank crew will never know who they killed behind the gates. Mohamed's
father still carries shrapnel in his legs from the shooting. "All
the time in my head I hear two things - the call to prayer from
the mosque, and the sound of bullets."
Ten-year old Amjad Abdeh was shot in the street by a tank while
picking up spent bullets and electrical wire to sell for scrap,
at nine in the morning. The boy's uncle was able to identify the
body only by the clothes Amjad was wearing. Amjad's aunt, who
had brought Amjad up as her own son, broke down weeping as she
told the story.
Another family showed us the hole in their bedroom pane where
a tank bullet entered the body of a middle-aged man named Mahmoud,
as he was looking in a drawer for medicines. Mahmoud's elderly
mother cried inconsolably, as the rest of the family told how
for 27 hours the army kept the ambulance from getting through
to them, and refused to allow a car to go out. (The Red Crescent
ambulance station is half a minute's walk away.) There was no
fighting in the neighbourhood at the time. The family cannot understand
why this law-abiding workman, the family breadwinner, had to die.
This morning a nineteen-year-old died from a tank bullet, fired
at close range on the main street of Askar. A few boys claim their
friends were throwing stones at the time. Others deny it. Whatever
the truth of the matter, the young man is dead. His blood still
stains the ground near the Askar mosque. We had hoped that our
coming here might help to prevent such horrors.
It is comforting to know that since so many internationals have
been in Nablus and the surrounding refugee camps, the nights have
been noticeably quieter. People do seem reassured by our presence
here. We are overwhelmed by their generosity and kindness. And
surprised, in this town where nearly everyone seems to have had
a relative violently killed by the army, at how little they seem
to hate the Israelis. (No doubt it helps that many in Askar have
worked in Israel, and have Israeli friends.) Most people in Nablus
we talked to claimed to reserve their anger for Sharon and his
government, and for the policies of the United States.
"We want peace," everyone tells us. "All we want
is for Israel to end the occupation, and leave us alone."
They ask me to take this message home with me to Bristol.
