Ramallah
- My first stop over the green line is bustling. The
city is beautiful, more white stone buildings, some tall with
domes, some intricately stacked on one another with small passageways,
staircases and arches in between. Some places you can see across
the mountains at the homes across the way. It is difficult to
be in a place where you are at once surrounded with so much beautiful
land, architecture and kind welcoming people (the Palestinians)
and so much violence and repression. Two weeks ago I would have
written, "Ramallah, my first stop in occupied Palestine."
But this whole place is occupied Palestine.
Palestinians who live not in the West Bank
or Gaza also live with the occupation and there are many refugee
camps full of people who were forced to leave their land and are
unable to return, their homes and villages were either destroyed
or taken over.
Sunday in Jerusalem we got a tour of the
Arab quarter. The Israelis continue encroaching on the Palestinian
homes. We saw a sign for an organization in the Arab quarter seeking
donations that read, "please help, Jerusalem is ours."
We saw the house that Ariel Sharon bought right in the middle
of the quarter. It is blazing with Israelis flags and has this
larger than life Menorah on the top. It is such an obvious act
of aggression. Although the people here told us Sharon spends
no time there, his message is clear.
Later that evening on our way to the African-Palestinian
section of the Arab quarter with an African Palestinian former
political prisoner, we see a group of Israelis standing in front
of a doorway. Our friend told us that the three men, most of whom
had more than one gun each, were body guards for a settler who
then came out the door and carved his way through the Palestinian
crowd.
I'm writing this in my notebook to send
to you all on the way from Ramallah to Nablus. We just helped
people get through the Kalandia check point. There was a woman
with a baby getting heat stroke standing out in the sun waiting
for the Israeli soldiers to let her through. Some from our group
went to the front to negotiate, 'we are human rights observers...'
and eventually all of us, Americans and Palestinians and New Afrikan,
got through the check point. We stayed for a minute to assist
the woman. Some times people are held four hours in the hot sun,
old men and women, mothers and small children. Sometimes they
get through and sometimes they don't. The Palestinians have I.D.s
they must carry, either from Gaza or the West Bank. They have
to show these to soldiers all
the time. A number of people have told us that we will never understand
the daily pressure and humiliation they suffer.
The checkpoint at Nablus has been closed
for a while, but we will try to get through, otherwise we have
two other checkpoints we can try. At both we will have to hike
through the mountains, at one for two hours, another for an hour
and a half. We hope we will get through the one we are headed
to because it is the closest.
I have seen 3 or 4 Israeli settlements
here on our drive. We just passed one. Some are really fancy houses
almost looking like a middle class suburb of Arizona or New Mexico
except for the sand bags, fences and barbed wire and gun towers
on the tops of the houses which are designed to "fit in"
and "look normal" with the homes. More details about
settlements in the next update, I promise, I have so much to say
and so little time.
We get to the Nablus checkpoint and learn
that not only is this our closest option but our safest. The army
is doing an operation in the mountains that we need to hike through.
They say the hills are crawling with soldiers (later I see them
and its true) and yesterday in the village Tel near Nablus they
shot and killed three men who were out farming in their fields.
One apparently was shot through the roof of his mouth. This means
they got close enough to tell that he was a farmer, and unarmed.
After our negotiators talk with the soldiers for a while, they
determine that because we are Red Cross Volunteers (yup) we can
walk through after they search our bags. This is very fortunate.
Okay, back to Ramallah. While part of our
crew was in Jericho, the other half was in Ramallah. When we arrived
there they updated us on an action they were planning in response
to the Israeli army's attack on Gaza on the 23rd. This attack
was carried out with American F-16 fighter jets, killed 15, nine
of them children, destroyed people’s homes, and wounded
150 more people, some of them serious injuries. On the front page
of the papers here they show some of the damage in Gaza as well
as three photographs of infants, babies, who were killed in the
attack on civilians. Chances are you saw some of the pictures
of the action. It involved some internationals, Israeli tanks
and APC's, and some paint. The APC's and Tanks were parked in
front of a municipal building that the soldiers occupied. We were
on Al-Jazeera (TV) and in the papers. People have been recognizing
some of the British folks who were in the photos.
In fact, some of the coverage shows a sign
that some of the Puerto Rican crew have made that reads "Puerto
Rico in solidarity with Palestine" or something close to
that. This Palestinian man who went to the university in Puerto
Rico saw the evening news and spent all night calling people to
figure out where we were. He finally reached one of the Palestinian
ISM organizers and got to our hotel after it took him three hours
to get through a checkpoint right as we were on our way out. Four
of the Puerto Rican folks were there and he was so excited to
see them.
But anyway, after the action we debriefed
in the home of some of the organizers and walked back to our hotel
after curfew. The army imposes curfews on entire refugee camps,
villages and cities. Curfew means nobody on the street - that's
it, no stores open, just some ambulances and maybe a taxi. Curfew
is imposed there at five o'clock so at the center of Ramallah,
which would have been bustling like mid-town Manhattan, there
is no movement in the streets but us. The stores are all closed,
and many have posters of martyrs wheatpasted on their doors and
walls.
The sky, however, is not empty. After curfew
Palestinian children fly their kites and there are twenty or thirty
that we can see. This is one way they resist, and says one kid
with a Palestinian flag kite, fly the flag despite curfew. We
found one store that was open and were able to buy some food.
That night I stood outside the fifth floor looking at the moon
(its been full the whole time) and saw two tanks rolling straight
towards our hotel, and then they turned and headed into the old
city. Nothing was moving but the tanks and jeeps, the noise of
the tanks wakes you up at night and is a constant reminder of
the occupation.
Okay, out of time, thanks for all the love,
its Friday and I'm still fine, more later... Amanda
