On
Thursday, 8/15 two of us from Qalqilia who have been
in Palestine for a while traveled north to Tul Karem to see if
we could help with a new group from the International Solidarity
Movement to get settled and up and running quickly. We spent two
days there.
Tul Karem
is about 15 Kilometers north of Qalqilia.
It is also along the border of the West Bank and Green
Line Israel. I will describe the process we went
through to get there. Keep in mind that we were both
privelidged enough to have fairly light skin and US
passports so you can imagine the difference in risk if
Palestinians were trying to do what we did.
The main
road from Qalqilia to Tul Karem is completely
shut down by the Israeli military. There is simply no
way to get ther by that route. So first we crossed
out of the main Qalqilia checkpoint to the East. The
soldiers were happy to see us leave so that was not a
problem, for Palestinians it could easily be an
unsurmountable challenge depending on the mood of the
soldiers. From there we took a taxi about three
kilometers east to the village of Azzoun. Azzoun has
a roadblock cutting it off from the main road so we
had to get out of the taxi and cross this roadblock in
order to catch another taxi. This taxi we took north
along a small windy road for about 20 minutes untill
that road dead ended at another roadblock. On the
other side of this roadblock was a Jewish-only settler
road and incidentally a military jeep. We had to wait
about 15 minutes untill the jeep left. We were then
able to scramble across the road, luckily no other
military vehicles spotted us, and climb up a dirt road
on the other side. At this point a Palestinian drove
by us crossing around a roadblock off road. We asked
him if he was going to Tul Karem and he said yes and
offered us a ride if we wanted. He took us around a
few more road blocks under conditions that must have
been extremely damaging to his car. We reached
another road and he gave up because there were
roadblocks on every side of the intersection. He
dropped us off and headed back, giving up on visiting
his family, which had been his goal. we were able to
walk across another roadblock and call someone in Tul
Karem to send a taxi for us. A total of four taxi
rides and a lucky free ride, an illegal scramble
across a settler road, and a whole lot of stress, just
to travel what should have been 15 kilometers.
Tul Karem
area contains 45 villages, camps and towns.
There are 150,000 people in the area and about 60,000
in Tul Karem itself. Many buildings have been
destroyed during the intifada. There have been more
than 100 martyrs in Tul Karem, 10 have been students
and many have been children. Before the Intifada
there were two checkpoints in the area, now there are
dozens, both fixed and mobile. Tul Karem has been
under continuous 24 hour curfew for the last two
months. Curfew is lifted on average once a week,
usually for 4 hours. In this time people must take
care of all their needs such as shopping for the week.
Last week the army announced a lifting of curfew at
8:00 am. they announced it would last until 6:00 pm.
After less than one hour tanks reinvaded and fired
into the market. The soldiers assassinated Ziad
Ada'as, a leader of Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade and two
others. The Israelis allowed a funeral march for the
three martyrs but only allowed a very small number of
people to attend. (A part of occupation I had never
thought about, people here do not even have the right
to mourn their dead.)
The day
before we arrived a similar incident took
place. The army announced a lifting of curfew,
apparently hoping that a particular student at the
university. They seem to have hoped that he would
take the opportunity to go to school because when they
reinvaded, long before they said the curfew was to end
they surrounded the university. He was not found.
One of
the first things we did in Tul Karem was meet
the former mayor of the town and his family. They
used to live in a village called Shufa to the east of
Tul Karem. About one year ago when they were out at a
party, Israeli soldiers occupied there house. This
meant that they lost access to their house, their
land, and all the possessions they had in the house,
while they were simply out at a party. They have been
able to get some of their possessions but it has been
difficult. Now they are forced to rent a flat in town
and live their. Every morning their three year old
wakes up and says he wants to return to their
beautiful home. This man was named Muneer and his
wife was named Layla. We talked with them for several
hours about many different things.
Layla
is a refugee. Her family is from the village of
Taitabah which has been destroyed but is in what would
now be considered norhtern Israel. Her family fled to
Lebanon in 1948 during the ethnic cleansing of what is
now Israel. She was born in Lebanon, moved to Syria
and then to Jordan before she was able to move to Tul
Karem. She spoke a lot about wanting to return to her
land. Here are a few quotes from the two of them:
"Without
the resolution of the refugees we will not reach any solution."
"Sharon
is a bloody man"
They
like many Palestinians specifically mentioned
September 11 of last year and said they were against
any such act.
"Sharon
has the green light to do whatever he wants to the Palestinians."
"The
tanks have destroyed all of the economic life."
"Many
families are hungry, but there is no work."
"In
spite of this the people are ready to resist more and more."
"We
want liberty like all the other people of the world."
When
asked how she would feel about returning to her
village as an Israeli citizen in Israel, Layla
responded:
"We
don't care if we are called Israelis, its just a name. The most
important thing is to go home."
Later
this day I went out on an ambulance run with the
Red Cresent in Tul Karem. This is an office where
three ambulances have been destroyed in less than a
year. One was shelled by a tank in March, killing the
driver and another member of the staff. The other two
were crushed by tanks. Now there are two ambulances
left to serve a huge population that requires many
more. On the ride we passed through the Taybeh
checkpoint outside of Tul Karem. Once the soldiers
saw my US passport we were waved through with only the
most basic of searches. On the way back I didn't even
have to get out, they waved us through without even
checking the id's of the patients. The driver told me
they often have to wait at the checkpoint for a half
hour or hour. Its great that we can help to speed
things up for them and yet horrible at the same time.
Yesterday,
8/16 we visited the families of two martyrs. The first
family had contained seven brothers. One, Omar, who was 19 at
the time was killed September 6, 2001 when an Apache fired several
missles into his car. The eldest brother described finding his
brothers face, without the rest of his head or body several meters
from the car and his hands several meters beyond that. He said
he did not take any pictures because no one should have to see
how his brother was killed. Another of the brothers is in prison
in the Negev in the south of Israel. Another had just gotten out
of a prison near Jenin three days before. He had been in prison
for 9 months. Another brother is a fighter, he was forced into
hiding and the family does not know where he is and has not seen
him for more than one year. The brother who had just gotten out
of prison was there simply because his two other brothers had
been wanted. When he was arrested the family had no idea where
he was for 6 or 7 days. While in jail he was beaten at the beginning
of his stay. The entire time he was kept awake almost all of the
time between Sunday and Thursday each week and interrogated regularly.
He was generally allowed to rest on Fridays and Saturdays. When
he got out of prison near Jenin the family feared he would be
immediately re-arrested. So they brought him home through the
mountains, travelling across country but avoiding the military
checkpoints. The military has come to the house many times. Whenever
they do all of the brothers must hide or risk being arrested.
The family has up several martyr posters for Omar who was killed
last year. The soldiers always destroy the posters but the family
has a new one made every time and replaces it. Once in March the
soldiers told the father of the houshold that they would make
sure that he had another poster like that for his other son.
Some
quotes from the eldest son in the family. he was
about 40 years old.
"We
give the Israelis 78% of our land but its not enough."
Talking
about different solutions to the situation in
Palestine...
"I
am sure Israel will never give us one centimeter."
"If
we have the same rights [as an Israeli] its okay with us."
"Sharon
thinks Israel is alive with war. [He thinks] if the war finishes
there will be no more Israel."
"George
Bush is crazy. He will destroy the USA. He is not a president,
he is a cowboy."
"Not
all the people here are fighters or want Intifada, maybe you can
say 20%. They want all of us to be fighters. They destroy houses
and kill family members. What choice do people have?"
A
reminder, this next quote came from someone who had to pick up
the pieces, including the severed face, of his younger brother...
"People
ask me what I think when I see Israelis killed. I'm a human being,
it makes me sad. It makes me sad to see a dead cat. I am a human
being."
The second
martyrs family we met was the family of
Amen Al-Jalad. He was killed on 10/24/01. He, his
cousin, and two friends were sitting on the curb on a
street corner one evening. Israeli special forces
opened fire on them even though none of them were
armed or even had any idea that there were Israeli
soldiers nearby. He, his cousin, Mahmoud Al-Jalad,
and one of the others, Saleh El-Assi, were killed by
the gunfire, the fourth was shot in the leg and only
survived by pretending to be deadand lying among the
bodies of his friends until the soldiers left. Amen
was 20. He was in his second year in a university in
Navlus. He was also working, his father had died of
cancer. He worked in a clothing factory. He had 5
sisters and 2 brothers. He played handball on a local
team. His family said he was always happy and always
had a smile on his face. He had made dinner for the
whole family earlier on the night he was killed. The
family talked about him so lovingly, it was very
painful. They showed us two videos on their computer
of the funeral march. Each was set to a different
song written about the three of them. The songs are
now famous and sung by children on the streets of Tul
Karem and the surrounding villages. On the same night
these three were killed, the Israelis also killed two
other Palestinians so there funeral march was for 5
martyrs. There were between 15,000 and 30,000 people
at the funeral. The videos were amazing. Massive
numbers of people out to mourn 5 more people killed by
the occupying forces of the Israeli military.
We returned
to Qalqilia this morning the same way we
had come, with several taxi rides and a fair amount of
walking.
Just
two more quotes at the end of my report about Tul
Karem. I met several young men who helped to show us
around town, show us some of the bombed out buildings
and introduce us to some of these families. They were
great. They all loved Che Guevara and some things one
of them said really struck me. I asked one who was
wearing a Che Guevara t-shirt if the Israelis would
not like the shirt. He replied,
"In
Israel it is okay for Israelis to wear a Che Guevara shirt, but
its not okay for Palestinians."
but...
"I
don't care about them they don't organize my life."
I only
hope I am able to be half so defiant in the face of such brutal
repression.
Love
and Rage from Occupied Palestine,
Garrick
=====
Garrick Ruiz grok@riseup.net mobile phone (in Palestine): 067
371 507 (from the US) : 011 972 67 371 507 arhive of updates at
www.straybulletins.com/Garrick
!!!!Palestina
Libre!!!!
