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Reports and reflections from ISM activists in Palestine
1- Israeli army opens fire on crowd in Jenin (ISM Official)
2- Report from Balata camp near city of Nablus (Ananda la Vita)
3- Report from Nablus (Matthew O´Breigh)
4- Words from Waheed (Dianne Roe-CPT)
1- Israeli army opens fire on crowd in Jenin (ISM Official)
International Solidarity Movement
July 11, 2002
for immediate release
[JENIN] Israeli soldiers have reentered Jenin city with tanks and armoured personnel carriers (APCs) during a lift in curfew. At approximately 1600 one APC deliberately hit an electrical pole, knocking it down and crushing it.. The electric wires fell on the APC trapping the soldiers inside and preventing further movement. The army immediately moved in with two more tanks and several jeeps and opened fire indiscriminately on the crowds of Palestinian civilians in the area. The army shot out windows of buildings and showed no restraint in this attack.
International witnesses report that one journalist, Emad Abdel Aziz, has been shot. He was clearly marked on his vest with the word PRESS in white lettering. He was shot from a tank with an 800mm round at a distance of 8 to 10 feet. When he arrived at the hospital he had a 0 over 0 blood pressure. He is currently in a critical condition. A ten year old boy was also injured.. Activists are at the hospitals now assessing further injuries or deaths.A Reuters cameraman was on the scene and footage is available via the
Reuters office in Jerusalem.
For more information contact: Tobias 972 (0) 67 362 344 / 059 319 450 Caoimhe 972 (0) 55 975 374
For more information on The International Solidarity Movement contact: Huwaida Arraf 972 (0) 52 642 709 Ghassan Andoni 972 (0) 52595319
2-Report from Balata camp near city of Nablus, Occupied Palestinian Territories Wednesday
July 11, 2002
Ananda la Vita
Children's Party
ISM activist Janet, along with others, decided to throw a party for the children in Balata camp essentially in response to hearing a child tell her: "My mother has been crying for 4 days. I just want her to stop crying." Adults dressed up in clown costumes and entertained the kids at one family's home. We painted designs on their faces, made animals out of balloons, and generally goofed around all afternoon. Pictures are available - see contact details below
II. Tour of Damaged/Destroyed Homes Three ISM activists visited an area of Balata camp that had been seriously attacked during March and April of this month. Two stories seemed to be behind the damage we saw. First, there was the man who was shot and killed by soldiers as a result of a collaborator putting a powder on his back, during a greeting, that is only visible to the army. We saw the man's completely demolished house, next to a graveyard, and the two adjacent buildings which were partially destroyed. In one kitchen, an entire wall is missing. Because of this attack, all 3 families living in the buildings have to live on one floor. Secondly, we saw a row of three houses that were worst hit during an April 6th attack this year largely through the use of Apache helicopters and tanks. As a man who lived through the attack told us, on that day the army came to the hill near the houses and detained all of these families. In all, 5-6 homes were attacked, consisting of about 20 families.
Twenty-three men were taken away, interrogated and tortured, and brought back the next day. We saw and photographed incredible damage to these homes, and heard about serious injuries suffered by the Palestinians. One woman lost an eye, another had half her face destroyed, two lost their hearing, and two "lost their minds," in the words of the man telling us this story. Two pregnant women lost their babies; one immediately (two months early), and one later. We saw a huge crater in a kitchen floor, a massive hole through a stairway, and an entire metal doorway blown away. These are just a few examples of the damage we saw. Our host told us that the Palestinians sensed that the army knew they had done something wrong here, because they had actually treated some of the injured people. In one home, a mother described having nowhere to go when the attack was happening, and hiding behind a wall, huddling over her children to try to protect them. Our host said he did not know why the army attacked them: "Why, why, why. We did not do anything." Contact in Balata camp: Ananda la Vita (972) 56 389 317
3-Report from Nablus
July 11, 2002
Matthew O´Breigh matzebreigh@hotmail.com
Today, Thursday, the Israeli occupying army lifted the curfew that has plagued this, one of the oldest cities on the planet, for over 3 weeks. Desperate to accomplish the most basic of tasks, from getting medicine or getting to the hospitals, to finally getting home if they were stuck somewhere away from home after the last time the curfew was lifted, Palestinians throughout the Nablus region were bustling from early morning and throughout the day. On the outskirts of Nablus, in the Askar refugee camp, the army has occupied a 3-story house as a base of operations and from which they have a prime vantage point over Askar and the villages in the valleys heading toward Al Fara, on the eastern edge of Nablus. There is a family living locked inside the bottom floor of this house, literally underneath the bootsteps of the soldiers who will not even allow them into their yards without permission. When curfew is lifted this same family is permitted out of the house for only 2 of the normally 8 hours given most other families. A group of internationals was successful today in escorting members of this house who been staying in Balata since the last curfew was re-imposed back to their house.. They were doubled up in Balata and though the internationals couldn't understand why they would want to live in the house with the soldiers, the family was reunited.
This house/army base sits up the street from a roadblock leading out of Askar/Nablus to the road to Al Fara. Our group was called to reinforce another group of internationals further down the road who were facing a tank that was prohibiting people from leaving Nablus/Askar. They were playing a cat and mouse game with people. The tank blocked the road completely, swiveling the turret 360 degrees and charging back and forth as people tried to run on the sides between the hills out of which the road was carved. The group finally convinced the army to turn off the engine and move to one side until we negotiated a way to let the people through.
Two other internationals hiked back up to the occupied house/army base to negotiate with the command center there to find out why Palestinians were being refused passage when the curfew was meant to be lifted, as well as try to negotiate a way to get people through. Two other internationals approached a Border Police jeep that appeared and began charging at people and yelling for people to go back up the hill and back over the roadblock and back to Nablus. These internationals were successful in calming down the jumpy soldiers and began negotiating allowing people through. Over the next several hours up to two hundred people were allowed through with international accompaniment, however, the soldiers' aggression did not abate as several hundred people were trying to leave the city to return to their homes in the villages outside Nablus. People were carrying garbage bags full of possessions. At one point, the soldiers threw to the ground the ID of a doctor who was meant to get to a clinic in one of the outlying villages. This was just one example of the kind of humiliation meted out to Palestinians who were waiting to pass that day. The soldiers warned the internationals there to help and observe: "If you've come for a problem, we'll give you a problem."
In the meantime, hundreds of Palestinians were approaching the army to implore they be let through. One Palestinian woman told Michigan Peace Team member Jilnar X "They (Israeli Army) lifted curfew so we came to do the things we haven't been able to do since. With God we did it, we always listen to them when there is curfew, we ran out of food, we needed to go the hospital (for my diabetes) and now we want to go. Dear God, why does this happen, what did we do to deserve this? I don't understand, why would they lift curfew and then. We do as they say."
At around 1 pm, after several hours under a hot sun with hundreds of Palestinians still waiting at this new, "impromptu" checkpoint, the situation began to escalate and the soldiers began to completely refuse any free passage.. They threw sound bombs and tear gas repeatedly over the next two hours in an effort to clear the area. Everyone from old men to little babies was stung with the tear gas. Children were crying as the sound bombs went off all around. The driver of the Border Police jeep was especially cruel as he would drive straight into crowds of people who were burdened with their belongings and slow to move. Still, many people, desperate to take this one window of opportunity to move, steadfastly approached the roadblock each time the army went back up to the base. Says New York activist Ananda LaVita: "It was incredible to see the kinds of risks Palestinians take over and over again. At the roadblock today they kept trying to get past it, literally running past at the risk of being arrested, gassed or even shot by the police or army."
As this second cat and mouse game continued, indeed many Palestinians did successfully get through the roadblock, though many hours later. Once, when a taxi sped up to the roadblock to drop people off, the jeep sped up behind, soldiers forced the people out of the taxi and one began beating the driver, who remained in the car, with the butt of his machine gun. 2pm came and the curfew was reimposed, the tanks came back through the streets and people scattered again. They went back to whatever shelter they could find in Nablus, until the next time curfew is lifted.
4-Words from Waheed
by Dianne Roe
On the afternoon of July 11, 2002 Janet Shoemaker and I walked out to the area of Hebron known as Wadi Ghuss to visit the family of Waheed Zalloum. As I approached their home I remembered the day in February 1996 when Israeli soldiers demolished the Zalloum family home. The soldiers driving the caterpillar bulldozer cheered and slapped each other on the back while family members cried out in grief. Two of us were arrested that day for refusing to leave a closed military zone.
A year later in March 1997, team members and Israeli friends returned to the site of the demolished home to clear rubble so that the family could rebuild. CPTer Cliff Kindy, Rabbi Arik Ascherman of Rabbis for Human Rights and two Palestinians were arrested that day.
I have returned many times since then to talk with family members who have not been able to rebuild but who have added an upper story to their uncle's house and are now living there. I told Waheed that Cliff Kindy and other CPTers are walking from Chicago to Peoria to demonstrate about the destruction that is happening in Palestine, and the part that Boeing and Caterpillar are playing in that. I asked Waheed if he had a few words to say about his house demolition and the company that made the destructive instrument.
"The destruction is not from Boeing or Caterpillar," he said. "The destruction comes from something much bigger. The government of the United States spends its money to pay for destruction. Many people in the world are hungry, while others in the world eat too much. The United States should spend its money to give people food, not on instruments of war. The Caterpillar can be used for peace. It could be used to rebuild houses. The United States should spend its money to help people build houses, not to destroy them."
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