[Peace-discuss] Reports from International Solidarity Movement
David Green
davegreen48 at yahoo.com
Sun Dec 5 11:19:28 CST 2004
This is another too-long post, but reading any one of
these 3 messages will give you the idea:
There are 3 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1. Fw: (ISM) ISM Reports and Journals
From: MichaelLevin11 at aol.com
2. Fw: (CPT) HEBRON UPDATE: November 18 through
November 28, 2004
From: MichaelLevin11 at aol.com
3. Fw: [JerryLevin] From The Inside Looking Out:
Report-40ðCTSD!ð
From: MichaelLevin11 at aol.com
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 1
Date: Sat, 4 Dec 2004 02:32:31 EST
From: MichaelLevin11 at aol.com
Subject: Fw: (ISM) ISM Reports and Journals
Sent: Thursday, December 02, 2004
International Solidarity Movement Reports and Journals
1. Another Faceless crime
2. Where are the Foreign Journalists?
3. Policy of Ethnic Cleansing: "No furniture, no
identity,no
life,just a shell, ready for demolition".
4. Camp Incursions
______________________________________________________
1. Another Faceless crime
When I look back upon my experience staying in a house
that was set
for demolition I only think of the kind eyed father
crippled by
Israeli fire two years ago, the mother numb from the
loss of her
son, periodically asking tentative questions in Arabic
and the
friend sitting opposite us in the newly rented family
house staring
incessantly at the wall, thinking of past times with
his young
friend, in between handing us glasses of coke,an
atmosphere of loss
hung over our uncomfortable conversation.
The house was decorated with flags of the chosen
accomplices, one of
the prominent armed groups here, and pictures of the
newly martyred
16 year old boy Amer Abdullah, who having seen his
father crippled
and his uncle killed by the armed forces representing
the Israeli
people decided to end his life, to take him away from
the suffering
of which he had become a part of and which he was
about to
enhance.
Is it right to blame those who indirectly benefit from
other people's
suffering for their suffering? A question I asked
myself to not let
the immediate feeling of rage take over.
His poster adorns the wall in our apartment, a soft
peach background
a stark contrast to the dark and harsh colours of
other martyr
posters. A fitting tribute to a child born in the
wrong place. I
look at the face of the boy and see the likeness to
his father, the
meeting eyebrows, the Roman nose, and I remember the
moment when the
smiling father finally accepted, after all his
obsessive sweeping,
that he had lost a son, and with the explosion, his
house.
I pictured the look of terrified innocence I had seen
earlier as I
heard him weep uncontrollably into his jacket. I
pressed my body
against his and offered all my warmth........
We heard that a house was going to be demolished after
we had got
back from an emotion-sapping demonstration in Budrus,
Ramallah.
Askar refugee camp, an adjoining camp of which I had
only heard
through hearing of another man killed. You never seem
to hear of
places because of something good in this place, only
locations, of
tragic events.
Unknowing, we were scared at the co-ords. Nervousness
and the
finality of it all, embassies were to be called,
things
packed...............
Everybody left together adding to the anxiousness. A
posse walking
the eerily deserted streets. We were told jaesh were
in Nablus which
didn't help our feeling of vulnerability on the wide
empty street.
Such a contrast to the usually chaotic taxi filled
roads.
It's scary when your senses are allowed to rest and
your brain
diverts its energies to thought.A totally unrelated
talk with my
sweetheart took my mind softly away from everything;
the eerie
streets now became beautifully calm.
The warm handshakes were pleasant to feel against the
mentally cold
night. We entered the camp from the main wide entrance
and Into the
labyrinth of tight winding streets The lamps sent a
circular
artificial orange glow onto the tightly packed walls.A
group of
seated men outside the door greeted us'As Salaam, Al
Akuum'The first
thing we noticed was that the house was as empty as
the streets, No
furniture, No identity,No life,Just a shell, ready for
demolition.
No distraught mother,
No anxious father,
No bereaved relatives,
Just a feeling of inevitability and acceptance,
Cold calmness.
The little that we were expecting was solumn faces and
depressive talk. The atmosphere of normality in this
situation was
scary, the neighbours just as inquisitive as in any
situation you
encounter here. Suffering has become a part, a huge
part of these
people's lives, so much so that this completely
unnatural, violent
situation is taken as utterly normal.
For once I was grateful for the liquid sugar tea which
was always on
Offer as my eyes began to drop. A raw red cabbage was
chopped into
small brain like segments and given.The father entered
the front
room, bent over sweeping the empty house; the
neighbour rolled his
eyes in pity. He looked up with his wide, kind eyes
and a huge grin
on his face energetically offering to show us the
empty kitchen,
pointing down he showed us the newly tiled floor, two
months ago
redecorated, the translation came.
'What can I do?'
A shrug of the shoulders understood in any language.
The total
control of a people by another.
What can they do?
Pick up a gun, be dead by 20?
What can people do to protect their families and home
and not let
their humanity be taken along with the control of
their lives?
How dare Israel put these people in such a position?
And so they came and at gun point ordered us out, and
on the father's
say-so, we went.
I looked at the father's terrified eyes, the look of a
child
flooding back into them as the soldiers repeatedly
tried to grab him.
I felt such anger at this humiliation. How dare you
terrorize this
grown man! Go away, so far that you cannot humiliate
these people.
They coldly marched in and out of the house. And then
I saw the
system that the Israeli army operates every time they
enter a city
or camp for military operations, the use of human
shields. Even the
word comes out like vomit passing through the lips.
The act of using
another human being as a shield. The forced first
line of defence
is not armor or vests but a human being, flesh and
blood. I saw the
neighbour who spoke good English and who we talked
openly with all
through the night about his kids, hopes and life here,
being marched
in front of the soldiers with a gun to his back.
I let out a sound of dispair as the life of a human
being was being
toyed with and cheapened to a worthless piece of
armor. Our new
friend's look assured us, the scariest thing was the
comfortableness
he emitted, just another day as a Palestinian, being
used as a human
shield. When I spoke to him later he said this had
happened to him on
numerous occasions. Another man being used, who we
glanced at, gave
us a look of bitter humiliation.
They coldly continued their calculated military
operations, passing
like a blanket of nothingness, wiping away humanity.A
man walked past
us with no gun and tightly pressed clothes.I felt the
coolness of
this man as he strode past having just one objective,
to blow up
another nameless house.
They left as they came, before the sun rose and
uncovered their
darkness.
"Collective, collective punishment".
Yesterday we went back to the house to take pictures
and document the
aftermath. What we found was to push collective
punishment to
extreme levels.
We met Abu Ahmed and his big smile in the newly rented
apartment he
and his family were now living in. They seemed
comfortable enough
but not settled. Ahmeds smile dropped as he told us
how the soldiers
had come in the night and in front of him used clubs
and gun butts to
beat four of his five remaining sons.
He continued to tell us how they were dragged outside
and stuffed
into the back of the jeeps and driven away. The
soldiers then came
into the house and began to upturn beds and couches
and left after
15 minutes. The most worrying aspect, the mother told
us, was that
they didn't know where their eldest son had been
taken. Often men and
women are taken away from their families to one of the
many
detention camps that dot Israel and are not seen for
months. Not
knowing
where your son is, how he is being treated, if and
when you will ever
see him again. To all mothers reading this, you must
understand the
wrenching pain of this.
The neighbours on all three sides of the house had the
connecting
walls destroyed and two of the neighbours are thinking
of moving out
because of the unsteadiness of the wall and the real
likelihood
that the wall could fall down on top of them.One, a
75-year-old lady
who lives alone, said to us that she didn't have
enough money to move
and would have to risk it and stay. The wall which
has huge cracks
and structural damage could easily fall, crushing all
inside. The
other neighbour, who has 4 children and had just
redecorated his
Kitchen, was packing up to leave when we visited.
Just to summarize who has been affected by Israelis'
insistence on
implementing its illegal policy of collective
punishment:
-Family of nine lose their only home
-75 year old woman forced to live under threat of
unsteady wall,
possible crushing of home and possible death.
-Family of five forced to move for fear of unsteady
wall, get no
monetary return on partially destroyed home
-Four brothers of martyr beaten and arrested, unknown
return date.
-friend of friend of martyr beaten and arrested for
suspected aiding
a suicide bomber.
-People do not kill themselves for no reason.The
violence that
penetrates every aspect of society here and that
children are forced
to grow up in,seeing friends shot dead, watching as
your father is
shot by a tank,hearing that your uncle has been
killed.
You give up trying to find answers as to why
And starting looking for ways to deal with it
Your survival mechanism kicks in
You are forced to fight it
To look for outlets for your frustration.
The extreme frustration and helplessness that I have
felt here is
a hundred times as much if you are doing more than
visiting.
Love to you
Jonson XXXXXX
_______________________________________________________
2. Where are the Foreign Journalists?
John, Nablus, Occupied West Bank
Are the Palestinian territories the only war torn
place in the world
not covered by journalists? How can accurate reporting
of the
conflict take place if reporters never leave Jerusalem
or Ramallah -
cities that are generally safe from the harassment and
violence of
every day life in the Palestinian territories?
Since I have arrived a few weeks ago, I have seen only
two foreign
journalists in the West Bank. One was an independent
freelance
journalist; the other, who I saw only this morning,
was an elderly
Welsh woman who works with the BBC. Following their
passion for
justice, they have traveled here alone and without a
news crew - and
generally without institutional support. Thus in
Nablus, a city of
300,000 people constantly under siege from Israeli
military
incursions and violence, the occasional journalist or
international
activist immediately stands out.
Last week in Jenin, for example, five internationals
with the ISM
were the only foreigners in the city. There was not a
single foreign
journalist to be found. In comparison to Iraq, the
West Bank is
generally a safe place for both travel and work.
Palestinians are
extraordinarily generous and hospitable and I, along
with most
people who have spent time here, feel safer walking
around here than
around many American cities.
Are the absent journalists too lazy, has the
occupation gone on so
long that it is no longer eye-catching, or are they
intimidated by
the Israeli government? Israel does demand the right
to censor
pictures and news stories from foreign journalists,
but there are
ways of reporting stories truthfully if one is willing
to invest the
effort. The BBC reporter that I met in Nablus this
morning was one
such case. She has changed her name four times in the
past two years
in order to be able to get into the country to work.
Doing so has
allowed her to report truthfully, and escape the
censorship and
strict media guidelines that Israel imposes on its
reporters.
Both of the reporters that I have met are unique in
that they had to
go to great lengths to even get into Nablus. Over the
past month,
the city has been closed to all foreigners. This
includes both human
rights activists, like ISM volunteers, as well as
journalists. To
get into the city, one has to sneak in, which requires
that you find
someone to show you a route that Israeli soldiers are
unaware of.
These secret pathways require both car travel on some
very bad
roads, as well as some challenging walking, but the
trip can be
accomplished in the space of a few hours. However,
the need to use
secret pathways to get into and out of a city whose
perimeter is
controlled by Israeli soldiers criminalizes the people
who need or
want to travel in and out without censorship or
harassment.
Two years ago in Nablus (during a period when the city
was
officially "open" to foreigners and others), I stood
one day next to
a BBC photographer who was reporting on an Israeli
invasion
occurring that day. As they tried to walk to school,
children were
being tear gassed, arrested, and beaten by Israeli
soldiers. We were
both documenting the events when a soldier approached
us and
demanded our film. We both refused but eventually the
BBC reporter
gave up the film to the solider. I asked him why he
gave in. He
responded, "If I didn't give them the film, I wouldn't
be able to
work here again and it would be bad for my career".
Being the only
foreign reporter in the city at that time - whose film
was later
confiscated - the world was never able to witness the
unbelievable
violence of Israeli soldiers towards those particular
schoolchildren.
Israel believes that its war with the Palestinians is,
at least in
part, a public relations war. Government officials
speak openly
about their need to control the way the conflict is
represented in
the United States and Europe. People who get all of
their news about
the conflict from Euro-American mainstream media will
never be able
to understand this conflict. Without searching the
many alternative
and independent news sites that cover the conflict
here, most people
in "the West" misunderstand the conflict as either a
"war between
two peoples" of ethnic, primordial, and religious
hatred or,
alternatively, as an Israeli response to Palestinian
violence. They
fail to understand the most elementary fact of life
for people in
the occupied territories, which is that Palestinian
people live
under a harsh and brutal military occupation by a
foreign army. The
occupation, which today is the longest running in the
world, is
rarely mentioned. As long as journalists are not
willing to take a
risk and report contrary to Israeli interests or
travel to areas
forbidden by the Israeli government, the world will
never gain the
objectivity and knowledge which it needs in order to
truly
understand this conflict, and the social injustice
which it
perpetuates.
___________________________________________________________
3. Home Demolitions and the Policy of Ethnic
Cleansing
November 29 2004
Ian
A group of ISM volunteers joined the villagers of
Anata on the
outskirts of Jerusalem today in an attempt to prevent
the demolition
of two homes. Other protesters included a team from
ICAHD and
representatives from Rabbis For Human Rights and a
Jewish Rabbinical
student.
About 300 police and soldiers had entered the village
at the start
of the day to seal off the area: a two-storey
apartment - home to
Jaduah Kabu'ah and 24 members of his extended family,
most of them
children. The family was ordered to remove personal
belongings from
the house, and given an hour to salvage what they
could. Mattresses,
furniture and personal items were heaped in a pile on
the ground.
The first demolition took less than two hours, and was
carried out
with a Caterpillar Bulldozer and a Hitachi drilling
machine. At one
point, a large section of wall was pushed over, taking
down an
electricity line to the village. Soldiers joked as the
distraught
family gathered in tears to watch their home
destroyed.
Armed soldiers then moved crowds back as the wrecking
machinery
moved further down the valley, heading for a
one-storey home owned
by Mohammed. Police jeeps arrived first, sending
terrified children
indoors. The family of nine - including children aged
from 1 to 13
years old - were also ordered to clear their home of
belongings
before being evicted.
As the bulldozer moved down the path to the Dandis
house, four ISM
activists attempted to intervene but were intercepted
by armed
soldiers carrying batons, who pushed them back and
threatened
violence. The demolition took less than an hour,
watched by soldiers
who were continually challenged by activists. The
pneumatic drill,
which had been used to puncture walls and destroy
foundations, also
carved a large trench across the access road, making
it impassable.
Most of the soldiers ignored the demonstrators. One
repeated 'it's
not my problem.' Another, clearly enjoying the event,
took
photographs of the crowd.
The military and police left as suddenly as they had
arrived,
leaving heaps of rubble where earlier in the day 34
people had their
homes. Both properties, as with every other house
visible at the
site, were the subject of demolition orders. They are
'illegal'
because they have been built without a permit. A
permit is virtually
impossible to get - usually because the land is
designated 'agricultural' by the civil administration.
The Kabu'ah
home was officially razed, however, as it's 'on a
slope'...
The two homes demolished today lie less than 100m from
the Apartheid
Wall, the route of which has been clearly marked,
running through
the valley. But Anata has been repeatedly targeted for
house
demolitions because of the strong resistance of
villagers and the
repeated rebuilding of destroyed properties.
Community spokesman Salim Shawamreh, whose own house
has been
rebuilt with the help of ICAHD four times, said 'What
happened here
today has once again made transparent the policy of
ethnic
cleansing. The Israeli government wants an empty land
for Occupation
purposes. This is state terror.'
----------------------------------------
4. Camp Incursions
John p. in Balata Refugee Camp, West Bank.
At 6:30 in the morning a small incursion of Israeli
military
vehicles entered Balata Refugee Camp. There have been
at least 5
such incursions over the past 2 weeks. The military,
supported by a
few armored jeeps as well as Armored personnel
Carriers (APC's),
usually merely sets up near main intersections while
one drives
around the outskirts of the Camp. Today, however, they
entered the
Camp several times, driving on both the main street
(Market Street)
as well as numerous small side streets that crisscross
it.
The timing of the arrival of the military was
particularly bad as
children were just beginning their journey to school.
Hundreds of
children poured onto Market Street and walked toward
the
intersection when the jeeps met them. Not trusting the
intentions of
the military's actions, the children backed up and
sought
alternative routes to school.
At least 6 tear gas canisters were fired into the
center of Balata
from a distance of over 100 yards away. One of gas
canisters hit the
Mosque and another landed in a U.N.-run compound. A
number of sound
grenades were also fired at seemingly random moments.
The effect of
all this was that business' were closed, people
driving taxis and
trucks frantically made U-turns to avoid coming into
contact with
them, and people stayed indoors or away from where the
military was.
Internationals on the scene documented the actions and
a couple of
times prevented the jeeps from entering the camp by
standing in the
road and refusing to move. The jeeps would drive
aggressively toward
us but stop a couple of feet in front. They would then
back up and
leave the camp. The reason that blocking the Jeep's
entrance into
the camp was done was to prevent them from creating
the hostile and
confrontational environment they seek. The military is
well aware
that the inhabitants view their actions as hostile and
that rock
throwing by the youths will be the response. Such a
response by the
youths gives justification to the military to kill or
badly injure
them. Such is what occurs often, as evidenced by what
happened in
Nablus last week when a Jeep entered the Old city and
proceeded to
shoot dead two teenage boys. Because Balata is
notorious amongst the
military as a place that has an active resistance to
the occupation
they receive the bulk of incursions in the West Bank.
As far as we were able to learn, only one shot was
fired by the
military. As a jeep was passing through the center of
town on Market
Street, it fired down an alleyway that was only
moments before
evacuated by Palestinians and an international. At the
time of this
report, we were not aware of any injuries.
At 10:00 a.m., the military vehicles just picked up
and left. They
obnoxiously gave us a wave goodbye as they headed out
of town.
Within minutes of them leaving, all the shops in the
area opened up
for business. Opening their steel doors and windows,
turning on
their lights, the streets quickly filled up again with
pedestrians,
thus completing another "normal" day for the besieged
residents
of Balata Refugee Camp.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
This Mail Was Scanned By Mail-seCure System
at the Tel-Aviv University CC.
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 2
Date: Sat, 4 Dec 2004 02:23:49 EST
From: MichaelLevin11 at aol.com
Subject: Fw: (CPT) HEBRON UPDATE: November 18 through
November 28, 2004
From: Christian Peacemaker Teams
[mailto:cpt_hebron at yahoo.com]
Sent: Thursday, December 02, 2004 12:44 PM
To: cpthebron at yahoogroups.com
Subject: [cpthebron] HEBRON UPDATE: November 18
through November 28,
2004
HEBRON UPDATE: November 18 through November 28, 2004
Thursday, November 18, 2004
Friday, November 19, 2004
Saturday, November 20,
2004
In the morning, Diane Roe encountered Israeli soldiers
ordering
shops in the Old City to be closed, because, a soldier
told her, it
was a "special" day for the settlers. So, the soldiers
said, they
were shutting the stores down to "protect the
Palestinians."
At noon while observing soldiers at the Beit Romano
checkpoint and
keeping a record of detentions, Dianne Janzen, Luann
Brooker, and
Roe were questioned by a soldier as to what they were
doing. He then
took their tally sheet, examined it, but refused to
give it back.
Then after only a half hour of conducting the watch,
the soldiers
ordered the CPTers to leave the checkpoint area, which
they did.
In the afternoon Diane Janzen, Bob Gross, Roe, and a
Palestinian
translator, made a visit to a CSD (Campaign for Safe
Dwellings)
family in the Jabal Johar neighborhood. The home is
situated
along "Worshippers Way," the path Kiryat Arba settlers
take to walk
to and from Abraham's Tomb. But because settlers were
on the march,
the CPT group was not allowed to take the most direct
route to the
home, which is alongside Worshippers Way. Even so, as
they tried to
get to the home via other streets, all of which are
inside the
militarily beefed up Israeli section of Hebron (known
as H2),
soldiers still kept diverting them, because, they told
the CPTers,
the streets they wanted to use were closed. After
being advised to
find another way and after several additional delays
trying to do
that, they finally did reach their destination.
When they arrived, they learned that other Israeli
soldiers had
commandeered another Jabal Johar house and were using
the roof as a
lookout to protect settlers, walking up or down
Worshippers Way. .A
Palestinian complained that one of the soldiers had
shot a hole in a
water pipe. Later the CPT group observed about eight
or nine settler
kids in Kiryat Arba throwing stones down onto the
roofs of
Palestinian houses just down the slope leading from
the settlement
to Palestinian homes lining Worshippers Way.
Sunday November 21, 2004
Monday November 22, 2004
Roe and Brooker encountered an elderly Palestinian man
in the Old
City who generously called out to them, "American
peacemakers. We
want to thank you. We are happy you are with us and
the people in
Tuwani.
Tuesday November 23, 2004
An overnight visitor to CPT left his luggage on the
patio outside
the apartment for a few minutes. When he came out a
few moments
later, he found it had been ransacked and all his
money stolen. (It
is thought that some neighborhood children sneaked up
the apartment
steps and took it, while everyone was inside.)
Wednesday, November 24, 2004
In the evening Kristin Anderson, Roe, Janzen, and
Levin experienced
the latest in population attrition from the Old City
when they
visited long time friends, who live next to the market
plaza nearest
the CPT apartment. They learned that the family, which
has lived in
the apartment for generations, will-in a month--be
moving out of the
Old City into the Palestinian administered area of
Hebron, known as
H1.
Thursday November 25, 2004
Israeli soldiers gave Levin, leading a tour,
permission to guide it
up Shuhada Street all the way to Tel Rumeida. .But
before soldiers
would let Levin's group and a busload of Medicin Sans
Frontieres
workers pass through their checkpoint, they were made
to wait while
a group of about thirty Israelis, also on tour and
guarded by
military jeeps and soldiers on foot, were waved
through the
checkpoint first.
Later on Roe, Janzen, and Anderson were allowed to
pass through the
Duboyya Street checkpoint to visit long time friends
living next to
Tel Rumeida
Friday November 26, 2004
Saturday November 27, 2004
At about 8:30 in the morning Anderson, Brooker, and
Janzen,
responding to a call from a Hebron University
official, went there
and observed two jeep loads of Israeli soldiers
detaining long lines
of young men and checking their IDs. An university
official said
that this was a regular practices of the military; and
male students
were often late to class because of the detentions and
ID checks.
In the afternoon, Anderson and Janzen observed Israeli
soldiers
escorting settlers through the old city. Several
settlers passing by
the two CPTers said the same thing to them,
"Motherfuckers go home."
Then, as the settlers were leaving the Old City, they
were observed
knocking over four large bags of olives. The contents,
which spilled
onto the street, were ruined by subsequent foot
traffic. Anderson
asked an Israeli soldier, why he stood by and let the
settlers
commit such acts of vandalism. He replied, "I know
it's wrong, but
there is nothing I can do."
Sunday November 27, 2004
Monday November 28, 2004
--------------------------------
Christian Peacemaker Teams is an ecumenical initiative
to support
violence
reduction efforts around the world. To learn more
about CPT's
peacemaking
work, please visit our website at:
http://www.cpt.org.
Photos of our projects may be viewed at:
http://www.cpt.org/gallery
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 3
Date: Sat, 4 Dec 2004 02:58:26 EST
From: MichaelLevin11 at aol.com
Subject: Fw: [JerryLevin] From The Inside Looking Out:
Report-40ðCTSD!ð
Jerry Levin
CPT
Hebron, West Bank
CPT's Hebron Land Line: 011 972 2 222 8485
. . .
jlevin0320 at yahoo.com
. .
>From The Inside Looking Out: Report-40
â*”CTSD!â*”
(Hebron. West Bank Palestine, December 4, 2004). It's
been a while
since the term PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder)
attained a kind
of idiomatic universality. But now I think it's
important to
recognize that--where traumatic stresses and the
disorders resulting
from them are concerned--there is something that may
be even worse
than PTSD; and that is CTSD: Current Traumatic Stress
Disorder. The
kind that a person being scarred and rescarred by
perpetual violence
can't leave behind. Can't leave behind because it
never stops. The
kind where--tragically--a victim doesn't have an
opportunity to
reach the point where relentless ongoing
stress--deliberately
applied--can be left behind so that he, she, or they
can enter into
a "post traumatic" phase, where presumably there is a
better chance
for recovery and healing.
So this report is about CTSD, especially as it applies
to the
beleaguered, careworn men, women, and children of
At-Tuwani who, in
the face of unrelenting subtractive too often violent
domination,
are struggling from one day to the next to hang on to
their way of
life and the surviving dignity they amazingly still
are able to
muster. At-Tuwani is a small and ancient Palestinian
village
situated too close for comfort to Ma'on, one of the
militant
violently acquisitive Israeli settlements in the Yatta
hills
southeast of Hebron.
Ma'on was suddenly established on a nearby hilltop by
Israeli
squatters in 1982. Since then the people of At-Tuwani
have been the
victims of continuous physical intimidation and the
equally
unrelenting theft of their agricultural holdings:
acreage made rich
by the patient labor of the local farmers, who have
been diligently
carving their plots out of the rocky soil surrounding
the village
for at least a thousand years. The more than a
generation of
repression, suppression, and oppression against the
people of the
village has been carried out by confidently smirking,
swaggering,
and often snarling settlers who know that they can
count on, if not
the connivance of the Israeli army stationed in the
area, then at
least its eventual passive acquiescence.
I first wrote about the gradual reduction of At-Tuwani
in the
second "From The Inside Looking Out" report that I
filed from
Palestine. Here is an extract from that July 10, 2002
account.
.
----------
"Why do you look so angry?" one of our small group
asked an Uzi
toting security guard. The grim settler had just led
an Israeli Army
patrol up to our little group of CPT and Quaker fact
finders, which
had been waiting expectantly and hopefully in a field
outside the
Palestinian village of At Tuwani for someone in
authority to answer
our call for help. We had gotten in touch with local
police on a
cell phone a half hour before in order to get help for
villagers
helpless to deal with mooning Israeli kids from the
nearby
settlement of Ma'on. Before that the brats had been
bathing brazenly
and nakedly in what had been a [Palestinian] well but
which lately
had been confiscated and put under settler lock and
key.
The Police told us it would send the Army. But when
the troopers
arrived, escorted by that scowling Ma'on security
guard, it was
clear that they were there on Ma'on's behalf, not
At-Tuwani's.
Our complaint had no constructive effect on either the
security
guard, which was no surprise, nor the commander of the
soldiers,
which really was not a surprise either, although we
had hoped he
might try to rein in the security guard a bit. Instead
he clearly
was concerned with making as few waves as possible for
the settlers--
not the villagers.
The security guard went so far as to tell us that we
CPT and Quaker
visitors had no right to be where we were because the
land we were
in was Area C--the notorious military security zone,
which many
people do not know constitutes about 60% of the West
Bank and where
the Israel military is a law unto itself. So from now
on, the
security guard yelled, we had to get permission from
authorities in
Ma'on to visit the area. The Army commander did not
contradict.
That's when the security guard was asked, "Why do you
look so angry?"
"I was born angry!!!" he literally snarled."
----------
Confiscation of At-Tuwani land began in 1982 about two
years after
Ma'on was established not more than three quarters of
a mile away
from the village. The area, where we stood during the
encounter
described above, along with its acre or so of olive
trees, has long
since been confiscated; and the ring of confiscated
land around the
settlement continues to expand at the rate of from 20
to 25 acres a
year. That may not seem to be very much acreage, for
instance, to an
American or Canadian; but for the village's five
families (numbered
at about 150-200 children, women, and men) the amount
of
cultivatable soil that is now out of their reach
behind settlement
fences adds up to about 375 acres.
In Palestine that's a lot.
And, oh, by the way, earlier this year, settlers
poisoned one of the
village's two drinking water wells by throwing dead
chickens into it.
Confiscation, however, has been only one dingy facet
of the
villagers' continuing--not just travail
but--terrifying peril. Along
with the land thefts, settlers, starting twenty years
ago, began a
relentless campaign of physical attacks on the
villagers (including
children) ranging from beatings to deliberate close up
shootings.
The "including children" is what brought CPT back to
At-Tuwani, more
or less to stay a couple of months ago.
The background of CPT's return is this: about four
years ago,
settlers began a stepped up campaign of not only
menacing but
actually attacking youngsters from a near by village
as they walked
to and from the area's primary school, located in
At-Tuwani. The
shortest route for the kids (2 kilometers) is a rocky
hilly road
that skirts the settlement. The hilliness is
significant, because
settlers hiding in nearby trees would wait there
undetected until
the kids got close enough that it was difficult for
them to be able
to dash safely away.
This year there are only four pupils who must brave
the settlers'
terrifying potential gauntlet each day. But when
school began in
September, the situation became so bad for them that
CPT and Italian
partners from a similar faith based nonviolent
organization,
Operation Dove, were asked to establish a constant
presence in the
village. Which the internationals did, and then
promptly began to
accompany the four kids as they walked fearfully to
school in the
morning and then back to their home villageâ*”just as
fearfully--at
noon.
Ma'on's settlers, to say the least, were not pleased.
Not long after
the accompaniments began, two CPTers were rushed to a
hospital after
being attacked by settler youths dressed in black and
whose faces
were hidden by black scarves. Dashing from their tree
cover,
swinging bats and chains, the settlement thugs were
not quick enough
to reach the fleeing children, but they did catch up
to the
internationals who got between them and the attackers.
The young Black Shirts, who could very well have been
some of the
same mooning brats I encountered from afar back in
2002, but who are
now older, bigger, stronger and more frighteningly
brazen, had
plenty of time to flail and beat the CPTers to the
ground. Police
and soldiers in answer to CPT's calls for help did not
arrive on
scene for thirty minutes. That was more than enough
time for the
settlement's proto-Ku Kluxers to break one CPTer's arm
and bruise
her knee badly, while the other CPTer's lung was
punctured by one of
his breaking ribs. (After stays in hospitals both
returned to their
work in At-Tuwani and elsewhere in the West Bank.)
That dangerous episode, however, was not the end of
serious
injuries. A few days later another CPTer and an
Amnesty
International observer were battered by more bat,
chain, and
slingshot wielding masked neo-Bundists. However, an
Operation Dove
accompanier was injured so severely in that attack and
he is still
recovering.
Happily, however, no child has been hurt since the
accompaniments
began.
Partly as a result of complaints and inquiries filed
with Israel
from around the world, Israeli military occupation
authorities
agreed to provide a police or military escort for the
children
during their frightening walk to and from school. But
not along that
short route skirting the settlement. They must follow
one, which is
several kilometers longer, and with the proviso that
the army or the
police do the accompanying not CPT, Operation Dove, or
other
internationals.
However, team members are still stationed in
At-Tuwani, to--among
several tasks-- anxiously monitor each day (from a
hilltop about 200
yards away) the slow daily progress on foot of those
four kids and
their military escort (riding securely in a jeep) to
and from school
each day. I say "anxiously monitor," because settler
toughs still
often come down from their trees to line the route in
order to try
to frighten the kids (or worse), while their Israeli
armed escort,
usually slow to react, leads its charges diffidently
onward.
CTSD!
This is the fortieth in a series of micro-reports,
commentaries,
and or analyses that I am sending routinely from the
Occupied
Territories and other areas in the Middle East. If the
information
or ideas seem helpful, please feel free to forward
them to others.
It would be a privilege to add their names to this
mailing list, if
so requested. I can be reached at:
jlevin0320 at yahoo.com. As always I
will be grateful for any feedback--Jerry Levin.
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