Socialist Action /September 2002
My Trip to Palestine
By MARTY GOODMAN
Palestinian children pour into the streets of Nablus to greet the
international volunteers.
As I write this I've just learned that two individuals, Susan Barclay
of Seattle and Lisa Jones of the UK, two very brave human beings, are amongst
the five international solidarity workers missing after being abducted by
the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) on Sept. 5. It's 9 p.m. in New York and
it's 3 a.m. in Palestine. Can't call. Have to wait. Can't reach anyone in
the States either. Damn!
This is so much like the Palestine I visited in July. I see it only as
e-mails now. Every day, often even every few minutes, word comes of a new
emergency, a new disaster for someone or some community in Palestine. There's
never enough time or people or resources to really deal with all the crises.
What I saw was a sham called "the Oslo peace process." The
deal was first brokered by Bill Clinton and agreed to in 1993 by Israel's
Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat. Don't believe
it. It's just a con.
Under cover of "Oslo," the rate of new Jewish settler construction
has increased an incredible seven times over that of 1993, while Palestinian
poverty in the occupied territories has doubled. (The occupied territories,
including East Jerusalem, are areas illegally occupied by Israel since the
1967 war. It constitutes a mere 22 percent of historic Palestine).
These supposedly Palestinian-administered lands are broken up into tiny
South Africa-style Bantustans, with the ultimate authority resting in the
hands of the Israelis. (See "The New Intifada," Verso Books, 2001.)
I was in Palestine with the International Solid-arity Movement, a relatively
new organization formed in August 2001, almost a year after the onset of
the "New Intifada," or uprising, which began on Sept. 29, 2000.
Our small group, brave people all, were from the U.S., the UK, Norway,
Sweden, and Japan. We were stationed in the Balata Refugee Camp in the West
Bank city of Nablus. Although Balata was still under UN supervision, modest
apartment buildings had replaced the tents of 1948.
We were there to protect the home of a family threatened with demolition.
Why demolition? Israel's policy is to demolish the homes of families of
resistance fighters and, inevitably, that of their neighbors too. Family
members are deported to Gaza, where conditions are worst of all.
Does Israel require evidence that links the family's to that of the accused?
Not at all! The policy is in absolute defiance of the 1949 Geneva Convention
agreements on war, designed to avoid a repetition of Nazi atrocities against
civilians!
We stayed with a wonderful family in the throes of a tragedy. They had
just lost their son. He and another young man blew themselves up at a dinner,
killing three in addition to themselves. The three were immigrant workers,
said the papers, and were not Jews.
The family was devastated. They were heartsick over what happened-but
had just lost a son. I can attest that these were a gentle people; kind
in every sense. Relatives and friends came to the house, which is occupied
by three families, to give them comfort. I remember the many times I was
asked to sit next to someone to eat, to drink, or to just talk.
"Tell Bush we're not all terrorists. The Israelis are the real terrorists,"
was the thought I most often heard there and actually throughout my trip.
The father told me that "I was now family."
There is a warmth in Palestine I've seen in few other places. Everyone,
I mean everyone, is friendly. Kids pour out into the streets to greet internationals
as they walk by. Cars stop and kids jump out just to wave.
Some thoughts on the son: What more can an oppressed people do than explode
their own bodies? Can anything so desperate reveal as strikingly that this
is a war of unequal forces; that there is oppression?
Yes, in a war the target should be military but when have the Israelis
ever obeyed their pompous lectures on terrorism? History records that the
state of Israel itself was founded on terrorism; massacres were followed
by 750,000 Palestinian refugees fleeing their homeland in 1948. Some 320,
000 more fled in the 1967 war.
Consider this: The Israelis have all the planes (U.S.-made F-16s), all
the helicopters (U.S.-made Apaches), and almost all the guns (U.S.-made
M-16 rifles). The civilian death tolls have always weighed heaviest on the
Palestinian side. How could it be otherwise with such absolute military
superiority? In Balata bullet holes from Israeli planes and tanks ran across
apartment windows and shop windows with the clear intent to kill anything
that moved.
Adding to the physical terror is the fact that almost everyone I spoke
with couldn't find work. I saw recently that unemployment in the occupied
territories may reach 80 percent and that the poverty is so bad it approaches
famine conditions. In order to help, the UN does distribute a limited number
of bags of flour and some milk, but many Palestinians sell their portions
just to have a little cash. I saw bags of flour stacked in one grocery store
around the corner from a UN truck.
Clearly, Israeli policy is to terrorize the Palestinian people, destroy
them, pulverize them, demoralize them, starve them, and humiliate them at
military check-points, until they leave Palestine and never return. Or,
at least imprison them in a racist hell. The Zionist madmen are now actually
constructing a physical wall around the West Bank. Can you believe it? The
Nazis too erected a wall-but theirs was to contain Jews living in the Warsaw
ghetto!
As one young Palestinian put it to me, "The biggest problem here
is the occupation. There is no difference between being alive or dead."
Night time in Balata
Guarding the family's house against demolition was as frightening as
anything any of us had ever done. The family faced it with incredible calm.
I don't know how they did it.
Our object was to show the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) that internationals
were present, we hoped, to act as a deterrent. Someone was always on the
roof at night and as visible as possible. We heard that homes were demolished
in the middle of night so we stayed up until the early hours taking turns
on the roof and at our places inside.
Inside, we devised a plan to surround the women and possibly prevent
arrest and brutality. One of us, Sherrill, was ready with a megaphone not
far behind the steel door that we fully expected the IDF to blast open with
explosive charges. It was Sherrill's job to persuade the IDF, over the racket
made by tanks, that we were non-violent and were there to observe. That
strategy and a press release was all that we had.
Fortunately, the IDF never came. Was it because of us? Who knows? But
many other homes have been demolished since. Their wonderful home could
still be blown up at any time. The ISM is still there.
But night in Balata was still filled with terrors. There were occasional
bursts of machine gun fire striking who knows where. Tanks and Armored Personnel
Carriers (APCs) could be heard all night long like giant monsters rumbling
down Jerusalem Street near the house or even across town, stopping to rev
their engines, then go a short distance, only to stop and repeat the incredibly
noisy sequence all over again.
To what purpose? Said Palestinians, "psychological terror."
Occasionally, we heard rapidly firing cannons originating from the military
base on the mountaintop overlooking Balata. I was told by a friend that
the guns fired non-explosive "big bullets" capable of incredible
penetration.
Twice I saw, but couldn't photograph, a powerful green laser sighting
device used to scan the entire town also originating from the mountaintop.
It was like something right out of the 1950s science fiction classic, "The
Day the Earth Stood Still."
Check-point Charlies
An important ISM objective was to open check-points established to enforce
the ever-present curfews imposed on the occupied territories. Curfews are
used to torment Palestinians psychologically and prevent them from working
or just seeing loved ones in even the same town.
I was told that the Balata camp was the only place the Israelis couldn't
really impose a curfew, due to the incredible determination of rock-throwing
kids. I myself witnessed kids chasing an Israeli Armored Personnel Carrier
(APC). True or not, it sure looked very possible!
The first check-point conflict we heard about was on the road to the
town of Tel, located on top of the mile-high Ebal Mountain outside Nablus.
It's where God, someone said, spoke to Abraham.
It was near curfew time at 1 p.m. and up to 100 Palestinians were trying
to return home to Tel. If they could not get home, then what could they
do? Wander the streets during curfew?
With the Palestinians' permission about 10 ISMers led the procession
toward the check-point. We began to plead with one soldier holding an M-16
machine gun. Women with children, some handicapped, and seniors holding
special medications begged the soldiers, some breaking out in tears.
After the soldiers had given several warnings-and a gunshot to the ground-ISMers
put our bodies between the soldiers and the Palestinians. In the end, the
soldiers allowed just a few through before hurling a sound bomb and then
a smoke grenade. We all retreated and we then escorted the people, at their
asking, by a very rugged and roundabout route to the top of the mountain
to Tel.
On succeeding nights three internationalists-Ethan, Meka, and Eric-went
again to Tel. There they saw the horrific sight of three immigrant workers
the IDF thought to be "terrorists," all dead, with at least one
having had the top of his head virtually blown off. The IDF had tried to
prevent them and the townspeople from seeing the bodies. As he protested,
Ethan was punched and then threatened by a Jewish soldier of Ethiopian origin.
Graveyard visit
An out-of-work teacher, who had also become a friend, was prevented from
working in Israel, like so many others, basically because he's Palestinian.
My new friend took me on a tour of Balata, which included a stop at a
graveyard where a number of young men spend time being near departed loved
ones. Everyone had time in Balata. There are simply no jobs to go to. Said
one man, "We haven't any money to live. [I'm] two years without a job.
What can we do?"
I listened to their stories. During roughly March and April, the Balata
camp was attacked for some 21 days. In the attack, said one man, 21, he
lost his brother, 23, who was killed next to his home when the Israelis
attacked and he himself was shot in the leg.
Another man, 24, said his brother, 32, was shot on the border of Balata
when the army surrounded the camp a few days before the attack. There was
fighting as tanks fired their machine guns into Balata.
The brother's woman companion, 21, was a university student in Nablus
and died from a shot in the head-but not before witnessing the death of
her lover and the man's older brother.
A third man, 26, told me he was shot at by a Jewish settler as he passed
a nearby hillside Jewish area. He showed me a row of missing teeth where
the bullet struck. Did he report it, I naively asked? "No," said
the man, "We cannot tell the police. There is no justice here."
Another man's two-year-old son was killed by gunfire; as he was burying
the child with the help of a friend the Israelis fired rockets into the
graveyard, which killed his friend. The father said that the Israelis believed
they were burying explosives in the graveyard and actually unearthed the
dead two-year old to examine the grave! (Note: The graves contain more than
one body due to a shortage of space.)
Others described their own situation. One man recounted his hellish two
years in prison for taking part in a demonstration. There were 20 in his
cell, which he described as four meters by four meters. During that time
visits from relatives were prohibited. He has three children and no job.
Yet another man said that "an explosive bullet" struck his
left hand, which is now completely gone. He went three hours without treatment
and says that Israeli travel restrictions and a lack of money prevent him
from getting proper treatment to this day.
As we left the graveyard a man beckoned to us to enter his family's home
and see its bullet-riddled interior, which they had luckily left just in
time. As we said goodbye his neighbor said to us, "We have very great
hatred for Israel, but especially Bush. He is the biggest terrorist in the
world. He is a big racist. We are like the Black people of America."
Families under the gun
With other internationals I visited two families whose homes were being
occupied by the IDF. The troops come and go without warning and stay for
up to a month or more.
In a home in Al-Masaken, three families are confined to the bottom floor
of their house. They have no money and no food. We bring them a food package
that should last them until a scheduled lifting of the curfew in a few days.
The soldiers, sometimes 40 in number, stole about $200 worth of food.
When the curfew briefly lifts the families quickly check in with their neighbors,
who try to help as best they can. The families complain about hearing guns
going off and noisy parties. Every hour at night one of the 10 tanks parked
outside will rev their engines.
In an upper-middle-class neighborhood just outside Nablus, strategically
located atop a mountain overlooking the city, a home to a family of six
had recently been occupied for the fifth time by the IDF. The last time
over 40 soldiers came shooting their automatic rifles into the air after
shooting out the glass widows of their car.
The family has no guns in the house but when the father opened the door
all the soldier's guns were pointed at him. An Apache helicopter hovered
above their roof. Twenty tanks and 10 APCs were outside. The family was
confined to one bedroom.
During the occupation Palestinian prisoners were taken to their living
room blindfolded and handcuffed, then interrogated and beaten. The family,
of course, heard it all. Soldiers would sometimes shoot at Palestinians
from their balcony.
Finally, the family was ordered to leave the house after 10 days and
ordered not to return until the soldiers left. They learned of the IDF's
departure only after neighbors informed them.
The family estimates the damage to their home at $100,000. They haven't
received a penny. Said the oldest daughter, 20, "Are we the criminals
or are the soldiers criminals?"
As I conclude this, I've just learned that my ISM friends are safe after
being abducted by the IDF. They were dumped on a highway and banned from
reentering Nablus. They made it to Jerusalem, from what I hear.
How long will they be safe? Who knows? But, for Palestinians, they are
never safe in occupied Palestine-"peace process" or not.
Socialist Action /September 2002 |