MCC Palestine Update #57
August 21, 2002
This week international humanitarian organizations in the occupied territories issued a statement in response to studies showing alarming levels of malnutrition in the occupied territories. This statement, signed by MCC, noted that we are looking not at a "natural disaster" here but at an all-too-human creation of a regime of curfews, closures, restrictions on movement, and subsequently high unemployment. The statement reads as follows:
"As international humanitarian organizations with relief and development programs across the West Bank and Gaza, we ar deeply concerned by the high levels of malnutrition and anemia documented in the recent CARE and Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics surveys. These surveys confirm what we have witnessed through our work in Palestinian communities- the steadily declining ability of Palestinian families to access and afford goods to meet their basic human needs, leading to an alarming decline in nutritional status."
"We must emphasize that the cause of this crisis is not a general food shortage. As these surveys document, shortages of high protein foods (meat, fish and dairy) exist as a result of border closures to Gaza, and road closures, checkpoints, curfews and military conflict in the West Bank. Further, where food is available locally, it is inaccessible to the population because of a lack of money or because of closures and curfews which make it impossible for people with money to get to the market. In other words, the cause is strictly a result of political decisions."
"The Geneva Conventions, to which Israel is a signatory, require that people under military occupation must have their basic human needs met by the occupying power. With the alarming malnutrition and anemia levels now extant in the West Bank and Gaza, it is clear that this is not the case."
"We call on Israel to end the curfews and closures which entail collective punishment, illegal under the Geneva Conventions, and which have led to this humanitarian emergency. We call on Israel to give humanitarian agencies safe passage to the populations at risk. We urge the international community to address this situation, including through the use of diplomatic, legal and political action."
Below you will find three pieces by journalists for the leading Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz. In the first, Gideon Levy dissects the troubling meaning of new Israeli military coinages such as "pressure cooker" and "neighbor procedure." Meron Benvenisti then issues a warning that Israel might try to use a US attack against Iraq as cover and justification for actions in the occupied territories which it might not otherwise carry out. Finally, Danny Rubinstein examines how Palestinians are managing to cope with record-high unemployment.
--Alain Epp Weaver
1. Some lives are cheaper than others
Gideon Levy
Which is preferable - "pressure cooker" or "neighbor procedure"? Is it better to detonate a building with the occupants inside - a practice known in the Israel Defense Forces as "pressure cooker" - or to send one of the local neighbors to defend the soldiers bodily, the "neighbor procedure" in IDF argot. In the moral deterioration of the IDF in the territories, which has been greatly accelerated in the past few weeks, the choices that are made by the army's commanding officers are often described as an alternative between two controversial actions, in which the non-use of one automatically validates the other, and both of them together are automatically justified within the framework of the war on terrorism in which just about everything now goes. Thus it was that the IDF tried, at week's end, to justify the appalling use that soldiers made of an innocent neighbor, 19-year-old Nidal Abu Muhsein, who was equipped with a protective vest and sent to his death by soldiers who were engaged in a manhunt for a wanted individual, Nasser Jerar, in the village of Tubas, near Jenin. The other choice the soldiers had, according to the IDF, was to resort to the "pressure cooker" tactic. In fact, in this case the IDF did not balk at using that method as well: after the "neighbor procedure" failed, the army buried the disabled Jerar alive - he lost both legs and an arm a year ago - under the ruins of the building, which IDF bulldozers brought down without knowing whether there was anyone else inside. This act drew no response from anyone in Israel. An innocent neighbor is ordered to go to his death, a bulldozer topples a building on a live wanted person - however cruel and however senior he may have been in his organization -without anyone knowing who else was in the house, and officers and politicians justify the operation without blinking an eye. If we have any desire to know how deep our insensitivity now runs and how morally obtuse we have become, this can make for an excellent case study: the nifty names the IDF has chosen - "pressure cooker" and "neighbor procedure" - can no longer mitigate the serious implications of both actions, which not even the most just war against terrorism can justify. The use of bodies of Palestinians for the IDF's needs is not new. In the first intifada, residents young and old were ordered to climb electricity poles to remove banned Palestinian flags, some of whom died of electrocution, while others were made to clear away barriers made of stones for fear that they might be booby-trapped. There were also cases in which Palestinians were forced to sit on the hoods of jeeps in order to protect the soldiers with their bodies. The exacerbation of the measures being used in the war against the second intifada has also brought about an exacerbation of the use of Palestinians as human shields: Palestinians have been made to enter buildings that were suspected of being booby-trapped, to carry out packages thought to be explosive devices and assist in manhunts for wanted individuals. Nor are these cases departures from the norm: they are part of a declared and fixed policy, so much so that they have become rooted as a "procedure." Underlying all these practices is the fact that the IDF holds Palestinian life to be cheap, and consequently, we can endanger them as much as we like. By the same token, the prevailing notion that in order to protect our soldiers we are allowed to make use of whatever means strikes our fancy, including the lives of innocent Palestinians, is a twisted concept morally and legally. The lives of the soldiers are precious, and it is the IDF's duty to safeguard them to the utmost, but the lives of the Palestinians are precious too. In the operation in which the neighbor was killed, the IDF deceived the High Court of Justice and showed contempt for the State Prosecutor's Office. Only three months ago the state's representative, attorney Michael Balas, told the High Court, "The IDF has decided to issue an unequivocal order to the forces operating in the field according to which it is absolutely forbidden to make use of civilians anywhere as a human shield against shooting or terrorist attacks." This ban applies to buildings, streets and wherever IDF troops are operating." Now comes this operation, which apparently was not the only one of its kind, and proves that in the eyes of the IDF a commitment made to the justices of the Supreme Court is totally worthless. The liquidation in Tubas thus symbolizes another stage in the deterioration of the rule of law in Israel. An army that makes an explicit commitment to justices of the Supreme Court to refrain from making use of a certain procedure, and then ignores its undertaking so flagrantly - as though it had never been made - is an army that poses a danger to democracy. There is no one to put a stop to this tendency today. The liquidation in Tubas may have prevented a "mega-terrorist attack." But like every other liquidation, it did not defeat terrorism. It is extremely doubtful that it deterred the Palestinians, but some of the events in Tubas should be of deep concern to Israelis. The "neighbor procedure" reflects not only what remains of our neighborly relations with the Palestinians, but also what is happening to us.
2. Preemptive warnings of fantastic scenarios
Meron Benvenisti
Day after day and seemingly deliberately, someone else fans the flames of hysteria about the possibility that an American campaign against Iraq will bring a nuclear-biological-chemical (NBC) attack on Israel. After the flaws in the old protective kits were revealed and raised the sense of danger from toxic gases, there followed anxieties about terrible epidemics of anthrax and smallpox and fears of nuclear radiation.
Those fanning the anxiety are doing it in a sophisticated, indirect way, through comments and leaks about "being prepared for the threats." These are ostensibly meant to relieve public fears and prove that the authorities are ready for action in even the worst cases of "existential danger."
After the statements about the need for mass vaccinations and issuing pills against radiation sickness, the public should be catatonic by now. But there seems to be no panic, and there is a distinct lukewarm response to calls to bring protective kits to be refurbished. The decision makers seem more anxious than the public - maybe they are afraid of future complaints about "failures," or maybe there are interests at work beyond the narrow matter of being ready for any threats.
Public hysteria will no doubt peak when the authorities announce a "voluntary inoculation campaign," placing responsibility in the hands of the citizens, and taking it out of the hands of the authorities, who will then be able to say they only provided what the public wanted.
But fanning anxiety with reports of "Home Front readiness" are not only about "defensive" measures. They are also about declarations by the Sharon government that "this time (as opposed to the Gulf War of 1991) Israel will certainly respond to any Iraqi attack." The worse the hysterical fear of an NBC attack - little children crying as nurses administer vaccinations on their arms - the more the pressure will rise to "stick it" to Saddam Hussein, whether it is necessary or not.
According to government statements, Israel might end up as the only American ally in the war - aside perhaps from Britain. The warnings about the destructive ramifications of an attack on Iraq for the entire Middle East are not deterring Israel - they are encouraging it.
Under the cover of George Bush getting even for his father, Ariel Sharon will be able to settle his own old accounts, going back to the days of Beirut. Maj. Gen. Yitzhak Eitan hinted at the strong connection between a war in Iraq and the war against the Palestinians when he said "an American attack on Iraq will also hurt the Palestinian Authority." It makes one wonder if the IDF has operational plans directly linking a reaction to an Iraqi attack with the war in the territories.
Since the Israeli government is coming up with "worst case scenarios" on NBC attacks, here's another one - an American assault on Iraq against Arab and world opposition, and an Israeli involvement, even if only symbolic, leads to the collapse of the Hashemite regime in Jordan. Israel then executes the old "Jordanian option" - expelling hundreds of thousands of Palestinians across the Jordan River.
There has never been a better opportunity for that option. The ideology, moral dissolution, and motives of hatred and revenge that already allow collective punishment, curfews, closures, assassinations, house demolitions, expulsions, annulment of Israeli citizenship, and denials of legal defense, have all created a reality in which mass expulsion, wholesale house demolition, and destruction of vegetation are not considered reprehensible steps toward a criminal ethnic cleansing. A state of war - "the threat of nuclear radiation and smallpox" - could justify such "an appropriate" response.
Just as the authorities are getting ready for an NBC attack, worried Israelis should get ready for the possibility of a mass "transfer" of Palestinians in case of war in Iraq. Anyone who regards such ethnic cleansing as a horrible crime must raise their voice now, without any of the "ifs, ands or buts" so typical of the response to the punishment already being meted out in ever more strict steps.
Warnings about ethnic cleansing should not only come from committed leftists, but from people whose patriotism cannot be questioned. And let nobody say it would be unnecessary protest because nobody is plotting "transfer." Immunizations against smallpox, and pills against atomic radiation are based on an even more fantastic scenario.
And last but not least, a word to the Americans. They should also be warned that an assault on Iraq could unleash ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians. Nobody should be allowed to say they weren't warned.
3. Hardship in the territories
Danny Rubinstein
Almost five months have passed since Operation Defensive Shield, and the change in daily life in the West Bank is clearly evident. Though life before then was difficult in the territories due to restrictions on movement, the closures and encirclements since the operation, which to a certain extent renewed the military occupation of the West Bank, have made the distress much worse.How long can this go on? It is hard to tell. Ghassan Al-Khatib, the labor minister in Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat's new cabinet, draws attention to the unemployment level. He says that while five months ago unemployment in the PA areas had reached 40 percent of the work force, recent surveys of the situation put the current figure at 80 percent. This means that unemployment has doubled in this short time. As in the past, the main reason for the unemployment is the restrictions on movement.The closures and the encirclements, which have become tougher in recent months, have been joined by continuous days of curfew in the various towns that the Israel Defense Forces have entered. The situation in the towns changes all the time. Most days last week, for example, there was a curfew in Nablus and life was paralyzed.In Tul Karm, Qalqilyah and Jenin, there was a partial curfew, usually for most of the nighttime hours, which was extended to other towns and villages. In Ramallah, on the other hand, there has been no curfew for a month now and anyone wandering around the center of town can see that life is more or less normal.No one can predict where the IDF will invade next and when the next curfew will be, and this uncertainty basically brings economic life to a standstill. The Al-Ayam newspaper, based in Ramallah, recently published interviews with workers from quarries in Samaria who had stopped working because the quarries' owners had closed them, and with workers who had been laid off from their jobs in sewing workshops in Nablus.The quarries were closed down because it was impossible to remove the quarried building stones from them. Those who buy from quarries in Samaria are contractors from the territories, and from Israel and the Arab world - and if there is a curfew in the Samarian towns and restrictions on movement on the roads between towns, the quarries are paralyzed. The situation is similar in the sewing workshops in Nablus. The workshops manufacture clothing for stores in Israel, and apart from the problems with the curfew and the road blocks, the demand for clothing has dropped sharply, reflecting the economic crisis in Israel and the effect of cheap imports from China. The Palestinian media have lately been reporting harsh descriptions of life on the threshold of hunger in a list of places in the territories. Schools in the Gaza Strip reported a clear increase in dropouts in the second half of the last school year. Children as young as 10 are leaving the classroom and going out to the streets to try to earn a little money. Some stand at street corners trying to sell bottles of water, pencils, dusters and cigarette lighters to passing drivers, while others wash car windows when the drivers stop at traffic lights, in the hope of receiving some payment.The Palestinian law allows children to work only from age 14, but no one takes any notice. Dozens of small workplaces in the territories currently employ children for only a few shekels a day. Many Palestinian children manage to slip past IDF checkpoints and work in Israel, usually in Arab villages. A harsh description of children from the Jenin refugee camp who work in Nazareth, was recently published by the Palestinian press. A 16-year-old boy named Firas led a group of children aged 10-15 across the Green Line near Umm al Fahm and reached Nazareth. They wandered around the streets looking for casual work. Many people take pity on them and helped. The children sleep on the roof of an abandoned building in the city."We are not beggars asking for handouts," said Shadi, 14, to the journalist who interviewed him. "We have come here because there is no food in Jenin, no money and no classes." Then he rolled up his sleeve to show the reporter the Hamas symbol he had scratched onto his arm and added, "After I get a little money, I will go back to Jenin and join the fighters." Such youngsters can also be seen in Jerusalem, where they have come from the Hebron region. Until a short time ago, they had also succeeded in reaching the Jewish neighborhoods of western Jerusalem.Now policemen and security personnel keep them away and they wander around only in the Arab neighborhoods. Sa'id Al-Mudallah, who heads the employment department at the PA Labor Ministry, says that data collected by his office in the West Bank and Gaza shows that there are about 30,000 Palestinian children under the age of 14 who are not going to school and are in the streets, looking for work. "Child labor on this scale affects the whole society," says Al-Mudallah, "because these children grow up exposed to physical and emotional harm."A report by Palestinian educators, based on similar cases throughout the world, indicates that these children who grow up in the streets and adopt street language and behavior will lead lives of misery. How indeed do people in the West Bank and Gaza manage to make a living in spite of everything? The Palestinian work force in the territories numbers about 850,000 (of a population of 3 million). Some 150,000 people are employed by the PA and public institutions, such as local authorities. The PA continues to pay low government wages. Most ministries are late in paying salaries. For example, a few ministries paid May's salaries just last week. The PA receives money for salaries mainly from the assistance fund financed by the Arab states and from loans and grants from Europe.The PA also has revenues from government companies (such as the fuel, cement and cigarette monopolies). In recent weeks Israel has begun to pay the Palestinian treasury some of the tax monies that Israel mainly collected from customs duties for it. At the beginning of the intifada the Israeli government halted the transfer of these payments. Arafat has ordered that 10 percent be deducted from the salaries of all PA employees and that the money be transferred to a fund to support the unemployed. Support payments are made via the offices of the workers' unions, headed by Shaher Saad of Nablus and Rasim Biari in Gaza. Every unemployed person is supposed to receive NIS 500 per month, but the fuss surrounding these payments is tremendous. The workers' unions have no precise lists of those eligible to receive payments and there is not enough money to pay everyone so payments are made only once every two or three months.A short time ago a Palestinian reporter from Nablus described how people crammed into the workers' unions' offices to get those unemployment payments when the curfew was lifted in that city, but only a few were lucky.There are several charitable organizations in the territories that distribute monetary allocations or basic foodstuffs. These are Muslim organizations, both local and foreign (from the Gulf States), Christian organizations from the West and humanitarian organizations from around the world. The United Nations' welfare and employment agencies has renewed distribution of food packages, an activity that had been cut back drastically in previous years. Lately the International Red Cross has also begun distributing food vouchers. The needy families who receive these vouchers take them to their local grocery stores to buy food. The storekeepers then redeem the vouchers for cash from the Red Cross. The vouchers are for up to NIS 300 of food and cannot be used to purchase cigarettes or alcoholic beverages. Many families, particularly in the West Bank, receive financial assistance from their relatives overseas. Over 20 years ago economists determined that about 25 percent of the revenues in the West Bank and Gaza came from money sent by family members working in Arab oil states. After the expulsion of the Palestinians from Kuwait (in 1991, after the Gulf War), revenues from these sources dropped sharply.The economic picture is therefore of a Palestinian population barely getting by on donations and handouts, with even the government salaries considered a gift because most offices are not even operating. What is saving this population is its traditional way of life, with its high level of mutual family assistance. When one (extended) family member is earning something, he shares it with the whole family, so the family manages to survive.
Wednesday, August 21
Wednesday, August 14
MCC Palestine Update #56
MCC Palestine Update #56
August 14, 2002
"I am against violence, completely. If getting a state means violence, if getting justice means violence, then I don't want them." That's what Cedar Duaybis, a board member at the Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center, an MCC partner organization, shared recently in a discussion of a Christian response to the phenomenon of suicide bombers in the context of a military occupation. I found Cedar's words inspiring, prophetic, and troubling, all at once. Inspiring, because it strengthens our resolve as MCC workers to have the privilege to work alongside courageous witnesses for nonviolence and peace like Cedar.
Prophetic, not only in her call to Palestinians to renounce violent struggle, but in the implicit message to all who seek noble aims-- peace, security, freedom, justice--through violent means. Troubling, finally, because regardless of the type of struggle waged by Palestinians, be it violent or nonviolent, I worry about what hope Palestinians can have. The structures which perpetuate Palestinian dispossession, which confiscate land, restrict Palestinian movement, confine Palestinians into increasingly smaller islands, destroy homes, uproot trees, impose collective punishment on millions: these structures grow stronger by the day. For a Palestinian Christian like Cedar, the refusal to use or support violence to secure justice is grounded in the nonviolent witness of the cross and the resurrection. In the grim realities of the occupied territories right now, the hope of resurrection can appear tenuous; praise be to God for the witness of Palestinian Christians and Muslims and of Israeli Jews who proclaim that justice and peace, security and freedom cannot be secured by violence and who live by the hope that, though the powers of injustice, death and dispossession appear strong, that God will in time overcome.
Below you will find three pieces. The first, published in Ha'aretz Monday August 12, is by Catherine Cook, an advocacy coordinator for Defense of Children International-Palestine Section. Cook explores the implications of growing malnutrition among Palestinian children for the future. The second piece, by Ha'aretz journalist Gideon Levy (whose car was shot at on Sunday, August 11, by Israeli military even after he had coordinated his movements in the West Bank city of Tulkarem with the military), discusses the need to hold Israel accountable for war crimes it perpetrates in the occupied territories. The final piece, by Israeli academic and activist Jeff Halper, looks at the message conveyed to Palestinians by the bulldozers which demolish homes, uproot trees, and pave the way for new Israeli settlements.
--Alain Epp Weaver
1. Palestinian malnutrition bodes ill for the future
Catherine Cook
Ha'aretz, August 12, 2002
A recently released US Aid funded nutritional assessment indicates that acute and chronic malnutrition rates of Palestinian children under 5 have reached emergency levels. Some 22.5 percent of children suffer moderate or severe acute or chronic malnutrition, and one fifth suffer moderate or severe anemia.
The study, designed by Johns Hopkins University's School of Public Health, surveyed nutrition levels, availability of food in the market and household consumption, and found that the factors affecting the dangerous rise in malnutrition directly relates to Israeli imposed movement restrictions and the dismal economic situation in the occupied territories.
Major food shortages were caused primarily by Israeli imposed road closures, checkpoints, and curfews, while the economic situation and subsequent loss in purchasing power was the main factor inhibiting people's ability to buy food. Fifty-six percent of surveyed families indicated that they had been forced to the amount of food consumed for more than one day in the previous two week period.
Of those, two-thirds cited lack of money and one-third cited Israeli imposed curfews and closures as the reason. The study found that 36.6 percent of Palestinian families in the West Bank and Gaza Strip lack the purchasing power to consistently feed their families. The number of families affected was highest in Gaza City, where 41.3 percent of families reported selling assets to buy food.
This is how collective punishment works - Israel implements restrictions on freedom of movement, Palestinians lose their jobs inside Israel or can no longer reach their places of work in the occupied territories, and their level of income decreases.
As of December 2001, unemployment had reached 35 percent in the occupied territories according to the World Bank. Figures released by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) in April indicate that in the first two months of the year 2002, more than two-thirds of Palestinian households were living below the poverty line, set at US $340 a month (less than $1.90 a day). PCBS also reports that more than half of Palestinian households have lost more than 50 percent of their income since September 2000.
How does this affect children? The US AID study tells us the answer - Palestinian wholesalers and retailers are facing difficulty getting food into the market, particularly fresh meat and dairy products, such as powdered milk and infant formula. Once they do, many families are either unable to reach the store, due to Israeli imposed
restrictions on freedom of movement or they cannot afford to buy adequate food, both in terms of quality and quantity.
The lack of purchasing power has forced Palestinians to buy less of more expensive high protein foods, such as fish, beef, and chicken. Lack of protein is one of the direct causes of malnutrition and anemia.
This situation is not the result of a natural disaster or a lack of natural resources, it is a result of Israeli government sanctioned policies implemented by an occupying power against civilians, a government which is the largest recipient of US foreign aid, totaling some five billion annually.
These policies are an integral part of the 35 year long Israeli occupation. What the nutritional assessment illustrates clearly is that the Israeli occupation is more than a soldier with a gun - it is a system of control that impacts every aspect of the lives of three million Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, 53 percent of whom are children.
Israeli actions are having a similarly devastating impact on other areas related to children's well being. The reality for Palestinian children is that they live in an environment where they suffer collective and concurrent violations of their rights at all times.
Israeli occupation policies simultaneously prevent Palestinian children from receiving adequate nutrition, interrupt the educational process, deprive children of homes, parents and siblings, lead to the death, injury, and arrest of thousands of Palestinian children, and imprison hundreds of thousands of children in their homes for days on end, under the policy of curfew.
The cumulative psychological effects of the last two years on Palestinian children have been immense and will take many years of intensive, serious work to treat. These factors not only impact the child's daily life, they constitute a major obstacle to the child's healthy development, and, thus, rob the child of prospects for a decent future.
The Israeli government repeatedly asserts that it is not targeting the Palestinian civilian population, but you cannot implement policies such as these without bringing a society to its knees. You certainly cannot do it for two years and claim that the results are unintentional. And the international community cannot continue to turn a blind eye.
On August 5, the UN General Assembly passed yet another watered-down resolution calling for an end to the violence on both sides. However, another resolution is not what is called for, but rather concrete action on the part of the international community to intervene to end the Israeli occupation is needed.
The US AID study pointed out in its conclusion that "today's acute malnutrition will be tomorrow's chronic malnutrition unless a variety of interventions - economic, political and health related - take place."
The international community would be well advised to open its eyes and take this a step further - Palestinian children today make up 53 percent of the Palestinian population of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.What will the situation look like in 10 - 20 years when this generation of children reach adulthood?
The author is International Advocacy Coordinator for Defense for Children International - Palestine Section, a child rights NGO based in the West Bank city of Ramallah.
2. The last recourse
Gideon Levy
Ha'aretz, August 2002
To what was Prime Minister Ariel Sharon referring when he stated at last week's cabinet meeting, "It is inconceivable for such phenomena to occur here in Israel"?
Was it the situation in which, according to the U.S. Agency for International Development, 13.2 percent of Palestinian children are suffering from prolonged malnutrition and 9.3 percent from temporary malnutrition? The dropping of a one-ton bomb on a residential neighborhood, killing 15 people? The withholding of medical aid? The daily liquidations of "wanted" Palestinians? The jailing of hundreds of thousands of people for two years within the framework of collective punishment? The deportation and demolition of the homes of the families of terrorists? The culture of racist manifestations with regard to the Arabs who are Israeli citizens?
We haven't heard an expression of shock from Sharon or his cabinet ministers about any of these phenomena. But the prime minister, and, in his wake, a uniform chorus of spokespersons - from Reuven Rivlin to Yossi Beilin - were shocked by the initiative of the Gush Shalom peace activists who wrote letters to 15 Israel Defense Forces officers, warning them that material evidence was being collected against them relating to their activity in the territories, with the intention of submitting it to the International Criminal Court in The Hague on suspicion that the officers are guilty of war crimes. "That is worse than a refusal [to serve in the territories],"the prime minister asserted.
Indeed, for a political movement to collect incriminating material about army personnel, with the goal of submitting the material to international courts, is problematic: Are there not enough authorities in Israel that have the task of collecting material if the suspicion of war crimes arises, and then placing those responsible on
trial? Why the need for actions of a kind usually attributed to informers?
But before we rush to attack Gush Shalom, we would do well to consider a few questions. First: Are the soldiers and officers of the IDF in fact carrying out operations that could be suspected of constituting war crimes? If so, they should be stopped, even if doing so entails controversial means. The very fact of the outcry raised by the IDF and the government is cause for suspecting that we do have something to hide. Lately the IDF Spokesman's apparatus has made several moves that are intended to persuade the media and the officer corps from making public the names and photographs of soldiers and commanding officers who are serving in the territories, for fear of the court at The Hague. The need to conceal the faces of the soldiers, as though they were criminals hiding their faces from the cameras in a court of law, raises the question of whether the IDF is convinced that it is acting with what was once known as "purity of arms."
Beyond this, some of the actions undertaken by Israel in the past few months as part of its war on terrorism need to be subjected to a moral and judicial test; but there is no chance of that being done here. These actions include depriving hundreds of thousands of people of normal supplies and of the possibility of making a living, to the point where malnutrition has been caused; dozens of liquidations of people and not only of "ticking bombs;" the demolition of the homes of people who have done no wrong; blocking medical treatment; and deportation. Is there no suspicion here of war crimes for which someone should perhaps be accountable?
But who is going to place anyone on trial? Unfortunately, in the past two years it has become clear, even more so than in the past, that there is no one to turn to in Israel in connection with these subjects. The IDF has almost completely ceased to investigate instances of killing in the territories, in contrast to its policy in the first intifada. If someone suspects that IDF soldiers killed someone with no justification and in violation of the law, what recourse does he have? Who will investigate the death of newborn infants and sick people caused by the refusal of soldiers to allow ambulances or people in distress to pass by checkpoints, if the IDF does not do so seriously? Can we entrust this task to the High Court of Justice? After all, its voice, too, has become almost mute in connection with security issues. The High Court justices have declared in the past that it is not within their purview to apply the rules of war to the liquidation policy; and last week, they ruled that the IDF no longer had the duty to warn Palestinians that their homes were going to be demolished. So another vital force for restraint in Israeli society has been eroded.
If people believe that the liquidations are causing Israeli serious damage and are contrary to international law, to whom will they appeal? If the IDF were to order proper investigations of suspected violations of human rights and were to place proven violators on trial, and if the High Court were ready to fulfill its duty and intervene in cases of the infraction of the law in the territories, no Israeli organization would consider turning to international bodies. In the present situation, though, there are political movements, human rights groups and individuals for whom Israel's moral image is precious enough that they are willing to take exceptional steps to preserve it. They are no less patriotic than anyone else.
Nor should we condemn those who think that sanctions should be imposed on Israel. The apartheid regime in South Africa came to an end, in part, because of the sanctions that were imposed on the country. Unlike South Africa, Israel does not have to replace its regime, only to put an end to the occupation - and for that, it needs the world's help. The caution that soldiers must now employ could turn out to be beneficial: Perhaps the IDF will henceforth consider matters a little more deeply before dropping another mega-bomb in the heart of a residential neighborhood.
In a situation in which the legislative branch, the Supreme Court, he attorney general, parts of the media and the majority of the public are being derelict in their duty, turning away from what is going on and refusing to see what we are perpetrating on others and on ourselves, too, the appeal to the world is the last recourse. Those who are making use of it want only the good of an Israel that has right on its side.
3. The Message of the Bulldozers
Jeff Halper
August 9, 2002
The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) deplores this week’s decision by the Israeli High Court of Justice against permitting judicial review for families of Palestinians whose homes are targeted for demolition because a family member has been involved in (or even suspected of) terror attacks. True to the pattern of many years, the Court has accepted the argument of the army that such demolitions take place as integral parts of military operations. Israel’s High Court thus permits the setting aside of fundamental human rights infavor of military considerations (which are but extensions of the government’s political goals).
What human rights are violated by this decision?
1· The right of innocent individuals not to be held legally accountable for the actions of relatives. “Blood tie” cannot be the basis of demolition someone’s home. The notion that individuals may be punished for crimes of others without any criminal charge being made against them forfeits the elementary protection that the legal system owes to every person.
2 The right of every person to due process and judicial review. Punishing individuals not charged with any crime, or denying them recourse to the court if they are faced with punitive actions, constitutes extra-judicial punishment. When an entire family is punished for the suspected deeds of one of its members, this is collective punishment. Both violate the essence of both Israeli civil law and international humanitarian law.
3 The demolition of houses or destruction of other private property of individuals residing in occupied territories is explicitly forbidden by the Fourth Geneva Convention (Article 53), as is collective punishment (Article 33).
This sad decision, which immediately effects 49 Palestinian families whose homes may be demolished at any time, represents the steady erosion of Israeli democracy as it tries to cope with popular resistance to an illegal Occupation. In its decision, the High Court itself subordinates the rule of law, not to mention human rights, to the requirements of military repression. In the simplest terms, it condones and permits war crimes. Absolute rule over another people is possible only by denying them fundamental legal protection. In the end, this must destroy the very moral and legal basis underlying democracy and law.
For the past six years ICAHD has been working on the issue of house demolitions. Every time we think: “OK, we’ve exhausted the subject, let’s go on to other, perhaps more pressing issues,” the systematic destruction of Palestinian homes returns to the center of the conflict with a vengeance. It happened in the Jenin refugee camp, where the indomitable drivers of the massive D-9 Caterpillar bulldozers labored for three straight days and nights demolishing more than 300 homes in the densely packed camp, thereby becoming the heroes of the invasion. And it is happening today as Israel demolishes dozens of houses belonging to families of terrorists, a form of collective punishment that is clearly a war crime.
Why? Why does house demolitions remain at the center of the conflict? Why has it been at the center of the Israeli struggle against the Palestinians since 1948? There are many specific reasons given: security, deterrence, punishment, self-defense, warfare, “illegal” construction, enforcement of the law and on and on. But one element remains throughout: The Message. Sharon, like his predecessors, never tire of warning that Israeli attacks on the Palestinians will continue “until they get The Message.” What is The Message? As stated by Sharon and the others (going back some 80 years to the “Iron Wall” concept of Jabotinsky and Ben Gurion), The Message is: “Submit. Only when you abandon your dreams for an independent state of your own, and accept that Palestine has become the Land of Israel, will we relent.” But The Message goes even deeper, is more sinister than that. The Message of the Bulldozers is: “You do not belong here. We uprooted you from your homes in 1948 and prevented your return, and now we will uproot you from all of the Land of Israel. “Transfer” has become an acceptable topic of television talk shows. And that is why house demolitions remain so prominent, the bulldozer beside the tank. Because in the end this process of reoccupation is one of displacement.
The bulldozer certainly deserves to take its rightful place alongside the tank as a symbol of Israel’s relationship with the Palestinians. The two deserve to be on the national flag. The tank as symbol of an Israel “fighting for its existence,” and for its prowess on the battlefield. And the bulldozer for the dark underside of Israel’s struggle for existence, its ongoing struggle to displace the Palestinians from the country. For Israel has always treated the Palestinians as an enemy, never as a people with collective rights and legitimate claims to the country with which it might someday live in peace. In 1948 Israel played an active role in driving 75% of the Palestinians from the Land. Over the next four or five years the bulldozer, following the tank, systematically demolished 418 Palestinian villages. Since 1967, as Israel’s tanks suppress Palestinian resistance to the Occupation with increasing frequency and ferocity, its bulldozers (aided by artillery and missiles) have demolished more than 9000 Palestinian homes and counting. Even as I write this, a day after the Israeli High Court of Justice gave its consent to demolishing houses of families of terrorists without warning or a chance to appeal to the court, houses are being bulldozed in Bethlehem and Gaza with dozens more threatened throughout the Occupied Territories. And not only. Throughout Israel proper, in the “unrecognized villages” and Palestinian neighborhoods of Ramle, Lod and elsewhere, houses continue to be demolished 54 years later. Jews now live in Palestinian houses in Israel’s major cities and Palestinian villages have long disappeared under the agricultural fields of kibbutzim and moshavs. Amidst this destruction 150,000 housing units have been built for the 400,000 Jews living across the 1967 border.
The bulldozer remains at the center of the “action” for the simple reason that repression and control alone do not secure the country for those the Jews whose claim excludes all others. Those with competing claims the Palestinians must be displaced if the Jews are really going to take possession, or at least confined to small islands where they cannot interfere with or challenge Israeli dominion. (The announcement this week by the Ministry of the Interior that Palestinian Israelis would be stripped of their citizenship if proven “unloyal” to the State extends the work of bulldozers.)
But just as Israel cannot insulate itself from the Occupation, so too it cannot escape the ravages of its own house demolitions policy. Fear that the displaced might yet rise again and claim their patrimony prevents Israelis from enjoying the fruits of their power. The country has been seized by rising xenophobia and national- religious fanaticism. Polarization characterizes the relations between the right and left, Jewish and Arab citizens, Jews of European and Middle East origin, the working and middle classes, religious and secular. Israelis are “hunkering down,” increasingly isolated from the world. Young Israeli men and women are themselves brutalized as they are sent as soldiers to evict Palestinian families from their homes. Even the beauty of the land is destroyed as the authorities rush to construct ugly, sprawling suburbs and massive highways in order to “claim” the land before Palestinians creep back in. Aesthetics, human rights, environmental concerns, education, social justice these are the finer things of life that cannot coexist with displacement and occupation. “Fortress Israel,” as we call it, is by necessity based on a culture of strength, violence and crudity.
In the final analysis, it will be the bulldozer that razes the structure that once was Israel.
(Jeff Halper, an anthropologist, is the Coordinator of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions http://www.icahd.org/eng/. He can be reached at <icahd@zahav.net.il>.)
August 14, 2002
"I am against violence, completely. If getting a state means violence, if getting justice means violence, then I don't want them." That's what Cedar Duaybis, a board member at the Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center, an MCC partner organization, shared recently in a discussion of a Christian response to the phenomenon of suicide bombers in the context of a military occupation. I found Cedar's words inspiring, prophetic, and troubling, all at once. Inspiring, because it strengthens our resolve as MCC workers to have the privilege to work alongside courageous witnesses for nonviolence and peace like Cedar.
Prophetic, not only in her call to Palestinians to renounce violent struggle, but in the implicit message to all who seek noble aims-- peace, security, freedom, justice--through violent means. Troubling, finally, because regardless of the type of struggle waged by Palestinians, be it violent or nonviolent, I worry about what hope Palestinians can have. The structures which perpetuate Palestinian dispossession, which confiscate land, restrict Palestinian movement, confine Palestinians into increasingly smaller islands, destroy homes, uproot trees, impose collective punishment on millions: these structures grow stronger by the day. For a Palestinian Christian like Cedar, the refusal to use or support violence to secure justice is grounded in the nonviolent witness of the cross and the resurrection. In the grim realities of the occupied territories right now, the hope of resurrection can appear tenuous; praise be to God for the witness of Palestinian Christians and Muslims and of Israeli Jews who proclaim that justice and peace, security and freedom cannot be secured by violence and who live by the hope that, though the powers of injustice, death and dispossession appear strong, that God will in time overcome.
Below you will find three pieces. The first, published in Ha'aretz Monday August 12, is by Catherine Cook, an advocacy coordinator for Defense of Children International-Palestine Section. Cook explores the implications of growing malnutrition among Palestinian children for the future. The second piece, by Ha'aretz journalist Gideon Levy (whose car was shot at on Sunday, August 11, by Israeli military even after he had coordinated his movements in the West Bank city of Tulkarem with the military), discusses the need to hold Israel accountable for war crimes it perpetrates in the occupied territories. The final piece, by Israeli academic and activist Jeff Halper, looks at the message conveyed to Palestinians by the bulldozers which demolish homes, uproot trees, and pave the way for new Israeli settlements.
--Alain Epp Weaver
1. Palestinian malnutrition bodes ill for the future
Catherine Cook
Ha'aretz, August 12, 2002
A recently released US Aid funded nutritional assessment indicates that acute and chronic malnutrition rates of Palestinian children under 5 have reached emergency levels. Some 22.5 percent of children suffer moderate or severe acute or chronic malnutrition, and one fifth suffer moderate or severe anemia.
The study, designed by Johns Hopkins University's School of Public Health, surveyed nutrition levels, availability of food in the market and household consumption, and found that the factors affecting the dangerous rise in malnutrition directly relates to Israeli imposed movement restrictions and the dismal economic situation in the occupied territories.
Major food shortages were caused primarily by Israeli imposed road closures, checkpoints, and curfews, while the economic situation and subsequent loss in purchasing power was the main factor inhibiting people's ability to buy food. Fifty-six percent of surveyed families indicated that they had been forced to the amount of food consumed for more than one day in the previous two week period.
Of those, two-thirds cited lack of money and one-third cited Israeli imposed curfews and closures as the reason. The study found that 36.6 percent of Palestinian families in the West Bank and Gaza Strip lack the purchasing power to consistently feed their families. The number of families affected was highest in Gaza City, where 41.3 percent of families reported selling assets to buy food.
This is how collective punishment works - Israel implements restrictions on freedom of movement, Palestinians lose their jobs inside Israel or can no longer reach their places of work in the occupied territories, and their level of income decreases.
As of December 2001, unemployment had reached 35 percent in the occupied territories according to the World Bank. Figures released by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) in April indicate that in the first two months of the year 2002, more than two-thirds of Palestinian households were living below the poverty line, set at US $340 a month (less than $1.90 a day). PCBS also reports that more than half of Palestinian households have lost more than 50 percent of their income since September 2000.
How does this affect children? The US AID study tells us the answer - Palestinian wholesalers and retailers are facing difficulty getting food into the market, particularly fresh meat and dairy products, such as powdered milk and infant formula. Once they do, many families are either unable to reach the store, due to Israeli imposed
restrictions on freedom of movement or they cannot afford to buy adequate food, both in terms of quality and quantity.
The lack of purchasing power has forced Palestinians to buy less of more expensive high protein foods, such as fish, beef, and chicken. Lack of protein is one of the direct causes of malnutrition and anemia.
This situation is not the result of a natural disaster or a lack of natural resources, it is a result of Israeli government sanctioned policies implemented by an occupying power against civilians, a government which is the largest recipient of US foreign aid, totaling some five billion annually.
These policies are an integral part of the 35 year long Israeli occupation. What the nutritional assessment illustrates clearly is that the Israeli occupation is more than a soldier with a gun - it is a system of control that impacts every aspect of the lives of three million Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, 53 percent of whom are children.
Israeli actions are having a similarly devastating impact on other areas related to children's well being. The reality for Palestinian children is that they live in an environment where they suffer collective and concurrent violations of their rights at all times.
Israeli occupation policies simultaneously prevent Palestinian children from receiving adequate nutrition, interrupt the educational process, deprive children of homes, parents and siblings, lead to the death, injury, and arrest of thousands of Palestinian children, and imprison hundreds of thousands of children in their homes for days on end, under the policy of curfew.
The cumulative psychological effects of the last two years on Palestinian children have been immense and will take many years of intensive, serious work to treat. These factors not only impact the child's daily life, they constitute a major obstacle to the child's healthy development, and, thus, rob the child of prospects for a decent future.
The Israeli government repeatedly asserts that it is not targeting the Palestinian civilian population, but you cannot implement policies such as these without bringing a society to its knees. You certainly cannot do it for two years and claim that the results are unintentional. And the international community cannot continue to turn a blind eye.
On August 5, the UN General Assembly passed yet another watered-down resolution calling for an end to the violence on both sides. However, another resolution is not what is called for, but rather concrete action on the part of the international community to intervene to end the Israeli occupation is needed.
The US AID study pointed out in its conclusion that "today's acute malnutrition will be tomorrow's chronic malnutrition unless a variety of interventions - economic, political and health related - take place."
The international community would be well advised to open its eyes and take this a step further - Palestinian children today make up 53 percent of the Palestinian population of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.What will the situation look like in 10 - 20 years when this generation of children reach adulthood?
The author is International Advocacy Coordinator for Defense for Children International - Palestine Section, a child rights NGO based in the West Bank city of Ramallah.
2. The last recourse
Gideon Levy
Ha'aretz, August 2002
To what was Prime Minister Ariel Sharon referring when he stated at last week's cabinet meeting, "It is inconceivable for such phenomena to occur here in Israel"?
Was it the situation in which, according to the U.S. Agency for International Development, 13.2 percent of Palestinian children are suffering from prolonged malnutrition and 9.3 percent from temporary malnutrition? The dropping of a one-ton bomb on a residential neighborhood, killing 15 people? The withholding of medical aid? The daily liquidations of "wanted" Palestinians? The jailing of hundreds of thousands of people for two years within the framework of collective punishment? The deportation and demolition of the homes of the families of terrorists? The culture of racist manifestations with regard to the Arabs who are Israeli citizens?
We haven't heard an expression of shock from Sharon or his cabinet ministers about any of these phenomena. But the prime minister, and, in his wake, a uniform chorus of spokespersons - from Reuven Rivlin to Yossi Beilin - were shocked by the initiative of the Gush Shalom peace activists who wrote letters to 15 Israel Defense Forces officers, warning them that material evidence was being collected against them relating to their activity in the territories, with the intention of submitting it to the International Criminal Court in The Hague on suspicion that the officers are guilty of war crimes. "That is worse than a refusal [to serve in the territories],"the prime minister asserted.
Indeed, for a political movement to collect incriminating material about army personnel, with the goal of submitting the material to international courts, is problematic: Are there not enough authorities in Israel that have the task of collecting material if the suspicion of war crimes arises, and then placing those responsible on
trial? Why the need for actions of a kind usually attributed to informers?
But before we rush to attack Gush Shalom, we would do well to consider a few questions. First: Are the soldiers and officers of the IDF in fact carrying out operations that could be suspected of constituting war crimes? If so, they should be stopped, even if doing so entails controversial means. The very fact of the outcry raised by the IDF and the government is cause for suspecting that we do have something to hide. Lately the IDF Spokesman's apparatus has made several moves that are intended to persuade the media and the officer corps from making public the names and photographs of soldiers and commanding officers who are serving in the territories, for fear of the court at The Hague. The need to conceal the faces of the soldiers, as though they were criminals hiding their faces from the cameras in a court of law, raises the question of whether the IDF is convinced that it is acting with what was once known as "purity of arms."
Beyond this, some of the actions undertaken by Israel in the past few months as part of its war on terrorism need to be subjected to a moral and judicial test; but there is no chance of that being done here. These actions include depriving hundreds of thousands of people of normal supplies and of the possibility of making a living, to the point where malnutrition has been caused; dozens of liquidations of people and not only of "ticking bombs;" the demolition of the homes of people who have done no wrong; blocking medical treatment; and deportation. Is there no suspicion here of war crimes for which someone should perhaps be accountable?
But who is going to place anyone on trial? Unfortunately, in the past two years it has become clear, even more so than in the past, that there is no one to turn to in Israel in connection with these subjects. The IDF has almost completely ceased to investigate instances of killing in the territories, in contrast to its policy in the first intifada. If someone suspects that IDF soldiers killed someone with no justification and in violation of the law, what recourse does he have? Who will investigate the death of newborn infants and sick people caused by the refusal of soldiers to allow ambulances or people in distress to pass by checkpoints, if the IDF does not do so seriously? Can we entrust this task to the High Court of Justice? After all, its voice, too, has become almost mute in connection with security issues. The High Court justices have declared in the past that it is not within their purview to apply the rules of war to the liquidation policy; and last week, they ruled that the IDF no longer had the duty to warn Palestinians that their homes were going to be demolished. So another vital force for restraint in Israeli society has been eroded.
If people believe that the liquidations are causing Israeli serious damage and are contrary to international law, to whom will they appeal? If the IDF were to order proper investigations of suspected violations of human rights and were to place proven violators on trial, and if the High Court were ready to fulfill its duty and intervene in cases of the infraction of the law in the territories, no Israeli organization would consider turning to international bodies. In the present situation, though, there are political movements, human rights groups and individuals for whom Israel's moral image is precious enough that they are willing to take exceptional steps to preserve it. They are no less patriotic than anyone else.
Nor should we condemn those who think that sanctions should be imposed on Israel. The apartheid regime in South Africa came to an end, in part, because of the sanctions that were imposed on the country. Unlike South Africa, Israel does not have to replace its regime, only to put an end to the occupation - and for that, it needs the world's help. The caution that soldiers must now employ could turn out to be beneficial: Perhaps the IDF will henceforth consider matters a little more deeply before dropping another mega-bomb in the heart of a residential neighborhood.
In a situation in which the legislative branch, the Supreme Court, he attorney general, parts of the media and the majority of the public are being derelict in their duty, turning away from what is going on and refusing to see what we are perpetrating on others and on ourselves, too, the appeal to the world is the last recourse. Those who are making use of it want only the good of an Israel that has right on its side.
3. The Message of the Bulldozers
Jeff Halper
August 9, 2002
The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) deplores this week’s decision by the Israeli High Court of Justice against permitting judicial review for families of Palestinians whose homes are targeted for demolition because a family member has been involved in (or even suspected of) terror attacks. True to the pattern of many years, the Court has accepted the argument of the army that such demolitions take place as integral parts of military operations. Israel’s High Court thus permits the setting aside of fundamental human rights infavor of military considerations (which are but extensions of the government’s political goals).
What human rights are violated by this decision?
1· The right of innocent individuals not to be held legally accountable for the actions of relatives. “Blood tie” cannot be the basis of demolition someone’s home. The notion that individuals may be punished for crimes of others without any criminal charge being made against them forfeits the elementary protection that the legal system owes to every person.
2 The right of every person to due process and judicial review. Punishing individuals not charged with any crime, or denying them recourse to the court if they are faced with punitive actions, constitutes extra-judicial punishment. When an entire family is punished for the suspected deeds of one of its members, this is collective punishment. Both violate the essence of both Israeli civil law and international humanitarian law.
3 The demolition of houses or destruction of other private property of individuals residing in occupied territories is explicitly forbidden by the Fourth Geneva Convention (Article 53), as is collective punishment (Article 33).
This sad decision, which immediately effects 49 Palestinian families whose homes may be demolished at any time, represents the steady erosion of Israeli democracy as it tries to cope with popular resistance to an illegal Occupation. In its decision, the High Court itself subordinates the rule of law, not to mention human rights, to the requirements of military repression. In the simplest terms, it condones and permits war crimes. Absolute rule over another people is possible only by denying them fundamental legal protection. In the end, this must destroy the very moral and legal basis underlying democracy and law.
For the past six years ICAHD has been working on the issue of house demolitions. Every time we think: “OK, we’ve exhausted the subject, let’s go on to other, perhaps more pressing issues,” the systematic destruction of Palestinian homes returns to the center of the conflict with a vengeance. It happened in the Jenin refugee camp, where the indomitable drivers of the massive D-9 Caterpillar bulldozers labored for three straight days and nights demolishing more than 300 homes in the densely packed camp, thereby becoming the heroes of the invasion. And it is happening today as Israel demolishes dozens of houses belonging to families of terrorists, a form of collective punishment that is clearly a war crime.
Why? Why does house demolitions remain at the center of the conflict? Why has it been at the center of the Israeli struggle against the Palestinians since 1948? There are many specific reasons given: security, deterrence, punishment, self-defense, warfare, “illegal” construction, enforcement of the law and on and on. But one element remains throughout: The Message. Sharon, like his predecessors, never tire of warning that Israeli attacks on the Palestinians will continue “until they get The Message.” What is The Message? As stated by Sharon and the others (going back some 80 years to the “Iron Wall” concept of Jabotinsky and Ben Gurion), The Message is: “Submit. Only when you abandon your dreams for an independent state of your own, and accept that Palestine has become the Land of Israel, will we relent.” But The Message goes even deeper, is more sinister than that. The Message of the Bulldozers is: “You do not belong here. We uprooted you from your homes in 1948 and prevented your return, and now we will uproot you from all of the Land of Israel. “Transfer” has become an acceptable topic of television talk shows. And that is why house demolitions remain so prominent, the bulldozer beside the tank. Because in the end this process of reoccupation is one of displacement.
The bulldozer certainly deserves to take its rightful place alongside the tank as a symbol of Israel’s relationship with the Palestinians. The two deserve to be on the national flag. The tank as symbol of an Israel “fighting for its existence,” and for its prowess on the battlefield. And the bulldozer for the dark underside of Israel’s struggle for existence, its ongoing struggle to displace the Palestinians from the country. For Israel has always treated the Palestinians as an enemy, never as a people with collective rights and legitimate claims to the country with which it might someday live in peace. In 1948 Israel played an active role in driving 75% of the Palestinians from the Land. Over the next four or five years the bulldozer, following the tank, systematically demolished 418 Palestinian villages. Since 1967, as Israel’s tanks suppress Palestinian resistance to the Occupation with increasing frequency and ferocity, its bulldozers (aided by artillery and missiles) have demolished more than 9000 Palestinian homes and counting. Even as I write this, a day after the Israeli High Court of Justice gave its consent to demolishing houses of families of terrorists without warning or a chance to appeal to the court, houses are being bulldozed in Bethlehem and Gaza with dozens more threatened throughout the Occupied Territories. And not only. Throughout Israel proper, in the “unrecognized villages” and Palestinian neighborhoods of Ramle, Lod and elsewhere, houses continue to be demolished 54 years later. Jews now live in Palestinian houses in Israel’s major cities and Palestinian villages have long disappeared under the agricultural fields of kibbutzim and moshavs. Amidst this destruction 150,000 housing units have been built for the 400,000 Jews living across the 1967 border.
The bulldozer remains at the center of the “action” for the simple reason that repression and control alone do not secure the country for those the Jews whose claim excludes all others. Those with competing claims the Palestinians must be displaced if the Jews are really going to take possession, or at least confined to small islands where they cannot interfere with or challenge Israeli dominion. (The announcement this week by the Ministry of the Interior that Palestinian Israelis would be stripped of their citizenship if proven “unloyal” to the State extends the work of bulldozers.)
But just as Israel cannot insulate itself from the Occupation, so too it cannot escape the ravages of its own house demolitions policy. Fear that the displaced might yet rise again and claim their patrimony prevents Israelis from enjoying the fruits of their power. The country has been seized by rising xenophobia and national- religious fanaticism. Polarization characterizes the relations between the right and left, Jewish and Arab citizens, Jews of European and Middle East origin, the working and middle classes, religious and secular. Israelis are “hunkering down,” increasingly isolated from the world. Young Israeli men and women are themselves brutalized as they are sent as soldiers to evict Palestinian families from their homes. Even the beauty of the land is destroyed as the authorities rush to construct ugly, sprawling suburbs and massive highways in order to “claim” the land before Palestinians creep back in. Aesthetics, human rights, environmental concerns, education, social justice these are the finer things of life that cannot coexist with displacement and occupation. “Fortress Israel,” as we call it, is by necessity based on a culture of strength, violence and crudity.
In the final analysis, it will be the bulldozer that razes the structure that once was Israel.
(Jeff Halper, an anthropologist, is the Coordinator of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions http://www.icahd.org/eng/. He can be reached at <icahd@zahav.net.il>.)
Wednesday, August 7
MCC Palestine Update #55
MCC Palestine Update #55
August 7, 2002
“Without being able to read, women can’t participate fully in society,” says Nawal Ghussein, the director of al-Majd Women’s Society in the Nuseirat refugee camp in the Gaza Strip. “They can’t help their children with homework, their job prospects are limited. That’s why, as an organization dedicated to strengthening women’s role in Palestinian society, we promote women’s literacy.”
Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) has supported al-Majd’s literacy program for three years. This past school year, thirty-five women, ranging from young women in their late teens to middle-age women close to fifty, participated in the program, all sharing a determination to learn to read. The women are divided into four ability levels, with those in the highest level preparing to take exams which will allow them to enter the regular school system.
Zahwa Immasara, seventeen (17) years old, has never attended school. School was five kilometers away, and because Zahwa suffered from a variety of health problems during her early childhood, her parents feared to have her walk such a great distance. Zahwa is one of three women in al-Majd’s literacy program who sat in July for a test administered by the Palestinian Authority’s Ministry of Education which will allow them to enter the seventh grade. “My hope is eventually to take the tawjihi,” Zahwa shares, smiling, referring to the high school matriculation exam required for entering university.
The women in the literacy program have varied histories. Some, like Zahwa, never attended school because of health problems or because of their distance from the school. Others couldn’t attend school because of family problems. Intisar al-Rabayah, now twenty (20), was in second grade when she was pulled out of school while her parents went through a divorce. In the years following the divorce Intisar and her siblings worked hard inside and outside the home
Siham Haroun, a lively woman in her late twenties with a bachelor’s degree from al-Azhar University in Gaza, teaches the literacy courses at al-Majd. Having been born, like her students, in the Nuseirat refugee camp, Siham can relate to the challenges her students face: crowded living conditions, poor job prospects, and the denial of the right of the refugees to return to their former homes in what is now Israel. “We know that we face many difficulties, as women and as refugees,” shares Siham. “But at al-Majd we challenge each other to overcome these difficulties.”
Al-Majd has a good track record of helping refugee women overcome obstacles. Twenty women who received training in yoghurt production in 1995 through an MCC sponsored program continue to work together as a cooperative, marketing their product throughout the Gaza Strip. At a time of record-high unemployment, these women are some of the few in the Gaza Strip continuing to bring in an income.
“Empowering women helps whole families,” notes Ghussein. For young women like Zahwa and Intisar, learning to read is central to their hopes for the future, hopes which are nurtured and encouraged at al-Majd.
Below you will find two pieces, both on Israeli checkpoints in the occupied territories. In the first, Ha'aretz journalist Gideon Levy comments on the scene at a checkpoint on the outskerts of the West Bank city of Jenin. In the second account, Ghassan Andoni, the director of the Palestinian Center for Rapprochement between Peoples in Beit Sahour and a professor at Bir Zeit University, relates a frightening--but sadly not isolated--incident he experienced while traveling between Beit Sahour (his home) and Bir Zeit (where he works). A note: Ghassan relays some of the graphic language used by the soldier on guard at the checkpoint.
--Alain Epp Weaver
1. Jenin checkpoint, 4 P.M.
Gideon Levy
At the Jenin checkpoint, Checkpoint 250, a few days ago. This is the barrier that blocks the entrance to the city. The place is deserted and derelict. Hardly anyone is allowed to leave or enter the "city of the suicide bombers." Nor is anyone trying to approach the checkpoint, which is made of spikes and concrete blocks. Next to it is a small army base in which soldiers man observation posts. The checkpoint itself is generally not manned - the soldiers come down from their positions only when a car pulls up.
At four in the afternoon, on the sandy road, in front of the first group of concrete cubes, far from the soldiers' position, stands an ambulance of the Red Crescent organization, the flashing of its red lights visible from afar. In the ambulance are two Palestinian paramedics and a woman volunteer from the United States. The ambulance was summoned from Jenin in order to take a woman in labor from the village of Jalma to the hospital in Jenin. It's a 10- minute trip in normal times. The ambulance driver says that the woman tried to become pregnant for six years. It's not difficult to imagine what she and her family are feeling as they wait forthe ambulance.
We are behind the ambulance. Waiting. A quarter of an hour passes. No soldier approaches the vehicle. Another half-hour goes by. Still nothing. The ambulance driver, Mahmoud Karmi, does not lose his cool. He always waits here between an hour and two hours before the soldiers come over. So far, an hour and a quarter has passed since he arrived at the checkpoint.
Following a phone call to the office of the IDF Spokesperson and a further wait, two soldiers descend from their position. In a lordly manner, they gesture for the ambulance to approach. The driver says he is afraid the soldiers will get back at him because we phoned the IDF Spokesperson. A brief check by the soldiers and the ambulance is allowed to proceed. It's worth keeping in mind that this is the road between Jenin and Jalma, not a road to Israel (between Jenin and Israel there is another checkpoint, at Jalma). The soldiers, of course, did not know the destination of the waiting ambulance or who it was carrying - an injured child, a dying man, a woman in labor.
One of the soldiers afterward told us that this was the order they had been given: to delay ambulances. The endless complaints about ambulances being delayed are more than confirmed by an eyewitness account. A few days later, the IDF Spokesperson stated in response, "The ambulance was held up needlessly. The checkpoint commander was admonished by his superiors. The debriefing of the event and its conclusions were conveyed to all the commanding officers in the brigade so that the proper lessons can be learned."
Red Crescent drivers in Jenin related at week's end that the situation at this checkpoint was now in fact better. However, last Thursday, the same driver, Karmi, was delayed for about 20 minutes at another checkpoint, near the settlement of Shavei Shomron, and then told by the soldiers to turn around and go back;there were two patients in the ambulance, who were being taken from Rafidiyeh Hospital in Nablus to Jenin. Karmi had to make the trip to Jenin through Tul Karm via dirt roads.
In some cases, tanks chase off ambulances without the ambulance drivers managing to explain their mission to the soldiers. Delaying paramedics on the way to give first aid to people who have been hurt has also become a widespread phenomenon. In one recent case, about three weeks ago, journalist Imad Abu Zahra bled to death after being shot by soldiers in Jenin, who then kept firing, preventing his evacuation for about half an hour. Similar events are described in the United Nations report about the Jenin refugee camp that was released last week.
In a period of targeted liquidations and mass terrorist attacks, the delay of an ambulance seems an almost marginal phenomenon. The woman in labor from Jalma made it to the hospital in time, unlike other cases. Still, the story should not be ignored, precisely because of its almost banal appearance. Whether an explicit order was given to delay ambulances or not, this behavior is an ordinary phenomenon,not an exception, and it has nothing to do with security risks, as no one
questions the need to check the ambulances.
This ugly and inhumane phenomenon of hazing and harassing ambulances stems from a deeper source: from the soldiers' basic attitude toward the Palestinian population. It's doubtful that the soldiers at the Jenin checkpoint delayed the ambulance because they were ordered to do so by their commanders. It's more likely that they thought this was the way Palestinian ambulances should be treated.
In the perception of the soldiers at the checkpoint, a Palestinian is not a person like them, he is part "human dust" and part potential enemy, so they have the right to do with him almost anything that strikes their fancy. It is likely that none of the soldiers tried to imagine a similar situation in which an ambulance carrying his mother or his father was being delayed. Nor, by the same token, did any of them consider how he would feel toward whoever was responsible for the delay.
We have regressed to dark days. If, after the Oslo Accords, the IDF started to become aware that the Palestinian population should be treated differently and did not consist entirely of "troublemakers," we have now returned to the old and bad conceptions - that a good Palestinian is one who is humiliated, harassed and ground into the dirt.
2. Almost Killed at Atara military check point
Ghassan Andoni
Sunday August 4th, myself and four friends of mine started our trip from Bethlehem to Birzeit University. Being away from the university for two weeks, I decided to come to the university, stay in Birzeit for ten days, finish the final exams, and go on a vacation until October 1st.
As our driver was experienced in driving the way forth and back, he knew how to go around road blocks, drive in the fields, and find alternative roads anytime we reached a deadlock. In general, and as this was not my first time, the road did not look strange to me.
In about 40 minutes, we arrived at the first (must go through) military checkpoint. We were delayed for 40 minutes and then ordered to drive through without being checked. As the two
teenage soldiers handling the checkpoint were in the midst of a conversation about the girl friend of one of them, we had to wait until they were finished. Knowing Hebrew is definitely an advantage. Honestly, I can not deny that I enjoyed at least
parts of their conversation.
After driving for 2 hours through, roads, fields, and small villages, we arrived at Attara bridge, a bottleneck without passing through you can not arrive at Birzeit. As the main road leading to the bridge was totally destroyed by army bulldozers, we had to drive through the fields, climb a steep hill to arrive at the other end of the bridge.
Driving up the hill, and as we approached the top, we saw a huge pile of dirt almost blocking the road. Suddenly the car in front of us started a U-turn back, and our driver started doing the same. Our conclusion was that we need to hit the road back to Bethlehem.
Suddenly, we found our selves surrounded by five soldiers pointing their guns at us and getting ready to fire. I can not explain to you how terrified we were. During those little moments, in which we expected to be shot at, I thought of all the people that I love and care for, and how sad they will be if I am shot dead.
An army officer approached us shouting, cursing in Hebrew, and moving his gun in a way that made us feel that this is the end. With the soldiers pointing the guns to our heads we were ordered to park aside and step out of the car.
The officer came close to me, pointed his gun at my head and said: As you have been trying to flee away from an army checkpoint, I have the full right to kill you all and no one will give a damn. Pulling all the strength I could I replied, in an assuring tone, that as we saw a huge pile of dirt and as the car ahead of us was turning back, we assumed that the road is blocked and were turning to go back.
The army officer looked in the eyes, brought his gun closer to my head and said: I do not give a fu... damn shit to the lies you are telling. And added: the only reason that I did not shoot you so far is to avoid two weeks of filling forms for the army inquiry. As well I do not want for my gun to get dirty, he added, for each bullet we shoot the army asks us to draw a mark on our gun, so if I shoot you my gun will look
ugly.
At this point I was not sure if he was trying to tell me that the army have the norms of investigating shootings or trying to tell me how much we are all worth for him. What worried me more than anything else is his hyperactive behavior and his continued attempts to provoke a reaction from our side.
I decided to keep communicating with him. So I said, is it really that you do not care about us being killed. Here I think I managed to communicate with the little human that is still inside him. He said: if you stand here for two or three hours
You will go nuts and start talking Japanese.
I said, hoping to still be able to communicate, but you are not the only one under pressure here, I am as well talking Japanese. He said: yeah.. yeah tell me a Japanese word and I said Yokohama. He sort of smiled but he managed to hide it.
I guess to step out of this position he turned into being sarcastic. He asked in a low and warm voice: to where are you going? I replied to Birzeit. He said, This little sweet town, but then started shouting: in fact it is not sweet it is a piece of shit, I will not give a fu.. damn if it is wiped out.
Then he asked in a low voice: where do you come from? I replied from Bethlehem. He said in the same low and warm voice: the sweet little town where the sweet baby was born, and before me saying yes, he shouted: in fact I do not give a shit to the town or to the baby.
He then went joking with our driver who smiled to him. suddenly the officer shouted at him: what are you laughing at? what the hell causes you to smile at a military check point?
All of this sarcasm was combined with nervous movements and regularly pointing the gun to the head of one of us. As he was getting more dragged into his sarcastic behavior, he became more threatening and dangerous.
At this point I pulled all of my strength and said: it does not help being sarcastic. He closed to me, pointed his gun to my head and said: yeah.. yeah.. I am the most sarcastic person you will ever meet in your short lifetime. Then he shouted: you need to tell me right now what is it that it does not help, just one thing. I said it does not help you feel better. At this point he halted for a while. I guess to get out of this position he acted more official and shouted: you need to bring all of your bags out and unload them so that I can see the bottom of each of them. So we did.
After saying some nasty comments at some items in the bag in the same sarcastic way, he ordered us back to the car and said you can pass through. We stepped back into the car. We were extremely worried that we might be shot at the minute we move the car. But what other choices did we have? We moved out physically safe but not emotionally.
By the way, we were never been asked about our IDs or checked if we were on the wanted list or not. Anyway, I am happy to be sitting in my office in Birzeit and will only worry about my trip back after nine days.
August 7, 2002
“Without being able to read, women can’t participate fully in society,” says Nawal Ghussein, the director of al-Majd Women’s Society in the Nuseirat refugee camp in the Gaza Strip. “They can’t help their children with homework, their job prospects are limited. That’s why, as an organization dedicated to strengthening women’s role in Palestinian society, we promote women’s literacy.”
Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) has supported al-Majd’s literacy program for three years. This past school year, thirty-five women, ranging from young women in their late teens to middle-age women close to fifty, participated in the program, all sharing a determination to learn to read. The women are divided into four ability levels, with those in the highest level preparing to take exams which will allow them to enter the regular school system.
Zahwa Immasara, seventeen (17) years old, has never attended school. School was five kilometers away, and because Zahwa suffered from a variety of health problems during her early childhood, her parents feared to have her walk such a great distance. Zahwa is one of three women in al-Majd’s literacy program who sat in July for a test administered by the Palestinian Authority’s Ministry of Education which will allow them to enter the seventh grade. “My hope is eventually to take the tawjihi,” Zahwa shares, smiling, referring to the high school matriculation exam required for entering university.
The women in the literacy program have varied histories. Some, like Zahwa, never attended school because of health problems or because of their distance from the school. Others couldn’t attend school because of family problems. Intisar al-Rabayah, now twenty (20), was in second grade when she was pulled out of school while her parents went through a divorce. In the years following the divorce Intisar and her siblings worked hard inside and outside the home
Siham Haroun, a lively woman in her late twenties with a bachelor’s degree from al-Azhar University in Gaza, teaches the literacy courses at al-Majd. Having been born, like her students, in the Nuseirat refugee camp, Siham can relate to the challenges her students face: crowded living conditions, poor job prospects, and the denial of the right of the refugees to return to their former homes in what is now Israel. “We know that we face many difficulties, as women and as refugees,” shares Siham. “But at al-Majd we challenge each other to overcome these difficulties.”
Al-Majd has a good track record of helping refugee women overcome obstacles. Twenty women who received training in yoghurt production in 1995 through an MCC sponsored program continue to work together as a cooperative, marketing their product throughout the Gaza Strip. At a time of record-high unemployment, these women are some of the few in the Gaza Strip continuing to bring in an income.
“Empowering women helps whole families,” notes Ghussein. For young women like Zahwa and Intisar, learning to read is central to their hopes for the future, hopes which are nurtured and encouraged at al-Majd.
Below you will find two pieces, both on Israeli checkpoints in the occupied territories. In the first, Ha'aretz journalist Gideon Levy comments on the scene at a checkpoint on the outskerts of the West Bank city of Jenin. In the second account, Ghassan Andoni, the director of the Palestinian Center for Rapprochement between Peoples in Beit Sahour and a professor at Bir Zeit University, relates a frightening--but sadly not isolated--incident he experienced while traveling between Beit Sahour (his home) and Bir Zeit (where he works). A note: Ghassan relays some of the graphic language used by the soldier on guard at the checkpoint.
--Alain Epp Weaver
1. Jenin checkpoint, 4 P.M.
Gideon Levy
At the Jenin checkpoint, Checkpoint 250, a few days ago. This is the barrier that blocks the entrance to the city. The place is deserted and derelict. Hardly anyone is allowed to leave or enter the "city of the suicide bombers." Nor is anyone trying to approach the checkpoint, which is made of spikes and concrete blocks. Next to it is a small army base in which soldiers man observation posts. The checkpoint itself is generally not manned - the soldiers come down from their positions only when a car pulls up.
At four in the afternoon, on the sandy road, in front of the first group of concrete cubes, far from the soldiers' position, stands an ambulance of the Red Crescent organization, the flashing of its red lights visible from afar. In the ambulance are two Palestinian paramedics and a woman volunteer from the United States. The ambulance was summoned from Jenin in order to take a woman in labor from the village of Jalma to the hospital in Jenin. It's a 10- minute trip in normal times. The ambulance driver says that the woman tried to become pregnant for six years. It's not difficult to imagine what she and her family are feeling as they wait forthe ambulance.
We are behind the ambulance. Waiting. A quarter of an hour passes. No soldier approaches the vehicle. Another half-hour goes by. Still nothing. The ambulance driver, Mahmoud Karmi, does not lose his cool. He always waits here between an hour and two hours before the soldiers come over. So far, an hour and a quarter has passed since he arrived at the checkpoint.
Following a phone call to the office of the IDF Spokesperson and a further wait, two soldiers descend from their position. In a lordly manner, they gesture for the ambulance to approach. The driver says he is afraid the soldiers will get back at him because we phoned the IDF Spokesperson. A brief check by the soldiers and the ambulance is allowed to proceed. It's worth keeping in mind that this is the road between Jenin and Jalma, not a road to Israel (between Jenin and Israel there is another checkpoint, at Jalma). The soldiers, of course, did not know the destination of the waiting ambulance or who it was carrying - an injured child, a dying man, a woman in labor.
One of the soldiers afterward told us that this was the order they had been given: to delay ambulances. The endless complaints about ambulances being delayed are more than confirmed by an eyewitness account. A few days later, the IDF Spokesperson stated in response, "The ambulance was held up needlessly. The checkpoint commander was admonished by his superiors. The debriefing of the event and its conclusions were conveyed to all the commanding officers in the brigade so that the proper lessons can be learned."
Red Crescent drivers in Jenin related at week's end that the situation at this checkpoint was now in fact better. However, last Thursday, the same driver, Karmi, was delayed for about 20 minutes at another checkpoint, near the settlement of Shavei Shomron, and then told by the soldiers to turn around and go back;there were two patients in the ambulance, who were being taken from Rafidiyeh Hospital in Nablus to Jenin. Karmi had to make the trip to Jenin through Tul Karm via dirt roads.
In some cases, tanks chase off ambulances without the ambulance drivers managing to explain their mission to the soldiers. Delaying paramedics on the way to give first aid to people who have been hurt has also become a widespread phenomenon. In one recent case, about three weeks ago, journalist Imad Abu Zahra bled to death after being shot by soldiers in Jenin, who then kept firing, preventing his evacuation for about half an hour. Similar events are described in the United Nations report about the Jenin refugee camp that was released last week.
In a period of targeted liquidations and mass terrorist attacks, the delay of an ambulance seems an almost marginal phenomenon. The woman in labor from Jalma made it to the hospital in time, unlike other cases. Still, the story should not be ignored, precisely because of its almost banal appearance. Whether an explicit order was given to delay ambulances or not, this behavior is an ordinary phenomenon,not an exception, and it has nothing to do with security risks, as no one
questions the need to check the ambulances.
This ugly and inhumane phenomenon of hazing and harassing ambulances stems from a deeper source: from the soldiers' basic attitude toward the Palestinian population. It's doubtful that the soldiers at the Jenin checkpoint delayed the ambulance because they were ordered to do so by their commanders. It's more likely that they thought this was the way Palestinian ambulances should be treated.
In the perception of the soldiers at the checkpoint, a Palestinian is not a person like them, he is part "human dust" and part potential enemy, so they have the right to do with him almost anything that strikes their fancy. It is likely that none of the soldiers tried to imagine a similar situation in which an ambulance carrying his mother or his father was being delayed. Nor, by the same token, did any of them consider how he would feel toward whoever was responsible for the delay.
We have regressed to dark days. If, after the Oslo Accords, the IDF started to become aware that the Palestinian population should be treated differently and did not consist entirely of "troublemakers," we have now returned to the old and bad conceptions - that a good Palestinian is one who is humiliated, harassed and ground into the dirt.
2. Almost Killed at Atara military check point
Ghassan Andoni
Sunday August 4th, myself and four friends of mine started our trip from Bethlehem to Birzeit University. Being away from the university for two weeks, I decided to come to the university, stay in Birzeit for ten days, finish the final exams, and go on a vacation until October 1st.
As our driver was experienced in driving the way forth and back, he knew how to go around road blocks, drive in the fields, and find alternative roads anytime we reached a deadlock. In general, and as this was not my first time, the road did not look strange to me.
In about 40 minutes, we arrived at the first (must go through) military checkpoint. We were delayed for 40 minutes and then ordered to drive through without being checked. As the two
teenage soldiers handling the checkpoint were in the midst of a conversation about the girl friend of one of them, we had to wait until they were finished. Knowing Hebrew is definitely an advantage. Honestly, I can not deny that I enjoyed at least
parts of their conversation.
After driving for 2 hours through, roads, fields, and small villages, we arrived at Attara bridge, a bottleneck without passing through you can not arrive at Birzeit. As the main road leading to the bridge was totally destroyed by army bulldozers, we had to drive through the fields, climb a steep hill to arrive at the other end of the bridge.
Driving up the hill, and as we approached the top, we saw a huge pile of dirt almost blocking the road. Suddenly the car in front of us started a U-turn back, and our driver started doing the same. Our conclusion was that we need to hit the road back to Bethlehem.
Suddenly, we found our selves surrounded by five soldiers pointing their guns at us and getting ready to fire. I can not explain to you how terrified we were. During those little moments, in which we expected to be shot at, I thought of all the people that I love and care for, and how sad they will be if I am shot dead.
An army officer approached us shouting, cursing in Hebrew, and moving his gun in a way that made us feel that this is the end. With the soldiers pointing the guns to our heads we were ordered to park aside and step out of the car.
The officer came close to me, pointed his gun at my head and said: As you have been trying to flee away from an army checkpoint, I have the full right to kill you all and no one will give a damn. Pulling all the strength I could I replied, in an assuring tone, that as we saw a huge pile of dirt and as the car ahead of us was turning back, we assumed that the road is blocked and were turning to go back.
The army officer looked in the eyes, brought his gun closer to my head and said: I do not give a fu... damn shit to the lies you are telling. And added: the only reason that I did not shoot you so far is to avoid two weeks of filling forms for the army inquiry. As well I do not want for my gun to get dirty, he added, for each bullet we shoot the army asks us to draw a mark on our gun, so if I shoot you my gun will look
ugly.
At this point I was not sure if he was trying to tell me that the army have the norms of investigating shootings or trying to tell me how much we are all worth for him. What worried me more than anything else is his hyperactive behavior and his continued attempts to provoke a reaction from our side.
I decided to keep communicating with him. So I said, is it really that you do not care about us being killed. Here I think I managed to communicate with the little human that is still inside him. He said: if you stand here for two or three hours
You will go nuts and start talking Japanese.
I said, hoping to still be able to communicate, but you are not the only one under pressure here, I am as well talking Japanese. He said: yeah.. yeah tell me a Japanese word and I said Yokohama. He sort of smiled but he managed to hide it.
I guess to step out of this position he turned into being sarcastic. He asked in a low and warm voice: to where are you going? I replied to Birzeit. He said, This little sweet town, but then started shouting: in fact it is not sweet it is a piece of shit, I will not give a fu.. damn if it is wiped out.
Then he asked in a low voice: where do you come from? I replied from Bethlehem. He said in the same low and warm voice: the sweet little town where the sweet baby was born, and before me saying yes, he shouted: in fact I do not give a shit to the town or to the baby.
He then went joking with our driver who smiled to him. suddenly the officer shouted at him: what are you laughing at? what the hell causes you to smile at a military check point?
All of this sarcasm was combined with nervous movements and regularly pointing the gun to the head of one of us. As he was getting more dragged into his sarcastic behavior, he became more threatening and dangerous.
At this point I pulled all of my strength and said: it does not help being sarcastic. He closed to me, pointed his gun to my head and said: yeah.. yeah.. I am the most sarcastic person you will ever meet in your short lifetime. Then he shouted: you need to tell me right now what is it that it does not help, just one thing. I said it does not help you feel better. At this point he halted for a while. I guess to get out of this position he acted more official and shouted: you need to bring all of your bags out and unload them so that I can see the bottom of each of them. So we did.
After saying some nasty comments at some items in the bag in the same sarcastic way, he ordered us back to the car and said you can pass through. We stepped back into the car. We were extremely worried that we might be shot at the minute we move the car. But what other choices did we have? We moved out physically safe but not emotionally.
By the way, we were never been asked about our IDs or checked if we were on the wanted list or not. Anyway, I am happy to be sitting in my office in Birzeit and will only worry about my trip back after nine days.
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