2. My first settler attack (Hannah-IWPS) 

3. Sick Palestinian detained for 9.5 hours and then arrested (Hannah and Anna)

1.Bil'in resists the Annexation Wall- two reports and an invitation

At 11:30 approximately 150 people, including Palestinians, international, and Israeli activists marched out of the village and towards the construction site of the wall. Today is a holiday in Palestine (Prophet Mohammad's birthday) and there was no school so many children attended the demonstration.

We reached the construction site at approximately 11:45 and began to chant against the Wall. There were four soldiers at the site. They told us that we could continue to demonstrate legally as long as there was no stone throwing. A few minutes after telling us this, reinforcements arrived and they declared the area a closed military zone. There had been no stone throwing. They ordered us to leave and started throwing sound grenades into the crowd.

Today Friday the 22nd the village of Bil'in held a demonstration to protest the construction of the Apartheid Wall. At about 1:30 150 people including Palestinians, Israelis and international activists departed from in front of the village mosque to the construction site of the fence. We arrived at the construction site at about 1:45 and were met by three Israeli soldiers who told us the area was a closed military zone. We continued the march and stopped under an olive tree next to the planned route of the Wall. For about 15 minutes we chanted slogans under the olive tree. More soldiers began to arrive. The army tried to prevent people from filming what was happening by pushing away photographers and demanding that they leave the area. We started to walk down the planned route of the Wall. The soldiers grew increasingly agitated and tried to stop us from walking to the area where bulldozers have already destroyed the land. While we were standing on the destroyed land the army arrested one Israeli. At first he was successfully de-arrested by Israeli and international activists but the army promised that if he would talk with them he would be released. The army also tried to stop the press from photographing their behavior by placing their hands in front of their lenses. The soldiers soon began shooting at demonstrators. They mostly used rubber bullets and some tear gas. Israeli and international activists tried to change the situation by moving between the Palestinian demonstrators and the Israeli soldiers. The soldiers ordered us to leave and then moved among us to try to use us as shields while they fired at demonstrators. The activists left the area. When we returned to observe what was happening the soldiers fired rubber bullets at us while we stood unarmed in plain sight on a road. It was clear that we were not a threat in any way. They also fired many times at a Palestinian who was filming the demonstration. 

Near the end of the demonstration the army began to fire live ammunition. When the army withdrew the demonstrators went to the construction site of the Wall, and many Palestinians held prayer on the land where their olive trees once grew. Five Palestinians were injured today and one Israeli activist was arrested. 

2. From slavery to freedom - from separation to partnership Demonstration with the people of Bil'in against the settlements and the fence that are being built on their lands. 

The coming Wednesday. The Passover weekdays. Israeli and international activists will join the people of the village Bil'in near Ramallah, for a nonviolent demonstration protesting against the annexation fence and the settlements who will annex more than half of Bili'n's land (about 2,300 Dunam - 575 acres). Intensive building works are being done, in the area between the route of the fence, to the green line at the West -as part of the expanding of the settlements Kiryat Sefer, Eastern Matityahu, and the town Modi'in Elit. Together with the inhabitants of Bil'in - men and women, we will protest loudly against the expanding of the settlement, the building the fence, and the jeopardizing the option for life together. We will also plant olive trees along the planned route of the fence. In the recent past the majority of the 1500 working people in Bil'in earned their living working in Israel. These days, due to the complete closure that has been imposed over the last five years the village economy is based more on agriculture, and the unemployment rate is very high. 

Since the high court of justice dismissed the complaint of the inhabitants of Bil'in against the new route of the fence which was ratified by the government, the village started a nonviolent struggle against the fence. Nearly daily, the people of Bil'in are marching towards the route of the fence trying to stop the work of the bulldozers, which are uprooting the olive trees and separating between them and their lands. Like in the neighboring village Budrus, so in Bil'in, the army tries to suppress violently the popular struggle of the village. Among other atrocities, the soldiers invade the village days and nights, shooting metal rubber coated bullets, entering houses, detaining and beating people.... A month ago, the border police soldiers set a fire in one of the houses by throwing a stun grenade inside it. Dozens of villagers have been of injured from shooting of rubber coated bullets, tear gas and physical violence of soldiers. For Wednesday the 27th of April, the people of Bil'in are inviting anyone who believes in the values of justice, equality and solidarity, to join them and create together a real alternative to the policy of annexation and dispossession of the Israeli government. Traveling arrangements should be coordinated with the communication women: Haifa, Solel Bone, 08:00, yana 050-8575729 Tel Aviv, El-Al terminal ant the Arlozorov train station 09:00 Sheli 054-4547989 Jerusalem, Gan Hapaamon - 09:15, Eli, 054-5718758 

2. My first settler attack (Hanna-IWPS) 

photographs can be found at the bottom of

  http://community.webshots.com/album/311043526hlRLlA/1, and on the following page. April 21, 2005

 Last week, I  witnessed my first settler attack.  "It was nothing," my friend Arafat told me afterwards, and I know that he was speaking in comparison to other attacks, when people have been injured and even killed.  Here, the Palestinian farmers were simply forced off their land.  Too simply.  Too easily.  But what can they do?  They don't have any weapons (unless you count their farming tools, as one woman joked to me); only the Israeli settlers and soldiers have real weapons. We went to AsSawiya (not to be confused with AzZawiya) because the farmers needed to plow their land that they haven't been able to plow for four years, and they had permission from the army to go on Sunday.  

The entire situation is absurd.  The village has been here for centuries, and in the past couple decades they've seen Israeli settlers move onto their land, destroying or stealing it and preventing farmers from continuing with their lives.  In the past three years they've seen this new outpost from the settlement of Eli encroach even more upon their land, with the help of the Israeli government who, even according to their own expansionist laws, should stop new outposts from being built.  When Palestinian farmers try to go to their land that is anywhere near any settlements or outposts, they are attacked, beaten, and forced off their land by settlers.  No settler from this area has been prosecuted, and the police consistently refuse to accept statements and evidence, or to follow up on cases. 

Now the Israeli army has decided to "protect" the Palestinian farmers.  The way they do this is to give them permits to reach their land for a few days a year (why do people need permits to go to their own land, and what about the rest of the year?), and they promise to protect the farmers while they are plowing (why don't they remove the settlers from their illegal dwelling place instead of trying to minimize the effects of the predictable settler violence against Palestinians?).  Even the army's protection is questionable.  What happened to us on Sunday is similar, apparently, to what usually happens: settlers come and threaten or attack Palestinians, and the army responds by telling the Palestinians that they should leave their land in order to avoid being attacked. 

But let me start at the beginning.  We (four people from Rabbis for Human Rights and I) arrived in AsSawiya and met my friend Arafat, his mother, and a few other farmers.  We walked up the mountain to the land, with Arafat pointing out their new water pipes that carry water to the village, and also pointing at the fresh water spring that the settlers had contaminated a few years ago by bathing and swimming in it.  We reached the place where people wanted to work and could see the outpost in the distance.  The army was nowhere to be seen (even though it was a designated army protection day).  The farmers spread out and plowed for about 20 minutes before two armed settlers approached and began yelling at the families to stop working, to go down, to leave their land.  Most of the farmers, knowing the danger, began to pack up right away.  It wasn't quick enough for the settlers, who kept yelling and running from family to family.  A couple minutes later two more settlers approached, and more followed.  These settlers were armed only with binoculars, not rifles, but their behavior was more aggressive and violent than that of the settlers with guns (who were apparently some sort of outpost security force, though they had no uniforms and were clearly self- appointed security guards).  Some of the settlers began pushing the farmers.  I saw one of them kick a donkey pretty hard, but the donkey seemed unperturbed.  One man later showed me his ripped shirt and told me a settler had hit him on the shoulder.  There were no witnesses, so the police would not take a report. 

The farmers began walking down the hill, followed (chased) by the settlers.  Finally, an army jeep pulled up.  Most of the settlers temporarily left (although some came back later), and the Palestinians were relieved.  The armed settlers approached the soldiers and began chatting.  Their arms were on each other's shoulders as one soldier asked where another settler was; clearly they knew each other.  Arafat tried to talk with the soldiers, to say, "Where were you? This is our designated day to plow, and we were on our land plowing.  Can we go back now and continue work?" The response was truly baffling: "You have to wait for the army to get here."  Weren't they the army?  Apparently there were other soldiers and commanders assigned to this task and they hadn't yet arrived, so the Palestinians had to continue moving down off their land, because God forbid these soldiers would actually ask the settlers to walk up back towards their (illegal) homes. 

When "the army" and police finally arrived, the settlers, Palestinian farmers, and Israeli accompaniers began negotiating.  I sat with the women and talked, and time passed.  We must have sat there for an hour before the army finally announced (or rather, asked Arafat to announce) that they would be allowed back to their land to plow for what was left of the day.  Two catches: 1) They could not go to the land they wanted to plow, the land they had begun working earlier.  They had to stay in the lower area, even further from the outpost.  2) All men (except children and old men) had to have their IDs checked.  One soldier stepped forward and said he would check IDs, but the job was immediately taken over by a settler.  That's right, an armed Israeli settler from an illegal outpost of an illegal settlement held a notepad in his hand and proceeded to write down the ID numbers of every Palestinian man who had come to plow that day.  Other settlers began taking pictures of the farmers.  All of this was probably just a way to scare them, but who knows what they could try to do if they wanted to hurt the people – they have connections, and there are generally no repercussions to their actions. Finally the farmers were able to plow on some of their land.   I chatted for several hours with a couple Palestinian boys, one of whom told me he spoke fluent Hebrew.  Usually only the Palestinian men who have worked in Israel speak Hebrew, so I asked him about it. "My brother is married to a Jewish Israeli," he said, "and she taught me." 

One army jeep drove up to the outpost, and soldiers patrolled there for the next several hours, making sure settlers did not come down again.  The farmers were relieved, and it was a minor victory, but I was disgusted that the ability to hurriedly and frightfully plow land, in a place that is not the place that most needs the work, is a "victory" in the context of  occupation. 

Perhaps the most difficult part of the day for me, on a personal level, was listening to attitudes of some of the Israeli accompaniers and watching one of them interact with all the parties there.  Most people who come with Rabbis for Human Rights (RHR) are fine, but not everyone has the same political analysis or familiarity with the land and the people as Arik, the RHR director. At one point, after the men had all packed up their equipment and gone to where the army told them to go, a few women were still trying to stay on their land and argue with settlers and soldiers. One of the Israeli accompaniers (a man) said to me, "The women don't understand the situation. The most important thing today is to plow the land, not make a political statement. If they don't plow for three years, an old Ottoman law says that the land is not theirs anymore."  "I think the women understand better that rules doesn't get Palestinians anywhere.  Just because they work their land does not mean the settlers won't build another outpost and steal it."  I heard the man talking with someone on the phone later, probably a man, and speaking in a condescending and amused tone about the women. In a far worse example, another Israeli accompanier was acting exactly like the army – telling Palestinians not to go to the land where they wanted to go because that would be "provoking" an attack; stepping in the middle of an attack by facing Palestinians and yelling at them to move down the hill, rather than asking the settlers to move up; ordering farmers to go to certain places for their "protection" – even pushing Arafat at one point in the direction this man wanted him to go.  I told him I thought he was being completely inappropriate, that Arafat knew exactly what he was doing and had far more experience with settler attacks than this man did, etc.  He did not change his behavior.  He came to me later and said, "I have seen too much death and tragedy in my own family, so I'm here to stop violent confrontations no matter what it takes."  "That's fine," I said, "and a completely appropriate attitude when you're in Israel.  But when you're here, your job is to follow the lead of the Palestinians and do what they ask you to do, not push them around and tell them what to do.  If you don't want to listen to Palestinians, you should continue your work at home, not here."  I don't think he had any idea that the farmers would perceive him as more of an oppressor than an accompanier.  And honestly, I don't think he really cared. His work had nothing to do with Palestinians; it was for himself. It's the same thing that happens in so many situations of oppression, when a member of the oppressor group comes in and tries to dictate to the oppressed how they should act, to tell them what's best for them.  People can't or won't step out of their own heads. 

It reminds me of an e-mail I read last week that is more amusing than offensive.  Someone had sent a message to an activist Israeli list serve entitled "Israeli presence needed in Yanoun on Sunday" (Yanoun is a small village that has been consistently terrorized by settlers from Itamar settlement).  One Israeli responded to the whole list saying, "That e-mail title was a bit ironic, and almost funny.  In fact, Israeli presence is absolutely what is NOT needed in Yanoun on Sunday." Where does all this leave us?  More and more I've been hearing about settler attacks recently – rounding up men and threatening to kill them, poisoning land, unleashing wild boars in Palestinian gardens, and more.  "And they call us the terrorists," so many Palestinians have said to me recently. 

3. Sick Palestinian detained for 9.5 hours and then arrested (Hannah and Anna-IWPS) 

Date of incident: 21 April, 2005 Time: 12:30 – 10pm 

Place:  Huwara Checkpoint, Nablus 

Witness/es: Detainee's brother, wife, 2 friends, and Anna (IWPS) 

Contact details: IWPS withholds this information as a courtesy to those involved – we will do our best to furnish you with all the relevant information you might need to begin action. 

Description of Incident 

A resident of Qira was reportedly stopped at Huwara checkpoint leaving Nablus, where he had spent 7 days in a hospital due to a serious stomach infection. He was on his way home with his wife. The detainee was held from 12:30-10pm while the army checked his ID. His wife stayed with him, and his brother and a friend also came to wait with them.  The detainee appeared to be in a lot of pain, clutching his stomach and coughing a lot. At 10pm the soldiers announced they were taking him away, but would not give any information as to why, where, or for how long he was being taken. He was driven away in a jeep. The DCO's Humanitarian Office reports that the sick man is being held at Salem for being "a security threat." He was reportedly seen by a doctor and is suffering from a stomach ulcer, for which he has received medication. The DCL informed IWPS that the man would most likely be interrogated and then released, but would not say for sure. His family is not allowed to contact him, and they have not been given any information about his condition, nor reason for his detention. We have more information about the man's name and his family's contact details. – contact us if you need them.

*********************************************************************************

April 20th, 2005,  A Correction of A Past Mistake

*********************************************************************************

April 17th 2005,   Random Observations

April 11, Part II – State of War

Before we go on, a little more basic Arabic:

"La" – No.

"Aiwa" – Yes.

"Sabach al Chir" - Good Morning. And the response:

"Sabach al Nur" - Good Day!

"Tisbach al Chir" - Good Night, but more like "Sleep well and have a good morning tomorrow."

And the next one comes from my friend Nathan:

"Rajoul Kasoul" – "Lazy man." My first morning in the cave-village of Qwawis, I woke up (late) to an ecstatic Nathan, marching in and announcing: "They're calling you a lazy man! Rajoooul Kasoooul."

Nathan woke us up this morning in Balata with, "I don't even have to prompt them to call you guys lazy anymore…"

But we didn't have time for Kasoul-ity this morning. We had already received a call – the soldiers are in Nablus. We arrived twenty minutes later. Two jeeps parked in the middle of a major street. An essential military operation if every I've seen one. And, right on cue, out come the stone throwing Shabab. The jeep doors swing open: rubber bullets. Tear gas for breakfast. The jeeps take off.

We catch up to them at Abu Raed Al-Khalili's house. Abu Raed and his family, we learn, had received notice the previous night that their house was going to be demolished. Abu Raed doesn’t care. "Even if the house were worth a million dollars" he wouldn't care: ever since the death of his son four days ago, Abu Raed doesn't care about anything. Great. But this is what I came here to do, isn’t it? If they're going to demolish the house, I'm going to witness it.

The soldiers have other plans:

"Please leave this area. Please."

Noooooooo! Canadian… can't… resist… polite soldier…

"Please leave this area. We are going to open fire."

What?

"Why are you going to open fire?" A reasonable question, I thought, given that there were no fighters, no guns, not even a stone-throwing boy by this point, and the inhabitants of the house were being more than accommodating. And bear in mind, we were basically standing there having a calm conversation. So his calm answer was:

"Because I want to."

But that wasn't his only answer: he showed us a sound grenade.

"You know what is this?"

I did.

"You understand my force? You understand my force?!" Which is not an English expression I've heard before, but the answer was clearly a "yes." We waited below. The only other question I got from this soldier was

"YOU WANT TO MAKE ME MAD?" (we tried to return to our previous position with the home owner). Conversation was no longer calm, and to answer his question:

no, I did not.

They went in and occupied the house (which is something they do), they occupied the neighbours' house (without evacuating the neighbours first), but they didn't demolish Abu Raed's house. Nor did they open fire. They trashed the place a little, a couple of sound grenades in the kitchen, burst a pipe, kitchen flooded. Tossed some clothes and mattresses around, arrested two men and left.

Later that afternoon, I sit with my friends at an internet cafe – some friends from ISM, a few non-ISM-ers. While we had been at Abu Raed's house, these guys were a street below, running in and out of a tear gas-filled house, trying to get the baby out of it.

We get on the internet and my friend sighs, "These guys are so irritating."

Who?

The fighters – the militants – the boys with the guns.

Apparantly, the fighters had shown up today, taken up positions at the outskirts of the city, got their pictures taken and went home. I didn’t even see them. But, sure enough, their photos were all over the internet. And they're photogenic enough: Armed guerillas! Clashing! Resisting! Terrorizing!

That night, while my friends got the Intifada tour of the Old City of Nablus, I met with Sami Al-Kilani, a Palestinian writer, peace activist and university professor. Sami is a middle aged man with a gentle, peaceful energy about him. Sami has spent a total of five years in prison. For what? Political activism, organizing, "But always non-violent!" So Amnesty International took him on as a Prisoner of Conscience. Sami was once tried in a military court for publishing poetry! His lawyer made the argument that the "People of the Book" can't jail a man for writing. The trial went on for five months, they couldn't prove anything against him, so the judge dismissed the case, but they sentenced him to three years of "town arrest," which can be done without the inconvenience of a judicial system.

Sami is friends with my uncle and aunt - he and his (then) ten year old son spent the night at their house. The now teenage boy still tells his friends about the Israelis he met, "And they have trouble believing him. The only Jews they have ever met are settlers and soldiers." 

But I have to ask, after a day in Nablus: what about the armed resistance? I mean, the position we in Jews for Just Peace-Winnipeg have been trying to take is "We support the Palestinian people, but we don't support violence of any…"

"Absolutely." Sami is a big proponent of non-violence, "which is hard for the young guys to understand. All they think about is revenge. But you have to also ask: what does it do?" Not only does it take lives, but it draws world public opinion to the occupying army's side. "It makes it look like it is one army against another. It gives them every pretext they need to justify Occupation - to justify harsh actions against what is basically a civil society..."

The next morning I leave Balata camp. Mohammad  gives me directions to Jerusalem. "Hey Mohammad," asks a fellow volunteer, "When's the last time you were in Jerusalem?" Mohammad has never, in his 26 years, been to Jerusalem.

He asks for my email and I write it down for him.

I bid my new friend farewell. "I'll be back," I promise.

"Insh'Allah," he answers - with God's help. "And next time you are here, maybe you will see my poster on the walls..."

"No!" the others respond, but it seems likely enough. "Take care of Mohammad," his friend had warned us earlier, "He forgets he's a Palestinian. He runs around like an international - he's going to get himself killed."

Like his best friend.

Like his uncle.