*As I’m getting ready to send this, I’m reading that two more Palestinian children have been killed by the Israeli army (at a demonstration against the Wall in the Ramallah village of Beit Liqya). I wonder how much longer this one-sided cease fire can last...
I just got back from visiting with my friend Um Fadi, who is preparing for tomorrow’s local elections in which she’s running. There are 33 people in Hares running for 9 seats on the village council, and then that group of 9 will vote for a mayor among them. At least 2 of the representatives must be women, and only 5 women are running, so Um Fadi has a decent chance of winning (besides, she’s great, so I don’t know why anyone wouldn’t vote for her!). In Hares, like a few other villages, everyone is running independently, with no stated political party affiliation.
I spent an hour or two chatting with her and her kids, sharing jokes and riddles, and practicing different languages. The youngest kids (8 and 11 years old) began to tell me all the words they knew in Hebrew: “meshugea” (crazy), “hamoor” (donkey/ass), “kelev” (dog), “bo” (come), “lech la’baytah” (go home)... I started to notice a pattern, and indeed, they confirmed that these are the most common words Israeli soldiers yell at Palestinians. Suddenly, 8-year-old Ali said in English, “Stop your game!” “Did the soldiers say that to you?” I asked. No. A few years ago, Um Fadi explained, soldiers were standing at the entrance of the village throwing gas and sound bombs into the village. One international was at Um Fadi’s house, and stepped out into the doorway to yell at the soldiers, “Stop your game!” The soldiers responded by throwing a sound bomb in her direction. The kids still remember the phrase.
Today I was on my way home from another visit to the university in Zebabdeh, Jenin, when a soldier stopped the taxi at a flying checkpoint. He looked at my passport and began asking questions: “Where are you going?” “Where do you live in Israel?” “Where will you sleep tonight?” I couldn’t tell if I should worry about saying the right thing or if he was just making small talk, but I answered curtly and vaguely. He started looking at other people’s IDs but kept talking to me: “What’s wrong? You don’t like soldiers?” “It’s difficult for me to talk to you when you have a gun,” I replied, stealing my colleague Anna’s line. I was glad to see that several Palestinians in the car understood what I had said, and nudged each other smiling. “You think it’s my gun?” asked the soldier. “It’s the government’s gun, the government gives it to me, I don’t choose it.” “You can refuse,” I replied. “If I came here with no gun,” he said, “there would be no me.” He then looked at one of the Palestinian men in the car and asked, “nachon?” (“correct?” in Hebrew). “Nachon,” replied the man absent-mindedly. “You don’t have to come here at all,” I said. “You can stay in Israel.” By this time he wasn’t paying attention to me anymore, but I was amused that he had tried to convince me that guns are necessary for occupation, when really my problem with his presence was the occupation itself, not merely the gun.
My visit to the university in Jenin was for a meeting primarily for members of Green Resistance, a new nonviolence club at the university, and the Israeli group Anarchists Against the Wall. The goal was to get to know each other and try to plan activities together. I was a little frustrated at the lack of concrete ideas generated by the group, especially the Palestinian students who have very little experience with any kind of resistance, until I realized that the meeting itself was a huge step. We introduced ourselves at the beginning, and one international who teaches English at the university said he came because he appreciated the courage of the Israelis to come there and the courage of the Palestinians to invite them. We broke into small groups to talk, and I sat back for a moment to watch the groups interact, knowing that this kind of cooperation is unusual these days. While the group didn’t agree on any one action (it seemed the Israelis were more into direct action against the Wall, while the Palestinians were more interested in joint lectures about nonviolence), they did agree to develop a joint statement and schedule a larger meeting in the near future that will be open to the whole campus. I wasn’t exactly sure what my role as an international was at the meeting, other than to observe and offer my support, but I must say it was nice to spend a whole day in a place where I didn’t hear the word “ajnabiya” (“foreigner”) whispered once. I walked around campus and nobody even noticed. They’re used to internationals teaching English, and also to female Palestinian students who don’t cover their heads, and I could have passed for either. Recently Palestinians have been telling me more and more that I look Arab. I take it as a compliment – “you’re one of us.”
I’ve traveled a lot this week, demonstrating, visiting, meeting, and relaxing. Last Thursday the village of Bil’in held a demonstration against the Wall. This is not unusual, as Bil’in has been one of the most persistent villages in their nonviolent resistance over the past few months, hosting demonstrations several times a week. What was different about Thursday was the presence of several hundred Israeli activists and the decision by the Israeli army to try new tactics and new weapons against the crowd. It started peacefully, even joyfully, as a Palestinian van blasted music and villagers carried the biggest Palestinian flag I’ve ever seen. There was also an impressive display of tear gas canisters, bullets, and other weapons that had been used by soldiers against villagers in previous demonstrations, and were now arranged on the ground to spell phrases like “No to the Wall.” We began to march towards the bulldozers. The wind was against us, so the tear gas quickly wafted our way. And then strange things began to happen. I turned around and saw what looked like two Palestinians fighting with each other. There was a crowd between me and them, so I didn’t see the rest, but according to eye witnesses and media footage, two men had begun throwing stones at the army. The Palestinian organizers tried to stop them, and quickly realized that something was awry. Indeed, as the men tried to stop the stone-throwers, the stone-throwers turned around, grabbed the men, and arrested them. They were undercover cops, apparently part of a unit used previously only to break up prison demonstrations. The Palestinian men who were arrested are still being held in a military prison camp, with charges of “assaulting a public service agent” or something along those lines, even though the cops wore nothing to distinguish them from civilians, and the “assault” was merely an attempt to get them to stop throwing stones.
After the main part of the demonstration ended, groups of Palestinian kids were collecting the weapons. I saw BBs for the first time at one of these actions, and then I saw a strange little plastic orange ball with a white powder inside. “Salt,” the boys were saying. Apparently, the soldiers had shot these salt pellets directly at people, causing welts and burns on people’s bodies. For photos and video footage of this, the undercover cops, and more, Gush Shalom is the place to go: http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en.
I left the demonstration exhausted, having inhaled more tear gas than ever before, and went with Dorothy, an Israeli friend, to her home in Herziliya. The next day, we were going to visit Jaber, the man with meningitis who was arrested at Huwara checkpoint the week before. He had been transferred to an Israeli hospital the Saturday before, I had visited him Sunday (as I wrote in my previous report), and on Tuesday he had been scheduled to be taken to court. The lawyer showed up at Salem that morning only to be told that Jaber still had a fever and the doctor had not released him. His lawyer told the judge that he planned to file a request to have him do his required bed rest at home. The judge said fine, we’ll be in touch, and the lawyer left. The next day the lawyer found out that the court session had gone ahead in both his and Jaber’s absence, and that the court had extended Jaber’s detention for another 15 days. He immediately filed an appeal, since the proceedings were blatantly illegal. He hadn’t seen Jaber since then, so he asked me to tell him, if I was able to see him, that he had another upcoming court date on Monday.
Dorothy and I were in the car on the way to the hospital when Jaber’s wife called to say, “Hurry up, get there quickly, they’re taking him away!” “How do you know?” I asked. “Did the doctor call you?” “No,” she replied, “another sick man who’s with him called me.” I called the lawyer and Physicians for Human Rights, who have been following the case, and neither knew anything about his being transferred. When we showed up, however, it was confirmed; he would be taken back to Salem within the hour. We did arrive on time, though, and walked directly into the room where the soldiers were sitting. Jaber smiled when he saw us, and I was immediately glad we had come. His health was infinitely better than it had been five days before, I was relieved to notice. I talked with him for a couple minutes, passing the messages that his lawyer and his wife had asked me to deliver, while Dorothy argued with the soldiers who were trying to get us to leave the room. I told Jaber I had seen his family, that they send their love, and that his 4-year-old son was so happy that I had seen his father that he stared at me and sat next to me almost the entire time I was at their house. Jaber smiled again.
Finally the soldiers forced us out and closed the door. We met the man who had phoned Jaber’s wife, and he told us he’d spoken to the family a few times this week, upon Jaber’s request. I spoke with the doctor, who said Jaber was physically, if not psychologically, ready to be released. He told me that in order to release him, he had to sign an army paper saying Jaber was healthy enough to be released to prison. He knows next to nothing about the prison conditions, he said, but signed the paper anyway. He seemed somewhat apologetic, but also said he understood that the army wanted him released from the hospital as soon as possible, since they were wasting precious resources guarding the hospital bed of a sick man whose legs were shackled together. It was Friday afternoon, and there were only a couple more hours before Shabbat began and Jaber would have to stay the weekend. So they took him. He started on foot, but the shackles made it impossible for him to walk properly, so they took him the rest of the way in a wheelchair, out to the parking lot and into a regular white car (not a jeep). I managed to sneak a few pictures of this process.
Tomorrow I’ll give the photos to the family, whom I’ve been trying to keep in touch with. Court dates continue to be scheduled and canceled, and his detention continues. According to his wife, he had a court proceeding today, and will have another hearing of some sort six days from now. Still no stated reasons for his arrest.
When I returned to Hares Monday, after several days away, I was greeted warmly by Um Rabia. Abu Rabia told me later that it was too quiet while I was gone, that without IWPS women upstairs, it seemed they had lost something, that something was missing. It’s nice to feel appreciated. I have no illusions about the effectiveness of our work these days, but I’m confident at least in the relationships I’ve formed with friends. We may not be getting any closer to an end to the occupation, but we’re getting closer to each other. For now, that will have to suffice.
