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International Womens Peace Service - reports from Brighton based supporters, Spring 2003. In just a couple of days two houses have been demolished in the village of Jama’in, in the Salfit governorate. We collected information about the first demolition and we witnessed the second one. House demolition in Jama’in – 19 February 2003 IWPS got a call early evening of the 19th of February 2003 that a house had been demolished in Jama’in the night before. Dunya and Laura went immediately to the family. The following is the account that was told to us by, Aarif Salem the uncle of the man whose home was demolished. The army arrived at the home in 4-5 jeeps at 12:30 am while the family was sleeping. The army used the butt of a gun to break the windows of the home and kicked in the door of the neighboring house and the family was told that the house would be destroyed in ten minutes. Both the family and their neighbors were forced to stand outside and watch during the entire operation Nafez Nayet Hussein, the homes owner is 25 years old and has been in prison for 7 months. He is being held in prison on what is called Administrative Detention*. In the home at the time were the Nafez’s wife, daughter and son. They gathered some clothes but did not have time to take any of their furniture or additional belongings with them and left the house. The home was then imploded at around 4 am and is now completely collapsed. The soldiers left just after their operation was concluded. The adjacent house also suffered significant damage. Stress cracking in the walls and ceiling, broken doors, doorways and windows and burn marks from the explosion were in all in evidence. This home’s stone kitchen counter and cupboards were broken and askew and their china was cracked and strewn about. The windows of three neighboring houses were blown out by the explosion as well. This home demolition constitutes collective punishment. Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention forbids collective punishment and states that a person shall not be punished for an offense he or she has not personally committed. This article explicitly relates to administrative punishment imposed on persons or groups because of acts that they did not personally commit. Article 50 of the Hague Regulations states a comparable prohibition. (Bt’selem) *Administrative Detention is a status in which without a person may be held by the State of Israel with no charge and the period of incarceration, again without charging the person, is commonly extended for 6 months at a time. Although and appeal before a military court is possible, it is largely considered futile. (by Dunya and Laura) House demolition in Jama’in – 21 February 2003 At approximately 12:15 a.m., we (Laura and Patricia) got a call from someone in the village of Jama’in, not far from Hares and Salfit. Getting there was very scary. The taxi driver we woke up in the middle of the night left us at the entrance of the village. We went through the village not knowing exactly where soldiers were. All the Palestinians were shut in their homes, but some of them saw us and gave us directions. We finally reached the location at approximately 1:30 a.m. There were 4 jeeps, a large truck, and approximately 20 soldiers, both inside and outside the home of Mr. Ali. It was a large home with a ground floor and 1st floor. Thirteen people lived in the home. The soldiers, amazed to see us, told us that the family had been taken to the home of a neighbour. We said we anted to see them but they prevented us to do so. We stayed in the street for some time and then were invited into another neighbour’s home from which point we could watch was going on. We were told that the family had been given only 20 minutes to take whatever belongs they could out of the home which meant that the family did not have adequate time to remove their household goods. Another 2 hours passed. For all of this time soldiers were inside the home.placing explosive (we could see them working) and outside patrolling the nighbourhood. When they had finished working inside the home, placing explosives, all of the soldiers, the jeeps, the truck, moved to a distance down the road which was beside the home. At approximately 3:30 - 4:00 a.m. the explosion came. A neat, quick and strong explosion. It destroyed the 1st floor entirely, one side of the home and part of the ground floor. The windows of some of the homes and cars near the Ali home were damaged and debris from the home littered the street. The Israeli military jeeps came roaring back down the street since it had filled with the people of the town, neighbours, and the Ali family, in a clearly provocative gesture. Some men in the street threw stones at them and then they left. We then talked to Mr. Ali. He told us that the Israeli soldiers arrived at his home between 11:30 p.m. and 12:00 a.m..He said that he had been told a year ago that his home would be demolished. Two months later his son Muhammed was killed by Israeli soldiers. He believes his home was demolished because of Muhammed. There is another son – Rizziq – who has been in prison for the past eight months, apparently under administrative detention. He was supposed to have been released on March 1st but the family believes it’s not likely he’ll be released soon. As morning arrived many people from the village came to the damaged home to help clear away debris, concrete, building materials, and remove household goods which the family might still be able to use. (by Patricia and Laura) |
Thursday, 20 February 2003 CHECKPOINTS IN THE WEST BANK: LAWLESSNESS, ARBITRIUM AND THE EYES OF THE WORLD Check-points are a fundamental obstacle to Palestinians’s everyday life in the Occupied Territories. They are situated every few kilometers and Palestinians have to cross them if they need to reach a hospital, visit their relatives or go to work. If they are lucky, to do five kilometers can take between two and eight hours; if they are unlucky, they will never manage to go through, will have to go back and try another day. What is happening at the checkpoints in Occupied Palestine is a perfect example of lawlessness. Lawlessness does not mean lack of rules rather an enormous number of arbitrary rules established in unpredictable ways by those who have the power against those who do not have it. In my two weeks in the West Bank, together with two of my colleagues, Patricia and Maren, I went three times to the checkpoint of Huwara, at the entrance of Nablus to monitor the work of the Israeli soldiers and to try to negotiate with them on behalf of some of the Palestinians attempting to pass. Everyday the situation was different, everyday a lot depended on the particular soldiers who were at the checkpoint, on their mood, but also on the presence of the media and also on our presence. At Huwara, in the morning of Monday 10 February 2003, Maren and I met there two Israeli documentarists shooting a film on checkpoints. That morning things went smoothly and the soldiers who were there behaved politely with us and with the Palestinians. I was able to take some pictures and people were let through quite easily. People held for further controls were returned their identity cards quite quickly (which means in about an hour or two). I managed to become friendly with a young soldier and to negotiate with him on behalf of a number of Palestinians, including a woman who was crying because she simply needed to go on the other side, get some money from her husband and come back. Things dramatically changed in the afternoon, when new soldiers arrived and the two Israeli documentarists left. This time people were held in the queue with shouting and pushing and Maren and I were forced to join the queue and stop our work of observation. Things were different when I visited the checkpoint for the second time, on Saturday the 15th of February. At about 7.45 in the morning I arrived there with Patricia. There were a hundred people waiting there, some of them since 5.30. One young soldier, in his twenties, was behaving in a very sadistic way. He wanted people to queue ten fifteen meters from his post and was calling them one by one. If while he was calling one Palestinian to move towards him, also another person started walking, he would send everybody back and stop checking their documents for fifteen or twenty minutes. Patricia and I complained about his behavior. He laughed and shouted at us: “You see how they are, how they act. They don’t listen to me.” The Palestinians were not obeying to him in every detail and for this reason he felt absolutely free to let them waiting for hours, in a clear act of revenge and in a clear statement of his power. He was enjoying what he was doing – always he had a half smirk, lording his role over everyone. In about forty five minutes no more than ten people were checked their documents and more than half of them were sent back. For this reason we called an Israeli organization working on checkpoints (Maksoum Watch) who advised us to call the DCO (District Coordination Office, the Israeli half of an office created after the Oslo agreements in charge of coordinating security operations between Palestinians and Israelis). Our call was quite effective. A soldier from the DCO turned up ten minutes later and speeded up the operations, letting through also people that the previous guy had rejected. At about 10.15, we decided that things were going better and we moved into Nablus. When we came back to the checkpoint from Nablus at about 1:30 p.m., the situation was terrible. There were more soldiers, and the young soldier with whom I had become quite friendly the time before was sitting atop a tank. The two soldiers in charge were screaming at the Palestinians with continual orders – move here, go there, line up here, turn around, be quiet – ultimately herding them well away from the checkpoint. It was fairly chaotic. If the people lined up far away from the checkpoint would inch forward, the soldiers charged at them with their rifles, pushing them back. Few if any people were being allowed through – despite the fact that many had doctor’s certificates for medical treatment. The soldiers were just as cruel and arbitrary as the soldier we encountered in the morning – screaming at and insulting everyone who came up to them. Some men were held behind the fence for further screening and were forced to turn their backs to the queue. When the soldiers saw us they told us to leave, but the guy on the top of the tank recognized me and told them to let us stay. I had a quite long conversation with him. I complained about the fact that some soldiers behave really badly and that this was not going to make things better for Israel, that more people will hate them. I also told him that the only way to put an end to the attacks of suicide bombers in Israel was that of ending the occupation and stop punishing the whole Palestinian population. I gave him two fliers by two Israeli organizations: one by the “refuseniks” (the Israelis who refuse to do the military service in the West Bank) and one on the Camp David treaty. I added that one of the main problems to be solved to put an end to the violence is that of the settlements I told him that settlements had never grown as much as after the Oslo agreements, despite they were forbidden by the agreements themselves, and that they often hosted fanatic people who go around shooting Palestinians randomly. His answer was double-folded. On the one hand he defended the need of checkpoints to stop suicide bombers to go into Israel. On the other hand he said that the settlers who go around shooting at Palestinians should be put in prison. About an hour later a police van arrived. One of the two screaming soldiers signaled us to the policeman who called us and told us to leave otherwise he would have arrested us. Because we know that while the army can not arrest us, the police can, and because we are aware that being arrested means being deported and leaving Palestinians without our support, we decided to go back home. We slowly started moving away from the checkpoint. The abuse against the Palestinians escalated. I turned my face towards the checkpoint and I saw three soldiers charging at the people with their rifles, running against them, pushing them fifty meters back and shouting everybody to go home. I could not hold myself any longer. I took my camera and I shoot a fifteen seconds video of what was going on. I was probably a bit naïve. In few seconds three soldiers were on me, shouting at me and threatening to arrest me. They forced me to delete the picture and because I couldn’t do that they took the memory card away and then my camera. They made us wait for about twenty minutes. I saw the police car coming back and I felt my days in Palestine were ended. But the police left. My “friend” on the top of the tank called me and offered to try to do something for me. He screamed something to the other soldiers and then I got my camera back. We left and went back home. I visited Huwara checkpoint again on Monday the 17th of February. The day before in Nablus two Palestinians had been killed and more than twenty injured, for a shooting exploded in the middle of the day. For this reason, there were very few people queuing at the checkpoint to get into Nablus and nobody was allowed to go in, except for us. There was nothing Patricia and I could do, so we just crossed the checkpoint and we reached Nablus. We went back to Huwara few hours later. Also this time no more than fifteen people were there. A man in his sixties, well dressed, walking with a stick asked us to help him to go through. He had a paper with a medical appointment for few days earlier. I went with him to talk to the soldier. The soldier at the checkpoint, the usual young soldier in his twenties, said it was not possible for him to go through as the medical certificate was old and the appointment was not for that day. After I insisted a bit he let him through. This was the only success of the day. Standing beyond the fence, in front of the soldier who was checking the documents there were six men held there because their identity cards were being checked. We talked to them. One of them, who spoke very good English, told us he was working in the health sector and that he had a magnetic card which allowed him to go through the checkpoints without many problems. He decided to show again his magnetic card to the soldier. In front of my eyes the soldier first behaved in a polite way, showing interest for his case, but as soon as he had the card in his hands, he started laughing loud, returned him his ID, put in a pocket the magnetic card and told him “OK, now go home! I will keep this” laughing even more loudly. A young family – father, mother and a small child - arrived few minutes later. They approached the soldier who did not allow them through and sent them back home. While he was getting back his ID the young Palestinian man ironically thanked the soldier. This was evidently too much for the soldier who decided to take his revenge. He very brutally called him back, took his ID and pushed him behind the fence together with the other men to wait for his ID to be checked. An hour later, when we left, he was still standing there. Three days at the Huwara checkpoint and my sleep is disturbed by what I have heard and seen. When I go to sleep I hear the shouting and the laughing of the young Israeli soldiers, I see their sarcasm and their contempt, I see them charging at ordinary people – men, women, children and elders – with their rifles, changing rules as they want, deciding restlessly of Palestinians’ everyday destiny. Basically, at the checkpoints of Occupied Palestine there are no rules. Everything is decided in an arbitrary way by young Israeli soldiers who have a uniform and a rifle and because of that they can do what they want. The only thing that gives me hope and that allows me to fall asleep is that some of these soldiers have doubts, some are ashamed of what they do and some others fear the gaze of the world. If only one or two thousand of the one hundred millions people who marched in the streets of the world on Saturday the 15th of February came to the Occupied Territories, stayed here for few months, with cameras and video cameras, talking to the Israelis, protecting the Palestinians - I am sure - that would make a big difference. |
International Womens Peace Service - reports from Brighton based supporters, Spring 2003. Click here to read further accounts Israeli contractors preparing to cut the olive trees, Fulamya |
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