invasion in ramallah

People’s Weekly World Newspaper, 01/26/02 00:00

RAMALLAH, Palestine – Since the assassination of Raid Karmi in Tull Karem four days ago I got that creeping feeling again – the one I get when it obvious that the already hellish situation here in Palestine is going to escalate. The feeling I get when I see that once again Israeli policy under Sharon’s right-wing government doing everything to set this land ablaze.

“Sharon wants a bombing before Zinni returns,” we told each other, and sure enough he got it. There is a line from a Hebrew song I love – “Things that you see from there you can’t see from here” I know that outside of Palestine the thought that Israel’s policy makers knowingly provoke suicide operations must seem ludicrous. From here it is an undeniable fact.

Ariel Sharon is a master at provocation. He knows how to hit exactly where it hurts and more accurately, he knows how to humiliate a people to the point of suicidal recklessness.

Raid Karmi’s assassination, the home demolitions in Rafah and then in occupied east Jerusalem on the one hand, and pressuring President Arafat to arrest the head of the second biggest political faction in the PLO, thus losing his legitimacy as a leader of all Palestinians did the trick. The horrendous Bat-Mitzvah killing has now legitimized renewing the military offensive against the Palestinian people. Prime-Minster Sharon is back on his home turf.

I have been spending the last few days in lower Rammalah. Earlier today I met my friend Haki in the street. He lives on Al Arsal Street, which was occupied two days ago. He carried a plastic bag with his pajamas in it. He was coming to stay with us in Lower Ramallah. I was going to the Internet cafe and would see him later. Or so I thought.

With nightfall Israeli tanks entered lower Ramallha and advanced until they where five minutes from the city center. I was at the cafe, which hurriedly closed when we began to hear the shooting from the street. My friends and I found a brave taxi driver that agreed to take us home. Well, he almost took us home.

As soon as we got out of the taxi we saw that their was shooting- red balls flying across the night sky – right above our house. Immediately we where called in by the neighbors, who served us tea as their little girl huddled closer to her mother with every explosion we heard from outside.

Israeli forces are currently occupying four neighborhoods one on each side of Ramallah – Lower Ramallah, Al Irsal street and Um el-Shirayat and Al-Bireh. The Palestinian Authority has issued an order that no one should shoot at the tanks, nonetheless we hear some gunfire, which is responded to with rounds of heavy artillery from the tanks.

I collected my courage and after wishing our hosts and new found friends goodbye we held hands and walked back towards the city center. We walked close to the walls hoping to avoid sniper fire. We found an open Internet café in the city center – the owner lives in one of the occupied neighborhoods and can’t go home. Here we checked out BBC, CNN, Haaretz – someone must be mentioning this somewhere, but we found nothing. Has the reinvasion of area “A” also become non-news like the siege and the killings of unarmed youth? Now that I’ve written this report we will again venture into the streets to sleep at another friend’s house. The night has just begun …

Neta Golan posted this report on the Gush Shalom Internet bulletin board.

jan 26 2002
RAMALLAH, Palestine – Since the assassination of Raid Karmi in Tull Karem four days ago I got that creeping feeling again – the one I get when it obvious that the already hellish situation here in Palestine is going to escalate. The feeling I get when I see that once again Israeli policy under Sharon’s right-wing government doing everything to set this land ablaze.

“Sharon wants a bombing before Zinni returns,” we told each other, and sure enough he got it. There is a line from a Hebrew song I love – “Things that you see from there you can’t see from here” I know that outside of Palestine the thought that Israel’s policy makers knowingly provoke suicide operations must seem ludicrous. From here it is an undeniable fact.

Ariel Sharon is a master at provocation. He knows how to hit exactly where it hurts and more accurately, he knows how to humiliate a people to the point of suicidal recklessness.

Raid Karmi’s assassination, the home demolitions in Rafah and then in occupied east Jerusalem on the one hand, and pressuring President Arafat to arrest the head of the second biggest political faction in the PLO, thus losing his legitimacy as a leader of all Palestinians did the trick. The horrendous Bat-Mitzvah killing has now legitimized renewing the military offensive against the Palestinian people. Prime-Minster Sharon is back on his home turf.

I have been spending the last few days in lower Rammalah. Earlier today I met my friend Haki in the street. He lives on Al Arsal Street, which was occupied two days ago. He carried a plastic bag with his pajamas in it. He was coming to stay with us in Lower Ramallah. I was going to the Internet cafe and would see him later. Or so I thought.

With nightfall Israeli tanks entered lower Ramallha and advanced until they where five minutes from the city center. I was at the cafe, which hurriedly closed when we began to hear the shooting from the street. My friends and I found a brave taxi driver that agreed to take us home. Well, he almost took us home.

As soon as we got out of the taxi we saw that their was shooting- red balls flying across the night sky – right above our house. Immediately we where called in by the neighbors, who served us tea as their little girl huddled closer to her mother with every explosion we heard from outside.

Israeli forces are currently occupying four neighborhoods one on each side of Ramallah – Lower Ramallah, Al Irsal street and Um el-Shirayat and Al-Bireh. The Palestinian Authority has issued an order that no one should shoot at the tanks, nonetheless we hear some gunfire, which is responded to with rounds of heavy artillery from the tanks.

I collected my courage and after wishing our hosts and new found friends goodbye we held hands and walked back towards the city center. We walked close to the walls hoping to avoid sniper fire. We found an open Internet café in the city center – the owner lives in one of the occupied neighborhoods and can’t go home. Here we checked out BBC, CNN, Haaretz – someone must be mentioning this somewhere, but we found nothing. Has the reinvasion of area “A” also become non-news like the siege and the killings of unarmed youth? Now that I’ve written this report we will again venture into the streets to sleep at another friend’s house. The night has just begun …

Neta Golan posted this report on the Gush Shalom Internet bulletin board.

Israeli left rails against Barak’s firepower

Independent, The (London),  Nov 18, 2000  by Phil Reeves in Hares on the West Bank

WITH PRECIOUS little evidence, Israel has justified the army’s daily shooting of young Arab rioters, including children, by accusing Palestinians of using them as human shields. Now, at last, the Palestinians do have such a shield. And she is Israeli and Jewish.

For the past four nights, Neta Golan, 29, has been sleeping in Hares, one of scores of Palestinian villages on the West Bank which are under an Israeli military blockade as collective punishment for the violence of the last seven weeks.

Armed with a loud-hailer, Ms Golan, a therapist and political activist from Tel Aviv, is trying to stop Israeli troops and Jewish settlers from firing into the village in what she sees as a calculated attempt to drive its residents off the land.

Her larger aim is to galvanise the Israeli left-wing, and the outside world, into acting to stop the excessive force used by the Israeli army over the past seven weeks. More than 200 people have been killed – including four more yesterday, most of them Palestinians shot by Israeli soldiers. The latest violence flared even as the Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, called for restraint from his own side. Ms Golan said: “I am concerned about the world’s silence and co-operation with this massacre. Maybe if people at grassroots act, governments will follow.”

Ms Golan, and the villagers, say that men from a cluster of nearby settlements, built on occupied territory, gather after dark on the edge of Hares in their cars, and fire weapons into the village. She has shouted at them through her megaphone when they shot at her.

“They come at around 8pm, stand at the village’s entrance, up to 60 of them from settlements all around, and honk their horns, swear, throw stones and shoot. It is not just the settlers. It is the army, too.”

Hares is an unremarkable Arab village, half-built, half- collapsing homes in a scrubby rolling landscape of olive trees, interrupted by an occasional minaret. Seven weeks ago, before the troubles began, Hares enjoyed a per capita income of about pounds 600 a month, largely because its men work as cleaners, builders, farm workers, and factory hands in nearby Israel itself or the Jewish settlements.That income has now disappeared.

But Hares’ location is more precarious than many similar villages in the occupied territories. The village sits on the edge of a finger of Israeli-controlled land that delves into the northern part of the West Bank, south of Nablus. Jewish settlements have been steadily growing along it in the past decade, helped by heavy subsidies and tax breaks from the Israeli government. The signs suggest that this is territory that the Prime Minister, Ehud Barak, intends to annex if he can wrest a peace deal out of Mr Arafat. Villagers are convinced that the settlers want to push them off the land before annexation, repeating in miniature the Arab exodus of 1948.

The village’s water has regularly been cut off since the intifada began – not by the Israeli water company that provides it, but by Jewish settlers at night, said the mayor, Hossam Daoud.

It is the olive picking season, when scores of villagers collect a harvest to turn it into oil, partly for their own use, partly for sale. But the Israeli soldiers blockading the village’s entrances will not allow the pickers out; the olives have been drying on the trees. The villagers were able to get to their trees for the first time yesterday after dozens of left-wing Israeli pro-peace activists arrived to assist them, accompanied by television cameras

Villagers say the conflict is worse than the first intifada, By the time that ended in 1993, 10 people from Hares had been injured; 22 have been wounded in the past seven weeks alone, said the mayor’s office. One, Raid Daoud, 14, was shot dead.

Mr Daoud is one of a minority of Palestinians who believes that peace talks can resume, but not if Arab villages remain under blockade or attack. “It won’t work,” he said, “We would rather die than leave our land. We are not going to be humiliated. If the Israeli terror continues, so will the intifada.”

april 2002

The Israeli military is holding international civilians and three Palestinian medics on the grounds of the Presidential compound. They have been held there for over two hours. The military has requested that the international observers leave without the Palestinian medics. Fearing for the safety of the medical personnel the international civilians are not leaving.

For more information contact:
Witnesses on the ground in Ramallah:
(for international dialing drop the 0 before the phone number)
Arabic / English – Huwaida +972 (0) 52 642 709
English- Jim Davies +972 (0) 55 975 374
French – Claude +972 (0) 55 559 145
There are German and Italian speakers available as well.
***************

Update: Ramallah
– Volunteer medic Netta Golan is riding with ambulances in the Ramallah Tahta (lower) area. She helped retrieve the two bodies that international civilians saw brought into Ramallah hospital earlier. She says that there are two more bodies that they cannot get to.

– She observed soldiers conducting house to house searches and for people who did not open their doors they were broken down and she saw soldiers entering firing upon Palestinian civilians.

– Soldiers are holding Palestinian men on their knees and an Arab source (who must remain unidentified) says that the men are being divided into two groups: one group to be arrested and one group that is being summarily executed.

Update: Bethleham

Our mayor has just announced that we expect invasion within the next hour.

12 to 15 APC’s and tanks are now at the Bethlehem checkpoint and one busload of soldiers. The soldiers are not allowing press to enter at gunpoint.

check http://jerusalem.indymedia.org for updates and details
****************
Ten international civilians and three Palestinian medics have just been arrested and taken to the Beit El Israeli Military compound. Among the arrested is Jose Bove.

Please call Peter Lunar the Israeli Defense Spokespersons and request that the civilians and medics be released immediatly and Israeli agression against Palestinian civilians and medics cease.
phone: 00972 2 997 7017
mobile: 00972 (0) 56 234 090
fax: 00972 2 997 7339
******************
NTERNATIONALS IN WITH ARAFAT CALL FOR THEIR AMBASSADORS

[RAMALLAH] 50 International civilians entered Yasser Arafat’s Presidential Compound today, which is under continuous siege by the Israeli Forces. The group of Internationals is comprised of civilian volunteers from France, Brazil, Canada, Belgium, Britain, Ireland, Germany, and Israel who are here on a humanitarian mission. Thirty-four (34) international civilians remain inside. The group has stated that they will remain inside of the Presidential Compound until the siege is lifted; they remain in solidarity with all Palestinian people who are now under occupation and extend their demands to include the end of Israel’s occupation of the entire West Bank and Gaza Strip. The Israeli’s have cut power, phone lines and water supply to the compound. Food is also in short supply.

The 34 foreign civilians are asking for their respective ambassadors to urgently come to President Arafat’s compound.

The city of Ramallah, where the group of internationals is currently based, is under closure and violent occupation by Israeli Forces. Power has been cut in most neighborhoods of Ramallah and water and food is in short supply in many homes, hospitals have had to resort to back-up generators and the transport of medicine and medical supplies has been disrupted. International witnesses have reported Israeli forces breaking in doors of homes and conducting mass arrests, where Palestinian’s have been bound and placed in torturous positions for extended periods, there have also been at least 14 extra-judicial executions performed by the Israeli Forces in the last 2 days. Medical personnel have been arrested by the Israeli’s and several ambulances have been confiscated, Israeli Forces also attempted to enter Ramallah Hospital earlier today but were kept out by a human blockade of conducted by the Internationals.
****************
Statement from Israeli civilian in Palestinian Presidential Compound

“State terrorism and terrorism are two sides of the same coin of occupation.
One cannot exist without the other and neither would exist without their foundation, which is occupation.

I call on all Israelis to raise their voices and act out against occupation – to stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people and their right to live free.”

– Neta Golan, Israeli citizen

Statement from Irish Citizen, Caoimhe Butterly
“I urge all Irish citizens, government officials and diplomats to show courage in standing up against the brutal aggression used by the Israeli military against the Palestinian people and the war policies of the Israeli government. The Palestinian people desperately need our help and protection – I have witnessed the execution-style killings and the house to house searches and destruction the military has carried out in refugee camps and in cities. Only international action and the voices of people working for peace and justice can overcome these criminal Israeli actions.”
****************

Britons join 200 in human shield

Peter Beaumont in Ramallah and Martin Wainwright

Monday April 1, 2002

The Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,2763,677118,00.html

More than 200 international volunteers, including some 50 Britons, deployed themselves in Ramallah and two refugee camps at Bethlehem last night in an attempt to form “human shields” for Palestinian families.

The British contingent, ranging from a retired nurse from Kent to a group of students from Manchester, joined Americans and Europeans dispersed among houses close to Yasser Arafat’s headquarters and Israeli army tank formations near Bethlehem’s Azar and Aida refugee camps.

Israel ordered all foreign volunteers and journalists to leave Ramallah yesterday, as another media worker was shot and wounded while covering the fighting in the city.

The warning came as Anthony Shadeed, an American reporter for the Boston Globe, was wounded in the back and shoulder after being shot near the city’s main square. He said he was walking along one of the main streets with his

Palestinian “fixer” when he was hit from behind by a single sniper shot.

Israeli soldiers denied that he had been shot by their forces.

Israel warned that any foreigners who chose to remain in Ramallah did so at the risk of being mistaken for Palestinian gunmen and shot.

But speaking above gunshots and the clatter of a surveillance helicopter, Rory Macmillan, an international business lawyer from Scotland, said he was at the Aida camp in Bethlehem to offer non-violent resistance to any attempt by the Israelis to arrest Palestinians or threaten families.

“I decided to use my Easter holidays to come out with a group to dig up roadblocks and block tanks in the occupied territories,” he said. “There are 15 or more tanks close by and there’s a general expectation that they’ll move in.

“The soldiers don’t use the streets – they move from house to house, blasting holes in the wall to get through. We’re here in the hope they’ll hold back if there’s a foreign national.”

In Ramallah, Osama Mutawa from Brighton said his group of human shields asked the British consulate yesterday to evacuate them but had been told there were no plans to do so. He said: “The British public has no idea what is going on here. We decided we should come and try and stay with families to protect them.”

Sarah Irving, 26, a Manchester University MA student in political economy, who is also staying at Azar, said: “You can’t go anywhere at the moment, it’s too dangerous, but we are each staying with a family. There are 38 tanks at the nearest checkpoint and we can hear an Israeli Cobra helicopter overhead.”

Dr Mortaza Sahibzada, another British volunteer, said that despite the deteriorating situation, he planned to stay on at Aida until the second week in April, when he had to get back to his work as a research fellow in engineering at Imperial College, London.

Most of the British volunteers travelled to the Middle East with the International Solidarity Movement, a coalition of groups concerned about the plight of the Palestinians.

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

Bethlehem Update

Israeli troops moved into the Village of Alkhader and the neighborhood Aldoha inside Bethlehem. With the horror seen reported from Ramallah, people are extremely worried that a Bethlehem massacre is in its way.

The international solidarity groups spent their second night inside refugee camps. Living with families they are determined to become a human shield for the innocent Palestinian refugees.

The International solidarity groups in Bethlehem are ready to play an active role to confront Israeli aggression hand in hand with Palestinians. Some are ready to accompany Medics and Ambulances when needed. Others are ready to shield hospitals in the town in case the Israeli troops attempts to invade as they did in Ramallah.

We are ready and will do our best to stop this unprecedented aggression and brutality.

For more information:
Ghassan 052595319
PCR 2772018
********************

The Alternative Information Center is forced to close its office in Bethlehem due to the unprecedented Israeli military aggression and propaganda against the Palestinian people and Palestinian Authority.

The office, centrally located in the Bab-el-Zqaq area of Bethlehem,is no longer a safe place for AIC staff and visitors.

Staff members from our Bethlehem office will continue to work from their homes while colleagues from the Jerusalem office, although hampered by the imprisonment of Co-Director Sergio Yahni for refusing to serve in the Israeli military, continue to work extended hours due to the current war Israel is waging against Palestine. Frequent contact amongst all staff members will ensure the best possible functioning of the AIC in this difficult time.

All contact with the AIC should be done via the Jerusalem office:
Telephones: +972 (0)2 6241159, +972 (0)2 6241424
Email: rtic@alt-info.org

The AIC staff remains as committed as ever to its joint actions on behalf of social justice, solidarity, community involvement and a just peace for the Palestinian people.
*****************
From: oznik-news [mailto:news@oznik.com]
Sent: lunedì 1 aprile 2002 18.09
To: readers@oznik.com
Subject: Internationals Attacked with Live Gunfire
April 01, 2002 1645: Internationals Attacked with Live Gunfire
Moments ago international civilians and two members of the Palestinian press were wounded by live fire in Beit Jalla.The internationals were attempting to visit the people in homes that have been taken over by the Occupation Forces.
Among the wounded are:
– British citizen: Aisa Kiysue, Kunle Ibidun, Chris Dunham
– Australian citizen: Kate Irving (currently being examined to see if surgery will be required)
– American citizen: Said Khulil
Wounded have been taken to Al Huissen Hospital in Bethlehem.

Word from the hospital staff is people were hit in the back of the head, face and one was hit in the upper thigh and knees. The Palestinians were hit in the chest

====================
Up to the minute news is reported on the Palestine Independent Media Center,
http://jerusalem.indymedia.org

====================
Refusenik Watch – an autoupdate counter of Israeli officers and soldiers who pledge to refuse military service in the Occupied Territories.
This morning’s count is on 384.
16 thrown in military prisons for refusal.
To add Refusenik Watch to your site see http://oznik.com/web_masters.html

Standing at the Gates of Jerusalem

Updates from the West Bank

by Starhawk

I’m back in the West Bank, in Neta Golan’s small apartment in Ramallah. I’m here to assist her with the birth of her second child, which could come any moment now, and to do trainings for the International Solidarity Movement, which supports the nonviolent resistance in Palestine. As well, I hope to take part in the campaign against the wall currently being built by the Israeli government, which confiscates much of the prime Palestinian agricultural land, destroys villages, and unilaterally extends the de facto border of Israel.

I’m tired now, after the long flight from San Francisco, the shared taxi ride that wound and wound around the streets of Jerusalem, the stress of getting ready to leave home, and the jet lag. But I’m glad to be here, grateful that I had no trouble getting in through the immigration lines or at customs or getting in through the checkpoint at Kalendia.

And that’s where I fell asleep last night. Now I’ve had a good night’s sleep, a quiet day catching up with Neta, who is one of the founder of the ISM. We have one of those friendships that seem to exist beyond the boundaries of time and space. I met her on my first trip to the occupied territories, to work with the ISM. I’d come first to Tel Aviv, reconnected with some of my Israeli friends, then finally worked up the nerve to head out to the West Bank. I took a bus to Jerusalem, a bus full of soldiers who were so polite and friendly, helping me with my bags, then a taxi to the Damascus Gate where the Faisal, the hostel frequented by the ISM, stands just outside the Old City. I couldn’t understand why the taxi driver grew more and more nervous as we got closer and closer, then finally insisted I get out of the car half a block away. Later I learned that Jewish Israeli taxis often won’t even go into East Jerusalem. They’re afraid.

I’d dragged my bags to the Faisal, up a narrow stairway tucked away between the vegetable stall and the felafel seller on a street full of small storefronts, across from the big, empty lot where shared taxis to the West Bank arrive and leave. I was tired, and nervous, and wondering if I were doing the right thing. I’d been trying to call Neta for two days and hadn’t gotten through.  I rang the bell, and the door was opened by a young man. I peeked inside, thinking both that I was too old to stay in youth hostels and that, if I were really going to the West Bank, I’d be staying in much worse places and I’d better get used to it.

“Welcome!  Welcome!”  Hisham, the proprietor of the Faisal, boomed out a greeting and beamed at me with a smile so friendly that I immediately felt better.  When I told him I was a friend of Neta’s, his smile grew even wider. She had been there the night before. He called her in Tel Aviv, and she came back.  We stayed awake half the night, talking as if we’d known each other forever. The next day, she tried to sneak me into the Al Aqsa Mosque dressed up as a Palestinian woman. The soldiers who guarded the mosque didn’t buy my disguise–the hiking boots under the long white skirt probably gave it away. Instead, we went to Bethlehem, which at that time was under siege, walking through the surreal streets of a silent, shuttered city to Nativity Square, where tanks were still stationed. The following day, she had me doing a training for internationals that was interrupted when we heard that Balata Camp was being invaded by the military.  By nightfall, we’d hiked through the mountains above Nablus to get into the closed city, then down to the camp, and were sleeping in the home of a Palestinian family who feared soldiers coming to search in the night.

I was remembering this all as I retraced the journey from the airport to the Faisal, where Hisham greeted me even more warmly than before.  He’d had a stroke, and now limps badly, but invited me in and gave me tea and the phone that had been procured for me.  It was a special phone–it had belonged to Rachel Corrie, the young woman who exactly a year before had been killed in Rafah trying to stop the demolition of a home by a bulldozer that deliberately ran over her.  I’d gone down to Rafah to do support for the team that had been with her.  Today my friends will be at a vigil for her at the Israeli Consulate. There will be vigils all over the world. My own action is coming here.

The Faisal really needs a John Le Carre to do it justice.  It has a back terrace that overlooks the Damascus gate, a screened porch where volunteers for the ISM and backpacking travelers and the more rugged breed of journalist all congregate, smoke, drink tea, exchange news and rumors and tips on how to get to the places the authorities don’t want you to go.  The bathrooms are covered with a thin scum of grey around the sink handles and the corners of the showers, the rooms are very basic, bunk beds or a bare mattress and cement walls, but the price is cheap and the information you can gather on the terrace makes up for the grime. Ironically, every actual Palestinian home I’ve stayed in has been far, far cleaner than the Faisal, even in the most crowded refugee camp.  For that matter, they’ve all been far, far cleaner than my own house.

But I can’t stay at the Faisal–I want to get to Ramallah before the checkpoint closes at nine o’clock.  I hoist my pack, say goodbye, and walk round the corner to find the busses for Kalendia, the checkpoint outside Ramallah. Out on the street, I’m struck with a sense of double vision.  East Jerusalem is truly a different world from the Jewish-Israeli suburbs of the west side.  The Old City looms before me, enclosed by its walls of stone, and I am thinking that for thousands of years travelers have gone down this street looking for transport.  Damascus Gate–in Hebrew, Sha’ar Shechem, the Gate of Shechem, which is now Nablus.  I am feeling just one of the many deep ironies of being who I am, a Jew in this land who has come here to stand in solidarity with the people whom my own people are dispossessing–moreover, a Jew who was raised and taught and conditioned in every fiber of my being to believe that this land is mine by birthright, my ancient heritage. Standing at the gate of Jerusalem, I can’t help but feel that this is, indeed, the place above all others where my ancestors walked, the place woven into our prayers and dreams, embedded in the very language we use to describe the sacred.  We “go up,” in the synagogue, to read the Torah, make an “Aliyah,” because Jerusalem itself is in the mountains, and you must ascend to get there, and climb again to reach the Old City and the Temple Mount.  I turned fifteen the first time I came to Israel, with the summer Ulpan study program of the Hebrew high school I belonged to That was in 1966, when the Old City was still held by Jordan, and off-limits to us.  I remember how I rejoiced in ’67, when it fell into Israel’s possession.

Now I stand for a moment, remembering what the passageways inside the gate look like in the day, when they are thronged with people and food carts and street vendors and felafel makers and women coming to shop in their long coats and headscarves or laying out their wares on blankets.  The stone streets wind into the labyrinth of passageways and markets, covered by domes and arches, the very archetype of “city” intact from some ancient era when pilgrims would have ascended these same stones carrying lambs for the sacrificial altar or fruit and grain for the offering.  There is nowhere else on earth I can feel both so at home and so strange, so akin and so alien.

I can understand, in my very bones, why my people want this place.  But my own sense of kinship is poisoned by the knowledge of the incredible injustices we are perpetuating in order to claim it.  I know the power of the story I grew up with–that we were homeless for two thousand years, despised and oppressed by every nation, but now we have come home, to our own true home, and by God no one is going to take it from us ever again. It’s a powerful myth. The Palestinians, unfortunately, have no role in it. Their very existence spoils the tale.

When I think back on my childhood, on what I learned in Hebrew school, on the history we were taught and what we were shown on the trips we took on that summer Ulpan, I’m struck by how rarely the Palestinians were even mentioned.  When I was in Balata, there was one family that were held prisoner in their own house by soldiers who took it over to use as a command post.  Men, women, small children–for days they were confined to one small room, not let out nor allowed to have contact with the outside world, not allowed to go out for food or milk for a sick baby. While meanwhile, soldiers took their ease in the rest of the house, lay down their guns to relax for a moment, played cards, ate, relaxed.  How could they, I wondered, with such misery locked away just on the other side of the doorway?  But then I realized that in effect, that’s exactly what we’d been doing to the Palestinians as a people, to the whole reality that this land was, in fact, occupied before we occupied it.

Whenever I write about this issue, I get a small but steady trickle of responses that say, in effect, there’s wrong on both sides and if you want peace, you won’t “take sides.” What I say is, as long as we barricade that door, what is able to burst through from time to time will carry with it great destructive force–but that is not a reason to keep the door closed, but to open it, to look inside, to acknowledge the reality of what we have done, to face the guilt and pain and discomfort it brings up, and to begin to make amends.  That is the only way I can see to begin the work of peacemaking.

So I’m looking at Damascus Gate and thinking about all the doors, all the portals, all the checkpoints, all the walls and barriers and fences and barricades that have divide this land.  But as I turn and walk to the bus that will take me to one of them, I’m feeling at home. Men crowd around me, stopping at the storefronts still open or waiting to pick up a felafel.  At one time I would have felt afraid to be alone in this crowd after dark–now I’ve traveled alone in Palestine enough to know that I’m as safe here as I could be anywhere.  And I feel a sudden sense of gratitude.  Hard as the work can sometimes be, it allows me to walk these streets and stand at this gate without fear.  It gives me a role I can play here with integrity, and so allows me to stand here in the presence of my ancestors, who are also the ancestors of the Palestinians, and be at home without needing to possess anything.

The van to Kalendia is full of tired, grim-faced men going home to their East Jerusalem homes.  It winds through streets of concrete buildings and neon signs and the grime and dust of any shabby part of the Third World, and finally stops at Kalendia, the major checkpoint between Jerusalem and Ramallah, and the central transfer point for busses and taxis to anywhere in the north of the West Bank.

Ramallah is the most open of the West Bank cities. Cars and taxis are backed up here, waiting hours in a haze of diesel fumes and dust, but no one stops those of us who are walking into Ramallah.  I follow the men on the path that leads past the fences and the barbed wire.  A young boy insists on taking some of my bags, and gets me a taxi.  I give him five shekels, and the taxi takes me to meet Neta who has been at the candlelight vigil for Rachel in the town center, which I have missed. We buy felafel, and go back to her apartment.

I greet Nizar, her husband, who is lean and quiet but very sweet, and her baby, Nawal, whom I helped deliver just a year ago.  Nawal is truly adorable, with big, gray-green eyes and lots of dark hair, one of those babies who seem to find everything in life funny. She has just learned to wave, and we wave at each other and smile and laugh and wave some more.  Neta is big with her second child now, her belly round and low.  The baby was due yesterday, but doesn’t seem in a hurry to come out.  Neta and I sit up far too late talking, and at last jet lag catches up with me  I fill my water bottle, charge my batteries, take note when I lay down where all my things are in case I need to grab them in a hurry. I’m back in the West Bank, where things can change without warning.

deir istya-i was absent

Exhibit 1. Letters from Gila Svirsky on non-violent actions against the occupation

Letter From Gila Svirsky
June 15, 2001

CNN transcrip

aired November 25 2000

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MIKE HANNA, CNN JERUSALEM BUREAU CHIEF (voice-over): A Palestinian mother tells of the Israeli attack that paralyzed her husband.

“I saw my father with a missile in his leg,” says her seven-year- old son. “The glass of the window hit me in the face, and the stones fell on me, and I began to cry.”

An Israeli woman weeps as she listens.

GOLAN: Yes, the Israeli army is responsible. Yes, Barak is responsible. But we are all responsible for this. And if people don’t believe, you know, us, you know, then people should come here and see for themselves, you know, how these people are living.

1.Simply. Not. News.

1.Simply. Not. News.
March 4th, 2006
By Neta Golan

I work in the ISM media office. On February 19th 2006 the Israeli milit1ary once again invaded Balata Refugee Camp. I remember the first invasion that Sharon orchestrated into the camps during this intifada, in February 2002. I remember that I could not believe it was happening. Never in my worst nightmares would I believe, had someone told me, that four years later such horror would become
‘normal.’

IWPS and ISM volunteers called me in the office as they accompanied Palestinian medics in their efforts to give medical treatment to the wounded and sick in the camp. They called me when the Israeli military shot towards ambulances and denied them access to Balata. They called me when they witnessed unarmed 22-year-old Mohammad Subkhi Abu Hanade being shot in the chest by a sniper through his bedroom window. I wrote a press release, emailed and faxed it and then called the news agencies and journalists.

No one wrote about it. Not even the Arabic press which is always more responsive. The next morning I looked everywhere for news of the invasion and found none.

That day Sixteen year old Kamal Khalili was shot and was clinically dead by the time he made it to the hospital. The woman that answered the phone at Agency France Press said ‘call us back when he dies’ and hung up.

The volunteers called me when soldiers refused to let them treat ill people in families whose homes had been occupied. They called me when people in the camp ran out of food and baby formula. They called me when the youth of the camp who defended their homes with stones and makeshift barricades were shot at wounded and killed. They gave me the names and the ages of children shot at with live ammunition.
I wrote it all down even though I knew that the mainstream media did not want to know.

I wrote it down knowing that wounded, hungry and imprisoned Palestinian civilians are simply. Not. News.

____________________

HEBRON UPDATE: November 20-23, 2000

From: CPT Hebron, Hebron, West Bank (CPT.Hebron.guest.49296@MennoLink.org)
Date: Sat Dec 02 2000 – 13:43:07 EST

---

CPTnet
December 2, 2000
Hebron Update: November 20-23, 2000
Monday, November 20-Day 51 of the curfew
At 9 AM, the curfew was lifted “until further notice.”
Neta Golan, an Israeli woman who had accompanied Palestinian
villagers from Harres while they picked their olives, called. Israeli
police had arrested her as she sought to protect the villagers from
settlers of Reviva and stipulated that she could not return to the
northern West Bank for one week or she would be jailed. She asked if
CPTers could take her place at Harres. When the team told her of the
ongoing violent settler demonstrations in the Beqa’a Valley east of
Hebron, she said she would take the bus down and join them there.

call from the mukataa

posted by GUSH SHALOM – p.o.box 3322, Tel-Aviv 61033 – http://www.gush-shalom.org/PRESS RELEASE 1 April 2002

Message from Neta Golan (Israeli activist at Arafat’s besieged headquarters)

This evening we got a call from our fellow-activist Neta Golan, who yesterday succeeded in entering Yasser Arafat’s besieged headquarters. It was only a short conversation, since the call broke off and could not be resumed.

Neta Golan, who is known for her courageous solidarity actions and has spent weeks in besieged villages, told that the mood in the compound is good though the supply of food and water is running low and in spite of the army’s psychological warfare. Through loudspeakers there are made constant threats and from time to time “shock grenades” are lobbed. These grenades cause loud explosions but little physical harm. She said, everybody there is steadfast and determined not to leave except as free persons.

“I and my friends – international peace activists from Italy, France, the US and other countries, some of them of Jewish origin – have come here to act as a human shield in case of any IDF attempt to break in. The government should know that among those determined to face the soldiers unarmed and bar their way is also an Israeli from Tel-Aviv.”

Neta Golan started to tell about members of the International Solidarity Group, located in Beit Jala, who marched today unarmed towards the Israeli tanks stationed there, and fire was opened at them. Seven of them were wounded, one was taken to hospital in a serious condition.

Then the call was abruptly cut off and could not be resumed – as happened on several previous occasions.

…….

global uprising

eccerpts from global uprisingAn Israeli Activist in Palestine

Neta Golan

Neta Golan Hares is a beautiful West Bank village that has become my home for the last month. Ancient olive trees – more than 1,500 of them – have been cut down or uprooted in the past two months by the Israeli army. Now Israeli settlers surround the village. As with many other Palestinian villages, Hares has been under siege from the beginning of the Intifada. Its inhabitants have been denied the right to move in or out, to go to work, to receive medical treat ment, or to study.