BostontoPalestine
Boston support group for the International Solidarity Movement

Home
About us
News from Palestine

Contact
    Email
    Subscribe
    Donate

Current Delegation
    Summer 2005

Past Delegations
    Olive Harvest 2004
    Freedom Summer 2004
    Past Campaigns

Events
Photos
Videos (ISM)
Rachel Corrie
Links
Speakers
Be a Delegate
Press
faq
Actions!

July, 20th 2005 "A night in Dheisheh"

July 30th 2005 "Martyr's Run"

August 2nd, 2005.  "I shot him, and I'm proud of it."

August 2nd, 2005.  "I shot him, and I'm proud of it." by Daniela

I am currently at the headquarters of the International Women's Peace
Service in the West Bank village of Hares. Four IWPS members have just left
the house, after getting an urgent phone call, to go to Marda.  About two
hours ago, the army invaded the nearby village, throwing tear gas and sound
bombs, then took away two young men in blindfolds.

Minutes after my IWPS colleagues left, they phoned to say that they had
passed Army jeeps heading for Hares and that we should be ready in case our
neighbors call for help.   So here we sit, waiting - hoping that the
military will leave us be for the night - but knowing that this is unlikely.

Yesterday I attended my first demonstration in Palestine, which turned into
an event more brutal than I have ever seen (though I've been told it was
fairly uneventful in comparison to others). About 120 Palestinians and 15
internationals marched through the village of Kifl Hares, heading towards
the large Israeli settlement across the highway at the end of the road. The
plan was not to enter the settlement but merely to hold a demonstration at
the foot of it.  After marching for only five minutes, we were stopped in
the middle of the village by four military jeeps. They had tied a ribbon
across the road and were telling us that this was a "closed military zone,"
and that we couldn't proceed. Our group pressed on through the ribbon as the
children waved Palestinian flags and sang songs of defiance. After a few
more feet, we were stopped again by the military commander, who began
shouting for us to get back. The spokesman for our group began explaining to
him that this was a peaceful protest, and that they would like the ability
to march through their own village.

I was so fixated on the twenty soldiers up front that I didn't notice that
several were now crouched on either side of us in the olive groves. Before
anyone knew what was happening, the commander gave the order and the
soldiers began shooting tear gas into the crowd.  Everyone started running
down the road to avoid the canisters. When my eyes stopped watering, I
looked up to see one man staggering away and was told that he had been hit
in the chest by one of the canisters. Again the tear gas came before we
could catch our breath, and then again the calm.

The group made the decision to sit down in the middle of the road while one
Palestinian and one International crossed the newly re-tied ribbon to speak
to the commander. One of the men from the group began to speak up, saying
that he should have a right to walk in his own village. The commander turned
around and told him that he was going to get shot if he didn't stop talking.
These words might have seemed like an idle threat were they coming from
police in the U.S., but here I knew that soldiers often do whatever they
want without suffering any consequences. Moments later, the tear gas began
flying again, but this time it was being shot at head level, directly into
the crowd. I turned around and saw the man that had been threatened earlier
for speaking up.  He fell to the ground, grabbing at his face and screaming.
A group of Palestinians rushed to his aid and carried off him and his
sobbing seven-year-old niece.

I stood there horrified, knowing that this man had been shot purposely, when
he had done nothing that could be construed as threatening.  We later
received word that he had been shot directly in the face with a tear gas
canister, and was now being rushed to the hospital in critical condition.
One member of the press confronted the soldiers about what had just
happened. "I shot him," said the commander, "and I'm proud of it."

I had spent the previous week living with a Palestinian family, working with
their children and within their community.  I listened to the stories of the
women that I now call sisters, and sensed the level of brutality reflected
in the art of the girls at the camp...but I had yet to see it with my own
eyes. Never before had I seen people treated like animals, with no care if
they live or die.

Yet there will be non-violent actions in this region every day this week.
And people, despite the actions of the military, will come out and continue
the struggle to protect their families and their land.

We have heard that as many as eight people may have been arrested in Marda,
six boys and two girls. I have to get on the phone to other human rights and
legal agencies, but I will try to write more soon.

[Postscript - 8/4/2005]

There ended up being 4 boys arrested in Marda on Tuesday. I believe that two
were 13 years old, one was 14 and one was 15. The IWPS members waited on the
side of the road for three hours in the middle of the night as 15 boys,
blindfolded and handcuffed, were taken one by one to the soldiers' jeep to
be interrogated. Finally, after some of the younger kids "confessed" to
stone throwing, the soldiers approached Carolyn from IWPS. They asked her if
she wanted to hear their confession.  She declined, saying that she, too,
might confess to stone throwing were she to be interrogated and frightened
at three in the morning!

So far, none of the Palestinian youths have been returned to their families.

*Daniela is a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College and has been a resident of
Boston for the Past year. She has recently worked in the Boston chapter of
the Caterpillar Campaign (www.bootcat.org), and will begin her first year of
law school in the fall.

July 30th 2005 "Martyr's Run"

Dear Friends,

I have just returned to Jerusalem after living in a small village in the Salfit region for one week. It is very hard to adequately describe the family I was living with, except to say that it is a household run by some very tough women. Although there are two brothers in the family, the house is dominated by the eight sisters - my host "sisters" - all of whom attend protests and demonstrations with their mother and are members of a group called "Flowers Against the Occupation." These women work hard to keep their family afloat and to fight for their country - and are intent on passing that kind of determination on to the younger generation.

Each day, I would go with my sisters to a nearby village, where we worked at a camp for girls, ages 12 to 18. The camp sprung up out of the Flowers Against the Occupation group, and is funded in part by the International Women's Peace Service (IWPS). At first glance, I felt like I was at any summer camp that you might find in the U.S. The girls sing songs, do arts and crafts, perform plays, dance and play instruments. Each morning the girls break up into teams, which they have named Hope, Freedom, Steadfast, Strength, and Jenin. They each have a chant that they have written and seem to compete to see who can shout it the loudest. It wasn't until my third day that I asked my host sister Sonia to translate one of the chants for me.  I was surprised to find that this group of twelve year old girls was calling out to the beat of a drum: "We are Palestinian girls, our well is unlimited. Our well is strong...Jenin is calling for us. Either we fight or we die."  As each song or activity was explained to me, I realized that most every word uttered within the walls of the camp is about resistance to the occupation.

Later in the morning, I joined my sister Lana and her team for play rehearsal in one of the classrooms. The play that they had written for the final show was called "Martyr's Run."  It told the story of two men who are on their way to meet their new brides. Along the way, they decide to go to a demonstration against the Wall and are shot and killed by Israeli soldiers. In the final scene the girls dance in a circle holding two coffins over their heads. They try to describe the streets of Jerusalem to the Palestinian children so that they may keep up the dream of one day coming back. The girls call out that they must keep up the fight, and I know that nothing about this play is pretend for them.

After one day of rehearsal, I sat in the yard with two girls named Roba and Jumana, both of whom are 14. They wanted to know what I thought about Palestinians. Like everyone else I had met here, they asked me if I thought that all Palestinians were terrorists (an absurd idea that proves more absurd by the minute). They wanted to talk about the Wall. I told them that I could see it from the window of my current Palestinian home. "I'm afraid of the Wall," Jumana said. "If they finish, I'll be in more of a prison than I am now. I can't go anywhere. I can hardly leave my village."

Roba explained that all the girls? families were activists and that their parents attended protests almost every week. Apparently Roba used to attend, too, but ever since her brother was imprisoned, her mother is too afraid to let her come along. When I asked what the charges against her brother were, she said, "He threw a rock at a tank."  He won't be let out for another five years. "Now that I can't go to demonstrations, I try to fight in other ways," she said. "I help my little brothers throw stones and I cut up onions to keep them from choking on the tear gas...What do you do to fight the occupation?" she asked.  I wasn't sure what to say.

Like my host sisters, these girls are the daughters of strong women who have taught them to fight. Even the youngest children have a clear vision of the Palestine that they are striving for, and they will continue to resist this occupation until they get it. I am often baffled by how people in my own country cannot understand this simple desire for freedom. It?s a word we hear a lot in the U.S., but one that for me has had little resonance until now. My sister Sabrine and I were sitting on the roof of the house one afternoon, playing with her little nephew. On one side of us stood an Israeli settlement twice the size of the village; on the other side, construction workers were blasting out a path for the Wall. "Every time you see a beautiful place they'll put up a settlement or a wall," she said. "We just want freedom. We see the children in other countries...they can go anywhere. This village is like a cage."

And still we danced on the roof every night and sang and joked over dinner.

I know that their family has been financially crippled by the occupation, yet the girls rarely let on about their own problems. Conversations always revolved around the suffering of others: the men who were assassinated in a nearby village; the girls at the camp who had lost their fathers; and the possibility of Palestine being divided in half by the Wall.  Only once did my sister Sonia break down - during a discussion about violent resistance. "I don't want to hurt anyone," she said. "I don't kill anyone. But we have lost everything. My father owned a factory four years ago, but he had to close it down because the soldiers would not permit him and his workers to get there. Now he tries to find construction jobs when he can, but no one can find work. We have lost everything," she said. "So tell me that I don't have the right to defend myself."

I will depart from Jerusalem tomorrow to go and work with IWPS in the village of Hares. Now, more than ever before, I know who I am fighting with and what we are striving for.

Dear Friends,

Last night we stayed in the Dheisheh Refugee camp in the Bethlehem municipality, after spending the day with various organizations that work within the community. What struck me most about the camp was how many children there are. The 6,000 kids make up about 60% of the population in Dheisheh, so several of the organizations here work to provide programs for them.
We have seen dancing troops, circus performers, theater, and music-mostly performed by kids under the age of 12. After watching an entire circus act, with clowns and jugglers and stilts walkers, I desperately wanted to learn the unicycle but ended up taking a dance lesson instead.
These centers are a great way to keep the kids in high spirits, but I think also to help them let out their frustration. At one point we watched an improv skit about Palestinians trying to get through an Israeli checkpoint. A ten year old boy, dressed in green and holding a toy gun, stood at the front as other children and adults tried to pass through. Each time someone came up to him he would yell out insults, push them to the ground, put a gun up to their head, and inevitably not let them pass through-no matter how hard they pleaded. Although this was all done as a farce (picture a four foot-seven boy pushing around a six foot-two man), it felt incredibly disturbing at times. The show was done all in Arabic, with a few random Hebrew insults thrown in by the "guard." Each time he yelled out an insult, it became painfully obvious that he was merely repeating what he hears every day. This is the only Hebrew that he knows.
After the show we told him that he was a great actor, but his response was that this wasn't acting, it was merely imitation.

No matter how much I had read about the occupation, it was never clear to me until now how it imposed on the day-to-day lives of these people in very "undramatic" ways. Last night, I sat on the roof of my host family's home as they tried to get as much food into me as possible. While my host mother handed me my fifth plate of desert, the men were showing me their orange I.D. cards, which identify them as Palestinian. It was explained that they have to have these cards on them at all times, and must produce them whenever passing from one town to the next. Many of my thoughts went to my own father, wondering how he would deal with the humiliation of having to explain himself to a group of soldiers, not much older then the boy in the play, every time he wanted to go to work (or to go anywhere). My host father has to leave his home at five in the morning, just so that he can wait in line at a checkpoint and, eventually, get to work by eight-if he is not turned away. His work is only five miles from his home.

Despite all of these barriers, everyone goes about their lives as best they can. My host brother and sister and I talked about pop music, my host mother told me that I was too skinny, their oldest son showed me his Super Nintendoand I went to sleep feeling more welcome in their home than I have ever felt.
At three in the morning, fellow B2P delegate Kera and I woke to the sound of cars on the street. We went to the window and saw two army jeeps driving up the road, shining their flashlights into each home. It was surprising to see, since we hadn't encountered the military since we had passed through the Wall that separates much of Bethlehem from other parts of Bethlehem and from the Jerusalem municipality (an example, once again, of how the Wall veers ridiculously far from the Green Line and cuts straight down the middle of Palestinian communities).
In the morning, we were told that the military had come into the camp and detained three people. Two members of our delegation had watched from their host family's window as the military barged into their neighbors' home and eventually took away a cousin of their host brother. The soldiers' reasoning is still unclear to me-and whether or not the cousin is coming back is still unclear to the family.

Every day I am seeing that under the surface of life's activities is an occupation that is too horrifying to verbalize. I'm still trying to process, but I'll let you know when I've had any revelations

-Daniela