Susan -

"Courageous 17 year old Woman Confronts Israeli Soldier"

from Qalqilya, West Bank

Thursday, 8/22/02

Our group continues our daily check point watches, round-the-clock
ambulance accompaniments, family visits, etc.

I recently became friends with a 17 year old Palestinian woman-we'll
call her "B." We met on an ambulance run-she was returning from a
health care visit. I later visited her family, consisting of her
mother, six daughters and one son; her father right now is living and
working in a village nearby. Here is the family's story of her 17th
birthday.

Back in April, on the evening of her birthday, Israeli tanks and
jeeps arrived and entered their house, at 8:30 P.M. They asked for
the father, saying that they were looking for some men, and that they
were going to search the house. The "reason," it seems, was that,
during the April re-occupation, they had spotted B taking a photo of
a tank-from a window inside the house.

The Israelis first handcuffed the mother and then moved the whole
family into the living room. One soldier placed his M-16 right on
B's heart. The mother began to cry. The soldier said to B, "I will
shoot you, I will kill you." She screamed back at him, "OK, kill me-
go ahead, kill me!" The soldier then turned to the mother and said
to her, "You tell your daughter that the next time I come back I
won't hit her-I will just kill her or take her to jail like a dog."

The soldier and B began to stare at each other, and they continued to
stare at each other-for a long time. Finally, the soldier said, "I
want to tell you-I came here for peace." She just laughed in his
face. She was still half-lounging on the couch. He ordered her to
put her leg down. When she didn't move, he shoved her leg down to
the floor with his gun, saying, "I said-we came here for peace.
Don't make me do something that's going to give me a headache."

She looked right at him and said, "Please, I need something from
you. If you do it for me-if I tell you and then you do it-you will
prove to me that you really came here for peace."

"What?", he asked.

She looked right at him and said, "Please, put down your weapon and
your bulletproof vest. Put them on the chair. Then sit down next to
me and just look into my eyes."

He screamed at her, "Are you crazy!" He then proceeded to destroy
everything in the living room-the furniture, the door, the glass
separating the living room from the hall. When he finally stopped,
she said to him, "Thank you. Now you have proven to me that you came
here just for peace. I apologize for everything I have done."

The soldier turned to the mother and warned told her, "Tell your
daughter she better be careful, because I will be back." The mother
pleaded, "Please don't pay attention to my daughter-she is crazy, she
has always been crazy." His reply: "No, she's not crazy. She
understands everything she says and does."

The mother told us, "If they ever take her to jail, I would kill
myself. There will be no one to take care of the family." She
described how she had later taken B in her arms and pleaded with
her, "Please, please, don't do this again. The Israelis are
criminals." The mother told us that she always cries when she sees
pictures of the martyrs, and she keeps worrying about what may happen
to her daughters. Finally, she said, "They have stolen everything
from us. They have stolen our happiness, our laughter, our dreams."

Prison information.
A few of us met with the director of The Palestinian Prisoners Rights
Association. They provide support for prisoners and their families-
funds for lawyers, monthly financial support for families, and money
for prisoners' daily needs. They also document cases of mistreatment
and torture, and work with the media.

There are numerous reports of interrogations where the Israelis use
various forms of torture: beatings, applications of boiling water,
cigarette burns, sleep deprivation, extremely loud and distorted
noise, recordings of sounds of people being beaten, etc. Women are
often sexually harassed or assaulted.

There is a huge difference between the central prisons in Israel
(within the Green Line) and the illegal jails in the settlements.
The illegal jails are an urgent problem. They are makeshift jails,
set up more recently in the settlements. They imprison Palestinians
who have not been charged with any crime. There are no rules. The
conditions are barbaric. The jails are basically tents, without any
real facilities for sleeping, eating, or bathroom use. The military
security forces are in full control-the soldiers act as "judges."
Often, Palestinians who are arrested are brought to one of these
jails and just immediately shot and killed. Those who are imprisoned
in these jails are not charged with anything, and they have no
trials. But they may remain in these jails indefinitely, under
utterly inhumane conditions.

The central prisons, within Israel, are a very different story. Many
of them are reasonably humane or progressive. The prisoners there
have been charged with crimes and have had trials. Some of these
prisons are unique. After Oslo, there were strikes inside the
prisons, and conditions improved greatly in many of them. Often the
prisoners gained the power to manage much of their daily lives,
primarily through prisoner councils, associations, and leaders.
Daily programs often include education, including university level.
Palestinian prisoners can say, "We want to be seen as political
prisoners-as part of the conflict."

Some prisoners in the central prisons have life sentences. Among
them are some who have this truly unique sentence-"Forever"-meaning
beyond life. When they die, their bodies are not released to their
families for burial, but are kept in freezers-a unique form of
punishment for families.

On Wednesday, 8/21, we visited Hajja, a farming village (population
2000) near Qalkilya. (We wanted to do some planning for the fall ISM
Olive Harvest Campaign.) We met with the mayors of seven villages in
the area-populations range from about 600 to 2500. We learned about
the intense problems they face.

Many of these villages are located near settlements, or actually
surrounded by settlements. In many cases, Palestinian fields and
olive groves have points of contact with the settlements. Settlers
and Israeli soldiers destroy olive trees, by uprooting them or
pouring chemical solutions on them. Israeli vehicles and tanks run
through fields, destroying crops. When farmers try to get to their
fields, they are often shot at by settlers and soldiers, or chased by
settlers on horseback. The settlers often use attack dogs-farmers
are often bitten. For many of the farmers, the risk is simply too
great, and they just can't get to their fields.

In one village, Inmatain, the Israelis have closed off the entrance
to the village. People can't get to the main roads-to Qalkilya and
Nablus. So, people have to use back roads, making them even more
vulnerable to attacks by settlers-beatings and shootings. (The mayor
keeps a careful list of people who have been injured by the settlers
and the soldiers.) There is a new settlement near this village, and
Israelis are still moving there. As the settlement grows, the
Israelis put in new roads, destroying Palestinians fields and
confiscating more of their land. This is, of course, just one more
example of the theft of land and economic strangulation that
continues all over Palestine.

These villages also have to deal with grossly inadequate supplies of
electricity and water. The public networks for both electricity and
water are controlled by Israel, and permits are required to connect
to these networks. The Israelis prevent the Palestinians from making
these connections by holding back the issuing of permits or just
refusing permits.

To deal with the electricity problem, the Palestinians often have to
use generators-and they are very costly to run. The Palestinians
have to ration their water. One method is to supply each half the
village population on alternate days. They also try to supplement
their water supply by bringing in water in small vehicles-but of
course the vehicles encounter the usual serious problems getting
through-closures and check points.

The following are a few quotes from some of the mayors.

"We do not hate the American people. We are occupied, and we want you
to help us end the occupation-to help us be free, like others in the
world. The American people are the master key to changing the
ideology of the American government-to do the right thing."

"It is our right to be safe, to be free, to live in peace. It is not
safe for us to go outside our homes now."

"We invite the American people to come and see the violence and the
oppression that the Israelis practice against us. We call on the
American people to pressure the Israeli people to change their
government's policy."

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Susan is part of a BostontoPalestine (www.bcpr.org) delegation

to the International Solidarity Movement's  Freedom Summer

campaign (www.palsolidarity.org).