Palestinians retaliate against Israeli terrorism

I recently spent almost 3 weeks in and around Nablus, Palestine - the largest city in the Occupied West Bank. I was a participant volunteer in 'Freedom Summer'
a campaign with the International Solidarity Movement, a Palestinian led organization dedicated to ending the occupation through non-violent resistance I joined
the ISM because I saw an opportunity to try to compensate for some of the injustices that are being inflicted on the Palestinian people by the Israeli government
through American support and with my tax dollars.


Balata Refugee Camp sits on the outskirts of Nablus. It is the largest refugee camp in the west Bank with 21,000 residents, most refugees from Haifa or Jaffa
who made their way to Nablus when they were driven out of their homes with the creation of Israel in 1948. According to the local UN clinic, the IDF has injured
nearly 600 civilians, mostly children, in Balata camp since March 28, 2002. There have been 25 people killed by the IDF in Balata since May 2002.

We were informed that there was a family in Balata who had reason to fear that the IDF would come to demolish their home at any time. It is a standard practice
of the IDF to demolish the family homes of those suspected of fighting to resist the occupation.

We were taken to their home to ask if they would want us to stay to try to prevent the occupation forces from demolishing the home. To get to the home we had to
pass through an alley that is no more than 2 feet wide. About 20 feet into the alley we passed through a door that is hanging on one hinge. We stepped over
concrete rubble and walked up a flight of stairs. The family said that after all they’ve suffered they don’t really care about the house but that we could stay if we
wanted to. I volunteered to stay in their home and chain myself to it to prevent the demolition.

The Al-Titi family live on the main street that bisects Balata camp and most of their story is fairly typical of any family in the camp.

Halima has been a single mother for 10 years and has raised each of her 10 children in the home that she still lives in. The youngest of her children is Jihad,
18.

Jihad was a popular boy and a bright student who excelled in English and mathematics. Though religious, neither he nor his family could be described as
fanatics. Everyone describes him as a very compassionate and caring boy. Like most boys his age he dreamed of buying a car one day – a car with a kick-ass
stereo. He had a great sense of humor and an eye on the future, always advising friends to work hard, learn a trade, and establish themselves before they took
on the responsibility of marriage. He was also something of a clothes horse – by Balata Camp standards anyway. He had a girlfriend who he planned to marry
someday and he had many friends. He was especially close to his cousin, Mahmoud. I was struck by the similarities between Jihad and my own son who is the
same age.

Like everyone in Balata Refugee Camp Jihad suffered many hardships under occupation but they didn’t get him down. He was the one who always advised
others not to dwell on the difficulty of life under occupation but to be patient and step over the hurdles. He helped many people who had been wounded or who
lost their livelihood since this second Intifada began in September of 2000. His outlook was always positive and he never lost sight of his goal.

Shortly before the Israeli army officially re-invaded earlier this year, they ‘unofficially’ opened fire on several teenaged boys in the streets of Balata camp. Jihad’s
friend was wounded and the IDF was not allowing ambulances in to take the wounded to the hospital. Jihad ran out to the street and picked up his wounded
friend to move him to safety. The army fired at him, hitting him on the right side. He lost a huge chunk of flesh and underwent surgery but luckily no vital organs
were damaged.

He was still recovering from this injury on March 1st when an armored bulldozer, accompanied by a tank, pulled up outside the family home. Israeli soldiers
stormed into the home and forced all of the members of the family into one room on the second floor. One soldier found the family’s life savings - $250 – saved
to pay college tuition, and stuck it into his pocket. They piled all of the furniture on the first floor and burnt it. Halima had just finished furnishing and decorating
the first floor in anticipation of her son’s marriage. The soldiers destroyed everything and then detonated 2 plastic explosives which they had attached to an
interior wall on the first floor. The house shook violently. Tiles fell from the kitchens and baths on all 3 floors. Glass broke everywhere. Doors were blown off their
hinges. Cracks appeared in the stone walls extending from the first floor all the way to the ceiling of the 3rd floor. The purpose of these explosives was not to
make the home fall but to weaken the structure to make it easier for the bulldozer, impatiently idling outside, to knock it down. The family was scared and didn’t
know what was going on, the IDF had told them nothing. Just as the bulldozer was about to begin the demolition, representatives from al-Jazeera began
arriving. Someone had called them and luckily they were nearby and able to arrive in time. The IDF backed off, presumably because it wouldn’t look good for
them to be seen on International TV bulldozing down a home for no reason with the family still inside. The IDF told the press that they intended to destroy the
home because ‘suspected militants’ sometimes visited there.

Less than a month later the IDF officially invaded Balata camp. For several days they fired on the residents from Apache helicopters. Many homes were
destroyed. These were not the homes of militants, there didn’t seem to be any selection process, they just destroyed homes at random. One belonged to an old
woman who lived with 2 grandchildren. The home was reduced to rubble. Today you can see several families living in tents that they have pitched on the rubble
of what used to be their homes.

On April 9, while the invasion was still ongoing, an older son, Munir - 36, and his 13 year old son, Saleh, were walking home from purchasing vegetables for the
family to eat. They had almost reached their door when they were struck from behind without warning by a tank shell. The shell also hit their home and parts of
the home fell on top of them. Saleh lost his right index finger and suffered severe damage to his hand. His thumb is not functional and is not healing well. It will
probably have to be amputated. Munir’s spinal cord was severed by shrapnel and he is now paralyzed and confined to a wheelchair for life. Munir has a wife and
8 children who now have no means of support due to his incapacity.

On April 28 the IDF invaded Balata camp again. This time Jihad and his brothers, along with every other male between the ages of 15 and 50 were forced to
strip and were paraded through the streets of the camp blindfolded with their hands tied behind their backs. They were taken to jail where they were questioned
for several days and where they suffered more humiliation and torture. While the men and boys were away in jail, the Israeli army blasted holes in the walls of
all of the homes in Balata camp so they could move between the houses without entering the streets. They stole whatever money, jewelry, or electronics they
could find in the homes and they terrorized the women and children. What they didn’t steal they destroyed. They spray painted black and red arrows on the walls
of the homes to show other soldiers the paths to take to move through all of the houses in the camp without having to enter the streets.

A few days later the army destroyed the home of Jihad’s best friend and cousin, Mahmoud by firing 12 tank shells at it. When they finished, a skeleton of the
structure still stood but the windows, walls, and doors were obliterated. Nothing was left inside. It was just a burned out shell of the building that it once was.

After the Israeli’s supposedly ‘left the areas recently re-occupied’ as ordered by George Bush, Jihad and some friends were returning home from school where
they had been peacefully protesting the occupation. As they stepped out of the car they were riding in, the Israeli army threw an energy bomb at them. Jihad
suffered severe burns to his right arm, hand, face, hip and thigh and he lost most of the sight in his right eye.

Despite his injuries and losses, despite the fact that the army destroyed his friends’ home and his family’s homes, despite the fact that the army imposed
curfew and no one could go to work or school, despite the fact that everything had been stolen or destroyed, despite being jailed without charge, Jihad still
managed to keep a hopeful outlook. He was still the positive voice of the camp, encouraging others not to give up, to look toward a better future.

On May 22, the IDF assassinated Jihad’s beloved cousin Mahmoud. Mahmoud and 2 friends were visiting a grave in Balata cemetery when the army fired 8 tank
shells, each loaded with over 500 nails shaped like arrows, at them from the top of nearby Mount Al-Tur. All 3 were killed by multiple direct hits and a fourth
person, 300 meters away, died from injuries that evening. 8 bystanders were seriously injured. There was severe damage to the surrounding homes and many
gravesites. Jihad ran to the scene immediately after the murders and found Mahmoud’s body in pieces. He tried to pick his body up but his hand passed
through the body through a hole created by the tank shells. Jihad was taken to the hospital and treated for shock. He couldn’t stop crying and shaking. After
being released, he refused to leave the hospital and spent the night in the morgue next to Mahmoud’s body. The next morning he passed out during
Mahmoud’s funeral.

The next day, on May 23, the IDF bulldozed what remained of Mahmoud’s home – and the homes of 6 other families that adjoined his. The bulldozer also
destroyed many graves in the nearby cemetery. According to what they told the press, they found a ‘bomb factory’ in the house and they used that as their
justification for the siege and attack on Balata camp. The home had been empty for weeks, since they had destroyed it back in April and there was nothing
inside but the burned up remains of the family’s furniture and possessions, certainly no ‘bomb factory’.

8 days later Mahmoud’s wife gave birth to his first child, a son.

Jihad took Mahmoud’s death very hard. He couldn’t stop crying. For the first time anyone could remember his talk centered on all of the injustices he and his
family had suffered. He talked of the crippling of his brother Munir and the maiming of his nephew Saleh. He talked about his own injuries which still had not
healed and of his friends who had been killed or injured. He cried hardest for Mahmoud. The day after Mahmoud was killed Jihad took some favorite clothing to
his best friend and told him that he wanted his friend to have them. He said that he thought the Israeli army would kill him next and he wanted his friend to have
something to remember him by. For 3 days and nights he sat in front of Mahmoud’s grave and refused to leave. Then he disappeared. Over the next 3 days
Jihad avoided his family and his friends. Halima kept asking ‘Where is Jihad?’, ‘Where is my son?’ – but no one knew. Everyone thought he was just spending
time alone to deal with his grief. At 5:00 in the afternoon of the 4th day after Mahmoud was murdered, Halima had a feeling of impending doom and was finally
able to reach him on his cell phone. She tearfully asked him where he was. She told him that he needed to come home now and grieve with the family instead
of grieving alone. He answered ‘I am far from you. I love you mother, I will wait for you a long time. Now, I don’t want anyone else to call me.’ He hung up and
turned off his phone.

2 hours later, on May 28th at 6:40 PM, 18 year old Jihad, the compassionate boy who had so carefully planned his future, walked to the center of an arrangement
of plastic chairs and tables in open air café outside Tel Aviv and detonated an explosive belt that he was wearing under his grey t-shirt, killing himself and 2
Israelis and injuring 50 others. He was the first suicide bomber to come from Balata Refugee Camp but he wasn’t the last. 10 days later his good friend who
lived in the home next door walked into an illegal Israeli settlement and opened fire on soldiers in training. He was shot dead by other soldiers. A few days later
another of Jihads’ friends went on a suicide mission.

The IDF did not invade and terrorize the people day after day after day in retaliation for a series of suicide bombers that came from Balata Refugee Camp. A
series of 18 year old suicide bombers came out of Balata Refugee Camp in response to the IDF invasions and the terror that they were subjected to day after
day after day.

The IDF refuses to release Jihad’s body to his family. They are holding it to a prison sentence of at least 25 years. Later, when a 17 year old Balata boy was shot
to death by the IDF for standing outside the door to his home during curfew, he was laid to rest in the space next to Mahmoud. One member of the Al-Titi family
commented that he was buried in what should have been Jihad’s resting place and would have been if they had the body.

In little over 2 weeks 3 teenagers from Balata Camp conducted suicide missions against Israelis. These kids went out after months of enduring Israeli state
terrorism against them and their families. The order is important here. The bombings were a result of Israeli aggression – not the other way around. According
to the IDF, the 2 bombers who struck in Tel Aviv this week were an 18 and 19 year old from Balata Camp as well. The family homes have already been
demolished and all of the males in the family, including a 72 year old man have been arrested and will be deported to the Gaza Strip. I don’t know if these boys
were among Jihad’s friends, surely they knew him.

The Al-Titi family was not allowed to grieve for long. 3 days after Jihad’s death, when the family home was filled with grieving women, the IDF returned. They
arrested all of the men who were related to or who may have known Jihad and interrogated them for 5 days on whether or not the Al-Titi family had sent Jihad out
to get money. Soldiers occupied the Al-Titi home after forcing Halima and the children into one room and locking them in. They remained there for 5 days and
used the home as their base of operations from which they terrorized the residents of Balata camp once again.

I spent hours talking with what remains of Jihad’s living friends. They cried and shared their memories of Jihad with me. One told me that he wished that Jihad
was buried nearby so he could visit his grave and talk to him, to feel that he wasn’t so far away. I sensed that each of these 18 and 19 year old boys were
struggling with a decision on whether or not they also should conduct suicide missions. I wanted to wrap my arms around them and tell them NO, don’t do it,
but I realized that I have no right to do so. This is the struggle that has been their reality since the day they were born; I am but a visitor for 3 short weeks. Who the
hell am I to tell them how to react to the terrorism that they are faced with day in and day out?

I sit here looking into the open door of Jihad’s closet. There hangs the brown polar fleece jacket that he was wearing the last time he was wounded by the
soldiers. The right sleeve is in tatters from elbow to wrist. There is a huge hole near the bottom right side of the jacket. There is a later photograph of Jihad
where he is hiding his right hand from the camera because he doesn’t want his damaged hand photographed.


The real test of my patience will come the next time some idiot tells me how Palestinian mothers teach their children to be suicide bombers and send them on
their missions. I hope it doesn’t happen anytime soon because I may just explode. I remember Halima and her children and Jihad’s friends and the sadness
and despair in their eyes. The memory of holding Halima Al-Titi in my arms while she cried her heart out, lamenting that she didn’t see him before he went, and
trying to convey to her with my limited Arabic that I empathized with her feelings on the loss of her youngest child, the same age and so much like my own son, is
just too fresh. This woman, who still glances expectantly toward the door each evening around 5:00 PM then starts crying when she remembers that Jihad will
not be coming home at his usual time after all, is in torment. Her tearful cry ‘My heart saw him before my eyes saw him’ will never be far from my mind. Neither
will the words of his brother when I asked if they knew what Jihad was going to do, ‘If we knew we would have held him and not let him go. Who would let their
brother go to die? He knew if he told us he wouldn’t be able to carry through with it. That is why he didn’t tell anyone. That is why he didn’t come to see our
mother for 3 days. He loved his mother and if he saw her he wouldn’t have been able to do it.’

I think of the crap that we are told on American TV about how Palestinian mothers ‘send’ their children out to do suicide bombings and I think of Halima and her
children and the sadness and despair in their eyes I get angry. I think of the bullshit that we are told about Saddam Hussein or Saudi Arabia paying these
families and I look at this home in this refugee camp where the girls have to make pudding and sell it on the street for half a shekel a cup just so they can feed
themselves and I want to scream at the people who perpetuate such ugly rumors. How can people be so ugly? Jihad and his family are every bit as much a
victim as the 2 people who died when he blew himself up are.

In the room where I sleep there is a large backpack filled with documents, photographs, and a change of clothing for each family member. The family treasures
and essentials are contained within, in the hope that when the bulldozer comes the family will have time to grab this bag if nothing else before their home is
demolished.

To end my story I went to the shopping center where Jihad blew himself up. I had read the reports on the major news sites first where I was told that he had
chosen to walk into a crowded ice cream parlor full of children because he was ‘evil’ and he wanted to kill babies. There IS an ice cream parlor in that shopping
center, it isn’t anywhere near where Jihad blew himself up though. There is nothing there that hints that anything ever happened. The paint is not fresh and new.
I talked with the owner of the café where it happened and he admitted that the damage was limited to a few plastic chairs and tables and some shattered glass.
What a difference the reality is to the way it was painted in the press.

I also read in the press that Halima had supposedly told Jihad before his mission ‘I hope that you are successful’. The idea is ludicrous. There was also a
report that Jihad’s father, a man who hadn’t seen his wife and son in 10 years, said that he wished Jihad had worn a nuclear bomb. I don’t know if he actually
said that or not but regardless, the press should have reported that they were estranged.


A final note: I asked Halima Al-Titi if there was anything that she wanted to say to the American people. This was her reply:

Halima: Americans, put yourselves in our position. If you were in our place what would you do when you are facing this threat everyday? When your house, your
land, and your money is taken away from you and your kids are afraid all the time of the soldiers coming to the house, searching and threatening and doing this
stuff? chidren say they cannot sleep here – he goes to his friends house. If there was a state that did what Israel does what would you do? If they came in
destroyed your house, took your land, killed your children. Every one of my children has been shot. They all have bullets in their bodies. Last time they put us all
in one room while they destroyed the other rooms then they put us in another room and destroyed this one. They turned it all upside down. Then they went
downstairs and destroyed the apartment I had spent months preparing for my son to be married in, they burned it completely. They fired 2 explosives that blew
out the doors. They blasted 2 walls to make doors to the neighbors houses and everything was destroyed. We are being humiliated and oppressed and we
have nothing to fight back with. We just have our faith and perseverance. We continue to live and struggle. The kids are scared and they can’t sleep. They can’t
sleep here anyore because of all the attacks and destruction and harassment.. What would you do? What if there was a state that was doing this to you? Would
you accept this? Would you allow this to happen to you in America? Because if you would allow this to happen, if the Americans would allow this to happen to
you, if you tell me that you would accept this happening to you then OK we will accept it too.