SF activist report from Palestine

The RoadMap from Nablus to Qalqilia, Palestine

In Qalqilya yesterday, the group of internationals that I am with met a family who lives less than half a mile from the 25-foot-tall Apartheid Wall, which the Israeli government is constructing around the West Bank and which has almost completely encircled the city of Qalqilya on the border of the West Bank (pictures of the wall are attched to this email and you can find more information at http://www.pengon.org/wall/fact.html). The family lost most of their farm land and orchards in Al Nakba (the Catastrophe) in 1948, when Israel took most of the land that was known as Palestine and over 800,000 Palestinians were expelled from their land and made into refugees. Since the construction of the Apartheid Wall, the family now cannot even get to the land that they were able to keep after 1948. When we asked him about the U.S. backed Roadmap for the Middle East, the father of the family said, “All of these talks and agreements -- this is just for the media. I do not want to hear it on TV. I want to hear it on the land.” Almost everyday here in Palestine, as we are witnessing yet another example of the injustice of the Israeli Occupation, at least one local will make similar comments to our group about the Roadmap and talks of peace.

In the last five days I have traveled from Nablus to Ramallah to Tul Karem to Qalqilia, and I would like to share with you what is happening on the land. I hope you can think about these things and share them with people you know, so that you will know what the media, the U.S. government, and the Israeli government are not saying. Today I do not have time to write much about Qalqilya, but I will be here for at least two weeks and will write more about the situation here soon.

Nablus

In my last email, I talked about things which have improved for Palestinians in Nablus: the regular 24-hour curfews that required that Palestinians not leave their homes for more than a few hours for weeks at a time that persisted from the spring through the summer and into the fall of 2002 have ceased for now. My friend and local organizer of non-violent resistance to the occupation, Saif, described to me the other day how the curfews were stopped in Nablus:

The children wanted to go to school and the education department did not take responsibility for these students and did not open the schools for them under the positions of tanks and curfew all the time. So the students with the local communities and the parents opened local [neighborhood/home] schools and then after a while [the people said] “No, we don't want local schools, we want to go to our [regular] schools. We want to study with our friends from different areas and our teachers. And then the teachers with the parents with the local communities with the students took the responsibility over the schools. How did the parents and the students challenge the authority of the Occupation? Yes, it happened! And the authority of the Occupation [the Israeli Occupation Forces] did not accept this they opened fire on children, they shelled schools, they shot students, they arrested students, they arrested teachers, they killed, but this did not stop these students from going to school. They continued going to school and this was one of the reasons that all of the community – everybody-- decided to break the curfew, to go out. The schools opened, the teachers went, the students went and they needed transportation, so the taxis started to work and they started to go and pick them up from the roadblocks. The people went to school, they moved in the streets and so they wanted to buy things and the markets started to be open for those people. [Then the people thought] Oh wow, the market is open, I'm going to buy something for my family, so the people themselves started leaving the houses and going out and buying stuff even if the tanks were in the streets moving all around the houses. They [the Israeli Occupying Forces] attacked the taxis, they destroyed cars, they killed drivers, but this did not stop the taxis from working. They [the Israeli Occupying Forces] came to the market, to the stores, crushing them completely. The owners would come and fix their stores, and if they were arrested, their son or relative would come and fix it and open it again. The woman, if they arrested her husband, she would come and fix the store and open it. And this is the reason from this time until now, that the Israeli army leaves us and does not impose the curfew on the street. And if there is a military operation, you come and you find the operation is happening in one area which is very limited and just a few meters from the soldiers, the stores are open and the people are in the streets just looking at the army. This strain of courage, it didn't come from nowhere. It comes from 55 years of occupation, 55 years of challenging the Occupation. If you go inside a refugee camp and ask a little kid, “Where are you from?” he will not say “I am from Askar refugee camp.” He will say something like “I belong to Jaffa - my family came from there in 1948. I live in Askar.” This will happen in any refugee camp you may go to.

The positive changes in Nablus have come from the resistance of the people. Sadly, although the curfews have been lifted, the checkpoints continue to strangle the movement of Palestinians between Nablus and all of the surrounding villages that depend on Nablus for work, school, medical treatment. It is hard for me to imagine how there can be talks about peace when the movement of tens of thousands of Palestinians is dependant on the whims of Israeli soldiers every day. Palestinians must have a written permission from the Israeli government to go back and forth between the villages and Nablus, and even this does not guarantee the soldiers will allow when to pass. Last week in Nablus I spent two days at the Beit Farik checkpoint which is the only way into Nablus from 5 villages. I would like to share some brief descriptions of people I met and things that happened in those two days:

*25 men stand waiting in the sun to return to their villages from Nablus for over 5 hours, the line grows from 25 to 50 men, but the soldiers ignore them, only allowing one or two men to pass every twenty minutes until late in the day. Eight of the men are singled out, their ID's are taken from them and they are detained at the checkpoint for hours until the soldiers decide to return their ID's and let them leave.

*A young woman and her brother are trying to get to the University in Nablus and chance driving around the checkpoint in order to avoid the wait and possibility that they will not be allowed through. A settler police jeep catches them on the side road and forces them to drive to the checkpoint where their car is taken and they are forced to wait for at least one hour until the soldiers decide to return the car and allow them to go to University.

*Many other cars, including taxis, tractors, and trucks loaded with hay, have been confiscated by the soldiers for everything from attempts to drive around the checkpoint or someone taking longer to leave and return than he promised the soldier. One man we meet has not been able to get his care back for over a month, while the standard punishment as the soldiers themselves call it is keeping Palestinians cars for one week. The soldiers at this checkpoint have a grocery bag full of Palestinians car keys.

*Water trucks with permits to take water to villages who have no access to safe ground water are forced to wait for hours with no explanation as to why they are not allowed to pass through the checkpoint.

*Three women from Jenin are allowed to pass the checkpoint they go to the University in Nablus and are studying Industrial Engineering, Information Technology, and Psychology. Their brother who also studies at the University and who is going to graduate in two days is not allowed to cross through the checkpoint. Tired of waiting, he decides to go around through the olive groves-- a very dangerous choice -- and his sisters worry for his life.

From Ramallah to Tul Karm

On July 3rd, we awoke at 6:30 am in Ramallah in order to arrive in Tul Karm no later than 10:00 am for a demonstration against the Israeli Apartheid Wall being built on farmers land throughout the western edge of the West Bank. We had to walk for thirty minutes to the outskirts of Ramallah rather than grab a taxi because of two large roadblocks built by the Israeli Occupying Forces. Anyone trying to enter or leave Ramallah on the Northern edge of town-- workers, students, old men and women, mothers with small children-- must walk the mile between the roadblocks that dips into a ravine and then back up. Thousands of Palestinians must cross this stretch of road in both directions every day. On the other end of the roadblock, we found a service taxi to take us most of the way to Tul Karm. After passing through beautiful terraced hills of olive trees tended by generations of Palestinians, at least 5 Israeli settlements, and two Israeli checkpoints (where the soldiers were much more interested in the local Palestinian ISM coordinators ID's than the internationals), we came to a locked gate close to Tul Karm. The Israeli Occupying Forces has constructed the gate to prevent vehicles from crossing into Tul Karm on this road. There were not soldiers at the gate this day, but we were still forced to get out of one vehicles, walk over the dirt mounds on either side of the gate and find another vehicles on the other side. Imagine what this means for ambulances or the movement of goods in and out of the region. When I asked one of the local ISM coordinators from Tul Karm about the Roadmap, he said his dream would be to drive from Tul Karm, to Nablus (where he grew up) in one vehicle without stopping.

Tul Karm

In Tul Karm, we visited the Camp Against the Occupation and participated in a demonstration against the Apartheid Wall. Below are the press releases from the International Solidarity Movement about the Camp Against the Occupation and the demonstration:

Camp Against the Occupation INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY MOVEMENT July 2, 2003 CAMP AGAINST THE OCCUPATION TUL KAREM REGION, WEST BANK, PALESTINE Founded by a coalition of the International Solidarity Movement, the National and Islamic parties of Palestine, the Wall Defense Committee and over ten villages within the Tul Karem region of the West Bank, Camp Against the Occupation stands as a meeting place for all those in opposition to the Israeli military occupation of Palestine. Established on July 2, 2003, Camp Against the Occupation marks the opening days of the International Solidarity Movement's summer campaign, entitled "Freedom Summer 2003". The Freedom Summer campaign focuses on the restriction of movement that Palestinians endure daily due to this occupation. Camp Against the Occupation was created as an element of this summer campaign in order to directly challenge Israel's construction of the separation wall. The wall stands to restrict Palestinian movement even further, to cut off thousands from their agricultural lands, to isolate access to water and to literally imprison Palestinians within the west bank. It is the intention of Camp Against the Occupation to highlight these issues through non-violent, direct-action that aims to actually stop the wall and end the occupation. For a map of the wall in this region, please see: http://www.nad-plo.org/maps/Qalqilya_land_grab.htm The objectives of Camp Against the Occupation are as follows: 7 To draw international media attention to the on-going Israeli military occupation of Palestine and specifically highlight the building of the Separation Wall within the West Bank. 7 To expose the truth of the current situation in Palestine, and in doing so change public opinion so that the international community will put pressure on the Israeli Government to work within International Law, to stop the construction of the Separation Wall and to end the occupation. 7 To support and participate in non-violent direct action initiated by local Palestinian communities that function to directly confront and challenge the on-going occupation and the wall itself. 7 To put a stop to the Separation Wall that will transform the West Bank, Palestine into the largest ghetto in the world, literally imprisoning the majority of the population within a 25 foot (8 meter) high concrete wall and a maximum-security fence. 7 To organize resistance to Israeli occupation forces and policies that have robbed Palestinian civil society of any semblance of normalcy, security, or dignity. # # # For more information please contact: Flo Razowsky International ISM Volunteer 067 361 708 or 064 309 753 Abed Al-Karim Dalbah Palestinian ISM volunteer 055 474 066 or 059 836 783 For more information on Freedom Summer Palestine, please contact: Huwaida 067-473-308 ---------------------------------------

WALLS MAKE GOOD GHETTOS Demonstration to Stop the Wall! Palestinians from 10 villages in the Tulkarem region will be joined by dozens of internationals from the International Solidarity Movement to stop the work on a section of the Separation Wall that, when completed, will totally isolate 3 villages: Baqa Sharqiya, Nazlit Issa, and Nazli Abu-Nar, from the rest of the West Bank, trapping over 6,000 Palestinians between a maximum security (electrified) fence and the Green Line. In the Tulkarem area alone the construction of the Separation Wall has isolated 47,000 dunams (4 dunams == 1 acre) of land from Palestinian farmers and landowners, caused the destruction of 25,000 almond and olive trees and will isolate and/or destroy 6 water wells, used by Palestinian farmers to tend their agricultural fields, directly affecting over 11,000 Palestinians in the Tulkarem region, imprisoning them in their ghettos and isolating them from their farmland. The International Solidarity Movement's Freedom Summer Palestine Campaign will focus on the Israeli occupation policy of denying Palestinians the freedom of movement, a basic right guaranteed to all people under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Palestinian civilians are forbidden to leave their towns and villages without special permission from the Israeli military. Roadblocks, checkpoints and now, the construction of the Separation Wall, have ghettoized Palestinian Bantustans. Palestinians and internationals will campaign to highlight the oppressiveness of Israeli occupation policies and bring to light the fact that, despite all the talks of a "Road Map", facts on the ground continue to be created to entrench the occupation, and Palestinian human rights continue to be violated. For a map of the wall in this region, please see: http://www.nad-plo.org/maps/Qalqilya_land_grab.htm DATE: Thursday July 3, 2003 TIME: 11AM (Meet at 10:30 at the Municipality) PLACE: Baqa Sharqiya (Tulkarem Region) ### For more information: Arabic: 055 474 066 and 059 836 783 English: 067 361 708 or 064 309 753 For more information on the Freedom Summer Campaign, contact: Huwaida: 067-473-308 Ghassan: 052-595-319 ISM Office: 02-277-4602

Report on Protest at Baqa al-Sharqiya gate Tulkarem by Neal Cassidy 3 Jul 03

Over two hundred Palestinians and international solidarity activists held a peaceful protest today at a construction site of a gate which will soon be completed, effectively cutting this town of 4000 people off from neighboring cities in the West Bank. Chanting "Palestine Must be Free " and "No to the Wall ", the demonstrators marched to the construction site and briefly stopped Israeli construction crews working on the gate. Other construction work along the fence nearby proceeded, however. Approximately 40 internationals held up signs that read "Walls Create Prisons, Not Nations ", and "Peace Needs Bridges, Not Walls ", Palestinian children carried signs reading "End the Occupation " and "Free Palestine " in English and Arabic. Israeli soldiers in jeeps pulled back as the demonstration approached, apparently hoping to avoid a confrontation. As soon as the demonstrators left, however, the soldiers reappeared and imposed a rigorous checkpoint, subjecting people on foot and in vehicles to questioning and searches. A long traffic jam ensued, which was eased slightly when activists from ISM negotiated with the soldiers and got them to agree to expedite the flow. The gate, on the southern side of Baqa ash-Sharqiya, is part of Israel s so-called "security wall " now being constructed inside the Green Line which demarcates the 1967 truce line between Israel and the West Bank. The Israeli Government claims that the wall is needed for security, but its actual line, cutting deep into Palestinian land, suggest that its true purpose is to annex more land and water resources for Israel. Many local farmers in the north Tulkarm region, as along the rest of the wall & fence, have been cut off from their lands. Baqa ash-Sharqiya and two adjoining villages, Navlit Issa and Nazlit Abu Nar, combind population 67000, will be completely isolated from the rest of the West Bank when the wall project is completed, as it will be surrounded on all sides, with access controlled by only three gates.

I am attaching a picture from the demonstration and more pictures are available on http://www.palsolidarity.org. The demonstration was a success in that we were able to demonstrate without being fired on by the Israeli Occupying forces. There was some disappointment in the number of local Palestinians who came by the local Palestinians who organized the demonstration with a large number of villages and local committees. It was also very upsetting that the soldiers chose to retaliate for the demonstration by imposing a checkpoint on the road  clearly a form of collective punishment, which is against international law.

From Tul Karm to Qualqilia

We left Tul Karm for Qalqilya in the afternoon after the demonstration and after numerous roadblocks, vehicle changes, and backroads, we arrived at the Qalqilya checkpoint. Qalqilya is a city of about 40,000 people and the 25-foot tall Israeli Apartheid Wall will soon completely surround the city. Currently there is only one legal way in and out of the city-- the checkpoint, and a small number of illegal entrances that are often guarded by soldiers and will be closed off soon. The family I mentioned earlier who lives near the Wall, described Qalqilya, “It is a jail with one gate. Qalqilia must be the biggest prison in the whole world.” They said that their ability to leave or enter the City depends on the soldier running the checkpoint, that there is no law or rule, and that many people have not left the city for one, two, and even three years.

When our group of internationals and out local coordinator arrived at the checkpoint, the soldiers did not want to allow us to enter. We waited and attempted to negotiate our way into the city for hours with no success. As usual here, at a little after 6pm the soldiers closed the checkpoint. At least fifty Palestinians were still waiting at the checkpoint or arrived shortly after the checkpoint was closed. All hoped to return home that night. The soldiers were refusing to let them return to their homes and families and screaming at them to leave the checkpoint. Some men argued with the soldiers and the soldiers responded aggressively. The soldiers would march up to the Palestinians who refused to leave and put their faces centimeters from the Palestinians faces and scream at them. One soldier was especially aggressive, kicking stones at a young man and screaming in his face and pushing and grabbing Palestinians. This soldier charged screaming at a Palestinian and was prepared to beat him, when his captain pulled him back, possibly because of the circle of internationals witnessing this abuse. After about one hour of this, while a group of internationals were discussing the situation with the soldiers, the Palestinians began to walk through the checkpoint in a large group. This time the soldiers let them go. We heard the next day that another group of Palestinians came to the checkpoint at 8pm and were not allowed into the city until the soldiers switched shifts at 11pm. Our group was not allowed into Qalqilya and at about 7pm we went to one of the few remaining alternate entrances to Qalqilia where the Apartheid Wall has not yet been completed. These entrances are deemed illegal by the Israeli military and when we arrived there was an armored personnel carrier with four soldiers blocking the way. While we negotiated with the soldiers to allow us into the city, a young boy (possibly 14-years-old) came on a horse trying to leave Qalqilia for his home in the village across the road. Another group of Palestinians wanting to go home to Qalqilia gathered across the road, watching us negotiate with the soldiers. I asked our local Palestinian coordinator if we could negotiate for them to enter the city also, but it was almost dark and he felt that we could ask the soldiers about them, but should not push the issue and that we should enter the city if the soldiers allowed us. When the soldiers finally consented to allow us into the city, we asked about the boy on his horse and the men waiting across the road, but the soldier refused to let them pass. We entered Qalqilia, one local and 8 strangers with the privilege of international passports, while 40 locals were stuck to wait until the soldiers left or forced to find another way home. I felt sick to my stomach.

I am enraged at the authority that the Israeli military exerts by force on the Palestinians. The Israeli Occupying Forces violate the basic human rights of Palestinians at every possible level and on the Palestinians' own land. Imagine if an invading army built a 25-foot wall around your city and your ability to come and go was dictated by the soldiers of the occupying army. Imaging if you were told by the soldiers of the occupying military that you had to come home before 7pm at night. Imagine if your family's survival depended on your family farm and that the farmland was confiscated in order to build the wall which imprisons you. When the media, the U.S. government, or the Israeli government talk about the Roadmap, do they mention the Apartheid Wall that the Israeli government continues to build all along the western edge of the West Bank? Do they mention the thousands of more acres of Palestinian land that the Israeli government is confiscating? Do they mention the countless checkpoints, roadblocks, and locked gates that the Israeli occupying Forces continue to impose on Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza?

Despite all of these injustices the Israeli Occupying Forces impose upon the Palestinians in Qalqilia and all of Palestine, one young man here, Mohammad, described his community's determination to stay in Qalqilia, “We believe in this land  this is why we don't leave. This is my land, my father's land, my grandfather's land. I will not leave it. I will not even think of leaving it.”

-Brooke





p.s. I am adding some new pictures and links to my website at http://home.earthlink.net/~brookehatherton/