Update on Detained Meningitis Patient

******************
1.Update on Jaber by Hanna from IWPS (International Women's Peace
Service)
April 25, 2005

On Thursday afternoon, 31-year-old Jaber was leaving a hospital in
Nablus where he had spent 5 days and been diagnosed with viral
meningitis. He was stopped at Huwara checkpoint and detained from
12:30 pm – 10 pm, when the checkpoint closed and the soldiers
officially arrested him.

Jaber's health deteriorated during that time. His wife, who is
pregnant with their fourth child, was with him and reports that he
became delirious after so many hours in the sun with no food or
water.

The army reports that after arriving at Salem detention center, he
was given water through an IV. We heard nothing else for a couple
days – no reason for his arrest, and only vague medical reports from
the army whose doctors diagnosed him with everything from a stomach
ulcer to heart disease, always with the same conclusion: "Medical
condition does not bar arrest."

Finally after many phone calls from organizations and individuals
around the world, they admitted he had something more serious and
took him to Ha'emek Hospital in Afula. I called the hospital, and
the first English-speaking doctor I found was also Palestinian. All
the Jewish doctors had gone home for Passover, he told me, so the
family could call the emergency room and speak Arabic with any of
the doctors if they wanted to find more information. He was
extremely helpful, calling me back twice to tell me as much as he
knew.

Meanwhile, I kept getting phone calls from the family and friends,
saying that his wife was not doing well, the family was worried
because he hadn't seemed fully recovered when leaving the hospital
in Nablus, etc. Everyone who heard about his arrest was shocked he
has no political ties, people kept saying.

The family asked us to try to visit him, so Susy (an Israeli
activist) and I went to Afula yesterday. We drove north through
Israel, but not far from the Green Line. We passed countless
Palestinian Muslim villages (I saw mosques everywhere) and
Palestinians walking along the roads. I marveled over the fact that
even after Israel's destruction of over 400 Palestinian towns and
villages, so many still remain.

We arrived at the hospital and went directly to the ward where Jaber
was being treated. His room was not difficult to find, since it was
the only one with a closed door and two armed soldiers sitting
outside. Susy tried to walk in and was stopped by the soldiers.
They would not let us enter, but we were able to talk to the doctor,
who had not yet received any information about Jaber's prior medical
situation. He seemed frustrated with the army's lack of sharing
information. We gave him the phone number of the doctor who had
treated Jaber in Nablus, and just at that moment the faxed medical
report from Nablus came from friends of the family. The doctor told
us he had just done a spinal tap and would soon determine Jaber's
illness. The viral meningitis diagnosis was confirmed an hour later.

We paced back and forth in front of Jaber's door a few times,
knowing it was unlocked and we could just walk in, but that that
probably would not be good for anyone. The soldiers became agitated
when we got too close, and were disturbed by our presence. The
hospital security guard, however, was somewhat more friendly, and
called the DCO to see if we could go into Jaber's room.

Finally an answer came: "No, you can't go in right now. Maybe after
many hours you'll be allowed in." So we left the hospital and came
back an hour or two later. We were almost sure we would not be
allowed in, but thought it was worth a try, another argument,
whatever it would take. It didn't take anything. We showed up at
the entrance of the hospital and the guard said, "You have
permission now." It was surprising, but not unheard of – the army
rules and decisions never cease to amaze me in their arbitrariness.

We returned to Jaber's ward, and the soldiers let us in, but said
one of them had to stay with us the whole time. When we entered
Jaber was sleeping. I said his name softly and he opened his eyes
and gave a little moan. I introduced myself, and he greeted me with
the customary, "Ahlan w'sahlan" (welcome).

He started to come to his senses a bit as he realized this was an
opportunity to notify the outside world of his situation. He was so
tired, and so sick, he told us. He kept saying "Biddi amoot"which
could be translated as "I want to die" or "I'm going to die." I'm
not sure which he meant. Maybe both.

He said the doctor was good, the hospital was good, but if he's
taken back to Salem detention center they might as well shoot him.

He was in tears, as he told us he hadn't eaten, drunk, or slept in
three days. In Salem, he said, they threw him in a small cell with
9 other people, and did not let anyone out to go to the bathroom
from 9pm – 8:30am. He spent the next two days on the floor in pain
(there were no beds), where he said it was extremely cold at night.
He told us he lost consciousness four times, but didn't sleep at
all. Nobody spoke with him while he was there, so if there is to be
any interrogation, it has not yet begun.

He still hasn't had anything to eat or drink, he said, only the
occasional IV to keep him from deadly dehydration.

I had seen a full tray of food leave his room earlier, and asked him
about it. "The doctor told me not to eat for a half hour after the
spinal tap," he said. The soldier argued, "The food came two hours
later." He asked us to feed him when they brought more food, he
really was too weak to feed himself.

He told us to lift up the blanket covering his feet, and we saw the
metal cuffs on his ankles, which seemed totally ridiculous. He was
too weak to sit up or feed himself, and two armed guards sat outside
his room, but he had to be shackled? One of the soldiers
said, "It's not our decision, we're only the escorts. We don't even
have the key."

While Susy spoke to the soldier I dialed Jaber's wife's number. She
picked up and I quickly said, "Hi Khulud, I'm with Jaber, hold
on..." and handed him the phone. They talked for a minute before
the soldiers noticed and then another minute while Susy argued with
the soldier about why he should be allowed to talk on the phone.
When he hung up, Jaber handed me the phone, thanked me, and smiled
for the only time all day.

The doctor pulled me aside at one point to ask about my
organization. When I told him about IWPS and what we do, he asked
why. It was a personal question: Why do you come from America to do
this? I told him I'm American and my tax dollars go to support
Israel's occupation of Palestine, and I'm Jewish and my name gets
used to oppress Palestinians as well.

We stayed with Jaber for over an hour, feeding him pudding, water,
and juice (when I asked for a second cup for the juice, one of the
soldiers said, "This is a hospital, not a restaurant"). Jaber asked
for another blanket and pillow, which the nurses brought. He asked
me what day it was, and I told him – Sunday, April 24. He begged us
to go to the Finance Ministry in Ramallah, where he works, and see
if they can do anything to help. He also stressed the importance of
sending the photos that Anna had taken of him being arrested at
Huwara to the newspapers, and giving them to his family.

I told him people from all over the world already knew about the
situation, that the army and hospital had been getting calls all
night, that he had to hang in there for his family, etc. "Just
don't let them send me back to Salem," he kept saying,"or I'll die."



For those of you who want and are able to do something for Jaber,
please call Israeli authorities and demand to know why they continue
to hold a sick man with no charges.

Israeli Army phone numbers (these numbers are what you dial from the
US – those of you outside can hopefully figure out which number to
dial from where you are
DCO in Jenin: (011-972) 4-640-7312 or (011-972) 4-617-9207
DCO "Humanitarian Office": (011-972) 2-997-7733


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

2.Crossing Erez by Ernie

I just got back to Jerusalem this evening from Gaza and it was so
hard to do, a simple thing like crossing through a checkpoint -
leaving the Palestinian authority's area of control back into
Israeli controlled territory - that i now believe all my paranoia
about security isn't paranoid after all.

Somehow my passport got "flagged" again as some kind of trouble-
maker and I was interrogated for quite a while. I am told it
usually takes an hour or so to get through this "boarder" (which
feels like an international boarder, but isn't, in fact), but it
took me almost 5 hours all told.

The result is they let me through without trying to deport me
because I was able to produce a valid connection to an Israeli, the
fellow at the college that is hosting my visit to Israel. I don't
think that any of the church stuff I told them all about impressed
them at all, even though I could produce all sorts of evidence about
what I was actually doing in Gaza - visiting all kinds of Christian
people, sites, and organizations.

The fact that I had the business card of the "Palestinian center for
human rights" in my pocket, along with many, many other cards of
places I visited, caused genuine alarm. I can't tell you how
infuriating that made me feel. In what kind of society is
monitoring human rights policies and practices some kind of a
crime? I have to say it made me feel so sorry for the state of
things in the collective Israeli psyche.

Anyway, I'm just sputtering now and I am sorry for that. Of course,
there were also Palestinians struggling to get through the
checkpoint too - and they are the lucky ones. Most Palestinians have
had no chance at all of leaving or entering Gaza for the last 4 -5
years. I saw a few workers lucky enough to have daily work permits
for Israel returning home for the evening. There were maybe 30 of
them at most. There used to be thousands everyday who went to work
in places like Tel Aviv - usually doing manual labor and other
service work. Actually the manager of the hotel in Gaza city where
I stayed said he used to be a life guard on the beach at Tel Aviv.
The first ever Palestinian one. He has not been permitted to work
there, or leave Gaza at all, for the last 5 years.

One old woman today got pulled aside like me for interrogation. She
had serious infirmities (from diabetes) to the point where she could
not see to dial the phone I loaned her to call her family to tell
them what was happening to her and where she was. She could barely
walk when she was cleared and the guard escorted her to the entry
point into Gaza (she was trying to get in while I was trying to get
out). I don't know how she was going to make it the whole way
walking through the absurdly long tunnel to the other side. Thank
god she wasn't carrying anything. I had trouble hiking it myself
with just my few bags.

Besides the tunnel is a complex maze of remotely operated gates and
turnstiles culminating with metal detectors and some kind of full-
body scanners that have the health professionals in Gaza very
concerned.

At one point on my way through the maze I was told over a loud
speaker by some unseen Israeli soldier watching us on some monitor
to hold the baby who was being carried by the very old man in front
of me, so they could scan him. I don't know what was wrong with the
baby, but the child was clearly seriously ill. Low birth weight
perhaps. Listless and emaciated. The lack of humanity in that
experience was a horror. The Israelis must really think all
Palestinians monsters to treat them this way. It is so sad. And
that wrong thinking creates such suffering - on both sides of the
barbed wire.

When the security officer decided he could find no reason to keep
holding me he said, "You know they killed a car of Americans in
there 2 years ago". And so what is that supposed to mean to me?
Because once out of desperation a terrible act of violence was
committed by Palestinians against innocents, it means no one in Gaza
should ever be trusted again, that they are untouchable? Of course
I know that is not the only act of violence committed against
innocents by Palestinians, but my point is, what about the
systematic and ordinary violence committed by the Israeli military
against Palestinian civilians every day? What about the children in
Rafah that the Israeli's killed last week for playing soccer? I
wish I could have said this to him and we could have had a real
discussion. There is plenty to talk about. But I knew that if I
said anything of the kind, I was going to jail and not back to
Jerusalem.

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

3.Settlers attack an elderly man written by Saed Bannoura
IMEMC&Agecnies
26.4.2005

http://www.imemc.org/index.php?
option=com_content&task=view&id=10675&Itemid=1

An elderly man was seriously injured when a group of settlers from
the Alon Moreh settlement hurled stones at him and severely beat him
as he was herding his sheep on his land near the settlement.

Aziz Hanani, 70, from Beit Dajan near Nablus, said that he was
attacked by five settlers who stole his cane and beat him with it
for approximately twenty minutes, causing serious injuries, mainly
to his head. Hanani added that three of the settlers also hurled
stones at him during the attack.

A tractor driver passing near the area later on saw Hanani laying on
the ground, and took him to his home, from where he was transferred
by ambulance to a local hospital in Nablus.

A nephew of Hanani said that his uncle suffers from diabetes. "This
is unbelievable, intolerable, we are living on our land, taking care
of our fields, we never attacked anybody, never harmed anybody, yet
they attack us with this brutality", the nephew added.

Abu Akram, a resident of the village called the Israeli police about
the attack. The police department dispatched one police car one hour
after they were informed on the attack, and made no effort to track
down the settlers involved in the attack.

"If a settler was attacked, and mildly injured, the police would
have arrived immediately and attacked our village, but since the
injured man is a Palestinian, they showed up an hour after the
attack", the resident said. Also, Abu Akram added that the police
said that they would investigate the event, but similar promises in
the past have rarely been followed up on by Israeli police.

The police took a statement from Hanani, who informed them that he
would be able to easily identify at least one of the settlers, the
most violent of his attackers.

Settlers of Itamar and Alon Moreh settlement have carried out
several attacks on the Palestinian residents in the Nablus area.

The residents demanded that the Israeli police act against the
increasing numbers of settler attacks against unarmed Palestinians