Below are the 8 most recent journal entries recorded in ISM Seattle's LiveJournal:

Thursday, January 23rd, 2003
3:57 pm	cracking bullets, whizzing bullets Ed Mast Cracking Bullets, Whizzing Bullets 12/24/02 When bullets are fired from two hundred yards away, they make several different sounds. There is always the reverberating report of the weapon being fired. Sometimes there is a buzzing whizz if the bullet passes close enough. If the bullet hits the ground nearby, there is a sharp splat of exploding dirt. And on occasion their is a sharp little crack, which, I learned today, is a tiny sonic boom as the bullet passes extremely close at a speed faster than sound. "When you hear the whizz, the bullet is in your area. When you hear the crack, the bullet has passed very close indeed." We learned this from a Welsh colleague who had the information from a BBC reporter training for crisis zones. Several of us -- from Sweden, Great Britain and America -- had gone to visit the Palestinian village of Salim, near Nablus. Salim and two other villages have been cut off from all transit by a trench which the Israeli army recently excavated. The trench is about 10 feet deep and 20 feet wide, and completely encircles the villages, preventing all wheeled traffic except for one small road, and that road has now been blocked by a roadblock and smaller trench which the rain has turned into a moat. People are going hungry in the village and animals are dying because there is no way to get in food. The roadblock is only intermittently staffed by Israeli soldiers, so on our way in -- unlike Palestinian residents, internationals can pass freely -- we participated in the apparently illegal act of carrying bags of feed grain across the muddy pond and mud heap which constitute the roadblock. (By the end of this process I began to resemble the Swamp Thing.) Supplies can't come in, but the people of Salim are also cut off from any access to their usual dumpsites for garbage or sewage, so recent months have seen outbreaks of Hepatitis both A and B. The shooting took place after we had met with people in the village and several of us had crossed a large open field to look more closely at a long section of the trench itself. When we heard the first firecracker pop of the shots, I started to crouch down, but a young man from London said "No, that's what they want us to do. We should stand." So we stood and tried to see where the shots were coming from. Several Israeli soldiers were firing from the settler road some hundreds of yards away. We were six men, as it happens, and at that distance they might have taken us for Palestinians who were coming too close to the boundary trench. We had been there some time, however, so the more likely targets were three Palestinians who were crossing the field toward us, away from the soldiers, toward the trench and the village behind us. The Palestinians were a man, a woman and a little girl whom I took to be about 5 years old. The parents both held her hands and walked quickly as the shots continued. We helped them as they crossed the trench and climbed up out, and we followed them back toward the village, trying to interpose ourselves between the family and the still-whizzing bullets. I found myself lifting my arms out wide at my sides, both as a universal I Come In Peace gesture to the soldiers, and as a sort of vague helpless gesture to shield the little family. I turned around at one point and noticed that several others were walking with similarly lifted arms. The man, woman and child were neither trembling nor ducking from the bullets, but simply walking as fast as they could without making the little girl stumble. They did not appear surpised or horrified. Many Palestinians have over the years have tried to communicate their feeling to me with a simple phrase: "This is our life." We made it back to the village without casualties, and the firing stopped. It's difficult to tell what was the soldiers' intent. Including the little girl, there were 9 of us, and it's hard to believe that the soldiers couldn't have hit at least one of us with the 20 or 30 rounds they fired, if they wanted to. On the other hand, I heard many bullets whizzing nearby, and I also heard several of the little cracks which meant bullets very close; so if the soldiers were merely trying to tell us something, they were not playing very carefully with their toys. ed ******* (Comment on this)
3:51 pm	Palestinian Bingo Linda Bevis PALESTINIAN BINGO Dec. 25, 2002 On Dec. 23, several ISM members visited the area where the Israeli forces (IDF) had blocked the road joining the city of Nablus with three outlying villages: Azmut, Salem, and Deir al-Khatab. Besides blocking at least two access roads to Nablus, the army has dug a large, steep moat to keep people from crossing fields to reach the Nablus access road. We had heard that the villagers were suffering from being cut off from jobs and food and hospitals in Nablus, as well as suffering from pollution coming from the chemical plant of the Israeli colony/settlement called Alon Moreh, which sits on two hills overlooking the three villages. The roadblock is intermittently staffed by the IDF. Usually there is one Armored Personnel Carrier (APC) (looks like a tank, except it doesn't have a large gun), with 3-4 soldiers at the wall of red earth that is the roadblock. Every time a Palestinian approaches the roadblock, slipping and sliding on the steep muddy paths approaching it from either side, the soldiers take his or her ID card. Then the Palestinian must wait in the rain and cold until the ID is returned. (These IDs are issued by the Israelis and are necessary to move around the country and to enter hospitals, etc.). When we ISM internationals first arrived on the afternoon of Dec. 23, about 20 Palestinian men were crouching in the rain, forced to face one direction and not to move. The soldiers, meanwhile, were taking their time checking every ID by telephone. They seemed to wait til 10 or 15 IDs had been checked before allowing any of the 10 or 15 people to leave. Occasionally, the soldiers would allow one or two people who approached the roadblock to pass directly on through. Unfortunately, this had the effect of convincing more Palestinians to try to pass through. In our three days of roadblock watch so far, we have found that the vast majority of Palestinians who have tried to pass through the roadblock have been stopped and held for 2-7 hours. Those stopped have included men, women, and the occasional donkey. Usually, younger children, very old people, and people so sick that they are on stretchers, have been allowed through with minimal (though not the absence of) hassle. During negotiations, the soldiers explained their behavior to us in the following ways: "this is a game of Palestinian Bingo: we gather all the IDs and sometimes we have a "bingo" and find a terrorist." Thus, I understand Palestinian Bingo be a strategy of not only criminalizing but actually arresting an entire population, in hopes of sifting through them to shake out likely suspects. The soldiers insist that this harassment and collective punishment is "justified by the end result" of occasionally catching someone they believe might be trying to bomb children in Tel Aviv. Clearly they are fearful, often making men bare their bellies (to show no explosives) before allowing them to approach the soldiers. Unfortunately, on the night of Dec. 23, the "bingo" was our friend Omar al Titi, who has been helping the nonviolent International Solidarity Movement and who had led us down to the roadblock thinking that any security check on himself would reveal that he was not "wanted". That night, however, after making Omar squat with the men for 3 hours, the IDF said that he was a "wanted" man and arrested him (true? or just trumped up charges to punish the ISM?). Although internationals tried to block the APC's exit, Omar was taken away. His whereabouts are currently unknown. The ISM has been successful at the roadblock in ensuring that no one was beaten or shot while we were there. The people tell us that our presence helps prevent this, as well as preventing some of the more egregious humiliations such as being made to kneel in muddy rainwater (in plentiful supply). However, the people also tell us that sometimes their punishment is doubled after we leave, thereby emphasizing that we cannot afford to ignore places that we begin to help. At the roadblock, we witness various levels of power games. One captain admits he's been reprimanded for hitting soldiers and indeed he is the most rigid about making the detained men squat and face a certain direction -- handcuffing any who attempt to speak to him. In another power trip, a young soldier with round glasses constantly aims his machine gun up the hill at little boys shouting far in the distance. When I stand before the rifle saying "I hope you aren't going to shoot anyone", he replies, "they're throwing stones", though they aren't. He keeps aiming and I keep standing in front of the muzzle til my partner helps me realize that this is his power game with me. So I distract with another request to let the detainees go. Later, in the rain and dark, only one detainee is left, but the Captain will not let him go. At first, he says it's because the man refused to call neighbors over to this Venus Flytrap of a roadblock when ordered to do so. Finally, the Captain tells us "because of you. You push too much. If not for you, this man would be gone." We realize then that we have pushed our political discussion too far, and this last detainee has paid the price. We ask if it would help if we step back. He nods and we step away, out of the shimmer of APC headlights. Minutes later, this last detainee is freed. We have learned all kinds of lessons about power today. It has been overpoweringly heartening at the roadblock to watch Palestinians approach Israeli soldiers (mostly 18-25 year olds here) as human beings and negotiate with them. There was 'Assem, a high school counselor, speaking to the soldiers: " Tell me, human to human, what is the solution? Our village is cut off from food; our people are hungry, our animals are starving, we cannot get to our jobs, and we cannot get to the hospital. We are starving, what is the solution? If you tell me, I will try to do it. Tell me, not as a soldier, but as a human, what should we do?" There was Haithem, who works in the Nablus Tourism Office (a grim job this year!), walking up to the soldier and saying: "I did not try to sneak across the field, I did not try to climb over some mountain. I came here, to you, to this checkpoint. Now I am asking you to let me go to my job in Nablus, or let me go home to my two girls who are coming home from school now and will have noone at home to care for them." And there was the man whose name I didn't get, organizing the group of 20 today (Dec. 25): "Alright, everyone who has been here since 7 am and waited here patiently for the last 7 hours, stand in this group here. Everyone who has just arrived and been detained, please stand over there. Now, I ask you soldiers, even though your shift has just changed and everyone looks new to you, to please let all of us who have been here since 7 go home. Thank you." We also witness various levels of humanity from the soldiers. One APC crew allows the Palestinians to complete unloading animal feed across the roadblock, while the IDF checks IDs. Another crew allows the detainees to stand, sit and build a fire. They give a canteen of water to a devout student of Islamic studies who wants to pray. They allow some old women and women with children to pass across the roadblock without security checks. Most soldiers (especially the dual citizen from Baltimore) feel compelled to justify their obviously unkind job as moral, in order to protect Tel Aviv babies from bombs. But humane or abusive as each individual man is, all are still soldiers in an army whose rules require them to systematically and consistently violate international law by collectively punishing an entire population of men, women and children. In Palestine, all 3 million people are being forced daily to play one big cruel and unpredictable game of Bingo. And amazingly, all of a sudden, all of those IDs which take "so long" to check according to the soldiers, materialized and were returned -- all the ones that the soldiers had had for 7 hours AND the ones that they'd only had for 1/2 an hour. Suddenly, at 3 pm today (Dec. 25), all the people detained during the day were released. Who knows why -- were the soldiers tired of standing in the rain, guarding old men and school girls and one soggy donkey? were they tired of the internationals and hoped they'd leave? were our calls to Hamoked (human rights organization) and the IDF spokesperson bearing fruit?.... The only thing that was clear was that it does NOT take a long time to check IDs, and if the soldiers really were there simply to increase Israeli security by checking IDs, the process could take less than 10 minutes for any one person. Even though Captain Arial Zev of APC # 753731 claimed that he was not doing this to "humiliate" and that he was "just following orders" (his own words were not in response to anything we had said, for we had found engaging in political discussion fruitless and counterproductive), his actions spoke loudly of collectively humiliating and terrorizing and starving the people and animals of three small villages -- a heroic group of courageous people retaining their dignity and community while trying to survive. And as I sit here in an incongruous internet cafe in the midst of a refugee camp in Nablus and write this report, I wonder whether our replacement shift saw a whole new group of folks detained. I wonder how the two young men got home after we met them on the road and warned them that they'd most likely be detained if they tried to pass the roadblock. And I wonder where Omar is tonight. Is he, like 90% of the male Palestinian population who has been to prison (currently there are 5,500 in prison) being beaten and forced to stand all night tied to a pipe in some freezing, dripping courtyard, or bent double in a cold "closet" covered in a burlap bag soaked in feces? I dedicate this report to you, Omar al-Titi, as you showed us the way to the roadblock, and opened up your heart and house to us. I hope that the coming days find you free -- and increasingly safe and warm. linda (Comment on this)
3:27 pm	Majd in Military Court Ed Mast MAJD IN MILITARY COURT 12/31/02 Palestinians in the Occupied Territories are not allowed to visit their relatives in prison, so hearings in Israeli military court are the only opportunity for many families to see their sons, brothers and fathers. Linda and I were able to sit with Lutfiyeh and Mahmoud at such a hearing for their son Majd, arrested along with all other males in his building last spring. Majd is in urgent need of ear surgery, and it was our hope that this hearing would gain Majd access to the medical care which the prison system has so far refused to allow him. His parents had not seen him in several months. The courtroom is in a prefab building the size of a small trailer, with about 15 chairs for family and witnesses. Prisoners are often tried in groups of three or four or five. The judge and all the court staff are uniformed soldiers. Behind us -- families seem to be barred from sitting in the front row of chairs -- sat two more parents waiting to see their son. More families came in and out as various prisoners were brought in and tried. They don't bring witnesses into military court. They don't debate or discuss or rebut. The prosecutor, who stands near the judge, simply speaks, at some length; then the defense attorney, when there is one, speaks at somewhat less length; then the judge decides what will happen. Mostly what happens is: decisions are postponed to a later date, while the prosecution gathers evidence. As would happen in any court, we sat for three hours waiting for Majd to appear. Lutfiyeh often stepped outside and looked through little cracks in the fencing, hoping to get a peek of her son as they brought him from the detention cell. When Majd's lawyer entered the court and indicated Majd was next, Lutfiyeh quietly picked up a chair and moved it front and center, as near as possible to the tiny prisoner's dock. Two days earlier we were with Lutfiyeh when her mobile phone rang with Majd's number from prison. There is apparently a contraband mobile phone in prison which prisoners share, so Majd is able to make a phone call every few days for a couple of minutes. When his call came that day, we happened to be in a part of Ramallah where there was no reception on Lutfiyeh's phone. We scurried with Lutfiyeh from street to street, looking for reception. We didn't find a place in time; the ringing stopped. We sat down with some friends we had planned to meet. After a moment, Lutfiyeh began to sob. Lutfiyeh doesn't like to cry. She prefers to laugh when she can. We all tried to comfort her. A young man who worked in the little restaurant seemed to know her situation. He spoke to her in Arabic, saying "You should not cry that your son is in jail. You should be proud." There were other mothers at the table with us, and at least one of them frowned with disapproval at this comment. In some ways, says Lutfiyeh, it's harder when Majd calls. "As soon as he says Hi Mom, my heart breaks." I was expecting that Lutfiyeh would start to cry when she saw Majd. She did not. When Majd was finally brought in to the little courtroom, Lutfiyeh smiled at him, and she sat beaming as if she were witnessing his graduation from college. Majd had grown a beard since she saw him last, and Lutfiyeh turned to us and mouthed with pride and surprise:"He's a man!" Same with Mahmoud: when his son came in, Mahmoud started smiling and giggling as if someone had given him a wonderful unexpected compliment or gift. As it happened, Majd was in the prisoner's dock along with the son of the couple behind us. They touched our shoulders and pointed out their son to us. They were smiling and beaming too. No talking is allowed in the courtroom, so all chat between families and prisoners must be furtively mouthed and signalled. Prosecution and defense spoke briefly and Majd's case was postponed for six weeks. The judge had not read the materials about Majd's health crisis. The judge did at least rule that Majd should be examined by the prison medical officers. I was taken aback that this had not already happened; Majd has been in prison since April. The ruling may be a positive step, though Linda points out that these prison medical officers are same ones who are routinely charged with assuring authorities that prisoners are healthy enough for further torture. After the prisoners are led out, the families leap up and step outside. There are chain link fences covered with green tarp material, but the tarp has some tiny rips and cracks. If the soldiers are in a kind mood, they may linger outside with prisoners, and the families may talk for a moment through tiny rips in the green tarp. This day's soldiers were in such a mood, so Lutfiyeh and Mahmoud and the family behind us were able to crouch down and exchange a few sentences in Arabic with their respective sons. Then the young men were led away. Linda and I were able to reach up over the fence and wave and call "Bye Majd!" Then we followed Lutfiyeh and Mahmoud as they ran over to another section of fence beyond another building, where they were able to peek through another tear in another piece of tarp and catch one more look at their son being led away, back to the bus and back to Ashkelon prison. Then the young men were gone, and everyone hugged, and we came away with the mothers and tried to comfort them in their tears. ed (Comment on this)
3:27 pm	Lutfiyeh, Hurriyeh Ed Mast Lutfiyeh, Hurriyeh 12/22/02 We spent last night with Lutfiyeh and family in Ramallah. Linda and Lutfiyeh are sisters of the heart, and it's a deep pleasure to watch the joy that Linda's simple presence brings to Lutfiyeh's grim weary life. Husband Mahmoud is gracious and gentle as ever, limping slightly on a wounded toe. Soldiers, we ask? No, he stubbed it on a stairway. When we arrived at their home in Ramallah, they were fiddling with a newly-installed ramshackle kerosene heater, like a big lantern in the middle of the main room of their apartment, attempting to supply heat in freezing cold winter when gas and electricity are unreliable. At this moment the electricity is on, enough for us to watch TV and see an Arab singer named Edward sing the popular song "Linda, Linda". Older daughter Raya is away at university near Jenin, so the only child at home is young Hurriyeh. When I first met Hurriyeh years ago, she was a little girl with only one primary expression: a radiant cheerful friendly smile. She still likes to smile and giggle, but the smile is varied by other expressions now: a sad look, a puzzled look, a look of intense worried total concern. This last will come suddenly, when an APC drives by, when her mother Lutfiyeh begins to talk about Majd, or even when the phone rings, because it might be Majd calling from Ashkelon Prison. One whole wall of the apartment has nothing but photos of Majd, the 19-year old son who was arrested in April along with all the other males in his builing. Lutfiyeh speaks slowly when asked about him. Hurriyeh travels every Sunday across Israel to visit her older brother in prison for one hour. 13-year old Hurriyeh is the only family member allowed to visit Majd. As it happens, she was born in Jerusalem, so she shows her birth certificate and is allowed to travel across Israel. Also, since she is not yet 16, she does not yet have the compulsory ID card that all Palestinians in the Occupied Territories must carry. In three years, Hurriyeh will be forced to carry the Palestinian ID, and her visits to Majd in prison will end. ed (Comment on this)
3:27 pm	molly - bullets through the wall in gaza Molly McClain From Gaza December 2002 Hello guys, im so sorry for the long time with no info. i cant believe how much has happenned in the what, 7 days since i last wrote? im back in jerusalem now and i thought a lot of you wouldnt want to hear about my week until i was safely here in the old city :). on, the 22 or 23 i cant remember- me and firyal and three of her kids- rula, ihab and mohammed, were sitting in the living room of their house. i was reading and they were sitting on the ground doing homework. we heard shots that were pretty close and they then sounded like they were hitting the building, so all of us got down. then shots must have come through the cement block kitchen wall. we were all screaming and firyal and i tried to get on top of the kids and i turned off the gas heater and there was just concrete flying thorough the air and i thought for sure it wasnt just bullets but some sort of larger explosion. we had to run down the stairs that are unprotected from the tank fire to get to safety. we huddled and giggled and ate oranges downstairs in their grandmothers house. i was shaking and so was firyal. Finally, tanks still sitting outside, we went back upstairs (just firyal and mustafa and me) me adn firyal wanted to sleep somewhere else but mustafa said no we were staying. We talked about why they stayed and they just dont have enough money to move- expensive rent in rafah is 100 dollars a month and knowing how much i spend and how easy it would be to give them 100 dollars a month killed me,becuase i knew i couldnt do it. mustafa went into the bedroom and firyal went in and found him crying. she was horrified. turns out it was just bullets, 4 actually and there was one that would have found my head had i been sitting where i was seconds before the bullet came through. the shots were also really low whereas before they had been relatively high- you get down no problem- not so this time. this random shooting into occupied houses happens all day and all night in most of the neighborhoods in rafah and there's nothing anyone there can do about it. it's how most of the people (kids) died when i was there. these arent homes of criminals or 'terrorists' they are just families who happen to live near this stupid wall. anyway, the next day we went out to let the army know we were there, we went with big signs saying 'the world is watching' we found some towers, tanks and bulldozers. ive got some great photos of one of our guys almost getting squished by a falling wall. it turned into a big debacle chaos with kids throwing stones, tanks firing at us and the bulldozers going farther (we think) than they were planning on it just because some of our group were being pretty antagonistic. we were really close to my house and the whole family was up in the top floor waving at us like we were their heroes or something. it was amazing to me that there in rafah- no one pays attention. there's no media, there's no international presence, there's no nothing and the army knows it and the people know it. So they many of them were happy that we were just there, even if we couldn't stop anything or change anything. later that day i got a call from mustafa, i couldnt understand him so i gave the phone to someone who could, and he said mustafa just wanted to say hi. a few hours later ahmed (mustafas cousin) called. i gave the phone to someone and they told me that the home i had been staying in had been demolished. i wanted to go to them,but i was shuttled off and told that i couldnt go becuase it was too dangerous. i should have just gone, but in rafah we ALWAYS have to have an escort especially women and i knew they would freak out if i just ran over. so i couldnt eat and i had bad dreams all night about what was happening and not being able to be with them. apparently at two in the afternoon a bulldozer just came, no warning, no nothing and just knocked one of the walls down of this four story building where firyal was cooking dinner and the kids were studying. they were hysterical. they ran away and there was massive firing from the tanks as they all ran out of the building. my friend hendrick who had been staying next door spent the night there and apparently it was like hell. there were huge explosions, the army turned off the electricity and sent in troops, the troops set up dynamite and an apache was in the air watching everything. they all left, again under massive fire from the now 12 tanks. We went the next day and it was awful, we got shot at again and i didnt really want to take pictures becuase i felt so sick and was crying so hard. This was home to 6 families. the day before one the sisters had shown me this huge closet full of beautiful clothes she had made, now it was all gone. This place that mustafa and his brothers and cousins had built with their own hands. This family had turned into my family (just the night before mustafa said that he was just as worried about me after the shooting as he had been about his family and that before there were 6 people in his family and now there were 7) and their heartbreak was mine, only mine was so so so so small in comparison. all the men were in the corner of this ruined home crying, holding each other and the women were outside just sort of staring. im sorry this is so long, im getting tired of writing and im sure if any of you have read this far, you're tired of reading too :). the story has something of a happy ending- they found a new house, it's smaller and not as nice, but it's a home which is more than many of these families end up with. even so, mustafa cried again today. i got to help them move in and spend the first couple of nights with them again, which helped me anyway :) mustafa was very sad to see me go today, but i think pretty excited to have his wife and bed back :). now im here in jerusalem and i thought id be happy to be free, free from constant watching and escorting and staring and coffee :) but i just feel really really lonely. and i miss them so much, and all the people i met that were so sweet and open and wonderful. and i hate that this happens every day there every day. that same day there were 12 houses demolished, which equates to like maybe 30-40 families without a home. and there's no one to help them or to stop this and i hate it and it's wrong and i paid for it and you guys paid for it. They cant leave, no one in gaza can leave, it's a huge prison and they are stuck there. they dream to see jerusalem, tall buildings, anything not rafah. how is this possible? how can people do this and others not try to stop it? and how can we even try to stop it? i couldnt do anything being there,i think it's possible we even made it worse. i think i need a hug :) anyway, ill see you all soon and im happy for that. molly (Comment on this)
3:04 pm	carla in gaza from Carla (from Seattle) in Gaza on December 28 Mawasi is a village on the coast side of Rafah (in the Gaza Strip) that is surrounded by settlements and guarded by a checkpoint that has not allowed a Palestinian through in 2 years. The villagers survive on whatever they themselves grow. No food or medicine has been allowed though for these 2 years. People who leave have not been allowed back. The action that is happening tomorrow has beem organized by Palestinians who are going to try & get back to their homes. They estimate that 300 will gather to return. There are 6 internationals here with the International Solidarity Movement that have been asked by the Palestinians to accompany them past the checkpoint. The Palestinians are very excited about doing this~ Yesterday a group of us went up to a tank to communicate that we have been getting shot at in homes & our countries would be very upset (so maybe we lied) if any one were to be hurt. I was so outraged after the experience. To quote Barbara Kingsolver, I "have the privelege of a safe life", even here. I can walk up to the tank and know they would not directly shoot me (well, it did shoot over our heads and at our feet). However, any Palestinian is fair game. The soldiers shoot into occupied houses, down alleys and streets. They just blanket an area with bullets. Many civilians are killed, children in classrooms, children playing outside of their houses, women cooking dinner. . . . all unarmed, all innocent of doing anything other than existing. How th! is helps Israeli securuty baffels me. Few of these people have ever seen a soldier, much less spoken to one--Gaza is so different from what I have heard of the West Bank where soldiers and civilian Palestinians see each other face to face regularly. Here the soldiers are up in guard towers at checkpoints or inside of tanks, APC's & bulldozers. They just shoot. There's no talking, no negotiating. Yesterday was not a planned action we were just going to look at the wall being built to better keep Palestinians in and the tank started firing above our heads. We then started to walk towards it to speak with the soldiers that we are indeed here to stay. (ISM has not had a presence in Gaza until this summer, unlike the West Bank where there have been ISM involvement for 2 years). The group of Palestinians that hung behind had never been that close to a tank. One young man who is one of our escorts told me he had nev! er seen the face of an Israeli until then. They are always too far away. (Gaza is very traditional, the women with the ISM scarve ourselves, and all of us move around the city with Palestinians accompanying us). I've been calling media in Jerusalem to try & get coverage of tomorrow. This has never been done before--families trying to get back to their village walking past a checkpoint. They would just get shot. The determination, the strength of these people is humbling. After all they live through, all their losses, they laugh & joke & love their children. The young man who accompanied me & Molly to see the demolished house of the family she had been with told me, when he saw me in tears as we walked away, that this is why they laugh so much--a person simply cannot contain that much grief forever--they see no future different than what they are experiencing right now. And they go on, setting the lat! est atrocity behind them. Amazing people, no whining, no complaints, but this steady determined day by day perseverance. Yours (and theirs), Carla (Comment on this)
2:18 pm	one hundred rounds of warning shots and a very long walk Carla Curio Gaza - part two Today, 12 January 2003 The next day we did accompany Palestinians down the road that used to lead into Mawasi (that now stops at a checkpoint guarding the new settlements) carrying medical supplies. At least one hundred rounds of warning shots hit the ground around us as we slowly made our way forward. A very long walk of only a quarter mile. One reporter, a Palestinian, was shot in the head (he was taken to the hospital and survived as the wound was superficial), but the group decided to continue forward. The task of those of us who were internationals was to protect the Palestinians (the reporter had been taking pictures to the side--very exposed). We walked in front and on the outer edge of their group, with them in the center, using the privilege of our international status (we hoped) to shield them. I had moved to the back of the group on the same side as the guntower in order to shield the women and I have not ever paid so much attention to absolutely every step I took. I was hearing sharp cracks of bullets on the ground next to me. A lot of them. Sprays of dirt kicked up by the bullets hit my cheeks. Each step became a shear act of will. The Palestinian women next to me must have been living the same struggle, but they were here to try to go home after two years, and I was here to accompany them as far as they were willing to go. Carrying a cardboard box of medical supplies (everyone else had see-through plastic bags) I was acutely aware of how they would have the excuse of saying they couldn't see what was in the box--there could have been a bomb--if I were to be hit. I opened the top, carrying it at an angle to demonstrate there was nothing to hide. Palestinians from Mawasi had not walked this road in two years without being shot at. This obviously was no different, however, we made it close enough to the guntower to be able to negotiate with the soldiers, closer than anyone had done previously. Encouraged by the negotiations, we took a few more steps forward, eliciting more bullets, this time silent bullets. That was truly eerie--the only sign we had that we were still being fired on was seeing (and feeling) dirt kicked up by the impact of the bullets. Unheard bullets were more terrifying--and luckily only a few were fired--those who had more experience with soldiers in Gaza announced that it was time to retreat, as the use of silent bullets meant serious business. We did not make it past the checkpoint that day, but two days later a group of Palestinians and internationals did go those last few feet to the checkpoint and negotiated getting the medical supplies into Mawasi. A small victory. Amazing to me was how quickly I got used to gunfire. The first day I was in Rafah I went with Molly to see the family she had been staying with. Their home had been demolished that morning and the family was gathering what it could salvage. We had to run for cover as a tank fired on what was left of the house. By the time I went to the Mawasi checkpoint I had been staying in Gaza in Palestinian homes for a week. Every day and almost every night I experienced shooting from the tanks that rolled by the edge of town, into the neighborhoods where the houses were located. Gunfire was (is) a daily reality on the southern perimeter of town bordering Egypt. Here Israel has plans for a "security" wall designed to keep Palestinians from leaving Gaza. The goal was (is) to wear down the resolve of families to stay in their homes that are on the periphery of town near the future wall. Neighborhoods are repeatedly assaulted by gunfire from tanks until families leave. Sometimes a tank will target a house with mortar fire, as was the inhabited house next to where my friend Molly was staying. (Let me make it clear these are unarmed civilians, families, non-combatants). Once homes are abandoned, Israeli soldiers will first dynamite, then bulldoze the houses, and begin to assault the homes of families that are newly exposed, homes that had laid behind the now demolished ones. Slowly they are eating away at the edges of Rafah. That is all I have to share for now, except to add that my experience of Palestinians is of a people to whom family and land mean everything. I will hold in my heart forever the smiles, the eyes full of kindness, the humor, and the generosity of each person who has contributed to my first memories of Palestine. In Solidarity, with Love~ Carla (Comment on this)
10:47 am	god bless our home Ed Mast A CALM DAY IN GAZA 12/30/02 We sit on the floor of a pleasantly-colored cinderblock apartment, one of a row of buildings painted in bright Santa Fe colors, in Rafah near the south end of the Gaza Strip. There are rugs on the floor and the ubiquitous pads that serve as beds by night and seats for guests by day. The woman of the house has invited us into her home and is serving us tea. This is daytime, there are no gunshots, and children play and follow us without fear. These homes are a little squeezed together, with no space between or around, but otherwise one might imagine that the inhabitants have little to complain about. This is, however, the woman's third home. She came here two months ago, when her other home was demolished, along with 96 others, because the Israeli settlement near Rafah wanted to expand. Everyone in these houses was driven out at the same time. They were awakened in the night, without warning, by bulldozers. This woman has been driven out of two other homes previously: in 1973, and in 1990, during the first Intifada. She does not at first mention the earlier home of her family, in Ashdod inside what is now Israel, from which her family was expelled in 1948. On her wall is a clock with needlepoint stitching below it saying "God Bless Our Home." Outside we are cautioned not to walk too near the corner of the street. By night, gunfire from settlers and soldiers is common there, and it sometimes happens by day. We walk to an SOS orphanage, and see the pockmarks of rifle and tank shells in the walls. We go to the southeast and southwest corners of Rafah. On the one corner is the border with the Israeli settlement which has been expanding and confiscating land. I take a few steps to look closer, and am again warned to step back. They point out a distant tower from which soldiers customarily shoot. Again, it's daytime, and mostly the shooting happens at night. On the other corner of Rafah, a high opaque metal wall is being built, to seal off the border with Egypt. The purpose of the wall is apparently to prevent the smuggling of weapons across the border, so Palestinians are to be walled in as well as out. "Rafah is a prison" one says to me. A swath of homes several miles long and maybe 100 yards wide must be demolished on the Gaza side of this wall, to leave a no-man's-land border zone. We walk through what are labelled Block D and Block G and Block O, areas where these demolitions have taken place. They look like bombsites. This is a refugee camp, so the buildings are mostly made of concrete blocks, and easily pushed over. The sides of buildings look like sponges or coral reefs, so covered with bullet and missile holes. We pick our way through a landscape of rubble to see this. Several houses with whole sides shorn away, and one house tilted halfway to the ground, crumbling slowly before our eyes as if there had been an earthquake. A three-story house that is mostly still standing, battered with gaping holes and pockmarks, turns out to be the house where our friend Molly and the children of her host family were awakened in the night by Israeli gunfire penetrating the walls. (People ask us if we know "Maaaly?") The family doesn't live there anymore. No one lives in these crushed homes. "This is our life" people tell us. I climb up on one pile of rubble to look at the wall. People call to me: Get down! I hear tanktreads over near the wall behind some of the rubble. Even in the daytime they must stay out of the army's sight. We leave the area without incident to travel with our friends back to Gaza City, in the north of the Gaza Strip. Our friends came to Rafah that day to deliver a workshop on storytelling techniques for kindergarten teachers. We were able to come to Khan Younis and Rafah without any trouble in the morning, but in the afternoon the Khan Younis checkpoint is closed. 500 people are already waiting when we arrive at about 3:00. Linda and I walk up to the front and talk to the soldiers. We are able to negotiate the passing of one ambulance, but nothing else. At about 8:30 that night the checkpoint opens and our friends, the early child education specialists, are able to drive us the 15 miles to their home in Gaza City. The night before, they got home at midnight. They are supposed to deliver workshops in Khan Younis and Rafah the rest of this week. This is the first income they've had in some months ed (Comment on this)