At approximately 4pm Wednesday May 14th, 2 tanks, 3 apcs, about 6
jeeps,
2 hummers and two apache helicopter gunships descended upon Jenin camp.
I
made for the camp, running up a neighbours-in-doorways and
stone-bearing-shebab alley thronged with people telling me to come back
and 'Where!?', up into the heart of the devastated neighbourhood. An
APC
and a tank were occupying the street, the tank lifting up its huge
barrel
to survey, slowly, spanning, scaling, raising and lowering its
home-hemeoraging sights. The APC spat out a few rounds of its 50
calibre
load onto the asphalt infront us (me and some rocks-aloft yoot). We
fanned back behind a house, out of its range. I asked them where it was
that they were arresting people and was pointed into the direction of
the
hospital. Behind the hospital, soldiers were holding a woman hostage
infront of her fiance - Khalil's - house. There were three jeeps that I
could see taking a street each flanking the house. Soldiers had taken
up
sniper positions behind short metal shields on both sides of the front
entrance to Khalil's house. A yellow minibus with two unflinchig
elederly
women inside was being used as a shield between them. A blue checkered
shirted, M16 slung, civilian clothed commander wearing a green helmet,
a
blue balaclava, a green flak waistcoat bearing grenades, bullets,
water,
a walkietalkie and a map was calling the shots. As I got closer, one of
the soldiers emerged from behind his shield to take aim at some toilet
paper (yup, anything at hand) throwing kids. I yelled at him to stop
and
obstructed him. He lowered his sights and smiled, told me to
shut-the-fuck-up or he'd fucking shoot me.

The tank and the APC could be seen in the distance, still humming
inside
the grey-area of
the camp.

I then saw that the second throng of soldiers had 4 shebab blindfoled
infront of them - again, using them as human shields. They beat them
sporadically, I saw blow after blow and taut words barked through
gritted
teeth hit them.When they were finally dragged up from their shield
positions and slung into the back of a waiting, older, fatter, more
ideological soldier crammed jeep (anyone staying in the force long
enough
into their thirties is in it from their depths) one had blood trickling
from his nose, he was covered in just-eaten dust, one of his legs
appeared to be dislocated; another had his flies undone, skin and hair
showing out, and another was marked with boot/fist dents. Sousan, they
were holding Sousan as go-between/hostage - calling her by her name,
beckoning her, letting her stand up and watch what was going on,
telling
her to shut-up, come-go. The soldiers told me to fuck off, but I told
them I wasn't going anywhere, khalas (enough). They then brought out
three young girls - aged 4, 9, 12, plus a large highly distressed,
dehydrated, woman, groaning and stumbling, white congealed spittle
settled in the corners of her mouth. 'Hospital, take me to la hospital'
she was saying, in English. They were ordered to sit beside the
soldiers,
backs up against the wall, Uskoot (Shut it/Quiet). The girls were
wide-eyed with shock. Bullets were flying overhead. A sound grenade was
exploding behind us, the jeeps were growling sporadically. The fighters
were stuttering out their AK47 bullet bursts, bouncing off the tops of
the jeeps before us, the kids were fighting the newly appeared tank and
APC heading for the hospital. I sat down with the the girls. The girls,
the beside-herself woman, now throwing dust all over herslef, invecting
insults at the soldiers with her last, dehydrated breaths, and Sousan,
were crying and wailing freely. At one point, one of the soldiers fired
two shots and in a sing-song voice told me 'oh well, 2 children died
today'. Later, when the bullets really started flying and a jeep was
taken out of action, he began to weep, then laugh, then he told me to
sit
down sit down, sit DOWN, SIT DOWN, before getting up and grabbing me
and
wrenching me to the ground and pushing me against the wall right beside
him. This spurned a wildfire rumour in Jenin that I had been 'beaten'
by
the soldiers. Mate, two words, British Cops, Ive had more beats from
those unmentionables than any Isralei soldiers, but I digress.

While this was all taking place, 15-year-old Deeyah Rrowadre was shot
through the throat with a 50 callibre bullet, fired from an APC. He had
been standing in the entrance of Jenin National Hospital. He died in
there later. Three more children were shot beside him - 2 in the legs
and
a bullet grazed the face of another. Before the soldiers drove away,
taking the orange van of hostages with them as a mobile human shield, a
bullet battered jeep towed in their tank-apc-jeep entourage, they threw
a
hand grenade into Khalil's house and one at his family's car, just to
really fuck them up. The aftermath was a tentative footing into the
house
to see where one of the unexploded grenades might be, a view of trashed
furniture, smashed TV, windows, mirror, kitchen, singed clothes, and
then
a surge of shebab, kids, family, crying, his brother rolling on the
ground, the spent dehydrated beaten woman expiring on the ground and
then
a gun-salute, black demonstration with Jenin's new shaheed, into a new
cradle to a gun-point walked fresh grave, with Koran words uttered over
it and another family shattered, throwing Palestinian earth over it.

Since then I visited many families. All still grieving and remembering
their dead. A new baby was born in the Gaza hospital yesterday, my
friend
Mervat's, her second, a boy named Mustafa; a woman-with-child by her
side, about to bear her tenth joked to me that she needed all her kids
cos one would die fighting the tanks, another to prison, another would
be
shot walking to school, like this.

Approximately 5 days ago a plucky young Jeninite stoped a bulldozer in
its traction-belt tracks by Kademm settlement. How? Blasting it with
one
of the three tank-guns stolen a few weeks ago from Kadeem.

2 days ago, 14-year-old Kamal Nawahrba was shot in the head by a tank
as
he sat studying in his class room in Yamoun village. He is clinically
dead now.

2 nights ago the home of 19-year-old English Literature student Hiba
Azzam Darajme, 19, in Tubas and that of her neighbour were demolished
by
the IOF as part of its policy of collective punishment for families of
anyone involved in the armed Palestinian resistance. Hiba exploded
herself in an Afula shopping centre on Monday killing 3 and injuring
50.
The same night of her home demolition, 2 Apaches, 3 APCs, 2 tanks, 2
Hummers and 5 jeeps invaded Jenin town centre. 10 people from the Old
City, Seabaht and Wade Zideen area were arrested, none of them Wanted,
including 23-year-old mentally ill Moffeah Abu Hammad, neighbour of
local
Reuters journalist Ali Samudi, whose home was searched and trashed at
gunpoint.

Last night the IOF arrested 5 Jihad Islami activists - none of them
Wanted. 2 from Aja, 2 from Tamoun and 1 from Tubas.

Update on the situation with Mahmoud Sulleiman Al Saadi - arrested last
June in the Jenin Camp round-up and held in Ofer Prison wihtout charge
since then. Mahmoud is now in Gaza City after his transfer there 2 days
ago. He must remain there under duress for the next 2 years. The reason
for this is becuase his brother - Haj Ali - was one of the military
heads
of Jihad Islami in the West Bank. Ali will never see the light of day
again, and his family will not see his dead body until it is released,
if
ever, by Israel in 200 years. His wife and three children will leave
their Jenin Camp community tomorrow and join him there. They will live
in
PA financed accomodation.

2 more people from Jenin, also incarcerated in Ofer right now are also
to
be transfered to Gaza in the next few days. More info on their cases
soon.

NABLUS

I spent 4 days in Balata and Askar Jadeed (New Askar) refugee camps
this
week, staying with the Abu Ayash family in Balata and the Bushkar
family
in Askar Jadeed. 19-year-old Amjad Abu Salim and 18-year-old Amr Abu
Ayash took themselves and their M16s to Shaarei Tikva settlement near
Qalkilya and opened fire before being gunned down by Settler Security.
They managed to injure 2 residents. They were with Hamas. The Abu
Aiyash
family were wasted with grief; sorrow, and much regret (Hamdullilahs
were
uttered by force). The men of the family, all staying in neighbouring
homes out of fear of being arrested arbitrarily, flung themselves into
the work of clearing the house - actually 3 apartments in one - of all
the furniture and freshly installed glass doors - on the second day
after
the attack. Amr's brother had just had a new bathroom put in.


The Bushkar family were mourning their son Osama who blew himself up on
May 20th last year in Netanya. It was the PFLP's first claimed suicide
attack. He was 17-year-old. He killed 3 people and injured over 50. All
the neighbours and family came round, sat on the floor, wept and
listened
to Ya Ooladi Rah - My Son Went Out - by Voice of Freedom - a fighter
music group comprising deep bass-tone traditional male voices and a
clear, sharp, teenage girl heroine of a singer who all pay tribute to
the
young dead of the Palestinian resistance. Me and the girls gave out
dates, bitter cardamom coffee; listened to the stories of grief and
imprisoned sons from the women around me; went to visit the neighbours
-
the family of a recently assassinated (1 week ago) Hamas fighter who
was
incinerated by a letter bomb in a nearby village. He was in his
thirties.
He had been a part of the backbone of the Nablus armed resistance, he
was
a lcoal hero, and believe me, Askar Jadeed needs them. The same scene
but
fresher, fallen sooner, greeted me in their house; women sat backs up
against the wall in muted loss. They gave me a gift - a fake diamante
crescent on black cord; Amr's sisters gave me clothes that same evening
-
a pink ruffle tishirt, black trousers. In the morning they groomed my
hair, blow-dried it under in swift, gaggled around me strokes. That
same
morning the Khilffe house in the northern mountain area of Nablus was
demolished and that of Jameela Abu Ahmad in the Old City. She'd been on
her way to blow herslef up following the April invasion last year. Now
she's in Prison.

Mohammad Rifae, aged 15-years-old, from Askar Jadeed, his uncle is a
Preventative Security local mafioso in New Askar, was sentended to 7
years in Prison for attempting to blow himself up inside Israel, last
year, September. I can't remember the date of the day we heard there
was
a 15-year-old with a bomb-belt out on the loose in the west bank. Askar
Jadeed was surrounded, APCs and Tanks growling around encircling it, a
bulldozer clanking away, working on destroying another part of
routinely,
painstaikingly put back together Palestinian infrastructure in the
distance, and the dooming hourly phonecalls from General Namroud, taken
by Amjad Rifae, rasping back to him, pure mafia style, don-to-a-don,
that
they were after Mohammad too, that it was Haaraam for a 15-year-old to
be
going out to do such a thing, and Namroud telling him back that Jihad
were split, that half wanted him to do it and half wanted him to come
back, and that they were Coming for His Family; Next Call in 2 hours,
Better Have Some More Information; the entire family sat in chairs
silent
like a grieving room, slammed-down phones, 4am calls,
the-waiting-forThem-to-come-and-smash-the
door-down-and-snatch-the-sons.
The IOF found him in the end - 2 days later. And came for one of his
brothers some months after too. That chapter is closed now.

The word out on the streets is that the IOF will be storming back,
taking
blanket Manat Ejawals (24-hour-Curfews) and teenage corpses in its
stride
under the banner of its latest operation codenamed 'Searching The
Grave'.
'Operation Defensive Shield' - the April massacre machine, spun its
propaganda round the pivot of Israel's Security and the need to keep it
By Any Means Necessary. This time round its an apt slap in the face of
the resistance, almost all, literally, in their graves, the Intifada,
it's spirit ever restless, will never lie still, but it's almost in
it's
grave, the last blows against the corpse machine echoing out over
Afula,
Qdes, Qalqilya, Gaza, in a virtual community-resistance-continuum
vacum.
Rumour has it that it'll be 15-days-long. Local old-timer journos tell
me
its a bullshit scare tactic and that Jenin is full to capacity with
spies; if they want someone, all they have to do is bring in the
Apaches,
APCs and jeeps, kill a few stone-luzzing kids, and take who they want.
They don't need the expense of curfew. But Israel did just get 10
Billion
dollars aid from the US (much of it to restore its General Strike - a
week long 2 weeks ago!! - and 2 years of Intifada ravaged economy) and
Zionism needs to assert and reassert its domination, exclusivism and
murderous supremacy, whilst performing its over a century-old plan of
mass-transfer - slowly by demolishing homes, families and hope or
quickly
and systematically by demolishing whole neighbourhoods, confiscating
vital Palestinian water sources, building a 8 metre high Apartheid Wall
and drafting in new Aaliyah-buying Jewish families into ever-expanding
West Bank colonies. Like always here, you just never know. And like
always, with hindsight, vison is 20/20, it always made perfect sense.


Brian al Ba'tal (Hero!) Avery is still in Rambam Military Hospital
after
being shot in the face with a 50 Calibre bullet in Jenin Town Centre
last
month. He had a general facial restructuring operation on Saturday
which
also focused on his jaw. He is still unable to eat properly and is
being
fed milky protein liquid from a hanging drip-bag ): He has lost a lot
of
weight and has had his head shaven. He is reading and surfing the net a
lot and is getting regular visits and newspapers and treats from lovely
Israeli Ta'ayush people and international solidarity activists. His
spirits are still strong. Rambam doctors have estimated the total cost
of
his facial reconstruction at $1 million dollars. Brian would like to
retutn to the States for his treatment but it is unclear still as to
whether Israel would pay for his treatment off its stolen Palestinian
territory unless forced to by a lawsuit.