ISM Updates - 16 June 2003


1.
Brian Avery Returns Home

Photos and story -
 http://www.palsolidarity.org/index.php?page=/activists/brianavery/BrianAveryReturn.htm

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2.
If they put the roadblock back again, we will come back and remove it
again

Nablus
27 May 03
Mona Lisa, Olof, Hussein


Jamal Abdel Nasser Street is one of the most important streets in the
city of Nablus as it is the throughfare that connects east and west
sides of the city of Nablus. The Israeli Occupation Forces blocked this
major throughfare with impassable mounds of dirt, cement blocks, and
random roadway debris. The IOF created this crippling roadblock as part of
their operations during the invasion of Nablus in April 2003.

The local community organized a demonstration 6 months ago to remove
the roadblock. They succeeded to remove enough of the roadblock to permit
traffic to pass, but one week later the IOF closed it again, remounding
earth and debris, and adding large trenches gouged out of the roadway.

Before April 2002, Nasser Street supported a variety of ordinary urban
activity. There is a large playground for children nearby, and
hundreds of people worked in the Palestinian Authority building and the local
businesses that lined the street. After the IOF constructed this
paralyzing roadblock, and began firing live rounds into the community from
the top of the overlooking hill where their sniper base is now located,
normal activity on Nasser Street all but ceased.

Following the invasion, Israeli tanks used the street outside the
stores as a temporary checkpoint for more than 112 days during the
city-wide curfew imposed on the community by the IOF. As an additional insult,
the IOF then attempted to close the alternate route for traffic, Amman
Street, with an iron gate. In December 2002, the local community
rallied together again to remove gate in a non-violent demonstration to
protest the illegal occupation of their city, and their nation.

According to a local shopkeeper, Mr. Sa’id, five shops have closed in
the last year due to the roadblock. Mr. Sa’id states that he has lost
almost all of his former business, and will have difficulty repaying his
business loans to the banks. If there is no change, his current
enterprise will not survive more than a month. According to Mr. Sa’id,
“Business will get better step by step if the road block is gone, and I
could start on my plans for a coffeeshop.”

“My daughter, 24 years old, died because the ambulance couldn’t reach
her for more than four hours due to the roadblock and the checkpoint”
says a woman who lives in the street. Following the loss of her
daughter, her 28 year old son became ill, and again his family called an
ambulance. Again, the ambulance was not permitted immediate access by the
IOF, and her son died of a heartattack.

Jarir, a paramedic from the Union of Palestinian Medical Relief
Committees recounted many stories concerning the suffering of medical workers
due to Israeli military roadblocks and checkpoints. “Many times they
have stopped us for more than four to five hours even though it is
evident that there are only patients inside the ambulances.”

During an invasion, while attempting to deliver food, medicine and
baby formula, the soldiers stopped Jarir and three other volunteers in the
Old City of Nablus. They were hundcuffed and brought to an occupied
house as hostages for more than 15 hours before being taken to the Israeli
military base at Huwarra for interrogation. The soldiers did not
release them until the next morning.

On the way back from responding to a call from a local village,
soldiers stopped the ambulance and insisted on examining a pregnant woman for
explosives. Jarir refused, and told them that only a doctor or a nurse
is permitted to examine a patient. They confiscated his identiy card,
and did not let them pass. After an hour and a half, the woman went into
labour. After waiting for two hours, they were finally allowed to pass
the checkpoint. The way to the hospital only took four minutes, but the
baby was born in the ambulance.

ACTION
At 9am on on Wednesday, May 28, 2003, members of the International
Solidarity Movement and the local community, in conjunction with the Office
of Public Works, removed a pair of roadblocks on Jerusalem Street
(Jamal Abdel Naser Street) that snarled local traffic, prevented rapid
response of emergency vehicles to all areas of the city, and resulted in
the closure of several shops along this major throughfare.

Two bulldozers worked for 3 hours to remove one roadblock entirely, and
cut a passable section through the second roadblock to allow traffic to
move freely. As evidence of how central this throughfare is to Nablus,
traffic began passing through the area the moment the bulldozers had
cleared a car’s width – and continued to pass steadily, dodging the
bulldozers, throughout the 3 hours of work.

This action of clearing roadblocks is not merely the coordination of
resources, but reflects the refusal of the Nablus and International
communities to be intimidated by the repressive military presence of the
Israeli Occupation Forces. On the hill directly above the roadblock,
there is an IOF military installation that has repeatedly fired upon the
population of Nablus.

The two roadblocks beside the destroyed PA headquarters, on Jerusalem
Street, were removed by the efforts of Palestinians and Internationals
as a direct protest against the unjust restriction of movement in
Nablus, and the West Bank and Gaza as a whole. Illegal restriction of
movement, and the unjust occupation of Palestine, takes the form of illegal
colonies[settlements], military checkpoints, fences, trenches, gates,
roadblocks, and at it’s most extreme, the ongoing construction of the
Apartheid Wall that flagrantly ignores the pre-1967 borders.

Comments
“Now I have hope.” - Mr. Said

“If they put the roadblock back again, we will come back and remove it
again.” - Governor of Nabus

“The checkpoint is a form of collective punishment and, as such,
illegal, and we will continue to work against it.”- Director of the Health
Department, Nablus Governorate



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3.
Army damages school, injuring 8 year old, and prohibits University
students from taking exams

Bethlehem
16 Jun 03
Kate Crockford

The ‘road map’ to peace, a plan highly lauded by international media
and optimists on both sides of the Green Line, this week revealed itself
to be full of roadblocks as violence continued unabated. On Tuesday,
Israeli Air Forces attacked Gaza city, shooting missiles from an apache
attack helicopter into the crowded civilian area, in a purported
assassination attempt on the life of Hamas leader Rantizi. Unfortunately,
while the attack failed to kill its target, it resulted in the deaths of
three civilians, including a mother and her young daughter. The next day,
Hamas
retaliated: a young man from Hebron blew himself up on a bus in the
downtown Jerusalem area, killing 17 and injuring scores. The Army
responded to this attack by tightening closures on the West Bank, enforcing
curfews, and stepping up their arrests and other operations, as well as
another assassination attempt, this one successful, on two Hamas members
in Gaza. The cycle of violence has once again begun to spin out of
control, and this week alone saw over 30 casualties, both Israeli and
Palestinian.

Unfortunately, the media has not been paying attention to the situation
on the ground in Palestine due to the renewed efforts at diplomacy.
Under the radar of most international media but glaringly obvious to
Palestinians here in Tulkarm (and throughout the West Bank), the army has
imposed a curfew on Tulkarm City for the past five days. Curfew, contrary
to a popular misconception, is a 24-hr closure throughout the entire
city, and results in destruction like loss of employment, loss of income
for farmers and small business owners who can’t get to their fields,
sell their produce or open their shops, family tensions due to forcing
children to remain inside in the sweltering heat, and mass frustration.
Again, while curfew is extremely destructive to a people, and often
results in the killing of children throwing rocks at jeeps and tanks in the
street, it is almost always ignored by the press. In Tulkarm, the army
has been patrolling the city during the day in jeeps and Army Personnel
Carriers and at night, in refugee camps, with hummers and a bulldozer
in addition to the border police and commander jeeps and APCs.

Today, Saturday, the army announced to local media that the curfew
would be lifted at 11:00 am. So when, at approximately 3:00 pm IDT on
Saturday afternoon, ISM activists in Tulkarm heard the first gunfire since
the typical, sporadic shooting and sound bombings heard throughout
Friday night and the early morning hours, five internationals entered the
center of Tulkarm city with cameras seeking to document the clashes and,
if possible, investigate the motive behind lifting curfew only to shoot
people in the streets a few hours later.

According to many local residents, jeeps had been circling the city
since the early morning, and gunfire could be heard throughout. The ISMers
decided to take a walk around the city in order to get a better idea of
where the army was located and what it was doing. At approximately 5:00
pm, the activists came upon a group of young boys who frantically
encouraged the internationals to follow them to the Al-Fadilia school, at
the edge of the city on the road leading to the army headquarters, the
DCO. One of the young boys was carrying a large piece of metal that had
fallen from an APC (All Personnel Carriers, small tanks), and motioning
excitedly toward the school, down the street and around the corner.

When the activists arrived, they saw APC tracks criss-crossed on the
road in front of the school and what was once a wall separating the
school property from the road. The wall was completely destroyed from the
entrance gate (the gate was also destroyed, and pock-marked with bullet
holes), down the sidewalk about 40 meters, all the way to the edge of
the school property. The wall, in large blocks of concrete, littered the
grass on the school property, while other pieces had fallen forward
onto the sidewalk. The boys told present ISMers that one APC and one jeep
had destroyed the wall, and the activists confirmed this assertion as
they clearly identified APC tracks on the road leading up to the
sidewalk. According to the children, who had been playing soccer in the
schoolyard when the army approached, the APC began to fire at the wall and
the school building behind it before finally driving up onto the sidewalk
and smashing it to pieces.

In addition to the damage to the wall, internationals took pictures of
bullet holes in the main gate---it was also crushed and destroyed by
the APC---and in the school building itself. The school, an institution
run by the Ministry of Education in Tulkarm and serving boys ages 16-18,
was not in session due to summer holiday, but, as aforementioned, there
were many people in and around the building at the time of the attack.
While the army did not hit any children with live ammunition, the Red
Crescent of Tulkarm city confirmed a report that an 8 year old boy had
been hit by what the army calls a ‘rubber’ bullet. This term is
extremely misleading, however, because such bullets are actually round pieces
of iron coated in plastic. From close range, these bullets can kill. The
young boy was hit on his left thigh, and, according to the Red Crescent
official, his femur was fractured. On Sunday, June 15, 2003, the boy
remains in hospital.

Internationals present were dismayed to find evidence of the Israeli
Occupation Forces (IOF) targeting a school building, but this is far from
the first time educational institutions have been targeted, and it was
one of the least destructive attacks on schools in Tulkarm throughout
the long 36 years of illegal Israeli occupation in the West Bank and the
Gaza Strip. In addition, the IOF often prohibits students from
attending schools and universities during crucial times in the semester.

The morning of the attack on the secondary school, the army entered the
Palestine Technical College in the Khadoury district of Tulkarm and
forced, by gunpoint, all of the students, faculty and administrators to
leave the school immediately. The students at the school, where the IOF
caused $3 million dollars of damage in 2000, burning labs and offices
and shooting holes in precious technical instruments, were prohibited
from taking their final exams, and thus were forced to reschedule them for
the next day, Sunday the 15th.


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4.
Two shot along the border in Rafah

Gaza
15 Jun 03
Laura

Rafah, Gaza Strip. An IOF tank has just shot two people, one
10-year-old and one 23-year-old, in the Brazil area of Rafah. The 23-year-old is
in critical condition. Both were taken immediately to Al-Najar Hospital
in Rafah for treatment.

The two were shot along the border with Egypt, where the Israeli
military is building an Occupation Wall. The border is in fact an artificial
border and Rafah a city divided, sectionned into 2 parts in Camp David
in 1982. At that time, the border was an officiality, but gradually it
has become a military zone.

Before the talks, there was a train that ran through the city
delivering olive oil and other goods between Gaza and Egypt. After the 1982
talks, a barbed wire fence about a meter high was erected, but it was left
there mostly without military supervision. You could walk up to the
border. Farmland, houses, and stores reached the border and passed into
Egypt. Families waved at each other from the rooftops.

Over the course of this Intifada, the IOF has aggressively expanded its
control over the border. Israeli tanks and military towers; the
Occupation Wall and its adjacent 100-meter no-man’s-land effectively comprise
the legal/security wing of this international border, shooting daily
and nightly at innocent civilians in their homes and on the streets. The
two boys shot just now are the latest casualties in this endeavor which
has left over 200 dead and hundreds more injured in Rafah alone.

In Rafah, Caterpillar bulldozers demolish farmland and homes almost
daily, in the effort to create a 100-meter no-man’s land along the border,
where formerly there existed a flourishing city. Over 945 homes have
been demolished completely; hundreds more partially demolished or
damaged. From the border rooftops, you can see Egypt’s bright green contrast
against the dead sand the army has made of the Palestinian border.
Countless families who used to walk to each other’s homes are now separated
by an electric steel wall 8 meters high.


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5.
Border Crossing Blues

Gaza
15 Jun 03
Raphael

Palestinians and foreigners are suffering from the consequences of
Israeli closure policies at Rafah Crossing Point between Gaza and Egypt.
Raphael Cohen trys and trys again.

For a Palestinian to have the audicity to wish to leave or enter the
Gaza Strip requires the permission of the Israeli Occupation. Assuming
the right permit can be acquired, Palestinians are still at the mercy
of the officials at the Rafah crossing, liable to be detained by the
Shin Bet and subject to the frequent Israeli closure of the border
(more than 160 days so far during the Intifada). Rafah Crossing Point is
the only exit for 1.3 million Gazans to the outside world. The Israeli
Occupation forces have this week demolished the infrastructure of the
Palestinian Liason at the border, an indication of the extent to which
Palestinian authority is nothing but a word game. Foreigners too are
now also experiencing great difficulties getting into the Gaza strip
while Israel maintains they represent a security threat.

The Egyptian side of the border at Rafah is open 24 hours a day: the
Israeli side for about six hours, on a good day. For the twenty or so
Palestinians with whom I queued, the even shorter hours on Saturdays,
the Jewish sabbath, meant we were unable to get on the bus despite
waiting from 12:30 pm and watching those in front pile themselves and their
bags on to the coveted bus. At 2:00 pm Egyptian officials told us to
head back inside the departure hall. The general mood was
disappointment and quiet resignation at having to try again. The distance between
the final Egyptian checkpoint and the Israeli vehicle barriers is no
more than 20 metres, but for Palestinans and foreigners trying to enter
or leave the Gaza strip it might as well be 1000 miles.

Frequent closures and failures to ’catch the bus’ mean that the
Egyptian
authorities are used to dealing with people stuck at the border. At the
moment several hundred are waiting to cross asa aresult of the current
lengthy closure imposed by the Israelis to mark implementation of the
Road Map.. To those who do not have relatives in Rafah or El-Areesh,
this means sleeping in the departure lounge, or if lucky on the floor of
the attached mosque. For once the travellers passport is stamped with
an Egyptian departure stamp, it is not possible to leave the hall
without cancelling the journey, a measure few seemed willing or able to
do. This step certainly provoked the interest of Egyptian security and
customs officials. Although in the case of missing the bus, little more
needed to be said. The advice for foreigners (non-Egyptian and
non-Palestinian) was to take the Palestinian bus on its return journey from
Egypt, rather than the Egyptian bus, as a way of avoiding missing the
bus again.

The mood back in Egypt outside the border complex was less resigned.
Three Palestinian women from Gaza who had been turned back that day for
having too much luggage (the Israelis randomly enforce their limit of
60 kg per
person) expressed their hostility towards the Israelis for making a
simple journey so complicated. Nor did they stint their curses on the
local taxi driver who had kept them waiting and overcharged them. They
were joined by a fourth Gazan matron, who had crossed that day. To
their complaints she added her own: the excessive Egyptian customs duty on
her six niqabs. Apart from touting taxi drivers, the vacinity around
the border is a den of money changers and fast food vendors. Improptu
garment sales are held for excess clothes, while cigarette smugglers
try to persuade you to take a suitcase full of Cleopatras (Gaza’s
cheapest
brand) across for them. (The legendary tunnels linking the two halves
of Rafah city, so often cited by the Israeli military to justify their
destruction of civilian homes, are far more likely used for smuggling
tobacco than weapons - as if you could get a tank, let alone a
helicopter gunship through a clandestine shaft).

The following day I returned to the border at 8:00 am. Passing through
the Egyptian controls proved no problem as my face had become familiar
to the uniformed bureaucrats. I exchanged nods and smiles with
travellers I recognized from the previous day. Most had stayed at the border
and would
have set off on the first bus. Optimism prevailed: the day was young,
the
border was open. Once through the controls, the queuing continued for
the
bus outside. The three Gazans from the previous day were just in front
of me and they asked me to take a bag for them to minimise their being
overweight again. I declined, given my own uncertainties about being
allowed in. The Rafah crossing was opened to Palestinians under the 1994
Cairo Agreement as part of the Oslo process. Prior to that, leaving
Gaza for Egypt meant entering Israel and taking a boat from Isdud
(Ashdod). Up to 1500 people per day were making the crossing before the
Intifada began; now they number about 250. The Egyptian complex is under
construction and promises to be a quite impressive replica of the
Karnak Termple when completed. For the time being, the unfinished halls
provide needed shade for the waiting departees, while they themselves
wait for the political changes to justify such grand architecture.

Fifty or so people, including ten children, managed to cram themselves
and their luggage on to the bus which set off for the final Egyptian
control and fence. The bus stopped and parked so as to allow the near
continuous stream of double lorries to continue delivering their loads
of cement and gravel unhindered (where is all this building material
destined for?). Each was subject to a brief underbody search using a
mirror at the Israeli barrier, about 20 metres away. Suddenly a man in a
sharp suit ran up to the bus accompanied by Egyptian officials. This
previliged latecomer proceeded to hand out brand new, late model mobile
phones to anyone who was willing to take one (25NIS, about $5 was the
recompense). After 30 minutes waiting it became clear there was some
problem. Discussion centred around three causes: the overcrowding on
the bus, the activities of the phone man and the presence of a
foreigner, me. As every lorry rolled by, as the Palestinian bus crossed and
recrossed, as the heat mounted, as the crying of children loudened people
waited stoically, muttering the occasional curse on both houses.

Finally after more than two hours on the bus, the signal came to move.
This required all those standing in the aisle (about 15 people) to
move to the back of the bus and crouch down on the floor to avoid
arousing Israeli suspicions of overcrowding. Once through the barrier
everybody helped their neighbour get up and breathed a sigh of relief. The
short journey over, now came the difficult part: convincing the Israelis
to let you into Gaza. For Palestinians this meant being separated from
their luggage after a preliminary glance at passports and passes by
apparently Palestinian staff (since 7 July 2001, only eight Palestinian
workers and three drivers have been allowed to work at the
checkpoint). If all looked in order one proceeded inside the arrival hall and
passed through a metal detector. The Israeli woman clerk summoning people
through had failed to internalize the stipulation of the Cairo
Agreement that \"the two sides are determined to do their utmost to maintain
the dignity of persons passing through the border crossings\". Her
incessant mantra of, \"jawwal, sa’ah, mafatih\" (mobile, watch, keys),
and admonishing \"Ya Ustaaz\" (mister) or \"Ya Hajja\" (madam) as she
asked men and women to remove their shoes and belts were delivered with
undisguised contempt. Her Arabic skills clearly did not include words
for please or thank you. That ordeal over, Palestinians handed over
their passports to clerks (again Palestinian) who handed them over to the
Israelis sitting behind smoked glass behind them where they would be
looked up on computers. Rafah crossing is a favourite point to detain
incoming Palestinians on \"security grounds\". Gradually the crosser
shuffled from one block of plastic seats, blue or orange as if according
to some secret code, to another as the outside beckoned. The odd
individual was escorted away by security officials (recognisable from their
trekker style boots) for a chat. If all went well with the two
passport and pass controls and your luggage was not overweight and
satisfactory you were free to leave. Al-hamdulillah.

That day three people were sent back by the Israelis; two of them were
foreign. The first was an American Palestinian with two children trying
to join her husband in Gaza. She did not have Palestinian papers and
was denied entry simply because she was American. She was sitting in
the Egyptian departure hall when I returned. The other, myself, was
British. I rejected the offer of the Shin Bet to prove to them I was not a
security risk (that is by informing on all my contacts in Gaza) and
chose to return to Egypt. This proved an involved process, as by the time
the ISA has decided to release me it was getting dark and there was no
transport across the border. I waited for some three hours on the
border road between the two sides in the hands of the Israeli liason
watching the jeeps, apcs and tanks I had become familiar with in Rafah
heading in and out of their base. The distant sound of shooting could be
heard periodically, and I wondered if my friends’ houses on the border
were being targetted again. Eventually I was walked across to the
Egyptian side and handed over to to the Egyptian liason to the
accompaniment of Israeli sirens sounding for a military exercise. I was warned
this would happen and that it was only a simulation. Nevertheless the
wailing could not drown out the sound of Israeli gunfire from Rafah. In
a way I wished the Egyptians would have refused to admit me and I would
be left forever to shuttle between the two fences until the world came
to its senses.




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6.
Appeal for Translators

Response to our past appeals has been enthusiastic and we owe the
deepest gratitude to everyone who has answered our calls for assistance. You
are truly amazing. We call on you again for help, this time so we might
reach a wider and more diverse audience.

Work is underway to translate our website into multiple languages so
that our message may reach more people worldwide. To facilitate this, we
are asking for volunteers to assist us in translating the palsolidarity
site to your local language.

This is not a small task. In addition to translating the existing
content (excluding journals, reports, press releases), we would need a
commitment to translate future documents which are created at an average
rate of 5-10 per week and to complete the translations within 48 hours of
the time that the document appears on the ISM website. The archive of
journals, reports, ISM in the news, and press releases would not need to
be translated except for those that have a prominent position on the
website. Volunteers would receive the files to be translated via email
and a tool to upload translated files would be made available.

If you are multi-lingual, if you think that the ISM site in your local
language would reach more people and raise awareness about the
realities of occupation, and if you have the time to spare, please contact
 webmaster@palsolidarity.org include your contact information, the
language you are qualified to translate to, and how much time you think you
could spend each week on this task.

Thank you again,

Webmaster, Palsolidarity