Report by an ISM volunteer in Qalqilia
Caroline | 19.07.2005 10:38 | Anti-racism | Ecology | Social Struggles
Here's a report I've been sent by a friend who is taking part in solidarity work in the occupied Palestinian territories, against the building of the 'security fence' AKA apartheid wall.
Last Monday went with Noah to Immateen, a village of 2700
people in Qalqilia district. The village is surrounded by rolling hills
covered in olive trees, which are the main source of income for most people in the village. The wall will be built on top of a hill near
Immateen, cutting the villagers off from a large portion of their
agricultural lands. There is a settlement nearby, on the opposite side of the proposed path of the wall.
I stayed in Immateen until Saturday morning. Every day we walked with a small group of villagers to the top of the hill to see the place where the wall will be built. On top of the hill there was a track where all the olive trees had been uprooted, and a dirt road left in their place.
On Tuesday we went up to the site of the wall during the day when work was still taking place. We went only a short distance up the track towards the top of the hill when we were stopped by soldiers who told us that it was a closed millitary zone and we could not pass. We tried to convince the soldiers to allow just one Palestinian and the two Internationals to go to the top of the hill. The soldier replied that one Palestinian could go but not the two internationals. We refused and the villagers led us along a different path, which allowed us to reach the top of the hill without meeting any soldiers.
At the top of the hill a bright yellow Caterpillar crane sort-of-thing
was being used to uproot the olive trees, and a Caterpillar
snow-plow-looking-thing-but-bigger (sorry my knowledge of digging
equipment is pretty poor) was being used to push the dirt and rocks to the side of the new path. As well as workmen there were lots of soldiers, and private security workers dressed in black or dark blue, with bullet-proof vest. Private security are scary because they don't have crowd control methods (tear gas, sound bombs, rubber bullets) only live ammunition.
At the top we spoke to some soldiers and one soldier agreed to speak to one of the Palestinians, who owns some of the land that will be confiscated for the wall, and me and the other international, and to walk with us along the path of the wall. The four of us walked for several hundred metres along the path of the wall, the soldier and the Palestinian man speaking in Arabic so that we internationals didn't understand what was being said. But the soldier spoke to the Palestinian in a civil tone and seemed to be having a conversation with him and not just shouting, which surprised me.
We reached the end of our walk and the soldier turned to me and Noah and said:
'I just want to say to you that this wall is for Israel's security, it
is not to steal land or to steal olive trees or anything like that.
When the wall is built there will be a gate and the people can go
through the gate and go to their trees. We do not want to take the
trees, it is just for security, nothing else.'
Noah asked the man, if the wall was just for security, why it wasn't
built along the Green Line, the internationally recognized border
between Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories. The soldier
replied that it is for the security of the settlement. Noah asked why
the path of the wall is actually closer to Immateen than to the
settlement, and the soldier replied:
'I think this is necessary for security'.
Noah and I then said that we didn't believe that villagers would be able to easily access their lands through a gate in the wall, once it was built, given that at other gates and checkpoints the Palestinians can only pass at certain times of the day, and/or they have to apply for permits to pass which may or may not be granted, and sometimes the gates are just randomly closed. The soldier actually told us that this is not the case, that Palestinians can easily pass through gates and checkpoints, and that the system of closures in the West Bank doesn't seriously inconvenience Palestinians in their day-to-day lives!
After we said goodbye to the soldier Noah told me that he was a Druze. The Druze have a religion which is an offshoot of Islam. In Israel the Druze are an underclass, but they are not looked down on quite as much as the (other) Palestinians, and Druze unlike Palestinians can serve in the Israeli army, although they are only allowed to serve in certain units, and these tend to be the most dangerous ones. Many young Druze see serving in the army as the only way to get a career and escape poverty and the stigma of being Druze, but in practise many are denied careers in the army after they have served their two years, and within the army the are still discriminated against for being Druze.
Thursday was the demonstration. A group of maybe 150 villagers, along with some internationals and Israeli activists, gathered in the village and began to walk towards the top of the hill, but before we got anywhere near the top we were met by soldiers who told us that the hill was a closed millitary zone. When the people kept walking the soldiers started firing a volley ofsound bombs and tear gas at us. Three of the Anarchists Against the Wall (funny name, probably sounds better in Hebrew) were arrested almost immediately. People ran a little way back, and some of the young men and boys started throwing stones at the soldiers. The demonstration continued for about two hours, during which
the soldiers fired rubber bullets as well as sound bombs and tear gas, and afterwards we found live bullets at the scene of the demo (lucky no-one had been hit with any of them). Then the Palestinians gathered together in a group and prayed among their olive trees, while Israeli activists and internationals stood nearby. When the prayers were over the Palestinian organisers of the march said they wanted to end the demonstration at that point, so we all went back to the village, although a lot of the youth stayed behind to throw stones.
Stone throwing is the worst moral dilemna I've faced here. We want to stay close by because often it is young boys throwing the stones and the army has fired on them with live bullets in the past, but we also know that our presence can encourage the boys to stay longer and take more risks. On this occasion we decided to leave. During the walk back into the village Noah made friends with an incredibly tough little old man who had been at the front of the demo the whole time, shaking his wooden cane at the soldiers. We were invited back to the man's home for lunch. I had a shower and a really nice lunch, and then we said goodbye and headed back to the house where we were staying, intending to meet up with the other internationals, when we saw a group of about forty men walking up the street. We followed them to see what was going on and discovered that the army had come into the village. I came across an amazing scene of a group of soldiers trying to arrest a couple of Palestinian men and a group of 6 or 7 Palestinian women de-arrested the men, gathering around the men in a group and physically dragging them out of the soldiers' clutches, all the while screaming and waving their arms around at the soldiers. The
Israeli Anarchists Against the Wall were also incredible, throwing
themselves between soldiers and the Palestinians they wanted to arrest. I followed some internationals and Israeli activists up a hill and came to a main road leading into the village. An army jeep drove towards us and we all linked arms in the road to prevent the jeep from getting into the village. An army jeep drove up and pulled up sideways in front of us, the door opened and a couple of soldiers pointed their machine guns at us and screamed at us to move. I stood there in the road practically shitting myself, but after a minute the jeep drove away. Soon after the army left the village. A couple of villagers got beaten up by soldiers but as far as I know no-one was arrested. Noah and I went back to the house feeling exhausted.
After the demo the other internationals and Israeli activists left
Immateen. Noah and I had a pretty much sleepless night as we were expecting the army to invade the village during the night in reprisal for the demo, but they didn't. Friday morning we were preparing to leave when army jeeps started driving through the village. We went out and spoke to a soldier who told us that the village was closed, that all non-residents had to leave, and that if he saw us again he would arrest us. We asked why the village was closed he replied that it was to make sure the work on the wall could go ahead. We told the soldier we were going to leave the village and headed back to the house.
We didn't know what to do because we wanted to be on the streets in the hope that our presence would make the soldiers less violent towards the villagers, but if the soldiers saw us they might arrest us. We sat around for a couple of hours and two women from the International Womens' Peace Service, which does similar stuff to ISM, turned up. Around noon the four of us decided to go outside and see what was going on. As we walked we met a group of men walking to the mosque for prayers, and the asked us to accompany them, so we did. We sat outside the mosque while the men went in to pray and then an army jeep pulled up. Then another jeep pulled up: it was the same jeep we had seen before and the soldier who had told us to leave the village 4 hours ago was a bit pissed off at us. He threatened to arrest us and I assured him that we really were going to leave the village this time. Then we set off and
the soldiers got upset because we weren't taking the shortest route out of the village and we said we had to go get our bags, and this soldier yelled at us, 'no bags, just go!' and I told him 'if I don't go get my money I can't get out of the village' and the soldier reached for his wallet and said, 'you want me to give you money?' Comedy. But they let us go.
So we went back to the house and we found out later that after we left the soldiers threw tear gas cannister into the mosque and tear gas and sound bombs into the street right outside of the mosque, where a lot of people including children were standing around. One man told me how a soldier grabbed him and he wrenched himself away and ran off to avoid being arrested.
Around 2 p.m. the soldiers left Immateen, and suddenly everything was quiet again.
Noah and I left Immateen the next morning, and went to Tulkarm, which had been invaded by the army because of the suicide bombing in Netanya the other day. Tulkarem was under curfew. Before Noah and I arrived the other ISMers took food and water to a house which the army had occupied, where 20 people were forced to spend the whole day sitting in two small rooms. We joined some other internationals and walked the streets, with the idea that if the soldiers knew we were around they would commit fewer abuses. Walking through a town under curfew is surreal, like being
in the Old West right before a shoot-out. The streets were empty, and the few people we met looked very nervous. Nothing much happened although we found rubber bullets and 'real' bullets in the street. This morning the curfew in Tulkarem was lifted, but the Israeli army refused to give control of Tulkarm back to the Palestinian Authority. Israel gave control of Tulkarm to the Palestian Authority four months ago as part of a process that is suposed to lead eventually to Israel withdrawing from Gaza and the West Bank.
This afternoon I came to Jerusalem, and tomorrow I'm going to Qawawis, a tiny village of one house and three caves, where internationals and their video cemeras are needed to keep the psychopaths in the nearby settlement at bay.
And I have been eating falafel twice a day for two weeks, and I'm still not sick of it.
Love,
Caroline
people in Qalqilia district. The village is surrounded by rolling hills
covered in olive trees, which are the main source of income for most people in the village. The wall will be built on top of a hill near
Immateen, cutting the villagers off from a large portion of their
agricultural lands. There is a settlement nearby, on the opposite side of the proposed path of the wall.
I stayed in Immateen until Saturday morning. Every day we walked with a small group of villagers to the top of the hill to see the place where the wall will be built. On top of the hill there was a track where all the olive trees had been uprooted, and a dirt road left in their place.
On Tuesday we went up to the site of the wall during the day when work was still taking place. We went only a short distance up the track towards the top of the hill when we were stopped by soldiers who told us that it was a closed millitary zone and we could not pass. We tried to convince the soldiers to allow just one Palestinian and the two Internationals to go to the top of the hill. The soldier replied that one Palestinian could go but not the two internationals. We refused and the villagers led us along a different path, which allowed us to reach the top of the hill without meeting any soldiers.
At the top of the hill a bright yellow Caterpillar crane sort-of-thing
was being used to uproot the olive trees, and a Caterpillar
snow-plow-looking-thing-but-bigger (sorry my knowledge of digging
equipment is pretty poor) was being used to push the dirt and rocks to the side of the new path. As well as workmen there were lots of soldiers, and private security workers dressed in black or dark blue, with bullet-proof vest. Private security are scary because they don't have crowd control methods (tear gas, sound bombs, rubber bullets) only live ammunition.
At the top we spoke to some soldiers and one soldier agreed to speak to one of the Palestinians, who owns some of the land that will be confiscated for the wall, and me and the other international, and to walk with us along the path of the wall. The four of us walked for several hundred metres along the path of the wall, the soldier and the Palestinian man speaking in Arabic so that we internationals didn't understand what was being said. But the soldier spoke to the Palestinian in a civil tone and seemed to be having a conversation with him and not just shouting, which surprised me.
We reached the end of our walk and the soldier turned to me and Noah and said:
'I just want to say to you that this wall is for Israel's security, it
is not to steal land or to steal olive trees or anything like that.
When the wall is built there will be a gate and the people can go
through the gate and go to their trees. We do not want to take the
trees, it is just for security, nothing else.'
Noah asked the man, if the wall was just for security, why it wasn't
built along the Green Line, the internationally recognized border
between Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories. The soldier
replied that it is for the security of the settlement. Noah asked why
the path of the wall is actually closer to Immateen than to the
settlement, and the soldier replied:
'I think this is necessary for security'.
Noah and I then said that we didn't believe that villagers would be able to easily access their lands through a gate in the wall, once it was built, given that at other gates and checkpoints the Palestinians can only pass at certain times of the day, and/or they have to apply for permits to pass which may or may not be granted, and sometimes the gates are just randomly closed. The soldier actually told us that this is not the case, that Palestinians can easily pass through gates and checkpoints, and that the system of closures in the West Bank doesn't seriously inconvenience Palestinians in their day-to-day lives!
After we said goodbye to the soldier Noah told me that he was a Druze. The Druze have a religion which is an offshoot of Islam. In Israel the Druze are an underclass, but they are not looked down on quite as much as the (other) Palestinians, and Druze unlike Palestinians can serve in the Israeli army, although they are only allowed to serve in certain units, and these tend to be the most dangerous ones. Many young Druze see serving in the army as the only way to get a career and escape poverty and the stigma of being Druze, but in practise many are denied careers in the army after they have served their two years, and within the army the are still discriminated against for being Druze.
Thursday was the demonstration. A group of maybe 150 villagers, along with some internationals and Israeli activists, gathered in the village and began to walk towards the top of the hill, but before we got anywhere near the top we were met by soldiers who told us that the hill was a closed millitary zone. When the people kept walking the soldiers started firing a volley ofsound bombs and tear gas at us. Three of the Anarchists Against the Wall (funny name, probably sounds better in Hebrew) were arrested almost immediately. People ran a little way back, and some of the young men and boys started throwing stones at the soldiers. The demonstration continued for about two hours, during which
the soldiers fired rubber bullets as well as sound bombs and tear gas, and afterwards we found live bullets at the scene of the demo (lucky no-one had been hit with any of them). Then the Palestinians gathered together in a group and prayed among their olive trees, while Israeli activists and internationals stood nearby. When the prayers were over the Palestinian organisers of the march said they wanted to end the demonstration at that point, so we all went back to the village, although a lot of the youth stayed behind to throw stones.
Stone throwing is the worst moral dilemna I've faced here. We want to stay close by because often it is young boys throwing the stones and the army has fired on them with live bullets in the past, but we also know that our presence can encourage the boys to stay longer and take more risks. On this occasion we decided to leave. During the walk back into the village Noah made friends with an incredibly tough little old man who had been at the front of the demo the whole time, shaking his wooden cane at the soldiers. We were invited back to the man's home for lunch. I had a shower and a really nice lunch, and then we said goodbye and headed back to the house where we were staying, intending to meet up with the other internationals, when we saw a group of about forty men walking up the street. We followed them to see what was going on and discovered that the army had come into the village. I came across an amazing scene of a group of soldiers trying to arrest a couple of Palestinian men and a group of 6 or 7 Palestinian women de-arrested the men, gathering around the men in a group and physically dragging them out of the soldiers' clutches, all the while screaming and waving their arms around at the soldiers. The
Israeli Anarchists Against the Wall were also incredible, throwing
themselves between soldiers and the Palestinians they wanted to arrest. I followed some internationals and Israeli activists up a hill and came to a main road leading into the village. An army jeep drove towards us and we all linked arms in the road to prevent the jeep from getting into the village. An army jeep drove up and pulled up sideways in front of us, the door opened and a couple of soldiers pointed their machine guns at us and screamed at us to move. I stood there in the road practically shitting myself, but after a minute the jeep drove away. Soon after the army left the village. A couple of villagers got beaten up by soldiers but as far as I know no-one was arrested. Noah and I went back to the house feeling exhausted.
After the demo the other internationals and Israeli activists left
Immateen. Noah and I had a pretty much sleepless night as we were expecting the army to invade the village during the night in reprisal for the demo, but they didn't. Friday morning we were preparing to leave when army jeeps started driving through the village. We went out and spoke to a soldier who told us that the village was closed, that all non-residents had to leave, and that if he saw us again he would arrest us. We asked why the village was closed he replied that it was to make sure the work on the wall could go ahead. We told the soldier we were going to leave the village and headed back to the house.
We didn't know what to do because we wanted to be on the streets in the hope that our presence would make the soldiers less violent towards the villagers, but if the soldiers saw us they might arrest us. We sat around for a couple of hours and two women from the International Womens' Peace Service, which does similar stuff to ISM, turned up. Around noon the four of us decided to go outside and see what was going on. As we walked we met a group of men walking to the mosque for prayers, and the asked us to accompany them, so we did. We sat outside the mosque while the men went in to pray and then an army jeep pulled up. Then another jeep pulled up: it was the same jeep we had seen before and the soldier who had told us to leave the village 4 hours ago was a bit pissed off at us. He threatened to arrest us and I assured him that we really were going to leave the village this time. Then we set off and
the soldiers got upset because we weren't taking the shortest route out of the village and we said we had to go get our bags, and this soldier yelled at us, 'no bags, just go!' and I told him 'if I don't go get my money I can't get out of the village' and the soldier reached for his wallet and said, 'you want me to give you money?' Comedy. But they let us go.
So we went back to the house and we found out later that after we left the soldiers threw tear gas cannister into the mosque and tear gas and sound bombs into the street right outside of the mosque, where a lot of people including children were standing around. One man told me how a soldier grabbed him and he wrenched himself away and ran off to avoid being arrested.
Around 2 p.m. the soldiers left Immateen, and suddenly everything was quiet again.
Noah and I left Immateen the next morning, and went to Tulkarm, which had been invaded by the army because of the suicide bombing in Netanya the other day. Tulkarem was under curfew. Before Noah and I arrived the other ISMers took food and water to a house which the army had occupied, where 20 people were forced to spend the whole day sitting in two small rooms. We joined some other internationals and walked the streets, with the idea that if the soldiers knew we were around they would commit fewer abuses. Walking through a town under curfew is surreal, like being
in the Old West right before a shoot-out. The streets were empty, and the few people we met looked very nervous. Nothing much happened although we found rubber bullets and 'real' bullets in the street. This morning the curfew in Tulkarem was lifted, but the Israeli army refused to give control of Tulkarm back to the Palestinian Authority. Israel gave control of Tulkarm to the Palestian Authority four months ago as part of a process that is suposed to lead eventually to Israel withdrawing from Gaza and the West Bank.
This afternoon I came to Jerusalem, and tomorrow I'm going to Qawawis, a tiny village of one house and three caves, where internationals and their video cemeras are needed to keep the psychopaths in the nearby settlement at bay.
And I have been eating falafel twice a day for two weeks, and I'm still not sick of it.
Love,
Caroline
Caroline
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