ISM Reports: Protest At Baqa Al-Sharqiya Gate

1. Protest at Baqa al-Sharqiya gate
2. Goodbye to Balata
3. Update From Balata



1.
Protest at Baqa al-Sharqiya gate

Tulkarem
3 Jul 03
Neal Cassidy


Baqa ash-Sharqiya, West Bank Palestine

Over two hundred Palestinians and international solidarity activists
held a peaceful protest
today at a construction site of a gate which will soon be completed,
effectively cutting this town of 4000 people off from neighboring cities
in the West Bank.

Chanting \"Palestine Must be Free\" and \"No to the Wall\", the
demonstrators marched to the construction site and briefly stopped Israeli
construction crews working on the gate. Other construction work along the
fence nearby
proceeded, however.

Approximately 40 internationals held up signs that read \"Walls Create
Prisons, Not Nations\", and \"Peace Needs Bridges, Not Walls\",
Palestinian children carried signs reading \"End the Occupation\" and \"Free
Palestine\" in English and Arabic.

Israeli soldiers in jeeps pulled back as the demonstration approached,
apparently hoping to avoid a confrontation. As soon as the
demonstrators left, however, the soldiers reappeared and imposed a rigorous
checkpoint, subjecting people on foot and in vehicles to questioning and
searches. A long traffic jam ensued, which was eased slightly when activists
from ISM
negotiated with the soldiers and got them to agree to expedite the
flow.

The gate, on the southern side of Baqa ash-Sharqiya, is part of
Israel’s so-called \"security wall\" now being constructed inside the Green
Line which demarcates the 1967 truce line between Israel and the West
Bank. The
Israeli Government claims that the wall is needed for security, but its
actual line, cutting deep into Palestinian land, suggest that its true
purpose is to annex more land and water resources for Israel. Many
local farmers in the north Tulkarm region, as along the rest of the wall &
fence, have been cut off from their lands. Baqa ash-Sharqiya and two
adjoining villages, Navlit Issa and Nazlit Abu Nar, combind population
67000, will be completely isolated from the rest of the West Bank when
the wall project is completed, as it will be surrounded on all sides,
with access controlled by
only three gates.


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2.
Saying Goodbye in Balata

Nablus
3 Jul 03
Joseph


This morning I said goodbye to the local coordinators here in Balata
Camp. We exchanged email addresses and hugs. Sadness made my chest heavy
as I walked down Market St. to catch a cab. Although I was only here
for a week and a half I created some good bonds with the Palestinian
coordinators I worked with at check points and removing roadblocks. I grew
accustomed to the cramped camp where entrances to the square gray
cinderblock houses are often hidden in the maze of alleys I have to walk
sideways into. Balata is a sad replacement for the homes these people were
forced from in Jaffa and Haifa; both coastal and ancient cities which I
will visit to truly understand what was stolen.
Daniel and I got a cab to Biet Iba check point where we pass out of
Nablus area towards Tulkurem where the local community raised the tents
of a peace camp in opposition to a coming wall that will separate
villages from farm lands, brother from sisters, families from income. When we
arrived t Biet Iba sweaty and excited we were told by the soldier in
his bullet proof booth, looked down on by a sniper tower and mini-base
just up the hill, that we could not pass. Ironically, Palestinians were
passing at a faster rate then I have seen since we got here but we, with
our privileged international status, could not get through.
We walked back up the dusty road lined on one side with a rock cutting
quarry shop, the tap-tap of metal hammers cutting the heat, and on the
other with stone dust drenched olive trees behind a squat rock wall.
Before we could call back to Balata for advice and help we met a cab
driver and promptly started discussing the fate of the Palestinian people
in a conversation wrought with mispronounced Arabic and broken English.
As soon as I said I am from Amrika the conversation turned to the love
the Palestinian people feel for the people of the U.S and the hatred
they feel for the government of the US. The driver asked us our opinions
of Bush and Sharon. After several minutes he welcomed us to Palestine
and we called Balata for help. The Balata crew arranged for a car to
take us around the checkpoint through the hills, and we decided to wait
out the midday sun under a tree in front of a house with a broken
windowed shop in the first floor. After several minutes of smoking cigarettes
and guzzling water a man came out from the house and sat with us on
the under the tree. As he batted away flies he told us about the house,
his home, and how a year ago the IDF occupied it for five months. During
this time his wife, his seven kids, and himself were confined to two
rooms in the house; the IDF took everything of value from the house
including the man’s watch and television. People who brought food and other
supplies to the family were often not aloud in to deliver the goods.
His wife and children are stuck in a small village on the other side of
the check point for twenty days now. They left to visit his wife’s
mother and were not allowed to return through the checkpoint. He told us
they may try to make the trip through the hills where they risk getting
shot by snipers or detained by the IDF. This man dressed in a blue
button-up shirt, dress pants, and dust speckled loafers, with skin dark from
the sun, shook with anger at how he and his family are treated in their
own country. He said that the Intifada is not a choice but a necessity,
a resistance that grew out of and is sustained by people with no other
choice but to resist. Our conversation came to a close and the man left
Daniel and me in silence to think about the dusty road and how people
here can’t just walk down it to visit a friend. As trucks drove by
throwing dust into out hair and the creases of our clothing another man cam
out from the house and asked us in for tea. We sat with his extended
familyof older men as he explained that his family’s sweets factory was
several hundred meters away but because of the checkpoint they couldn’t
get to it for over three years. They often wait all day at the check
point, literally eight hours in the sun and dust, just to be turned away.
Another man spoke of visiting relatives in Chicago where he could go
out to the movies in the evening and not worry about soldiers in the dark
late nights, how the worry was gone from his life after just several
days away from the occupation. I never thought of Chicago as liberating
before. We sipped tea and spoke with each other like old friends
catching up with the tragedy of life. And then Daniel and I left headed back
to Balata when our driver failed to show up. We try again tomorrow but
if we get through quickly I do not think I will learn as much as I did
today, all in the one time inconvenience for me and daily oppression for
the Palestinians.



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3.
Update from Balata

Nablus
29 Jun 03
Joseph


Here I am in Balata Refugee camp. Here you know when there are tanks
and APCs at the end of the street; the shops start to close up and boys
of all ages from six to 21 are galloping down the street barely stopping
to scoop up rocks to throw at the double armored vehicles. Yesterday as
the boys were throwing rocks at an APC and tank at the end of Market
St. in the 5pm slanting sunlight two were hit with rubber bullets shot
from the APC. One boy was walking onto Market St. from Jerusalem St.,
the main street on the edge of the camp, when he was hit in the mouth
with one of these plastic coated metal balls bigger than marble.
I met 14-year-old Mohamed today in his family home. His top lip is
swollen and covered with bloody bandages, the front of his shirt stained
with drips of blood from his constantly leaking lip. Although he was in
obvious pain Mohamed sat with us and told us about how he had been
walking past the APC and tank to go home when all of a sudden he heard the
shots and saw blood pouring from his face, he said at first he didn’t
feel pain, he just saw blood. The APC had been no more than 75 meters
away.
Mohamed couldn’t stay in the hospital because there is not enough room
for him there. He has to wait out the healing process over his summer
break from school before he enters 9th grade at home in the back garden,
where during our conversation we could here the close firing of guns
from APC in the latest of IDF actions at the edge of the camp. The
hospitals here in Nablus are over crowded.
Mohamed’s father was shot in the face by the IDF during a different
incursion into the camp. The plastic bullet stayed in his face for a
while before he could get the needed operation to remove it. The other
eight-year-old child was hit in the forehead.

Last night I stayed in the Bata house, yet another home threatened with
destruction from the Israeli military. The Bata house is in Askar
Refugee Camp a three minute taxi ride from Balata camp. When I arrived in
Askar with Daniel, an activist from Sweden, we walked down a small alley,
wide enough for a compact car, where several groups of men were sitting
in circles lit by late open shops talking in the still warm night. We
came across the Bata father and a group of his friends. They all spoke
emphatically about the horrors of U.S foreign policy, Mr. Bata
translating in his slow but almost perfect English. All I could do was apologize
and listen to their angry justified complaints.
After a while Bata, a man with one front tooth, a head of white hair
who carries himself with intention yet ready to smile, speaking as
though he can’t waste words explained to us why the Palestinians are
fearless, why they throw rocks at the tanks and continue drinking their tea as
APCs roll by. He told us that the international community needs to
understand the Palestinian people; they need to know that “Here our
children, our future, are born between tanks.” He told us that unless Israel
and he U.S understand this exposure to violence and terror from the
womb to the grave then there will be no move towards justice for the
Palestinian people.
As I fell asleep, my joints and muscles decompressing and the dasy
collection of sunlight poring off my body I thought about the kids shot
with rubber bullets, the constant tanks, the unseen snipers on the hill
and felt sad, helpless. I also thought about Bata’s joking with the
neighbor kids and nearly toothless grins, and I slept well.

joseph