This came from Israel Shamir shamir@home.se
Sent: Wednesday, April 17, 2002 1:37 PM
A nice letter from Liad, the jolly Israeli-American girl, familiar to my
readers, about her visit to Ramallah
LIAD IN RAMALLAH
by Liad Liad <liadland@yahoo.com>
“Hey baby, what’s a nice girl like you doing in Ramallah?” You may ask.
On Friday, April 5, seven Israeli girls from good Jewish homes
entered Ramallah. I was one of them. Our goal, simply stated, is to
express objection to our government’s war against the Palestinian
civilian population currently taking place in Ramallah, as well as other
cities in the West Bank, and to show solidarity with the Palestinians.
It is currently illegal for Israelis to enter the Occupied Territories.
Illegal, that is, unless you’re a soldier. We know that the government
does this to keep us Israelis from seeing what really goes on over
there. That’s the reason they also don’t allow photographers in and
shoot at them. But we were determined to see for ourselves. And we did.
We enter Ramallah by a combination of driving and walking. The whole
process, while it only takes half an hour at most, makes us feel like
outlaws on the run, like moving targets. Being Israeli, it’s clear that
we’re facing danger from both whichever Palestinians would not happy
with our presence in their neighbourhoods and see us as enemies and by
the Israeli occupation forces that may capture and arrest us, plus
whatever crossfire we may get caught in from either side. We can’t be
left alone for a minute. So we make arrangements for a Palestinian “tour
guide”. The first thing he asks of us is that if at any point after he
leaves us we get caught, that we don’t mention his name to the military.
On the drive there we take a nice tour of every nearby refugee camp and
the slum neighbourhood outside of Ramallah. The streets are empty and
the stores are closed. Every once in a while we pass a car. The driver
stops and talks with our driver, and based on that our driver knows
where the tanks are placed and which route to take. We can’t get caught
because there’s curfew and they can either shoot us or arrest us. At
some
e point we have to get out and walk in an open field. This is
particularly dangerous because we’re exposed. Every time we reach a
crossroad, our guide instructs us to hide behind the nearby building
while he goes to check if there are tanks or soldiers around the corner.
The guide lets us out 200 meters before the Ramallah hospital. The
last 200 meters we have to walk by ourselves, no guide, just us seven
women, and a group of ten Italians who know as little about the
situation as we do. He gives us twenty bags of pita bread to bring to
the people on the inside, and tells us to be careful. Those were the
scariest 200 meters I’ve ever walked in my life. We’re all wearing
white, so that if the soldiers catch us, they can identify us as
Internationals and know not to shoot. Apparently they don’t shoot at
you as long as you’re marked as a non-Palestinian. We have to walk very
slowly in the middle of the road, to make sure we’re visible. We walk
with our hands in the air so that the army can tell that we have no
weapons.
We make to the hospital ok, and are greeted by the medical team and
some fifty activists who’ve been staying at the hospital for over a
week. No one has taken a shower in eight days because there is no
running water. The only water available is in bottles, and the supply is
limited. There are a number of international journalists there, no
Israeli press of course – not only is it illegal for any press to be
there, what Israeli, journalist or not, would risk their lives to be in
these conditions and illegally, only to conjure up some report? The
international press wants to interview us, but they’re afraid that
through their reports the army will detect that they’re staying in the
city illegally and will kick them out.
We don’t get exposed to the patients too much, and our only experience
with the horrific tales of bloodshed are through stories we here from
doctors and activists. Yesterday morning, we are told, a 55-year-old
woman somehow made it to the hospital. The cast on her foot was broken,
and she had to get it changed. She left the hospital at 11:00 am. At
11:15 she returned to the hospital at the arms of an activist who
carried her dead body back. She was shot twice, in the cheek and the
neck. Two days prior to that, the military blocked the entrance to the
hospital with a number of tanks. They did not allow ambulances filled
with injured patients and dead bodies they collected from throughout the
city to even get near the hospital. The army knew that there are lots of
activists staying in the hospital, and threatened to break in, forcibly
pull the activists out, and destroy everything inside.
Another phenomenon we’re informed of is mass arrests, particularly of
Palestinian men. There have already been around 3000 arrests. The army
takes the men into an undisclosed location, blindfolds them, and tie
their hands behind their backs. They go through 3 or 4 days blindfolded
and tied, generally without food or water, until the army investigates
who they are. Then the army dumps their bodies, which are still
blindfolded and tied, in some field in the middle of nowhere. They give
them a note which says they’ve already been checked out, in case they
get
arrested again. One of these men made it to the hospital a day before we
arrived. He was injured by the army. He said that there are fields full
of these men, who can’t even move and certainly can’t make it home.
Somehow, he was able to make it back home, after a very long walk. He
was stopped by the army, and some soldier stopped him and wrote
something on his hand which he couldn’t read, because it was in Hebrew.
The activists took a picture of his hand and wanted us to look at it and
find out what they wrote. I think that instead of giving him a note that
he was arrested, they just wrote it on his hand. Kinda reminds me of
some means of marking cattle.
We decide to go to the headquarters of the Union of Palestinian Medical
Relief Committees (UPMRC). There is a shipment of food there that was
sent in by Israeli organizations and is going to get distributed today.
The food reached Ramallah two days ago, but hasn’t been distributed
because of the curfew. There’s been a curfew on the city for the last
seven days, and anyone caught outside will get shot, though more likely
so if they’re Palestinian. The curfew was lifted only once so far, three
days ago, for three hours, to allow people to stock up on food or run to
the hospital if they need to, but apparently even during the lift of
the curfew the army shot and killed people who were out on the street.
The curfew is going to get lifted again for three hours today. This is
probably because General Zinni is going to be in Ramallah for a meeting,
and the Israeli government wants the place to look normal, so that he
doesn’t get to see what it’s like under curfew. Things are crazy once
the curfew is lifted. People run like mad to get as much food and
supplies as possible, because they know that within a few short hours
they’ll be stuck in their houses again for an indefinite amount of time.
And on top of that, most stores and businesses are not open, because all
the owners and the workers are themselves busy running out trying to
load their houses with food and water. The only place where people will
be going to get food is the UPMRC, and the entire neighbourhood is going
to be there. So we decide to go there and help before the rush.
Apparently, as long as you are identified as an International, you are
not outright shot and are somewhat free to move about at certain
neighbourhoods of the city, despite of the curfew. The headquarters of
the UPMRC is about a five-minute walk on a regular day. But today we
can’t get straight there, because of the tanks which are blocking some
streets on the way, and soldiers stationed at certain corners on the way
that we’d like to avoid. We have to take some bypass route. We begin our
journey, and are accompanied by Huwaida and Adam of the International
Solidarity Movement, and a Palestinian volunteer the UPMRC.
There are trenches in the middle of the streets every so often, and the
roads have tank marks all over them. There are bullet shells and tank
shells everywhere. I’ve never seen tank shells before. They look just
like the bullet shells, but are about twelve inches (30 centimetres)
long. I start picking them up as mementos, but I quickly realize that
there are far too many to pick up. Had I gone one block’s length and
picked up all the shells, I would not have enough room for them in my
backpack. We pass by several cars that were either run over by tanks or
set on fire or blown up to the point that they are without recognition.
People will be left without cars after this is over. There are several
electricity poles that have been torn down and are lying in the middle
of the street. Apparently tanks have this habit of running over cars
and electricity poles. The building themselves are of course not immune
either. There are holes in them everywhere. In some buildings the holes
are as bi big as my head. It’s scary to think that there were people
inside the buildings when they hit. Several buildings burned down from
the bombs, and are entirely black. one of them is Ramallah’s biggest
nightclub Rumours, which served as an infamous hangout to Israelis as
well as Palestinians before the beginning of the Intifada. What was the
army looking for at a nightclub?
We get stopped by soldiers twice. The first time this happens we turn a
corner and two soldiers come at us from a building and stop us. Within
ten seconds there are four more. They start aiming their guns at us and
up at the windows of the building above. They want to know what we’re
doing on the street. Don’t we know there’s a curfew? They demand we go
back. They spot a Palestinian among us and demand that he comes into the
occupied building with them. Fearing that we may not see him again, we
refuse to let him go alone. Adam begins arguing with the soldiers, and
I join him. What am I going to do to him? says one soldier. He pinches
himself, I’m only human, see? He’s not trying to convince the
Palestinian. He’s talking to us. The hardest thing is speaking to the
soldiers. I want to lash out at them in Hebrew. They treat Israelis with
such a different level of respect than they do of internationals, which
they see as a bunch of fools who blindly support Arafat and his
terrorists and have no real understanding of the situation. I know that
if I or any one of us speaks in Hebrew, we’ll be arrested in no time. We
will be put on trial and our sentence could lead to several months’
worth of jailtime. So we don’t take the risk. We send Adam with our
Palestinian companion into the building. We wait outside for over half
an
hour. We hear shillings. tank fire, guns. It gets closer. We hear cars
coming towards us. We’re standing in the middle of the street and are
totally exposed. We start shaking. Adam and the UPMRC volunteer return
eventually.
The second time we get stopped, the head soldier and his assistants are
searching a car. People where told that the curfew will be lifted at
12:30, and it got changed to 2pm. People have been coming out believing
that the curfew is lifted, including this poor guy who took his car out
to get food for his family. The soldier refuses to speak any language
other than Hebrew to the guy. He’s ordering him to open his trunk, and
asks him a bunch of questions like what are you doing outside, where do
you think you’re going. The poor man is having difficulties taking the
soldier’s orders and answering his questions. It’s obvious that he can
hardly understand a word he’s saying. As soon as the soldier spots us,
he orders us with our backs to a nearby wall. After some interrogation
he lets us go “with a warning.”
The UPMRC office is located in a building that is also host to the
Mandela Centre for Political Prisoners, a seamstress shop, and a law
office. Perhaps because of the political nature of two of the offices,
the entire building got raided just days ago. The law office upstairs
suffered the most damage. First the military fired fun and tank shells
at it, then they blew the doors open, entered, and confiscated all the
documents inside. The door is hardly hanging on. The wall with a window
facing outside is no longer there. The wall behind it is hardly hanging
on and with holes of all sizes it looks like a strainer. The entire
office is full of rubble. Everything is torn down and broken, except for
a picture of the lawyer’s daughter which is still hanging on the wall.
We begin distributing the food as soon as the curfew is lifted. People
bang on the doors and push each other to try to get to the window. We
can’t even control them, and we certainly can’t work fast enough. We
talk on the phone with Israeli journalist Amira Hass who lives in
Ramallah. Speak in Hebrew, she says, it’s important that the
Palestinians know who you are and that you’re there.
After several hours of work we head back. The street is filled with
frantic people running around in chaos. We must leave the city before
the curfew comes back on. We get as far as the checkpoint outside of
Kalandia refugee camp by car. We have to cross the checkpoint by foot,
as no cars are allowed through. The checkpoint is experiencing a
bottleneck as one by one each person puts their possessions aside for a
search, steps forward, lifts up their shirt, and turns around before
they’re either allowed or denied passage. We’re scared to pass the
checkpoint, because we don’t have international ID. We can get stopped
and, once more, face arrest and trial.
We are let through without problem though, as we pass the soldiers one
by one. The last one to pass through is Shelly. After we move away she
tells us that she know one of the soldiers at the checkpoint. He was her
classmate. She went to school with him for seven years. What can I say.
We are everywhere.
Responses to Liad Liad <liadland@yahoo.com>