Today, while the people in my country celebrate independence from a
colonizing power, Palestinian families are holding demonstrations at prisons
all over the West Bank demanding the release of people who have been
imprisoned for various acts of resistance to the military occupation of this
land. In Jenin, about 100 people, including Palestinian families and
international and Israeli activists in support showed up to demand the
release of husbands, sons, fathers and brothers from this prison where many
have been held for months without formal charges. The demonstration took
place outside the Salem military base, where there is also an illegal
detention center. The march to the detention center and the subsequent
demonstration were both peaceful and there was no direct confrontation with
the lines of border police, armed with M-16s, who had showed up to meet the
demonstrators.

On the way to the demonstration I talked to some of the family members of the
political prisoners, most of whom were carrying large framed photographs of
their loved ones who have been held in the prison. There is something about
seeing a group of Palestinian mothers carrying photographs of their sons in
one hand and tearing pieces off of onions with the other hand to provide
relief from the tear gas that may meet them once they arrive at the
demonstration. I talked with Mohammed, a man who was leaning on a cane and
holding a picture of his 14-year-old son who has been held in the detention
center without charge for 2 and a half months. Despite his age, Mohammed's
son is being held in the adult prison. "His voice is still the voice of a
young boy," Mohammed tells me. "I do not know why he is there. I don't know
if we will ever see him again." At the demonstration, Mohammed was one of
the many speakers who connected his son's imprisonment with the illegal
occupation that controls the lives of Palestinians living in the West Bank.
"Soldiers come into our houses and take our sons away. We don't know why.
We cannot farm our lands, we cannot travel to visit our families, some of us
do not have food. With the wall [a concrete and razor-wire barrier the
Israeli government is erecting to surround the West Bank, in violation of
numerous international laws], it will only get worse. What is left for my
son? He is fourteen years old. What is left for his future? If he gets out
of this prison he will still be living in a prison."

Through a translator, I spoke with Alia, a Palestinian grandmother who was
carrying, in addition to her three-year-old sleeping granddaughter, pictures
of her two sons, who have both been in this prison on unfounded charges for
at least a year. She doesn't know if or when they will be released. She
says, pointing to her granddaughter, "On the day the soldiers came to take
away her father, they came into my kitchen and kicked over all the food we
were making. They spit on my food! Why did they do that? They took him
away with guns. Why? We don't know why. And his daughter here--she doesn't
even know her father. He cannot work to buy food for us. Sometimes we have
food and sometimes we do not."

At the demonstration in Salem, as well as in every other place I have visited
in the West Bank, I noticed that people may or may not talk about the
violence that has been visited upon their families, but everyone talks about
food: whether they have it now, whether they will or won't have it in the
future. Although in Jenin the most immediate reminder of the occupation is
the ubiquitous nature of the Israeli soldiers, who enter the city most nights
and begin shooting, the economic realities of closures, checkpoints and other
physical barriers to a free society are ultimately proving more harmful to
ordinary Palestinians. According to Khamel, a shopkeeper, "we do not have
food the way we used to. The food can't arrive. We can't farm because maybe
we cannot get to our farmland. We do not have any more money because they
are cutting us away. Nothing can come here from Jerusalem, people can't buy
things. My uncle used to be a hotel manager. Now he sells falafel down the
street. He has a nice car-- a beautiful car! But he can't drive it because
he cannot afford to put benzene [gas] in it. And he can't sell it because no
one can buy it."

In other parts of the West Bank things are much worse. In Ramallah I met a
group of international volunteers who have been working in Hebron for the
last two years. According to one of them, "in Hebron the occupation has been
mostly successful. So it's hard for us to figure out what to do now. When I
say the occupation has been successful, what I mean is that in the old city
of Hebron there is nothing left. You walk down the main street, where even a
year ago there used to be a market; where a few years ago the whole city
would congregate, and people would be selling everything-- fruits,
vegetables, falafel, clothes, furniture, cell phones-- now you walk down the
main street and there is absolutely nothing. Nothing. Not one person. The
shops are this long white line of boarded-up doorways. The people who could
leave have all left by now because there is absolutely nothing for them.
The people who can't leave have moved up the hill and most are trying to grow
things outside where they can. Soldiers don't even need to come in anymore
to the old city, because they've done their job. Everyone's gone." People
describe the city like a ghost town in an old Western, where razor wire rolls
through the dust like tumbleweed.

And yet in Hebron, as all over the West Bank, the people who remain insist on
living their lives as normally as they can. A successful demonstration in
Hebron last week consisted of families going into the old city, despite their
fears and despite the economic depression, shopkeepers opening their doors
and selling what they could even though layers of dust had by now piled up on
the cans. In Jenin, mothers armed with photographs and onions face soldiers
aiming M-16s, because resisting the occupation, in whatever way, is the only
way they may get their sons back; their fathers, husbands and brothers. Next
week the women of Jenin will return to Salem. According to Alia, "I will
keep returning, as long as they are there; as long as I am here. They may
take away my son but they will not take away my heart."

======
On a more personal note, I'm fine; falling in love with the people here who
offer us their food, their houses, their stories. As of yet I have had no
reason to fear for my safety; on the contrary the people here constantly tell
us they feel the need to protect us and I feel more looked after here than I
ever have in my adult life. I am meeting incredible healthcare workers,
including some of the most amazing paramedics i have ever encountered;
18-year-old boys who calmly treat trauma cases with the kind of skill I hope
to one day possess. I miss all of you and appreciate all of your supportive
emails. When I can I am trying to answer them one by one. For now please
know that all of you are in my heart. More soon.

Love and solidarity,

Catherine

Rubble and Celebration in Jenin
by Catherine

UPDATE FROM PALESTINE by Catherine

Today, while the people in my country celebrate independence from a
colonizing power, Palestinian families are holding demonstrations at prisons
all over the West Bank demanding the release of people who have been
imprisoned for various acts of resistance to the military occupation of this
land. In Jenin, about 100 people, including Palestinian families and
international and Israeli activists in support, showed up to demand the
release of husbands, sons, fathers and brothers from this prison where many
have been held for months without formal charges. The demonstration took
place outside the Salem military base, where there is also an illegal
detention center. The march to the detention center and the subsequent
demonstration were both peaceful and there was no direct confrontation with
the lines of border police, armed with M-16s, who had showed up to meet the
demonstrators.

On the way to the demonstration I talked to some of the family members of the
political prisoners, most of whom were carrying large framed photographs of
their loved ones who have been held in the prison. There is something about
seeing a group of Palestinian mothers carying photographs of their sons in
one hand and tearing pieces off of onions with the other hand to provide
relief from the tear gas that may meet them once they arrive at the
demonstration. I talked with Mohammed, a man who was leaning on a cane and
holding a picture of his 14-year-old son who has been held in the detention
center without charge for 2 and a half months. Despite his age, Mohammed's
son is being held in the adult prison. "His voice is still the voice of a
young boy," Mohammed tells me. "I do not know why he is there. I don't know
if we will ever see him again." At the demonstration, Mohammed was one of
the many speakers who connected his son's imprisonment with the illegal
occupation that controls the lives of Palestinians living in the West Bank.
"Soldiers come into our houses and take our sons away. We don't know why.
We cannot farm our lands, we cannot travel to visit our families, some of us
do not have food. With the wall [a concrete and razor-wire barrier the
Israeli government is erecting to surround the West Bank, in violation of
numerous international laws], it will only get worse. What is left for my
son? He is fourteen years old. What is left for his future? If he gets out
of this prison he will still be living in a prison."

Through a translator, I spoke with Alia, a Palestinian grandmother who was
carrying, in addition to her three-year-old sleeping granddaughter, pictures
of her two sons, who have both been in this prison on unfounded charges for
at least a year. She doesn't know if or when they will be released. She
says, pointing to her granddaughter, "On the day the soldiers came to take
away her father, they came into my kitchen and kicked over all the food we
were making. They spit on my food! Why did they do that? They took him
away with guns. Why? We don't know why. And his daughter here--she doesn't
even know her father. He cannot work to buy food for us. Sometimes we have
food and sometimes we do not."

At the demonstration in Salem, as well as in every other place I have visited
in the West Bank, I noticed that people may or may not talk about the
violence that has been visited upon their families, but everyone talks about
food: whether they have it now, whether they will or won't have it in the
future. Although in Jenin the most immediate reminder of the occupation is
the ubiquitous nature of the Israeli soldiers, who enter the city most nights
and begin shooting, the economic realities of closures, checkpoints and other
physical barriers to a free society are ultimately proving more harmful to
ordinary Palestinians. According to Khamel, a shopkeeper, "we do not have
food the way we used to. The food can't arrive. We can't farm because maybe
we cannot get to our farmland. We do not have any more money because they
are cutting us away. Nothing can come here from Jerusalem, people can't buy
things. My uncle used to be a hotel manager. Now he sells falafel down the
street. He has a nice car-- a beautiful car! But he can't drive it because
he cannot afford to put benzene [gas] in it. And he can't sell it because no
one can buy it."

In other parts of the West Bank things are much worse. In Ramallah I met a
group of international volunteers who have been working in Hebron for the
last two years. According to one of them, "in Hebron the occupation has been
mostly successful. So it's hard for us to figure out what to do now. When I
say the occupation has been successful, what I mean is that in the old city
of Hebron there is nothing left. You walk down the main street, where even a
year ago there used to be a market; where a few years ago the whole city
would congregate, and people would be selling everything-- fruits,
vegetables, falafel, clothes, furniture, cell phones-- now you walk down the
main street and there is absolutely nothing. Nothing. Not one person. The
shops are this long white line of boarded-up doorways. The people who could
leave have all left by now because there is absolutely nothing for them.
The people who can't leave have moved up the hill and most are trying to grow
things outside where they can. Soldiers don't even need to come in anymore
to the old city, because they've done their job. Everyone's gone." People
describe the city like a ghost town in an old Western, where razor wire rolls
through the dust like tumbleweed.

And yet in Hebron, as all over the West Bank, the people who remain insist on
living their lives as normally as they can. A successful demonstration in
Hebron last week consisted of families going into the old city, despite their
fears and despite the economic depression, shopkeepers opening their doors
and selling what they could even though layers of dust had by now piled up on
the cans. In Jenin, mothers armed with photographs and onions face soldiers
aiming M-16s, because resisting the occupation, in whatever way, is the only
way they may get their sons back; their fathers, husbands and brothers. Next
week the women of Jenin will return to Salem. According to Alia, "I will
keep returning, as long as they are there; as long as I am here. They may
take away my son but they will not take away my heart."

======
On a more personal note, I'm fine; falling in love with the people here who
offer us their food, their houses, their stories. As of yet I have had no
reason to fear for my safety; on the contrary the people here constantly tell
us they feel the need to protect us and I feel more looked after here than I
ever have in my adult life. I am meeting incredible healthcare workers,
including some of the most amazing paramedics i have ever encountered;
18-year-old boys who calmly treat trauma cases with the kind of skill I hope
to one day possess. I miss all of you and appreciate all of your supportive
emails. When I can I am trying to answer them one by one. For now please
know that all of you are in my heart. More soon.

Love and solidarity,

Catherine

------------------------------------------------------

July 9, 2004
Az Zawiya, West Bank
Occupied Palestine

Today is Friday, the traditional Muslim day of prayer. And so today, in the
village of Az Zawiya, hundreds of Palestinian men and boys decided, in an
expression of nonviolent resistance to occupation, to pray. After meeting at
the old mosque in the center of town, most of the male residents of the city,
accompanied by about twenty international supporters, marched through the
streets of the village to hold the prayer in what was, until weeks ago, a
large and flourishing olive grove where most of the village's economy is
based.

Bulldozers have cleared away much of the farmland surrounding Az Zawiya now,
in preparation for the Apartheid Wall the state of Israel has been planning
to build on this land. Under the pretext of increasing security, the Israeli
government has been building a concrete and razor-wire barrier that, if or
when it is completed, will effectively enclose most of the West Bank like a
prison.

Everyone I have talked to in Palestine doubts that the main point of the wall
is to increase Israeli security. According to Hassan, a student at Al Quds
Open University in Jenin, "They are using it to take more of our land. If you
look at maps of the West Bank you will see that the wall does not follow the
Green Line-- in many places it goes far far inside the West Bank. They are
using it to create a new border and to take even more land from us."

Hiba, a mother and English student from Az Zawiya who is also maybe the best
cook in the world, says, "It is a prison. Really. What else can it be? I
hear what it is like in places where they already have the wall. Children
cross through a gate to go to school. Sometimes they can cross and sometimes
they cannot. And everyone can only go through this gate at certain hours of
the day? It is already difficult to go anywhere. If I need to go to Nablus
maybe I can and maybe I cannot. With this wall it will be impossible. And
they are destroying everything to build this wall! If something is in the
path of the wall, they do not even have the dignity to go around it. A
house, a store, a tree: they crush it with a bulldozer. They do not care.
Look at all of this empty land you see! Just weeks ago there were olive
trees here. They even cut our trees that were not in the way of the wall.
Why? Just to cut them? Some of us need those trees in order to survive.
They do not care about our lives. They want to keep us in like in a prison.
I cannot think of any other reason."

In Beituniya, a small neighborhood on the outskirts of Ramallah, an art
student named Ghalib showed us where the wall was being contructed to contain
water lines for Israeli settlements that have not been built yet. This is
what he said: "We have not done anything! All of this they have destroyed.
For what? And now they are going to build a new settlement on the other
side, after they destroy our land? They are supposed to be removing the
settlements! Even they admit the settlements are illegal. But they are going
to use this wall to bring water to the settlement. We have been needing
water for years! I am an art student. I am not a terrorist. Really, I do
want peace. We resist this wall by creating the art exhibit you have
visited. We make sculptures and pictures. A documentary. And they take
everything we have. What do we have left now?"

For me it was shocking to walk down these hills that until recently had been
overflowing with olive trees. Now there are only gray rocks, hollowed deep
into the ground like an amphitheatre. It stretches on like this for miles.
In the middle of the canyon the bulldozers have made, there is a long line of
concrete pillars. They will be maybe fifteen feet high when stood on end to
make the wall; for now they lay on the ground as a physical indication of
what is to come. Pillars like these have been sitting on the ground in
Ramallah and Jerusalem since well before I got here. They snake through the
land and along the roads like a heavy warning.

Yesterday, while the village of Az Zawiya was holding prayer on their
destroyed land, the International Court of Justice in the Hague issued a
ruling, citing numerous international laws against occupation and land theft,
that the wall must come down. The only dissenting vote came from the United
States. Many people here do not have a lot of faith that this ruling will do
anything to help the situation; supported by the United States, Israel is
able to violate countless international laws daily, and the wall itself is
already flaunting some of Israel's own laws and court decisions.

Despite the rather momentous nature of the decision at the Hague, I found the
most inpiration yesterday in the words of nine-year-old Akhmed, a wise and
fierce activist from Az Zawiya who led chants on a bullhorn with the charisma
and dignity of a man four times his age. He says, "This wall will fall! But
not because of Israel and not because of the USA; because of the people. You
and me and you and me. Together we will make it go down."

=================

But the occupation is ultimately about so much more than this wall. In the
past few days I have visited, among other things, a summer camp for
six-year-olds where children are taught first aid in addition to finger
painting because, in the words of one volunteer, "they need to know it;" the
house of a lawyer who now farms olives because his degree is useless as long
as the Palestinian Authority continues to hold no legitimacy in this
occupation; and a university where almost the entire young population of
Jenin chooses, at significant expense, to get an education.

The student council room at the university is decorated with pictures of
former student council members who have been killed by Israeli forces.
Mahmoud, the student next to me, pointed to a picture of his brother. His
brother was nineteen when he was killed in Mahmoud's family's house. This was
three weeks ago. The other decorations in this room are sculptures and
pieces of woven cloth that students have made from jail, where they are
continuing their studies even if they may not get food, light, or water.

===============
July 10, Jenin

Today we returned from a peaceful demonstration organized by the families of
women prisoners, to find out that our friend's sixteen-year-old daughter had
been arrested, along with his wife, last night. Soldiers entered their house
in the Jenin refugee camp at three o' clock in the morning, armed with M16s
and yelling in Hebrew.

According to Abu Ali, our friend, "Luckily I speak good Hebrew, so they
didn't destroy my house. Usually they will destroy the house when they enter
but not last night. They took my wife and my daughter. Why? They came with
orders to take me. I do not know why. But they saw me in my wheelchair and
realized it would be inconvenient to take me. So the man in charge of the
soldiers made a phone call and said it had been decided they would take my
wife instead. Why did they take my wife? And then they took my daughter.
She is only sixteen. She is a baby! She is afraid of everything. If she
sees an insect on the floor she starts to cry. She doesn't go anywhere
alone. Not ever. Last night after dinner I asked her to go buy me
something. Just down the street! She would not go alone. She went with her
sister. She is very clever. She is about to graduate. She has one month
left of school. She studies very hard and she knows how to speak some
English. She knows almost all of the Koran."

His wife came home from prison at around noon today, but as of this evening
Abu Ali still does not know if or when his daughter will be released. He
doesn't know anything about any possible charges she may have. While we were
talking to Abu Ali in the shop he owns, maybe twenty people came by to give
him their regards, hear news, or offer food or other assistance.

"We help each other," Abu Ali says, referring to the many friends who have
stopped by to ask about his family. "It is a way of staying human. There is
so much we cannot do. I cannot take my daughter out of prison. What can I
do? I open my shop. I visit my friends. I take care of the rest of my
family. In this way we continue. It is the occupation; all of it comes from
the occupation. The occupation kills our children. It takes our land away
from us. What else can we do but fight the whole occupation? Not anything
more or less. Maybe I will get my daughter back soon, if God wills it. But
only when this occupation is over will she, and all of us, truly be free."

=======================================

---ok sorry this was a long one. Lots has been happening. I am keeping you
all in my thoughts and sending love not only from me but from so many of the
Palestinian students, workers, mothers, and fathers I have met. I have met
activists who are ninety years old, leaning withered on canes, and I have met
activists who are five. All are fighting, with a fullness of heart I have
rarely witnessed elsewhere, for nothing less than a chance at a free and
dignified life. I am honored to be walking beside them on this path and
boundlessly grateful to you, for being here to listen.

With respect, solidarity, and love,

Catherine

July 15, 2004
Jenin, West Bank
Occupied Palestine

These have been days of walking among ruins. Almost any street in Jenin has
at least one hollowed-out frame of a stone house somewhere, wires and
concrete piled inside among layers of dust and struggling plants. Rubble is
everywhere, even when you drive. On the way from Jenin to many of the
numerous villages that surround it, piles of white rocks that used to be
houses line the roads like graves.

One morning our friend Nihad, a local doctor, wakes us up at eight o'clock to
tell us he is taking us to meet with a few of the local medical
organizations. After meeting with the Red Crescent Society, the main
organization for emergency medical services here, we walk half a block away
from their headquarters to the destroyed remains of Jenin's old Palestinian
Authority building. Nihad's office was in this building until the Israeli
army destroyed it in 2001, within hours of receiving news of the September 11
attacks in the US. [This news was, evidently, justification enough for the
Israeli forces to lauch a military assault on the only office building here
belonging to Palestine's closest approximation to a legitimate government.
In light of this and so many other unprovoked attacks, many here doubt the
Israeli government's claims that Israel is working legitimately toward peace.
Israel has spent the last three years refusing to give permission for the
Palestinian Authority to
rebuild its offices here.]

In the United States a site like this would be condemned, cordoned off with
yellow tape and barbed-wire, but here it is another part of the landscape.
We hike over crumbled ceiling tiles, heaps of electrical wire, cactuses
inching up through piles of concrete, to the space in the rubble where Nihad
once built a thriving medical practice. "Here was my examining table," he
says, pointing to a blown-out section of wall, now held up by the grayish
door of a mangled Toyota. The charts of former patients lie strewn among the
vines and rocks, orders for antibioitics and insulin cracked and fading on
the paper after so many years in this harsh sun. He takes us to see the
skeletons of ambulances behind the old building; we look at the jagged
shards, now rusting, that pop out of the ceilings where Israeli soldiers
planted bombs. Since the beginning of this intifada many doctors and
ambulance drivers have been injured or killed in Jenin; the ones who remain
say they are "lucky" to still be
alive and working here.

"I still feel sad when I come here," Nihad says after a long silence, as we
wade through collapsed chairs, rocks, a baby mattress decorated with
spaceships. He shows us the rosebushes he planted in the courtyard and
tended between patients on slow days ("with my own hands," he tells us, at
least four times); today they are stooped, wrinkled, caked with white dust,
but still blooming.

=========

One evening we go to dinner with our friend Akram in the Jenin refugee camp,
the site of a bloody massacre the Israeli army conducted in spring of 2002.
The camp lies in a valley surrounded by high rocky cliffs covered with
forest. Akram takes us to the cliffs and shows us the wooded areas where
soldiers gathered to surround the camp on three sides before descending into
it. The seven days following this descent were some of the harshest in
Jenin's history: fifty-eight people were killed, and over four hundred houses
were destroyed. Of the many people who lost their homes, well more than half
still have yet to return to some kind of appropriate living situation.
People in Jenin refer to this time as "the Battle;" two years later the sense
of loss is still palpable.

Every doctor I have talked to about the Battle still expresses regret that
their ambulances were unable to get to the wounded during this time.
"Everyone who was hurt, they died," says Jamil, a local doctor who ended up
setting up an emergency clinic outside the camp because it was impossible to
enter to treat the wounded. "I cannot tell you, as a doctor, how it feels to
know that people are suffering, to know you are able to help them, that it is
your duty to help them, but you cannot enter."

Another doctor in Jenin, beloved by the residents of the camp, did try and
enter with his ambulance. The army blew up the ambulance, killing the doctor
and seriously wounding his companion. Now a large sculpture of a horse
stands at the entrance to the camp in honor of this doctor. It is made of
the tangled shrapnel of his old ambulance.

Today, people agree that "things are better" than they were around the time
of the Battle. Yet the army still enters the camp to carry out
assassinations of young men, and the rebuilding process is dubiously slow.
The UN has responsibility to rebuild the destroyed areas of the camp, and it
is trying to enact a condition that the rebuilt roads be wide enough for
tanks to enter them. (The narrow streets apparently caused great
inconvenience for the illegally invading soldiers in 2002.) The people of the
camp, naturally, say this is unacceptable. And so the shells of new houses
continue to stand here, gray columns of roofless walls on the hills, waiting.

Before we leave the camp Akram takes us to the cemetery, "the most important
place in the whole camp." After the Battle, the state of Israel refused to
let human rights workers enter the camp, while they hurried to remove any
evidence of the massacre that had taken place. Yet Palestinians who were
present were able to document much of the destruction, and eventually Israel
was forced to admit, at least, that an invasion had occurred.

"This cemetery is more than a place to bury our dead," Akram tells us. "It
is evidence. We heard after the Battle that Israel was saying it didn't
happen. If I was younger, I would have looked at the dead bodies, the crying
mothers, all the houses that were gone, and I would have said, 'How can they
say this?' Now I don't even ask this question anymore. Every day they do
things I do not understand. But for us it becomes important to remember. So
we build this cemetery and we decorate it; now any martyr from the camp is
buried here. We gather here. It is a special, important place for all of
us."

This evening mothers sit at gravesides and chat with one another; little boys
play soccer among the rocks. The concrete slabs that usually cover graves
here have been turned into flowerbeds, and brightly colored blooms spring out
of every one of them. In the setting sun they glitter like gold.

==========

Most days lately we have been visiting the villages surrounding Jenin to
check in about their situations and let them know about opportunities to
participate in activites the other villages are planning. Each village is
dealing with the occupation in its own separate way, but most of them express
a huge willingness to support the other villages in their respective
struggles.

When we were talking with the mayor of the village of Araqa, for example, we
told him about an action the residents of Barta'h were planning against the
checkpoint that cuts them off from almost the entire West Bank. Every single
day the farmers in Araqa struggle with soldiers who prevent them from
accessing their farmlands; many of them have been shot simply for trying to
get to their crops. But when we asked this mayor if he thought the people of
Araqa might want to come to this demonstration he looked at us in the patient
way an adult might regard a very young child. "They must," he said simply.
"There is no question."

Visiting the villages is more than an organizing opportunity, though; it's a
chance to sit in someone's living room and listen to what's happening in
their lives. So many people have told me that this is what they appreciate
the most. In the maybe-too-candid words of Rahim, a seventy-year old man who
has lost all three of his sons to Israeli soliders, "If you stand in front of
a soldier or a bulldozer, maybe you die. Maybe they kill you. Ok, you die
for us. You are a martyr. What a gift! But to live with us, to sit and
share in our suffering-- that too is a gift. So precious. I am so thankful
that you have come to drink coffee with me, and to share in our suffering."

People refer to our presence here as this: the sharing of suffering. I
wonder. As an international in Palestine, I have not suffered at all. On
the contrary I have been protected by everyone: mainly by the Palestinians
who feed us and offer us places to sleep, who shepherd us through backroads
and olive groves so we don't have to go through checkpoints. But also, the
Israeli soldiers I am here in many instances to confront offer me higher
regard than they do the Palestinian people who have been living here for
generations. And so, for a long time I was puzzled by this expression, until
I realized that the sharing of suffering maybe means nothing more or less
than to listen, really, to the stories I am hearing.

I spent one afternoon with Layla in the village of Zabuba, looking at
hundreds of pictures her son has sent her from prison. "He is in a better
prison now," she tells me. "Before, he was in Ansar Three. Worse than Abu
Ghraib, my brother tells me-- he was there too, my brother. Now he is in a
better one. He has sheets and he can go outside and he can study. Before,
all the prisons used to be so terrible. It changed because of the people.
The families of the prisoners made the Israelis make it better. This is why
I believe in the people. Together we can make things better. I have seen
it."

In Anin the van we were riding in stopped to pick up a husband and wife who
were both over one hundred years old. They asked if we wanted to look at the
land that had once been theirs, before the van dropped them off at their
house. While we hiked over the brown rocks to the cliff where their olive
groves once stood, the wife said to us, "When I was young I was beautiful! I
had seven sons. We had a house and trees--olive, almond. We had everything.
Over the years we have lost everything. Some of my family are in camps in
Lebanon but I don't know if they are even alive anymore. I love my husband
maybe too much. But he is all I have left." She points down over the cliff
where some trees still grow up to the line the Wall makes through these
hills. "My land," she says. "Don't you think it is beautiful?"

==================

A few nights ago our friend Basim invited us to a party at his house, in
honor of his daughter Arua's graduation from high school. He explained that
the party was going to be "small. Just family. Otherwise I would have to
invite the entire village." We were honored to be included at such an
intimate gathering.

Basim's "small" family party ended up having over 150 guests, all relatives
except for us eight internationals. Every flat surface in the house was
covered with plates of fruit, hummus, falafel, chicken. Most of us stayed on
the roof, where Basim's nephew had rigged a stereo system that blasted Arabic
music deep into the quiet village surrounding the house. Everyone danced:
the men, the moms, the five-year olds in party dresses, the grandmothers,
hunched and wrinkled and keeping rhythm better than most of us. Kids ran in
and out of the crowds, dancing when they felt like it, shooting red and green
firecrackers off the roof under Basim's guidance. From the roof we could see
the glittering lights of Israeli hotels and bridges; the Mediterranean is
just over the next hill. "At one point you could go visit there for the
day," Basim's daughter Arua said. "Just go there, come back. So relaxing.
But now it takes too long and it is too much of a hassle. All day you would
spend to
get there maybe. So we don't go." Later on, I was talking to a woman whose
son had just gotten out of jail. It occurred to me that every man I had met
that day had been in prison for at least some part of his life. Every single
one.

At one point in the party Basim's wife began a call-and-response song and all
the women joined in; the five-year-olds, the grandmothers. These songs are
from the first intifada, Basim's daughter Lena explained to us; they speak of
the strength of the people's struggle. These songs follow their natural
course; they don't have fixed verses and they last as long as people sing.
For at least half an hour, the women sang, clapping hands, to the beat of a
drum. The men stopped what they were doing, and paid attention. The
internationals were all spellbound. The kids still ran around; fireworks
still exploded off the roof. On this same night sons and daughters remained
in prison, farmers went to sleep wondering if they would be able to work
their crops tomorrow, and everyone knew they may not be able to travel freely
to school, work, or a family's house. But even still there was celebration;
people danced to Arua's bright future and sang about a day when justice, not
occupation, would
be a reality in this land.

============

more soon! love and solidarity to all of you,
Catherine

Last Days in Palestine
by Catherine

Barta'h, Jenin, and Jerusalem

Occupied Palestine

The mood at the checkpoint is festive. This is not usual; checkpoints are
not happy places. But today crowds of Palestinians and internationals have
outnumbered the jeeps and soldiers guarding the road. We have made
improvised noisemakers, plastic Pepsi bottles filled with gravel. These,
along with our whistles and chants, manage to drown out any orders the
soldiers yell at us through their bullhorns. For a few moments this large
nonviolent crowd is invincible.

For weeks the residents of Barta'h and other villages have been planning this
demonstration against the checkpoint that separates them from almost the
entire West Bank. Barta'h is one of a few villages that lie between the
Apartheid Wall and the Green Line that created the borders of the West Bank
in 1967. Residents of Barta'h, like all residents of the West Bank, are not
allowed to cross the Green Line into Israel without the special permission
that may be sporadically granted or denied by the Israeli government.
Additionally, because the village is located outside the Wall, residents are
also unable to enter the West Bank with any regularity. In order to get into
the West Bank, they need to cross through a checkpoint where the soldiers
have the authority to deny them access for any reason. Perhaps more dire,
though, is that the checkpoint also denies entry to most vehicles from the
West Bank into Barta'h. This means that, among other things, trucks with
food and other supplies are allowed only sporadic access to the villages.
Sometimes trucks with perishable goods like milk will be made to sit at the
checkpoint for hours in the sun; by the time the truck is allowed through the
milk has already spoiled.

At the demonstration, the people in the crowds are elated, not only because
of the noise but because we have been able to get here at all. Somehow the
Israeli forces found out about this demonstration and set up temporary
checkpoints on every road into Barta'h.

Our van was stopped and turned away four times, making a journey that should
have taken thirty minutes last well over two hours. I was amazed that the
Israeli government had gone to such great lengths to prevent a nonviolent
protest from happening. But turning back was not an option. Tareq, a trade
unionist who was riding in the van with us, said "it is silly for them to
make these little checkpoints. Do they think we will not find another way?
We always find another way, even if it is through our own fields. They
cannot stop us!" Indeed, our van ended up driving through a road that had
been hastily dug through an olive grove, branches cracking against our
windows as we trundled through the dust.

At the demonstration, the soldiers don't know what to do with us. Finally
they start letting cars through from Barta'h onto our side of the checkpoint.
The cars pass slowly into the sea of noise; it is like New Year's, or a
wedding. Finally the soldiers issue a warning that even we can hear through
the festivities: they will shoot us if we don't leave immediately. Even as
we turn away everyone continues to celebrate today's small victory.

===================================

Daily we have been visiting our friend Abu Ali, whose sixteen-year-old
daughter remains in prison. She still hasn't been formally charged with
anything, although she has been in jail now for almost two weeks. "She was
supposed to see a lawyer on Wednesday," Abu Ali tells me. "The lawyer had
contacted the prison and was given permission to see her and even a time that
she should come. She went all the way to the prison-it is not easy to get
there-and when she got there she was turned away. They said she did not have
permission to enter, even though they had told her before that she would be
able to go. So my daughter still has not seen a lawyer." This is usual
here. Abu Ali's daughter is one of perhaps thousands of Palestinian
prisoners who have no idea why they are in jail, or for how much time they
will be there.

Life goes on for Abu Ali. He runs a busy grocery store and is rebuilding his
house after a fire that happened a few weeks ago in the Jenin refugee camp,
where he lives. Two days ago his son Ali, who works in the grocery store in
the evenings, got into a motorcycle accident and broke his leg, which means
that Abu Ali has been working in the store from 6 AM until well after ten
o'clock at night. One day I say something like, "Abu Ali, this is just too
much!"

"Too much?" he replies. "This is not too much. This is life.
Life has ups and downs. We survive it. Look: I am still alive. I take care
of my children. I take care of my wife. I have friends like you who have
come all the way from America to be with us now. Yes, I miss my daughter
every day. But it will be all right."

He pauses for a while and looks out the window into the busy street. "Do you
know the only time I think it may all be too much?" he asks. "Sometimes I
realize I have already gotten used to the idea that my daughter is in prison.
It is just a part of life now, not a terrible thing I must use all my energy
to fight against. This, I think, is too much. This I cannot accept. When I
realize I have been thinking like this, it is the only time I feel like maybe
I will cry."

=====================================

The day I leave Jenin some of the internationals have gone to the refugee
camp to work in its summer program for children. Others have traveled to a
small village outside the city to accompany a group of farmers to their land.
(Right now a roadblock separates the farmers from their land, so every day
the farmers, loaded down with tools and backpacks, climb over the rocks in
order to reach their crops. Lately soldiers have been harassing the farmers,
threatening to shoot anyone they see climbing over the roadblock. The
farmers feel that if they are accompanied by internationals, their chances of
being shot are considerably diminished.)

I am struck, once again, by the realization that Palestinian resistance to
the occupation is everywhere. Farmers insist on working their land, even
under the threat of death. The refugee camp invests in its children even
when everyone else, it seems, has turned away. The very walls of the city
are decorated with flags and pictures of martyrs. The barbershop below our
apartment is named "The Best Freedom." On my way to the parking lot where I
will catch a service (shared taxi) to Jerusalem, a vegetable vendor gives me
five free eggplants when he finds out I am here in solidarity with the
Palestinian people. (Although I work hard to resist such celebrity status
here-it is the people, after all, not I, who deserve recognition-this is by
no means the first free produce I have received under these circumstances.)

At the service station there are three little boys on bikes zooming around in
circles at lightning speed. Every one of them has tied a Palestinian flag
around his neck like a Superman cape. The last things I see before our car
rounds the bend are those red, black and green flags, flowing out from the
boys' shoulders like wings in the dusty road.

In Jerusalem the first things I notice are the roads and the tourists.
People do not take pictures here to document brutal injustices. Maybe they
will bring their photos home and say, "This is the Old City. This is our
hotel. This is the view at sunset." I work hard not to feel angry or
self-righteous about this. I remember, with effort, that Jerusalem is
actually a very beautiful city.

And the roads have suddenly become navigable! Driving on a smooth road
after being in Jenin is somehow even more shocking than seeing a tank in the
street. Roads in the West Bank are bad in the way that roads in Nicaragua
are bad: maybe they were paved at one time, but it's been so long since they
were repaired that the road is now a treacherous combination of sand and
concrete and rocks and little piles of ground asphalt. It takes forever to
get anywhere. Trucks sometimes drive not on the road itself but in the
ditches on the sides of roads because the ditches, ultimately, are less
likely to damage the truck.

And so the smooth roads in parts of Jerusalem are like a double slap in the
face, because they remind me, even though I know this already, that the
Palestinian roads are bad not because there is no money to fix them but
because they are yet one more tool the Israeli state uses to keep Palestinian
people as second-class citizens in their own land.

I walk through the Muslim Quarter in the Old City with my friend Sofia. We
are wearing bracelets with the Palestinian flag on them and the merchants are
curious. One after another they invite us into their shops for coffee and
ask us how it is "out there." Palestinian residents of Jerusalem tend to
have Israeli passports and are therefore denied regular access to the West
Bank. We talk to many people who are rarely able to see their families.
People give us names when they find out we have been in Jenin, and ask us if
we may have met their relatives.

One man, Marwan, tells us about his brother who has two daughters. "My
brother's wife is from the West Bank although now she is registered in
Jerusalem. Their first daughter is also registered in Jerusalem. For the
second daughter for some reason the government decided not to give her an ID
right away. Then they said she needed to be registered in the West Bank.
Can you imagine? What a disaster! So my brother and his wife have not yet
registered this daughter, even though she is almost two years old, because
they are scared she will get a West Bank ID. It is illegal not to have
registered her yet, but the alternative is worse. It would mean they would
be separated from their daughter. So they don't know what to do."

Toward evening one of the merchants tells us that there is a walkway on top
of the roofs of the shops; you can see the whole city from up there, he says.
We climb the stairs and are struck, not by the view, but by the razor wire,
fences and watchtowers that have taken over this entire space. A soldier in
jeans and a T-shirt, with an M16 slung over his shoulder, shouts at us across
the fence: "What do you want?" He cannot be older than 20. Instinctively we
hide our Palestine bracelets with the long sleeves of our shirts. We tell
him we are tourists, that we have come to see the view. He regards us
silently for a long time. "It is not safe," he finally says. "You could get
killed. You cannot possibly understand what it is like here." We are used
to soldiers saying things like this to us but here it feels even more
surreal. All of us look at each other for a long time.

Finally he relaxes and grins at Sofia, who is beautiful. "If you want to see
the view I can show you from my tower. It actually is quite a nice view."
He's called our bluff; we need to go with him. Suddenly I realize this is the
privilege of being an international in this land: on a roof in Jerusalem I
can stand across a fence from a soldier and he will put down his gun and
flirt with my friend. Sofia and I walk through an opening in the fence like
spies. We stand at the tower and look down into Jerusalem, all yellow and
gold in the evening sun. Finally we feel like it is ok to leave. As we
squeeze back through the hole in the fence he calls after us: "Be careful,
really. Not everyone here is as nice as I am."

After we leave I am still thinking about that soldier: his jeans, his Adidas,
his gun, flirting with girls to ease the tedium of a long workday. Then I
think about soldiers I have seen in Jenin: knocking over old men and
vegetable carts in the market, rooting through the knapsacks of little boys
at checkpoints, firing live ammunition into crowds of peaceful demonstrators,
aiming the turrets of tanks at children in the road, laughing as they hurl
sound grenades and tear gas canisters into crowds of unarmed civilians. I
wonder at the intentions of a government that not only accepts but demands
such things of its young people.

Later that night we find out from a Palestinian friend that only Jewish
people are allowed to be on that roof over the Old City. It has been created
as an alternate route, so that Jewish Israelis do not have to go into the
Muslim Quarter when they are crossing through the Old City. I think about
bypass roads in the West Bank; how they connect the illegal Israeli
settlements to each other so that Israelis can travel from settlement to
settlement without ever having to see a Palestinian face. (Of course the
settler roads are new and modern. A Palestinian who even crosses one of
these roads may be shot.) I realize that this occupation is using a lot of
its energy and resources to make it easier for Israelis to forget the
occupation even exists. It is possible, even in Jerusalem, for Israelis to
bypass an entire society of people who are living and working literally right
next door.

And yet there continue to be Israelis who know about the occupation and who
work, against great pressure, to resist it. The stakes are brutally high for
Israelis who are resisting the occupation, and yet I have met Israeli
journalists, lawyers, students, doctors, anarchists and even soldiers who are
working within their own contexts to speak out about the occupation and
challenge the unchecked power of their government. I have spoken with
Israeli lawyers who defend Palestinian prisoners when the Palestinian lawyers
have no legitimate power to practice, Israeli doctors who drive their
ambulances to checkpoints to allow Palestinian patients access to much-needed
operations, and Israeli journalists who write articles challenging everything
from the Apartheid Wall to the shoddy quality of Palestinian roads. And, as
one Palestinian activist told me, "if we ever want to do something a little
bit crazy, like cut into the Wall, for example, we can always depend on the
Israeli anarchists. They're amazing! They'll come all the way from Tel Aviv
to do something like that."

Perhaps the most powerful message of Israeli resistance to the occupation
comes from the growing numbers of young people who are refusing to serve
their military duties in the occupied territories. As of now, over 1300
young Israelis are facing long prison sentences because of their refusal to
serve in the occupied territories. Still others are returning from service
and spreading the word about their experiences, also under threat of grave
punishment by the Israeli government. Please see the following links for
more information about resistance by Israeli soldiers:

http://www.seruv.org.il/defaulteng.asp

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v26/n14/print/laor01_.html

I am writing about Israeli resistance because I want to stress that, contrary
to the way our media portray this situation, this is not a conflict between
Israeli people and Palestinian people, but a broad struggle, often across the
barriers that separate those two societies, against an oppressive power and
for justice and human rights. Most Palestinian people I met echoed this
sentiment from Abu Ali: "Before 1967 my family's neighbors were Jewish.
Always we were in each other's houses. I even have a sister who has the same
name as our Jewish neighbor. They grew up together. Every now and then we
still talk and of course we still care about each other. This is how it is
when you have been neighbors for so long. I don't have anything against the
Jewish people. That is not what this is about. I know many Jewish people
who have come here to support us because they know the occupation is making
things so bad for us. To them I say what I say what I have said to you and
everyone: if you come here to support me, give me your hand. We will
struggle together."

=====================================

Ok, once more sorry about the length. Thanks for reading this far! Thanks
to all of you for your attention and support these past few weeks. Back in
the States now; the work is really just beginning. I am looking forward to
seeing and talking to you soon; the struggle continues.

Love and solidarity to you all,

Catherine