7/29/04 Thursday

Just as I was about to send out the report below on my first six days here,
we learned that the Israeli military has invaded the Tulkarm refugee camp at
3:00 on Wednesday morning. Seventeen internationals hurried to the camp and
most of us spent the entire day and evening there, with the soldiers
threatening to arrest us the entire time due to it being a "closed military
zone." They claimed to be looking for a wanted terrorist, and demolished
several houses, arrested many people (among them a twelve year-old boy whose
mother was in complete distress) and stole money and jewelry from many of the
people whose houses they invaded.

In addition to witnessing and documenting the invasion, we ensured that an
ambulance got through to two elderly women who were ill, as well as tried to
escort people between houses and to prevent the soldiers from following
through with their threats of shooting the children who were running around
fearlessly and refusing to be subdued.

As it started getting dark, the soldiers made more direct attempts of
arresting us. After escorting a few of the women who weren't allowed back to
their houses to a UN office in the camp, we made the decision to leave the
camp temporarily. We feared the invasion would go on for weeks, as it has
before, but the soldiers left the camp at 11:00 the same night.

Although we didn't go to the Tulkarm camp to "learn" but to act, there's
still no doubt that a day like this brings an outsider much closer to
understanding the reality of life under Israeli occupation. What strikes me
the most is the grotesqueness by which the Israeli dominators try to control
Palestinians' lives, and how enormously resilient the inhabitants of this
occupied land are.

In the Tulkarm camp, the soldiers among other things refused to let a woman
back into her house to breastfeed her baby and also relegated a large family
into one small room of the house for about twelve hours so that the soldiers
could help themselves to the amenities in the rest of the house. The men who
hadn't already been arrested as the soldiers broke into their homes in the
middle of the night dared not to leave their houses for a minute as it's
known that invading soldiers are likely to shoot at any Palestinian man.
Ultimately, they invaders punished approximately 3600 people for the
possibility of catching one man.

If the soldiers used collective punishment as a means of control, the camp
residents used non-cooperation and insistence of their right to their land
and their lives as theirs. We were amazed how the women in the camp refused
to stay put, and how they made sure to bring drinks and food to their
neighbors and to us (it's a very strange thing to stand in the middle of a
war zone and eat fresh-baked bread and drink Arabic coffee from gold-lined
coffee cups). One woman, Neda, who we spent a large part of the day with,
seemed to embody the resistance to be oppressed, and to balance the
internationals' moments of panic and confusion with her own incredible calm.
She would shrug her shoulders and, and, in her limited English, try to make
us understand that "things will happen," but that the worst thing you can do
is to allow the soldiers to humiliate you.

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Triple the six days I've spent in Palestine and that might come close to how
long I feel like I've been here. In Tulkarm, a middle-sized town in the
northwestern corner of the occupied West Bank, I've yet to complete a full
day, but the atmosphere after the most recent Israeli attack on the town has
stretched my feeling of being here. On Saturday night, six men between 18 and
35 years old were killed - each shot with a bullet in the head - by Israeli
forces. The next day, the Israeli newspaper Hareetz reiterated the words of
an Israeli military who claimed the six men were all terrorists on their way
to commit a terrorist act. You don't exactly have to be at location to start
to wonder if some of these men weren't simply guilty of the usual Palestinian
crime: being at the wrong place at the wrong time. Only two of them have been
reported by villagers to have had connections with the Al-Aqsa Brigade, a
faction of the armed Palestinian resistance. And armed resistance - indeed
any resistance at all - apparently warrants a death sentence in the eyes of
the Israeli occupying power.

The youngest of the six men, Muhammad, lived next door to the apartment that
the internationals in Tulkarm live in. His neighbors, friends and relatives
tell us about the party they had for him a week ago in celebration of his
high school graduation and future university studies. We spoke to some of
them today as we attended the ceremony where men (and apparently
international women) expressed the condolences to male family members of
three of the dead. Mohammed's cousin showed pictures of his relative's
wounded head while asking the question that we all know the answer to, but
that still always fails to give an answer: why?

The children that play around the circles of rocks marking the location where
the men were killed aren't yet asking us "why?" but instead "what's your
name?" and then they matter-of-factly match a name to each flower-decorated
circle. I wonder how these children are able to retain even a fragment of
their childhood when some internationals are traumatized after just a month
in the occupied territories.

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So what are we as internationals doing here? The people staying here are all
ISM'ers (the International Solidarity Movement, for those who don't know, is
a Palestinian-led organization that works towards an end of Israeli military
occupation through nonviolent actions) from the U.S., Denmark, France, Italy,
Sweden, Canada, and Italy among many other countries. ISM activism has indeed
been on the low for a few days in Tulkarm as people are mourning and the
armed resistance insists on a three day break in commerce (today we saw a
group of masked young men running down the street with bats - most likely
making sure that all stores are closed).

On Friday, the ISM Freedom March begins in Jenin, the northernmost city in
the West Bank, and will continue south along the Israeli Apartheid Wall, the
most monumental of many structures and practices intended to restrict
Palestinians' freedom of movement. By cutting the Palestinians off from their
own land, this eight foot concrete wall further impairs the already
disastrous Palestinian economy, and leaves the land up for grabs for Israel
to annex. The march is intended to highlight these injustices and to draw
worldwide attention to the illegality, as expressed in the Fourth Geneva
Convention, of confiscating land and building new permanent structures on
occupied land. I am planning to participate in the 21 day long march as long
as I can manage (the heat here is relentless, especially when you're required
to cover both arms and legs, and especially in this area where the proximity
to the ocean equals New Orleans-style humidity) and then I may go back to
Tulkarm, or to go to a refugee camp in Nablus and possibly teach English to
children there.

Tulkarm is, after all, pretty quiet compared to Nablus, where curfews and
invasions are everyday phenomena. We visited this the largest of the West
Bank cities on Monday for a action against the Huwwara checkpoint that has
remained completely closed lately. All the new ISM:ers, who made the
strenuous trip to Nablus by secret mountain ways, joined up with Nablus
internationals and Palestinians to try to cross the checkpoint. The increased
number of soldiers (ISM's actions are completely public and so the occupation
forces never lack time to prepare) were surprisingly nonviolent in their
confrontation with the demonstrators. The Palestinians heading the
demonstrations finally asked us to withdraw from the checkpoint; the main
purpose of the action, after all, had been to bring out the media and to
highlight Israel's physical and psychological control over Palestinians'
lives. Later, people speculated that the lack of tear gas, sound bombs and
rubber bullets at the checkpoint indicated that, most likely, Israel is
planning a much bigger strike on Nablus.

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I know this is quite long - this has been an important and eventful first
week, from my initial days in Jerusalem and the revelations that another
delegate from New Orleans Palestine Solidarity was detained at the Tel Aviv
airport and later deported, to the two day long ISM training in Ramallah, to
the action in Nablus, and then to the grieving city of Tulkarm. I'm doing
very well though, despite the heat and the overdose of falafel sandwiches. I
appreciate everyone's support and hope to be in touch with you all soon. I am
not sure how often I will have internet access during the march, but I will
try to send out another update as soon as I can.

Love,

Charlotte

The Apartheid Wall

By Charlotte

8/6/2004

I walked along the Apartheid Wall in the West Bank for four days, from the
village of Anin outside the city of Jenin to the village of Deir al-Ghassoun
outside the city of Tulkarem. All the way, our group of internationals,
Palestinian coordinators, and villagers walked the rocky terrain along the
wall, or along the barbwires, electric fences and massive ditches that mark
where the wall will be built - unless Israel heeds the ruling of the
International Court of Justice and removes the wall and stops further
building of it. All the way, we heard stories of families separated, lands
inaccessible and uncultivated, and hopes crushed.

It's not like this wall is the sole obstacle to Palestinian freedom - it's
only one of many physical and psychological weapons making up the Israeli
control structure. But the various methods of closure (road blocks, check
points etc.) that have been implemented since 1993 and that have been
incomprehensibly damaging to the Palestinian freedom of movement and economy
have no doubt culminated in this monstrous structure that Israel refers to as
a "security fence," but that Palestinians rightfully dub the Apartheid Wall.
How else would you describe something that severs people from their families
and lands, and in places closes in on itself and, like the Bantustans in
Apartheid South Africa, imprisons people into noncontiguous ghettos?

So the stories that lined the path of the wall testify both to the direct
impact of this monumental apartheid structure and to the innumerable other
injustices that Palestinians face. On the way to the join the march, for
instance, we witnessed one of endless examples of the Israeli military's
elaborate system of aggression and humiliation. Somewhere between Tulkarem
and Jenin, a couple of soldiers were stopping traffic, and letting cars
congest completely while interrogating some of the travelers. When three of
us walked up to one of the soldiers, we noticed a man standing on the side of
his car with his hands tightly tied. When we questioned an already
antagonistic soldier about why this man was detained and why his hands were
tied, the soldier threatened to shoot one of us in the leg if we didn't go
back to our car. The man told us that the soldiers had not given a reason at
all for his detention. After an hour or so of our persistence, the soldiers
finally untied the man, and eventually returned his ID card.

Arbitrary arrests and detentions are rampant in the Occupied Territories.
Proper judicial processes are not. "Administrative detention" is the name of
the law by which Israel can hold detainees - including children -
indefinitely without any formal charges.

During the second evening of the march, our host family in the village of
Tura showed pictures of the family's only son, who was suffering his third
year in jail after being arrested, presumably for stone throwing, at age 14.
It is not unlikely that this boy will spend the rest of his teens in jail,
and it is not unlikely that when released, he will be a very different person
than the one snatched away from his family. Since the beginning of the second
intifada in 2000, over 2,200 children have been arrested and nearly all of
them have reported some form of mistreatment and/or torture, the Defense for
Children International reports.

After Tura, the next hosting village was Nazlat Issa, where the marchers were
given a spectacular welcome with live song and dance. This town used to have
a bustling market place that brought together Palestinians and Israelis. But
the unifying commerce took a lethal blow in January 2003, when the military
demolished many of the shops in the market place, claiming they didn't have
building permits. Now, with the Apartheid Wall replacing the once busy
marketplace, the future of Nazlat Issa seems, to say the least, dark. The
family that we stayed with here was of a higher socioeconomic class than our
previous hosts, but one sensed that the fancy sofa and the modern washer
machine were probably just remnants of the relative prosperity that started
to wane when the family business was shut down a year and a half ago. And the
dunums of land that the wife owns won't provide a cushion for the family's
fall, as they're all on the other side of the Wall.

It's impossible for me to understand what these villagers must feel when
walking along the Wall, seeing the omnipresent soldiers that fiercely guard
their homeland, and the illegal settlements that dot the West Bank landscape.
It is no secret that many of the settlements are built before there is really
a demand for them, often in order to take control of prime agricultural land,
and of aquifers. This has made it possible for Israel to seize more than 80
percent of Palestinian water, which stems mainly from West Bank aquifers.

One of the settlements crowning the hills in the Jenin region is Shaked. On
the border of this settlement sits the lone Palestinian house of the Zeid
family. In 2002, Israeli bulldozers disconnected the supply lines to the Zeid
household, leaving the family without both water and electricity. But the
family of twelve remains, deprived of its basic rights, and imprisoned
between the settlement, its heavily patrolled bypass roads, and the Apartheid
Wall.

The majority of the villagers that join the Freedom March are men. One day
though, two young girls made their way down from a nearby village, but then,
at the mere sight of the Wall and its weapon-laden guardians, they started to
cry uncontrollably.

The girls' immense fear shows that the occupiers may as well put up the
"mortal danger - military zone" signs that decorate the path of the wall all
over the nearby land as well, as soldiers don't wait to shoot male
Palestinians that dare to go within shooting range of the Wall. This is why -
beyond the prospect of getting groundbreaking media coverage on the reality
of the Wall - the freedom march functions to empower the Palestinians who get
to voice their anger against the structure that is crushing their lives. On
the fourth day of the march, some of these Palestinians were accompanied by
International (including Israeli) activists in breaking open one of the gates
in a symbolic act against the illegality and inhumanity of the Wall.

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Tomorrow, I am meeting with a group called the International Women's Peace
Service (www.womenspeacepalestine.org), and there is a possibility that I
will join them in their work in the central West Bank region of Salfit. I
will keep you updated. Please make an effort of distributing this report
widely.

Women Against the Occupation
By Charlotte

Hares, Salfit Region, The Occupied West Bank

8/15/04

"We pay for people to spit on us," jokes one of the Women in Black as she
collects one shekel each from the participants in one of the organization's
weekly demonstrations. Since January 1988, this group of mainly Israeli women
has gathered at a busy intersection in West Jerusalem to interrupt the
lunchtime traffic with signs calling for an end to the occupation of
Palestine. Calls that on this day were met with exclamations such as "that's
Arab propaganda" and "traitors." One of the veterans, Gila, jokes that at
least today, the angry passers-bys in some way acknowledge that Women in
Black have a political message whereas before, they would frequently yell
things like "whores" and "if you had a good man you wouldn't be here." The
next minute, Gila calmly fends herself against a really aggressive elderly
lady who claims to be an army widow and who yells that Israel's problem is
people like Gila, and not the occupation.

It was an amazing experience to stand next to these women, who manage to meet
irrational antagonism and death threats with humor, steadfastness and
nonviolence.

I already had the sense that the principles of nonviolence that were
underlining the Women in Black's opposition to the occupation were mirrored
in many Palestinian women's resistance to the occupation. But after I left
Jerusalem the next day, I started seeing more of these peaceful means of
resistance among different women. For me, these women have provided a gateway
to understanding the multitude of ways that Palestinians resist the
occupation - ways that contrast with the forms of Palestinian political
expression that Westerners tend to hear about: the politics of the
Palestinian Authority, the armed resistance, and stone-throwing youths of the
Intifada.

The day after the Women in Black's demonstration, I joined the International
Women's Peace Service in the Salfit region in the central part of the West
Bank. The IWPS is a well-respected group of women that works with nonviolent
intervention in human rights abuses, documentation of human rights abuses,
and support of nonviolent actions and programs against the Israeli
occupation.

The Salfit region, with its many small farming villages, does not see quite
as many army incursions, arrests, and assassinations as other areas with
larger cities and refugee camps. But the region is still far from free of
military aggression. Children and soldiers are taken away by soldiers on a
weekly basis - among the most recent cases is our landlord's son. A couple of
weeks ago, an elderly woman was critically wounded as army jeeps entered the
village of Hares, where the IWPS is located.

Salfit has also lost a comparatively large part of its land to illegal
settlements, which means that villagers in this region are constantly
vulnerable to settler violence. The other day, for instance, settlers burned
60 olive trees in the village of Marda, in one of many attempts to
incapacitate Palestinians' livelihood. In addition to the army and settler
violence, the Apartheid Wall stretches halfway through the Salfit district,
leaving a few of the villages on the Western side of the wall, on the land
that Israel is attempting to appropriate.

Mas'ha is one of those unlucky villages. In Mas'ha's case though, it is not
the entire town that has been cut off, but only one of its houses. The house
belongs to Munira and Hani Amer and their three children. In February 2003,
soldiers informed the Amers that their house was going to be demolished to
make room for the Apartheid Wall. But the family stayed put, only to see the
soldiers destroy the nursery of olive and citrus saplings that was their
livelihood, and erect the Wall on one side of the house, and a fence on the
other sides of the house. For about seven months, the family was completely
imprisoned, as soldiers controlled the gate into the village. The only gate
that was always left open was the one facing the Elkana settlement, where
settlers in the 1980's had stolen land up to 20 meters of the Amers' front
door. Now, Elkana settlers were given free access to terrorize the Amers,
which they did by smashing the family's water tank and windows and by
throwing stones at the children.

Because of significant media attention about the "one-family Bantustan," the
military finally gave the Amers a key to the front gate. But Munira, who we
visited the other day, says that she does not dare to leave the house out of
fear that the soldiers will demolish it. She also says that she would never
do what the military and settlers want her to do: pack up and leave. "Not for
any amount of money in the world." Instead, she welcomed the invitation from
an artist from San Francisco to paint a mural on the Wall together with
Munira's children and their friends. Today, the 8-meter cement block is
covered from side to side with colorful trees and flowers that serve as
reminders of the plants that the Amers nursed before the Catastrophe a year
and a half ago.

Refusal to succumb to the occupation's disruption of life is one way that
Palestinian women protest against Israel's injustices. Organized actions,
however, are often reserved for the men, especially in some of the smaller
and more conservative villages. But as the 21-day long Freedom March along
the Apartheid Wall reached the Salfit region, teenaged girls from the
neighboring villages where some of the most enthusiastic demonstrators. These
girls represented the organization Flowers Against the Occupation, which is a
product of a summer camp for girls that the International Women's Peace
Service recently organized in the region.

After spending the night before the march with some of these girls from the
village of Deir Ballut, I feel more strongly than ever the importance for all
Palestinian children to be able to express their resistance to the
occupation. Imagine a 13 year-old American girl alternating between singing
some love song by Enrique Iglesias and trying to spell out "genocide" on a
banner. The girls in Flowers Against the Occupation, like all Palestinian
children, are acutely aware of the oppressor's violence. They are still
children - but they also have some very un-childlike stories to tell about
friends' and relatives' houses being demolished, and brothers and fathers
being detained and tortured.

One of the members of Flowers Against the Occupation is 17 year-old Tazneem.
She is a determined young woman, set on getting a good education, and on
teaching others about Palestinian culture. She was also one of the most vocal
participants among the hundreds of people walking in the Freedom March in the
Salfit region. During the hours that we marched together, she insisted that
we chant the entire time, which for most people is a pretty strenuous thing
to do while walking in hilly terrain in the heat for a long period of time.
As tired as I was, Tazneem's inexhaustible energy kept me invigorated. To me,
her refusal to accept the rise-and-fall of the chanting, and her tremendous
desire to be a part of the protest, shows more than anything else the
essentialness of being allowed to resist the occupation.

On Thursday, the Freedom Marchers will try to end their three week long
demonstration by entering Jerusalem. I was happy to hear that one hundred
Flowers against the Occupation are planning to be among them.

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I have been working with the IWPS for a week now, and I have one more week to
go. At the moment, there are five other short-term and long-term volunteers
here, all of which are amazing women. I am learning so much by just being
around them. In addition to going to the Freedom March for another couple of
days, I have been helping out with a variety of projects and have also been
trying to learn some Arabic.

Thanks to everyone who has written to me. I miss you all.

Charlotte