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Merrick 2148 posts |
Apr 12, 2002, 20:02
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Fri, 12 Apr 2002 14:30:45 hey all, a strange day. we tried to get up to manger square to get food to the families who have been under curfew for nearly a fortnight. a radical christian group who managed to get up earlier than us got two consignments up to within about 60 yards of the square and distributed it to families (this, by the way, is a large stack of UN aid food - rice, flour, milk powder, sugar etc). we had just managed to get a third consignment about half way there, with a certain amount of idf compliance and a negotiated deal about where we could take stuff, when that well-known bunch of arselicking collaborators the red cross (not to be confused with those heroes the red crescent) showed up. they butted into our negotiations with the idf officer and sorted a new deal out, which excluded us - suddenly it had become 'too dangerous' for anyone but red cross staff - and only got the food in half as far, with a third of the number of people to actually dole it out. and then they took the stuff we had already lugged up the hill. of course, just the fact that the stuff gets anywhere is good, but it's pretty fucking annoying when the multinational aid industry, especially in the shape of the almost, it appears, universally unpopular veronique, sticks its nose in. other goings-on in bethlehem today include the idf dynamiting a house not far from the imc. the explosion shook the building here. the idf claim it was a factory for bombs; the neighbours insist it was residential. later in the day it was curfew lift, and the whole place went completely insane. people were fighting to get into the shops, many of which were enforcing one-out/one-in policies to prevent chaos. quite a bit of random shooting and stuff as well, but that's pretty much par for the course now. it's hard to know what to do. things in bethlehem are bad, but things are so bad elsewhere. do we cancel food drops here to go to demonstrations against that bastard powell in ramallah, leaving bethlehem without internationals? god we need more people here; we kind of thought that powell's presence might at least inspire a brief pullback and give people a litle respite, even if they came back. but not even that seems to be happening. the entire international community has sold out the palestinian people. where else is it possible to turn? sarah
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Merrick 2148 posts |
Apr 12, 2002, 20:02
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Fri, 12 Apr 2002 14:41:26 just another message if anyone is planning to come out here, or knows people who are (and god knows they are needed). 153 PEOPLE HAVE BEEN TURNED BACK FROM BEN GURION AIRPORT SINCE APRIL 3RD. the israelis do not want internationals to see what they are doing. if you must coem through ben gurion, come alone or in twos, and make sure you have a bloody convincing cover story. but try instead to come through amman. less money to the israeli government, too! details at http://jerusalem.indymedia.org sarah
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Merrick 2148 posts |
Apr 14, 2002, 18:33
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Sun, 14 Apr 2002 10:18:20 hey all, very hot and sunny here. curfew has been lifted in beit sahour but not bethlehem or beit jala. i don't know if this tactic of lifting it on different days in different places is because it's easier for the idf to police or because of some malicious desire to make it harder for people to see family or get home if they were trapped somewhere distant. yesterday we had another shot at getting food into the old city, the areas where as of tomorrow people will have been under unbroken curfew for a full fortnight, and some have not eaten for 4 days now. we went round the back of the star hotel this time, down the backstreets onto salesian street into the old souk. the sight that met our eyes was devastation; the idf had been blowing up cars that morning and the road in front of us was full of smouldering vehicles. there was glass and twisted metal all over the streets and bullets coated the road underfoot. as we stood, gaping, there was an almighty bang from the other side of the house in front of us, and bits of car flew forty feet into the air, followed by a fat plume of thick, noxious-smelling black smoke. despite this, one family had responded to the noise of our arrival by venturing onto their balcony and were beckoning us to bring food. 2 people scrambled over a wrecked car and dumped the UN aid sacks at the foot of the building. then we saw people on the road to our right, which heads towards manger square, and we took a number of sacks and boxes of powdered milk over to them. people, mainly boys, began to pour from the houses and fight over the food, and we tried to split them up, but we'd deposited all we had - maybe 20 sackfulls - and had no more, and retreated. but the noise of yelliung children had attracted an idf soldier, who appeared from the direction of the initial explosion, and came out firing, uninterested in who or what he was firing at. things get hazy for me from here, as i got hit on the top of the head by a piece of shrapnel or flying masonry and was pretty freaked out by the quantity of blood coming from my scalp, and by the fact i couldn't see what the pain on the top of my head was. it's fine, just a clean flap of skin cut, but like all head wounds it looked gorier than it needed to, and i was kind of woozy for a couple of hours from the sharp rap on the skull from whatever it was. georgie also got me on tape swearing at some stupid journalist who was trying to make me stop and tell her what had happened. everyone else got back ok, but after some discussion at the hotel we decided that going back in was probably too risky, especially since most of the press that had come the first time had got theit footage and may not have come back a second time. much respect to jeremy bowen of the bbc though for being the first journo to actually carry some stuff in on one of these runs, instead of cowering at the back like most of the foreign press. a bunch of us then went round to al-madbasa again to drop off some medication for a woman who was getting dangerously low on stuff. here, despite the devastated streets and broken pillars along the front of the buildings, people were in the street after an italian consulate convoy had been allowed in with food supplies. there we met a UN volunteer in tears, who shwoed us the food-strewn bottom of the van she had been driving and the place where she had been punched by people desperate for food and hungry enought to fight for it. these people are starving, and they don't know when they will get more.
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Merrick 2148 posts |
Apr 14, 2002, 18:33
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in manger square, meanwhile, the idf have been up to something very strange. there is now a huge hydraulic lift with a giant speaker hanging from it; yesterday it played the most hideous shrill feedback noise at the poor bastards in the church for about quarter of an hour, but they don't seemed to have used them since. as well as the original blimp (or at least the third one there, thanks to the aim of some local shaobab) there are also nowa blimp over beit sahour and fairground-style hot air balloon kind of over beit sahour, in the direction of the idf military base at heriodian. and yesterday there were a couple of aluminium foil balloons lurking round the church and the peace centre, of the type i think are used for blocking signals - like the few mobile phones inside the church with any charge left? the tosser of an israeli soldier who turned up at the star hotel with his apc yesterday evening to schmooze with the less discriminating journalists tried to claim that they were for 'decoration' and that the loudspeaker was for celebrations of israeli independence day...quite bizarre and sick. i'm supposed to be going to jerusalem today, but i'm not sure that i can stand the thought of being somewhere festooned with the flags of this apartheid state, whilst they murder people just a few miles away. another man was shot by sniper fire in the church yesterday; he was initially thought to be dead, then breathed whilst being moved, but with 2 bullet wounds in the chest and no possibility of medical care there seems little hope for him. he was 26 years old. for those of you who expressed concern about khaled, the bethlehem tv cameraman who was arrested at deheishe, he was released yesterday. he was held at gush etzion prison, where he says there were hundreds of people, many of whom had not been processed at all - the prison did not even know who they were holding. they were kept blindfolded all the time they were being held - whilst eating, sleeping and using the toilet. and the guards had a free hand to act as they pleased, beating and kicking the prisoners and preventing them from going to the toilet when they needed - khaled described one weeping 16-year-old boy who was prevented from going to the toilet and then beaten when he went in his trousers. khaled, whilst fine, is, not surprisingly, not his usual cheerily cynical self. internationals protesting in ramallah against the pitifully ineffectual nature of colin powell's visit had been prevented from getting anywhere near the muqada, and are presently at deadlock with the idf. pictures from jenin show the continuing atrocities there; including the burnt body of a small boy - see http://www.jerusalem.indymedia.org . houses there and at the balata refugee camp in nablus bear the hallmarks of having been exploded from inside, by bombs carried into them by soldiers and then remotely detonated. by the way, for another personal - and more long-term - account of life under occupation, go to http://georgie.ripserve.com for georgie's diary from bethlehem. take care, and see you all soon(ish). sarah xx
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Merrick 2148 posts |
Apr 14, 2002, 18:35
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khaled's statement on release from prison Arrest and imprisonment On the afternoon of Thursday 12th April, in Bethlehem, when I was working as a cameraman, I was filming the tanks attacking ambulances and people trying to deliver humanitarian aid. On eof the soldiers, called Menachem, shot 2 bullets at me, hitting my car about 10cm from my head. I was filming the bullets. When he realised I wasn’t shot, he raised his machine gun, told me to approach him slowly, to put my camera down, and to take off my flak jacket and hardhat. When I reached him he searched me and told me to take the film out of my camera and give it to him. He ripped it, and then he handcuffed me with plastic quikcuffs. He blindfolded me. Then he stood me against a wall for half an hour while he finished the action against the ambulances and people. Then they put me in a tank, after checking my id and press card. The tank went to many places, including the military base at Abu Ghneim, near Gilo settlement. Then he took me in the tank to Etzion, 10km away. Etzion is not just a settlement. It is a new fascist prison. They built it quickly to collect and maltreat Palestinians. They choose special soldiers for it: surely they have psychological problems? Many are Druze and Russian soldiers. When you arrive they speak to you in their own way – first, when you enter blindfolded they trip you up, and laugh about it. When you try to stand they continue to laugh – because you can’t, your hands are tied. They kick you in the legs and body to make you stand. They ask you questions like "are you a man? You will be a woman soon!" as they kick you in the groin. Many soldiers stand around and laugh during this. At this moment, you know that your troubles have only started. They shout abuses at you, about your mother, your sister and your God.
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Merrick 2148 posts |
Apr 14, 2002, 18:35
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Etzion prison Etzion prison is an expanse of asphalt squares surrounded by barbed wire. The tents are placed on a hill, and it is very cold at night. The site was a carpark and tank site. They put me in one of the tents, with 41 other people. The youngest was 16, from Ayda camp. The oldest was 65, from Beit Jala. This tent was for people from the Bethlehem area. When you arrive, they tell you to sit down, but you can’t because you are cuffed. Then you’re kicked until you fall, often on one of the other people, or just onto the asphalt. And they laugh at you. Rami, the Druze soldier, is in charge. He shouts in Arabic. He is about 20. He especially dislikes Palestinians. Once he pointed his gun at us and said that he would shoot us. He said he could just claim it was a mistake and no-one could do anything. Everyone was scared of him. He taunted me, saying that "if I was a journalist I could film it." The food was tinned military rations, tuna or bully beef. They would open the can and put it in front of you, still blindfolded and handcuffed, and give you 30 minutes to eat it. When you try to reach out to eat, you can’t always find the right place, and when the half hour is finished you often haven’t eaten it all. You had to eat just with your fingers, picking the food out of the can. I refused to eat like this, telling them I was on hunger strike. You had to ask to go to the toilet. Each time, you had to ask maybe 10 times. When you try to call, you’re told to shut up. When you really need to go, and call many times, you are kicked in the head and body. One of the prisoners wet himself and started to cry. The Shin Bet officers interrogate you and take your id card. This is the first time that they take off your blindfold, and they take a photo of you with your id number. Then they take you back to the same place and things start again, with the soldiers kicking you, hitting and shouting. You don't know if it's day or night – you lose all feeling of time. The people who are on the wanted list are taken elsewhere, I don’t know where. You must sleep where sit without blankets, people heaped on each other, and when you try to sleep they don’t let you stay asleep for long – they shout and wake you to make you get up. They make you stand if they think you are going to sleep. Sleep is just a few stolen moments. You couldn’t sleep at night – it was too cold, and the blankets on the ground smelt really bad. You couldn’t take off you shoes, and you are always being beaten and woken. Release When they decide to let you out, you may have to stay days to collect 40 or 50 people to fill a bus to take you to the DCO in Beit Jala. It’s a horrible bus journey, still blindfolded and cuffed. When you arrive at the DCO they just let you out into the curfew and tanks, so you may be re-arrested
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Merrick 2148 posts |
Apr 16, 2002, 16:45
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Tue, 16 Apr 2002 10:55:16 hello all, back from jerusalem. it was horrible - the israeli independence day celebrations are tomorrow and the place is covered with the flags that i can now only associate with the fronts of apcs and israeli army jeeps. got some aggro for wandering around even east jerusalem with a kuffiyeh, but also got some wonderful responses from palestinians. it was extremely strange being there - we all kept jumping at anything that remotely sounded like a bang - coke bottles being driven over etc. and all that fresh food everywhere...! surely vegetables come out of tin cans? but lots of productive meetings (!) and a better level of co-ordination than we've really managed so far. another group went up to jenin this morning, and a group went to nablus yesterday. spoke to one of the guys who just came back from jenin. contrary to what the press keep saying, it sounds like anyone with a bit of nowse and a convincing but vague story can wheedle their way in. not that many would want to - one of the internationals up there counted 14 bodies uncovered in 2 hours, but as soon as one came to light it would be spirited away by the idf to an unknown fate, doubtless beyond the ken of its relatives. hideous to realise how many people must now be fated to never know what happened to their loved ones, or at least to have a damn good idea without ever really knowing...and do we think the idf are including those 14 in the '45' dead they were admitting yesterday for the entire camp? hmmmm...one french woman (in her 60s), though, is doing the most astounding work - she swiped a fire truck and has been driving aid around jenin, and when she found an idf-looted pharmacy she loaded up buckets with medication and doled them out. my hero. in nablus, the idf has been shelling askar refugee camp from tanks and helicopters all night, and has had it under closed military status for 4 days, so no access to the wounded for medical personnel - same old story. we just had a report in that the idf are doing house-to-house searches there and have just killed a 10-year-old girl in the process. colin powell's visit was, unsurprisingly, a complete non-event in terms of actually achieving anything remotely useful. scum. and now they've arrested marwan bagouti, secretary general of fateh, and are rapidly preparing a mock trial for him, ask mordechai vanunu, as well as thousands of palestinians, what israeli justice looks like... [Merrick adds: Mordechai Vanunu, a former Israeli nuclear technician, rleased evidence of the Israeli government illegally producing nuclear weapons to the press. He was kidnapped in Italy by the Israeli secret service, taken to Israel and imprisoned. He served eleven and a half years in solitary confinement. He is still inside. For more details see http://www.nonviolence.org/vanunu/morestory.html] here in bethlehem, things are pretty tense, and it's pretty strange being back. the rubbish has been piling up so much that people have started to burn it, so the city smells of acrid smoke. the idf killed a 24 year old woman and wounded her 8 month old baby yesterday whilst doing house-to-house in Doha. and they are still blowing up buildings here for no very obvious reason. there are also stirrings up by the nativity church, but with this atmosphere no-one is going up there... in ramallah, a palestinian AP reporter was arrested by the idf, and an international was informed that anyone seen out on the streets would be shot on sight. this seems a tightening of the situation there, as we had had reports that ramallah was easier to walk around - lesslocked-down - than bethlehem. sharon seems implacable, and determined to ignore the opinions of the world and its peoples, especially whilst the usa slowly backslides its way out of what puny stand it took in favour of withdrawal. take care, sarah
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Merrick 2148 posts |
Apr 16, 2002, 16:45
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Tue, 16 Apr 2002 12:36:42 oh 'eck welcome back to bethlehem... the idf just took over the star hotel, where we were staying to start with and which is where all the press, including a number of palestinians, are staying. it is also, not coincidentally, where said press have been filming the nativity church and manger square from becasue the fifth floor has a ringside view and is the only place they can see it from...and that's where the people in the building are being excluded from. they've been told that this situation will continue for several days. there are also a couple of apache helicopter gunships hovering around. they don't usually come out in daylight unless they have a purpose... this is pretty worrying, mainly for the people in the church but also for palestinians in the hotel, given that other palestinian journalists have been detained today. s xxx
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Merrick 2148 posts |
Apr 17, 2002, 17:34
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Tue, 16 Apr 2002 18:04:07 it's a hot, muggy evening in bethlehem, and smoke is cloaking the hill over beit jala. some of it is rubbish fires, but some of us looks very thick and like it's from something bigger. always a worry, smoke. the idf are attacking the church of the nativity this evening. we've been expecting it for so long, but to know it's happening now is so painful. they've eliminated the only press witnesses by barring them from the top floor of the star. there are flares going off regularly over the sniper positions above al-azza camp, and loads of gunfire. i'm not sure if the apaches are still around, but there is an idf drone (an unmanned observation aircraft) buzzing around. they are revolting little things; they make a high-pitched whine and when it's dark you don't know what they can see with infrared or thermal imaging or whatever. locals report lots of explosions round the church and the possibility of gas being used to drive them out, and a rumour that a fire may have started in the church also. unconfirmed. note that a right-wing member of the knesset suggested several days ago, with no sense of irony, that the people in there be gassed out. what with the church and the arrests this afternoon and the threatened demolition of a block which houses 15 families (certified empty by the red cross for the idf) and the deaths yesterday, there is a definite tension and sense of re-escalation here. a group of internationals got the shit kicked out of them in nablus today as well - poor, sweet mika was beaten till he bled, and one woman may have 2 broken fingers. they were punched, kicked and smashed in the ribs with rifle butts, all whilst trying to get food and medicine in to camps which have been closed military zones - under complete lockdown - for 4 days. and in jenin internationals have been trying to get more aid and witnesses in, swathed in the reek of dead bodies. meanwhile, powell and bush try to set up 'peace summits' without arafat. and over the illegal settlement (colony) of har gilo, overlooking bethlehem, they are celebrating israeli independence day with a firework display, the bangs of the rockets mingling with the sounds of civilians being shelled and shot. s xxx
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Merrick 2148 posts |
Apr 17, 2002, 17:36
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Wed, 17 Apr 2002 09:13:02 it appears that, despite their protestation, the idf did try to get into the nativity church yesterday, but failed and are now trying to backtrack. it's possible they were trying to get over the walls using grappling hooks like they did into the university, having assumed that after the psychological torture and starvation of the people inside they would not meet resistance. interestingly, though, even he israeli government has finally admitted that only 30 of the people inside are armed - a pity, then, that most of the press keep talking about the 'gunmen' or 'militants' inside the church and not the 220-odd civilians and religious there. there was a lot of shelling and gunfire noises all night, including a sniper positioned just behind our building - i spent an interesting half hour crouched by the window watching dying flares or tracer bullets and then the heavy-calibre shots that would follow them, slamming down towards bab al-zqaq. we also had gunfire in the alley at the back of our building, which is unusual and must have been terrifying for the families whose houses line it, many of whom have small children. in 3 villages in east jerusalem, families have been evicted and homes are threatened with demolition in the quest to 'eradicate nests of terrorism.' these are areas slated for demolition anyway as the israeli state expands its illegal settlements in east jerusalem, colonising more and more palestinian neighbourhoods. people returning home from work were kept out for hours, and the men and women were being separated out. it still astounds me - looking at press coverage - that anyone still thinks that this is a war against terrorism, or that anyone can believe that committing genocidal massacre and hideous individual human rights abuses can possibly stop the desperate actions of a few suicide bombers. where do these peopel think that desperation comes from? there are all these myths about religious fanaticism - the al-aqsa suicide martyrs, for example, are a secular organisation, and any religious elements for them are entirely a personal issue. these actions, horrible as they are, and born of repression and desperation, not some kind of inbred racial religious fanaticism, which is what many of the rightist zionist posters on the imc website seem to believe. i got a call this morning from one of the guys who came out here nearly 3 weeks ago for the ism, and who i thought had left - he's actually leaving today. he's from colorado and in his 50s, i'd guess, a quiet, unassuming, pleasant kind of guy. he's spent the last 2 weeks volunteering with the palestinian water authority, using his skills as a civil engineer to put water back into the houses of those who've had their supplies cut by shelling etc. a great example of the way in which people's skills from home can be put to such good use in this situation and the way that absolutely anyone, with any range of talents, can be of use, since he thought he was coming here to do direct action and awareness-raising work for back home, until the idf intervened. and given the apparent unwillingness of the international community (political or aid) to get off their well-padded arses and actually do anything useful round here, that kind of help is really needed, since again international volunteers can get places palestinian workers can't, or can replace palestinian workers trapped under curfew or within closed military zones. there's a horrible feeling of anticipation here, not helped by the howling wind outside and close, low clouds. how can the israelis justify still being here after these weeks? how can the international community justify letting them be here? a couple of white farmers get shot in zimbabwe and the entire world is up in arms, embargoes ahoy etc, and hundreds, if not thousands, of palestinians can get slaughtered and be denied human rights enshrined in myriad declarations and yet nothing much happens...and i wonder why i lost my faith in parliamentary politics years ago... s xxx
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