=
×

Julian Cope presents Head Heritage

Head To Head
Log In
Register
U-Know! Forum »
Palestinian report
Log In to post a reply
46 messages
Topic View: Flat | Threaded
Merrick
Merrick
2148 posts

Re: Palestinian report 22
Apr 12, 2002, 20:02
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
In reply to:
Re: Palestinian report 21 (Merrick)		 Replies:
Re: Palestinian report 23 (Merrick)
Topic Outline:
U-Know! Forum Index