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Palestinian report
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Merrick
Merrick
2148 posts

Re: Palestinian report 32
Apr 19, 2002, 20:40
Fri, 19 Apr 2002 16:59:24 +0000

hello all,

my last message from palestine. tomorrow the circumstances of my life dictate that i will get a serveece out of bethlehem and i will cross the border into jordan and come back to manchester. i am longing to see my friends, but the idea that i have to leave bethlehem whilst the curfew is still down, the tanks still rumble up and down the streets, and the people here - including people that i love - are still suffering devastates me.

today i sat in the idf-infested lobby of the star hotel, bethlehem's journalist residence, and listened and answered phones whilst plans were made for the next few days - plans i won't be around to see come to fruition. on sunday there will be an attempted march from jerusalem to bethlehem. and we are trying to arrange the medical evacuation of a guy who lives up near the peace centre, right by manger square. he had open heart surgery just before the invasion and urgently needs proper medical care and medication. and g & d went out and found themselves being shown the house of a family who were raided at 4am today, the food in their cupboards thrown on the floor, the husband arrested but then returned and the place generally trashed. the little girl, maybe 10, had marks on her face where the soldiers had hit her. how many nights will it be before she sleeps properly again? and there have been more house-to-house searches in the beautiful, quiet, ancient little town of beit sahour. tomorrow, people will try and get food up to villages in the bethlehem area which are not necessarily under full military control, but which have no access to food and where many people have no money left even if they could get to shops, because they haven't worked for three weeks. another way in which the israeli state systematically eradicates any viable palestinian economy and makes the road back to peace and decent living conditions that bit longer and harder.

update! the archbishop of canterbury's rep here for the nativity church negotiations was the person we tracked down to try and reach the guy who had surgery and couldn't get medical care. as a senior churchman, he'd been able to get into the square whilst activist scum like us couldn't, but as a former doctor he was also a great person to do this job. he just rang to say that 'us peaceniks' were doing a wonderful job, and if we wanted to know that we'd achieved just one thing it was that today we'd saved someone's life by getting him up there. the guy was in a really bad way and would not have lasted many more days, but he's now been properly checked over, been given a supply of the medication he needed, and will be ok. a minor thing given the scale of the horrors that have happened here, especially at jenin and nablus, but the world to one family - the wife of the sick man was on the phone to us almost screaming that she didn't care about food, she just needed her husband's medication.

for continued information on the situation in palestine, keep checking http://jerusalem.indymedia.org, and for a personal perspective on life in beit sahour and bethlehem see georgie's online diary, http://georgie.ripserve.com

thanks to everyone who has received, read, forwarded and acted on my emails, and to those who have replied and given me their support and love, which has allowed me to keep going through the last few weeks, and to pass on some of that energy to do what tiny bit i have been able to help the palestinian cause.

s xxxxxxxxxx
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