Palestine letter from a friend

national | miscellaneous | news report Friday July 12, 2002 17:55 by Eoin Dubsky

Below I've copied the text of an email from a friend who is just getting back to England from a two-week visit to Palestine as a peace worker with the international solidarity movement. His letter moved me to share it with you.

Dear all

thank you again for all for your mails - sorry I have not had time to reply
personally. This will probably be my last email from Palestine - I am safely
back in Jerusalem for a couple of days before flying home on Monday. I feel
very strange, part of me guilty and heavy with loss at leaving, but also
relieved to be in the relative sanity of Jerusalems old city.

The last three days have been so insane that I can't even find the words to
describe my feelings about them, and I don't really know what it means to
write these things anymore, of if it's too long, too much. I'll just have
to say what happenned. Please please pass this mail on to everyone you can,
especially any press contacts anyone may have - none of this has been
reported in the international press to my knowledge.

On tue a team of us carried on doing occupied house visits. We went to a
house very high up on the outskirts of Nablus. A rich family of 8 people
were living in one room in a half finished house with no windows and rubble
everywhere because the soldiers had taken their house. They had no
belongings with them. they said to us they would be willing to share the
house with the soldiers rather than live how they were.

Four of us went up to the house expecting a few soldiers, but there was a
small army there and they started to fire around us as soon as they saw us.
Two of them came down to talk to two of us. One soldier was hard and rude,
another visibly upset and said sorry, they were having to do things they did
not want to do. We talked for a few minutes but they were well dug in at
the house and there was no room left for the family. The upset soldier said
he would give us his name and number so we could contact his commander to
discuss it, the other soldier said no they would not give names or anything
and we should go as there was a curfew. I said to them that I hope they knew
that if their families were in this situation we would help them as well.
This caused the rude soldier to have a complete fit and wave the barrel of
his gun in our faces. He said that if we did not go immediately we would be
arrested and under his control and he did not know what may happen. We
went.

On tue night many tanks and armoured personnel carriers (apc's) entered the
city and there was about 2 hours of heavy gunfire and explosions from the
Rafidia sector. I don't know what was going on.

On Wed morning we did another house visit. We got in and the family was
okay. They wanted us to bring their brothers family to stay with them and
the soldiers said this was okay, we could do this the next morning. An
amazing result. We were not sure if the brother would want to move into an
occupied house, but he did when we called him. He said it was too terrible
with overcrowding at the Belata refugee camp where there were 5 of them in
one small room in a house with a fmaily in each room.

On Wed afternoon, a tank and APc went down the main road by Askar refugee
camp imposing curfew and a few teenage boys threw some stones at the tank.
So the tank and soldiers opened fire on them. One 19 year old died with
shots to his face and neck, an 11yr old and 13yr old boy were seriously
injured. It was a terrible time for everyone. What can we say to these
people? How can we answer for or explain these things?

Wed night was my first night off the ambulance night shift and I was
sleeping at the medical centre near the ambulance station. About 3am I was
awoken by tanks rolling past our door up to the station. We called them and
the co-ordinator said they had taken over the station with tanks and apcs
and all the drivers and paramedics and 1 international were lined up outside
against the wall. He had been allowed to stay at the phones in the office.
There were 5 of us internationals at the med centre. There ensued a heated
discussion about what to do? Go up there in the dark? do nothing. How many
of us? The med centre staff did not want to be left alone, the ambulance
co-ordinator was too scared of being shot to go outside and tell the
soldiers we wanted to talk with them. We decided that all 5 of us should go
up, otherwise what were we there for? but leave by the med centre back door
so as not to be seen. We all put on light clothes and I was nominated as
negotiator, a job which I didn't really want this night. We left and as we
started up the hill I don't think I've ever been so scared in my life.

We all called out as we walked up the hill so as not to surprise them and
get shot. They saw/heard us, I walked forward with my passport and my hands
up, and two of them walked down to me. I got lucky because they knew me.
They had stopped the ambulance I was on a few nights previously and we had
talked. After about 10 minutes of discussion they said two of us could go
up to the station to check all were okay. The crews were all okay. We then
negotiated to get back the ID's of two drivers and two paramedics so that
two ambulances could go out on emergency calls which they agreed to, which
was good. I spent the rest of the night there.

On Thu morning curfew had been lifted for a few hours so we picked up the
family of 5 who were moving in with their brother and took them to the
occupied house in a taxi. How crazy. When we got to the occupied house the
shift had changed and of course this shift hadn't been informed about the
agreement made yesterday. So we negotiated it all again and they agreed.

As we were finishing at the house we got a call to say that though curfew
was off, there was a problem at the roadblock about 100 yards from the house
we were at and things were getting tense. There was a tank and apc allowing
everyone into Nablus but not allowing anyone out to the villages and
surrounding refugee camps.

A team of 5 women internationals arrived and went to talk to the soldiers in
the tank, and us four went to talk to the border patrol guards in the apc.
It was a sad, mad situation, hundreds of people and families with bags and
food trying to scrabble over a mountain of rubble and through the ditch left
when the israelis ripped up the road to block it. The apc driver looked
completely deranged and was clearly completely stressed out and angry. When
I approached the soldier who seemed to be in charge he said "if you want
problems we can give you really big problems" and I wasn't sure what to say
to this. I asked him who he was getting his orders from rather than engage
with him and he said an officer in the occupied house we had just been in.
So me and one other ran up to the house to talk with this officer while two
stayed at the apc. In the meantime the five women had worked miracles with
the tank and had gotten the crew to park it off the road and switch its
engine off and were telling them riddles.

The officer at the house fairly quickly agreed to let women, children and
old men through, which was something. I asked him to let the soldiers know
immediately which he did, and we re-joined the other two at the apc. Many
people got through including a lot of men. For about an hour or more we
helped people over the road block and past the apc, all the while engaging
with the soldiers to keep things calm. Then all of a sudden they changed.
As if someone had flicked a switch, they said enough and if people didn't go
back there would be trouble. I asked him to give us 5 minutes to try and
let the people know, he said yes, but after about two minutes the soldiers
all got out and started to get things out of the back of the apc, I went to
them and was pleading with them not to do anything, but they just ignored me
and started to load up their tear gas and stun grenade launchers, so I gave
up and joined the Palestinians at the road block.

They fired stun grenades into us first and then tear gas. I thought I was
going to die, it was so painful and the sorriest site I have seen in my
life. There were many young children and babies in arms and old people in
the crowd, all screaming and crying and running away in confusion. Children
were collapsing. I was trying to hand out wet-ones to the mums for the
children to breathe through but could hardly see myself. The pain does not
last long luckily.

There then ensued a horrible game played by the border guards. They would
beckon for and allow through a few people, then when the rest surged forward
drive at them. Or they would drive away out of sight, everyone would rush
to the roadblock and they would re-appear and drive at them again, more tear
gas was fired into the crowds a bit later. We saw one taxi driver being
punched and rifle-butted through the window of his car. We stayed and did
what we could for the next couple of hours as this played out, and got
tear-gassed again ourselves. Two of us ran to tell the commanding officer
at the house about what his soldiers were doing, but a soldier at the door
said it was our word against theirs and the commander was asleep and they
would not wake him unless it was something important.

So this is a small taste of the so called "war against terrorism" in our
brave new world.

I don't know what else to write. My mobile phone number 07967 819514 has
been stolen so there's no point calling me on this until probably about the
19th july by which time I should have a replacement sim card and phone. I
can be contacted at The Well on 01908 242190 from tuesday am.

I had the most precious and beautiful thing happen to me last night. As I
was walking home to the med centre at dusk through the old town, a small
Palestinian boy of about four or five years wandered up to me in the road,
and without a word, he took my hand, squeezed it and walked with me for a
while.

With much love and in peace

Marcus x