We are everywhere

By an Israeli girl
17 April 2002

"Hey baby, what's a nice girl like you doing in Ramallah?" You may ask. On Friday, April 5, seven Israeli girls from good Jewish homes entered Ramallah. I was one of them. Our goal, simply stated, is to express objection to our government's war against the Palestinian civilian population currently taking place in Ramallah, as well as other cities in the West Bank, and to show solidarity with the Palestinians. It is currently illegal for Israelis to enter the Occupied Territories. Illegal, that is, unless you're a soldier. We know that the government does this to keep us Israelis from seeing what really goes on over there. That's the reason they also don't allow photographers in and shoot at them. But we were determined to see for ourselves. And we did.

We enter Ramallah by a combination of driving and walking. The whole process, while it only takes half an hour at most, makes us feel like outlaws on the run, like moving targets. Being Israeli, it's clear that we're facing danger from both whichever Palestinians would not happy with our presence in their neighborhoods and see us as enemies and by the Israeli occupation forces that may capture and arrest us, plus whatever crossfire we may get caught in from either side. We can't be left alone for a minute. So we make arrangements for a Palestinian "tour guide". The first thing he asks of us is that if at any point after he leaves us we get caught, that we don't mention his name to the military. On the drive there we take a nice tour of every nearby refugee camp and the slum neighborhood outside of Ramallah. The streets are empty and the stores are closed. Every once in a while we pass a car. The driver stops and talks with our driver, and based on that our driver knows where the tanks are placed and which route to take. We can't get caught because there's curfew and they can either shoot us or arrest us. At some point we have to get out and walk in an open field. This is particularly dangerous because we're exposed. Every time we reach a crossroad, our guide instructs us to hide behind the nearby building while he goes to check if there are tanks or soldiers around the corner.

The guide lets us out 200 meters before the Ramallah hospital. The last 200 meters we have to walk by ourselves, no guide, just us seven women, and a group of ten Italians who know as little about the situation as we do. He gives us twenty bags of pita bread to bring to the people on the inside, and tells us to be careful. Those were the scariest 200 meters I've ever walked in my life. We're all wearing white, so that if the soldiers catch us, they can identify us as Internationals and know not to shoot. Apparently they don't shoot at you as long as you're marked as a non-Palestinian. We have to walk very slowly in the middle of the road, to make sure we're visible. We walk with our hands in the air so that the army can tell that we have no weapons.

We make to the hospital ok, and are greeted by the medical team and some fifty activists who've been staying at the hospital for over a week. No one has taken a shower in eight days because there is no running water. The only water available is in bottles, and the supply is limited. There are a number of international journalists there, no Israeli press of course - not only is it illegal for any press to be there, what Israeli, journalist or not, would risk their lives to be in these conditions and illegally, only to conjure up some report? The international press wants to interview us, but they're afraid that through their reports the army will detect that they're staying in the city illegally and will kick them out.

We don't get exposed to the patients too much, and our only experience with the horrific tales of bloodshed is through stories we here from doctors and activists. Yesterday morning, we are told, a 55-year-old woman somehow made it to the hospital. The cast on her foot was broken, and she had to get it changed. She left the hospital at 11:00 am. At 11:15 she returned to the hospital at the arms of an activist who carried her dead body back. She was shot twice, in the cheek and the neck. Two days prior to that, the military blocked the entrance to the hospital with a number of tanks. They did not allow ambulances filled with injured patients and dead bodies they collected from throughout the city to even get near the hospital. The army knew that there are lots of activists staying in the hospital, and threatened to break in, forcibly pull the activists out, and destroy everything inside.

Another phenomenon we're informed of is mass arrests, particularly of Palestinian men. There have already been around 3000 arrests. The soldiers take the men into an undisclosed location, blindfold them, and tie their hands behind their backs. They go through 3 or 4 days blindfolded and tied, generally without food or water, until the army investigates who they are. Then the army dumps their bodies, which are still blindfolded and tied, in some field in the middle of nowhere. They give them a note which says they've already been checked out, incase they get arrested again. One of these men made it to the hospital a day before we arrived. He was injured by the army. He said that there are fields full of these men, who can't even move and certainly can't make it home. Somehow, he was able to make it back home, after a very long walk. He was stopped by the army, and some soldier stopped him and wrote something on his hand that he couldn't read, because it was in Hebrew. The activists took a picture of his hand and wanted us to look at it and find out what they wrote. I think that instead of giving him a note that he was arrested, they just wrote it on his hand. Kinda reminds me of some means of marking cattle.

We decide to go to the headquarters of the Union of Palestinian Medical Relief Committees (UPMRC). There is a shipment of food there that was sent in by Israeli organizations and is going to get distributed today. The food reached Ramallah two days ago, but hasn't been distributed because of the curfew. There's been a curfew on the city for the last seven days, and anyone caught outside will get shot, though more likely so if they're Palestinian. The curfew was lifted only once so far, three days ago, for three hours, to allow people to stock up on food or run to the hospital if they need to. But apparently even during the lift of the curfew the army shot and killed people who were out on the street. The curfew is going to get lifted again for three hours today. This is probably because General Zinni is going to be in Ramallah for a meeting, and the Israeli government wants the place to look normal, so that he doesn't get to see what it's like under curfew. Things are crazy once the curfew is lifted. People run like mad to get as much food and supplies as possible, because they know that within a few short hours they'll be stuck in their houses again for an indefinite amount of time. And on top of that, most stores and businesses are not open, because all the owners and the workers are themselves busy running out trying to load their houses with food and water. The only place where people will be going to get food is the UPMRC, and the entire neighborhood is going to be there. So we decide to go there and help before the rush.

Apparently, as long as you are identified as an International, you are not outright shot and are somewhat free to move about at certain neighborhoods of the city, despite of the curfew. The headquarters of the UPMRC is about a five-minute walk on a regular day. But today we can't get straight there, because of the tanks which are blocking some streets on the way, and soldiers stationed at certain corners on the way that we'd like to avoid. We have to take some bypass route. We begin our journey, and are accompanied by Huwaida and Adam of the International Solidarity Movement, and a Palestinian medic the UPMRC. There are trenches in the middle of the streets every so often, and the roads have tank marks all over them. There are bullet shells and tank shells everywhere. I've never seen tank shells before. They look just like the bullet shells, but are about twelve inches (30 centimeters) long. I start picking them up as momentos, but I quickly realize that there are far too many to pick up. Had I gone one block's length and picked up all the shells, I would not have enough room for them in my backpack. We pass by several cars that were either run over by tanks or set on fire or blown up to the point that they are without recognition. People will be left without cars after this is over. There are several electricity poles that have been torn down and are lying in the middle of the street. Apparently tanks have this habit of running over cars and electricity poles. The building themselves are of course not immune either. There are holes in them everywhere. In some buildings the holes are as big as my head. It's scary to think that there were people inside the buildings when they hit. Several buildings burned down from the bombs, and are entirely black. One of them is Ramallah's biggest nightclub Rumors, which served as an infamous hangout to Israelis as well as Palestinians before the beginning of the Intifada. What was the army looking for at a nightclub?

We get stopped by soldiers twice. The first time this happens we turn a corner and two soldiers come at us from a building and stop us. Within ten seconds there are four more. They start aiming their guns at us and up at the windows of the building above. They want to know what we're doing on the street. Don't we know there's a curfew? They demand we go back. They spot a Palestinian among us, and demand that he come into the occupied building with them. Fearing that we may not see him again, we refuse to let him go alone. Adam begins arguing with the soldiers, and I join him. What am I going to do to him? Says one soldier. He pinches himself, I'm only human, see? He's not trying to convince the Palestinian. He's talking to us. The hardest thing is speaking to the soldiers. I want to lash out at them in Hebrew. They treat Israelis with such a different level of respect than they do of internationals, which they see as a bunch of fools who blindly support Arafat and his terrorists and have no real understanding of the situation. I know that if I or any one of us speak in Hebrew, we'll be arrested in no time. We will be put on trial and our sentence could lead to several months' worth of jailtime. So we don't take the risk. We send Adam with our Palestinian companion into the building. We wait outside for over half an hour. We hear shelling, tank fire, guns. It gets closer. We hear cars coming towards us. We're standing in the middle of the street and are totally exposed. We start shaking. Adam and the UPMRC medic return eventually.

The second time we get stopped, the head soldier and his assistants are searching a car. People where told that the curfew will be lifted at 12:30, and it got changed to 2pm. People have been coming out believing that the curfew is lifted, including this poor guy who took his car out to get food for his family. The soldier refuses to speak any language other than Hebrew to the guy. He's ordering him to open his trunk, and asks him a bunch of questions like what are you doing outside, where do you think you're going. The poor man is having difficulties taking the soldier's orders and answering his questions. It's obvious that he can hardly understand a word he's saying. As soon as the soldier spots us, he orders us with our backs to a nearby wall. After some interrogation he lets us go "with a warning."

The UPMRC office is located in a building that is also host to the Mandela Center for Political Prisoners, a seamstress shop, and a law office. Perhaps because of the political nature of two of the offices, the entire building got raided just days ago. The law office upstairs suffered the most damage. First the military fired fun and tank shells at it, then they blew the doors open, entered, and confiscated all the documents inside. The door is hardly hanging on. The wall with a window facing outside is no longer there. The wall behind it is hardly hanging on and with holes of all sizes it looks like a strainer. The entire office is full of rubble. Everything is torn down and broken, except for a picture of the lawyer's daughter, which is still hanging on the wall.

We begin distributing the food as soon as the curfew is lifted. People bang on the doors and push each other to try to get to the window. We can't even control them, and we certainly can't work fast enough. We talk on the phone with Israeli journalist Amira Hass who lives in Ramallah. Speak in Hebrew, she says, it's important that the Palestinians know who you are and that you're there.

After several hours of work we head back. The street is filled with frantic people running around in chaos. We must leave the city before the curfew comes back on. We get as far as the checkpoint outside of Kalandia refugee camp by car. We have to cross the checkpoint by foot, as no cars are allowed through. The checkpoint is experiencing a bottleneck as one by one each person puts their possessions aside for a search, steps forward, lifts up their shirt, and turns around before they're either allowed or denied passage. We're scared to pass the checkpoint, because we don't have international ID. We can get stopped and, once more, face arrest and trial.

We are let through without problem though, as we pass the soldiers one by one. The last one to pass through is Shelly. After we move away she tells us that she know one of the soldiers at the checkpoint. He was her classmate. She went to school with him for seven years. What can I say. We are everywhere.

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