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| Vredessite / Palestina alert 2002 Ooggetuigen |
Israeli reinvasion to Balata Report by internationals
Saturday 08 Jun 2002I just spoke to Annie Higgins, one of the team of internationals who came here to help Palestinians. She is now in Jenin. Prior to this she was in Balata. She gave a quick run down of events there.
The first thing to happen after the IOF entered Balata was that they rounded up all men from the age of 14-45. No one knows the exact figures of how many were rounded up. Estimates from the people in the camp vary from 4-10,000. The total population of Balata, according to UNRRA, is 26,000. Most of the men have since been returned. But about 100 have not; no one knows where they are or any other details about them.
A boy of about 15 was shot in the back while crossing a street.
Events that occurred after the men had been rounded up included:
(a) soldiers breaking through walls in order to go from house to house without having to expose themselves on the streets.
(b)Shells being fired from tanks into residential neighborhoods. One of these entered a room in which a woman was changing the diaper of her recently born infant. She was hit in the leg. After she was escorted to the hospital with the help of the internationals, they also helped bring the infant to the hospital so that she could nurse it. It is probable that had the internationals not been there, the baby could not have been brought to its mother.
(c) numerous cars destroyed or damaged
(d) Apache Helicopters shot randomly into neighborhoods. One such attack was at 4:00 AM, another at 7:00 AM.
Every single house in the camp was searched. Many but not all were subjected to having their walls broken through.
Annie and some of the other internationals tried to be on friendly terms with the soldiers. The personal relations established helped, at times, to ameliorate situations. Annie reports that some of the soldiers were gentle and told her and others of the team that they did not like being in Balata and doing the things they had been ordered to do. Such soldiers tried to act humanely to the people (consisting only of women, children, and elderly men). But other soldiers behaved sadistically. The team terminated its contact with the soldiers after some of them (who have no right to arrest) detained members of the international team and delivered them to the police in Ariel.