The past 10 days with ISM

Update #4: The past 10 days with ISM
Date: Tue, 16 Feb 2010

Hope everyone's doing well. This email's quite lengthy but I feel strongly that to shorten it would be to exclude integral details.
Things have been rather exciting around here lately!

Recent Events

3 am Sunday (2/7): Three ISM volunteers awake in the Ramallah office to sounds of the door being broken open. Looking out the window, a line of army jeeps is visible in the street below. Upon destroying the door, 12 IDF (Israeli Defense Force) soldiers storm into the apartment wielding M-16s and dressed in full riot gear, complete with bullet-proof vests and kneepads. The soldiers arrest two Internationals on charges of overstayed visas and search the apartment, tearing down posters, filming extensively and taking one computer, two cameras and personal information for about 20 persons. ISM has reason to believe that phone and email surveillance were used prior to the raid. http://palsolidarity.org/2010/02/11224

6 pm Sunday (2/7): One week after a settler waved an M-16 wildly in the street, a group of settlers armed with another M-16 attempt to access the back half of the al-Kurd home, pointing the weapon in the chest of Rifqa al-Kurd, 87, and threatening to kill her. http://palsolidarity.org/2010/02/11251

Monday (2/8): Israeli Supreme Court finds the International arrests to be illegal under the Oslo Accords, which prohibit IDF activity in "Area A" of the West Bank. The detained Internationals are released on bail.
http://palsolidarity.org/2010/02/11257

3 am, Wednesday (2/10): Despite the court's findings just two days prior, Internationals again awake to soldiers and are held at gunpoint in the Ramallah office. In the second IDF raid in four days for the office, soldiers this time took our other computer and rifled through our previously-searched belongings.
http://palsolidarity.org/2010/02/11339

Saturday (2/13): Fatima Diab, 45, is arrested in a controversial altercation which occurs when a Zionist member of Knesset (Israeli parliament) provocatively tours Sheikh Jarrah. Diab is denied food and water while in prison, and, upon being released on bail the following day, is placed under house arrest for a week.
http://palsolidarity.org/2010/02/11435

1 pm, Sunday (2/14): Violent Zionists tour Sheikh Jarrah. It is hard to know what to write about this. Definitely the most discouraging experience I've had here. About twenty people stroll up to the block where we're sitting in the sun. We get out our cameras, they enter the al-Kurd yard while mocking and taunting the Palestinians watching on the side. Several attempt to grab our cameras and/or block us from filming. The guide delivers truly the most horrific presentation I have witnessed, referring to Palestinians as "robbers", describing them at times as misled and confused, at others as dirty thieves who know full well that they violating "divine will" by fighting to preserve the scraps of land they have lived on for millennia.
They end in song, jeering and dancing on the al-Kurd lawn as my Palestinian friends and neighbors watch. As they leave the yard, one woman begins screaming "Murderers! Murderers!" At this point, I become frightened since it is apparent that she is violently angry and uncontrollable. As people flood into the street, she continues to lunge at Palestinians (some elderly), screaming "Murderers! We're here to stay!" At one point, I see her break loose from the other tourists that have attempted to hold her back, and I move forward. Afraid she'll really hurt someone, I'm thinking only to get it clearly on camera since that's all a person can do. Catching a glimpse of me filming, she turns and lunges. Before I can react, my camera is flying through the air as the settlers and tourists present begin to clap and cheer. It's hard to know how to respond; that's all I can say.
http://palsolidarity.org/2010/02/11404

11 pm, Sunday (2/14): Settler and Palestinian youth exchange insults in the street. Although this type of altercation occurs every hour or so, tonight the police arrive in a blue-stripe van and arrest Tarek Gawi, 15. He's held for a few hours until ISM can arrive with footage demonstrating settler provocation, at which time he's released but banned from Sheikh Jarrah for 10 days.

Tuesday (2/16): Gawi camp is destroyed yet again. One Palestinian is injured when the municipality truck reverses spontaneously, trapping his leg between the curb and truck bed as he tries to move a couch.

Putting it in context

Although the past days have been dramatic and attention-grabbing, they demonstrate no break from the larger routine of life in occupied territories.

Raids

Just 5 weeks ago, ISM media coordinator Eva Novacova was similarly raided and arrested. Also before dawn, soldiers surrounded the building and were positioned on the roof of her Ramallah (Area A) apartment. The West Bank is separated into areas A, B and C as a result of the Oslo Accords (1993). Palestinians allegedly have full jurisdiction of Area A, while B is split and C is entirely Israeli-controlled.

Borrowing from the ISM website, "The Oslo Accords between Israel and the Palestinian Authority clearly forbid any Israeli incursion into Area A for reasons not directly and urgently related to security, even in “hot pursuit.” A raid on Area A on the ground of expired visas is therefore in direct violation of the accords." The now-routine raids demonstrate the little actual control that Palestinians have over their lives.

For some great maps showing the division of the West Bank, see http://www.israelsoccupation.info/gallery/west-bank


Night raids arresting the leaders of Popular Committees (local Palestinian resistance organizations) have been ongoing, and Stop the Wall has also experienced raids. The increased crackdown on non-violent resistance has been a challenge. While we're struggling to replace our electronics, Palestinians who involve themselves with resistance work face years in prison under the worst possible conditions. The recent attention by the IDF makes it clear that the ISM is a powerful organization in the fight to end occupation and apartheid. It's a little unsettling to feel targeted and watched, but we're collectively heartened that the Palestinian resistance is gathering momentum.

Arrests in Sheikh Jarrah

Life in the neighborhood is incredibly trying. Palestinians and Internationals sit chatting and sharing food in the al-Kurd tent and Gawi camp (most recently a few sofas on the sidewalk). To me, Sheikh Jarrah feels like home; the Palestinians like family. It's
increasingly difficult to tolerate the continual harassment by settlers who walk back and forth shouting, filming us, etc. However, I never lived in the homes the settlers now inhabit. The patience and grace of the Gawis, al-Kurds and other neighbors will forever astound me as I realize just how deeply it must hurt to live on the sidewalk outside of the home where you have both lived as a child and raised children. To compound the emotional trauma with continual harassment and cruelty by the inhabitants of your stolen home is more than I can comprehend tolerating. Indeed, there are moments where my Palestinian friends respond to the provocation.

It is now apparent that the settlers are manipulating this emotional limit as much as possible. As the arrests of the past week demonstrate, police need little provocation to ban an individual. Several have been banned for varying lengths of time since my arrival. This morning as the camp was demolished, several of the police casually chatted with the settlers and then entered the occupied home. Drinking coffee? Using the restroom? It's ever more absurd that police/military maintain the charade of neutral authority. Their only actions are in defense of the settlers, despite the frequency with which they are the party at fault.

Conclusion

As I mentioned above, truly the hardest part of all this was the tour. Primarily from the U.S., the tourists demonstrated a level of cruelty and inhumanity beyond what I could conceive, despite what I've already witnessed and heard here. I've abandoned all attempts to censor my writing for U.S. "neutrality.” The apartheid here is undeniable and horrific. It's responsible for the injury and imprisonment of my International friends as well as most Palestinians.

I have been personally confronted with violence and contempt by fellow Americans, and have had American-made weapons used against me. Everything I write home about has been made possible by the $3 billion in tax dollars the U.S. provides Israel with each year, as well as its vetoes of more than 40 U.N. resolutions regarding Israel's flagrant disregard for international accords.

I'll do my best to keep writing. Please, do your part to start raising awareness in the U.S. about the reality here. "Occupation 101" and "Peace, Propaganda and the Promised Land", both available at freedocumentaries.org, are great places to start.

Please, ask questions! Forward!