Existence is Resistance

Related
Israeli court upholds order to confiscate hundreds of Palestinian citizens' land
Evictions and demolitions continue in East Jerusalem
---
Anna Baltzer writing from Nablus, occupied Palestine, Live from Palestine, 21 March 2007

A view of Nablus from the Old City.

One week after I left Nablus I found myself again looking out across the city's majestic sunlit hills, this time from one of the highest mountains in the West Bank. In all my reporting on Israel's invasion and human rights violations, I never mentioned how beautiful the ancient city is, from the surrounding mountains to the enchanting Old City, so easy to get lost in. Both remind me of Damascus (one pessimistic Palestinian pointed out the comparison early on during my stay, claiming that the Nablus invasion was practice for an attack against Syria). My last day in Nablus I got to discover another one of the city's gems: An-Najah University. I immediately took to the old architecture mixed with modern sculptures on the main campus, but what inspired me most was watching thousands of students return to the frantic bustle of daily university life so soon after soldiers had released the city from hostage. Resilience is a defining character of Palestinian identity in my experience, and I was more impressed than surprised to see Palestinians asserting their determination to get an education even in the most difficult circumstances. Just another example of the ever-pervasive Palestinian nonviolent resistance.

Palestinian students return to An-Najah University after a week under siege in Nablus.

The night before visiting I had passed by the empty campus -- abandoned since the army took over and classes were cancelled -- in a taxi driving home with the family that was hosting me. I had grown quite close to the warm family with Leninist communist leanings, and felt happy and comfortable in their home covered with posters of Che Guevara, David Beckham, Shakira, and others idolized by the three teenage daughters. As we were driving and chatting after having visited some friends, we were suddenly surrounded with jeeps driving through the city to and from seemingly every direction. We panicked. Was there curfew? Would we be shot for being outside? Screeching to a halt, we tried to back up to the neighborhood we'd come from, but jeeps were swarming in that direction as well. Where were we supposed to go?

The jeeps left as quickly as they had come. Apparently they were doing a practice invasion, presumably to train new soldiers, as they've been doing a lot recently in a village called Beit Lid near Tulkarem (even though nobody in the village has been accused of threatening Israel's security). I will never forget that feeling of being suddenly surrounded, the confusion and panic, the helplessness. There was something about sitting together to a cheerful family breakfast the next morning that felt like a kind of nonviolent resistance too: the insistence on ordinary life and pleasures no matter what havoc occupation forces are wreaking just outside.

I returned to the Nablus region a week later to accompany a teacher named Addawiya and her family to plow land they haven't been able to work for six years due to soldier harassment. The next plot over hasn't been plowed in 26 years for the same reason. There are Israeli military posts on all the highest West Bank peaks, among them the mountain where Addawiya's land lies. As we cleared away stones that had overrun the land over the last half dozen years, Addawiya told me about the day she was picking olives with her brother when the soldiers came and threatened to shoot her brother if he didn't leave the land immediately. He persisted in picking olives until the soldiers began shooting into the air to show that they were serious, at which point he ran off terrified. Addawiya was left alone, and on her hands and knees pleaded for her life, all along sure she was going to die. Her fear was not unjustified. Three years ago, Addawiya's sister was taking a walk on the family's land near the village with her husband when a group of soldiers popped out from the foliage and open-fired on him. The 33-year-old teacher died instantly.

The Addawiya family plows their land for the first time in six years.

The Israeli army came and apologized to Addawiya's family. Apparently they were intending to assassinate a wanted man and shot the wrong guy. Addawiya's sister, who was 23 and pregnant at the time, is now a 26-year-old going on 60. With nobody to support her and two young children to raise, she had to move back in with her mother. Incidentally, the mother invited me to move in too when we returned from plowing (as an unmarried, childless 27-year-old woman, I'm practically an old maid around here). I declined politely, and we began the journey back to Haris.

Our first stop along the way was Huwwara, the southern checkpoint out of Nablus city, where as usual hundreds of students from An-Najah and other universities were waiting unhappily, squished together like cattle as it began to rain and everyone squeezed under the roof to wait behind metal detectors and turnstiles to leave the city.

A Palestinian man is searched at Huwwara checkpoint.

I remembered passing through Huwwara a few days earlier on a trip accompanying other farmers in the area. Since the solidarity effort was organized by the Israeli group Rabbis for Human Rights, we were driving in an Israeli car with yellow license plates, so we didn't even slow down as we breezed through on the Israeli-only road parallel to the one where Palestinians had been waiting for hours if not days.

On the way back from Addawiya's land, a colleague and I decided to stay at Huwarra to do checkpoint watch, i.e., witness and document any human rights violations. There was already one sick man whom the army had refused to let pass and we took his story. At first the soldiers didn't seem to mind our presence, but after some time one soldier told us we weren't allowed to stand where we were. He pointed to a line drawn on the floor nearby and said we could stand behind it. We began to protest, but quickly realized a fight would translate into longer waiting time for the Palestinians being processed by the same soldier, so we walked a few paces to the other side of the line. Ten minutes later, a different soldier informed us it was illegal to be observing the checkpoint at all, so we would have to leave immediately. We didn't even dignify his absurd claim with a response. He stood next to us awkwardly repeating himself a few times and then eventually went away.

We were approached by a third soldier, speaking only Hebrew. When we said we couldn't understand, he told us in broken English that it was illegal to be there if you didn't speak Hebrew. This was a new one. Another soldier showed up to translate the soldier's original message, namely that in fact we could look but not take pictures. The soldier regretted to inform us that he would have to delete my photographs. At that point we decided we preferred to leave rather than lose the photos, so we began to walk away. As expected, the soldier didn't chase after the supposedly "illegal" pictures. Just before we left, we saw the sick man previously denied passage try his luck with a different soldier at a different machine and get through.

Israel claims that its checkpoints are for the security and safety of its citizens. What makes this claim so difficult to believe for those observing the institutions is how inconsistent and seemingly arbitrary the army's actions and "laws" so frequently are. The sick man got through on his second try. Had that failed, he could have sprung for an expensive taxi ride to an alternative checkpoint 10 miles north that is scarcely monitored at all (when we passed through on the way to Addawiya's land there were no soldiers in sight). The whole trip north and then around again would cost him several hours and paychecks, but he could exit his city with relative certainty. Anyone who's spent time in the West Bank knows that if you're desperate, you can get anywhere. There is always an alternative road, even into Israel, even with the Wall, which is full of holes so as not to disturb settlers commuting to Israel. Israel is not stupid. It knows that Palestinians can get around the army's blockades if they just drain enough energy and resources to do so. So why does Israel do it?

Israeli soldiers check Palestinian IDs at Huwwara checkpoint.

As our shared taxi from Huwwara to Haris left the checkpoint, the driver pulled up next to several drivers to ask how Zatara was. Zatara is a permanent checkpoint between Huwwara and Haris, but there's an alternative road through Jama'iin village, which drivers take when the checkpoint line is too long or slow. The ride takes much longer, and is painfully bumpy and curvy. When our driver chose the detour, the woman next to me grimaced and took out some plastic bags, which she spent the ride vomiting into. I rubbed her back, not knowing what else to do, thinking about the short, straight, paved road that could have eased her suffering if it were not rendered so endless for non-Jews.

The taxi eventually dropped us off near the Haris bus stop, which soldiers have surrounded with large concrete cubes leftover from the roadblock that used to block our village. The blocks mean that waiting Palestinians cannot easily get from the sheltered bus stop to the road, so at least one traveler must wait always wait on the road to spot and flag down cars, even when it's raining. Each time I'm forced to drench my backpack and jeans waiting to start a day's journey, I think about what Israel has to gain by making even a bus stop inaccessible without struggle, by rendering what could be a smooth drive home into a nauseating miserable ride. I think about why the roadblocks were set up to begin with outside Haris, when villagers either had to drive their cars to the entrance, park, walk around, and take a taxi the rest of the way to work or university, or they had to take their cars along a strenuous unpaved detour through the countryside to reach the same outside road. What's the point of making life so frustrating that people reconsider even going to work or school? What happens when daily life in Palestine becomes just too unbearable?

My questions are answered almost every day when strangers call or approach us desperate for help getting a visa to Europe or North America. They say they can't take it anymore -- first Israel took their land, then their sons, and now their dignity. What Israel wants more than anything isn't to harm Palestinians; it wants for Palestinians to leave. Israel is the first to admit that the "demographic problem" of too many Palestinians in an exclusively Jewish state threatens Israel more than any suicide bomber ever could.

Addawiya told me she wanted to leave as we were walking back from her groves. I asked her where, and she told me it didn't matter -- she wasn't going anywhere. "Because no country will give you a visa?" I asked, and she shook her head. "Because that's what they want us to do. They want us to flee as we did in 1948, so that the Jewish National Fund can again expropriate our land and reserve it for Jews only. But I won't leave. I will stay here because it's my right and it's my duty, to myself and to my children." For Addawiya, even staying in her village and working her land is nonviolent resistance, the kind almost every Palestinian partakes in. It's not the type of resistance that will make it onto headlines or the six o'clock news, but it is there, it is strong, and it is not going away.

All images by Anna Baltzer.

Anna Baltzer is a volunteer with the International Women's Peace Service in the West Bank and author of the book, Witness in Palestine: Journal of a Jewish American Woman in the Occupied Territories. For information about her writing, photography, DVD, and speaking tours, visit her website at www.AnnaInTheMiddleEast.com

Nablus Invasion Diary II: Human Shields and Medical Obstruction

Anna Baltzer writing from Nablus, occupied Palestine, Live from Palestine, 14 March 2007

An Israeli soldier occupies the minaret of a mosque in the Old City of Nablus.

7 March 2007

Most of the jeeps pulled out late Monday night, but we all knew they would be back. Israeli officials announced that the operation was not over, as they had not yet achieved their objectives. Typically, the army will withdraw for several hours or a whole day, hoping the wanted men will move around and be spotted by a collaborator working with Israel, and then the army can pounce. Soldiers also remained in occupied houses, where they typically set up hidden sniper nests.

Ghareb Selhab lies unconscious at Al-Watani hospital

Nevertheless, the withdrawal gave the city a chance to move and relax a bit before the next strike. We took the chance to document the destruction and take reports from victims and their families. Our first stop was Al Watani Hospital, one of many that had been surrounded during the invasion. According to the director, soldiers set up a checkpoint for everyone coming into or out of the hospital, and questioned several patients after checking them. He worried about the psychological and physical effects of even mild interrogation on patients already fragile with sickness.

In the hospital we met family members of Ghareb Selhab, a man in critical condition since the day before. According to his son, Ghareb was in the bathroom when tear gas began to fill his home. He gasped to his wife that he could not breathe, and went into cardiac arrest. The family immediately called for help, but soldiers prevented the ambulance from reaching Ghareb's home for over an hour. By that time Ghareb had stopped breathing and fallen into a deep coma. By the time he reached the hospital, he had no pulse, and it was too late. Doctors hooked him up to a breathing machine, and five days later (last Sunday) the family decided to pull the plug. He was 47 years old, the father of seven.

UPMRC volunteer, Alaa

Normally, UPMRC volunteers serve as a backup if ambulances can't get through, but as luck would have it, while Ghareb was breathing his last independent breath, soldiers were raiding the UPMRC. Soldiers came into the clinic with dogs and herded all the doctors and internationals into one room while they searched the building. My colleagues Nova and
Yara overheard someone being beaten next door. The raid was just one of many incidents of the army detaining medical relief workers. We interviewed our friend Alaa, who was detained while making rounds with a doctor on Monday. Alaa was handcuffed in a jeep for seven hours, scolded when his hands shook (he has a weak pulse condition), and hit anytime he raised his head. He was released five miles south of the city at midnight, but back delivering medicine with UPMRC on Wednesday after the soldiers reinvaded and curfew was imposed again.

The second invasion seemed heavier than the first, with even more soldiers and jeeps around every corner. More and more families were going incommunicado, which we understood to mean their homes were being occupied. Sometimes people would call for help, but when we arrived nobody would answer. Neighbors were sure that the families hadn't left, so we would yell to the soldiers that we knew they were there and just wanted to deliver medicine. After some insisting sometimes they'd answer, sometimes not.

Once we were made to wait forty minutes outside one occupied home. As we waited, soldiers escorted detained men in and out, including one group of at least ten medical volunteers from the Red Crescent and UPMRC. After half an hour they let the medical relief workers go on the condition that seven would leave the area and the other three would stop doing distributing medicine.

Sometimes the detainment was unofficial. Soldiers demanded at gunpoint the IDs of the four volunteers we were accompanying, and then refused to give them back for a full hour. Because it's extremely dangerous to be caught breaking curfew without an ID, we were forced to wait instead of delivering insulin to a diabetic who was waiting. The soldiers claimed they were checking the IDs, but spent the hour chatting, eating lunch, and taking pictures of us waiting.

There were so many stories that I stopped writing them down. But one that stuck with me came from Nova and Yara, who were delivering bread and medicine with three friends from UPMRC when soldiers called them from far away to approach their jeep. One by one, our friends were ordered to open their jackets, pull their pants down, turn around, and put their hands up against the wall. Nova and Yara averted their eyes with shame as the men were forced to strip in front of them. The soldiers let them go afterwards, but we have scarcely seen our friends since -- I can only imagine their embarrassment, in a culture where modesty and gender boundaries are so important.

Medical volunteers detained by Israeli soldiers.

Something about humiliation is worse that physical punishment. I've heard stories of young women detained, photographed naked, and threatened that if they don't collaborate with the army (as spies), their pictures will be distributed, shaming them and their families beyond repair. This can be more effective that bribery and even torture. It's interesting how many of the detainees are young people, sometimes not more than 13 years old, who say they aren't questioned about the wanted men at all. Instead, soldiers use various techniques to encourage them to collaborate.

Jihan

It's strategic to target the young and weak. We took one report from an 11-year-old girl named Jihan, taken from her home to serve as a human shield after her father and older sister proved too strong-willed to cooperate. The army came for her at at night and made her walk in front of ten armed soldiers as they went from house to house in the Old City. When she protested they threatened to arrest her.

Jihan was not the only young human shield used this week. One family told us how the soldiers invaded by breaking a hole through their wall, herding 27 family members into one room, and taking two kids to open doors in front of them as they raided the rest of the neighborhood. After six hours, the women and older men were released while the human shields and all other men were handcuffed and taken away. One of the men, Abdallah, gave us his testimony:

We were five in total, ages 17 to 30. They led us away from our home via the hole that they'd made in our wall. It was hard to climb through the hole without the use of our hands. Then we had to walk up the steep and rocky hill behind our house, which was also very difficult with our hands behind our back.

The soldiers brought us to a home in the Raas Al Ain quarter. We were not allowed to use the toilet at all for the next ten hours, but my need was very urgent during most of that time. After the first couple hours, we asked when our hands would be untied -- we were having pain in our shoulders, especially my brother who is overweight so he cannot remain so long with his hands stretched behind. A soldier came behind us and instead of opening our hands he tied the handcuffs tighter as punishment for asking. It was very painful for us. Soon I could not feel my hands and I asked another soldier if he would loosen the cuffs. He said we would be released soon.

Instead, we were taken into jeeps, blindfolded, and driven to Huwwara military base south of Nablus. The Mukhabarat [Israeli Intelligence] were waiting there and when we arrived they took off our blindfolds, looked at our IDs, checked them, and asked a few questions: What's your name? Where are you from? What do you do? We answered their questions in two minutes, and then they put the blindfolds back on for six more hours. You cannot know the feeling of being detained, handcuffed, and blindfolded for 17 hours. Try closing your eyes and tying your hands for just one hour -- it will feel like an eternity, and you will begin to feel you are losing your mind.

Between 9pm and 3am they led us around to different jeeps. We kept tripping because we could not see anything or use our hands. At 3am they took off our blinds and handcuffs, gave us a paper saying in Hebrew that we'd been at Huwwara, and told us we could go. We could not understand the logic of detaining and handcuffing us for more than ten hours without food, water, or access to a toilet just to ask us a couple silly questions that they probably already know the answers to.

Because of the curfew there was no transportation so we had to walk the eight kilometers [five miles] back to Nablus. Actually, we ran part of the way because we were scared -- there are many dogs on the road, plus we were afraid of being caught in clashes between Palestinians and the army. We arrived at home almost two hours later, around 5am.

The soldiers returned twice more to Abdallah's house during the invasions, and they will probably be back. The third time they destroyed many things in the house, turning over furniture and breaking glasses and windows. As illustrated by Abdallah's story, it's not clear whether the raids and detainment are as much about getting information as general harassment, or at best disregard for residents' rights.

We documented another raid at one student dormitory of An Najah University, where soldiers arrived at 4:15am, threw sound bombs and demanded that everyone evacuate or the building would be destroyed on top of them. Students and family residents fled out in their pajamas and were brought to the basement of a nearby building. Women and children were kept in one room, while all the men -- as young as fourteen -- were handcuffed and sat in another room. For the next six hours, the thirty men were forbidden to speak, open a window for fresh air, or even lean against a wall to sleep.

A family describes their experience being woken up and detained from 4am-10am with students from an An-Najah dormitory.

The door to a Al-Najaa dorm room after being destroyed by Israeli soldiers.

When the soldiers left after 10am (without untying the men's strong plastic handcuffs -- neighbors came to help free them), the students and families returned to find their homes in shambles. Each flat had been raided: soldiers had used bombs to blast open doors, windows were shattered, light fixtures were dangling from their sockets, and the elevator had been blown apart. Bedrooms were turned upside-down, textbooks and assignments strewn across the floor, pictures and pop-star posters ripped from the walls. Like every other raid throughout the invasion, none of the wanted people were found in the building. But how many more fighters were created?

I apologize if these reports of detention, raids, human shields, and the obstruction of medical treatment seem repetitive. I tell them not only because I believe they each deserve to be heard, but more crucially because with enough reports the seemingly arbitrary harassment can no longer be dismissed as isolated incidents or simply unfortunate side effects of conflict, but must be recognized as unspoken policies of the Israeli Army. If the intention is security for Israeli citizens, these policies are not only ineffective but counter-productive in my opinion. If the intention is to scare the people of Nablus, then this is terrorism and should be recognized and condemned as such.

All images by Anna Baltzer

Anna Baltzer is a volunteer with the International Women's Peace Service in the West Bank and author of the book, Witness in Palestine: Journal of a Jewish American Woman in the Occupied Territories. For information about her writing, photography, DVD, and speaking tours, visit her website at www.AnnaInTheMiddleEast.com.


Related Links

BY TOPIC: Israel Attacks Nablus: "Operation Hot Winter" (25 February 2007)

Video: Interview with wounded son of man killed in Nablus Invasion

Video, Research Journalism Initiative and A-Films, 9 March 2007

On 26 February 2007, the second day of the Israeli invasion, Anan Tibi was shot and wounded while on the rood of the the family's home in the Old City of Nablus. Only seconds before, Tibi's son Ashraf was also shot and wounded. From his hospital bed Tibi describes what happened: "When I went down the stairs that lead from the roof to our home I was shot in the arm. I told my father I was shot. ... I sent my brother downstairs to get an ambulance. I reached our home and heard a second shot. When I looked up I saw my father lying on the stairs." This video-interview was produced by the Research Journalism Initiative and the Anarchist Film Collective "A-Films".


Related Links

BY TOPIC: Israel Attacks Nablus: "Operation Hot Winter" (25 February 2007)

Video: Israeli invasion of Nablus

Multimedia: Video: Nablus Invasion, Day 4 ( 1 March 2007)

Multimedia: Video: Nablus Invasion, Day 2 ( 1 March 2007)

Multimedia: Video: Nablus Invasion, Day 1 ( 1 March 2007)

Diaries: Live from Palestine: A Day in the Life of Nablus Under Curfew ( 1 March 2007)