Yasir Arafat dies, world peace has a chance....

[Rian Jackson]

ok, so it's shitty poetry. unrevised. but i was pissed.
here's a year ago, and my response to the foreigner who tried to tell the people how to run their resistance:

Who are you to speak
Your conflict resolution gospel?
Who are you to tell a people
How and why and where to resist?
Is it your white skin,
Your US passport,
Your Phd?


You've seen so much
These past few months,
Really getting to the bottom
Of this whole conflict.
Really.


Your arrogance astounds me,
Your self righteous proclamations.
Yes, you are teacher,
You are impartial,
You see both sides.


Shut up your mouth, please.


Your textbook answers
Have no place
Bathed in blood.
Your high flying theories
Don't belong
Amongst mud and stones


Let's have no more talk of 'tactics,'
Masking your prejudices, your privilege
In military knowledge


When you know the blood,
The rhythms of a people,
Then you may speak to them.
Until that time, your should be no teacher,
But a humble scholar
For your students have much
To teach you.

[Rian Jackson]

8 December 2003


These are things that can only happen in a place like Palestine. Coming through Huwwarra later than anticipated due to unforeseen circumstances, I sit in a taxi waiting for more passengers to Qalundia/Ramallah. The evening darkens; I have to close the frivolous novel that I started for a mental break. 45 minutes pass, a man sits himself in the front seat and begins to speak. There are no more taxis (despite people's assurances in Nablus), not enough passengers to pay for the ride. I am offered a special for 50 sheckles - half of the usual rate. I explain the problem - 100 sheckles is all I have to get to Al-Quds, eat, sleep, and return to Nablus if I can't find the Israeli who posted our bail money for Bruce.

He thinks a minute, and designs a new plan. I'll come with him to Lubnan (which sounds like it is near to Ramallah), and look for taxis. I decide I can walk to Qalundia if from his home. He urges me to stay with his family if there are no taxis to be found. As it turns out, Lubnan is only just past the Zatara checkpoint, which is a few kilometres beyond Huwwarra, which is barely out of Nablus.

I don't have any other option. To cross Huwwarra is unlikely at best, since despite our legal right to be in Nablus the army routinely refuses us entrance. To take the settler road and cross the mountain into Ragib probably means getting shot. I can’t spend the night at the checkpoint. It is dark and wet and cold. I am poor and without a phone. The only person with any idea where I should be is Mustafa, and he must be assuming I am well on my way to Al-Quds now. I have no other phone numbers, just people awaiting my arrival in Al-Quds.

So it goes.

Samer's (the cab driver) family is kind and welcoming despite my surprise visit and awkward manners. They provide everything I could want and more... and more... and more. It is a long visit; it stretches to 5 hours before I can sleep. It is wearing. Hopefully they are not insulted when I take to my book. I speaking broken Spanish/ Arabic with Samer's father, smoke narguila with Samer's mother, and play with his 5 month old niece. We pass the time.

Aside from my worry about those who await me in the south, it is truly an amazing situation. How many people will voluntarily pick you up from a car, take you into their families, and treat it as nothing more unusual than a small gesture?

The night is briefly interrupted by a profusion of gunshots and the sound of military vehicles. There is shouting and banging in the house. I fight the urge to go see what the army is doing this time and try to force myself to sleep.

Morning comes early, as these cab drivers are up at 5 and 5:30 am. We drive back to Huwwarra and wait for more passengers; we watch the soldiers bully the drivers, and finally drive on to Al-Quds...

Everything I've been taught is wrong.


8 Decmeber 2003

The culture shock never ends. Maybe it is for the best. Maybe it will help to ease re-entry in less than three weeks. There are things you can do in Al-Quds to which you could only say 'Ya haram!'(roughly, ‘How sinful!’) in the camps. There is an altered way of being, an entirely different atmosphere in tourist zones like Al-Quds and Bethlehem/ Beit Sahour. I've even seen tourists wandering about with that strangely shell-shocked look that non-volunteer ajeneb (foreigners) tend to carry. Plus the enormous cameras. And the tourist clothes.

I am constantly re-adjusting to rules here. Al-Quds and Bethlehem make me feel uncomfortable... haram is always on my mind. Odd. I guess Muheiam Balata got into me more than I realized.

It's odd to see people going about their lives, 'fancy' shops and the like. It's hard to imagine what Palestine would look like without Intifada and Occupation, but I suspect this is a taste. It would be prosperous, happy...

The children and youth even seem younger here, in their faces and their attitudes, their carriage and their characters.

Still, there are bullet holes in the Nativity Church. My tour was less where Jesus was born and more where the fighters hid, or where my friend was shot smuggling food to them.

I am keenly aware of this friend's account of his cousin's death. Called to the scene with UPMRC (medics), he arrived at a home that turned out to be his aunt's. The aunt was crying, the children hysterical, the uncle soaked in blood. Upstairs, the cousin's body lay. His head rolled down the stairs toward my friend. His crime? Making tea in his kitchen. Not so very long ago.

It's odd how different cities in the West Bank can be so disparate. I suppose it is a matter of who is targeted when. Everyone has their time.


_____________________________

speaking of which, i caught up with my 'protege' yesterday. i hadn't realised that when he was in Balata this summer he almost got hit from apache gunship fire. I hadn't realised that he watched a child have his arm blown off with an M16. (The child then picked up his arm, ran, and miraculously survived. He would have been arrested and died had he not run.) I hadn't realised that my friend watched many people bloodied, beaten, and killed before him.

Tactics change.

________________________-

[Rian Jackson]

11 December 2003

I don't often post without writing and thinking first, so I suppose I may regret this. However, I just came to the realization that I am aimlessly emailing people I used to know, searching for some sort of connection.

It is two in the morning here, or a bit after perhaps. Trying to sleep seems a bit useless. Although I know I am tired, sleepy is another matter. I suppose I am somehow hoping that if I sit here cruising around the internet long enough, sleep will somehow come to my door. In reality, it's probably with jesus - never coming back because it is stuck at a checkpoint somewhere.

It is strange to me how I recognize my own stress. It is in the constant stomach pains, the sleepless nights, the torn skin on my thumb. If only I could take down a barricade, build a bridge, rip down a fence, something to expel some energy and divert attention from the state of waiting... waiting under occupation. It is our minds that are occupied most of all, perhaps. And still, it is in our souls that the only freedom resides.

I never admitted to myself that there would be goodbyes. Now, looking into the eyes of a dear friend, I have to come to grips with the fact that in two weeks I won't see those endless brown eyes anymore. Insha’allah, someday. If they are still alive when I manage to return.

One could cry at times like this, if there were tears left to cry. They must have dried up with water supplies co-opted by settlers. I need some sort of grounding. I'm not sure where I can find it. Right now, the only grounding I know is in the raw reality of gunshots and tank tracks.

I wish I could sit still. I forgot how recently. These things happen when your back is turned, when you are distracted by the daily eruptions of violence. I suppose it's been happening for a while. I jump up from studying to scrub my clothes, hop up from reading to make tea, leap to my feet to find another CD of Arabic music to listen to while I try to do something productive. At the same time, I am neglecting the truly productive tasks I could be managing in my downtime - writing IMC articles, for instance. Perhaps they take too much focus.

After I sleep, insha’allah.


12 December 2003

Culture has never been this exhausting before. I'm sure a shortened sleep didn't help anything. First, a lesson in breaking the rules... where, when, and how (though I won't say it is all clear!) Different kinds of limits, of boundaries, personal and public...different meanings of 'haram.'

Then dinner with the usual family. At first, it was nothing particularly out of the ordinary. Ramse was giving me trouble about looking more like a man than a woman (hey, I can't help it if these are the clothes the Palestinian community gave me!) Then, the proposal. The visiting woman seemed to think my eyes were a good enough reason to marry me to her son. The mothers are always so much more persistent than their sons. Or something.

Everyone was laughing - I think more at her than at me.

It all heated up when they put a hijab on me. They all loved it, and tried to make me promise to wear it everyday. I can't, really - the old man at Mahmoud's falafel shop will accuse me of lying and get upset, though the others from the street seem to think that I should ignore him. Anyway, all was well and good until they started to truly try to make me Muslim. I know the trick - if you say all four prayer beads and then something about Mohammed, you're Muslim. I wouldn't continue once I realized what they were up to. The woman grabbed my finger and tried to force me to say the words. The entire room - maybe 15 people - exploded into impassioned explanations about how I would go to hell - in-nar ikbir - if I died without being Muslim. When that didn't work, they told me that all the Palestinians are Muslim (largely true, though not entirely), and essentially saying that if I love the Palestinian people and want to be one of them, I have to be Muslim. I know they did it out of care for me. They know we ageneb put ourselves in dangerous positions, and they didn't want me to burn in the eternal fires if I died tomorrow. They were genuinely distraught. I tried to explain that religion has to come from the heart, not from culture or pressure or fear, but it didn't seem to be an acceptable answer, despite a glimmer of understanding.

Finally, halas - which morphed into Ramse trying to say that his perfume was a bomb. I didn't think it likely, but I also didn't want to take any chances with a room full of children. This, of course, led to endless merriment on their part.

Exhausted from translation pressures (chemistry and telephone theft, to be specific), from trying to dodge the visiting woman's invitations into her home (for some reason I just wasn't willing - maybe it was her insistence that I marry her son), and from the pressure of a dozen yelling people, I tried to leave, only to be pushed forcibly onto the couch by Yusif.

Too much, not enough energy. Though I know they meant the best, I felt trapped. I'd like to go back to the lesson about breaking the rules now.


12 December 2003

Name: Abdullah (Omar’s nephew)
Age: 3.5 years
Village: Beita
Cause of death: Severe scalding from milk spilled during explosion.
Crime: Standing at his home, in the vicinity of an IOF explosive device.

12 December 2003

Our newest shahiid has inspired others, as I expected. He was 28 - Bashir, I believe. He died in jail after being refused proper medical treatment following a beating. Now one boy - or man - from Balata is trying to avenge the death, or so the word is from Kita'ab Al Aqsa. No surprise. Also no surprise that now there are soldiers in the camp again.

Further violence for today - settlers shot in Balata Balad (town/center). They thought they could come here without repercussions. How stupid can you be? When your community is the one directly responsible for so many deaths, so much strife between two peoples, and then you have the nerve to enter right beside a fairly militant refugee camp? I don't know how to feel. I am sorry for their families, but I can't help thinking that they asked for it. Even the military is angry, arresting those that weren't wounded or killed.

The resistance is out tonight. I heard/saw at least two firearms readied as the army rolled in and the shops hurriedly bolted their doors. Somewhere, in alleys and on rooftops, they are waiting. But there may be no need - the army loudly announced its presence. But now it is all too quiet. I look to the house down the road, convinced all of Balata Camp is being watched from there, down the barrel of the IOF's M16s.

[Rian Jackson]

14 December 2003

‘Ana za9lane,’ she says (I’m upset.)
‘Leesh?’ (Why?)
‘Id-dinya…’ Life. Life under occupation. She’s been here since she was 5 years old, moved here with the first wave of refugees in 1948. I can see she still dreams of her village. Her eyes light up and her mind drifts to places far away when she names it.

She sits each night and day in her shop across the street, providing the odd assortment of soaps, sweets, cigarettes, and sundry other household goods. She is quiet, and won’t call you into her shop. Should you enter, however, she is as welcoming as the next person, if not more so.

I met her early in my stay in Balata, perhaps on that first day. I’d bought something there, and she gave me too much change. When, upon hearing of the error, I returned to her shop to correct the mistake, it won her friendship.

Now I understand enough Arabic to know she is asking me to stay for tea and conversation. We sit on plastic stools, standard Palestinian issue. She smiles and offers me a sprig of a sweet smelling plant that she produces from her pocket. My cheeks are still warm from the kisses she planted on them.

Her face is weathered but somehow still youthful. Her head is wreathed in a hijab, worn the way the older women are wont – with less worry than the young, hanging loosely, perhaps a bit haphazardly. She wears a simple black dress.

She is tired of this – the jeeps at night, the tanks by day, watching generations – her own family and others – killed and imprisoned. Her weariness is spoken not only with her words and in her eyes, but also in all the movements of her sinews.

She doesn’t ask for much. She doesn’t receive anything. Only she waits, watching the jeeps roll by.

[Rian Jackson]

15 December 2003

He called out to me from the street. I hadn’t heard his voice or seen his face in weeks. Ibn ammi! (Cousin) It was Mohammed, in Nablus City for his work. I was overjoyed, and gladly accepted his invitation for (fruit juice) cocktail.

Elation only lasted so long. The news I hadn’t wanted to hear – she is family.

Three days ago, she was murdered in the road, near a checkpoint. The soldiers shot her in the taxi. At 21, she leaves behind an uncompleted university education, two children, a husband, a half-formed child in her womb, and a mourning village in Asira.

This is a strange sort of grief, as I doubt that I ever met Kamli. But it feels very much like losing a distant relative, which, in a way, she is. I am choked with it, for myself some but mostly for my family that is grieving so keenly now. The deaths are coming closer and closer to me all the time. This week, my cousin’s cousin. Maybe next time my brother, my close friend… who is to say? What way do we have to escape this wanton devastation, which makes cooking dinner or traveling to university criminal trespasses punishable by death?

What right do these young boys have to take the lives of my family’s family?

Something is seething in me. This is how martyr bombers are fashioned.



15 December 2003

There’s nothing quite like having a gun pulled on you – again. Of course, I told him to go ahead and do it, as long as he had started. Of course, he didn’t. Still, formless statistics flashed though my mind. How many people are killed each year in handgun accidents, thinking that the chamber is empty? Still, ‘yella!’ (Come on!) I told him.

It was a joke of sorts, left over from two weeks ago, when he said he was a wanted man and I refused to be afraid of him. He’s all swagger at the not-so-tender age of 20 – part kidding youth, part fighter.

I see so many young men on the street with proper weapons – Kalashnikovs and the like. These days they are out in Nablus in broad daylight, waiting. I never know whether to look them in the eye or ignore them. I’m not afraid of them – after all, we are on the same ‘side.’ Yet I am sure that I must be suspect to them.

That said, there’s a decent chance they know who I am. I’m sure Abu Hussein knows them all, and with increasing frequency I am seeing familiar faces in Nablus City, many of whom know me from the camp and even greet me by name.

I’ve seen more firearms lately than ever before in my life (not that Palestinians really have that many.) They are passed though car windows, tucked into waistbands, slung across shoulders – both Israeli and Palestinian alike. Sometimes I don’t even notice them at all. Such a strange contraption. All shiny and metallic – or many here not so shiny – heavy and shaped from clean lines. And the bullet itself has clean lines, aerodynamic, perfectly formed. How can anything so graceful be so destructive? The gun itself could be considered beautiful… it is only the damage it causes which belies it.



15 December 2003

The sounds of occupation are many. Chilling somehow… the tanks in the distance, growling over mountains, huffing up and down the roads. The apaches overhead, a great beating of wings, menacing in the night, their sound echoing over hills and masking their location. The airplanes – warplanes, the only ones that seem to fly here, thrumming above. The jeeps, their speed evident in the rise and fall of their motors, preceded by the alert from the neighborhood’s stray dogs. The explosions ripping apart the quiet. The bullets cracking in the night, bouncing from wall to wall. And the silence between is almost as bad. Perhaps the worst of it is that all these sounds make me want to do now is bury my head in my pillow.

However, today is a new and terrible day – mannea ta jawwal (24 hour a day curfew) in Balata, imposed by bullets into children’s skulls, Ismael taken to prison in the night for the crime of looking like his wanted brother, jeeps marauding in the streets, children’s voices rising not from the streets and alleys as they normally do but only from rooftops and inside of houses, even on this fresh, sunlit day. The shops remain closed; the schools don’t open their doors. Still, in the smallest alleyways families have come out onto their steps to share breakfast, discuss the issue, and listen for jeeps. I wonder if they do this most mornings and I only never knew it? Maybe it is only during curfew.



15 December 2003

The room is full of women, the women are full of anger, the anger is full of grief, the grief is full of disbelief.

Her young daughter grabs at the poster, unrolling it and crumpling it, calling out, ‘Mamma! Mamma!’ Her youngest, four months old now, won’t eat. He was still breastfeeding, and isn’t used to cow’s milk.

Tears would be flowing if they hadn’t been doing so for days. The women’s eyes look tired from it all. And disbelief alternates with helplessness, which turns again and again to anger, to talk of killing Sharon and the like.

Yes, it IS haram (sinful), I want to answer the old woman. I want to piece together some semblance of life for Kamli’s mother, sitting beside me. But I don’t try. No one can bring the young woman back now. Instead, she will adorn endless shahiida (martyr) posters, and her death will be avenged, and her small children will grow up never knowing their mother, until they too are killed by these occupation forces that claim fervently to be moral.

[Rian Jackson]

16 December 2003

The handilla, the symbol of the Palestinian people, is a poor man, his hands clasped behind his back, always reaching after the shiny apple, the sweet life. This is how Kan’an tells it.

For a while the Palestinians were fooled by the ‘yellow’ happiness – yellow like a banana peel, which then falls away to reveal something less brilliant and more fleeting underneath. This was Oslo.

Under Golda, the Israelis held out a beautiful flower to the Palestinians with one hand, but the other hand held a knife behind their backs. Should anyone try to touch the flower, their hand would be cut off.

An old woman’s house was once destroyed. As she sat on the rubble, a journalist asked where she would go, what she would do. ‘Are you an Israeli?’ she asked, for his question was an Israeli question. The woman brought forth her Arab answer. ‘I will stay here, and pitch a tent. They will come and break the tent over my head. And then still I shall stay here, and the sky will be my ceiling.’

All of this was spoken in low, confidential tones as the sun set over the mountains, and the two of us stood gazing out from Kan’an’s rooftop. He pointed below to his family home, destroyed by the occupiers in 1976. It is now a garden, since the Israeli government still refuses to grant them a permit to rebuild. It is a beautiful old ruin, unroofed, covered in aging floor tiles, with a ceiling of vines and chairs of greens. As he speaks about that house, I can see him moving from room to room, each inch memorized.

His mother somehow knew a month before and moved everything out, even removing the windows and the doors. When they came to tear it down, she said that should they give her enough time, she would do it herself rather than have them destroy it. After all, she built it herself. She knew how to dismantle it again.

Those first years, they lived in one room that was preserved only because it is half underground. Then passed years of waiting at the window for her sons to return, all but one exiled, forbidden entrance.

The new house is built where Kan’an’s grandfather’s tomb once stood, surrounded by a well-tended garden. Painful as it was, the bones had to be moved. To live on the soil of their forefathers was far more important.

They will never move from this soil, the soil of memories and of family, unbroken though generations.

Kan’an remembers each minute of his four years in prison. He waits for the day when his son Majdi is grown so he can tell his story, moment by moment. One day Majdi will know.

The Palestinian people, chasing that flower, that apple, once nearly forgot their roots, distracted by false freedoms of movement, by jobs, by housing permits. Now each Palestinian, from birth to death, knows their heritage, their lineage. They will fight, and survive, standing rooted in their past, struggling not for passage or for money, but for identity.


16 December 2003

Balata is under major invasion. 40 tanks. 12 shot. One dead. Huwwarra village, too. Maybe the Old City next. Muheiam Askar. Every door in Askar Camp has been broken in, every house in Balata is being entered. Shari Al-Quds (Jerusalem Street) – all the belabored improvements built slowly by hand these past months – has been flattened in the wake of the tanks. Countless houses are occupied across the region.

The only good news is that the roadblocks are now opened, easing travel, making way for the death machines.

[Rian Jackson]

17 December 2003

Sometimes the waiting is the worst part. The world is in shambles outside, and you pass the hours indoors waiting your turn, knowing the soldiers are creeping closer, house by house. You can hear them knocking holes in walls to enter houses, see them below with their guns, standing sentry in some family’s doorway. And you begin to destroy the evidence, burning phone numbers and passport numbers, fighting the stiff wind until it is all reduced to ashes on the roof.

Finally, after word of three internationals arrested, you pack your own bags, readying for the likelihood that today they will find an excuse to arrest you all.

It was difficult to even get home from Asira today. The army was on foot in our neighborhood, searching each house. Today they are skittish. They shoot at small provocation. There was a serious question as to whether they would recognize me as an foreigner before it was too late.

And the arrests – picked from the street, all of them.

I was relieved today to see my friends Azem and Hanny, to hear that Maher was ‘safe’ at home with his family and a house full of military personnel. Not in the hospital in Rafidiyya. Not in the cemetery. Hamdillallah!

It was brilliant when Johan and the other Swedes arrived – reinforcements! Finally, we could get out of the house. (Under the circumstances, you need a certain critical mass to be effective and ‘safe.’ Aside from that, we had to guard the office and the family we live with, made more vulnerable by harboring internationals). Things were calmish, enough for a visit to Azem’s family. And then they shot someone again.

Johan, Daf and I got into some occupied houses. Upstairs, they were knocking holes in the wall, making a passage from one home to the next without using the doors. It’s one way to become close with your neighbors.

Of course, running into the UPMRC medical volunteers and joining forces with them meant a much later night. There were homes to visit, despite the danger of being shot in the dark. There were sick people locked up with the army, and children without milk.

The worst was a house that had been totally ransacked. Everything in it was broken or stolen. Furniture overturned, enormous wardrobes crashed to the ground, broken glass everywhere. Through the back room, we could see the army moving through the next home, having created and entered through a 3x3 hole in the stone wall. ‘Ruuh!’ (go) they shouted at us every time they saw us, ignoring or denying our requests to come in and see the family.

Finally they began to file out… maybe 8 of them, an agonizingly long parade of legs cloaked in olive drab. The last one ducked to look at us through the hole. I’ll never forget the look in his eyes as he stared into mine, the relish with which he threw the grenade. Satisfaction. Vindictive, malevolent satisfaction. We didn’t know what it might be, only ran from the room. From the look the soldier gave us, it could have been explosives. It was gas after all, but what kind I can’t say. I’ve never seen such panic. As it passed from home to home, people streamed to the street crying, vomiting. Mustafa and I tried to re-enter, thinking it only tear gas. It was too potent… ‘That’s not tear gas,’ he announced. Four young children were trapped inside. UPMRC tried to reach them, but not before donning full gas masks and hoods.

They called the ambulances down to the home and loaded a man into it. He seemed to be unconscious, and needed help to breathe.

We took five to the hospital. We are still trying to figure out what it was. Reports are coming in that it caused convulsions. I know my face muscles were hurting, and that my headache worsened – and I barely got dosed.

As if that family hadn’t been through enough.

At another home, you can now enter the neighbor’s house through the wardrobe doors. Such an odd sight.

Maybe it was because of these things that awaited me that I couldn’t properly enjoy the trip over the mountains from Asira today. It was beautiful – Tammoun, Tubas, the Jordanian hills… no soldiers at all, only untamed middle eastern beauty, and the knowledge that the snipers had us in their sights.

[Rian Jackson]

19 December 2003

I finally went to the hospital today. Really, the pain has been bearable, but I would have gone sooner had I realized the connection. It was with a start that I noticed that the sharp, cramping pains in my upper abdomen, under my ribs, began only after the gassing. They had been coming and going for two days, making it hard to walk at times, but with all of the other recent illnesses I assumed it to be more of the same.

As usual, I was in contact with our media office. I happened to ask after the information they’d been compiling on the gassing. The verdict – looks like a nerve agent.

It dawned on me that my symptoms had started post-gassing, and I began to worry. I even began to consider a doctor visit, which is usually a last resort for me. Of course, there was pressing work to be done first.

We’d been engaged with the military since about 1 p.m. It was a proper invasion – tanks, jeeps, hummers, APCs, and occupied houses throughout the camp.

Johan and I were trying to get into occupied houses, but were repeatedly denied, unlike two days before when we succeeded at least once. (A rather strange experience in itself – the soldiers asking what we were doing there, trying to assist the family on the sly, not knowing if we would be allowed back out again….) Every corner we turned down was in the sights of a jeep, most of which ignored us, unlike the foot patrols.

The soldiers were completely uncooperative, refusing to let people pass to their homes. Finally they let an old man through who we were escorting, but turned us back with gunbarrels aimed and teargas canisters raised in the air. I was only glad that they didn’t fire them while the man was there – he moved very slowly, and was far too heavy to carry.

I admit I was frustrated by some of our hosts today. First, the woman we tried to escort to her home. She then decided she wanted to find her son – which apparently meant standing around making phone calls and checking every conceivable alleyway.

Then there was the girl who wanted to close her shop. It was a simple request, except that the army was parked right outside of it. It felt like an accomplishment when she finally decided what course of action she wanted to take and we bolted the doors shut. Then, she wanted to go home, and wished to drag her sister along. Her sister, however, was totally petrified and unwilling to cross directly in front of a jeep to get to her home. Nuha, the younger girl, wanted us to go back and get her sister, even after the sister’s countless refusals. I myself refuse to drag someone into a life and death situation where they do not wish to be. Nuha had some trouble accepting this. In the end, the older girl decided to cross on her own. I hope Johan is right and it proves to be a great personal victory for her.

The part that bothered me is that through all of this, we could hear gunshots from other places in the camp. I’m happy to get people to their homes, but the time wasted in indecision was killing me.

We visited some more occupied houses full of soldiers, the men all lined up outside in the cold and the rain. The soldiers assured me they’d been there only 5 minutes which, in reality, was already a half hour when we arrived.

Surprisingly, they let us stay and supervise. I was continually disgusted by the soldiers – denying the prisoners jackets, readying to shoot small girls, pointing their guns at families. Finally I put myself between the gun and the people. My queries – i.e., ‘Why are you pointing your gun at these people? They are just a family going to their homes’ – seemed to have made some minute impact.

Mostly, the soldier answered my questions with ‘It’s not your business.’ It is though – I live here. ‘I’m here aren’t I? Just like all of these people.’ He didn’t seem to agree.

I was standing in a doorway to ferry tea to the detained men when the commander and his crew arrived. Brushing past me, they stormed into the home and back out again, grabbed Johan, and put him against a wall. Apparently, socializing was forbidden.

Moments later, the commander and his posse returned from the second house and led almost all of the detained men away. There were at least 8 that were taken, the youngest a boy of 12. When we asked where they were being taken and why, we were answered with a brusque ‘Do you want to come with me?’

They hauled them into a fleet of waiting vehicles, and added men from other parts of the camp. They’ve been taken to Huwwarra military base now. No one knows when they will return.

What else is there to say? Curfew imposed again, gunshot wounds, tanks. A trip to get two of our Palestinian coordinators out of the camp, wrangling for passage from the guards as night fell and they stopped Sameh, hiding others in our ranks. The impossibility of getting back in, blocked by fleets of vehicles and totally vulnerable in the darkness. An interlude at the family home of some kids who knew it was too dangerous for us out in the night, a break with food, drink, laughter, narguila, a warm heater, and being begged to stay for the night. Back into the camp with our lives on the line, listening for the near silent, invisible jeeps, sure we’d be shot at any moment, meeting jeeps and then tanks, looping back on our path in search of a way that was not blocked, holding our breaths, counting our steps, hesitant to cross the bigger alleys or to turn the corner, an eternity to home and relief upon arrival. It had been too quiet, deadly quiet. Another trip out, this time in neon vests, to escort a woman named Tahreer (Liberation) to her home, under the watchful eyes of the snipers, in between the jeep patrols.

And, finally, a risky trip to the hospital in an ambulance – the only way to get out for medical care during curfew – and an ‘antidote’ for the nerve agent. We weren’t even shot at on the way out or back in, though the streets are so trashed it’s amazing Feras, the driver, can negotiate them.

I’m not sure which is worse – this wholesale destruction of a community’s lives or yesterday’s four sniper attacks in the Old City mixed up with the burning of stores and followed by a rain soaked funeral procession bearing the bodies of four young men.

I do know that the hammam – the Turkish bath – was a welcome and much needed break, even though it was half spoiled when word came that the soldiers were occupying the city’s other hammam and were also surrounding the Old City.

It feels like it may never end.

This monster will never be satiated.

[Simply Joel]

December 21, 2004
Make No Mistake
By DAVID BROOKS

It was a series of unfortunate events.

How did we get to this sudden moment of cautious optimism in the Middle East? How did we get to this moment when Egypt is signing free trade agreements with Israel, when Hosni Mubarak is touring Arab nations and urging them to open relations with the Jewish state? How did we get to this moment of democratic opportunity in the Palestinian territories, with three major elections taking place in the next several months, and with the leading candidate in the presidential election declaring that violence is counterproductive?

How did we get to this moment of odd unity in Israel, with Labor joining Likud to push a withdrawal from Gaza and some northern territories? How did we get to this moment when Ariel Sharon has record approval ratings, when it is common to run across Israelis who once reviled Sharon as a bully but who now find themselves supporting him as an agent of peace?

It was a series of unfortunate events.

It was unfortunate that Ariel Sharon, whom tout le monde demonized as a warmonger, was elected prime minister of Israel. After all, as Henry Siegman of the Council on Foreign Relations reasoned in The New York Review of Books, "The war Sharon is waging is not aimed at the defeat of Palestinian terrorism but at the defeat of the Palestinian people and their aspirations for national self-determination."

It was unfortunate that George W. Bush was elected and then re-elected as president of the United States. After all, here is a man who staffed his administration with what Juan Cole of the University of Michigan called "pro-Likud intellectuals" who went off "fighting elective wars on behalf of Tel Aviv." Under Bush, the diplomats agreed, the U.S. had inflamed the Arab world and had forfeited its role as an honest broker.

It was unfortunate that Bush gave that speech on June 24, 2002, dismissing Yasir Arafat as a man who would never make peace. After all, the Europeans protested, while Arafat might be flawed, he was the embodiment of the Palestinian cause.

It was a mistake to build the security fence, which the International Court of Justice called a violation of international law. Never mind that the fence cut terror attacks by 90 percent. It was the moral equivalent of apartheid, the U.N. orators declared.

It was a mistake to assassinate the leaders of Hamas, which took credit for the murders of hundreds of Israelis. France, among many other nations, condemned these attacks and foretold catastrophic consequences.

It was unfortunate that President Bush never sent a special envoy to open talks, discuss modalities and fine-tune the road map. As Milton Viorst wrote in The Washington Quarterly, this left "slim prospects" for any progress toward peace.

It was unfortunate that Bush sided openly with Sharon during their April meetings in Washington, causing the European Union to condemn U.S. policy. It was unfortunate that Bush kept pushing his democracy agenda. After all, as some Israelis said, it is naïve to export democracy to Arab soil.

Yes, these were a series of unfortunate events. And yet here we are in this hopeful moment. It almost makes you think that all those bemoaners and condemners don't know what they are talking about. Nothing they have said over the past three years accounts for what is happening now.

It almost makes you think that Bush understands the situation better than the lot of them. His judgments now look correct. Bush deduced that Sharon could grasp the demographic reality and lead Israel toward a two-state solution; that Arafat would never make peace, but was a retardant to peace; that Israel has a right to fight terrorism; and that Sharon would never feel safe enough to take risks unless the U.S. supported him when he fought back.

Bush concluded that peace would never come as long as Palestine was an undemocratic tyranny, and that the Palestinians needed to see their intifada would never bring triumph.

We are a long way from peace. But as Robert Satloff observes in The Weekly Standard, Israel's coming disengagements "will constitute a huge leap - both in psychology and in strategy - rivaling the original Oslo accords in historic importance." And the U.S. is already raising millions to help build a decent Palestinian polity.

We owe this cautiously hopeful moment to a series of unfortunate events - and to a president who disregarded the received wisdom.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

[Rian Jackson]

Israeli unity: like hell.

Sharon almost got ousted recently. Israelis were predicting his assassination.

Sharon is a war criminal. Angel of peace my ass.

Terror attacks have, I understand, INCREASED because of the wall.

Israel isn’t really a democracy. And Palestinian democracy, fledgling as it is, is homegrown, not imposed by anyone else.


This article is bullshit, straight up propaganda. Disgusting.

[Simply Joel]

Israeli unity: like hell.

Sharon almost got ousted recently. Israelis were predicting his assassination.

Sharon is a war criminal. Angel of peace my ass.

Terror attacks have, I understand, INCREASED because of the wall.

Israel isn’t really a democracy. And Palestinian democracy, fledgling as it is, is homegrown, not imposed by anyone else.


This article is bullshit, straight up propaganda. Disgusting.

unlike the bile above?

[Rian Jackson]

Israel has been torn apart by internal divisions recently. Sharon lost his settler backing for th Gaza pullout. Even a minimal following of their news shows this.

I can try to find facts and figures for the numbers of attacks, but the cause and effect relationship is pretty clear. Saying that they've decreased because of the wall is widely known to be a smokescreen.

A look at the way that Israeli citizenship is ranked on race and religion will show it to NOT be a true democracy. And hell, you think someone forced the Palestinians to have elections? Um.... no... and they aren't perfect at this, but they are learning.

So what exactly do you mean, Joel? or were you referring to something else as 'the above?' Hmmm?

[Simply Joel]

Israel has been torn apart by internal divisions recently. Sharon lost his settler backing for th Gaza pullout. Even a minimal following of their news shows this.

I can try to find facts and figures for the numbers of attacks, but the cause and effect relationship is pretty clear. Saying that they've decreased because of the wall is widely known to be a smokescreen.

A look at the way that Israeli citizenship is ranked on race and religion will show it to NOT be a true democracy. And hell, you think someone forced the Palestinians to have elections? Um.... no... and they aren't perfect at this, but they are learning.

So what exactly do you mean, Joel? or were you referring to something else as 'the above?' Hmmm?

i mean bile as is "inclination to anger"

does Palestine have a true democracy, or even a notion of what one is?

how about we "force" the Palestinians to stop killing their own along with innocents from Israel?

is Israel perfect? hell no... but it certainly seems better than Syria and Lebanon, which likely aids and abets terrorists.

i am all for the shooting to stop.

that is my position... which side has the morality to be the first one to stop?

my bets are on the Israelis.

i hope the Palestinians prove me incorrect.

[Rian Jackson]

but Joel - what about the cease fires called by te Palestinians and violated by the Israelis? Isn't that stopping? What about the years and years on non-violent protest by Palestinians, which were responded to by gunfire from the Israelis?

You can't ignore history forever...

Palestinians are certainly working on it. They're working on, i believe, universal suffrage (i'm sure above a certain age). I don't have any 'facts' for this, but the candidacy of a woman in Jerusalem seems to be a strong indicator. Tarazi says that they are not used to the whole government - media - citizen pressure model for things, after being under The Fuck for so long. But they are moving toward it quickly. They're learning. They vote just like we do, except without freedom of movement and without those damn voting machines.

Don't look now, but your prejudices are showing again.


i

[Simply Joel]

my prejudices are based on...

#1. Israel is a sovereign nation.

#2. Hamas, PLO, and all the other are not sovereign nations.

#3. Terrrorism is not a moral let alone valid form of political expression.

they (Israelis and Palestinians) seem like they can on like this forever, and no one wins...

i hope for better behavior from both parties.

[Rian Jackson]

20 December 2003

Home seems unreal. Messages about return feel lifeless. I am afraid faces will be plastic, meaningless.

Here, in the fury, the passion, and the fear we live our ‘miserable’ life, eking out what joy we can. I’m not sure how we do it, yet it has a vibrancy.

It makes me choke to read my email – Hammoudi begging me to come to Asira El Shemaliya before I go. I can’t. I can’t even see everyone here.

I will be haunted by these eyes forever.


20 December 2003

Mahmoud Titti was shot a year and a half ago. He and two friends sat by another friend’s grave, paying their respects, mourning the loss. Snipers from the mountain opened fire with shells, ones that ruptured to spray smaller projectiles. The first tore his torso open. The second split his head apart. The other two young men were also killed.

Jihad heard the explosion and went to see what had happened. When he got to Mahmoud, he tried to lift his cousin, but his hand passed through the body.

Three days later he was a martyr bomber, attacking soldiers.

And who was Jihad? 19 years old, the baby brother of the family, always joking. Mahmoud, a stalwart defender of Balata, keeping the military from using it as a thoroughfare to Nablus for their tanks.

And people ask why there are shahiid (martyrs).


24 December 2003

I don’t even know what is to be said anymore. As I fly away from Palestine, my chest is empty; my heart remains in Nablus.

Things have been horrific. The day I was to leave Nablus, three days ago, Mohammed Na’em Sareedeh was killed by sniper fire in Balata. His age: 5 years. Somehow it makes it all worse that it was by snipers from the occupied house: they aimed carefully to kill.

Mohammed is only one of many new shahiid, mostly children and old men. The children are shot; the old men and women die of gas inhalation, or remain in critical condition after being beaten strongly, their faces ground into the pavement with a soldier’s boot.

Anyway, Mohammed’s death made me completely crazy. I was on the streets of Nablus when I found out, running my last errands before saying goodbye, spending a few last moments with the people that I love the most here. I could have bawled when I heard, but you can’t cry on the streets. Home was far away, so the only thing left was to ball it up into anger.

We called Ismael to take me to Huwwarra checkpoint but soon discovered that Share Al-Quds (Jerusalem Street) was completely closed with massive numbers of military vehicles. Perhaps I could have passed, but the picture of bullets passing through the heads of my three Palestinian friends who accompanied me was enough to get me to agree to sleep in Askar Refugee Camp.

After dropping off my luggage, our coordinators dropped me by Balata. I had every intention of marching up to the occupied house and giving them a piece of my mind, no matter the consequences. I quietly dispensed instructions in case of my arrest – what needed to be mailed, what could go by plane, etc. ‘Don’t do anything crazy,’ I was told.

I smiled and shut the door.

Luckily I have some survival instinct, so all I came out with is a stone to the chest. But I saw yet another yet shot, crumpling to the ground. I believe it was a medical relief worker.

The bulldozer returned, completely replacing all of the old roadblocks. It made sure to damage the neighboring shop while it worked, purposely bringing its shovel down on the awning, crushing it. I now realize what the big mound of boulders near the taxi stand may be for. They are perfect for closing the road.

What is there to say? I thought that was it – three dead in one day, the army finally gone from the houses and the streets reblocked. It seemed to mark an end to the invasion. For a while, it did.

I was gone, of course. But every day brings new shahiid reports. Occupied houses. Curfew. Tear gas thrown into houses. Our office raided. Share Al-Quds blocked over by the muqata (compound). A fence all the way around Balata. Soldiers stationed by An-Najah University. One soldier dead. Shooting of anyone trying to enter or leave the camp. The Nabulsis think this will be as bad or worse than the infamous April invasions. Right now it isn’t safe for them to go outside.

And me? Some trouble at Huwwarra, concocted lies, half truths. Too much time waiting at Huwwarra for it to be Samer‘s (the taxi driver from Lubnan Al-Sharkiyeh) turn to go.

And since Mohammed was killed, I haven’t been the same, snapped in two. I am driven mad by the worry and the anger and the grief and something else that could one day become hatred. All I want is to get back to Nablus and Balata. I think Swedish Eric was right. I am messed up in the head

[CoworkerLurker]

my prejudices are based on...

#1. Israel is a sovereign nation.

#2. Hamas, PLO, and all the other are not sovereign nations.

#3. Terrrorism is not a moral let alone valid form of political expression.

they (Israelis and Palestinians) seem like they can on like this forever, and no one wins...

i hope for better behavior from both parties.

That leads me to ask a question that keeps nagging at me. I recently asked it of a local columnist, but I expect a better answer from you, Joel: Can anybody give me a good definition of "terrorism"?

[diane o'thirst]

I'm not sure if you'll accept this as a definition, but I'll give it a go anyway...

Terrorism is what a schoolyard bully does, in a very elementary and amateurish way. The difference between your average terrorist and your average schoolyard bully is that the former has let his personality disorders fester for a couple decades and he has access to big money and serious weaponry. Take the schoolyard bully, let him think "I'm right, You suck" for about 16 years, give him a cynical authority figure telling him he's absolutely right, then put a Tec-9 in his hands and access to C4.

Apologies if it's not 100% lawyer-proof or dictionarily letter-perfect.

[Rian Jackson]

Hey, did you hear?

The sniper/soldier that killed journalist Tom Hurndall (GB) in the Gaza strip last year finally admitted that he lied under oath and that he knew that Tom was unarmed.

Finally, the things we knew all along....

[Simply Joel]

'terrorism'

noun: the calculated use of violence (or threat of violence) against civilians in order to attain goals that are political or religious or ideological in nature

and for a another view on terrorism...

http://whyislam.org/877/Services/Literature/22.asp

I'm not sure if you'll accept this as a definition, but I'll give it a go anyway...

Terrorism is what a schoolyard bully does, in a very elementary and amateurish way. The difference between your average terrorist and your average schoolyard bully is that the former has let his personality disorders fester for a couple decades and he has access to big money and serious weaponry. Take the schoolyard bully, let him think "I'm right, You suck" for about 16 years, give him a cynical authority figure telling him he's absolutely right, then put a Tec-9 in his hands and access to C4.

Apologies if it's not 100% lawyer-proof or dictionarily letter-perfect.

well, i never called Yassir Arafat "a cynical authority figure," yet sure, that definition works for me.

yet, before anyone decides to start calling the US Armed Forces a bunch of terrorists... remember the above definition... the US Armed Forces are not targeting civilians.

do civilians get caught in the crossfire. yes, so maybe we can hold the terrorists at least partially to blame, if blame is assessed to the US Armed Forces.

then there is the other point of sovereignty.

and Rian... if the soldier confessed to lying under oath, now he has two problems... doing the shooting, and then lying for it. i hope justice is served calmly and cooly.

[CoworkerLurker]

How I managed to avoid the dictionary when seeking a definition of terrorism is beyond me. Duh. You're too good.

One part that I keep bumping up against as I try to understand this, though- were the Allied forces targeting civilians in the firebombing of Dresden and Tokyo in WWII?

[Rian Jackson]

me too, m'dear. knowing the government in question, there won't be any 'justice'. but at least there will be a tiny bit of relief for Tom's family. I should find the article.. the solder talks about the mentailty in the army.... that in Gaza you pretty much fire at will. the 'open fire orders' in IS/Pal are pretty bad.

the thing is, Joel, many of these armies make little distinction between targetting 'terrorists' and 'civilians'. I believe that most US soldiers are good people who want the best for the folks, but at the stage that ambulances are routinely destroyed by gunfire - very common, the aggressors are the Israeli army and the US army - there's something gravely wrong

in both situations, i understand you have civilian areas which are declared closed military zones, or battle zones. it's a real problem for the civilians who cannot leave. talking blithely about being caught in the 'crossfire' here is deceptive.

forgive my cynicism, but i've read too many testimonies from Israeli soldiers who tell how they were coached: 'if you see a woman and her four children by the fence, kill them. then later say thatyou saw five hunched figures' I guess I've seen too much of this misinformation at work - like when Rachel was killed and they called her a 'terrorist' for 'protecting arms tunnels' - actually a doctor's house. well, if there is an arms tunnel there, the army still hasn't returned to destroy it.

there's always an official story. there's always a claim that the people were dangeous. i'm not saying soldiers don't have good reasons for fear, but i know the stories that get told after snipers kill the kid who's standing in his doorway munching a sandwich.

i'll never forget what my protege told me about the day he was hooded by the army. they took him to an occupied house so that the civilians, who were now imprisioned in their home, could see what had become of this foreigner... then they started telling him how they were going to shoot an Arab. and then the gunfire began as they picked off kids in the street.

i've seen too many things done out of malice and later covered up. way too many.

I'm really not saying that all soliders are terrible, immoral people. i'm saying that the operations of armies such as the US army and the Israeli army are often far from moral in their actions and their methods, and disingenuous to themselves by their justifications.

just sayin.

[Simply Joel]

How I managed to avoid the dictionary when seeking a definition of terrorism is beyond me. Duh. You're too good.

One part that I keep bumping up against as I try to understand this, though- were the Allied forces targeting civilians in the firebombing of Dresden and Tokyo in WWII?

i find it difficult to measure yesterday's behavior with today's measuring device.

it is my understanding Dresden and Tokyo were retaliatory, and no, that doesn't make it right.

and Rian, i am not simply discussing Israel...

what i really wonder is why would you show up at a demonstration when you know the response from the authority figure could be deadly?

where are the responsible parents telling their kids it isn't safe to venture out?

these are rhetorical questions, but ones that i ask myself when i see the news from the Gaza Strip.

[CoworkerLurker]

Joel- first off, by today's measurements, anyway, the Allies committed terrorist acts. That's what you're saying, right?

Secondly- if you're not discussing Israel, but you are discussing Gaza, are you willing to discuss the actions of Israeli soldiers in Gaza? Specifically, did the soldier who targeted and shot Tom (unarmed civilian) commit an act of terrorism?

[Rian Jackson]

in gaza you're often not allowed to leave home for long periods at once..... it's called 'curfew'. but sometimes you aren't told when curfew begins, so you just get shot because you went to the store. and eventually you have to leave home because you have no water and no food and no doctor and you simply must leave.

tom wasn't at a demo... snipers were shooting at these tiny kids. he went to get them out of the way. some of us go to things where we might get killed because it's unacceptable for kids with sandwiches to be shot in the head in their own damn doorways.

you see Joel, some parents DO keep their kids indoors. but it becomes a little silly - i know families who have lost members from the bullets aimed through their windows, or the missiles which hit their houses, or other such things. so how do you ever stay safe from that? what's your answer? there's no such thing as safety.

i think that even though the methods have changed from WWII, we HAVE to look at the travesties of that era to begin to measure our own. because apparently, as a nation, morality hasn't crept it's way into our estimation of military action. we are blind, as a nation.

and, m'dear: i'm not just talking about Palestine, either. but this is the only conflict for which i can say exactly how it feels, and what happens, and describe to you the look in a solider's eyes.

[Simply Joel]

Joel- first off, by today's measurements, anyway, the Allies committed terrorist acts. That's what you're saying, right?

Secondly- if you're not discussing Israel, but you are discussing Gaza, are you willing to discuss the actions of Israeli soldiers in Gaza? Specifically, did the soldier who targeted and shot Tom (unarmed civilian) commit an act of terrorism?

#1 no

#2 no

#3 no, he committed two criminal acts punishbale under Israeli law (no i don't have a specific cite because i don't know about Israeli military law, so i am making an assumption it is similar to the UCMJ, i could be wrong, but i will wager i am pretty close). if it were to be terrorism, he would have to possess the intent to "attain goals that are political or religious or ideological in nature." furthermore, if there were an order to shoot civilians, the order itself would be a criminal act perpetrated by military personnel. if the intent of the order was to "attain goals that are political or religious or ideological in nature" then in fact, the order itself might slide the slippery slope into state-sponsored terrorism.
in my humble opinion.

[Rian Jackson]

CWL, i kinda think that terrorism, in the violent sense, is scaring the shit out of covilians by threatening or taking their life or health by force in order to get what you want.

which, of course, not only includes the likes of bin Laden, but also the US and Israeli governements.

Unfortunately, the issue with Tom isn't isolated. The only reson that there was any real publicity is that he's British - but aside from Tom and Rachel and Brian, i could be listing names for the rest of my life to tell you similar siuations.

Too bad this is the rule, not the exception.

[Rian Jackson]

(NTS: proofread, ya dumb bitch!)

[CoworkerLurker]

Joel- first off, by today's measurements, anyway, the Allies committed terrorist acts. That's what you're saying, right?

Secondly- if you're not discussing Israel, but you are discussing Gaza, are you willing to discuss the actions of Israeli soldiers in Gaza? Specifically, did the soldier who targeted and shot Tom (unarmed civilian) commit an act of terrorism?

#1 no

#2 no

#3 no, he committed two criminal acts punishbale under Israeli law (no i don't have a specific cite because i don't know about Israeli military law, so i am making an assumption it is similar to the UCMJ, i could be wrong, but i will wager i am pretty close). if it were to be terrorism, he would have to possess the intent to "attain goals that are political or religious or ideological in nature." furthermore, if there were an order to shoot civilians, the order itself would be a criminal act perpetrated by military personnel. if the intent of the order was to "attain goals that are political or religious or ideological in nature" then in fact, the order itself might slide the slippery slope into state-sponsored terrorism.
in my humble opinion.

#1
If the firebombing was not an act of terrorism, then perhaps you need to amend the definition of terrorism to read:
"the calculated use of violence (or threat of violence) against civilians in order to attain goals that are political or religious or ideological in nature, performed after the year 1950 (or 1960, or 1970, or some other chosen date)"

#2
Minor point, but now you're confusing me. You say you are not willing to discuss the actions of Israeli soldiers in Gaza, but then you proceed to do so in #3?

#3
So, the intent is key. That helps me understand. I think an individual can have the intent, and that a military group can have that intent. The question that needs to be asked is- did anybody involved in that particular shooting have the intent "to attain goals that are political or religious or ideological in nature"? A key question in this case.

It seems that you are trying to make a distinction between terrorist acts and criminal acts. Perhaps a different amendment to the definition would be:
"the calculated use of violence (or threat of violence) against civilians in order to attain goals that are political or religious or ideological in nature, that is not already against the law"
But maybe you're just saying that it's only a matter criminality, not terrorism, if the intent is not there.

[Rian Jackson]

but if a soldier is working for the Zionist interests of a Zionist state, isn't that political and religious and ideological? so therefore isn't it also terrorism, by Joel's definition?