Return from Nablus: Streets of Blood, Cloud of Death

Return from Nablus:
Streets of Blood, Cloud of Death
April 23, 2002

Hi everyone,

I just returned with the delegation from Nablus last night. We are now in Hebron, and heading out to the village of Dura tomorrow morning. We have been serving as international observers/ witnesses to the effects of the invasions on cities throughout the West Bank, and accompanying local medical and relief workers to assist the civilian victims. There is much to write, especially to say that these invasions were promoted by the military to 'take out the terrorist infrastructure.’ In reality, in nearly every city, they took out the infrastructure, period. The city centers and facilities and nearly everything else that makes a city a city has been decimated. Bullet and tank shell holes in every single building along the main streets and the old city market. Many of the oldest houses will have to be torn down, their thick stone walls cracked open. Thousands of vehicles, even school buses, were flattened by tanks. But that is another letter to write. In the meantime, you can look at jerusalem.indymedia.org to find out more about the invasions.

Right now, I am trying to decide which of what I saw in Nablus I will have nightmares and flashbacks from first. Will it be the mass grave dug across the street from the clinic in which we slept--a long ditch which already held fifteen bodies of combatants and civilians, adults and children, and will hold at least another sixty yet to be buried? Or will it be the refrigerated milk truck, used as a temporary morgue to hold all the dead because the hospital morgue was never built to hold so many?

Will it be the first street into the old city, where many butcher shops were, and also much fighting? The street itself is no longer there. The military took up the pavement, which lies in piles here and there. Instead there is mud everywhere. The city is coated in dirt. On the first day wesaw the damage, it was raining. Blood was pooled in the streets. A large piece of muscle was coated in mud. I didn't know whether it was animal or human. Scraps of flesh and more blood were under a piece of tin roofing we passed.

We went to the hospital and visited with the wounded. Some were fighters, and others were civilians. Many had been wounded when rockets hit their homes, or their homes collapsed on them. I saw toes blown away, missing limbs, steel pins holding together bones. One man was screaming in agony as the nurse changed his bandages. He was burned by one of the bombs. In the bed next to him was a farmer who had been in the fields with his sheep when the settlers came, a few weeks before. They killed all the sheep, then they beat him and left him for dead. When he regained consciousness,he dragged himself home.

Will it be the site of a large ancient home which used to hold 20 families? All made it out except one family of eight when the bulldozers came. They were found crushed only a few feet inside their door. There are piles of wreckage two and three stories high in places where houses used to be.

One was next to the church of St. Demetrius. As we walked over the rubble, the medical workers who were guiding us told us dozens of priests were yet unaccounted for. They thought the bodies would probably be found somewhere underneath. I do not know how they will get a bulldozer in that tiny alleyway to take the rubble away. I don't even know where they will put the stones when they try to clean up that area.

Will it be the blood spatters on a wall, the only thing left of three people who sought shelter under an overhang in Balata refugee camp? Actually, the missile never exploded. It is thrust deep underneath the shop. Yet the force of the impact shattered foundations across the street, and propelled one of the men through the metal shop doors and embedded his body in the back wall.

I think what I will remember longest is when we were asked by the hospital staff to come to the morgue and witness the injuries of three boys who were killed. They were all in a car when apparently a tank ran over it. The twelve year old was missing the right half of his skull, his brains collected in a plastic sack on the gurney. His only other injuries werecuts on the back of his hands. It seems he tried to protect his head the way we were taught in tornado drills in school. The six year old's head was simply split open. Another brother, maybe eight years old, had blood which covered and encrusted his hair. The rest of their tiny bodies were untouched. The father is in critical condition in a Jerusalem hospital, the mother cannot be found. Another little boy in the car survived. I wonder, do they know what happened? Where are they now?

Despite the wounds, it was hard to believe they were dead. The twelve year old's head was tilted slightly towards me, his eyes open. He looked as if he was just waking up from a nap and sleepily noticed I was in the room. It was the similar with the six year old, who looked like he was sleeping peacefully with his lips just parted. Time seemed to stop while I looked at them. One of our delegation members was asked to take picturesof the injuries. Then the morgue workers bandaged up their heads and wrapped them tightly with a sheet, leaving their faces uncovered in the traditional manner here.

While I found it strange how composed I felt while standing next to the children's bodies, when we left the morgue, I had a strong biological reaction that I can't quite put to words. I canonly describe without the real experience as what an early miscarriage must be like. We all returned to the clinic where we were staying feeling barely able to stand.

I have kept thinking about that mother, missing somewhere, wondering. Perhaps it is because so many mothers here are my age, and some keep handing me their children to hold in hopes that it will encourage me in the same direction. Twenty-four hours earlier, I had two beautiful children of a perfect stranger curled up in my lap. Two young Danishvolunteers who were with us had witnessed the 'accident'. I wonder what I would have done if I had been there. As my thoughts drift that direction now, I think I would have gone out of my mind, trying desperately to stop it even when it was too late. Would I, insane with horror, have allowed myself to be crushed as well?

Some of my other thoughts since then have included wishing I could find that mother and have a baby myself to give to her, to begin to make up for all she has lost. Or maybe to make up forthat made-in-America, paid-by-America tank that took her family. After all, I have seen more American-made weapons here in three days than most Americans see in their lifetimes.

Greg told me he had an emotional breakdown yesterday in Dura, which is also a grim situation. A man took him into his house, which was not hit by the tank fire. His was next door. He showed him how the internal walls had collapsed all the same, and a pile of heavy rubble in one corner. "That is where we put our two year old so she would be safe," he told him. The safest place in the house. Miraculously, she survived. He broke down anyway. He said, "it's not the violence, it's not the death....it's the innocence that's getting to me.'

Tonight is not the time for me to write rationally. Our reports will be written, facts documented, the whos and hows and whys and where exactlys will get printed sooner or later. Tonight I write only to begin to express that thick, heavy, cloud of evil that is weighing on me and covers the land. I finally have realized what evil is.