Posts
Notes from the Invasion
June 29, 2002
Hi everyone,
I am wiped-out tired because I haven't slept for two nights.
Correction: I did get 2-3 hours sleep between when the first bomb was dropped in the center of town and the second one (3:30am). The PA headquarters was blown to pieces by Israeli F-16s. The force blew the windows inward (Dutch style, not double-hung) but the glass didn't break. It shook the house and was the loudest thing I'd ever heard. And we were about a mile away. We sent two pairs up to check out the damage to the houses in the immediate neighborhood of the blast. Stay tuned for pictures on our website. The dust is settling over the entire city. The night before they were firing Apache rockets and heavy artillery. Anyway, after the second blast last night, I was almost drifting off again, then felt something skitter across my arm. It was a 1 1/2 inch cockroach. So I shook out the mat, dragged it out of the corner, and committed an act of violence with a broom. Then a while later I was almost asleep again when I realised the windows being blown open (latch is broken) allowed the Mosquitos of Doom to enter our room. So I fended them off the rest of the night. Argh.
One bold rooster is still crowing across the street. I think I wrote the other day about the dead animals piling up due to the heat inside the stall. There is no way to move them or anywhere to take them, so the kids sneak in every day and remove the carcasses. The stench in our street is incredible. We morbidly wondered if installing a 'chicken cam' would cause at least the animal rights activists to apply pressure on the curfew situation. People could watch in horror over the internet as they suffocated and died, and the soldiers prevented anyone from getting near to aid them.
The Israeli military is now in charge of the water supply. Way to go guys. Now there is no water supply. Never give control of essential life resources for a civilian population to a group of people with guns. This is one of my Obvious Rules of Humane Warfare (if there is such a thing.) The other is, ‘Never allow contact between soldiers and refugees.’ That is why there are clashes here. The soldiers station themselves right outside the camps and make life miserable as soon as people set foot outside the camp. Then after the clash starts, the camp gets tear gassed. This is called collective punishment. The same situation occurs with soldiers and schools, as you have seen by reading our reports. My third Obvious Rule is, ‘Never give an eighteen year old kid a gun and a sense of superiority over another group of people.’ We've been dealing with that crap all week.
Anyway.
Yesterday I took food supplies up Tel Rumeida to a family living next to the settlement. On the way, I got goosed by an otherwise gentle looking teenage boy. Hey! You're way too young for me! Today we'll go a different path on the hill to check in on other families who can't sneak to a renegade grocery store because they're too close to the settlements.
It is now the fifth day of curfew over the entire city. But the soldiers are strangely absent from the streets. This is because they control all the hilltops; only one street in town is not visible to them. So why patrol? However, this does not keep tanks, bulldozers, and APCs from rolling up and down the street next to our place at all hours of the day and night. The noise is deafening. It's great to be on the phone and tell people to wait for the tank to pass. Especially international calls.
In lighter news, we've been invited to another Saturday night party with our colleague international observer force in town, TIPH. This is lovely and so needed. As long as Doctors Without Borders can come pick us up, we'll be fine. No taxis during invasions. So, it's a nice partnership blooming among the three groups. TIPH supplies the swank facilities, DWB the transport (TIPH isn't allowed out at night right now) and we I guess are the nutty entertainment!
That's my news for now. Keep sending the jokes.
Le Anne
Saturday, June 29, 2002
Thursday, June 27, 2002
Gee, it all looks so familiar...
It all looks so familiar…
June 27, 2002
Hi everyone,
Well, we are three days into the invasion of Hebron and have been busy busy busy. Our team has been escorting medical staff and patients to hospitals, sleeping in hospitals to prevent destructive military searches, running groceries to hungry families (they give us money, we go to the two or three shops defiantly open around the city), etc. etc.
We've been dealing with a largely nasty group of soldiers, shipped in special for the task. We figured out today they ship in new guys for this because they don't have attachments or relationships formed with the place or its people. They clearly haven't been here long enough to see the paramilitary tactics of the settlers, and they have either been propagandized or shell-shocked enough to feel little compassion for Palestinian civilians. Many also do not know us or the other organizations in town and are obstructing our work. Still, there are a few good eggs.
We also have realized today, after one exasperated teammie asked the question, "Who is the sick mastermind who decides to do all this stuff (closures, curfews, blocking ambulances, etc.)" Another asked, "Don't these soldiers get a briefing on international law?" A refusenik friend who was previously in the army gave us the answer. He said, "basically there are no rules. The 18-year-olds are given guns and assignments, and have a free hand to do whatever they see fit and their commander allows them to get away with." That certainly gels with our most recent experience, three young guys blocking our path, refusing to call their commander, each giving different orders about what we could and couldn't do, where we could and could not go. Standing right beside each other as they spoke.
I did have an interesting conversation with one soldier today. We were trying to take food to a bank security guard marooned without supplies when curfew was announced. He said, "you think I don't care people are starving here? I don't make the orders." I said I thought he probably did care, and I hoped he would think about the morality of his commander's orders. He said, "but the orders are not from my commander, they are from the Prime Minister himself (Sharon)."
In the meantime, I've been training international volunteers to be trainers for other humanitarian/nonviolent action volunteers in Palestine for the summer. We didn't have time to do the 'role plays' required for the training, but they got their practice hands-on when the invasion began and stranded them in the city. They've been a great help in attending to the hospitals' security.
Those are just a few happenings right now. Overall, there are a dozen or so Palestinian police holed up in the headquarters here, an old British Mandate building that is heavily fortified and difficult to destroy. Apache helicopters have been shelling and firing missiles the past three days. It is a siege that will likely end in their deaths whether they surrender or not, so they feel they have nothing to lose. The entire city is under curfew. A city of 140,000 people looks like 'After the Bomb' or some movie like that. You can hear tanks rolling in the streets and gunfire in the distance.
Our team morale is pretty good right now, hope it can keep up. I scrubbed all the black gunk off our pots and pans tonight, which was therapeutic, but will have a chat with teammies who don't wash both outside and inside the dishes when they have kitchen duty. And then I chiseled off the stove which someone baked rice onto while I was
home. Yes, there will be chats. I guess things slip through the cracks. We've all had the stomach flu in the days leading up to the invasion, Immodium supplies are nearly exhausted now, so we were wiping down door handles and computer keyboards and scrubbing suddenly disgusting toilets. Now we are all simply dehydrated from the long hot treks required across town on a full-city patrol. I hope this serves as a brilliant recruiting campaign for you all into this type of service! ;)
Well, three tanks rolled by and they shelled something from a helicopter just now. Hope the night is quiet. We'll all be having a couple beers in Jerusalem when we get out of this mess. Write me funny stuff or mundane stuff that has nothing to do with the Occupation, please! Especially send raucous jokes to read off.
Hope to hear from you all soon.
-Le Anne
PS. The first morning of the invasion, I completely charcoaled two pieces of toast in rapid succession. The last two pieces of bread in the house. And the house was full of smoke. Really, this was because the phone kept ringing off the hook. Really. Good thing we found a renegade bakery while out on patrol. And we aired out the house.
June 27, 2002
Hi everyone,
Well, we are three days into the invasion of Hebron and have been busy busy busy. Our team has been escorting medical staff and patients to hospitals, sleeping in hospitals to prevent destructive military searches, running groceries to hungry families (they give us money, we go to the two or three shops defiantly open around the city), etc. etc.
We've been dealing with a largely nasty group of soldiers, shipped in special for the task. We figured out today they ship in new guys for this because they don't have attachments or relationships formed with the place or its people. They clearly haven't been here long enough to see the paramilitary tactics of the settlers, and they have either been propagandized or shell-shocked enough to feel little compassion for Palestinian civilians. Many also do not know us or the other organizations in town and are obstructing our work. Still, there are a few good eggs.
We also have realized today, after one exasperated teammie asked the question, "Who is the sick mastermind who decides to do all this stuff (closures, curfews, blocking ambulances, etc.)" Another asked, "Don't these soldiers get a briefing on international law?" A refusenik friend who was previously in the army gave us the answer. He said, "basically there are no rules. The 18-year-olds are given guns and assignments, and have a free hand to do whatever they see fit and their commander allows them to get away with." That certainly gels with our most recent experience, three young guys blocking our path, refusing to call their commander, each giving different orders about what we could and couldn't do, where we could and could not go. Standing right beside each other as they spoke.
I did have an interesting conversation with one soldier today. We were trying to take food to a bank security guard marooned without supplies when curfew was announced. He said, "you think I don't care people are starving here? I don't make the orders." I said I thought he probably did care, and I hoped he would think about the morality of his commander's orders. He said, "but the orders are not from my commander, they are from the Prime Minister himself (Sharon)."
In the meantime, I've been training international volunteers to be trainers for other humanitarian/nonviolent action volunteers in Palestine for the summer. We didn't have time to do the 'role plays' required for the training, but they got their practice hands-on when the invasion began and stranded them in the city. They've been a great help in attending to the hospitals' security.
Those are just a few happenings right now. Overall, there are a dozen or so Palestinian police holed up in the headquarters here, an old British Mandate building that is heavily fortified and difficult to destroy. Apache helicopters have been shelling and firing missiles the past three days. It is a siege that will likely end in their deaths whether they surrender or not, so they feel they have nothing to lose. The entire city is under curfew. A city of 140,000 people looks like 'After the Bomb' or some movie like that. You can hear tanks rolling in the streets and gunfire in the distance.
Our team morale is pretty good right now, hope it can keep up. I scrubbed all the black gunk off our pots and pans tonight, which was therapeutic, but will have a chat with teammies who don't wash both outside and inside the dishes when they have kitchen duty. And then I chiseled off the stove which someone baked rice onto while I was
home. Yes, there will be chats. I guess things slip through the cracks. We've all had the stomach flu in the days leading up to the invasion, Immodium supplies are nearly exhausted now, so we were wiping down door handles and computer keyboards and scrubbing suddenly disgusting toilets. Now we are all simply dehydrated from the long hot treks required across town on a full-city patrol. I hope this serves as a brilliant recruiting campaign for you all into this type of service! ;)
Well, three tanks rolled by and they shelled something from a helicopter just now. Hope the night is quiet. We'll all be having a couple beers in Jerusalem when we get out of this mess. Write me funny stuff or mundane stuff that has nothing to do with the Occupation, please! Especially send raucous jokes to read off.
Hope to hear from you all soon.
-Le Anne
PS. The first morning of the invasion, I completely charcoaled two pieces of toast in rapid succession. The last two pieces of bread in the house. And the house was full of smoke. Really, this was because the phone kept ringing off the hook. Really. Good thing we found a renegade bakery while out on patrol. And we aired out the house.
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