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.