Sunday, November 10, 2002

The following is reported from Palestine. Reposted from The Yellow Times.

Saif Abu Keshek, Aisa Kiyosue & Susan Barclay
International Solidarity Movement

[ASKAR REFUGEE CAMP] -- Last night at approximately 3:15 a.m., Israeli Army (IOF) soldiers came into Askar refugee camp in Nablus in a completely ordinary operation to arrest one man -- so normal, in fact, that it wasn't even mentioned in the Israeli or International press. What exactly does a normal, routine arrest entail?

A “normal, routine arrest” begins when the IOF arrive in the camp and open fire indiscriminately and incessantly to awaken and simultaneously paralyze everyone with fear. Everyone means families – mothers, fathers, children, aunts, uncles, and grandparents. It means students, store owners, officials, secretaries, doctors, sanitary workers, taxi drivers and the unemployed; people who eat humus, falafel, rice, cheese, salad, or nothing but bread that day; people with lots of money or some money and those with little or none; parents who worry about feeding their children, who think about how to educate them, how to clothe them and most of all, how to love them.

It means hundreds of human beings packed into dense homes, homes so close you can hear your neighbor sneeze, that awaken in the flash of a second to bullets, thundering through the thin alleys, ricocheting off cement walls, garbage cans, and steel doors.

Soldiers entered six houses in their search for Naser Abu Aliz, yet another one of the thousands of wanted men in Palestine. The IOF began by blowing up his front door to gain entry into the house, and continued by exploding a second door inside. They found the house empty, but ransacked it, nonetheless, damaging or destroying nearly everything.

They then went to his brother's house, Jilal Al Jabaji, and blew off his door. The soldiers ransacked his house as well, and even fired live ammunition while the parents and children, a 6-year-old and an 8-month-old infant, witnessed these actions, literally terrified. The flood of children's tears moistening a mother's shirt and the echo of their screams ring in their parent's ears, waking.....

Another house, that of Mamoud Abu Sada had five people inside when the IOF calmly and precisely blew off its door. Three children, one 7, one 5 ½, and one 2 ½ years old, screamed and cried when the bathroom door was blown up, the tiles destroyed, their big table ruined; they all riveted in panic from the shooting inside their supposed sanctuary, watching dark shadows holding M-16's aimed, shooting, invading their rooms and then running on to....

The next home where the soldiers found Iyad Itiyim, his wife and 8-month-old baby. They ransacked the house, fractured the walls with their 'routine' explosions and shot bullet holes in a dresser that we ran our fingers across this morning.

Still they did not stop; they went on to Ahmed Abu Hayeh's home and then to the home of Ehab and Mahammed Bahar Ildam. Same old story: an explosion blows up the front, metal door, fractures the thick cement walls, and breaks every window within a few meter radius; the soldiers ransack the house, break the chairs, tables, fans, dressers, and small appliances and open fire with no thought of the heads, hearts and hopes of young children and their parents.

At 4:50 the IOF left Askar camp; another routine operation had come to an end.

In their tracks lay six houses in utter disarray, nine other homes with their windows blown out, and clusters of children, families, glued together in sticky, terrified tears.

We know because we walked the camp this morning, surveying the very extensive, yet routine damage. We touched the bullet holes, picked up pieces of broken glass, and walked over blown up metal doors bent into oblivion, contorted beyond imagination. We know because we took pictures of the broken windows and whispered curses upon seeing the damage. We know because we saw the fathers' faces, greeted the mothers, and held the hands of the children.

One enormous tragedy of war is that inhumanity, violence, and terror become normal. Human beings are very adaptable and remarkably continue even in the truly worst of situations. But this does not in anyway mean that what has become normal is healthy or humane.

What is normal about terrorizing children? Coming in the middle of the night firing rounds of live ammunition in rooms where babies sleep? Destroying furniture, appliances, equipment, walls, and windows in the search for a man?

Routine for the IOF amounts to trampling on all security and safety, breaking hearts like glass, and then jumping back into their jeeps and tanks and driving away.

One child looked up at us this morning with big, beautiful brown eyes and showed us past the broken bits of glass, over the obliterated door, into her home, walked over to the dresser, looked in the mirror cracked by the bullet of an M-16, and still miraculously managed to smile.

No, there is absolutely nothing normal about this.