July 27, 2006

Letter from the West Bank

Dear friends,

It¹s been over a month since my last epistle, and as you all know, there¹s a
war on in this region since Israel launched attacks on Lebanon 15 days ago
following the capture of two Israeli soldiers.

The situation in the Gaza Strip has also grown worse, as it¹s been under
siege by Israel for a month. At about 1:00 this morning I received a phone
call from a man in Rafah, near the border with Egypt, whose brother¹s home
was about to be demolished by the Israeli army. The man said his brother had
been warned to empty his house, and had done so, but urged me to send a
group of people to the house to prevent its destruction.

I told him the International Women¹s Peace Service was based in the West
Bank, and I didn¹t know of any organizations in Gaza that could help.

After we hung up, he called me back. ³Please help me,² he said. But there
was nothing I could do, and he hung up again with resignation.

At the time (and having been woken from my sleep), I thought the call was
odd. Normally we only receive calls from the Salfit region in the West Bank,
where we are based, and about army or settler incursions, never house
demolitions. Also, I wondered, what were the Israelis doing demolishing
houses in the Gaza Strip? Didn¹t they evacuate a year ago?

Today I learned that the Israeli army has destroyed at least six Palestinian
homes in Gaza recently, hours after phoning residents to warn them to
vacate. International direct-action groups don¹t operate in the Gaza Strip
anymore, and Israeli human-rights organizations such as the Israeli
Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD), which tries to prevent
demolitions and rebuilds homes in the West Bank, are not allowed into Gaza.

Over 3,000 homes have been destroyed in the Gaza Strip over the last five
years, says Jimmy, who works with ICAHD. ³It¹s massive destruction,² he
says, alluding to the current aggressions as well, which since June 28 have
deprived the civilian population of access to electricity, water and
humanitarian aid, largely as the result of the IDF¹s destruction of bridges
and the only power station in the Gaza Strip.

³It¹s worse than a normal war.²

Here in the West Bank, we have seen increased checkpoints and incursions. On
Monday, a teammate and I passed through six checkpoints en route from
Tulkarem to Deir Ballut, via Hares (where we live), and the last week has
seen a regular roadblock on the main road outside Hares, though only for
Palestinian vehicles.

More worryingly, there have been several night-time army incursions, and a
settler incursion into my village of Hares. On Saturday night the army
pulled in and arrested a 15-year-old boy for throwing stones. They then
drove out of town with him, allegedly beat him in the jeep, then drove him
back. The next morning, three men from a nearby Israeli settlement (Revava)
came into the town; two of them fled, but one forced a villager from his car
and made him go into his house (he was armed, as are most male settlers, I
think). The householder tried to take the gun away from the settler -- shots
were fired into a wall and the refrigerator -- and eventually he was subdued
and taken away by police. This was the first settler incursion into Hares
that we know of.

People here seem to agree that Israel's aggressions in Lebanon will bode ill
for Palestinians, though of course it¹s much worse for the Lebanese, where
hundreds of civilians have died in the past two weeks.

Last month my friend May arrived back in her home country of Lebanon from
Toronto; a few days ago she  escaped with her mother from the southern part
of Lebanon to the relative safety of Beirut. May says the Western media is
only showing part of the picture, and describes the situation as ³simply
inhuman. A whole country is targeted.²

The conflict has affected our IWPS house team¹s numbers, if not our safety.
One of our short-term volunteers, a rabbinical student from Philadelphia,
flew home to the United States a week ago after being asked repeatedly to
leave by her worried mother and boyfriend, and another, from England,
decided not to come for her two-week stint after all. I was also to have
given a tour of the Salfit region to a tiny delegation from Canada including
a former member of parliament and a labour union leader, but they cancelled
their late-July trip due to the instability.

Still, people here have been continuing their lives much as usual, with
weddings and parties celebrating the end of the exams. Three of us had the
pleasure of attending Day Two of a Palestinian wedding last week, at which
the bride was feted first by female friends and family (she sat on a stage
in a Western wedding gown and veil while women sang and danced below her)
before being led off by the bridegroom, his father and her own father to her
new home, where she and the bridegroom sat together on another stage in
another living room, with the same festivities.

I also took a few days off last week with my good friend Jo, another IWPS
volunteer, prior to her departure from Israel. We visited Jaffa and Tel Aviv
for two days, then Jerusalem for one before Jo flew home. (Interestingly,
people from the north of Israel, which has been targeted by Hezbollah, were
trying to get a room in our guest house/hostel in Jaffa, though the manager
said some were picky about air-conditioning!)


Peace,

Beth

************

Beth is an activist from Toronto working with the Internatinal Women's Peace Service in the West Bank.

 

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