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4/10/2002 (24:40) |
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'Masters and slaves'
Dreams of peace and a secure future shatter under the weight of Israel's massive assault on the West Bank
Isabelle Humphries reports on the unfolding tragedy
Sabriya Assalli stands next to the body of her son Nasser, 41, and husband at their house in the Old City of Nablus in the West Bank. The two men were killed at the start of the Israeli incursion 3 April
Shrouded in a media blackout, the occupied Palestinian West Bank has this week been subject to the most intense Israeli military assault since Beirut in 1982. It is not possible to give a full picture of the extent of fatalities and structural damage as areas have been closed to media and medical personnel alike. On 7 April, Israeli Defense Force (IDF) Chief of Staff Shaul Mofaz told the Israeli cabinet that thus far, 'Operation Defensive Wall' has resulted in the killing of 200 Palestinians and 11 IDF soldiers.
On the ground countless individual accounts are seeping through the media blackout painting a bloody picture of the deaths of these 200 and the wounding of thousands more. In Nablus, for example, heavy shelling on a population under strict curfew has necessitated the establishment of six temporary field hospitals. Anyone caught on the streets is liable to be shot by Israeli snipers so it is extremely difficult for the wounded to be escorted to hospital or for bodies to be taken to burial. Detailed accounts of the medical crisis have been relayed to the media by the Union of Palestinian Medical Relief Committees (UPMRC), whose own offices in Ramallah were shelled last week.
Ambulances have been attacked and medical personnel shot and arrested. Three health workers in Nablus were used as human shields as the army went house to house making arrests. The International Red Cross has refused to operate owing to persistent attacks on its personnel.
At the Al Razi hospital in Jenin, doctors were forced to watch as 28-year-old Nidal Al Haj bled to death in the hospital yard. 'The medics waited for a long time, but they could not get to him because of the shelling,' said Dr. Ali Jabareen of Al Razi Hospital in Jenin. Bodies are reported to be lying in the streets in many areas such as Ramallah and the refugee camps around Nablus and Jenin. The Qatari satellite TV station Al Jazeera last week broadcast the gruesome images of bodies being placed in shallow mass graves without proper ceremony as the Ramallah hospital morgue overflowed.
The UPMRC issued a statement warning against epidemics caused by decomposing bodies which remain unburied in homes and health institutions.
In addition to damage and destruction of human life there has been widespread vandalism and looting and it is not merely the so called 'bomb factories' that are being destroyed. Homes and businesses have been bulldozed and ransacked. Dr. Shukri Odeh, a gynecologist, told the Cairo Times that all the doors to his clinic had been broken down and equipment inside smashed. 'Patients are calling me at home to help them and there is nothing I can do. The ambulances are unable to reach them,' he said, speaking under curfew from his home in the old city of Ramallah. As his kids shouted in the background, he explained that his children literally begin to shake whenever they hear shooting.
Riad is the father of two young children and works in a USAID-funded project, the Clinton Scholarship Program. He represents one of the many disillusioned Palestinians, who once genuinely believed that Oslo would bring peace and independence. 'There is no hope on the horizon,' he said. 'My children are living through the nightmare of war that I had hoped they never would.'
Riad also detailed the army looting that is going on across Palestinian cities. 'These soldiers, the new barbarians, even took my neighbor’s CD player from the snooker hall he owns, stowing it in the tank.' He spoke with disgust of how soldiers urinated on the carpet in front of his neighbors’ family. Numerous eyewitnesses have detailed theft and vandalism, from cash to televisions to the gold in the downtown jewelers of Ramallah.
'We are paying the price of the New World Order,' Ramallah resident Bashir Barghouti told the Cairo Times. The words of Bush and Blair paying lip service to a Palestinian state mean nothing on the ground for Barghouti and his family, who have just spent a week without electricity–ducking below their windows in an effort not to be caught by an Israeli sniper. 'There are masters and slaves in this world, and Israel is a friend of the master.' The role of the US in this crisis, from the Apache helicopters to the use of America-made munitions has appalled Palestinians. European inaction is read as direct complicity.
The only positive international presence in the Palestinian crisis appears to be the band of foreign activists, currently roaming the streets of Ramallah and Bethlehem, staying in homes within the refugee camps, and feeding international media with muchwanted eyewitness accounts. Georgina Reeves, a British citizen, is a coordinator with the International Solidarity Movement and a volunteer with the Indymedia news service (see http://jerusalem.indymedia.org for up-to-date information). Reeves spoke to the Cairo Times as she tried to negotiate her way past tanks and armored personnel carriers to try to take bread to a Bethlehem hospital. Attempting to provide protection to ambulances and take food and medical aid to individual homes, the internationals are hoping that their foreign passports will allow them to provide emergency services that Palestinians can not. Largely successful, the movement is not without casualties. Last week an Australian was operated on to remove shrapnel from her stomach.
While the main focus is away from Gaza, the killing continues there as well. American NGO activist and writer, Jennifer Lowenstein told the Cairo Times of the frustration and desolation hanging in the air. 'In Gaza there is no where to run, nowhere to hide.' On 5 April, for example, seven Israeli tanks entered Tel Al Sultan refugee camp west of Rafah, killing one man and a schoolgirl and wounding 12 others. Israeli military attacks tend to hit Gazans worse, a largely poverty stricken community with fewer middle-class links to the Western media. The Israeli media blackout in the West Bank has allowed only a fraction of the bloodshed to be reported. It is technically possible that if they turn their full attention to Gaza, the Israelis could shroud the tiny area in an almost total media blackout, hiding the extent of a military attack from the rest of the world.
Palestinians inside Israel have tried to provide help by virtue of their relative safety on the other side of the border. Adalah, the NGO providing legal aid for Palestinian citizens of Israel has–amongst other cases–filed a pre-petition to the Israeli Army Legal Adviser regarding the case of 340 Palestinian detainees released at the Qalandiyah checkpoint between Jerusalem and Ramallah. Released in the middle of the night these detainees were told that they were free to go–only to be told that they were unable to pass the checkpoint. Their ID cards had been taken during their original arrest in their homes in Ramallah and Jenin.
Individual Palestinian citizens inside Israel have organized protest tents and demonstrations. One such demonstration on 4 April outside the US embassy in Tel Aviv resulted in six non-violent protestors being badly beaten. Arabs across the Middle East have reflected the same anger. In one place in particular, however, it all seems frighteningly familiar.
The residents of Shatilla refugee camp in Beirut have seen this bloodshed before. 'We can only watch the television in disbelief,' said Waleed, slumped on his sofa. ‘Abu Ammar’ [Arafat] features in every other conversation in the camp. Nobody was interested in Bush’s latest speech or the gathering of the Arab leaders for the Beirut summit a few kilometers from the sodden alleys of the camp. It appears that Sharon’s imprisoning of Arafat, and not the summit, is what is uniting the Arab community. After Friday prayer, residents wound their way out of the camp past the graveyard of the 1982 victims and towards the center of town, to greet protestors at the 24-hour tent erected in Martyrs’ Square. Earlier in the week several hundred Lebanese forces had prevented demonstrators from going to the Egyptian embassy in Beirut. Protest is of course only within the strict limits defined by the authorities.
And what will come? Nobody in Palestine believes that Sharon wants to see peace under any terms. 'Sharon’s first step is to incite a hatred amongst Palestinians that will create thousands of new suicide bombers,' said Bashir Barghouti. 'The second step is to uproot us all.'
The fear of transfer is very real in the West Bank and Gaza. Israel is daily increasing a military campaign which ensures that a new generation of Palestinians know nothing but hate, blood and persecution.
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Volume 6, Issue 6
11 - 17 APRIL 2002
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