MARCH 2003

What They Say.....
By Annie Higgins.23 Feb 03

I wish.... Islah says, with a smile. Her mother has just told me that I would have been attending the House of Mourning/Bayt Ajr for her if not for the Army officer stopping thesoldier mid-aim. May you live, I say to Islah, and she smiles again. She is in the top of her high school class, loves poetry, and is uninvolved politically.


Tahani, would you like to be a martyr? asks Imm Nabil, bathed in morning light as she lies on her mattress under the window, recovering from an operation. She tells me how the present world pales in significance to the Hereafter, and being killed is no shame for a believer.

Daddy, I want to have an operation, says a little boy to his father. Why? You arent sick. No, I want to do an operation against the Army. (Do and have use the same verb in Arabic.) His father is surprised at this; he himself has never thought or spoken of such a thing to his five-year-old.

The man explains to himself as much as to me, that the youngsters have never seen the more positive
times with Israelis that their elders have. The children see the Israeli Armys destruction every day  destruction of human lives, destruction of material things, destruction of movement and destruction of hope.

The constant destruction has planted in me a great desire to find a peaceful place where I can learn
to build. The neighbors have just finished building an addition onto the house, and the tiler is laying the new floor. I ask him to show me how he does it, and then, with no shame, I ask to try it myself. He guides me and praises my attempt, but takes up my tile. I try again with more coaching, but it needs another dollop of sand and cement. Even so, it is a little bit of a little dream fulfilled, and the constructiveness brings a breath of peace.

All of this destruction, and developing technology in order to destroy; what good does it do? asks the shopkeeper who has every color of thread and every shape of button imaginable. His shop is like a trip into history; he has resisted suggestions to modernize because he feels there is value in historical things, even the cabinets. He speaks of Egypts Pharaohs, whose contribution of construction has lasted the ages, puzzling modern engineers. They took time to think, and then acted. Their method is superior to our quick reactions.

Why do foreigners have bigger imaginations than we do? asks Yumna when I draw a long-legged stick-mans shadow. Her sister has asked for help in depicting shadows. Yumnas question is a good
one. I tell her that maybe it is because we dont do so much memorization at school. Since we dont know the answers to questions, we have to use our imaginations to make them up. It makes me wonder how our American education system, which teaches us to ask questions, has produced a nation so willing to believe without question what they are told in illogical news broadcasts.

In America, people believe that everything they hear in the news is true, laughs Muhammad. Here, even an eight-year-old knows to question what he hears in the news!

Half of them are good, arent they? affirms eight-year-old Mustafa with a question. Half of the soldiers are good, he tells me from the balcony overlooking the main entrance to Jenin Refugee Camp. He is home from school again because the tanks threatened the children at the Primary School. Again. He tells of instances of the soldiers humanity, talking with the children in the Camp, and of the military guards giving him a banana after repeated body searches when he went to visit his brother in the notoriously harsh Naqab/Negev Prison.

It is the first time I have heard the proportion of good soldiers identified as a full half. But along with the accounts of killings and desecration, people of all ages and classes have expressed the idea that some of the soldiers are good and are at the mercy of their superiors.

If I had an airplane, I wouldnt fly over Israel. I would attack the Arab countries first, for ignoring us in our plight, says a creative and upbeat university student.

I long for the day that Saudi Arabia is occupied by Israel, says a journalist who has been wounded
twice while wearing a vest and helmet clearly-marked PRESS. Let them experience what we have endured all these years while they ignore us.


Bored at what he calls a laundry list of Israels attacks on civilians and infrastructure in Occupied Khalil/Hebron, the Middle East Editor of an American-based international newspaper derides the photographic evidence as a convenient catalogue for international journalists. He hopes the situation isnt as bad as it sounds, and concludes that things arent so bad after a brief stroll in the street.[http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0210/p25s01-cogn.html ]

I can imagine the intensity of the Khalil official he met. I have encountered it many times, along with the urgent desire -- sometimes a plea, sometimes a demand to get our story to the world! Tell them what is happening! With this particular newspapers reputation for fairness that often ran counter to the crowd, the Khalil mayor probably felt this was his chance to get someone to take him seriously, and was intent on presenting all of his evidence. The crimes of the Occupation are overwhelming when you hear of them. Imagine living them.

The Mayors presentation and Editors response brought to my mind the image of a man struggling against an undertow and calling desperately to someone on shore, whereupon the potential rescuer
responds casually, Trouble with water? Some people can swim and walks away.

This bland carelessness is alarming because we are dealing with human lives and with major international issues on the cusp of a worldwide crisis. The crowning glory of the Editors Khalil/Hebron diary entry is that any solution here will have to keep the Israeli colonist (settler) safe, or within Israeli borders. No mention of keeping even one Palestinian safe. Or of Israels refusal to define borders and stay within them.

This sheds light on why my repeated pleas to these editors to ask critical questions and to provide context have been ignored. Is ignore-ance the same as ignorance?

Before we blame Israel, we have to clean up our own house, first, right? says Majdi with a big smile, and no rancor. We have to get rid of the spies amongst ourselves. That was weeks before a score of local spies, including some schoolgirls, were rounded up. There was talk of executions, but
a life-preserving judgment prevailed. What good would it do to execute  him? says one father regarding the spy who led the Israeli Air Force to exterminate his son. These young people are just being used. It is the ringleaders who matter.

They are Muslim on their identity card only, says the mother of the collaborators who led the Army to assassinate her son.

The spies gave the Israelis the wrong information, laughs Islahs mother. They stormed the house where they thought they would find their wanted man, and instead found two men drinking coffee. But she is serious in her relief that the soldier did not shoot immediately when he saw Islah peering out at the commotion from behind the window blinds.

When the neighbor building the house addition mentions Israeli Arabs, I question the term, as I do each time I hear it: They are Palestinians; why do you say Israeli Arabs ? He agrees that some identifications need to be specified correctly, but instead picks up on the term Israeli: When I say the name, Israel, I can only have respect. I should not use derogatory language. Israel is the name of Gods people. He is enthused when I refer to Banu Israil/The Children of Israel in the Quran. Yes, that is Israel!

I greet some young men hanging out in the evening across from the destroyed Hawashin neighborhood, the bald hill of hard reddish dirt. To my question, How are you? they respond, as people do in every circumstance, Praise God. But they speak of having no jobs  the UN wont hire them unless they have four children. I tell them to look for brides quickly! They have no place to go and cannot even visit relatives in neighboring villages. A few of my ideas for small sparks of self-expression are met with, Who will listen? They miss their shahid/martyr friends. They are enjoying hemselves. They are in heaven. We are still here on earth. May you live, I say.

When I come home, the women are stuffing zamatat leaves, like grape leaves. If there is a war, will
Tahani go back to America? one neighbor asks. No, she will stay here and die with us, says my hostess, looking up from her work and smiling. Yes, I say, smiling, and forgetting my usual, May you live.

As we are settling onto our floor-level mattresses for the night, Raghda kisses me on the four diamond-points of my face, Thats how you kiss a shahid/martyr on the  bier! She has experience with a number of family members. She then requests her favorite, a Welsh lullaby whose refrain, in one version, says, All, all is well.

Annie Higgins in Jenin, Occupied Palestine + 972-67-540-298

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".I want to remind the world that these soldiers are sick, they are sadists, they experience pleasure by inflicting pain on innocent people and seeing people suffer.”

Nablus (West Bank): 22 February

By Khalid Amayreh

Trigger-happy Israeli soldiers on Saturday killed two additional Palestinian civilians in this city, which of late has been the target of a harsh Israeli repression unprecedented since the huge carnage at the Jenin Refugee camp last Spring.

Eyewitnesses testified that Israeli snipers posted at strategic rooftops in downtown Nablus shot and killed a 34-year-old man, identified as Sami Murtadha Halaweh, in full view of his wife and children.

“They ordered him and his family out in order to search the home, they kept the them in the rain outside, and when he moved to comf ort one of his children who was crying, a sniper shot him in the chest,” said Hatem Shak’a.

“They just slaughtered him in cold blood like you slaughter a sheep.”

Shortly afterwards, another Israeli sniper opened fire on pedestrians for no apparent reason, killing a college student.

The student, 23, was identified as Hatem al Sardi .

Eyewitnesses described the killing as “a wanton act of murder.”

The Israeli army acknowledged the killing, but refused to acknowledge responsibility.

The murder of the two civilians brings to 8 the number of civilian victims killed by Israeli occupation troops in the past four days.

One Israeli officer warned the killing of Palestinian civilians would continue until the “score reaches fifty Palestinians for each Israeli soldier or settler killed.”

The officer, speaking via a loudspeaker in Nablus , said the Israeli army will show no mercy “neither to an old man, nor to an old woman, not even to babies.”

Palestinians in Nablus have described the “campaign of terror” being waged by the Israeli army against their town as “conspicuously criminal.”

“With the world’s attention focused on Iraq, the Israeli army is perpetrating daily atrocities against defenseless civilians,” sai d Hanin al-Masri, a journalist working for a local newspaper.

“It is shameful that the world is allowing Isra el to repeat the Gestapo experience against housewives, workers, school children and other innocent civilians.”

Al Masri said the Israeli army was systematically destroying and damaging people’s homes for no reason other than wanting to inflict pain and suffering on us.

“I want to remind the world that these soldiers are sick, they are sadists, they experience pleasure by inflicting pain on innocent people and seeing people suffer.”

Nablus mayor Ghassan Shaka’a opined that the real goal of the Israeli campaign of terror was to get the people to leave their country .

“They simply would like us to leave so that they could establish a racially pure Jewish state…., well it is like Hitler sought to create a racially pure Aryan state.”

“It is Jewish Nazism, pure and simple.”

Israel routinely denies targeting innocent civilians deliberately.

However, human rights groups as well as international peace activists operating in Nablus and other parts of the West Bank vehemently dispute Israeli claims to that effect.

“How can we possibly believe them? They murder, not kill, but murder civilians everyday, I just don’t believe they do it by mistake , when mistakes happen each and everyday, it means there is a policy to kill, the world must understand this and stop believing Israel’s mendacious hasbara (propaganda),” one north American lady said.

The American peace activist accused the Israeli army of adopting an unwritten policy of killing a given number of Palestinian civilians everyday, regardless of security considerations.

“They have a death quota that must be met by any means. Just look at it, they sacrifice 3-5 Palestinians every day, the bulk of them innocent bystanders pedestrians, taxi drivers or passengers.”

“The soldiers seem not to worry, they should have clear instructions to kill and not worry about the consequences, since whatever Israel does is sanctioned by the American government.”