THE HANDSTAND

OCTOBER 2002

The most beautiful city in the West Bank lies in ruins and the lives of its residents have become inhumane. The Old City of Nablus, where some of the buildings are more than a thousand years old, has been destroyed almost entirely. The Nablus Road is pockmarked with pits that the IDF dug across it in order to prevent vehicles from passing through the city streets. The municipality's Internet site, on which the last report is five months old, looks like a disaster area. It contains only lists of those who were killed (84 in the IDF's April incursion), reports about

Today will mark 100 days of general curfew for the people of Nablus and
surrounding villages and refugee camps.

-Last night September 29,2002 the Israeli Occupation forces took over the Alool Abu-Salha Business Building in the Nablus city. They forced themselves in by blowing up the main entrance which was then followed by the destruction of all offices in this building.

-In the Old City of Nablus over 150 Palestinians were gathered up
and arrested.....................

IMMEDIATE PRESS RELEASE
INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY MOVEMENT
[MONDAY SEPTEMBER 30, 2002 NABLUS AREAS]

The city of Nablus and surrounding cities and villages have been under strict military curfew. For the past 24 hours the people of Nablus have had to endure shelling not only from heavy land artillery but also from air raids.

At 4:30 PM : The Israeli Occupation Forces have stepped up their violent shelling campaign especially in the Dawar Centre Area (Circle Center) of Nablus. What was already a dangerous situation spun into an even more violent situation. Two buildings known as Sabre and Karmel Buildings have been totally set on fire due to IOF's cantsant shelling. As people rushed to the scene amidst reports of people trapped in these burning buildings the IOF kept them away using live rounds of ammunition shooting in the direction of International Solidarity Movemnet volunteers and local Palestinian children. The IOF(Israeli Occupation Forces)for a long period of time kept the ambulances, and firetrucks from entering. approximately 6:30 PM they were all allowed in, ISM activists entered with paramedics and firefighters into the burning building as a search and rescue team.
One of the burning buildings has been utterly destroyed and 10 of the unknown number of people trapped in the building are in serious condition due to smoke inhalation and were whisked away to Rafadiya Hospital in Nablus, luckily no deaths have been reported.
Five Israeli soldiers have been injured and 1 died due to the exchange of heavy gun fire with Palestinian fighters in the Dawar Centre Area. It is reported that an Israeli tank used for shelling the buildings had exploded; the cause of this explosion is not yet known.
It is also reported at 6:30 PM a second Palestinian child was killed Martyr Mohamed Zaghloul was only 10 years old also from the Nablus area. The first child martyr today was 13 year old Ahmed Youseff Abu-Abayya from the Balata Refugee Camp also killed from direct live ammunition.

At approximately 8PM: The Israeli Occupation Forces have left the area of the burning buildings in Dawar Centre Area heading towards Balata and Askar Refugee Camps to continue their shelling campaign.
The total today of those injured is thirty-six, 36, and one of those injured is a little child who was shot in the stomach. All of the injured are now present in the Rafadiya Hospital in Nablus.

Those who give us hope...........
> By Mustafa Barghouti, Al-Ahram Weekly Online, Issue No. 605
>
> As the second Intifada continues, the plight of the Palestinians grows ever more hopeless. The seemingly endless closures and paralysing curfews imposed by the occupying forces and its government continue to punish our entire civilian population. The economy and the education system have been devastated, throwing hundreds of thousands of people into poverty. Additionally, the gradual reoccupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip has created an insidious combination of occupation and apartheid. New settlements continue to be built on land stolen from Palestinians, and old settlements continue to expand. Palestinians remain unable to move freely from Palestinian town to city to village -- the Israeli policy of "Bantustanisation" of the Palestinian areas is apparently succeeding.
>
> On the surface little appears to have changed since the first
> Intifada. Palestinians have been killed with greater frequency, and
> the Israeli army has used more brutal methods and greater violence to
> punish and attempt to quell our uprising against the occupation. But
> this is not new.
>
> However, there is one aspect in which this Intifada differs from the first. It has demonstrated the amazing power of people, foreigners, who come here to participate in the Palestinian struggle for justice and independence.
>
> Since September 2000, approximately 3,200 people of different nationalities have made their way to Palestine, despite the Israeli immigration services turning scores of people away from border crossings and the airport, and numerous deportations.
>
> Most of these activists arrived here directly from North America, Europe and Scandinavia, although the occasional South American and Antipodean have also made the journey.
>
> The fact that they have come, in such numbers and at their own expense is, quite frankly, amazing. Even more amazing when one considers what they have come from.
>
> Those from the United States are coming from a country that provides billions of dollars in support, aid and loans to Israel, and have an
ad ministration which believes "Sharon is a man of peace!" They are> surrounded by a media that has, over the past two years, proved the most resistant to publishing anything but the official Israeli version of what is occurring in the occupied Palestinian territories, in addition to using the terminology provided by the Israeli government, without question. Yet still they learned and came.
>
> Having a conversation with them is an eye-opening experience, especially when discussing the reasons for coming. Whether they are 18-year-old university students from Britain, a grandmother from France, or a 65-year-old priest from Belgium, they possess an understanding of the conflict that goes far beyond that of their elected representatives. The media bias felt by Palestinians everywhere is something that they too are painfully aware of. They have come to see what is really happening in Palestine. To see the truth for themselves.
>
> They also make a tremendous contribution to Palestine and the Palestinian people because of the rest of the world's failure. The UN in particular has failed to provide the one thing that Palestinians have consistently called for -- an international protection force.
>
> Since the beginning of the Intifada, when Israeli troops responded to unarmed Palestinian demonstrations with excessive and disproportionate military force, Palestinians have called for protection. As the two years have passed, and the Israeli onslaught has continued, to the point that over 1,800 Palestinians have been killed and, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, more than 41,000 have been injured, we have pleaded for international protection.
>
> It was not UN troops in smart uniforms who took up positions in our villages and cities, nor was it American soldiers storming ashore, as in Somalia. It was individuals who responded to our calls, and small groups from trade unions and churches, anti-globalisation activists, committees from the world social forum, Jewish and Christian groups opposed to the occupation, governmental representatives, as well as those belonging to Palestinian solidarity groups.
>
> These people came, even at the risk of injury, arrest and deportation, to stand up to the Israeli occupation, by the Palestinians' side. They have delivered food and medicine to the sick and hungry during curfew, torn down military road blocks, protested the draconian Israeli siege and closure, helped get the sick and wounded to hospitals or accompanied our medical teams to enable them to provide badly needed treatment.
>
> And at the height of the Israeli violence, during the March and April invasions, they did what the Israeli army prevented the media, international aid agencies and international community from doing. They entered Jenin refugee camp and were witness to what occurred there, talked to the victims, wrote, took photos and told the world.

> I think these people are examples of the world's new generation (irrespective of age), and the positive side of globalisation. News and information is accessible to people everywhere if they make the effort to find it. It may not be delivered to them on their doorstep every morning, but it is accessible through the Internet. People have learned the truth and they have come. Whether they came to break the siege, protect children going to school, or pick olives, they have come.
>
> So despite the double standards of providing UN protection to some people and not others, and the double standards of expecting some countries to be accountable to UN resolutions and international law> (Iraq), yet not enforcing the implementation of resolutions for other countries (Israel), we had our protection. We turned to the people and they responded.
>
> Just as importantly, they have come to Palestine, met with the people> and seen for themselves what is happening. They have contributed to> the ability of Palestinians to demonstrate peacefully, as the number of popular protests in the past few days has shown. Furthermore, after being here for a few weeks, or months, they return to their home countries with what they have seen, experienced and heard, richer for the experience, and motivated to continue to work for an independent Palestine.
>
> These people have an amazing power that has revitalised international solidarity for the Palestinian people. They are responsible for making the Palestinian cause the number one liberation cause in the world. They are the ones that give us confidence that we will be victorious in the struggle for our freedom and independence from continuing Israeli occupation.
>
> * The writer is spokesman for the Palestinian National Initiative, a
> coalition for democratic change in the West Bank and Gaza.
>

International solidarity reports

from Jennifer 09.06.02
Celebrating the Sabbath
This morning I spent at the small village of Falimia where our small band of 4 international volunteers had been invited back to the community where we had been 2 days earlier, walking through rich, fertile farmland,past rows and rows of greenhouses, and among orchards
of fruit-laden olive/orange/lemon trees. The very land that the Israeli military has begun to confiscate and plow under. That day, we had walked along the redspray painted numbers, marked by surveyors where the construction will take place. Marks appeared on rocks as close as 3 meters from people's homes, on the trunks of ancient olive trees and the poles and tarpsof industrial-sized greenhouses. And the drinking water beneath the ground would also fall under the ever expanding Israeli Occupation.

Today, we were present to witness the villagers' demonstration of commitment to their land and homes. For nearly 2 hours, the men and boys of the surrounding villages came here to worship, not in the mosque but in the fields among their crops. It was an incredibly powerful sight: young children and cane-supported old men, all farmers, seated on the land cultivated by their fathers and their fathers' fathers' and their fathers' fathers' fathers and on and on. The past and the future together to pray for peace and for assistance from the only resource currently available to them. I watched from the shade of a fruit tree as the men and boys one-by-one washed their hands, their faces and their feet from water of an irrigation faucet. They then carefully slipped their sandles on and walked to a place in the fallow field, spread their prayer mat, removed their shoes and sat silently, listening to the songs of worship. It was an incredibly powerful act of nonviolent resistance and of their refusal of the Israeli confiscation.
I doubt this story will reach Israel or the United States. But for today, the villagers thanked us for
being with them, for witnessing their struggle, and joining our voices with their prayers in breaking
the silence.
Lisa Nessan We went to a home where a man shared with us a story which began, "My brother, a simple farmer, was killed while working on his farm"... his farm is only 200 meters from his home. His 12 year old son was present when the tank drove by shooting, and his father told him he had been hit and that he must go and get help- the son ran back to the home to try to get help but by the time he returned, his father was dead. This man telling us of the story of his brother's death, went on to tell us that even with this, "I still think of peace, my brain is only thinking of peace, peace is everything, peace is the solution, we want to live together... since 1948, we are surviving." He spoke of his land in Hadera near Tel Aviv and said, "my father had 100 dunams, i have the key..."
Walking through the raped landscape- made raw by the
mechanized claws of the giant Caterpillar... ripping
the life and history from is seams where the roots of
the ancient olive trees were grounded in the soil.
Branches and leaves, unripened and now dying olives
scattered by where my feet sink down into the
bulldozers' tracks. Many cycles and seasons of life
and love will not be remembered as the trees that have
bared witness fall silent with only a slight remnance
of the scream from the depths of the chainsawed
trunks... A final gasp, a sudden breath as the spirit
slips away from the silent melody of the earth. In the
distance we hear the piercing interruption of the
weapons of mass destruction. I feel sickened by the
desecration of the land... the olive trees witnesses
to the history and future of wars, of blood, of
peoples- turning one another out of "their" lands...
There is an importance in my gazing upon such trees,
to have a memory of their existence, to have rested in
their shade, to be supported by their branches, and to
see their death before the harvest their fruit...

Eric Storlie I spoke over the phone with a Palestinian activist as he stood in a field on Sunday, watching bulldozers destroy Palestinian crops, somewhere between Qalqilya and Tulkarem.  He was accompanied by international activists and the farmers who owned the land (there was a press release in this forum describing the Israeli intent to seize land in this part of the West Bank a week ago).  He said the people who live in this fertile region and who relied on agriculture for their livelihoods would become refugees, and the towns of Qalqilya, Tulkarem and surrounding villages would become refuge camps .
 Gabe An APC commander was firing in the direction of people trying to cross the street.  I just stood there looking at this man who, from the safety of his mini tank,  feels justified in firing at young kids for crossing their own street.



Susan Barclay This morning in Balata, they came in jeeps and began tear gassing everyone in sight for over an hour. Balata is one of the only places in Nablus that actively resists the Israeli army and succeeds-the children and young boys throw stones and impede the tanks from entering into the camp regularly. Our role this morning was not to negotiate or approach the tanks but rather to be witnesses, and attempt to discourage shooting by putting our bodies on the line. Two tanks are sitting in an open field at the southern entrance of the camp; the children and boys are 50m from them with us. We make ourselves visible and watch as the children and boys throw stones and push the tanks back.

The tanks play cat and mouse for over two hours with the youth, racing forward and shooting in the air, rushing the crowd and letting out huge smoke clouds, then pulling back as the children race back out to throw stones. After over two hours of this we retreat back 3-4 m to some shade and sit as most the Palestinians mill about, seeming tired of these games. All of a sudden there is tank machine gun fire directly overhead us and shrapnel hits a 17 year-old boy in the head. I turn and see blood pouring down this young man's face, 1m in front of me. Everyone runs with him to a nearby clinic and the Internationals watch them go and turn towards the tanks that begin to retreat. What kind of military operation is this? All day they have been wandering the streets, firing at will and terrorizing. Things are closed again despite the fact that today marks the 14t! h day straight without any lift of curfew-two weeks without even an hour to go outside.

Israeli, American made F-16's bombed Gaza and we watched Aljazeera news, as the numbers of those dead and injured rose ever higher, reaching over 170 (155 injured and 15 killed) by 2:30 a.m. when the news broadcast ended. I sat with 7 young Palestinian men at the UPMRC center watching the people shift through the rubble looking for more and more bodies, and then flashes of the hospital in total chaos. Horribly, graphic images flashed across the TV screen, especially of children no longer recognizable as human, but I was most touched by the young man next to me, as I watched one tear roll down his cheek, and felt that I too, was going to cry.


ABOUT THE INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY MOVEMENT AND GHASSAN ANDONI.
>Andoni, 46, was born in Beit Sahour - the biblical Shepherd's Field near Bethlehem. He has been a lecturer in the physics department at Birzeit University near Ramallah since 1984. He is the founder and executive director of the Palestinian Center for Rapprochement between People (PCR), established in Beit Sahour in 1988. The center is a nonprofit, nongovernmental community-based organization that has a genuine commitment to, and a long history of working for, peace and justice in the Holy Land. Under Andoni's leadership, PCR has been in the forefront of the nonviolent movement, motivating and leading Palestinians in the struggle for human, civil and national rights.

Andoni's resume as a peace and social activist dates back to the mid-1980s when he organized Beit Sahour's tax resistance movement against the Israeli occupation, an effort for which he was arrested four time by the Israeli authorities.  

In December 2000, Andoni co-founded the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) along with the American husband-and-wife team Huwaida Arraf and Adam Shapiro, Israeli peace activist Neta Golan, and other Palestinians. Hundreds of internationals from around the world have since traveled to the West Bank and Gaza to resist the Israeli occupation by participating in nonviolent direct actions, including removing roadblocks, delivering food and medicines to Palestinians under curfew, riding in ambulances with Palestinian emergency medical workers, and acting as human shields between Israeli occupation soldiers and Palestinian families.

Both the Palestinian Center for Rapprochement and the International Solidarity Movement work in alliance with other Palestinian and Israeli peace groups, including the Women's Coalition for a Just Peace, Gush Shalom, Women in Black, Alternative Information Center (AIC), Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD), Rabbis for Human Rights, and the Christian Peacemaker Teams.

Photos of Nablus and Olive Groves by Luke Powell © 2002 http://www.lukepowell.com/
& Photos of Palestine by Khalad Abo Ajamieh © 2002