Tag Archives: Israel

June 17, 2014 · 1:46 pm

Why Amnesty International is right: Both the village of Kafr Qaddum and Murad Shtewi must be freed

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The village of Kafr Qaddum in the West Bank was the scene of some of the worst violence I saw during my half year working as a human rights monitor there.

The village holds weekly demonstrations to demand that their main road be reopened. It was closed by the Israeli military authorities in 2002 to prevent Palestinians from travelling on roads designated for use only by Israeli settlers and adds on nearly 20km to their travel to the main town.

These demonstrations are violent affairs. This is my account of a ‘not so peaceful protest’ which includes footage of a Palestinian being mulled by an Israeli military dog (see below) as well as multiple protesters being shot directly by heavy metal tear gas canisters. This is my account is of a 17 year old boy who was relearning to talk after being shot in the head by a tear gas canister.

As I said – the demonstrations are violent affairs littered with human rights abuses. It is not surprising then that on a number of occasions the Israeli military tried to stop human rights monitors and members of the press from entering the village. On one occasion before a particularly brutal response to the protest I had to travel through the olive groves to avoid the Israeli military checkpoint to gain access to the village.

In midst of this madness trying to marshal events was the figure Murad Shtewi. Murad is (was) a leading activist in the weekly demonstrations held in his village. I met him on a number of occasions normally over strong Arabic coffee and cigarettes to discuss what had occurred in his village during the previous week. Invariably the conversation focused on army raids and arbitrary arrests (painfully common events across the West Bank) but this was juxtaposed to Murad’s middle-eastern understanding of lavish hospitality and his talk of non-violence resistance.

I liked Murad for having optimism in the face of such continued violence (violence that Murad experienced first hand, in the video of the dog attack you can see Murad being pepper sprayed in the face for trying to intervene in the dog attack on his nephew).

Despite witnessing so much violence Murad was also committed to non-violence. This commitment to non-violence is one of the key criteria for Amnesty International who now consider Murad a ‘prisoner of conscience’ after his arrest at around 3am on 29th April of this year (arrests in the middle of the night are common place in the West Bank – even when detaining minors).

Murad is charged with organizing a demonstration without a permit, causing a public disturbance, and throwing rocks during a demonstration. Amnesty International has responded to these charges saying:

“In Amnesty International’s assessment, the charges of rock-throwing and of causing a public disturbance are unfounded. Murad Shtewi has been persecuted for expressing his non-violent opinions and for his role in the peaceful protests in Kufr Qadum against Israel’s illegal settlements. His arrest and detention are a measure to punish him and stop him and other village activists from exercising their rights to freedom of expression and to peaceful assembly.”

As such Amnesty International is calling for Murad Shtewi to be released immediately and unconditionally, as ‘he is a prisoner of conscience, detained solely for the peaceful exercise of his right to freedom of expression’.

This is a call that I am happy to publicly back. On every occasion that I went to Kafr Qaddum I never once saw Murad throw a stone. On a number of occasions I did see him telling others not to throw stones. I also talked to him at length about the importance of non-violent resistance.

This is also the third time Murad has been arrested (each time released without charge) in the last few years, the first was after the dog attack on his nephew.

Simply put, I can’t see how this latest arrest of Murad has any purpose other than to try and deter him from organizing legitimate protests against the Israeli policy of segregation in the West Bank.

It is in light of all this that I ask you to take a few seconds to send this sample letter to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that significantly not only calls for Murad’s release but also to:

‘take effective measures to prevent the use of unnecessary and excessive force by Israeli forces against peaceful demonstrators’

Please help me help Murad by taking this small action.

For more information:

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October 16, 2013 · 9:59 am

On Israeli settlers: “They come down from the hills and get us with dogs and guns”

I have just stumbled across this article that the wonderful Kate Hardie-Buckley wrote after visiting me and my former colleague Emmet Sheerin in Yanoun in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

I don’t think I shared the article on Hynd’s Blog at the time.

The title, “They come down from the hills and get us with dogs and guns“, might read to some as being as slightly over the top. The fact that I can promise it isn’t says a lot about life in Yanoun.

Anyway, have a read of the article and let me know what you think.

PS – you can also watch Emmet’s video about life in Yanoun.

 

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February 18, 2013 · 10:52 am

“This is what occupation looks like” says ex-Israeli soldiers

Breaking The Silence is a group of ex-Israeli soldiers who have taken it upon themselves to “expose the Israeli public to the reality of everyday life in the Occupied Territories”.

Today they put out this important message:

In the past few days thousands of people have seen the image on the right: a Palestinian child in the cross hairs of an Israeli soldier’s gun after the soldier took the photo and uploaded it to his personal Instagram account. It was shared hundreds of times, with many people expressing their discomfort with this absurd show of force where a person can aim a gun at a child just to post a ‘cool’ picture and get many shares.

The image on the left was taken by another Israeli soldier in Hebron in 2003. He later gave us the rights to the photo along with a testimony that were presented in the first Breaking the Silence photo exhibition. The solider in question took the photo using his own personal film camera to keep as a ‘souvenir’.

Both pictures are testaments to the abuse of power rooted in the military control of another people.

Ten years have passed. Technology and media have changed. The distribution of images has changed. But the exaggerated sense of power and the blatant disregard for human life and dignity have remained: this is what occupation looks like.

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June 6, 2012 · 11:42 am

Walking in the (Occupied) Golan Heights

“This really is paradise” said Ziv, a twenty four year old Israeli ranger working in the Yehudiya National Park. He flicks back his dreadlocks and smiles at us looking for confirmation. My colleague, good friend and fellow hiker, Helene responds, “It really is”. We were stood overlooking the impressive Zavitan waterfall which cuts into the incredible landscape that’s rich in fauna and wildlife. In the immediate vicinity of the waterfalls it is hard to disagree with either of their assessments.

Helene and I walked for hours through deep gorges, stopping only occasionally to swim in the natural pools. Sporadically however we would hear in the background the unmistakable sound of explosions. A reminder that the Yehudiya National Park is surrounded by Israeli military areas. At one point as we were sat by a pool side a flock of birds flew from the tree in which they were perched at the sound of an especially loud explosion.

With every explosion, I was reminded that we were enjoying ourselves in an Occupied Territory. This mixture of unworldly beauty combined with occupation followed by an illegal annexation is what I spent three days thinking about as I walked in the Occupied Golan Heights.

The Golan Heights were occupied by Israel during the 1967 war and as such they were internationally considered to be “Occupied Territories”. In 1981 Israel formally annexed the territory and argued this changed the territory’s legal status. Despite this annexation and subsequent claim, the law of belligerent occupation continues to apply until the international community acknowledges a political-legal settlement between the parties. This did not happen in 1981 and has not occurred since.

The UN Security Council Resolution 497 of December 17, 1981 summarises the international community’s response to the annexation stating, “(The UN) Strongly condemns Israeli annexationist policies and practices in the occupied Syrian Golan Heights, the establishment of settlements, the confiscation of lands, the diversion of water resources, the intensification of repressive measures against the Syrian citizens therein and the forcible imposition of the Israeli citizenship on Syrian nationals, and declares all these measures as null and void as they constitute violations of the Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War”

As such, as an Occupying Power, Israel is obligated to adhere to the principles of international humanitarian law, notably the Fourth Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, and must also adhere to the principles of the international human rights law. This position has been repeatedly upheld by the UN and international human rights organisations.

Despite this clear status the occupied Golan Heights is often ignored by the media covering the “Israel/Palestine conflict”. Journalist and author Mya Guarnieri commented on this saying, “Perhaps it’s easier for journalists to talk about ‘Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories’ or the ‘Israeli-Palestinian conflict.’ But to do so is an oversimplification that ignores the broader regional context that includes the Golan Heights”. Living in the West Bank, reporting on what I see, this is a criticism that I am acutely aware of. To understand the current struggle for the realisation of human rights in the oPT you must also have an understanding of the Golan Heights.

After the occupation of 1967 130,000 Syrians were forcibly displaced from the territory leaving only 6,000 behind. A report by The Arab Centre for Human Rights in the Occupied Syrian Golan, highlights human rights abuses from expropriation of land and water resources through to settlement expansion. A report well worth reading.

What troubled me during my time in the Golan however was that all of this that I had read about human rights before visiting the Golan seemed a million miles from what I actually saw. Visiting the Golan Heights felt, as a tourist, to be no different from visiting any other part of Israel.

Hitch hiking to start a walk one day an Israeli picked us up, drove us no more than 5 minutes and insisted we take her number in case we were in the area and wanted to spend Shabbat with her family. I was met with a well maintained tourist industry and extreme kindness and hospitality – this was comparable to my experience in the rest of Israel.

My time in the Golan left me confused, it didn’t feel as oppressive as the oPT but I knew, in many ways, that it was comparable. My resolve from the trip is to return, to speak to more Israelis living in the Golan and to search out the small number of Syrians still living there, still resisting the occupation. What I witnessed, mainly from an Israeli perspective, was a complete normalisation of life, including the military presence. I left wondering what I would have experienced if I had spent time with the remaining Syrian communities in the area.

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May 28, 2012 · 3:10 pm

Waterfalls and walkers in Ein Gedi

On the other side of the stream I watch on as five elderly ladies help each other climb up a small rocky slope. One at a time each of them grasps onto whatever they can reach with a steely determination. The path they are following weaves its way up through shallow rock pools and passes protruding rocks. Passing me are a unit of off duty soldiers relaxing, chatting and joking. Each pushing their way down the gravel track by which I am stood. They have the look of a group returning from the beach, slightly sun burnt, windswept but happy. Below me I can see other tourists making their way up the side of the small stream. Varying degrees of fitness and determination will decide how far up the valley they go before they place themselves next to a plunge pool for the day.

Ein Gedi is an oasis in the middle of a desert. Waterfalls cut through a barren landscape diving deep into the rock to leave two adjacent blossoming valleys. Each valley has deep plunge pools that attract tourists from across Israel. The whole nature reserve stretches up away from the dead sea leaving you with views across the lowest point on earth and out onto the shores of Jordan. An incomparable location.

What sets Ein Gedi apart however is not the idyllic waterfalls and plunge pools or even the soaring mountain landscape that surrounds it. It is not even the fact that it extends up from the lowest place on earth. What makes Ein Gedi special for me is the people it attracts. Melting together in the scorching dead sea sun are Orthodox Jews, lefty kibbutz dwellers and Israeli Arabs all swimming together. Intermixing amongst all of this are a blend of bemused and astonished internationals, unsure whether to gawp at the beautiful King David Waterfall or the sight of Orthodox Jews splashing in the pools below it. Throughout the nature reserve and beach front, families, friends and foe all come together, transfixed by the natural beauty of their location.

Ein Gedi’s beauty attracts swathes of humans but it also offers a chance to escape the hustle and bustle of the religiosity and intensity which defines so much of Israel’s tourism. If you take one of the paths out of the valley bottom up into the surrounding mountains you can experience a sense of real isolation. Stood at the peak of Mount Yishai overlooking cliffs dropping sharply down to the crafted shoreline of the dead sea it is hard not to feel a sense of wonder at such a landscape. On a still day you might be able to hear the occasional cry of children playing in the valleys below but here on the mountain tops you know you are far from where others will make the effort to walk.

As you make your way back down off the mountain side you walk past people and nature stood side by side, together.

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April 7, 2012 · 7:38 am

From the West Country to the West Bank – an interview with Steve Hynd, in Jayyus, Occupied Palestinian Territory

I was interviewed by Eugene Grant (of Dead Letter Drop fame). Have a read!

“Have I seen awful things? Completely.” Only a few weeks ago, Steve Hynd was observing a protest near Jayyus – a small village in the West Bank, Israel – when the army fired tear gas canisters directly at the crowd as they were running away. One of the three inch-long steel canisters struck a protestor – standing a few feet away from him – in the neck.

For Hynd, the words ‘police tactics’ are a complete misnomer. “Why would you have soldiers stewarding a protest?.” He says such tactics constitute not so much a policing strategy as “an aggressive attack on protest”. Since then, he’s stopped using the term Israeli Defence Force (IDF) – the military wing of the country’s security forces. The phrase, he says, suggests the force is there for defensive purposes, “but I’ve seen it overwhelmingly used for acts of aggression… when you say ‘army’ people understand that armies can be aggressive.”

You can read the full interview here.

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April 3, 2012 · 4:01 pm

Crossing the separation barrier daily – one day honey, one day onions

Stood squinting into the early morning sun a young Israeli soldier leans against the heavy metal gate that is separating the two of us and sighs. The gate is padlocked closed for what he had described to me earlier as ‘security concerns’. The soldier looks tired, worn down and wanting nothing more than a sit down. Instead he is stood talking to me. I ask him (again) why it is taking so long for the workers to pass through the agricultural gate this morning. He answers me in elaborate, almost performed Arabic, “yaum ‘asal, yaum basal” – “One day honey, one day onions”. He stares at me and meets my eye for as long as the strengthening sun will allow before retreating back to the solitude of the shade.

For the two hours preceding this conversation I had been stood watching frustrated agricultural workers waiting to cross the separation barrier to access their own farmland. The separation barrier is built predominantly through the middle of Palestinian farm land and as such was ruled to be illegal by The International Court of Justice at The Hague (in 2004).

The men are grouped in small circles, one circle lit a small fire out of rubbish and wood they have collected. Others are pacing the width of the road promenading up and down discussing the matters of the world. Others however wait with less patience.

All of the men hand in their permits to one Palestinian who has the unofficial job of keeping the peace and trying to organise what order people will pass in. The men pass in groups of 5 past the first turnstile before entering into a cabin where there papers are checked for what seems like an impossibly long time. One man who was waiting (patiently) nodded to the Palestinian holding the pile of permits and said, ‘He plays cards with those permits. You never know if you will wait 10 minutes or 2 hours”. I asked if there was any favouritism and the man responds, “it is good if we are friends”.

The first few groups of Palestinians emerge from the far side of the checkpoint and go their separate ways to their small plots of land. I look up sporadically to see what the soldiers are doing. There are normally four on duty that I can see (one to check vehicles, 2 to ‘control the crowd’ and one to stand their pointing his gun at people – or this is what I have deduced from previous times). Soldier one (who in previous groups has made an effort to look menacing) is stood in a concrete pillar box resting his chin on his semi-automatic weapon making little effort to keep his eyes open. The second (there to check vehicles) is  sitting with feet up on what I have seen in the past used as a second inspection point (which doubles the speed of transit for the workers trying to cross). The final two spend most of their time talking but occasionally tell the men waiting to take a step or two back.

The four soldiers barely look up as a small fist fight breaks out over what I presumed to be a disagreement about who got to pass through the checkpoint next. The soldiers take a couple of steps closer but allow the men waiting to sort themselves out. One of the Palestinians around the fire looks up and sucks air in through his teeth. For the majority of men waiting, they stand patiently looking out at their land to the west. Staring back at them are the soldiers who wait patiently as the minuets left on their shift slip away.

What was notable about this gate monitoring was the lack of anything specific happening. The Palestinians were not tear gassed nor were the soldiers pelted with stones. There was however a low level lack of respect that materialised itself in different forms depending on what side of the locked gate you were stood. There was a understood sub-text that they were not going to make life easy for each other. This is where the power dynamics shine through.

I noticed the Palestinian men would often pretend not to hear the soldiers when they were giving orders or would take a long time to move when they were asked. The response from the soldiers is no less petty but has far more serious repercussions. As I mentioned the power dynamics between the occupied and the occupiers is not equal.

To illustrate, as the workers leave the cabin where there permits are checked the soldiers normally wave on the next group of five men through the turnstile. Today, for no explicable reasons, they waited until the workers were well clear of the gate before allowing others to come forward. This wasted crucial minuets and added to the feeling of frustration.

These small actions (or sometimes lack of actions) meant that at the end of the two hours (the gates opening times) there were over 50 men (and 40 sheep) still waiting to pass when I left the gate at 9:00am. This has serious repercussions on those who do not make it through (loss of income in a desperately poor society). I have monitored this gate many times before and have seen that proactive friendly soldiers can ensure that all men (and animals) pass through without problem and with minimal delay. Today the soldiers did their jobs, but with the minimal possible effort you can imagine.

The tired soldier at the end said that one day is like honey, while another is like onions. He made this  comment with a certain fatalistic edge to his voice. What today has taught me is that if some days are like honey while others are like onions as the soldier suggests, then it is because of his choosing. Soldiers (often young conscripts) have an extraordinary amount of power and control over ordinary people’s lives. For the men who have to wake in the early hours of the morning clutching their permits to pass to their own land, days are rarely like honey.

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April 3, 2012 · 1:14 pm

Is “Death to Arabs” just another football chant?

This article was written for the Football Rascal blog.

“Mavet la ‘aravim” is Hebrew for “Death to Arabs” and is regularly chanted at football grounds throughout Israel. It was recently recorded being sung by some fans after a Beitar Jerusalem victory before the same fans turned on a couple of Palestinian men and attacked them.

A few days later an off duty Israeli soldier in Jerusalem approached me in the street and struck up a conversation about Israeli and European football. He was keen to talk to me about how Israeli football was developing on an international stage. The conversation soured slightly when I asked him what he thought about these ‘Death to Arabs’ chants. His first response hinted at a wider problem, “come on man, those fans are crazy”. He swiftly turned the conversation to why Benayoun was not starting for Arsenal and extolling the virtues of keeping him as captain of their national team.  I tried my luck and once more asked him why this one specific chant is so prolific. He responded bluntly, “Look, it is not nice but it is no worse than what is sung in football stadiums throughout Europe”. Sadly, I know this to be true.

The incident to which I refer was caught on video and shows a few hundred Beitar Jerusalem supporters singing loudly in a shopping mall before the incident escalates. It was reported inHaaretz that some of the fans started to spit at 3 Arab women who were with their children close by. Some men stepped in to help and chased the football fans away but were then turned on themselves and were severally beaten.

One shop owner described the assault saying, “They caught some of them and beat the hell out of them…They hurled people into shops, and smashed them against shop windows”.

The soldier, who asked not to be named, went on to argue that this sort of hatred was a reflection of ‘mindless soccer culture’ and does not represent the views of the majority of Israelis. Although I am sure that this statement holds an element of truth, it misses an undeniable fact that the discrimination that Palestinian Arabs face within Israel is systemic in its nature.

The Mossawa Centre summarizes the situation of Palestinian Arabs (who make up about 20% of the Israeli population) when they say, “the Arab Palestinian citizen of Israel faces direct and indirect discrimination in all aspects of political social and economic life”. In 2011 alone the Coalition against Racism [In Israel] reported that there were 35 pieces of discriminatory legislation in the Knesset, 60 cases of racism committed by elected representatives in Israel and 58 cases of racism committed by the Israeli Army.

The soldier’s assertion that we can write off football chants simply as a reflection of a moronic minority sadly holds a lot of weight in the UK as well as in Israel. Chants, however moronic, do not occur completely out of a social context though. When we hear disgusting racist, homophobic or even anti-Semitic chants on our terraces in the UK they are framed by an undeniable persistence of these problems in our society. The biggest mistake we can make is to pretend that we do not have these problems. Like an alcoholic, the nature of our problem has numbed our ability to spot the problem in itself. We have developed a culture that laughs off problems that when analysed in the cold light of day hold little humour. To acknowledge the nature and severity of the problem is to take our first steps to recovery.

In the UK racism is too often talked about in the past tense as something that John Barnes had to endure back in the ‘bad old days’ (if this season has taught us anything, it is that racism is still alive in British football). There is nothing special about the ‘type of discrimination’ you find inside football stadiums compared to ‘real life’.  The only thing that makes a stadium’s terrace unique is that it can shine a light on a problem which would otherwise lurk in the shadows of society. The sooner we face up to this reality the better.

In Israel we have seen a series of grass-roots initiatives to voice opposition the recent attack and disgraceful chanting. I would suggest however, that the real challenge for Israeli society is to acknowledge the severity of the underlying causes for such chants. The ‘Death to Arabs’ chant (as far as I am aware) is uniquely Israeli but how we tackle prejudice and hatred highlighted through football chants is a universal one. In Israel, I cannot swallow the argument that these chants were just ‘a small moronic minority’ of football supporters – it is clear that this prejudice sits much much deeper. Equally, in the UK I do not accept that we have ‘kicked racism out of football’ any more than we have out of our communities in general.

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March 15, 2012 · 7:20 pm

No father, no food and an unknown future

When I was at school I did a sponsored fast – nothing was to go between my lips for the entire school day. I was raising money for something, a cancer charity maybe. During the morning break-time I remember pushing a doughnut into my porky little face. I scoffed it down and never told a soul about it. Licking my sausage fingers I can remember not feeling even the slightest crack of guilt.

Today, for this first time since that fateful event, I felt guilty. I felt guilty because stood in front of me in the mid-day sun was Hallah Hattab. Hallah is one week into her hunger strike. She is standing in solidarity with her father, Kifah Hattab who is 3 weeks into his hunger strike in an Israeli prison. Kifah is just one of a number who have chosen to go on hunger strike in recent months in protest of Israel’s continued use of administrative detention.

Hallah Hattab is a beautiful 20 something year old that oozes intelligence and holds herself with a confidence which conceals her age.  She has joined others today outside of the International Red Cross in Tulkarm to protest about the conditions that Palestinian prisoners are being held under. Specifically they are looking to highlight Israel’s on-going use of administrative detention. As the Israeli human rights organisation B’tselem states, “according to international law, administrative detention can be used only in the most exceptional cases, as the last means available for preventing danger that cannot be stopped by less harmful means. Israel’s use of administrative detention blatantly violates these restrictions”.

Both men and women gather on the pavement outside of the International Red Cross building sitting on plastic chairs in large circles. Each person holds a photo or a poster of a loved one who is languishing in an Israeli jail. Each of those attending the protest hold their own story of how someone close to them, a son, a brother or a father have been taken away from them. For Hallah it is her father.

I catch Hallah in between interviews with various local, national and international news agencies and ask her how she is feeling. She has the answer to this question down to a fine art, “I am trying to keep my spirits up, I know what I am feeling is nothing compared to what my father is experiencing, but it is still hard”.  Her hazelnut eyes blink at the end of her sentence and then fix themselves on me, attentive and focused on the interview at hand.

After a few seconds silence I ask Hallah how long she will be willing to carry on her hunger strike for and she responds saying that she will continue for “as long as it takes…I want to support my father”. She says these words with real determination. I wonder how far she will be pushed. Khader Adnan recently went on hunger strike for 66 days and very nearly paid the ultimate price. The undertaking that Hallah has taken on is no small one. I am eager to find out what fuels this fire inside of her but we are interrupted at this moment by someone introducing Hallah’s mother.

Her mother stands with us and insists (in perfect English) that she does not speak very good English.  I wonder whether she is just comparing herself to the English that flows from her daughter. Unlike her daughter she looks tired, both physically as well as mentally exhausted. She may not be on her hunger strike but you can see that the situation is taking its toll on her. When I ask her if she is worried about her daughter however her face lights and up she says that she feels ‘nothing but pride’. I half turn back to Hallah to ask about her studies at university and I catch her mother’s proud smile in the corner of my eye.

Frustratingly Hallah is whisked away as some other news agency is wanting to speak to her. I watch on as she gives another interview in another language. I look at her in admiration. I marvel at all she is doing with no father to support her, no food to sustain her and an unknown future to look to. I wonder if I would be able to do what she is doing and I think back to my pathetic failed attempt to fast for one school day.

On the walk back to the house where I am staying I talk to other EAs about Hallah. One colleague rationalises all that she is doing with the simple comment, “it is just her way of coping”.

 

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March 13, 2012 · 2:57 pm

The tale of an Israeli smile

“Do you know what the best thing about tonight is?”. I answered honestly, “No”. The soldier pushes his helmet back up his forehead with the butt his gun and says, “I get to drive these British Land Rovers”. I am not sure how to respond to this and so I sheepishly smile back. My coy response does not deters the soldier, who I later find out is called John, from continuing. “The Palestinians are really suffering you know”. I sensed an old IDF trick coming on, luring lefty NGO types into a false sense of security so I volunteered, “so are the Israelis”. John’s response was telling, “Are you crazy man? You really think the Israelis are suffering in comparison to the Palestinians?”

By this point I will admit that a certain degree of surrealism had been entrenched into the proceedings. I had been called by a local Palestinian at around 1:00 in the morning. He said that the IDF were in his house and they going to arrest his brothers and I should come quickly. As I turned the corner to his house I was met by at least 3 jeeps and an unknown number of soldiers. At first I negotiated a compromise about where my colleague and I could stand to monitor the proceedings. A few minutes later though one of the soldiers beckoned me over and at first started to interrogate me before letting himself slip into casual conversation.

Ignoring the growing sense of irony I pushed on with John, “A lot of Israelis are living in fear, they feel scared all the time, it is not good to live your life in fear”. The IDF soldier, now the voice of rationality in this increasingly bizarre conversation chirped back, “I know that but this fear cannot justify what we are doing here in the West Bank”. I trailed off, “No…of course not”. John was either a master at using reverse psychology or he was an Israeli soldier who was genuinely concerned about the Palestinians.

In the following 5 minutes we talked about the London bombings and how this had fuelled a growing suspicion of Muslim communities in London and what steps could be taken to breakdown this divide. I talked about multi faith projects I have been involved in and he listened with genuine interest. Our conversation meandered easily through politics and religion. After a while I tried to steer the conversation back to the reality in which we found ourselves.

As casually as one can ask an occupying soldier I said, “so, what are you guys up to this evening?”. I was meant to be getting answers to why they were terrorising a community in the middle of night for no apparent reason. Instead I sounded like I was flirting. I clarified, “what are you’re…ummm…objectives?”. The soldier laughed, smiled and said, “We are here for security, I think you know what that means”. I smiled and nodded as if this sort of response comes up all the time and I knew exactly what he meant. Of course I didn’t really know but I guessed this either meant they were there for no reason at all, or there was some super secret army reason for them being there that he couldn’t let on about. I suspected the former.

I glanced around and watched a collection of silhouettes on the roof tops. Men looking on to try and see what the IDF were doing. John caught my glances and reassured me, “they are just curious, there is nothing to be afraid of”. My colleague was stood 20 yards back nervously trying to work out what on earth I could be still talking about after 10 minutes or so of conversation. I knew it was time to draw this surreal conversation to a close. To do this, you would ordinarily ask a closed question like, “Is there anything else?” (a standard way to close what was meant to be an interrogation). On this night though I pushed my thumb into the palm of my hand and said, “I am really sorry, I don’t want to appear to be rude or anything, but if I stay and chat to you here for too long everyone will want to know what I was talking to the soldier about. It might cause some problems tomorrow. I hope you understand”. I was apologising to an occupying soldier for having to break off our nice little midnight chat. Once again, a big smile spreads across John’s face and he beams, “of course, I hear the Israelis have got a bit of bad reputation around these parts”.

As I walked back to my colleague, I felt two completely contradictory emotions. I could feel the cold metal being aimed at my back as I walked away, soldiers poised with suspicion ready to strike at any moment. The cold harsh reality of occupation – soldiers storming houses in the middle of night, interrogating, harassing and intimidating. Then, in complete contrast to this I felt John’s warmth. In my mind’s eye I saw his smile and could hear his soft laughter. Within a few minutes John had shown me a sign a hope and optimism that I know will stay with for days to come.

What will stay with the villagers however is another night time incursion, another family traumatised by interrogation. Mothers and fathers terrified at the prospect of their sons being arrested. Young men having another sleepless night living under the constant threat of arrest. They know too well that being a young male is enough to have you dragged from your house in the middle of the night with no explanation. This will stay with them for longer than just a few days, this will be with the for the rest of their lives.

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March 8, 2012 · 4:06 pm

The last 24 hours – an extract from my diary.

This is a short extract from my diary (with the naughty bits removed) covering the last 24 hours.

18:25 – I get a text message from one of our local contacts asking if I want to play football in the village with some of the other guys. It sounds like a laugh so I pull on my Arsenal shirt (staying neutral in the Barcelona/Real Madrid turf war) and head out. The two guys I meet are wearing jeans, jackets and leather shoes and I wonder whether my tracksuit trousers and football shirt looks a bit eager. This feeling is confounded when we stop and eat freshly made falafel (it’s hard to say no to Palestinian food). We arrive at the pitch (floodlights and all) and I start to get the feeling that something is not quite right.

18:45 – We spend over an hour warming up (I say we, the two guys who I arrive with are sat on the side – of course they are not playing, they’ve just eaten). This warm up is more exercise than I have done for a very long time. Apparently F.C Jayyus take their warm ups (and football in general) very seriously. I try to cover up my inherent lack of ability and my self-created lack of fitness by making jokes. The guys I came with laugh, everyone else looks on with growing concern at the amount of sweat dripping down this English boy’s face.

The coach barks instructions at players and I occasionally hear my name mentioned (that’s right, this village football team has a coach, and he barks). I try my best not to mess up but get the feeling that I am not the foreign super signing that F.C Jayyus had been looking out for.

21:00 – I survived it, just. One shoulder in the face, and only the occasional noticeable mistake and I think I survived my first (and possibly last) training session with F.C Jayyus. I walk off the pitch knowing full well that my legs will be stiff tomorrow but pretending that this sort of exercise is par for the course for me. It was great to meet some new faces in the village and to have a kick around with them – I wonder if that feeling is mutual? Either way, they are eager for me to come back to the coffee shop with them to watch Champions League football. I excuse myself, miming that I have to get up early tomorrow for checkpoint monitoring (I always thought the Jungle Book was hard but this take charades to a whole new level). I walk away from the group feeling proud that I have turned down the chance to watch football in favour of getting to bed on time – perhaps this whole experience is making me grow up.

23:30 – It’s pathetic and I know it. I have to be up in four and half hours but I could not resist watching Arsenal play (second leg trying to come back from a 4-0 first leg deficit against A.C Milan). Arsenal go 3-0 by half time and I am on cloud nine…and then…nothing. We (because when you support a club you are a part of the collective) crash out of the Champions League and any thought of silverware for the season goes out the window with it. To top it off, my home club, Cheltenham Town drop 3 crucial points in the race for League 2 promotion. I go to bed with my mind swarming with football. How can I love something that consistently causes me so much misery?

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1:20 – I am awoken (2 hours after I went to sleep – not that I am bitter) with a phone call to say the IDF are in the village making an arrest (possible arrests – plural). After a quick assessment we decide it is too dangerous to be wandering the streets so we decide to monitor the situation from our rooftop staying in mobile contact with others around the village. It is an eerie feeling to see these silhouettes of men on roof tops in the early hours, all whispering reports to each other. It does however work as an informal information network.

2:30 – An hour later we receive confirmation that a local has been arrested. We can see IDF jeeps buzz around the outskirts of the village but only occasionally see them in the village. These late night visits (often not to make arrests) are happening far too often. I go back to bed, my mind now buzzing not with triviality of football, but of the guy who has just been bundled out of his house in the middle of the night – where will he end up, what will happen to him, what (if anything) will he be charged with?

4:55 – Alarms, I hate alarms. It does its job though and I am up to monitor the agricultural gate to the North of the village which open 5:30 – 6:30 every morning. I arrive and the IDF are parked with their headlights on full beam facing straight at where I monitor the gate from. I stand there, centre stage, performing the worst solo performance they are likely to ever see (essentially a tired Englishman staring blankly at them). After a while a small trickle of farmers flow past and I mutter a few good mornings. The Israelis have made a concerted effort to encourage farmers not to use this gate (as the road on the other side runs straight through a bit of land marked for settlement expansion) but still the locals use it. I wander back to the house feeling cold and tired.

08:45 – A Palestinian with an Israeli ID is coming to pick us up and to drive us to the other side of the separation barrier. We pass through the checkpoint and our bags are x-rayed and a sniffer dog sniffs every nook and cranny of the car. The young girl behind the desk has a staring competition with my passport photo (my photo wins every time) and I am asked why I visited Egypt (A: “I was on holiday”…my mind runs through potential comedy answers and I stop myself from laughing by making a sort of snorting noise). She looks at me and waves me through.

09:30 – We meet a local farmer and he walks us around his land showing the problems that they face (settlement expansion, military activity, water rationing etc). Inside a hut on his land we drink sweet tea and point at maps laid out in front of us. He shows us how the access to his land is being controlled (you need to have a permit to access your own farmland), restricted (they have built a massive separation barrier through the middle of his land – twice) and made unreliable (he had been waiting for months to get a permit). Worst of all, it can be taken away at any minute. We are shown his neighbours land which has been literally blown away – it is now a stone quarry providing material for massive ‘settler only’ road upgrading schemes. Areas all around his land have been claimed by the Israeli government as state property (using British mandate laws I should add – sigh…I love the BBC, tea and cake at 4pm and The Beatles but I sometimes struggle to find anything else to be patriotic about and being in Israel/oPT is not helping this).

We are joined during the day by a Dutch delegation who have decided to spend their free time working as unforced free labour on the land. For some this might seem an odd choice for a holiday but I think I ‘get it’. It is beautiful land they are working on and it is rewarding work. At the very least I ‘get it’ more than those fighting for sun beds in Magaluf.

17:00 – After a long day in the sun in the fields this is exactly what I don’t want. I am sat on a concrete bench in the seam zone (the area in between the separation barrier and the Green Line) waiting for a taxi driver who is over 1 hour late staring at the backend of a checkpoint I am not allowed to enter (it is for workers only). When the taxi does show up (with no explanation for the delay) I need to be driven in a huge loop around and through a car terminal. No one checks any of my nooks and crannies on the way back through.

 

I am currently serving as an Ecumenical Accompanier in the West Bank – follow the hyperlink for more information.

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February 27, 2012 · 2:45 pm

No man is an island

The English poet John Donne once wrote, “No man is an island entire of itself”. This assertion has never faced a more literal challenge however than through the story of Haney Ameer.

Mr Ameer lives on the outskirts of Mas-ha just outside of Qalqiliya in the West Bank. Back in 2003 his house was situated on the path of the proposed separation barrier, 80% of which is built on Palestinian land. When he refused to leave his house and his land the Israeli government decided to build the barrier around him. His house is now surrounded on all four sides by either walls, fences or the separation barrier. He lives in what looks like a high security prison except he now holds the keys for the one small gate that provides access to his property.

On one side of his house is the 8 meter high concrete separation barrier that scars the landscape for as far as the eye can see. All over the wall there is battle between local graffiti artists and the Israeli Defence Force’s (IDF) censoring white paint. On the other side of his house there is an illegal Israeli settlement which is cut off from him by a barbed wire fence. Flanking each end of his property are locked security gates leading to the military road that track the separation barrier. He is hemmed into his small plot of land on all sides.

On the approach to his house our driver and translator rings ahead for him to come and meet us. We pull up alongside the 8 meter high concrete slabs to walk the last few meters. Next to the barrier there is a small rusted metal door from where Mr Ameer emerges. Between 2003 and 2006 he lived in his property not owning these keys to access his own property. For three years he relied on the IDF to let him through the security gate each day to return to his own property. It was not uncommon in those days for friends to throw food parcels over the wall so he could feed his wife and children.

We sit outside his broken and bruised property in the fading evening sun. He explains he cannot fix any of the broken windows, crumbling walls or holes in the roof as he cannot get a permit off the Israelis to ‘build’ on his own land.

I ask him if he ever considered leaving. He responds with a story of isolation and incredible courage which is characterised by a lack of options. The Israelis offered him a lot of money and a chance to rebuild a bigger and better house on more land wherever he wanted in return for his land. He refused. Why he refused is a mixture of a connection to a family home that has been with him for years, and a slightly more harsh reality. The Palestinians who lived nearby warned him that if he sold up to the Israelis he would no longer be considered a ‘Palestinian’, he would be isolated. An ironic threat given his circumstances.

Regardless of his motives, Mr Ameer now finds himself in a physical limbo, not on either side of the separation barrier. He insists that if he could turn back the clock then he would do nothing differently. I ask what he hopes for the future and he bleakly responds, “nothing, I will die like this”. This response sends a shiver down my spine as I realise that this is quite possible. The occupation has come to a point where a family can be living in 60 by 40 meter virtual quarantine and the world does not bat an eyelid.

Mr Ameer has the look of a man who has told his story a million times before. He sits back in his chair as if this is a day to day occurrence for people all around the world as he recalls the details of his isolation. I wonder whether this is just his way of dealing with what is an unimaginable daily infringement on his personal liberty.

The meeting comes to a close and he walks us back to the rusted metal gate. Unlocking the padlock he looks up at the separation barrier and then at the floor. His body forgets what he is doing for a brief moment but his hands are still unlocking the door they have unlocked everyday for the last 6 years.

We leave him on the other side of the barrier. I cannot decide whether I have extreme admiration for this man, or if I just want to shake him by the scruff of the neck and tell him to move with his family to a new house. I suspect if I did the latter, he would sit me down, light a cigarette and tell me to not be so impatient. I am impatient though, I don’t want to think of this man sitting in his house, his virtual prison, until the day dies. There has to be an alternative ending to this tragic story.

The occupation restricts peoples movement, freedoms and lives on a day to day basis. Mr Ammer’s story is unique only because of his physical proximity to the separation barrier.

Haney Ameer will sleep tonight though knowing no one can tell him to leave his family house, not the IDF and certainly not a foreign human rights monitor like myself.

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February 13, 2012 · 12:37 pm

Qalqiliya checkpoint and the impossible question – why?

When you awake at 3:00am everything is a blur. The edges of your vision slip away to nothingness, your eyelids drop with every slip of the mind and your senses are numbed. Unless that is, you are stood at Qalqiliya checkpoint in the West Bank. Here your senses are heightened from the cooking meat, the brewing coffee and the mass of humanity. The harsh strip lighting rips through any thought of sleep and ensures you stay with the present, however much you and all around you wish to escape it. What cannot be so easily explained however are the emotions that sit so heavily on the pit of your stomach as you stand in the early hours counting people through the entrance of the checkpoint.

Qalqiliya checkpoint is situated to the north of the city and in the first few hours of opening it will see thousands pass through its gates. On this particular morning I watch 3,000 bodies slip past me, all on their way to try and make a day’s living on the other side of the barrier. Mostly the faces of these men look to me with a registering smile but little else. I am not sure what I expect from my endless cheery “good mornings” but I certainly do not get it. On occasions I get nods, mutters and silent acknowledgments.

I cannot, and do not blame them for this response. For them, it is another freezing morning where they have had to awake well before 3:00am to queue to get past a barrier that an occupying power has built across their land. For them, they have seen little improvements in condition or speed of transit since the international community started monitoring the checkpoint. My EAPPI colleagues and I provide invaluable data to the UN, but for them we are now part of the whole degrading process. I am shocked by the lack of humanity, but they are the victims of it. I am appalled by the humiliation of passing through the checkpoint but they have to endure it. I am saddened to the point of tears building behind my eyes by every one of them not being able to lift their gaze from the floor but it is their reality, not mine.

Cutting into this reality is the continuous voice that is devoid of any sense of irony when it keeps demanding “Yallah yallah” move move. A never ending list of impossible demands reverberates from the PA system above our heads. They keep reminding anyone who is listening that they must move faster. How they expect people to do this is never elaborated upon. A faceless voice demanding the impossible.

This is the reality of my first session monitoring Qalqiliya checkpoint. When you report on human rights violations and how International Humanitarian Law is being violated, the first rule is to show the victim with agency – the ability to influence and change the situation they find themselves in. Here, every aspect of life is controlled. Whether we are talking about access to land, water or food, or the ability to build, work, learn or get medical treatment. Everything is controlled, restricted and made unreliable. In light of this, all I can offer now are the harsh realities of passing through Qalqiliya checkpoint the best as I can recall them.

As I stamp my feet in the bitter cold I try one last “Good Morning” to another body slipping past me. This time though he stops, looks at me, raises a wry smile, and responds “leish?”…. why? Why is it a good morning? For this I have no answer.

Tomorrow I am getting up a few hours later to monitor an agricultural gate that opens before sunrise. At the same time, many of the same men will be starting the same humiliating regime all over again.

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