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Eyewitness Accounts:
Letter from Gaza: Summer in the Strip
15 Palestinians killed, Sharon: 'A great success'
Letter from Gaza: Rising Up from the Dust
Diary from Aisa 20/07/02

Letter from Gaza: Summer in the Strip

Monday, July 22, 2002

Posted by Jennifer Loewenstein

(Gaza) – F-16 Warplanes zoom overhead daily. In Rafah they've been breaking the sound barrier. At night you can watch flares light up the sky so that the Israeli soldiers in their fortified bunkers all along the perimeter of the Gaza Strip and surrounding the illegal Jewish settlements on the interior can survey the area.

The staccato sound of gunshots in the distance is so familiar I pay no attention.

Up close it's something different. A boy has been shot in the back beneath the shoulder.

He is crying and lying on his stomach on a stretcher as medical personnel attend to him. A reporter from Palestine Space TV is filming him now instead of the cloud of thick brown dust rushing upwards from the tunnel between Rafah and Egypt that the Israelis have just blown up. Illegal weapons smuggling, you know: can't have this sort of thing. The logic is perverse but accepted. The military superpower mini-state can test its state of the art technology on anyone and anything. Palestinians are not allowed to arm themselves even with home-made fireworks.

Fair's fair.

The boy is sweating and breathing heavily now. The attempt to keep him alive is failing. His body goes limp on the stretcher and we watch him die. "What do you mean by filming this!" An indignant soldier shouted at the cameraman. Bad P.R. for Israel you know, Israel – the innocent victim of the poverty-stricken, unemployed multitudes of the Gaza Strip. Shoot the TV bastard. They do, but miss, and the cameraman gets to go home another day.

In an incident of heavy fighting in the Rafah refugee camp Iyad peers out from behind a wall to see what he can see. Two people lie dead on the ground nearby. Someone fires at him and the bullet grazes his ear as he ducks away. The sound rushes through his head and he runs for his life, trying to reach the relative safety of his home in the Yibne block of the camp but his shock is such that, after 20 years of living in this prison, he can't find his home. He is dazed with fear. Twice he passes his home before being able to recognise it, and when he finally does he walks in, sits down where his family is eating their dinner, and eats in silence until all the food is gone. He has no recollection of this. His brother tells him about it later – about the blank, crazy look on his face, and about how he recognised nobody there. Iyad has seen many people die. His own life is the gift of Fortune.

Now we are sitting in Iyad's home eating hot stuffed grape leaves. Flies settle on the food, on our faces, hands, and feet. It does no good to brush them away. Sweat drips down our faces as we sit on the floor around the food. The children are dusty and hot. All of Rafah is without electricity today – the hottest day of the summer so far. The door is open so that a stale breeze can drift in now and then. It carries with it an overpowering smell of sewage. A huge, flying cockroach zooms in, hits the wall, and drops to the ground near our dinner. It is the sixth one this evening. Samira shrieks and someone smashes it with a shoe and sweeps it back outside. The quiet, stagnant evening engulfs us again. The temperature will drop to 85 degrees Fahrenheit tonight. Iyad lights the kerosene lamp when it's too dark to see.

How do you bear it? I ask. It's an embarrassingly stupid question. What choice do they have?

How did he bear the bullet in his leg, and the prison sentence for passing out PFLP flyers on campus? How did he bear the interrogation? Or the smell of the sackcloth placed over his head in the interrogation room, the cloth with the vomit, spit, and urine of thousands of others? But it didn't make him talk. Neither did the beatings or the insults or the chains around his hands and feet. Neither did the kicks to his chest and testicles. Neither did sleep deprivation for 18 days. He was released in two months. Got off easy.

I have yet to meet an adult male in Occupied Palestine who hasn't been to prison or seen a brother or father sent there. The crime? Being Palestinian, of course; wanting to live on their own land in peace.

There are rumours again that Gaza will soon be invaded; hot, weary Gaza, the Palestinian Alcatraz. People are too tired to be tense this time. In the office, Leila wonders aloud what will happen to the people like her who are living in Gaza illegally – Palestinians who came here or to the West Bank on three month visitors' visas and stayed because they had no other place to go. What will happen to the people who are living in this God-forsaken prison without permission? The ironies are endless.

At the checkpoint an ambulance with its red lights flashing waits for permission to pass. Two hours later, when the traffic is finally allowed to move, it inches forward with the other vehicles. I never found out whether its sick or wounded passenger lived or died.

Tuesday, July 23, 2002

Posted by Arjan El Fassed

(Ram, occupied Palestine, 23 July 2002) – Ayman missed his second birthday. He was only 18 months old. Mohammad did not pass the age of four, Diana was only five, Mona was killed with her children, four-years old Subhi and six-years old Mohammad, Mohammad al-Shawa died with his five-years old son, Diana Matar was only two months old and Ala Matar did not even get into high school, he was only eleven. What on earth did they do wrong? They were sentenced, not allowed to live in freedom, not to live at all. Ariel Sharon called this 'a great success'. He added, 'we of course have no interest in striking civilians and are always sorry over civilians who were struck.' The statistics show that he lies. With 1,669 Palestinians killed and 19,792 injured, of which most are civilians, who on earth can believe this freely walking war criminal?

'We are accused of terrorism
If we dare to write about the remains of a homeland
That is scattered in pieces and in decay
In decadence and disarray
About a homeland that is searching for a place
And about a nation that no longer has a face'

I read hypocritical condemnations by the British Foreign Office calling the air strike 'unacceptable and counterproductive' and extending their 'sympathy to the families of the children killed'. It was that same Foreign Office that allows the export of British components for US F16 war planes sold to Israel.

All countries that still supply Israel with arms are complicit in this war crime. The United States, Britain, the Netherlands and other countries supply Israel with the tools, the support and the arms to erase the existence of Palestinians on their own land. Will the perpetrators face trial? Did Sharon and Ben Eliezer by ordering these killings expose themselves to criminal prosecution? Let's see if there is something called 'universal justice'? Is the principle of universal jurisdiction just ink on paper or is the scenario that the pilot who fired the missile that levelled the five homes in a Gaza City neighbourhood, will find himself persecuted by arrest warrants in various states around the world a very real and not so distant possibility?

I read the hypocrisy of the European Union. How many times (I forgot the number) did the Union condemn extra-judicial executions? What was the immediate result of all these condemnations? Zero, nothing. Yes, the European Union can impose sanctions against Robert Mugabe, only yesterday, the Union unanimously agreed to step up sanctions against Zimbabwe. The European Union has condemned almost every single human rights violation committed by Israel but these words of condemnation merely remain ink on paper.

I read that spokesman for the United Nations, Fred Eckhard has said that 'Israel has a legal and moral responsibility to take all measures to avoid the loss of innocent life'. That same global body did not want to know the truth about what happened in Jenin and Nablus. A body that is afraid to really support what it says in hundreds of resolutions and even in its own charter.

It is nice of Kofi Annan to call on the government of Israel 'to halt such actions and to conduct itself in a manner that is fully consistent with international humanitarian law', but who will ensure that this is done? Who will guarantee a nation under occupation being protected against the brutal manners of a colonial occupier?

'Self-defence', says Gideon Meir, justifying state terror. But if you want to defend a country, its borders must be set. Expanding territory is not 'self-defence', oppressing a nation is not 'self-defence', depriving children of the right to live, the right to education, the right to work, and the right to development cannot be termed 'self-defence'. No Gideon, this was not 'a precise Israeli air strike against a known terrorist', this is an act of state terror.

The key point about terrorism, on which almost everyone agrees, is that it is politically motivated. This is what distinguishes it from, say, murder or football hooliganism. Terrorism is calculated to terrorise the public or a particular section of it. In the American definition, however, terrorism can never be inflicted by a state. Is the understatement 'self-defence' terrorism inflicted by a state?

Denying that states can commit acts of terror is generally useful, because it gets Israel and its allies, off the hook in a variety of situations.

Interestingly, the American definition of terrorism is a reversal of the word's original meaning, given in the Oxford English Dictionary as 'government by intimidation'. Today it usually refers to intimidation of governments.

Recently and in the past, Western countries, in particularly those that support Israel, tend to define 'terrorism' in such a way that acts describable as 'terror' are applied mostly to resistance groups and rarely to states. According to Israel all acts of resistance by the Palestinians are forms of terrorism, including acts against Israel's occupation forces. This kind of attribution of the term 'terrorism' renders it meaningless.

In 1948 the nations of the world adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which provides that 'if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, human rights should be protected by the rule of law'.

International humanitarian law prohibits attacks on the civilian population as such, as well as individual citizens. Acts or threats of violence, the primary purpose of which is to spread terror among the civilian population, are prohibited.

Israel's use of terror has been qualitatively and quantitatively much higher than that of the Palestinians. The number of civilians killed as the result of actions by Israel, both before its creation and after, has far exceeded the number of Israeli civilians killed by Palestinian groups.

Dehumanisation by way of political language has an anaesthetising effect and it paralyses normal human empathy and disrupts moral inhibitions. Ariel Sharon's insistence on mopping up '2,000 terrorists' in Sabra and Shatila in 1982 was virtually a mandate for the indiscriminate slaughter of 2,000 Palestinians. The predominant terminology employed by Israeli spokespersons, the American administration (and Foxnews for that matter) is an additional factor in creating conditions in which human rights violations and gross violations of humanitarian law, including war crimes are tolerated.

The level of what has been tolerated has been moved a step again. Every minute the world remains silent and inactive the level has been set further. More is tolerated. Someone has to stop this. Someone has to take action. Before it is too late.

Tuesday, July 23, 2002

Posted by Jennifer Loewenstein

(Gaza City, Occupied Palestine) -- Heaps of concrete, broken pillars with wire sticking out, people's shoes, clothes, bedding, strewn haphazardly among the rubble, dust everywhere, a hole in the landscape where a two-story apartment was just yesterday: the hardest part for me is how familiar it has all become. Jenin, Rafah, Nablus, Khan Yunis, Ramallah, Gaza City. The Israelis are masters in the art of destruction. And as I wander through another mass of wrecked lives I'm struck by the sense of deja vu that comes over me.

Can you begin to imagine what it must be like to be sleeping in your home one minute and half dead from a missile attack the next? I say "half dead" of course, because the dead don't have to reckon with beginning all over again, with the loss of loved ones, the loss of home and livelihood, the death of the past up to now, and the unfathomable uncertainty of the future. I remember Walt Whitman's poetic elegy to war, "I Saw the Vision of Armies" in which he remarks that it's those who go on living who suffer. This couldn't be more vividly expressed than in the faces of those drifting through the wreckage of their former lives. And it will take on another dimension in the inevitable response Israel just created through its complete disregard for human life and dignity.

No army struck back at the F-16s flying overhead last night. This is the continuation of the We Kill - You Die philosophy of war adhered to by the world and regional superpowers. Fifteen people died sleeping. Eight were children. Six belonged to the same family. They won't have names and faces in the US media. The children following me at the scene of the devastation assured me of this. "America thinks we are all terrorists" one young boy says. "So look at this," he says pointing to the ruins, "this is America's Peace." Another child has collected the pieces of a missile. "Made in America," he says looking at me for my reaction. It is sobering that the children of Palestine are so politically astute.

Around 11:45 last night I awoke to the sound of low-flying warplanes. They were circling in the skies above Gaza City seeking another product of their 35 year old occupation; another product of 54 years of subjugation and displacement. We're not allowed to say this, though. It suggests that the US and its Israeli client have a direct responsibility in the creation of militant resistance movements; that the Arrogance of Power in our every step has left bitterness in its wake.

The mission was to kill Salah Shehadeh, a 48 year old leader of Hamas (The Islamic Resistance Movement) in Gaza and founder of the military wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassem Brigades. Mission accomplished. The man whose resistance movement Israel once nurtured and funded is now dead. His brother Fayiz confirmed it on the telephone to a fieldworker at the Mezan Centre for Human Rights office early this morning. Shehadeh's wife and three of his daughters died with him. Another victory for Israeli-American Justice. Fair trials and Due Process are reserved for the White; democracy a privilege for the rich. Yes, and the academic and intellectual elites will write verbose articles defending Israel's policies. What do you suggest Israel do with such people???, they will ask, in all sincerity, wondering how anyone can stoop to defending the poverty-stricken, dispossessed multitudes without being suspect themselves. I see that glance again and again: she's a traitor. She doesn't know what she's doing. She supports terrorism. Openly. There ought to be laws against this kind of thing.

Just wait. John Ashcroft is still in office.

Yusuf took us into his destroyed sewing shop. Fifteen industrial sewing machines ruined beyond repair. Each cost $1,000. All the fabrics in his shop lie saturated in grey dust, missile fallout. The plight of the neighbour. He has no insurance. No second chance. How many homes are damaged irreparably? How many children will not be able to sleep for weeks now? Would you like to see what happened to my car? --Someone asks me.

That's OK. I can already see the metallic shell sitting mute in the distance.

What will it take for this insanity to end? How many articles must we write? How many more pictures must we take? How many more children must die in their sleep, or playing their games? How many more buildings will be reduced to twisted heaps of steel, concrete, and dust? How many more lives have to be ruined? How many more times will the warplanes fly overhead on a mission to murder? How many more dollars will be spent in support of state terror? How many more years must a people live exiled in their own land? How much longer can people be silent? When do we rise again together to stop the brutality?

Dear Friends, Hello from Nablus. This is Aisa.

Thank you very much for emailing me. I am very happy to read supportive emails from you.

I arrived in Nablus yesterday afternoon. It was a long journey.... On 18th afternoon, I left Jerusalem for Nablus, but the main checkpoint (Huwwara) to go to Nablus was closed and I was denied to get through. So I went to another checkpoint called Hamra and negotiated with the Israeli soldiers. Fortunately my friends and I managed to get through the checkpoint there. It was not a good time to walk into Nablus. So we stayed in Al Fara refugee camp near the checkpoint for one night. Yesterday morning, we left the camp in the early morning and started to walk for Nablus.

Because the IDF (Israel Defence Force) destroyed many parts of the road to get to Nablus, walking is the only way to reach Nablus. We walked for nearly three hours... On the way to Nablus, two Bedouin boys came down from the hill with their donkeys and helped us to carry our baggage. After arriving in the village near Nablus, we were invited for coffee and tea by a Palestinian family. The family saw that we were taking photos of their neighbour's demolished house, and spoke to us. The reason why the house was destroyed by the IDF is that members of Hamas lived in the house.

They were living with their family there. When the IDF came to the house, the family members apart from the two members of Hamas were ordered to come out from the house, and the IDF soldiers got into the house.

Afterwards, the two members got killed by the soldiers in the house. The dead bodies were taken out from the house, and the house was destroyed (maybe bombed).

After having tea and coffee, we went to the Askar refugee camp in Nablus to hear about the situation of the camp from the residents. According to some residents in the camp, the IDF tanks and soldiers came to the camp on 18th afternoon (11 am to 2 pm), and started to shoot the houses in the camp randomly. Many children have been mentally effected because of regular shooting and bombing by the IDF. We saw the house which was demolished on 19th early morning (2:30 am) in the new Askar camp. This is the house where one of the attacker of the bus (to go to the Settlement) incident happened near Nablus 4 or 5 days ago was living. When the IDF tanks came to the house, the attacker's family members (father, mother, brothers and sisters) were staying there. The IDF soldiers ordered them to leave the house immediately. The members had no time to take their belongings with them. Afterwards the house was bombed, and father and brothers got arrested. They might be deported to the Gaza Strip. The mother and sisters became homeless...

It is a collective punishment against attackers or suicide bombers' family members, which can not be justified with any reason. At night I stayed in the Balata refugee camp to act as a human shield. The houses where the suicide bombers' families live are under the threat of demolition by the IDF. This is also a collective punishment against the families' members who have nothing with suicide bombings. I do not agree with suicide bombings at all. However, I can not find any reasons to demolish houses where the bombers' families live. Demolition of the houses means destruction of the families' daily lives and evidence of their lives. It is really horrible. Last night, the IDF started to bomb near the camp at 11:30 pm, but it was not so heavy although once I heard the big bombing sound. No houses got demolished in the camp fortunately. I will act as a human shield in the same house tonight. Yes, the curfew was lifted this morning in Nablus (maybe until 1:00pm). That is why I am in the Internet cafe now. Many people are having shopping to get foods on the streets at the moment. Curfew had been imposed on people in Nablus for 7 days.... I have to go now. I will try to send you more information about the situation in Nablus when I can access to the Internet next time.

Take care!

Aisa KIYOSUE