Refugees in Our Own Land: Chronicles From a Palestinian Refugee Camp in Bethlehem
184
Refugees in Our Own Land: Chronicles From a Palestinian Refugee Camp in Bethlehem
184Hardcover
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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780745316529 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Pluto Press |
| Publication date: | 10/20/2001 |
| Pages: | 184 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.32(w) x 8.46(h) x 0.70(d) |
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CHAPTER 1
Ordinary Days in Dheisheh (2000)
Wednesday, October 4, 2000
Dear Diary,
The numbness I've been feeling for the past six days continues. I can't seem to be able to sleep much these days, and so when I got up at dawn this morning, I tried to convince myself not to turn on the computer or radio and just go up on the roof and have my coffee. I feel like I'm going crazy.
But without even thinking, I made coffee, turned on the radio to the local Bethlehem 2000 station and started downloading 352 new emails in my inbox. I feel so numb. About a dozen letters of solidarity arrived from teenagers in Burj el-Shemali Refugee Camp in south Lebanon. I'm printing them out and faxing them to the local Bethlehem TV station and to local journalists in Gaza and Ramallah. It is important for Palestinians here to know what Palestinians in the Diaspora are saying and doing, and about all the demonstrations taking place in Europe, the U.S. and Canada. And vice versa of course. Reports and photos about the massacre being committed against the Palestinians here need to reach people in Lebanon, France, the United States, England and Canada. After a few hours of reading emails, forwarding, translating, faxing, calling Gaza and Ramallah for news, I start feeling the pain in my stomach. To escape, as if there is an escape, I turn on the TV and watch live coverage on the Palestine Satellite station and the local Bethlehem TV stations. Israeli soldiers are massacring our people. Meanwhile, the international community is watching in silence! When will this injustice end?
If Mohammed al-Durra was a 12-year-old Israeli boy and we had killed him in cold blood, U.S. president Clinton would have screamed to the high heavens that we are terrorists. How can the world we live in be so unjust? When will this nightmare we've been living in for the past 52 years come to an end?
Nobody in Dheisheh is able to go to work except those who work in Bethlehem. Life has come to a standstill. Each "Zone A" area is sealed off, with Israeli Merkava tanks, from other areas. We can't get from Bethlehem to Hebron in the south, or to Jerusalem in the north. All we can spend our days doing is to follow the news closely. Everyone's eyes here are glued to their TV set every waking hour of the day, nothing else.
I went and watched TV with my neighbors yesterday. Nobody wants the clashes to end. Everyone here wants an all-out confrontation with the Israeli military and to hell with it. There is so much desperation and people are under so much pressure that they feel this is it this time: it is either us or them; it is either the end of Israel's occupation of us or our death, and if the Israelis are going to bomb us and level us to the ground, then so be it. "One bomb will do it for Dheisheh," remarks Muyasar, my 34-year-old neighbor and mother of six.
"We'll all die instantly," I reply.
"Dying is better than going on the way we have been," she laments.
Every woman I talk to here says the same. The mood is so different this time. People are just fed up with Israel's aggression. They are fed up with the Palestinian Authority's corruption; with the shameful so-called peace agreements that have turned this place into an apartheid state, a Bantustan, a West Bank divided into 200 isolated islands. People are fed up with a silent world that doesn't give a damn about us just because we are Arabs. I grab Marianna, Muyasar's adorable 2-year-old daughter, and hold her tight to my chest. I adore the kid and love to play with her every day.
"I'm crazy about you auntie Muna," she giggles as she kisses me and wraps her tiny arms around my neck.
I take a deep breath, sniffing her sweet soapy scent. She, her sisters and brother are the only thing that has kept me sane these past few days. Don't they deserve a better future? A future with political and civil rights! Don't they deserve a decent education, a life without turmoil, a life outside the damn "Zone A" we are cooped up inside? Or don't Palestinian kids count in today's world! Are we less human? The women here are angry at the scenes on the TV showing Israeli troops evacuating Israeli settlers from the settlement of Nitsarim in Gaza under the cover of the night. "Who will evacuate our women, children and men?" snaps Marianna's grandmother, Um Ra'ed.
As we sat there drinking tea with sage and sharing our sadness and depression, Marianna's father came home with guests for the night: a man, his very pregnant wife, and their 2-year-old daughter. Their house is in the midst of the exchange of gunfire in the nearby town of Beit Sahour. The wife and girl were in such a state of hysterics that they refused to sleep in the house another night. So they came to Dheisheh for the night. I looked at the woman, who expects to deliver her baby any day now, and tried so hard to hold back the tears as she complained of the pain in her belly. She was a nervous wreck. Isn't she human? Doesn't she deserve to have someone evacuate her?
I took Marianna's oldest sister, Malak, and walked down to the store for some groceries. The clashes started at the end of the month and none of us here has received our September salaries yet. So we buy on credit and borrow some shekels here and there from each other. It's funny how we live. None of us has enough money for a donkey ride out of this place, let alone for a plane ticket. Perhaps this is why the anger at the affluent Palestinian leadership. There sure is money in this country, but only in the hands of the few. The rest live month by month and put their fate in the hands of God!
At the store, the volume of the TV was turned up loud. Reports were coming in about the bombardment of residential neighborhoods in Rafah and Gaza. All eyes were watching. "You're becoming a bad salesman," I tease Yakoub, the shopkeeper.
"Why is that?" he asks surprised.
"Where are the M16s and hand grenades on your shelf? Don't you want to order any and sell them to us?" I say jokingly.
Everyone in the store laughed and started making remarks.
"Stones don't do it anymore. Guns are the answer. That's the only language the Israelis understand," someone remarks.
We know, of course, that M16s won't stand a chance in front of LAW missiles or Apache fighter helicopters, but we are desperate here. No one even thinks about death. We only think about an end to Israel's aggression against us. It is either them or us. There is no third way. The occupation simply has to end.
I called Gaza last night. Friends in Rafah, Khan Younis and Gaza City are holding up. Everyone is determined to go on and they don't want Arafat to meet with Barak. No one wants that. People are very pleased with the mass demonstrations in so many Arab countries: Abu Dabi, Cairo, Beirut, Sana', Damascus, Amman.
People here keep saying that if we hold on till Friday, when the imams of all the mosques in the Arab countries are bound to tell their masses something significant, then we may gain something out of this. We just have to hold on till next Friday and see what will happen in the Arab countries.
And Friday is only two days away and there doesn't seem to be an end in sight to Israel's bombardment of civilians. And the clashes are still going on everywhere. The sound of the ambulance sirens going by on the main road has become a part of the daily sounds we hear in Dheisheh. Sometimes at night we hear the sound of gunfire, mostly coming from the town of Beit Jala nearby.
Meanwhile in Israel life goes on as normal. The Israelis get up every morning and go to work, while their kids go to school. They go to their restaurants and movie theaters; they are not affected by all of this. It is as if their husbands, fathers and sons who are killing, wounding, and maiming us are some mercenary soldiers from a faraway land. There is no public outcry in Israel. There are no demands to bring the aggression to an end. Israel has simply become comfortable in being a racist apartheid state!
Ziad Fararjeh, 20, from Dheisheh, lost his eye and everyone is waiting for him to return from the orthopedic hospital in Jerusalem so that they can visit him. A rubber-coated metal bullet struck Ziad's eye during clashes in Bethlehem a few days ago. His eyeball fell in the palm of his hand and his friends say he kept holding it till he reached the hospital. He thought they could put it back in - the poor kid and so good-looking too. He's going to be blind in one eye for ever. But Ziad isn't Moshe or Uri. He doesn't matter and doesn't count.
It is almost 6:40 a.m. Soon the local TV stations will start broadcasting live coverage of clashes in different areas. The local stations in Bethlehem and Palestine TV are the best, giving us live reports all the time, revolutionary songs, and archive footage from the first Intifada. We wake up and sleep to the same every day. There is no escape from it. We can't turn off the TV sets. We all want to know what is happening minute by minute. And we all have this vision that the Arab masses will march into Palestine and join us in our fight for liberation. We don't want a repeat of Lebanon '82, when the Arab world merely watched civilians get butchered during Israel's invasion and did nothing except cry about it. So we keep hoping that the Arab masses will wake up from their deep slumber and come to our rescue.
We have to keep the faith that maybe, just maybe, this time around things will be different and that 52 years of Israel's brutality against our people will see an eternal end. Perhaps then Palestine would be such a beautiful and wonderful place to live in. We all know it can be.
The good news is that the official Palestinian Satellite TV station and the local stations reported last night that the Fatah Movement has issued a leaflet calling on Arafat not to meet with Barak in Paris and asking the Palestinians not to surrender, urging them to stand up in the face of Israel's continued aggression.
This means that there is no intention to stop the struggle.
God only knows what today will bring.
*
Thursday, October 5, 2000
Dear Diary,
The electricity went out in the Bethlehem area between 7:00 p.m. and 11:00 p.m. last night. Soon we found out that the Israeli army had shelled an electric generator in Bethlehem. The Palestinian Authority asked the Israelis not to shoot at Palestinian fire fighters so they could go in and put out the flames, which engulfed the generator. The Israelis refused, of course!
How the electricity came back on at 11:00 p.m., we don't know. But it looks like the electricity just went out again in parts of Bethlehem this morning because both the radio and TV, which were both turned on, just went silent.
The blackout seemed to confirm the sense of deep depression we've all been feeling since it was announced that Arafat was meeting with Barak in Paris. So many of us could have bet that Arafat wouldn't do it. Nobody here wants him to.
And now the morning brings with it this heavy cloud of gloom. The revolutionary songs and the sounds of the sirens outside, and the reports about the clashes yesterday and last night, which resulted in seven additional deaths, aren't sounds that anger us. Rather they are sounds and reports that push us forward, that make our blood boil, allowing us to feel angry enough to survive through another day.
But reports of an agreement between Arafat and Barak aren't what we want to hear. So what if Israel pulls back its heavy artillery? They will still use live ammunition, rubber bullets and tear gas to kill innocent civilians. We will still wake up the next day in the apartheid-state we live in; the Israeli settlements built on our land will still be there, and the checkpoints will still be there. And that's why the adamance this time around to see matters through. No one wants to go back to the situation as it was prior to al-Aqsa Intifada. Everyone is simply too fed up with Israel's occupation, its unwillingness to return to us the land it occupied in 1967, and its feeble attempts to sign one defunct agreement after the other with the Palestinian Authority; all agreements that fail to give us our full political and human rights.
As hard as these past few days have been, with a week feeling more like an entire decade, people here are amazingly determined to fight till the end. How can this momentum be allowed to subside? We have been putting up with the results of the Oslo Peace Accord for seven years now, and these results have done nothing more than reinforce Israel's apartheid rule over us. It is enough. We want an honorable peace this time.
And so it was that I half-heartedly turned on the radio and TV this morning, thinking that all the stations would be talking about an agreement reached between Barak and Arafat in Paris. But surprise! Oh sweet, lovely precious, wonderful and energizing surprise! Listening to the broadcasts you wouldn't think anything happened in Paris last night. Interviews with various Fatah, Hamas and other activists indicate that the battle is still alive. Everyone interviewed is talking about the massacre against the Palestinians and that the fight hasn't seen an end yet.
Our refugee camp is so quiet this morning. There is little movement outside. I went out on the streets with a BBC reporter yesterday afternoon and it was so calm. A few kids in my alley were playing a war game; throwing pebbles at each other and firing toy guns. A few other kids were playing soccer with a flat soccer ball. Poor kids! The loud volume of radios and TVs emanated from the open windows and blended in with the smell of fried tomatoes, boiled rice and fresh baked bread; the sweet smells that give the camp such a safe, homey feeling. This is a feeling I've always loved about Dheisheh. It is the feeling that we are all one big family.
The high volume of the radio and TV startled me just now. So the electricity is back on in Bethlehem! The radio announcer is reporting that the Palestinian Authority has just released eleven Hamas political prisoners from its jails. What about the rest of the political prisoners, I wonder? Eleven doesn't sound like the correct number of all the political prisoners who are being held, without trial, in Palestinian jails!
Another correspondent is filing his report about the clashes and demonstrations in Bethlehem. I type as he speaks:
Last night in Bethlehem, there were intense clashes in the Rachel Tomb area. A heavy exchange of gunfire was reported. Israeli bullets penetrated Palestinian homes and heavily damaged the top floor of the Paradise Hotel near Rachel's Tomb. Four Israeli soldiers were wounded and an army chopper evacuated them to Hadassah Hospital in West Jerusalem. An American tourist was injured from Israeli gunfire near the Tantur Ecumenical Institute, adjacent to Bethlehem's northern entrance. He is reported to be in a critical condition.
Also last night in Beit Sahour, an exchange of gunfire lasted for nearly one and a half hours. Three Israeli soldiers were wounded. Meanwhile, at the Beit Jala Tunnel, Palestinians fired shots at an Israeli bus, wounding the driver.
In the village of Husan, south of Bethlehem, severe confrontations were reported. Two Palestinians were wounded by live ammunition: one shot in the chest, the other in the leg.
Armed Palestinians fired shots at the Israeli settlement of Bitar Ilit, southwest of Bethlehem. Afterwards, Israeli settlers took to the streets and started pelting Palestinians with stones. Soldiers stormed into the village at night and brutalized the residents. Armed Palestinians also fired shots at an Israeli military target in the village of al-Khader, south of Dheisheh.
Two Israeli military tanks are now situated at Rachel's Tomb. High-velocity Israeli guns are ready to fire in al-Khader, Beit Sahour, Rachel's Tomb, the Beit Jala Tunnel, and near the Israeli settlement of Efrat.
Palestinian demonstrator set the car of an Israeli settler on fire in the village of Husan. Israeli snipers are now ready to shoot demonstrators in Bethlehem because several soldiers have already been injured during clashes in Bethlehem and Beit Sahour. One soldier was killed in Beit Sahour. So the Israelis are now out for revenge in Bethlehem. They're planning something for Bethlehem.
One Palestinian was killed in Hebron yesterday at one o'clock in the morning, when an Israeli under-cover unit, attempting to enter the Palestinian-controlled territories, fired at Palestinians and their homes. An exchange of gunfire was also reported near the villages of Halhoul and Yata, south of Hebron.
All this was from Radio Bethlehem 2000. I switch to the official Palestine Radio station. The reporter is saying:
There is another martyr this morning in Jericho. He died from wounds he sustained the day before yesterday. There is a total of seven martyrs in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and inside the Green Line since yesterday morning. Apache helicopters fired at demonstrators at the Nitsarim junction in Gaza. LAW missiles were also fired.
In Nablus this morning thousands of marchers are participating in the march organized by the Palestinian Women's Union. Activists urged the marchers to march toward the nearest Israeli military checkpoints. The marchers are chanting: "Abu Ammar (Arafat), Mr. President, come home from Paris."
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Refugees in Our Own Land"
by .
Copyright © 2001 Muna Hamzeh.
Excerpted by permission of Pluto Press.
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