(25) Biddu, Palestine -- Saturday 28 February 2004
"He can now see nothing," the old woman cries. Her husband, Mohamed Mostafa Mahmood Haiden, 75, sits silently on a mattress beside her, one eye bandaged and the other clouded and blind. I am in their family home in Biddu, a village close to Jerusalem. The room is crowded with family members, local men and other ISM volunteers. As the woman speaks, her anguish and anger is clear. Few in the room seem unaffected.
Two days ago, on Thursday 26 February 2004, Mohamed was one of at least 65 local people who were injured by the Israeli military as they resisted the destruction and annexation of their land to make way for the Wall. They are among the survivors. Three men were left dead by Israeli soldiers and border police. Another man, shot in the forehead by an Israeli sniper, will not recover. The villagers were not armed. Some resisted with words, others with their bodies, others with stones from their land. In response, the Israeli military unleashed live ammunition, rubber-coated steel bullets and tear gas and beat protestors with batons. Today the residents of this and nearby villages tend to their wounded, mourn their dead and face the seemingly inevitability of a renewed Israeli assault on their land and communities.
Mohamed's wife tells us what happened to her husband. He had joined with hundreds of other villagers as they attempted to halt the work that will destroy and annex their lands. Bulldozers rumbled across Mohamed's family land as they moved to clear a path for the Wall. Announcing "I will stay on my land; it is my ancestors land," Mohamed went to protect his fields. Here he was beaten by Israeli border police wielding batons. Using his bare hands, he attempted to protect himself, but, in response, the border police shot him in the face with a rubber-coated steel bullet. The range was only a few meters, and the bullet hit his right eye and destroyed it. Mohamed, already blind in his left eye from an existing medical complaint, is now completely blind. His wife tells us that, blinded, he threw soil and earth at his assailants before being helped to safety by other local people. Throughout my time in the house, many people speak -- Mohamed's wife, his brother and others -- but he himself remains silent.
Tears fall from his un-bandaged but useless eye.
I visit the scene of the Israeli military attack on Biddu. I stand in the field between the village, the Wall site and the overlooking Israeli colony of Giv'on Ha-Khadasha. The ground is littered with teargas canisters. A colleague finds spent bullet casings confirming eyewitness accounts that Israeli military, despite their denials, used live ammunition on protestors here. Behind us is the house of a local family that was seized by the Israeli military. Its roof was used as a sniper position. It was in this area that three men died and another left without hope of survival.
En route to the adjacent village of Beit Iksa, my eyes begin to smart as the tires of the taxi kick up dust from the fields and road. Tear gas trapped in the ground is again released; the soil itself is saturated with gas after three days of wave after wave of tear gas attacks. It was this gas that killed Abdel-Rahman Salem Abu Eid, 65, on Thursday. He died of a heart attack after being caught up in one of the many tear gas attacks that day. In the village, we visit the home of Zacharia Mahmoud Eid, 27. It is now a house of mourning or beit al azaa. Zachariria was one of those shot dead in Biddu on Thursday. Outside his family home, plastic chairs are placed in neat rows. We pay our respects to his family and drink the bitter mourning coffee in the bright sunshine.
We travel on to the village of Beit Duqqu. We stop as the funeral cortège walks past carrying a single cloth-wrapped body. A local man tells me it is the grandmother of another of Thursday's victims Mohamed Fadel Riyan Yaseen, 26. She died today. Mohamed's loss, the man tells me, was "too much to bear." At Mohamed's family house, I see his brother weeping and supported by another man, inconsolable in grief. Female relatives across the court yard support each other. Some weep. Others wear blank and shocked expressions. Amongst them, no doubt, are Mohamed's widow and mother to his 1-year-old daughter. Sweets are distributed to the mourners. A Palestinian colleague informs me that these sweets are intended to symbolise the celebration of Mohamed's death as a martyr to the cause of freedom. But we both agree that it is clear that the family is grief-stricken. That their son, husband, brother, father died defending his land is cold comfort, at least for now.
The people of these villages have lost much to the Occupation. Their lands have been seized to make space for the Israeli colonies that intrude across the landscape here. Now the Wall will seize more land and isolate them from communities in the rest of the area. The Israeli military have taken the lives of four men here and destroyed the lives of many more to injury and grief. However, nothing suggests that these people will bow to the violence that is being inflicted on them in the name of Israeli security. Everyone here that I spoke to said they were prepared to return to their land and oppose the bulldozers and the Israeli military. These people will not remain silent as the Wall destroys their lives.
