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Brooke Atherton Reports

Forrest and I arrived one week ago here in Palestine. We are now in refugee camps near Nablus. I would like to share with you some of my experiences. A preface for those who I know worry about me here: I feel completely safe here - the military treats me completely differently from the Palestinians and one soldier has even explained that to me himself. It is horrifying to me that the Palestinians cannot share the safety from harm in their own land.

8/21 Askar Refugee Camp

This morning, just before 8 am, tanks rolled down the main street of Askar Refugee Camp shooting. Tanks roll through town many times every day - the last time I was in town during the day I heard them go through the camp at least 4 times in 2 hours. The shooting by the Israeli military is not unusual either. Last night at around midnight, the tanks came into the camp and their shooting continued until 1:30 am. There was the threat of house to house seraches, and whern a bulldozer was seen, of home demolitions. Thankfully, there were not house to house seraches here last night (although a home was searched in Balata two nights ago and one son arbitrarily arrested) and no homes were demolished here last night (although one home was demolished with no warning or reason given in Nablus three days ago). Last night the bulldozers tore up a long stretch of the main road, pushing huge blocks of asphalt up to block the entrances to stores, homes, and one road, and causing the wall to collapse of the room in which an old woman with no husband or children lives. The Israeli army has threatened to demolish the home where I sleep and many other homes here. As I went to bed last night in a room with 5 Palestinian women from the 1 year old baby in the family to the mother, I was terrified for what might happen to the family and the home where I sleep, I thought about what it must be like to go to bed with this fear every night. Can you imagine what it would be like?

Yesterday, curfew was liften in Nablus from 2pm to 6pm. Nablus has been under almost complete curfew for about 60 days. Curfew is usually lifted for only 4 hours in one week. When curfew is liften in Nablus, people from surrounding villages flock to Nablus for groceries, medical care, to get married. Yesterday, myself and 4 internationals went to an adhoc checkpoint near the village of Azmud on the road between Nablus and 4 nearby villages. An adhoc checkpoint, means that there is not a physical structure to regulate the passage of people. In this case, the checkpoint consisted of a tall mound of dirt and rocks followed by a deep trench in the road (6 feet deep and 10 feet wide) and monitored by 4-6 Israeli soldiers wielding M-16s with an armored personel carrier and the support of two tanks that literally reved up and down the road aiming its turret at Palestinian men, women, and children waiting to pass, and chased groups of villagers as they tried to cross the fields. There is nothing more disgusting than the sound of a tank grating along the road. Close to 2 pm, a group of about 50 Palestinians walked towards the checkpoint from the villages. The soldiers immediately stopped them, and made them wait in a large group. Throughout this waiting, the soldiers waved their M-16s and yelled at the people, while the tanks initimidated them. The soldiers looked at some people's idenitification, but did not let anyone pass. After a while, the soldiers slowly let about 5 people pass. It was clear that they did not want to allow people to pass in a timely manner if at all. Myself and the internationals came closer to try to put pressure on the soldiers to at leats do thewir job which is to check people's id's and let them go. One woman spoke English and pleaded with me, "Please help, my brother goes to Nablus to meet his wife." The groom stood in the hot sun in his wedding suit. The sister had her dress for the wedding in a plastic bag. I began to talk to the soldiers who ignored me and the other internationals claiming to not speak English (later it became clear that most of them did speak English). In the meantime, many sick people were pleading with them to let them go to the doctor and the hospital. We pleaded with them to let people through. The soldiers kept up their slow and reluctant pace, allowing the sick to pass, but not others. After thirty minutes in the hot sun, they allowed the groom to go to his wedding, but they would not allow his sisters or mother. At one point a young woman with a very sick son of 5 or 6 and three other small children and a couple of bags was allowed to pass, but the soldiers did not allow the man who had accompanied her, leaveing her to manage all of the children and bags by herself. Out of 5 soldiers, only one would check ids, and he was the most beligerant with the Palestinians, often he would ignore them altogether. Over the course of 2 or 3 hours, very few people passed though, and many gave up, including the groom's sister and mother. Finally near 6:00 as curfew in Nablus was beginning gain, the Israeli soldiers let the last people through the check point, including a young boy with jugs for water who had been the first in line at the begginning but was turned back by the soldiers. Accoridng to people with more experience, this is not particularly "bad" behavior by the soldiers, as they tend to function somewhat better in the presence of internationals.

The expereinces I described above are part of daily life for Palestinians under the illegal Israeli military occupation. Every day I am baffled at how anyone in the world could justify the Israeli military's absurd abuse of power and use of terror against the Palestinians.

People in Askar Refugee Camp come from over 37 villages and towns in historic Palestine (what is not Israel). I met a grandmother today who walked to Askar Refugee Camp with her family when she was 15 from their farm in Jaffa after tyhe Israeli army attacked her village. She showed me the deed to their land from Turkish rule, dated 1810. The land is now a hospital near Haifa. A friend of mine here, Saif, is 21 and his family is also from Jaffa originally. He told me that when the Israeli army expelled the Palestinians from their land in 1948, they said the Palestinians could return in one week. Saif says, "This has been a very long week - 54 years - I think we have lived maybe one day."

I think I will leave you with this to think about. I am not sure what "good" I can do while I am here in Palestine, but I very much hope to share with people in the United States the horrors of the Israeli military occupation and hope people will question the US support in billions each year of this brutality and humiliation.

Brooke Atherton

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