Monday The war on Iraq and a volunteer in Palestine This is an e-mail from my friend Aysha who works as a volunteer in Palestine. She helped set up International Women's Peace Service in Palestine --"an international team of 16 women from 8 countries, 4 of whom are based at any one time in Hares, a village in the Salfit Governate of Palestine's West Bank. Team members witness and document human rights abuses in the Salfit area, nonviolently intervene to protect human rights."
Aysha's commitment to Palestine is just so rare and I think there are very few people of our generation who have that kind of courage.
Hi.
More from Palestine. I may not be writing again for a while – we expect things to get very bad (even worse) here shortly. Forgive me if this turns out to be a bit incoherent – my thoughts aren’t too organized at the moment. The last few days have brought a lot of unwelcome news.
We’ve always known that the Israeli government would try to take advantage of a war in Iraq to carry out some kind of military campaign here – the world’s attention will be elsewhere – but it’s becoming more and more clear just how far-reaching the plans are. We have noticed this week that a lot of new roadblocks have been put in place (and if anyone is wondering just what I mean by ‘roadblock’, it’s a huge pile of earth and rocks). The Israeli army seems to be preparing to seal off places, and the expectation has been that they will try to move Palestinians out of certain areas so that they can eventually annex those areas. The most vulnerable places are those near to the Green Line – the ‘border’ between Israel and the West Bank.
As part of that campaign people are also expecting electricity and water to be cut off, so we’ve been stocking up on provisions, buying water containers, we even bought a small generator so we will still be able to run our computers and get reports out.
Day before yesterday, though, we heard some very disturbing information – that it may not be the Israeli army that will carry out this expulsion of the population. A couple of us attended a meeting with Ta’ayush (a Jewish – Palestinian organization); they were delivering a lorryload of flour, in anticipation of the food problems people will face during the war. (We helped shift the sacks of flour, and got covered in the process...a moment of fun in otherwise gloomy times.)
One of the Israeli activists who spoke at the meeting after said that in fact the government is going to use the settlers to go into villages, to perhaps choose one or two villages and conduct massacres, in order to terrify people in the surrounding area to leave (i.e. 1948 tactics). The government doesn’t have to take responsibility, but will achieve its aim of emptying this region of Palestinians. This is really frightening, as settlers are a law unto themselves…It’s difficult for us to have a strategy for dealing with them.
And then yesterday, as a lot of you will have heard, an ISM activist was killed in Rafah (in the south of the Gaza Strip, where I taught a couple of years ago). She was run over by a bulldozer while trying to prevent a home demolition. An American woman, 23 years old. It’s just horrible news. I have attached a statement by her parents which is moving. (You can see pictures of what happened here: http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article1248.shtml - be warned, it’s upsetting.)
Right now I am busy trying to coordinate with an Israeli lawyer who has offered to file a complaint to the ICC in The Hague, as well as issue arrest warrants for the IDF officers involved in Rachel’s death. (We – IWPS – help out with a lot of ISM’s legal work.) Let’s see how far it goes.
And then war starts tomorrow.
I keep finding myself not breathing properly – I have to make myself take deep breaths when I notice. It’s like the world is falling apart and no one is willing or able to do anything about it. It’s all so unreal.
I still don’t doubt the importance of being here, though – even if it’s just to bear witness.
