Voices from the siege

The same message echoes over and over: please help us. There have been many massacres, and it has sometimes been possible to say we did not know what atrocities were being committed until it was too late. This time, voices have been ringing out, with increasing desperation: please, do something. The massacres continue. On the Internet and in the print press, the testimonies circulate. The story is one of phenomenal devastation. At Al-Ahram Weekly, we feel it is our responsibility to provide these voices with a platform -- so it will not be possible to say we did not know
BETHLEHEM
From Bethlehem local churches and organisations
An extremely unprecedented dangerous measure
Friends -- It is the first time since the fourth century in which Christians of Faith were prevented from performing the Sunday mass in the Church of Nativity. Last week the Israeli occupation forces prevented people of Christian faith from arriving into the Church of Nativity to attend the Sunday service. This unprecedented move from the side of the Israeli occupation forces is an extreme violation to international law and norms.
We strongly condemn this extreme and highly threatening procedure. We as well condemn the siege of the Birth Place of our Lord Jesus Christ. We as well strongly condemn the acts of killings of innocent civilians, the arrest of hundreds of innocent people, the destruction and vandalising of the ancient parts of our beloved city--The city of peace, which hoisted many of the world political and religious leaders including His Holiness the Pope, during its Bethlehem 2000 celebrations.
Please raise your voices with ours calling for an end to the Israeli occupation. Let us work together to lift the siege and insure that no one will think again of attacking our holy shrines.
The Charitable Antwanian Society
The Orthodox Charitable society-Bethlehem
The Orthodox Charitable society-Beit Sahour
Mar Afram Charitable Society
The Latin Monastery-Bethlehem
Bethlehem International Center.
Dar AlKalemah Academy
The House of the Cardinal
The Arab Orthodox Club-Beit Jala
The Arab Orthodox Club-Beit Sahour
The Latin Monastery-Beit Sahour
The Latin Monastery-Beit Jala
The Roman Catholic Monastery-Bethlehem.
The Roman Catholic Monastery-Beit Sahour
The Roman Catholic Monastery-Beit Jala
The Evangelical Lutheran Church-Bethlehem
The Evangelical Lutheran Church-Beit Sahour
The Evangelical Lutheran Church-Beit Jala
YMCA-Beit Sahour
The Bible College-Bethlehem
The Catholic work Institute
The Greek Orthodox Church-Bethlehem
The Greek Orthodox Church-Beit Sahour
The Greek Orthodox Church-Beit Jala
PCR
Dear all -- The worst has happened. The Church of Nativity is on fire.
Early this morning Israeli army fired heavily at the Church of Nativity. One of the rooms in the Catholic section of the church was set in flames and burned completely. According to Father Majdi, one of the Palestinians inside the church was shoot dead by an Israeli sniper while attempting to put down the fire. his body is still inside the Church. Please if you fail to stand for the people inside, stand for the most sacred holy shrine. If we all stay silent then the birth place of our lord Jesus Christ might be burned again.
Act now. Please.
Ghassan Andoni
The Palestinian Centre for Rapprochement between People
64 Star Street, P.O.Box 24
Beit Sahour - Palestine
www.rapprochement.org
17 April
1. Heavy gunfire broke out near the Church of Nativity yesterday evening. Flares and grey smoke were visible overhead. Israeli troops, besieging the church compound where 200 people have taken refuge since 2 April, tried to storm the church but failed.
2. The Israeli Army continues to prevent ambulances and medical teams from entering the Nativity Church area, Manger Square and the Old City to assist the sick and wounded.
3. Israeli Forces invaded Al-Bidiya village near Bethlehem. Two deaths and two injuries reported.
The Palestinian Centre for Rapprochement between People
Beit Sahour
JENIN AND RAMALLAH
11 April
Following is information received from Palestinian sources in Ramallah, Jerusalem and elsewhere 11 April. We cannot verify the information, but it comes from Palestinians that I have dealt with for years and whom I trust.
Jenin Refugee Camp:
-Several witnesses saw IDF trucks full of bodies from the camp going into Israel.
-There are reports of mass graves being dug by the Israeli Army.
-The IDF has requested additional body bags from the United Nations. The supposition is that if the IDF has to seek body bags from other sources, the number of casualties must be very high.
-As of 11 April, The IDF continues to deny access to Jenin Refugee Camp to the press, the ICRC and to any medical teams. Many of the dead are Palestinians who have died from their wounds. There are still wounded in the camp who have no medical attention and deaths of these people will continue to mount.
-Betselem, the Israeli human rights organisation, has taken written statements from 10 individuals in Jenin who witnessed a summary execution of eight Palestinian men by the IDF. The 10 witnesses provided the place of the execution and the names of the Palestinians that the IDF killed.
-Some 39 Palestinian fighters along with other civilians attempted to surrender yesterday to the IDF. The IDF responded by shelling the building with tank fire, killing two and wounding several. Only after intervention with the Israeli Government by the UN and several countries did the IDF stop the shelling.
Ramallah:
-The IDF has destroyed the archives, furniture, computers and office equipment of the Palestinian Legislative Council.
-In addition, the IDF has similarly destroyed the Ministries of Education, Culture, Commerce and Local Affairs. Reports are still coming in regarding other Palestinian Authority organs.
-The IDF destroyed the archives of all property records in Ramallah. The implications of this are very serious. Palestinians will not be able to prove ownership, which will increase property disputes and subject additional Palestinian land to confiscation by Israel. The Serbs did this against the Bosnians.
Situation in Arafat's offices:
-There are approximately 120 people confined to several rooms.
-Health conditions are appalling because there is no running water. Toilet facilities are unbelievably bad.
-People confined have had no water to wash with or any change of clothing for 11 days.
Edward Abington
Former US Consul General in Jerusalem (1993-1997)
Washington
Tel: 202-296-6616
JENIN
12 April
"We're going to try to get back into Jenin today. We tried all day yesterday and it was a total nightmare.
"There are 748 here people combined from two towns who have been dumped off. They are dropped off at 200 meters from the checkpoint in their underwear. They are not allowed to go back to Jenin but they've been arrested, beaten and tortured and held captive for several days. There's hundreds of them here. Refugees from a refugee camp.
"The community is taking care of them in these two towns. I asked how they are getting food and they said they are getting a few donations from people in neighboring towns and they're just sharing what they have. Their main source of supplies is in Jenin and they can't get there either and of course there's no telephone service or anything. They still have electricity.
"There are soldiers' flares going in the night. The Israeli soldiers are walking around in the fields. We're going to try to get back into Jenin today. There is one checkpoint that we've been trying to go through, through a roadblock. And the soldiers have been sitting there since yesterday morning. Early yesterday morning a couple of reporters got through but they got through by making an arrangement with the Israeli soldiers to be escorted in, take pictures and video of what the soldiers showed them to take video of and then they were escorted back out. So actually no real reporters have gotten in as far as we can tell. The other pictures that have been coming out of Jenin are from the Israeli soldiers themselves, who are videotaping whatever they choose and even their reports are horrific and so you know it's just nothing compared to what's going on.
"So the towns that I am near are Taiba and Remani, near a place called Sallem checkpoint. When people are arrested at Jenin Refugee Camp, they are beaten and tortured and taken to the checkpoint where they are held for usually for about three days without food. One guy told me he asked for water and was given a cup of urine to drink.
"Usually they are then dumped off 200 meters from the checkpoint and the people in these two villages, Ramani and Taiba, come by in a truck and pick them up and bring them into these two towns and take care of them. They've got a school set up as basically a refugee center for the refugees that are re-refugees. You can realise just how horrifying that is that people in a refugee camp are refugees again.
"And two villages feed and cloth them. They have a doctor come in, open the medical office, just a classroom, and they have probably a hundred boxes of different kinds of medicine and then they have piles of jeans and shirts and shoes because the men are dumped off in their underwear, right outside of Sallem checkpoint. Ramani there's at least 548 men living there. Here in Taiba there's 200 as of last night. And each one has a really horrific story to tell -- about being dragged from their homes, having their home bulldozed. They don't know what's happened to their families. They're forbidden to return to Jenin and there's absolutely no communication.
"The mosque in Ramani instead of calling out for prayer it lists the names of the disappeared. And on this school that's the makeshift refugee center there's a list of names all the detainees, the new arrivals also to try to keep track of who is there. Every day there's new loads of refugees that get dumped off outside Sallem checkpoint by the Israelis and get rescued by the Palestinians in the town.
"One man he was dumped off unable to walk, he was beaten so severely. He talked of ten soldiers beating him with sticks while he's in the detention center at the checkpoint, after having been dragged from his home -- he did the human shield -- having his home bulldozed, being stripped naked to his underwear in the rain and the cold, blindfolded, hands bound, thrown in the back of a jeep and put under the bench of the jeep, and being kicked by the soldiers, and then taken to the woods (because there's a nearby forest), burned with cigarettes and beaten some more while he heard [US.-made, US.- supplied] Apache helicopters bombing the camp and the soldiers cheering. [pauses... ]
"And then he arrived in the detention center at the checkpoint with broken ribs and cigarette burns. And by the time he left the detention center he couldn't walk from being beaten with sticks by ten Israeli soldiers.
"There's a 75 year old man who had to take off all his clothes in front of his grown daughters and they had to do the same. They had to stand outside in the square of the camp. And he was dragged off to the detention center he has no idea what happened to his daughters.
"I can't figure out what's happened to any of the women. The Red Crescent ambulance driver who for three days was feeding 200 women and children until they ran out of food. So then they left that sort of makeshift medical center where the Red Crescent ambulance driver had been feeding them and he got arrested. They all walked off trying to find food somewhere else and they were stopped. Some of the women were separated from their kids; they had to give up their kids.
"And they were forced to take off their clothes too. And I just don't know what's happening to any of the women. Lots and lots of them don't make it to here.
"Complete massacre there. The Israelis don't want us to get in -- I mean they don't want anyone to get in. Some people tried to get into this little town, it's Taiba. Got turned away twice by Israeli soldiers -- they were just trying to get into this town and soldiers said, "well, we're afraid that you're actually a group of journalists." Because they don't want anybody to document what's going on in there. And once you get here to Taiba you're a little closer to Jenin, because you're back in Palestine.
"There's one area that's near here and there's a possibility of getting in but we tried it all day yesterday and it just... There's this one little town where the soldiers set up a roadblock and so that's where we were going to try to get in. So from there I think Jenin is 15 minutes. You can see it.
"But getting from Bethlehem to East Jerusalem, which should take maybe ten minutes or something, took at least 45 minutes because of all the checkpoints, because you have to take these crazy roundabout ways. The Israelis make it impossible for Palestinians to move from town to town.
"Nobody knows what has become of the women in Jenin. And I don't understand why the international community isn't all over this, except for that... Maybe because nobody can get in? Maybe people are afraid? I don't know. But some people are thinking that the intention is to completely raze all of Jenin Refugee Camp. And so once they've done that then they'll let people back in. All evidence will be destroyed. Physical evidence of torture will be gone from the bodies. Somewhat at least. Some people here are thinking they are just going to get rid of it altogether. And so there'll be no way to even sneak in until after Sunday.
"Dan, will you tell everybody what's going on? It's a massacre."
Kristen Schurr
Taiba
Transcription of a phone call to Dan Vea
To arrange an interview with a New Yorker acting as an observer in Jenin, please call 001 972 2 056 622 017
14 April
Tonight, five members of the International Solidarity Movement are sleeping at a school in Jenin with 800 refugees from the Jenin Refugee Camp. Earlier in the day, nine internationals from the United States, Sweden and Italy entered the refugee camp and started to deliver food to the remaining residents of the camp -- women, children and elderly men. After 10 minutes of walking one team came across an injured elderly woman trapped in the rubble of her half-demolished home. She had been stuck there for days. The internationals helped her escape and carried the woman out towards the city and the hospital.
While at the hospital, seven bodies were brought in to the morgue, each body charred beyond recognition. One team of internationals reported seeing bodies lying amid the ruins of destroyed homes, noting the smell of the rotting and decomposing flesh, creating a major health risk for those still living in the camp. One international counted 14 bodies she saw in her movement around one area of the camp.
Internationals walked through areas of the camp that had been bulldozed -- homes destroyed with a wide swath of road cut through homes. Dozens of homes lie flat in ruin, while many others are partially destroyed, leaving the remainder of the homes exposed to the elements. Many people inside the camp remain without food and water, as aid agencies are still prohibited from entering the camp.
In Jenin city tonight, internationals report that two tanks are moving up and down one of the main streets, firing tank shells in opposite directions indiscriminately into the city.
15 April
-Early this morning PRCS and the Red Cross were permitted to enter Jenin Camp under military escort after over 10 days of access denial to remove the injured and the dead. Their movement was strictly confined to certain areas resulting in less than 10 per cent of the Camp being accessed. Only seven bodies were recovered as the mass destruction of infrastructure and building collapse made search efforts nearly impossible. Seven other bodies had to be left behind. Heavy equipment will be required to remove the rubble to facilitate more extensive searches of the camp. Additionally the risk of unexploded ordinances is very high and some areas cannot be accessed safely.
Journalists and media were prevented from entering the camp with medical recovery crews.
-PRCS and ICRC continue to provide relief to people in need throughout the West Bank by providing food, water and medical supplies despite extreme restrictions on movement and access.
-Israeli Forces still impose restrictions on ambulance movement throughout the West Bank, regardless of ICRC coordination.
- One PRCS medic remains in detention.
- PRCS, ICRC and other humanitarian organisations request Israeli forces to allow medical teams to reach injuries and deaths in many cities especially in Jenin.
- Many Hospitals continue to report critical shortages of insulin and other medical supplies.
- Israeli Forces continue to deny and restrict access to PRCS ambulances in all areas of the West Bank to transport the dead, ill and injured to hospitals for medical treatment.
For more information, please contact:
Jeff -- 056-529-966/OR Audrey -- 056-691-487
RAMALLAH
12 April
Dear friends everywhere -- I woke up this morning very tired, as I had little sleep last night. At 3am my husband woke up complaining from a sever headache. I checked his blood pressure, it was so high (200/110), I could not believe my eyes, he never complained of high blood pressure. I decided to call 101 (emergency) and see what they can do to help him seeing a doctor. "Do you have army tanks in your street?" asked the voice on the other end, I said "they pass by from time to time." Sorry, said the voice on the other end, "we cannot do anything, if we come we have to take a permit and that will take hours that is if they give it, and if we come without permit, they will stop us, strip our clothes, and let us wait endlessly. [...]
Early in the morning I received a phone call from Salwa, my gynecologist friend, telling me that a neighbor in their area was 'visited' by the army and some one has to be in my brother in law's house, otherwise they might break into the place and make their usual mess. She also told me that she is still giving directions for women in labour over the phone. [...]
Then I got another phone call from another friend telling me that she heard in the Israeli radio (we have no Palestinian radio whether for the Palestinian Authority or local stations since the beginning of the re-occupation), that they will lift the curfew from 12-4pm. I felt very reluctant to go out, every time I go out I meet people who tell me their stories and I come back with heavy heart. She said we will go and do a sit in in Al-Manara Square -- that is if we can manage.
I left my house, I met a 20-year-old neighbor of mine, whose parents are both blind and who has only one younger sister. He told me they were 'visited' by the army and that he was beaten up, humiliated, and used as a human shield to their next door's neighbors [...] I left him and, accompanied by my friend Suad, I headed to the Ramallah industrial zone to see if we can get some fresh vegetables. We found plenty of fresh vegetables, mostly Israelis and few from the Jordan valley. All the roads were full of trenches and torn apart. Suad, wanted to buy some chicken, Nora, her dog, is not eating almost anything, she likes chicken necks which became a non existing coin since the re-occupation. To our luck we fell on some fresh chicken so we bought for us, and for Nora too. On our way back to my house, we met Nabil and Vanoush, and heard more stories about people who had been 'visited' by the army.
Dr George was visited two days ago at 2am, even their dog Granda did not hear them coming, she barked when they entered the house. They asked him to open his hand bag, ah, he forgot the secret code, the soldier insisted that he has to open it, but he just could not remember out of stress. Dr George said, it is a funny thing, what could a doctor hide in such a bag, he was about to be beaten, how could he dare to tell the soldier it is funny, but his Russian wife and Granda came to his help. [..].
Stories did not stop, some of them were funny, others were tragic. My daughter Sireen arrived, very pale, very shocked. She hugged me and cried. I said to myself, I knew it, I knew that I will hear more sad stories. "Jad was found," she said. "Dead". I could not believe it, this is 23-years-old Jad Khalif, my son's friend, who lost his father in 1997 when a military jeep killed him in his village Azzoun near Nablus. Jad had joined the Palestinian police in 1996 in the anti drugs section. He was shot after the last phone call he gave my son Maher. How and where? No body knows. Every body thought that he was arrested. [...].
The Israeli army are not allowing any Palestinian detainee to see a lawyer or be visited before 18 days. We assumed he was arrested, unfortunately we were mistaken. We were however relieved to know that his group of 40 people were in detention. Jad was found stripped of his clothes, except for his underwear, in one of Ramallah streets in a pool of blood, his clothes beside him. It turned out that he had been lying in the Ramallah hospital morgue for the past 11 days.
For the past five days my son and myself had been calling the Red Cross to give us any information about him, then two days ago, some friends of his had been told by the Red Cross that he was alive but injured and that he was in detention. We were happy he was alive, and we tried to find out the name of the hospital where we assumed he would be. I wrote to all of you, especially my Israeli friends, to ask if any one knew his whereabouts. Some people advised my son and his friends to go and check the morgue, just in case. No, they said we checked the morgue of the Sheikh Zayed hospital (part of Ramallah hospital) and he was not there. They had been advised to check the morgue of the Ramallah hospital itself. My son saw his green jacket and his blue shirt he gave to Jad the last time he was in our house, he was terrified. The jacket and the shirt were all in blood, but he recognised immediately what had happened.
Suad, Sireen, and myself again in the Ramallah hospital. "Please Suad don't step on the mass grave, it is just here," I said. We saw my son coming out of the morgue and we all collapsed. "We phoned his mother," my son said, "but she does not want to believe us, we had to ask a photographer to take a picture of him to send to her." The problem now is how are we going to send him to his village while we are under curfew and taking the road to Nablus is like mission impossible. I left a message to Mustafa Barghouthi, asking him if there is a way to send him back to his mother after he spent 11 days unidentified. To this hour, we don't know yet what to do, may be an angel will come tomorrow morning to take his body back to his home and to his mother.
Islah Jad
Egyptian academic
Birzeit University
15 April
Today the curfew imposed on Ramallah was lifted for the fourth time for four hours, allowing us to enter the Khalil Sakakini Cultural Centre premises and assess the damage wrought by the Israeli army during their Saturday 13 April break-in.
The scene was that of desolation and destruction of a beautiful old building epitomising the esthetics of Palestinian architecture. All of the windows of the middle floor of the centre and all the glass of the veranda were shattered by two blasts caused by the blowing up of two side metal doors. All of the floors of the veranda/ conference room and the foyer were covered with glass shards.
The four offices were all broken into and vandalised -- including the one used by poet Mahmoud Darwish -- : Drawers from antique built-in closets as well as from desks were emptied on the floor, bookcases broken, and books thrown on the floor, a wooden door was broken. The full extent of the damage can only be known and quantified once we return to work, but we were able to assess the preliminary damages: Irreparable damage to some art work, and to an antique original ornate iron door, the telephone switchboard is destroyed, electricity cut off, the alarm system damaged, a radiator broken by the blast and its water covers the foyer's floor, the heavy metal safe was forcibly opened, shards from the blast caused deep marks and impact on all of the area's walls and ceilings. As for theft, the main computer's hard drive was stolen, as were a few thousand NIShekels in cash from the destroyed safe, and a mobile phone. The damage was videotaped and photographed.
The Khalil Sakakini Cultural Centre is a non governmental organisation established in 1996, organising varied art activities and events, as well as special projects on Palestinian narrative. The Centre hosted a week before the start of the current invasion a visit by a delegation of international writers, among them two Nobel literature prize laureates, Wole Soyinka and Jose Saramago.
Arts and culture organisations have not been immune from the vandalism and methodical destruction of Palestinian institutions in the last two weeks. In addition to the Sakakini Centre, there was the break-in and vandalism of the Qassaba Theater and Cinematheque in Ramallah, the destruction of the contents of the French and Greek Cultural Centres in Ramallah; and the ongoing occupation of the Bethlehem Peace Center, and of the Ministry of Culture's Ramallah headquarters.
Since the start of this invasion, Sakakini Centre staff have continued working under siege, gathering and posting testimonies about daily life under siege, letters and drawings by children, appeals to the media, and an open letter to George Bush. All these documents may be found at: www.intertech-pal.com/siege. The other Web site featuring these documents, www.alnakba.org/siege, has been hacked.
The method of the Sakakini break-in fits the pattern of other Israeli army break-ins into homes and institutions in the past two weeks, summarised in two words: terror and criminality. This pattern demonstrates a clear intent to vandalise concrete Palestinian institutional achievements, accompanied by quasi-systematic petty theft.
It is to be expected that this Israeli army that has no respect for human lives (as epitomised by the barbaric Jenin Camp massacre), or for holy places (as symbolised by the continuing medieval siege to the Nativity Church in Bethlehem), also shows no respect for the dignity of human cultural heritage.
Adila Laïdi-Hanieh
Khalil Sakakini Cultural Centre Director
Further information may be obtained by contacting Mazen Qupty, head of the Sakakini board of directors (972 2 627 66 67).
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