FRFI 175 October / November 2003
Kosar Saira Nzeribe is an active supporter of the Marks and Spencer picket in Manchester. In August she visited Palestine for three weeks. Below is her report.
On my arrival, I went on a training course run by the International Solidarity Movement (ISM). When we had finished, we were told that Palestinians in the village of Mas’ah near Qalqilya needed our help to stop the Apartheid Wall being built through their homes. The following day, 3 August, 20 of us travelled to join the peace camp in the village.
Mas’ah – between the Apartheid Wall and the settlers
When we arrived there were already protesters from many countries – internationals – and a few Israelis. Bulldozers started work at approximately 7am, about 20 meters from the nearest house which belonged to Manira A’amer. The Israeli military and police were called to evict the activists. Palestinians, internationals and Israelis linked arms around the property as the owner of the house and representatives of the National Committee Against the Wall, ISM, and Israeli peace organisations held a press conference. Because the activists and the media were present, construction was halted for the day. The contractors told the protesters that there would be no construction on the A’amer property for two months – what liars they turned out to be!
Our peace camp was situated on Manira A’amer’s family’s property. They had been told that the small animal shed attached to their house would be demolished to make way for the Wall, which would run immediately in front of their house. Directly behind them is the illegal Israeli Elkana settlement. The settlers did not want the Wall next to them, and their wishes mattered more than those of Manira A’amer. The result is that the A’amers will be completely trapped between the Apartheid Wall and the settlers. The family has been told that they will only be permitted to enter and leave their home three times a day through a gate controlled by Israeli security forces and that no visitors will be allowed inside their house.
The story of Nazeeth Shalabi
Nazeeh Shalabi showed us the area where the Wall is being built. 95% of his land had been stolen in May for the Wall. Like other Palestinian villages, Mas’ah is already surrounded by mounds of earth and rock that prevent any vehicle from entering or leaving the village; 98% of its land will end up on the opposite side of the Wall. A father of seven children, Nazeeh realised that losing his land would mean a death sentence for him and his family. With no land, no way to leave the village, or means to make a living in it, how could he feed his family? Nazeeh worked 16 hours per day, and had walked barefoot in his olive grove since the age of five. He could not contain his sorrow, frustration and anger. He told his wife ‘don’t wait for me – I have days, perhaps weeks, till the bulldozers erase my olive trees. I want to spend this time in the grove.’
He set out for his grove to be with his olive trees for as long as he could. The story of Nazeeh started going around in the village, through the road blocks, to international peace activists. People started to visit him, then they stayed and within a few days a little tent was erected in the grove. Very soon the tent turned out to be the tent against the occupation. The camp was then moved to the A’amer family’s land.
On our second day at Mas’ah, on 4 August, Shabaq, the secret service, and the army came with M16 rifles in their hands and demanded to see our passports. They also came with camcorders and started filming us. No one showed their passports. I was worried they would think I was a Palestinian and go for me. Instead, they arrested two Israeli peace activists; just as the army was about to drive them away one of them shouted ‘they are going to bulldoze today!’ They were released after a few hours and banned from entering the camp for 15 days. We met to decide what we would do to protect the A’amers’ property.
Ariel police station
At 6.30am the next day the border police arrived again and told everybody to leave. We decided to sit in a circle with arms and legs linked. They shouted and took a young Israeli man first and then began to drag away the rest of us. I found it frightening not knowing what they might do as they grabbed you from behind. We were pulled away, some people were beaten, punched, choked and kicked: the ISM Summer Co-ordinator sustained four broken ribs. I was dragged off by a number of soldiers. I closed my eyes, as I didn’t want to see who or how many. When I opened them I saw that one of the soldiers was a woman. I asked her how she could watch Palestinian children become prisoners in their own home. I told her I had a seven-year-old son whom I had left in England to support the Palestinians against unjust actions like these. She looked uncomfortable but replied in racist terms ‘you don’t know these people, they are murderers, they killed my best friend.’ A large male soldier told me to get up. He was itching to beat me up, but for some reason the woman soldier blocked his way and asked him to give her time to sort me out. She stopped him from beating me up and got me into the waiting coach. As the coach left, we saw the side of the property being bulldozed to the ground.
Forty seven of us were detained. We were taken to the notorious Ariel police station. A few weeks earlier four ISM people had been arrested, detained and beaten there; the only Muslim, a Canadian, was beaten to near unconsciousness separately by five police officers in the interrogation suite. We heard Nazeeh Shalabi had also been arrested. When we saw our lawyers there was no confidentiality: the soldiers stood next to them while we asked questions and they provided the answers. We were kept in the yard of the police station in the August heat of over 100 degrees for a number of hours and then taken inside.
We spent the night in the station. A soldier with an M16 rifle stopped me from going to the toilet. I pushed his M16 to one side to pass. The soldier was angry and said ‘I am God, if you do that again I will kill you’. To this I responded ‘you can kill me, but you are not God’. Then he gave me more abuse and laughed. We were bailed the next morning on condition that we would not enter the West Bank otherwise we would be fined and deported.
A few days after this, I went to the Al Aqsa mosque where we had a meeting and some of us agreed to break our bail conditions. I went to Tulkarm, where the ISM had a camp in a village called Deir Al Ghusun by the Apartheid Wall. Next day I spoke to a couple of farmers, who had had their land seized for the Wall: Mohammad Badair, who had lost 250 dunums of olive trees, and Jamal Esmail, who had lost 22 dunums. They told me that the Israeli government use an old Ottoman Empire law which allows the state of Israel to seize land if it is not worked for three years. Now that their land is on the other side of the Apartheid Wall they are certain that they will lose it because they will not be let through the gates.
Jamal also told me about the daily struggles people face, in this case just to buy a bolt! He told me how it took him three days to buy a small part for his tractor. He had to travel to Nablus. He faced many checkpoints, and at one particular one he was told to take his top off, kneel and was made to endure this for eight hours. He wasn’t allowed water, to use the toilet or to get off his knees.
Women detainees and their conditions
I met Nawal Attar, 45 years of age. On 23 July 2002, she was at Al Bidan Valley check-point near Nablus on her way to see a doctor. Soldiers became suspicious when she rang her female friend on her mobile phone about the doctor she was planning to see. She protested and tried to explain who she was talking to and why, but the soldiers took her away in the jeep. At the police station, they checked her bag for identification documents. They told her she would be imprisoned for the rest of her life unless she co-operated; they threatened to kill her if she did not confess.
She was transferred to prison where she found young women between the ages of 18–25 on hunger strike. She joined them for four days, but came off it because she became very ill. The young women remained on their hunger strike for 19 days. On the fifth day she was taken, blindfolded, to the interrogation room, where she was questioned. After this, she was sent to another prison near Jenin called Jalama. She was kept in the political prisoners’ section. There were four women in the cell with her to begin with and then two more women joined them. These two women had been on a hunger strike, and as punishment they were made to sleep on the concrete floor without a mattress or any covers for one month. They had been protesting against the conditions of the prison. Nawal told me that they were let out of the cell for half an hour per day and they were not allowed visitors. The hunger strikers achieved one of their aims: after they ended the prisoners were let out for three hours a day.
The refugees in Tulkarm
I met Mrs Dameeri, a 76-year-old woman who lives in Tulkarm refugee camp whose family had 120 dunums of land near Haifa. She remembered in 1948 a Palestinian local leader telling the local people they should leave after news of the massacre at Deir Yassin. Four days later they took what they could. They lived for seven or eight years in a tent. One of her grandsons, a 15-year-old, had four bullet wounds, sustained on four different occasions – one in the hand, one on his face, one in the stomach and one on his leg. He was still smiling as we spoke and he bought me an ice cream. I asked what impact having been shot four times had had on him, he said ‘I still throw stones at the tanks and always will’.
Conclusion
My visit left me with a complete hatred for the Zionists. Whenever I hear the word ‘Israel’ I think of words like apartheid, ethnic cleansing, violence, prison, hatred, fascism. No one I spoke to trusted the US or the British, and they certainly didn’t trust Mahmoud Abbas, so it’s no surprise he’s gone now! The Palestinian people I met had a dignity, grace, patience, intelligence, strength and generosity that I have not experienced very often in my life.
Most of all I want to say to the world: wake up, do you know we have an apartheid state called Israel, and that Palestine is the biggest open prison in the world? We have to take action now by supporting a boycott of Israeli goods, and supporting the boycott of Marks and Spencer.
