[1828] in peace2
Report from Garrick - In Rafah Camp with Susan 7/23/02
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Aimee L Smith)
Thu Jul 25 15:50:55 2002
Message-Id: <200207251950.PAA00759@gold.mit.edu>
To: peace-announce@MIT.EDU
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Date: Thu, 25 Jul 2002 15:50:37 -0400
From: Aimee L Smith <alsmith@MIT.EDU>
Let's hear it for the brave souls of the International Solidarity
Movement and for the brave souls everywhere who maintain their humanity
in the face of so much inhumanity.
In hope,
Aimee
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 24 Jul 2002 17:05:09 -0000
Subject: [BostontoPalestine] Rpt. from Garrick - In Rafah Camp with Susan
7/23/02
Friends, this is an account of one night in Rafah, Gaza. It is a
little long, but well worth the read if only to get a sampling of
what Palestinians are and have been living with.....
From Garrick Ruiz in Gaza ---
Another very bad night. I have a lot to talk about
from the last few days and nights but I'm going to
first concentrate on last night in the hopes of
conveying what was truly an experience unlike any
other I've ever had and try to convey to you the
horror of daily life here as well as one particularly
bad incident. As you have hopefully already heard,
Israeli F-16's bombed Gaza City last night destroying
5 homes. It was an assassination against the leader
of the military wing of Hamas. At this hour at least
11 are confirmed dead, 8 of them children. Al-Jazeera
has been reporting that more than 100 are wounded and
many of those are in critical condition. There may be
bodies that have not been discoverd yet. This only a
few hours after Hamas declared it would stop suicide
bombing attacks in within green-line Israel to attempt
to let the peace process work. If I haven't driven
home the point enough this should make it clear Israel
has absolutely no interest in peace. But about last
night...
Yesterday 5 of us from ISM arrived in Rafah at the
southernmost end of the Gaza Strip. This is my third
visit to this hardhit city. Two of us from ISM as
well as two journalists, one from the US and the other
Dutch ended up staying with a family near Salahadeen
gate. This is an area in the Yibna refugee camp hear
in Rafah along the Egyptian border and an area that
sees intense attack from the Israeli military every
night. Some members of ISM had stayed with this
family a few days ago so we knew it would be a long
night but I don't think anything could have really
prepared me for just how long it would be.
I want to give names to the people in this story
because they all have names but I'm going to use fake
names so as not to have any possibility of my words
being used to target anyone. The father of the family
is Mohammed. Mohammed has 8 children and his wife to
think of. His home was severely damaged almost one
year ago by Israeli tanks and bulldozers. They can no
longer stay in their own home so they have moved down
the street a few meters further away from the Egyptian
border to a neighbors home. Just a few quotes from
Mohammed, (I'm amazed at the sense of community under
such horrific circumstances):
"I am original here, my family has lived in the Gaza
Strip for hundreds of years."
"Simply I want my house, I want to continue my life as
I am."
I take care of my neighbors children. They take care
of mine. there is no question. Where else can I find
that?"
"When I left my house I hoped to return in 1 or 2 or 3
hours. I think now I will never return. Why not?"
I really got the sense from him that he loved the
people who lived around him, his friends and
neighbors. He loved the shared memories of the
community and had no desire to leave those people or
those memories which is why even under the horrible
conditions even if he could he probably would not
leave.
Mohammed used to work as a construction worker inside
Israel untill the beginning of this Intifada. Now
with the closure he has no source of income.
Mohammed stays up every night now until at least 4:30
or 5:00 am. He sits outside with some other men from
the community keeping track of where the tanks are,
what's happening, if he and his older boys need to
run, if the whole family needs to move, etc. At best
he gets 2-3 hours of sleep per night. This has been
going on for more than a year. And he loves to talk
about his life and the situation that they live in and
so I learned a lot last night.
Something like a timeline of last night:
11:30 pm We go outside. The shooting usually starts
around midnight or 12:30. Almost immediately tonight
we hear a series of gunshots from a tank. Mohammed
tells us that there is already a tank at the end of
the street. I can see the flashes of tracer bullets
shooting by at the end of the street.
12:00 tanks begin to move. We hear them roll behind
us around the building we are sitting in front of.
More shooting but still only sporadic rifle and
machine gun fire at this point.
At this time Mohammed shows me some of the damage in
his neighborhood. He points out where homes had been
demolished, where a medical clinic once stood and he
shows me many streams of bullet holes from machine
guns. He points out how many of them stitch through
houses in places where people could not even possibly
stand much less attack a tank from. "Why?" he asks.
"Why do they shoot at these houses at places where no
one could possibly fire back?" "Why do they shoot
here? There is nothing military here, only regular
people." I have no answers for him. Though it seems
clear to me that the answer is that the Israelis don't
view them as regular people they view them as dogs or
vermin or all the other racist terms so common once
amongst the Nazis referring to Jews that now are so
common in Israeli culture.
12:50 tanks shoot down the street we are on. We all
have to stand against the wall so as not to draw
gunfire.
1:00 the news starts to spread of the assassination
of a Hamas leader in Gaza City. It happened around
12:30 or 12:45. We go inside and turn on Al-Jazeera
(the CNN of the Middle East, Mohammed translates for
us) (We got the following information in bits and
pieces over the course of the night but I'm including
it all here for sake of ease) At least 11 killed, 8
children dead, about 100 injured from an F-16 attack.
5 homes were destroyed. The assassination was
targeting Salah Shihadah, leader of the military wing
of Hamas. He, his wife, his three children, 5 other
children and one other man are known dead. We watch
as people from the area pull bodies and pieces of
bodies from the rubble. Others are being rushed to
ambulences bleeding heavily. Children are screaming
everywhere. Children's faces and bodies sliced open
by shrapnel. One child bleeding from his head sitting
drooling, unable to control his body. Have you seen
these images in the US or has once again the voluntary
censorship of the US media won out? That was the face
of state terror last night. That is what the world
should see, but I know that it won't. All this comes
after Hamas has announced only a few hours before that
it will stop suicide bombings to allow the peace
process a chance to move forward, they were apparently
veryclose to signing a deal. This morning we learned
that the attack was ordered by Sharon and the minister
of defense. The rest of the Israeli cabinet did not
even know. The message is clear to Palestinian
organizations. Talk about peace and we will hit you
harder. We will kill not only you but anyone around
you, including children. Israel has no problem with
sacraficing children to continue its one sided war
against an already oppressed and occupied people.
There is some indication of disgust even from within
the rest of the Israeli cabinet. We heard the
response was that if these people within the
government criticize civilian deaths in this action
they can never again criticize civilian deaths in
suicide bombing attacks. I heard this second-hand but
if true, what a disgusting and sick argument. Not to
mention the fact that it shows that these people
don';t care about anyone, Israeli or Palestinian. I
just heard that Sharon declared the action a great
success but expressed regret about civilian deaths,
how nice of him. The death toll is now 15. The
assassination weighs heavily on us the rest of the
night.
1:15 We come back outside. We sit in a different
place, nearer to the home, with more shelter from
another house and a partially demolished wall. We
continue, drinking tea and coffee, smoking cigarettes
and talking. Gunfire and shelling continue around us.
Occaisonally a bullet passes directly over us.
(From hear on out the times become very approximate.)
2:30 The shooting becomes extremely heavy. There is
sustained machine gun fire down our street. Shelling,
the snap of bullets striking homes. Across from us a
man has come out of his house because they are
shooting into it. Mohammed yells at him not to cross
the street. He lays on the ground beside his house
casually smoking a cigarrette. Suddenly two flares go
up illuminating the area. The man jokes that he was
wondering where the tanks were, now they've lit up the
area and he cansee them. People are on their rooves
and on balconies. There is an amazing communication
network that quickly relays where the tanks are so
that people can make decisions about what they need to
do. I am struck by the overwhelmingly sobering
situation. People, just trying to survive. People
who have lived under these conditions on and off for
55 years. Regular people just trying to get by with a
first world army unleashing its full might against
them.
3:00 The shooting and shelling become extremely bad,
even worse than before. Mohammed thinks that there
are some Palestinian fighters throwing a few bombs at
the tanks. We here maybe three or four of these bombs
all night. The Israeli fire lasts hours. He thinks
the reason is because of the assassination. Who could
blame them. What would I do if children in my
community were blown to pieces over and over again.
What would I do if a peace announcement is responded
to with assassination. What would I do ifmy home was
shot at every night? What would you do? Regardless,
the fighters if they are indeed attacking, can do
nothing against the tanks. As the shooting gets worse
Mohammed has us all go inside the house. The sound of
tanks moving is huge. They are rolling all around the
area. He makes the decision to take his two oldest
sons, Achmed and Jihad, probably about 19 and 16 and
leave. They climb over a back wall and are gone. If
the Israelis come into the house they will go after
the men and older boys. This iswhy he stays awake, so
he can wake them and get them to safety. He says we
can go with them. We feel we'd rather stay with the
mother and small children as we will be safer as
internationals even if the soldiers do come into the
house. Moving in the shadows we will only be targets.
Two of the children, 3 year old Ibrahim and 5 or 6
year old Hiba have woken up. Ibrahim sits with his
mother. He has a nervous condition. One night his
whole body tensed up and he had tobe massaged by
doctors to get him to relax again. He had knots in
his groin from the tension. We try to comfort them.
Ibrahim falls asleep on his mothers lap but his
breathing is so loud and troubled, it is so hard to
listen to. Hiba seems somewhat cheerful suddenly the
loudest explosion of the night goes off somewhere
nearby. Her face contorts in fear and tears begin to
pour from her eyes. The dutch journalist drops his
camera and grabs her cradling her in his arms, trying
to comfort a child too young to know why she is hated.
We hear Apache helicopters overhead for the first
time this night. There fire is added to the noise.
After a few minutes Hiba pulls away and throws herself
down on a mat in the room she was sleeping in. She
tosses and turns for a few minutes with her face in a
pillow. I ask her mother if I can go in with her. I
pull the blanket up around Hiba and stroke her
forehead, trying in my lame way to provide some
comfort in a world that no 5 year old should ever have
to deal with. Stroking a childs forehead as machine
guns, grenades, shells, and rockets are all going off
around us trying to make some sense of this world.
Eventually her breathing becomes regular, she sleeps
and I rejoin the others in the courtyard of the house.
The sounds of hell continue around us. Eventually
Ibrahim and his mother also return to the room to
sleep. We continue to hear his labored breathing.
4:15 Mohammed and Jihad return. Gunfire continues
but it has subsided to some degree. Mohammed is
worried because has lost track of Achmed in the
confusion. He tries not to show it and says it has
happened before but obviously he is a father and can't
hide the concern for his oldest son.
5:00 the gunfire slowly subsides. We turn on
Al-Jazeera for one final update and then get what
little sleep we can.
7:30 Tamara wakes me up with a call from Jenin.
Things are not good there either. People slowly wake
up. Achmed has returned and the whole family is safe.
Children in the neighborhood are up and playing
outside. The day has started people go on with their
lives and getting done what they need to do before the
next night of hell. The family cooks us an amazing
breakfast as is always the case in Palestine. The
fact that three out of four of the foreigners come
from the same country that the plane and missle used
in the killing of 8 children in Gaza City, the bullets
and ammo and other weapons used here did does not
bother them. The fact that the blood stains our hands
as well in the form of the tax dollars we pay to a
government that doesn't care about Palestinians or
their rights does not cross their minds. We are their
guests and they will take care of us even though they
have no money.
I write all this not to tell you of my experiences on
one particular night but rather to illustrate what
people have gone through every night for two years.
As they say, "This is our life" They refer to the
gunfire as "music". They continue to survive in spite
of everything. This people that I find myself living
amongst is so amazing. So resilient, so strong and so
wonderful. They do not deserve to be on the receiving
end of Israeli fascism. Last night was just one
night. Lets work to make sure that these nights do
not continue. Do what you can, resist in the US and
other countries. Call your elected officials tell
them to stop supporting fascism, shut down Israeli
consulates and embassies and the government offices
that support Israel, boycott Israeli goods, fight
against the military industrial complex, come here and
see for yourselves. Shut it down! This cannot go on.
There may or may not be a part 2 today. I have more
to report than just last night but am also very tired.
We shall see. Hope all is well where you are.
Love and Rage from Occupied Palestine,
Garrick
=====
Garrick Ruiz
grok@riseup.net
arhive of updates at www. straybulletins.com/Garrick
!!!!Palestina Libre!!!!
------- End of Forwarded Message
