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News from Budros
Budros
Wednesday, December 31, 2003.
Hi All,
New Years Eve and still the violence increases, and we internationals are losing our ability to challenge what is happening. Budros is a small village of just 1,200 people just inside the green line. Its neighboring village Qibya was the village that was attacked by Sharon's notorious 101 Commando Unit on the 15th October 1953 when 54 houses were destroyed and 69 villagers killed, the majority of them women and children. Most of the victims died from bullet wounds. A significant portion perished beneath the rubble of their homes. But back to today, Budros has decided as a community to resist the building of the annexation wall that will take 10 durams of their best agricultural land and olive trees. Three days ago they sat down in the olive trees and refused to move. They were successful and the bulldozers went away. The next day internationals and Israeli activists joined them and again after clashes with the IDF the bulldozers left although they had managed to destroy about 75 meters of olive trees.
This morning a group of internationals and myself joined the others already
there. The situation when we arrived was already fairly tense: the army had
deployed in the valley where the fence was being built overlooked by the
village. Villagers and internationals had tried to reach the olive trees in
the bottom of the valley and had managed to work their way down through the
fields. Then the army had attacked using battens to beat the village women
and had driven them and the internationals back. Some of the soldiers now
targeted the internationals. They first grabbed the four Israeli activists
and took them away followed by the two Swedes, one of whom was the Swedish
MP Gustaf Fridolin, so hopefully this will cause some sort of diplomatic
incident as the second Swede was beaten by the soldiers. The soldiers were
now skirmishing through the olive trees and prickly pears beating at the
women and suddenly we realized that they were again targeting the
internationals, trying to cut them off and detaining them. This was when
Kate was arrested.
The group I was with had already decided that we did not
want to risk arrest so started to climb out of the valley back to the
village. As we and the older villagers, including the women who had been
beaten, retreated the soldiers advanced until the children started to throw
stones. The soldiers stopped under a hail of stones and we continued on up
to the level ground to get out of the line of fire both from the stones and
the soldiers who were now firing rounds of rubber bullets. This sort of
advance and retreat continued for some time with army jeeps entering the
village and firing live rounds, rubber bullets and teargas at the villagers. At one time I was showered with fragments of stone from the house I was scurrying
past as the soldiers fired live rounds at us. The whole group decided to
retreat to a safe distance and to reassess what was happening. Some of the
group decided that the situation was more than they wanted to deal with,
and one experienced man had to leave for other reasons, so it was decided
that 4 of the group would leave. The villagers had now all gone into the mosque to decide on what to do next and decided to have a demonstration walking through the village and along the road that overlooked the valley.
We told the village leaders that we would not stay with the demo if stones
were thrown and they assured us this would not happen, which it did not.
Once the demo reached the road overlooking the valley we turned around and
started to return to the village. It had been completely peaceful. Then a
jeep arrived with a soldier standing in the back firing at the crowd and
once more people were hurt. More than 50 Palestinians needed medical
treatment from the ambulance and medical volunteers during the day with eight
people being arrested.
Tomorrow I'm returning to Nablus with new internationals. Nablus is still
under occupation so it will be interesting trying to get in.
All for now Dave
Return to Nablus
Friday, January 02, 2004,
Hi all,
Yesterday (Thursday) I travelled back to Nablus with 4 new activists. The
journey from Ramallah to Huwwara was fairly uneventful but from then on it
deteriorated. Huwwara checkpoint is still closed to internationals so we
did not try to enter but took a service taxi that was going to take us to
Tell. After waiting some time for other Palestinian passengers we finally
set off. As we arrived at Burin, a bulldozer also arrived with an
accompanying jeep and started to construct a new road block on the road we
wanted to pass along. There was some debate amongst the Palestinians as to
where we should now go and it was eventually decided to go around Huwwara
and take a new road to Madama. Gerry and myself were asked to sit in the
front seat so if we came across soldiers they would see internationals and
not fire on us. We learnt later that this was a dangerous road and that
taxi drivers had been shot on it before.
Unfortunately we ran into soldiers with two jeeps, who were very
aggressive. As we came round a corner going quite fast, the soldiers
appeared and aimed their guns at us, not the best feeling as we did not
seem to be slowing down as quickly as I would have hoped!
The soldiers were very aggressive with the driver and questioned us at some
length but we had a good story and were all singing from the same song
book. Even the Palestinians said that they knew the fictitious Doctor we
were going to see!
The soldiers then said that we were all in big trouble and that we had to follow them together with two other cars that they had stopped. Previously our taxi had caught fire when some wires had shorted out, now the battery was flat and it would not start! Eventually the driver managed to bump start it and we drove off in convoy. The Palestinians thought that we were being taken to Huwwara military base but eventually we turned off on to a small road and some small military encampment. Our taxi failed to get up one hill so Gerry, the Palestinians and myself walked up the hill to explain to the soldiers that the taxi had no first gear and could go no further.
After a lot of confusion the soldiers said that the internationals and Palestinians could go but the driver had to stay. I could see Iraq Burin in the distance where Jenny and I had walked in to Nablus two years ago, so we set off walking. We had about 3 miles to walk and eventually reached Nablus by mid afternoon. Nablus was under curfew but we managed to find a taxi and get to Balata without further incident.
Nablus under curfew.
Today (Friday) Balata was free of the army and working as usual, but Nablus
old city was still under curfew. The new group and I walked in to Nablus
and through part of the old city that we had been told was free of soldiers
and went to the Yasmin Hotel. There we met up with the other internationals
and divided up into teams.
Gerry, one other international and myself worked with the UPMRC volunteers who wanted to take food and medicine to people in the area of the old city that was cut off by the soldiers. The first time we tried was not successful as we had not formed any plan before approaching the soldiers.
For the next time we talked through what we wanted to do and I went forward
on my own and managed to get close enough to speak with them. After some
negotiation I managed to persuade them to allow the UPMRC volunteer to come
forward and talk to the people in the house. One woman was then allowed to
come out of the house and take the medicine that we had brought. Our first
success!
The next thing we tried with another lot of soldiers was not so successful. A family in a house near one that had been blown up wanted to leave as they were afraid that their house might fall down on them from all the damage. Again we talked through what we wanted to do and this time it was decided that two of us would go forward and negotiate so Marie, an Italian woman, and myself went forward. Unfortunately just then a large group of internationals and UPMRC volunteers arrived in the passageway behind us and were all talking so loud that I could not hear what the soldiers were saying to us. Also the soldiers could not hear what we were saying, and were agitated by all the noise. One soldier leveled his gun at us and fired a single live round in our direction hitting the wall just in front of us. Marie who had turned to walk away when he fired was hit in the back by shrapnel. She reacted very calmly and we both walked away. The injury was not very serious though it had torn her clothing and cut her across the spine.
My third go at negotiation was again successful working with a French lady whose name I don't remember. We managed to get food into an occupied house. The soldier at that house was particularly obnoxious and said to the French woman 'don't come in here or I'll fuck you'.
Yesterday and today a lot of people were injured and one person killed.
Some of the old city has been destroyed. There was one very large explosion
shortly after we started to work from the heart of the old city. These are
historic buildings going back many hundreds of years that they are willfully destroying. Also the large road block that we removed in January has now been rebuilt cutting the city in two once more.
So much damage, so much violence, all I can wish you is bright moments, Dave
