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Yesterday this was home to eight families.

Tanks and devastation visit Nablus

Tanks back in Nablus

Friday,
January 23, 2004

Nablus remained relatively quiet until Thursday and the repair work to the roads and pavements continued. Two years ago during my first visit tanks and bulldozers tore up the road between Askar refuge camp and Balata camp leaving the road impassable. The municipality leveled the road off somewhat between my first and second visits and cars could get along the road slowing down for the worst bits. At the moment they are resurfacing this road with new ultra smooth black tarmac. On the way up to Nablus from Balata they have once again started to repair the pavements, relaying the curbstones and resetting the brick cobblestones.
Tanks on their way to Nablus had mangled up the pavements that had just been repaired.

All this had been repaired once since 2002 but was destroyed by the tanks during the recent invasion.
The people's belief that there will be a continuation of this invasion was proved true on Thursday and some of this work was undone once more. People are rebuilding their lives here continually. From the engineer who has just ordered smelting coke from Italy for his foundry hoping to complete an order, to the poor families in the old city who have done their best to make their homes habitable again after the IDF severely damaged them earlier this month. In Balata they have cleared the rubble from one of the houses that was demolished by the army last month, and are now laying new foundations. Everywhere you look people are continuing with their lives.
But the tanks were back in Nablus yesterday and managed to damage some of the new curbs as they passed.

Going to school is so unpredictable and children all suffer from post traumatic stress.
By the time we arrived from Balata a tank was at a crossroads near the center and many jeeps were roaming about the place causing the usual clashes. We were told that there were people in a Mosque in the Obaidah area near the university and the soldiers had them surrounded.
When we arrived there we found that a school had also been held for some time and that the children were now being let out and having to face the army. After helping the children get home we moved on.
The whole area was cordoned off by jeeps and an armored military bulldozer was present. It turned out that a wanted man who had taken part in the resistance fighting during April 2002 in the old city was now hiding in the area. We decided to get in to the area to find out what was going on. Obaidah is on the side of the mountain with the main streets running parallel and one above the other. Steep flights of steps join the streets. We made our way to a street overlooking the cordoned off area and then descended some steps and used back lanes until we were just above the house that the soldiers had surrounded. We started asking questions and it turned out that the wanted man was Emad Akkobeah who was 28 or 30 years old, and the house that was surrounded belonged to an Uncle; the man's own family house was next door.
We then spent most of the day watching. Earlier in the day the soldiers had been saying over the loud speakers "Emad we have come for you, we know you are a nice boy and don't want to cause your family any problems so come out and we will take you away". They said this and other things in a mocking style as if they were talking to a child. Two other wanted men had been executed by the soldiers only last week in a nearby district of Nablus after they had been taken into custody. Eventually they got the mother to speak over the loud speaker. Apparently at first she told him not to come out and said that she gave him to God. Later they were playing a recording of her asking him to give himself up.
The bulldozer has knocked out the second story windows and torn down the ground floor wall.

During this time there were many bursts of gunfire and sound bombs. During the afternoon we could hear the bulldozer moving about and eventually we could hear the sound of things breaking.
We moved to a new position from where we could see the bulldozer was knocking down the front of the house by driving into it with his bucket. The bucket could reach up to the second floor and he soon stove in all the first and second floor walls of this 4 story house.
There was then a lot of heavy gun fire directed at the house.
Things remained quiet after this and then a dog emerged from the occupied house below us and entered the holes in the front wall. The dog came out after a while and was sent back in again. When he emerged for the second time heavily armed soldiers accompanied by dogs then entered. We counted 12 men and three dogs. After some time it became obvious that there was no one in the house, and that the soldiers were laying explosives in the house.
Eight families live in the house and they had not been allowed to take any of their possessions with them when the soldiers made them leave. All the adjacent houses were still occupied except the Akkobeah family who had been arrested and who we later saw in handcuffs.
From our new position we could see the armoured troop transporter that had brought in the explosives..

We then moved again to another vantage point where we could see what was going on but was far enough away to be safe for us out in the open when the house was blown up.
Just before the explosion a laser gun site was trained on us.

















The explosion when it came was immense, the walls of the house erupting outwards before being engulfed by huge clouds of choking dust that was sent high in to the sky.
What can you say?.





The shock wave from it severely damaged all the adjacent houses making them uninhabitable. It also blew windows out many streets away; we had to retreat until the worst of the dust settled.







The shock was immense and people broke down crying as the realisation that nothing was left sank in.
Once we could see again, there was no sign of the house only a heap of ruin. A crowd started to form and then there was a shout and the wanted man emerged and went off accompanied by the crowd. He obviously had not been in the house.
Some people had been hurt by the explosion and were evacuated by ambulance. The devastation to the adjacent houses was extensive with walls being knocked down and whole window frames and doors being blown inwards destroying all the furniture and blowing the windows out at the other side of the house.



The next morning clearing up had begun.

When we returned today cleaning up was well under way with two JCB's clearing the rubble, electricians making the electrics safe and people trying to make the surrounding houses weather proof again with plastic sheeting over the windows.
The electric lines had to be made safe. Notice the plastic sheeting already replacing the windows.









This casual demolishing of everything that these families own only breeds more resentment and loathing of the Israelis. Thirty families were affected by this demolition and about 100 people made homeless, some of them permanently. Not one person had done anything that was against international law, the wanted man was perfectly in his right to defend his city from the invading army. The occupying army has no right to demolish property belonging to civilians. This continual breaking of The Hague and Geneva Conventions must be challenged, collective punishment is not allowed.
The force of the explosion had damaged houses for a considerable distance, blowing in the windows and devastating the interiors while the people were still inside.
The roof that you can see in the earlier pictures is now just this pile of splintered timbers.
The community was pulling together to overcome these extreme acts of violence against them.


Hopes and dreams are dashed and lives destroyed every day in Palestine.
I urge you to look up the law and write to your MP. We must tackle our governments and insist that they comply with international law which obliges them to prevent this happening.
Dave.

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