- Dear friends everywhere,
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- Today is day 11 of the re-occupation of Ramallah. We
hear less shootings but from time to time we hear explosions of forced
entry into houses and I keep hearing the same stories over and over again.
Ask everyone to gather in a room, they start their 'searching'. It is
supposed to be a search for people, but in many cases they were 'searching'
for something else, money, jewels, laptops, mobile phones... etc.
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- Jenine Al-Bina gave me a call to tell me that she cannot
be connected via e-mail first because she has no electricity and second
because they stole her laptop during their 'visit'. She is neighbor to
Elan Halevy who is in France. They 'visited' his apartment and turned
everything upside down. Majdi al Malki is also a nearby neighbor. They
used his house for two days, used the bath, kitchen, food, sleep, then
stole his wife's gold and his two girls gifts. They did not forget to
urinate on his carpeted floor.
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- Today, I managed to get finally a bottle of gas for cooking,
it took me one hour to find it, I was so happy to get one, everybody was
asking me from where I got it. The usual shops for cooking gas were empty,
the shopkeeper told me you are our customer, I will tell you, they allowed
us only one truck to bottles, but it is in the industrial zone you have
to get a taxi, if you find, and get one. This becomes so difficult, but
I have to get one, since two days I am using my electric oven to heat
water and also for cooking. I found a taxi, take my empty bottle, go to
the place, get a bottle and come back full of happiness. I paid 35 NIS
for the bottle and 30 NIS for the taxi ($12).
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- In my house, Amal was waiting for me, we have to go and
give some money to a woman who lives in downtown Ramallah. This is the
second case today I heard about, without having any money to buy food.
We gave her some money. Her baby had an infection for two days with a
fever. We told her to take him to one of the Medical Relief clinics.
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- We went to the market to buy some vegetables and fruits,
forget it. One kilo of tomatoes cost 10 NIS ($2). On normal days we get
4 or 5 kilos for that price. I was angry, and said to the man, "Are
not you ashamed, why you are raising the price?" He denied and said
"This doesn't stem from us, they allowed very little quantity from
Israel. Our gardens where we get the good vegetables are sealed. Not even
a bird can get out of Jenin and Nablus now." We left without buying.
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- I wrote down a list of things to buy, but when you see
the devastation in the city, shattered windows, the dirty streets, the
clouds of dust filling the air, the provocative presence of the Israeli
troops in al-Manarah square, I lost the desire to buy anything.
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- I ask Amal about our friends in Nablus. She tells me
what happened to Inas. She lives very close to the old city, the hottest
point now, they visited her at 3 a.m., searched her house and asked her
to come with them. They took her as a human shield to her neighbor's house
about 20 meters away.
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- They ordered her to knock the door, she rang the bell,
they laughed at her and told her "Stupid! Don't you know that we
cut all power in the city?" She knocked with her hand, but was pushed
aside and they put a kind of dough on the door. It was blown up in a second
while she was close to it. She started to shake all over.
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- In the house a family of 10 people, half asleep. To wake
them up, they threw a stun grenade with a huge reverberation. The mother
started to weep, saying, "Please don't harm my children." Inas
started to cry to see her see her very proud neighbor weeping like this.
They ordered Inas to leave. "How, and what if they shoot me?"
she askes, "It is curfew and almost dawn." They pushed her out
but she insisted.
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- The officer called out to let her go and she returned
back to her home in her night dress and her slippers. I said to Amal,
the story I heard on ANN t.v, an Arab satellite channel, at 3 a.m. They
interviewed Dr. Tariff Ashour, he is the head of what he calls a 'field
hospital' in the old city of Nablus.
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- During the interview you can hear clearly the cries of
injured people dying. He said that in front of him were 18 corpses, and
3 on the way. They were mostly civilians, "one was shot dead when
he came to give us some blankets to cover the bodies, another one was
shot when he went to dig a grave in the courtyard of the hospital".
The field hospital is located in an old mosque with very simple equipment.
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- "We could not get out of the Old City even a single
one of the injured or any of the bodies," he said. "We have
no morgue in this place. What we have are plenty of first aid staff who
can treat light injuries, but for serious injuries we have to leave them
to die. These are the ones you can hear crying now and we can do nothing
to help them. I have another one with serious injuries in his leg, we
have to cut it tomorrow at 7, we have no other choice."
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- "For your information," he added, "we
do this under continuous bombardment, this place was hit several times,
but we have to do our duty. Where are our Arab brothers? Where is the world
to see this?"
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- I was telling Amal what I heard. I felt so angry. Why
did no one prepare a proper hospital there? Why did no one provide needed
equipment there? She replied that no one ever expected that, "They
will go to this limit."
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- I tried to calm myself down, and said at least they are
better off than injured and killed in Jenin refugee camp, where they have
nothing. I heard Dr. Mohamed Ghali, head of Jenin public hospital saying
on Al-Jazeera t.v that he gives directions to people in the camp what
to do and after 5 days of fighting and heavy bombarding in Jenin refugee
camp and the Old City, and the Old City of Nablus, they did not allow one
single ambulance to get to these places or to evacuate any injured or
killed.
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- Kamel Jaber from Jenin tells me too that his friend Ibrahim
Said has the body of his son Walid of 19 years old in his arms since two
days now. He does not want to bury him but even if he did, he cannot. The
Apache helicopter did not stop firing missiles and nobody knows what to
do with their dead.
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- On al-Jazeerah too I heard the voice of Hussam Khader,
a Palestinian MP from Balata refugee camp. "Yes, they fired three
missiles at my door step. My young daughter could no longer speak and we
cannot take her to a doctor."
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- Then Mahmoud Al-Alool, Nablus governor, "The situation
is horrible and catastrophic. I keep getting calls from the Old City about
the killed and the injured. If the Red Cross cannot manage to get them
out, who can?"
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- On April 7th, they demolished Hendeya building with an
F.16 bomb, a building of 7 floors turned to rubble. An old woman refused
to leave her house. She is buried now under the rubble. They commit war
crimes but who will punish them?
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- "But people in Jenin refugee camp manage with their
injured," said Amal. "They have a 'field hospital'", she
insisted. I was surprised and I wished that what she is saying is true.
I said "But yesterday, I heard the head of a first aid clinic there
and he does not say that they have a 'field hospital'"
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- "No," she adds, "I have a friend there
and she told me that some shabab (young men) in the camp collected all
towels and keffeya (the checkered Palestinian scarves) and put them in
a big pan of water and boiled them on coal because they have no electricity,
of course. They use these towels as sterilized bandages."
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- "These might be useful for light injuries,"
I asked her, "but what about serious injuries?"
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- "No, they die," she said.
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- I felt so depressed and angry. We saw a big poster of
Yasser Arafat in al Manarah square written on it 'Just decide what you
want, you are the great knight of this time'. I noticed that something
was written in Hebrew over the Arabic writing and asked some passing by
what is written. Nobody could tell me. When I came back home, my daughter
told me that they wrote over Arafat's picture, "Mother, mother, where
did you leave me?" or something like this.
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- In al-Manarah square we meet many other women, all say
Hamdulla assalama, ("Thank god for your safety"). "Yes,
for the time being," we answer back.
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- We were a small group of women but we shouted at soldiers.
"Go away, go back to your mothers! Sharon, get out of our land!"
They just stared at us but after few minutes they threw a stun grenade
with huge sound, and we ran away.
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- Amal was laughing and said history has to register that
the first bomb thrown at demonstrators was probably thown at women. "As
usual," I said, "women are always the first to demonstrate after
each occupation." This happened after the 1967 war and in 1987 in
the first Uprising.
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- I came back home exhausted as usual, my hair felt like
metal wires, so dry and full of dust. I need to take a shower. My daughter
cooked some spaghetti again. I feel no desire to eat. She forced me, saying
"You have to. This might go for a long time. We have to survive. At
least we are lucky that we are not dead or under ferocious fire like in
Jenin or Nablus."
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- When she mentioned Jenin and Nablus, it was too much
for me and I started to cry. She left the food and joined me crying too.
"It is good for our survival to cry sometimes," said Yasmine.
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- By 7p.m, I hear the news. "We extend our hand to
the Palestinians for peace. We want to live side by side with them. They
have to abandon their leadership. They brought on them catastrophe after
catastrophe," Sharon said.
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- I felt that he was not talking to us. He talks to some
aliens he sees. He addresses the outside world with this talk but us we
know how he speaks on the ground. How can politicians lie like this?
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- Sharon decided to add three ministers to his government,
all right wing. One of them, Eiphy Etam, is an ex-general who says publicly
that "The land of Israel cannot contain two nations, it is us or them.
We will not bring buses to force them into but we will make their lives
so difficult to leave by their 'free will'."
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- What a free country, what a free people, what a free
spirit! With these people in power, I think the worst will happen, although
we did not see it yet.
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- My love to all of you.
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- Islah
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