Friday June 21, 2002

An amazing day, full of incredible experiences, interesting people, and a horrible trip from Jerusalem through two checkpoints to Ramallah, ending in Arafat’s destroyed compound. This is being written at 4:00 am Saturday sitting with two young guards with kalashnikovs, and a third young man doing his prayers on a rug pointed at Mecca.

The day started out at the Knights Palace Hotel with a super breakfast, then a walk down to the Damascus Gate and over to the Faisal Youth Hostel at 8:00 am to start a long day of training for ISM (International Solidarity Movement) activities. I won’t go into a lot of detail since it was eight hours of high intensity training, mostly led by a young Christian girl from Iowa. LeAnne Clausen has been here two years now and has been part of many ISM activities, including accompanying Palestinian farmers into their fields to try to protect them from armed and violent Israeli settlers who harass them. We were taught how to handle ourselves around three types armed Israelis: Soldiers, Border Police, and Settlers. Soldiers can often be reasoned with, Border Police less so, and the Settlers are violent, unpredictable, and dangerous. When confronted by an armed Settler, back down!

Early in the day, Huwaida Shapiro arrived to help with the training; she was also monitoring the hot spots that might need ISM personnel to help out. She spent a lot of time on her cell phone talking to Ramallah, Jenin, Nablus, Bethlehem, and Jerusalem. One of the main ISM coordinators, George N. Rishmawi, with whom I had emailed, is bottled up in Bethlehem and not even able to get to the Rapprochement Centre office, but he can keep connected using his cell phone. The Israelis have tanks, Apache helicopters, assault rifles, tear gas, and stun grenades. ISM has cell phones.

Early on I met the legendary Neta Golan, a tall young woman who is one of the leaders of ISM. She is an Israeli Jew, born in Tel Aviv, lived with her parents from age 4 to 9 in Toronto (long enough to gain Canadian citizenship and passport), but married to a Palestinian. She spent 31 days in the Arafat compound when it was under siege in April. She has stories to tell about that! Little food, water, and very primitive sanitary facilities. She ended up in there without even a change in underwear, but she had her cell phone and could give reports and interviews to the press. ISM runs under a consensus model, but she appeared to be calling the shots yesterday.

The fear is that after this last series of suicide attacks, Sharon will send the tanks back into the cities and refugee camps of the West Bank (Note, added later: He did and with a vengeance). ISM people are already in Jenin monitoring and helping the Palestinians cope with the Israeli terror. We heard of firing into a crowd of civilians and killing several, including children, but whether these incidents get reported in the American/Canadian press is unlikely. If given the chance I will volunteer to go to Jenin to document the physical and psychological damage. At least I could bring back some pictures of piles of rubble that used to be houses.

Neta came to the conclusion that our group should move to Ramallah and split up, some joining the ISM people at Arafat’s compound, and others prepared to ride ambulances in case of widespread casualties and closures by the Army. So we packed into a small shuttle bus for what I thought was to be the trip to Ramallah, which is only a short trip from East Jerusalem. A few kilometres into the trip we came to the first checkpoint. Our bus had to stop; we all got out and walked through the checkpoint, only to get into a different bus on the other side. A truck must stop, unload its cargo and then another truck on the other side of the checkpoint is loaded up for the trip to the next checkpoint. There are hundreds of these throughout the West Bank and Gaza. They have brought life to a standstill. It is called sociocide. Sharon is intentionally killing Palestinian society—and a good many people directly and indirectly as well.

Our new bus and driver bumped along for a while, and we came to the next checkpoint, a really formidable fortress with a central tower and machine guns, and armed soldiers checking traffic, both vehicular and pedestrian. Again we disembarked our second bus, and lined up with the Palestinians waiting to go through by foot. This took a while. Palestinians now must apply to the local military commandant in their town or village for a pass, valid for one month, and usable from 5:00 am to 7:00 PM each day. I saw one Palestinian woman with a heavy load of bundles turned back after trying to reason with the soldiers to no avail. I assume her pass was not in order.

Finally our turn came and Neta decided that the whole group, eight trainees and Neta would try to go through together. This worked. We had to show our passports and a stub of the entry permit from the airport, which I had luckily stapled into my passport. We are after all tourists and allowed to visit places such as Ramallah. Neta travels on her Canadian passport.

So, into our third bus, another fare paid, and finally into Ramallah, a city of about 40,000. First we stopped at the apartment of Huwaida and Adam Shapiro for a continuation of training. This took the form of role-playing; one part of the group took the role of ISM people and the other half were soldiers or settlers. We played out a real action that had taken place at a small village on the outskirts of Ramallah. A Palestinian sniper from somewhere (not the village) had picked off six soldiers at a checkpoint between the village and Ramallah. The Army then closed the village completely. No one in, or out. The villagers are dependent on travel to Ramallah for food and medicine but can‘t get there anymore. They have been locked up for months. The ISM tried to bring some media attention by staging a small demonstration and trying to get some of the Palestinians through to Ramallah. It did not work.

Finally it was suggested we go out to eat about 7:00 PM. We walked what seemed to me to be a few kilometers with my heavy pack to a really nice restaurant with an outdoor dining area. Fantastic food. I can’t name the dishes, but we ordered too much food and passed it around. About an hour later we got the final course, courtesy of the house—Arabic coffee and watermelon slices. Then came the bill: 30 shekels each, and that included the tip. So for about $6US we dined like kings (or well to do Palestinians). I could go back to that restaurant several times and not exhaust the menu. By the way I ate vegetarian and enjoyed it. You get chickpeas in a variety of dishes and that provides plenty of protein.

Then it was by taxi, at my wish, to the Al Muqata, Arafat’s compound in the centre of the city. An incredible scene of destruction. Pure spite on Sharon’s part. Piles of smashed, flattened civilian cars piled up among the mounds of ruble from the successive bombardments.

We were welcomed with open arms—they were so glad to see Neta again. She was kissed on each cheek by the officers, which I understand is very unusual for an Arab man to do this to a woman. She is accepted as sort of genderless in her position as one of the leaders of the ISM. It was moving to watch the reception. We were led inside through bunkered passageways up to the East wing with rubble everywhere, windows still not replaced, and armed guards everywhere. They were all not only friendly but glad to see us. We are joining a small group of French, Italian and American ISMers already here. One Canadian is also here, a young Palestinian Canadian from Toronto. The boss of the ISMers here at the compound is Claude, a redheaded French woman from Brittany. She has been here for a long time, and I think went through the siege.

There really wasn’t much to do or see, since it was almost 10:00 PM when we got here, and I was dead tired by that time. I was given a mattress, pillow, and blanket and a spot of the floor of this big room, and a few minutes after 10:30 PM I was asleep. Until one of the Danes who stayed here woke me up to borrow my laptop. He is writing articles for a magazine back in Denmark.

The ISMers stay and sleep in a relatively undamaged portion of the headquarters, the East Wing, which is where Arafat also stays. We did not meet him, although most of the ISMers had met him.

And that was it until about 3:30 am when a bunch of ISMers and Palestinians woke me up with their chatter and it was no use trying to sleep. It is 0600 as I write, and the sun is up brightly, so it’s out to take some pictures.

During the months-long siege of the compound, Israeli tanks ran over and destroyed any car they found on the street. Purely malicious vandalism to humiliate and impoverish the Palestinians. This is called "rooting out terrorism." I call it simply terrorism.