Budrus: The threat of a good example

In a earlier blog, called Report from Palestine on the 4th Anniversay of the Second Intifada, I introduced readers to the village of Budrus, west of Ramallah. Budrus for the last year and half has been waging a united non-violent campaign to stop the confisication of their land and the construction of the Apartheid Wall on it (see also Green Left Weekly
http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/2004/601/601p14.htm).

The village had been successful in stopping construction for a period of time and had shown that a united non-violent campaign could actually win some victories.

The village continues to resist and the Israeli government is threatened by their stance.

Recently one of the leaders, Ahmed Awad, of the Popular Committee from the village was arrested and put under administrative detention (see the Ha'aretz article http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/499602.html). Ahmed is currently under administrative detention, meaning that the Shabak (Shin Bet/Secret Police) do not have to publicly present any proof that he has committed a crime or done anything wrong.

Originally one military judge deemed that there was no evidence to hold him, but another has agreed that he is a "security threat" and placed him under administrative detention for two months. This detention could be extended indefinitely if they chose to do so. In response to Ahmed arrest and the continued construction of the Apartheid Wall, the village invited Israeli and International peace activists to help plan a solidarity action to highlight Ahmed's arrest. The idea that the Israeli peace activists came up with was that to have a demonstration with the theme being "I am Ahmed Awad". The idea was that the Israeli activists would carry no ID and they would voluntarily be arrested and submit their name as Ahmed Awad.

The action, while very symbolic in many ways, was very inspiring because was exactly what the Israeli security forces are trying to stop – fraternization between Israelis and Palestinians, who are working peacefully in a joint struggle against the occupation and the wall. Fraternization between Israelis and Palestinians is a major taboo and is something the Israeli state tries to ensure does not happen.

Awad and Budrus' main crime is that they have been a successful in their non-violent campaign, not only uniting Israeli's and Palestinians, but also stopping the wall construction for a short period. Budrus is a real threat because they offer a real example of how to win and how to do it in a united and non-violent way.

Kate, S and myself left Al Quds around 10 am, hoping that three hours would be adequate enough to get us to Budrus, even if there was some delays. We headed first for Ramallah to catch a serveece from there to the village. The journey from Ramallah to Budrus, is probably one the prettiest ones I have taken here. Lots of olive trees lining the road and rolling hills either side. A half an hour into the journey we hit our first checkpoint. The soldiers did not even ask us to stop fully or check our IDs, they simply yelled "Go Back" and waved their guns at us. Our driver, who had no choice but to obey, turned us around.

As we headed back the way we came, Kate asked whether we were going to Ramallah or another way. Another way, said the driver. I have begun to joke that Palestinian serveece drivers are definitely the font of all knowledge. I can not count how many times we have relied on their knowledge and ingenuity to get us to demonstrations, through checkpoints, to provide information on situations for us and assist us when it comes to the army or other problems.

The previous week when we had left Jenin, we had hit a flying checkpoint and the driver not wanting to wait and miss the small period of time allowed by the IOF to pass through Beit Iba checkpoint, turned us around and took us cross country, through the agricultural fields. There had been heavy rain for several days and the ground was soft and we held our breaths several times, thinking we were going to be stuck in mud. However, after a bit of "bush bashing" through fields, rubbish dumps and river beds, we finally got safely to the other side and continued on our way unabated.

As we approached the village of Ni'alin just outside of Budrus, we hit a permanent checkpoint. At this checkpoint, everyone was hauled from the car and asked where we were going. After some more questioning, the soldiers eventually told the Palestinians they could get back into the car. As we went to do the same, they told us we were not allowed to go. As we started to argue with them, the soldier in charge kept saying, "you know why you can't go".

It was obvious that we were not going to be able to continue in the serveece, so not wanting to hold up the Palestinians and cause them any trouble, we got our bags and paid the driver and said thanks. As the serveece drove off and we were stuck in the middle o nowhere, we again started to argue with the soldiers. I asked one why was he harassing people to which he replied, "I'm not". But you are I said, "you are stopping people going about their journeys, you are making hard for the Palestinians who just want to get home to their families".

We quickly decided to try and make a break for it and just walk through the checkpoint hoping that they would not be paying to much attention to us now as other cars came through. As we started to walk quickly, Kate almost made it when the soldier in charge came running up to stop us. Kate kept trying to get past him but he was having none of it. So we sat down and two more soldiers came over.

For the next 10 minutes we started to debate and argue with them about what they were doing here. Parroting the usual refrain of all the soldiers we have ever encountered, they said," We are just following orders". "But don't you ever question what your are told", we all chorused. "The order was signed by somebody high-up" said the woman soldier, "and they know better then us".

S and I then started to say, "well other soldiers in history have said that too and look what happened". The female soldier confused by our obstinacy kept telling us that they were trying to protect us and when I said we really didn't need or want their protection and that they were harassing us, she said "but I am not doing anything too you". She seemed even more perplexed when I responded, "but you are. You are infringing on our civil liberties and our right to move freely".

Realising that time was getting away from us, we decided to walk away from the checkpoint and see what our next move would be. As we headed down the hill out of sight of the checkpoint, we decided to cut across the fields of Ni'alin. For a half hour we weaved in and out of terraced hills, through the cactus, rocks and olive trees before we finally reached the village. Relieved we had not been seen by the soldiers, we found the main street of the village and hailed a serveece to take us the rest of the way, hoping we would not encounter anymore IOF.

Within 15 minutes we reached the village, but it was 1.20pm and the demonstration had started dead on time at 1pm. As we made our way to the fields, we could hear teargas and sound grenades being fired and saw groups of boys, villagers and internationals running.

As we moved up too the hill where the internationals were, we were told that around 50 Israeli activists and 30 Internationals had joined 100 villagers. Usually, village demonstrations are always lead by the Palestinians with Internationals and Israelis at the back of the rally, however, because the idea of this rally was for the Israeli activists to be arrested to highlight the arrest and detention of Ahmed for non-violent resistance, it was the Israeli activists who this time led the march. The demonstration we were told, had been peaceful and the demonstrators wearing signs in five languages, saying "I am Ahmed Awad" had successfully made it down to the bulldozers.

Once the IOF had started firing on and attacking the non-violent demonstrators, the shabab (Palestinian boys) began to take up positions with their sling shots and rocks. As Kate and I moved down the street to the open field we could see IOF arguing with some of the women from the Israeli human rights group, Maschom Watch (Checkpoint Watch). Kate began filming and I began to take pictures. A few minutes later teargas began exploding around us, as the IOF began firing on us and Kate narrowly missed being hit.

We moved back up the hill and for the next half hour, the young women in the village began chanting at the soldiers to go home. As we moved cautiously back down the street, we could see that some of the Israeli activists who had been detained were coming back up from the valley where the bulldozers were. The villagers began to move out into the field, with the young women of Budrus once again taking the lead. For a half another we stood there watching the soldiers and the young women slowly moved out into the field.

The television media, which had been down in the valley, suddenly began to make their way back up to the flat area where we were. Seeing the media and hoping their presence would deter the IOF from attacking, the young women and the rest of the village began to move calmly and slowly towards the soldiers. The shabab had stopped throwing stones sometime back, when asked by leaders of the village and the non-violent peaceful demonstration once again began to move out onto the field. The soldiers confused as to what to do, with the media present but also around 100 demonstrators advancing on them, at first held fire. Clearly rattled by the advancing, peaceful, chanting crowd, the soldiers knelt and began to take aim, firing teargas and sound grenades directly at demonstrators.

As we began to run back, one Israeli activist wearing a prosthetic leg fell. As she fell, she landed on an exploding sound grenade, while another landed next to her and exploded. As we rushed to assist her, we could see that the explosion had burnt a huge hole in her clothing and that she had sustained burns. We picked her up and carried her to the ambulance. All the while the IOF continued to fire into the crowd.

As we were retreating to the ambulance, the IOF began to fire on the ambulance. Several of us were hit full force by tear gas canisters fired at high velocity. D, one of the ISMers was hit in the stomach, when suddenly I felt a huge whack on my upper thigh. I initially did not realise what had happened, but within seconds I could feel my skin burning and gas began to explode around me and knew I had been hit by teargas canister. Everyone around me began running and the ambulance drivers tried to maneuver up the hill to get out the fire of the IOF.

When we were finally out of range of the IOF we began to take stock and see how badly people were hurt. The woman who we had carried to the ambulance, luckily only sustained minor burns. D and I, despite being hit by the canisters were reasonably okay. We had copped the teargas full on and like everyone else our eyes and noses were streaming but within ten minutes this had subsided. I was in some pain and limping from being hit full force by the teargas canister, but while there were some abrasions caused from the velocity and heat of the canister, my skin was not broken and there was no bleeding.

I now, however, have a massive round deep purple bruise around 10 –12 cm across in diameter and it has of course been quite tender. In the days following, my body has started to ache all over, no doubt in reaction to the trauma of being hit with such force. Despite "creaking" a lot and aching, I am fine and will recover with no problems and I am extremely grateful that I had not been hit in the head or back with the canister or by a rubber bullet which were also being fired (recently one activist had been hit with rubber bullet in the upper thigh and it had penetrated 4 cms).

For the next hour and half, a stand off between the village and the IOF continued. The IOF armed with rubber bullets, live ammuniation, teargas and sound grenades to continued to attack an overwhelming peaceful demonstration. Kate had sought refugee in the house that I had been given refugee in at the last demonstration at Budrus. The soldiers, however, also raided the house and commandeered the roof from which they continued to fire teargas and sound grenades at us.

In response to the full frontal attack on the peaceful demonstration by the IOF, the shabab once again began to amass behind a half built house to defend their village and began firing a constant rain of stones at the soldiers on the roof. The soldiers armed with high tech weaponary and boys armed with stones continued their standoff for about another half hour before both sides decide to retreat slightly. At this stage, the village leaders decided it was time for us to pull back all together. Several of the ISMers agreed to stay in the village over night in case there were any further incursions.

41 Israelis had orginally been detained by the IOF. As we gathered back at one of the village leaders house, the phone call came through that most of them had been realised and only four were being officially arrested. A half an hour later, those who had been released were soon back at the house. They had been split up and some taken to the local area command and then released, while others were detained down in the olive groves.

Budrus' campaign to stop the wall will continue. Budrus’ campaign is one which frightens both the Israeli military and the Israeli state. They are a threat because they have successfully forged ties with Israelis, something which is taboo and which Israel does everything in its power to prevent. They are a threat because their campaign has been overwhelmingly been non-violent for the most part. They are a threat because they have united activists from all Palestinian factions and from Palestinian civil society. But most of all they are a threat because they have shown that a small Palestinian village can take on the Israeli state and military and win.

Humiliation

This blog is written by my friend and colleague, Kate.

Kate is a Jewish activist who has spent almost a year in Palestine and writes regularly about her experiences here for her own blog and for her friends and family. Kate has kindly given me permission to publish her blog, ‘Humiliation’, on Palestine Eyewitness.

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December 5, 2004

Humiliation.When you ask Palestinians to talk about the occupation, especially the men, the word that comes up more than any other is "humiliation." Ask about the occupation, and the first ten stories will be about checkpoints, and all of them will have the word "humiliation" in them.

It is hard for people not living in this situation to grasp, that humiliation is the hardest thing about living under occupation, much worse than violence. I have said something like this before, the dailiness of it, the ordinariness, the fact that it might happen ten times a day or even more, depending on where you live and work and what is happening there, the way that it emphasizes to you that you have no control over your life. It is hard for me to grasp, and I have lived here for more than a year now (a fact that is also very hard for me to grasp). It's hard for me to understand because I don't feel humiliated when I am stopped at a checkpoint or asked a hundred times a day, "Where are you from?" "What are you doing here?" But of course, the checkpoints are not meant to humiliate me. They are not asking the questions for that, though why they are asking them, I cannot quite figure out. It is certainly not because they want to know, and not because it tells them anything.

But it is telling that "Where are you from?" ("Meayfo at?") is almost always the first question they ask, before "Where are you going?" or "What are you doing?" It speaks to the apartheid nature of these control mechanisms. By asking, "Where are you from?" they are asking, "How do I have to treat you?" Last night in the Old City, a border policeman stepped in front of a group of men and asked, "Where are you from" in Hebrew. One of the men said, "Do you speak English?" He repeated the question, immediately more polite. The man said, "Colombia." The policeman was visibly shocked and withdrew, saying, "Oh, go ahead," and then answered some questions about how to get to a certain bar near New Gate. I thought, they could have been from Nablus and answered, "Colombia," and would he have known the difference? He did not ask them for ID. I think it doesn't even occur to them that people might lie to them.

Whenever I am in a service going to Jerusalem, at the checkpoint the border police get on and usually everyone just holds up their IDs and they look at the cover and if they are blue, they don't ask to see them, only the green or orange ones. So I always think, isn't there a huge underground market in blue plastic covers? But I don't think there is, because most people are too afraid to lie. And that in itself is humiliating, that you feel like you have to tell these bastards the truth, because if you are caught lying, you will be punished so severely. It is like being a child with an abusive parent.

The South Africans who are working here talk about it being worse than their apartheid system. I tend to react negatively to that, because I think of the violence, and certainly, the South African government was as violent and as harsh in its repression of Africans and much more so of dissent within the white society. But I think what they are seeing is the humiliation factor, the in-your-face-ness of the occupation, the way that it controls every aspect of Palestinian life, they can never forget it, while the Black South Africans had more space to call their own, they didn't run into the police or the army every day.

My neighbor, Abu R, was saying tonight that the last Intifada was concentrated in the cities, but this one has been more in the villages, because the cities are technically unoccupied, while the villages are where the army is omnipresent. Sami Awad was talking about this issue, "How do we resist from within a prison?" Though in that sense, the prison analogy is not good (in others, it is quite apt), because in prison, normally the repressive apparatus is very visible. It is more like, "How do we resist when we are on reservations?" The South Africans had their labor to withhold, but Israel is no longer dependent on Palestinian labor.

This evening, I was going to visit some friends in Deir Balut, and there was a checkpoint at the entrance to the village. A service was being checked, and when I got there, I asked the driver if he had room and he said no, though I think that he did. The soldiers asked me where I was from, as usual, and I answered in Hebrew, and then they asked why I was taking Palestinian transportation. I said in English, if you want to go to Qarawa, it is the only way to go. They didn't understand. I tried to ignore them, and one soldier asked, "Do you need any help?"
I said, "Well, if you want to help me, you could go away, because while you are here, no one wants to pick me up."

He said, "I don't know what you are talking about."

He finished checking the next car and it went through and I realized that it was Abu R, who was taking one of his employees who lives in Biddia to the Qarawa roadblock. When he saw me, he picked me up, and then he said he had thought I was with the army. I said, yes, everyone thought that, and told him about my conversation with the soldier. He laughed and said, "He can understand what you say, but he cannot do what you ask."

I thought about how it feels to be someone like him, a man of tremendous power in his community, who was, at some point, a military leader much higher than these kids who were asking for his ID, and now is sort of a leader in a nonviolent movement including hundreds of Israelis and internationals, as well as Palestinians, who's been interviewed for documentaries and European television and South African radio, and to have to give your ID on demand to any bored Israeli punk in a uniform and say nothing, if you don't want a hassle or worse. I think about how it must feel to men who are doctors or sheikhs, standing for hours at checkpoints, to have to ask Israeli women or me, who has no social power in my own society whatever, to beg the soldiers to let them go to the doctor or to work or whatever. And then I feel bad for being classist and thinking that maybe their humiliation matters more than that of an old farmer or a builder or the kids who sell gum at the checkpoints.

Last week, I went on a trip to Jenin, and we hit a flying checkpoint on the way. The line of cars was really long and didn't seem to be moving well. I got out and walked up to the front to see what was happening. There was a huge space between the cars going north and those going south – maybe 200 meters, and the soldiers were standing in the middle and really taking their time motioning cars forward from one side and then the next. I was just going to stand at a distance and watch, see if it sped it up any, but they called out to me to come, so I did. They asked me a bunch of questions (interestingly, the first one was not "Where are you from?" but "Where are you?"), and told me that they hate Arabs.

I asked, "So is that why you are here, because you hate them?" and one of the soldiers answered, "Yes, I hate them because they kill my friends." I walked away, and he called me back. I tried not to go, saying, "I don't want to talk to you, it will just hold up all these cars." He said, "It will not take long, just two words." I went back. "Two words," I said. "I don't hate all of them," he said. "Just the ones who kill us."

I said, "Okay," and turned around. The commander came forward then and made a point of telling me to go wait in the car, which I was already about to do. The line suddenly went a lot faster and people were able to wait much closer to them.

When our car got to the front, they told us all to get out. Ours was the only car they did that with. We were standing on one side of the car, and they gestured to us to move to the other side. We obeyed, and lined up and gave them our IDs. Then one soldier, not the one I had talked to before, came over to me. "What are you doing here?" "Visiting friends. What are you doing?" He said, "Visiting friends." I have to admit, that is the first time I have gotten that response. His friend called out in Hebrew, "Give her your phone number." He said, "I'm looking for a special friend." I said, "Well, you're unlikely to find one here, go home." He gave me back the IDs and we left.

Why did they do it? Whom were they hoping to humiliate, me or the Palestinians? Or both? The sad thing is, they wanted to do something to show disrespect, and to flaunt their power, but they were not really sadists, so once they had done that, they couldn't figure out anything to do with us.

On Saturday night, I encountered some border police who were sadists. Nine of them were hanging out near the entrance of the Old City, and they would call young men over and beat them. Just like that. One guy, they slapped twice and kicked once, another guy they choked and were getting ready to beat with clubs when I ran up. They made one kid take off his shoes and socks and it was freezing and wet. They had told me to get lost, but I didn't, so they took my ID and they didn't like it (copy of my passport and my IWPS ID card, in a Palestinian ID folder). I think they let it go because they don't read English well and couldn't tell exactly what the ID card was and if it was something official or not. Father M, the rector at the Hospice, came by while I was waiting to get it back, and I went to talk to him, thinking it might help. Then right before they let me go, a Palestinian man I know, who works in a drug prevention and treatment program in the Old City, happened by and said, "Are you okay? Do you need any help?"

People have been talking about the story, that Israelis are more upset about soldiers at a checkpoint making a man play the violin for them than they are about the soldier in Gaza firing a barrage of bullets into a 13-year-old girl after she was wounded. I don't think it should be either-or, people can and should be outraged by both incidents. But in a certain way, those who are more outraged about the violin incident, are the ones who correctly understand the long-term strategy of occupation. The incident in Rafah illustrates the complete dehumanization of the officer who killed the girl. The incident at Beit Iba illustrates the conscious dehumanization of the violinist – taking a man's pride and joy, his talent, the thing that gives his life meaning, and forcing him to use it as an instrument of oppression.

In an online chat with my friend N, she asks, "is it humiliating because that is the intent? or can it not be humiliating if one is not humiliated?"

The intent is definitely to humiliate. But if you are not humiliated, then you pretty much rob them of their power. They can use violence, but the violence is also primarily meant to humiliate.

My friend A told this intense story, in the interview I did with her, about an incident where a soldier said, "You're going to spend the night with me in the tower," and she decided to keep walking and leave her ID behind. And how she took the power from him. But I think about how terrified she must have been, because really, he could have killed her.

For Palestinians in the area where I live, the sheer existence of the army in their faces every day, on their land, driving their jeeps around on roads carved out of their olive groves, and the fact that these 18 year old kids can stop them and demand ID from them and ask them prying questions or make them play the violin and they can't fight back, is humiliating. Because it says that as a people, they have no power.

My friend Um F never even looks at the soldiers when she encounters a checkpoint, never takes out her ID ahead of time like others do, and almost all of the time she just walks through without stopping. A Palestinian friend of N's in Ramallah says she doesn't believe in documents (passports, IDs, car registrations), so she doesn't carry them. I don't understand how she gets around, but she does. She gets hassle, but she has never been arrested for it and she always gets to work and home again. I want to interview her about it. I don't know how long she's had this policy. Right now, she is about my age.

It's kind of like me and giving the copy of my passport all the time. Sometimes I think it is making trouble where there doesn't need to be any. But it is also subverting the occupation, which is built of rules. Because if I just give them the passport, they glance at it and let me go, and everything goes smoothly. And if I give them something they don't expect, they have to think about it. Sometime this year, I started to think, "Why do I always make so much trouble? I can just show them the passport and go on my way." Now I think, maybe that is when I started to think more like an occupied person.

Jenin Lives!

Jenin, in the north of the West Bank, hit international headlines in 2002 when Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) invaded the city and refugee camp, bulldozed hundreds of house, leaving thousands homeless and hundreds dead causing a massive humanitarian disaster. In early December, Kate and I went to Jenin to do interviews with Palestinians women’s groups and activists.

As we began our journey to Jenin, we discovered that the Border Police were at the front entrance to our village. They had stopped one of the local Palestinian buses and made everyone get off and were checking their hawiyye (ID cards). As we got there all the men were getting back on the bus and we had discovered that they had been there for about a half hour or so.

It is not unusual for Palestinian buses to be stopped for long periods of time by the IOF and having travelled on buses in the last few months, I already knew what had just passed.

Either the driver or one of the passengers on the bus would have been ordered to collect all the hawiyye (ID cards) and then take them to either the Border Police or the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) solider and wait for them to go through them. Palestinian hawiyye are Green or Orange ID cards and identify the holder as Palestinian. Israeli IDs on the other had are blue. The colour coding makes it easy for occupation forces to easily identify who is Israeli and who is Palestinian, with the colour coding of IDs yet another example of the structural and institutionalised apartheid imposed by the Israeli state.

As the hawiyye is being collected and then checked by the Border Police or soliders, in the majority of cases but not all, the rest of the men would also have had to get off the bus and wait, as they had done this morning. Sometimes they would be called up individually and checked, other times they would be told either individually or collectively to raise their shirts to prove they had no bomb strapped to their chests.

Eventually, they would be allowed back on the bus and to continue their journey. How long they would have to wait would be totally arbitrary and depend on the mood of the soldiers or the police officer conducting the check. Recently one of our other team members, J was on her way to Ramallah for her days off, when the bus she was on was stopped for three hours. When she asked what was going on, she was repeatedly told that it was not safe to travel on the bus because the ‘Arabs were all terrorists’.

Eventually, we were on our way, but we were to encounter two more flying checkpoints before we reached Jenin. At the second one, less then 20 minutes from our village and near Tulkarem, the procedure was repeated. The hawiyye and our passports collected, handed to the soldiers and then after 15 or 20 minutes, we were passed through.

It was the third checkpoint that we encountered, however, which was the most disturbing. As we neared the village of Balaa, 6 soldiers were stationed in the valley along the winding road, stopping all traffic.

As traffic banked up, Kate decided to go down to see what was going on. She later told me that when she asked what was going on and why were the IOF there, one of them replied, without censoring himself first, “because we hate the Arabs”, but then realised what he said and quickly said “only the ones who kill us”.

In front of us was a truck carrying live chickens and as its turn came to go through, the first two soldiers spoke to the driver and checked the truck and then waved him through. However, they were then halted by the second set of soldiers who also decided to recheck the vehicle.

From the hill we watched in silence. One of the other passengers in our servicee then broke the tension by saying what we all had been thinking about the pointless rechecking of the chicken truck. Provoking a weary laugh from the rest of us in the servicee, he muttered to no-one in particular, but to all of us….“what are they checking for … exploding chickens?”.

When it came our turn to pass through, we were waved through by the first set of soldiers to the second two. Here the double edged sword of being an international shone threw.

Being an international, we more often then not are able to use our positions to help alleviate some of the more over the top harassment of the Palestinians by the Israeli occupation forces, but on some occasions the presence of internationals can also make soldiers angry and they then take out that anger on the Palestinians. We are always constantly aware that this can happen and as a result we try to gage the situation to ensure that any interactions we have do not escalate a situation unnecessarily.

As we approached the middle set of soldiers, our car was told to stop and we were instructed to get out. In the half an hour we had been waiting, no one else had been asked to leave their vehicles. It was clear from the soldier’s behaviour that Kate and I were the reason for this happening.

The young soldier checking the IDs who would not have been more then 20 or 21 years old was clearly bored and was looking to show that he could do what ever he wanted and to know doubt show the Palestinians they should not be doing any favours for internationals or even interacting with them.

Briefly checking the Palestinian hawiyee, he then focused on Kate and my passports. “Where are you from? Why are you here? Where are you going?”.

"To visit friends", Kate said. To this the young solider replied, “I’m looking for special friend’. Kate replied in a flat tone “well I doubt you will find any here, so perhaps you should go home”. Ignoring Kate’s comment, he continued to recheck our passports.

Kate, who speaks little Hebrew as well as Arabic, later told me that the other soldier, who had a smarmy grin on his face the whole encounter had said to the soldier checking out passports “give her your phone number’. After another few minutes of pointless questioning and sexist innuendo, we were finally allowed to get back into the car and waved through.

As we sat in silence in the car I felt angry, degraded, dirty and powerless. The thought raced through my head, if I felt this way after such a minor encounter, imagine how the Palestine people must feel all the time. Every single day, they are humiliated and degraded by the occupation and the security forces. In addition, to enduring their own humiliation, they must also endure the continuous and ongoing humiliation and shaming of their mothers, sisters, brothers and fathers. Every week here, you see, hear and are told stories of ritual humiliation.

Just a week earlier, the Israeli newspapers carried a disturbing photograph taken by the women from the Israeli human rights group, Maschom Watch (Checkpoint Watch). The photo, reminiscent of the holocaust, was of a Palestinian being forced to play a violin for soldiers before he was allowed to pass through the checkpoint at Beit Iba.

The week prior to that, when visiting with our friend F, her 16 year old daughter S, told me a story about soldiers at one checkpiont thought it was amusing to try and humiliate a young Palestinian man and woman by forcing them to kiss each other.

The soldiers, she said, had refused to let one young man pass through a checkpoint unless he kissed a young Palestinian woman. The young man did not know the young woman, who also just waiting to be passed through. The young Palestinian woman, refusing to be degraded or humiliated by the soldiers, told the Palestinian man that it was okay because to her he was her brother. Later the young man, apparently impressed by the woman’s dignity and kindness, went to her family to ask to marry her.

In the weeks since our trip to Jenin, one of the leading IOF Major Generals, Elazar Stern, told the Knesset (Israeli Parliament) committee for Constitution, Law and Justice that one in five soldiers (around 20% of the IOF) believed that the life of a Palestinian or Arab was worth less then the life of an Jewish person (http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/510815.html.). As a result said Stern, Palestinians were regularly degraded and humilated at checkpoints and roadblocks.

We eventually reached Jenin and we met up with Kate’s friend, Y who had arranged for us to meet with some of the local groups and families who had lost land to the wall the next day.

Y told us how he had been working to try and establish a cultural centre for the children both in Jenin city and Jenin camp. From the window of our room, he showed me the camp and where the 2002 incursions into the camp had taken place and where the IOF demolished hundreds of homes and killed dozens of innocent civilians in the process.

Y told me that in the aftermath of the incursion, he and others had organised for the children between the age of 6 and 16 years to do painting and drawing workshops as therapy in response to the trauma they had just been through. The theme which the children had been asked to draw was “a day in your life”. Many of the drawings from those sessions were now in Scotland as part of a exhibition, but he promised to bring some of the ones he still had the following day to show us.

Later that night, Kate and I went our separate ways for an hour or so and agreed to meet back at the unit. Kate, however, got lost. As I waited for her to come back (with the key to get into our room), on the stairs near our apartment, the children from the neighbouring apartment came out to see what this strange woman was doing sitting on the step. They invited me to come in and eventually I agreed. The oldest boy, 12 year M, called me over and lifted the blanket that lay across his lap to show me the plastercast on his right leg and the bandage on his left. I quickly realised he had been shot by the IOF.

Kate soon arrived and was also invited in for coffee. In Arabic, M’s parents explained that he had been shot twice. One bullet had shattered the bone in his right leg and the other had entered the calf of his left leg.

Kate asked why the soldiers had shot him and was he the only one. M told her, he had been throwing stones and the soldiers had shot him and nineteen other young boys that day. In early November, when he had been shot, the IOF had also assassinated four militants in Jenin and had regularly raid house and arrested and detained children and adults.

Later that night, at 1.30am, Jenin once again experience tanks rolling through her streets. The tanks, we were later told, had set up near the camp. A few days, later after we had left the city, the IOF entered the camp and carried out raids once again.

The next day, Y arrived at the apartment. He brought with the drawings and paintings he had told us about the night before. We sat in a circle and he passed each one to us. The paintings, he explained were done be children from his village, while the drawings done in coloured pencil were by the children from Jenin camp. The difference between the two was stark.

While many of the paintings from the children from the village carried images in browns and blacks, tanks and guns, there were also many which depicted “normalcy” with the children using green and red and other bright colours drew their parents, their house, trees, flowers and grass. In contrast, all the drawing done by the children from Jenin camp were dark, full of pain and suffering.

Dark in colour, browns, blacks, dark blue, most of the drawing showed the rolling hills of Jenin camp. The hills and streets, however, were not filled with pretty houses or trees or flowers, but instead they were populated with images of Israeli tanks carrying the Star of David flag, firing on protestors, soldiers shooting people, helicopters firing missiles at houses and buildings, as well as houses on fire, buildings exploding. As I picked up each drawing and looked at the pain that filled them, my heart just broke for the children who drawn them and the horrors they had witnessed.

Y then asked me would I take the drawings with me to Australia and do an exhibition, like the one in Scotland. I was completely dumbstruck and overwhelmed by the magnitude of the request.

I remembered seeing an exhibition in Canberra a number of years ago of paintings and drawing by Jewish children who lived and died in Theresienstadt/Terezin concentration camp and remembered how moved I had been by the exhibition and how important I had thought it was that these children’s testaments had been saved. All I could think was how now can I be responsible for such precious and important documents? How could I be responsible for the testaments of the children of Jenin and his village?

Y, however, was certain it was the right thing to do and that I should take them. And finally I agreed. R and I had been talking about doing a photographic exhibition when we got back to Australia and I had also started collecting anti-occupation posters from the various organisations and towns I had visited. I now had enough of them and thought they too could be used as part of any exhibition we did. Now, it seemed that I also had a collection of precious drawings and paintings to add, as well as a cd with photographs of the drawings that had gone to Scotland.

After carefully packing away the drawings, Y took us to meet the women from the General Women’s Union. Although they were busy organising to ensure women’s involvement in the upcoming Palestinian election, several of them took time out to talk with us. One of the women, H, who agreed to talk with us and to be interviewed by both myself and Kate, had been imprisoned in an Israeli jail.

H had spent two years in an Israeli prison because she had been an activist with Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Hiyam told us that she had been involved in the social and welfare work carried out by the organisation and had been an outspoken opponent of the occupation.

H’s story, was like many of the stories, I had either read about or had heard from others who spent time in the Israeli jails. My friend M had been jailed three times during the first intifada, as a young teenager for simply throwing stones (spending a total of a 2 and half years in prison). He was lucky he told me, because he did not suffer any physical torture, only psychological. H, however, had not been so lucky.

One of the torture techniques favoured by Israeli interrogators is make prisoners stand with a dirty and smelly sack on prisoner’s head, sometimes for hours, sometimes for days, to exhaust them, disorientate and isolate them. H, like many other women, was subjected to this abuse.

She went on to tell us how she was burnt with cigarettes and cigars, how she had been electrocuted and how the women had been isolated and beaten. She told us how the women were humiliated and left without sanitary products during their menstruation period. She told us how the Israelis would encourage the Israeli women prisoners in the criminal section of the prison to attack the Palestinian women political prisoners. In particular, said H, the more psychologically disturbed Israeli women prisoners were used to terrorise the Palestinian women political prisoners by letting them roam the Palestinian sections screaming, yelling and physically attacking the Palestinian women.

As she told us her story, H began to cry, the memory of it all was still fresh she told us. As I sat there and listened to her story, I too was on the verge of tears. I tried to image myself in her place, going through what she had gone through. How would I cope? Would I have the strength, both mentally and physically to get through it? What would I do?

As H told us her story, I also thought of Nidia Diaz, the El Salvadorian revolutionary, who too had kidnapped and brutalised in prison but who never gave in to her torturers. I remembered how moved I had been by her story and courage, just as I now was by H’s story.

There were really no words to be able to express our thanks to H for sharing her life with us, but we tried anyway.

With our time in Jenin almost over, Y took us to meet with a family is Suweitat, about 10 minutes from the outskirts of Jenin. The family once had 200 dunum of land (1 dunum = 1000 sq meters) but much of it now lay behind the electronic fence which made up the apartheid wall that ran through the Jenin region. As we drove onto their property, we were greeted by the two destroyed houses. The houses, now just concrete rubble and wire garters, had apparently been a “security risk” and were demolished at the time of the 2002 incursion.

Y took us to meet the family. The women were sitting in the yard, thrashing wheat. Just down the hill a little from where the family had been working was the illegal colony of Ganim, which had been established in 1985. As we looked over the ridge towards Jenin city, we could see the army and a bulldozer clearing my trees to make way for more illegal housing infrastructure.

As we sat and had tea with the family, the told us how the soldiers had come and cut their trees and destroyed their houses. They told us, how even though the soldiers said they could not go to their land to plough, decided to try and go anyway. As the children blew up the balloons that Kate had brought for them, they shared their stories with us and then took us to meet the rest of their family who were ploughing some of the land that they had been able to access.

We soon, however, had to leave and said goodbye to both the family and Y. In the servicee on the way back to Tulkarem, the other passengers in the car were quick to asked if we thought there would be peace soon. When I said, I hope so, but I am not confident, they all agreed.

My trip to Jenin was one which was a mixture of emotions: raw, disturbing, sad, heartbreaking and inspiring. Jenin - A name now so well known, however, embodies within its hills the spirit of the Palestinian people. A spirit of resilience, dignity and resistance and a determination to survive, to remain and to live.