Palestine Journal, Saturday, Oct 28, 2000: DESPITE ISRAELI SHELLING Young people’s mood for struggle ‘cannot be quelled’

The following is a report from a four-person delegation from the  International Action Center from their humanitarian and fact-finding mission  to Palestine during what is being called the Al Aqsa Intifada, or uprising. The  delegation aims to bring back a first-hand report documenting the repression  inflicted by the Israeli army and to bring medical supplies for Palestinian  hospitals, which have been declared a state of medical emergency. The  Emergency is caused by the dual problem of the heavy casualties inflicted by  the Israeli repression and the inability of sick and wounded people to pass  through Israeli checkpoints on their way to the hospital. The IAC delegation members include IAC co-director Sara Flounders, Richard Becker, West Coast Regional Coordinator of the IAC, Preston Wood,  Los Angeles Coordinator of the IAC, and Randa Jamal of New York.

On Saturday, Oct 28 the International Action Center delegation landed in Tel Aviv and after a delay by security forces at the airport, finally arrived in East Jerusalem.

Just today two more Palestinians died in hospitals, raising the official total to at least 137, all but eight of them Palestinians. At four funerals there were further clashes with Israeli police and troops, who fired on and wounded hundreds of people. There are reports four more people were killed.

The night before, Israeli officials claim there was firing from a Palestinian village of Beit Jala on the settlement of Gilo on the outskirts of Jerusalem. The Israelis fired rockets from helicopters and shells from tanks into the Arab village.

There was more shelling tonight near East Jerusalem, apparently from Gilo, and reports of more shelling in Bethlehem. It is no wonder that these repeated attacks from the Israeli occupation forces have aroused a struggle that seems unquenchable.

Ali Jeddah, a long time activist and many years a political prisoner, described to the IAC delegation the resistance mood of all levels of Palestinian society. “The young people especially,” he said, “are in a mood for struggle and defense of their people that cannot be quelled. All day they seem to practice with slingshots. Then after the funerals they head to the checkpoints, armed only with their rocks.”

Jeddah helped establish Ambulances for Human Rights, a project organized by both  Palestinians and anti-Zionist Israelis to come to the defense of Palestinians under attack. They have sent mobile car units to try to go to the assistance of the Palestinians wounded by Israeli gunfire. This is still a small but significant effort.

The larger problem is the growing violence of settler attacks on Palestinians, which has reached new levels everywhere.

One-month anniversary

Today is the one-month anniversary, of Israeli General Ariel Sharon’s provocative visit to the Dome of the Rock -- Al Aqsa Mosque with more than a thousand armed Israeli troops.

Sharon’s visit was a clear provocation since he was the Israeli military leader responsible for the slaughter of thousands of Palestinians at the Sabra and Shatila camps outside Beirut during Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon. Since that visit there has been one month of unprecedented Israeli violence against Palestinian civilians and Palestinian resistance to this armed assault.

From our first steps at the airport Israeli officials made the racist character of their state apparent. In the United States we have a lot of experience with racial profiling. It is equally blatant here.

Of the four members of the IAC delegation only the young Palestinian woman who was born in the United States and holds a U.S. passport was stopped by security, interrogated, searched and insulted.

It is now the season for harvesting olives. Many Palestinian families and whole villages are totally dependent on the harvest. It is then devastating that Israeli settler mobs have attacked Palestinian farmers in the fields and Israeli military blockades have confiscated the picked olives.

Attacks on the olive harvesters

These attacks are part of the continuing effort to drive the Palestinians living in villages out of the area and clear it for Israeli settlement, which is in violation of the so-called peace process and all the earlier agreements.

The IAC delegation met with Sergio Yahni of the Alternative News Service who described the settler mobs that have been attacking, bashing, beating isolated Palestinians in Jerusalem along the edges of Israeli neighborhoods. And this hasn’t been limited to these areas within Jerusalem.

“In the past month,” Yahni said, “Israeli settler attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip have increased dramatically.”

These settlers have generally acted with impunity, as the Israeli military and court system historically have been reluctant to arrest, try, and punish settlers for violence they commit against Palestinian civilians. As a result, settlers are virtually free to carry out intimidation, assault of body and property, and even murder against the Palestinian population.

Earlier in October settlers from Kfar Oreh, which is near the Palestinian city of Ramallah, schemed with the settlement’s guards to stop farmers of Um Safa village from picking their olive harvest. Villager Mousa Mohammed stated in al-Quds daily newspaper on Oct. 20 that "while dozens of other farmers from the village and I were in our fields, the settlers came and put their weapons in our faces, calling us to leave the area, telling us they would shoot us otherwise."

Reports on many of these incidents can be found on the web sites of the Alternate News Service http://aic.netgate.net/ or at the Al Addmeer site at www.addameer.org   .

That these attacks have taken place so frequently shows that they are not isolated incidents or the actions of individuals, but rather a carefully organized campaign carried out by the settlers to drive out the Palestinian farmers.

It is clear from all our discussions that the Israelis have used the past seven years of peace talks to reinforce access roads and place Israeli settlements on the West Bank in now heavily fortified hilltops, like the Gilo settlement on the outskirts of Jerusalem.

Now Israeli troops are using the excuse of the uprising to level acres of land in Gaza and in the West Bank and to reinforce all their military checkpoints.

With a demonstration planned Oct. 29 in Bethlehem, the IAC delegation is uncertain if it will reach its destination with the medical equipment, as the Israeli forces threaten to block the roads there. There are new land confiscations in Bethlehem the excuse is to reinforce Israeli checkpoints and military presence.

 

PALESTINIAN RESISTANCE