Palestine Journal, Monday, October 30, 2000: ISRAELIS SHELL PALESTINIAN NEIGHBORHOODS/ ‘I want to send this missile back to Clinton’
The following is the third 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.
Shelling from Israeli tanks and helicopter gun ships into Palestinian towns escalated Oct. 30 as the death toll from the repression rose to 151 Palestinians by official count, plus eight Israelis. Scores of Palestinians in both Gaza and the West Bank were wounded.
Near midnight an announcement came over the television that everyone in the entire Palestinian nations was to go to the center of the town they lived in to demonstrate against the shelling by the Israeli army. It was a call for a massive national demonstration, taking place past midnight..
The four-person International Action Center delegation was in Ramallah, where they hoped to make their second delivery of medicines and dressings to the hospital the next morning. In the meantime Ramallah joined the list of towns targeted by the Israeli army.
From the rooftop near the family’s home where they was staying, IAC delegation members could see and hear the step up in shelling from tanks. This is how IAC organizer Dick Becker described it:
“At about 10:30 local time we saw a rocket attack from what we believe was an Apache helicopter some distance from the house that we’re staying in. A plane that was flying over, we could see that, we saw a flare and then a large explosion took place possibly within a mile, mile and a half.
“We went immediately to the site and it turned out that a very small building from the Fatah organization had been rocketed in a residential neighborhood in Ramallah’s twin city, El-Bireh.
“When we arrived on the scene there were many people on the streets. There’s no other commercial or offices in this neighborhood, all the rest of the neighborhood was residential. The rocket hit the Fatah office, which is something like I would say six feet by 12 feet, a really a tiny office.
“Then we went immediately across the street to see the widespread damage to the residential apartments. We went inside to talk with the people inside the apartments, which all had the glass blown off in the front of buildings. There were pieces of the rocket inside the apartment, on the floor.
“By very great fortune none of the people were injured. We interviewed a 7-year-old boy who was very scared and a 13 year old and a 16-year-old girl who were terrified. Fortunately, their mother, a U.S. citizen who lives most of the time in Birmingham, Alabama, had heard the planes and the helicopters outside the house had brought the children into the center of the house in the hallway and had them on a mattress.
“Then the rocket hit across the street and destroyed the office and blew up the whole front of the square unit apartment building. There was massive debris everywhere, including pieces of the missile inside. There was another house where according to the neighbors the people had just left five minutes before the rocket hit. This house suffered structural damage, large pieces of stone from the house lying in front of it, the windows were all blown out.
“We were not able to go into the house next door that was rocketed. Inside the apartment building there were pieces of missile that burned the rug. It was also very fortunate that the apartment building wasn’t destroyed by fire.
Becker remarked that the people were well aware that the weapons for the shelling were coming from the United States. “One man who had lived for many years in an apartment upstairs picked up a piece of a wall that was blown into his apartment, through his window from the house that was blown up across the street. He held it up and said, ‘I want to send a message to President Clinton, I want to send this back to him.’”
Whole nation on lockdown
“The family I’m staying with,” said IAC co-director Sara Flounders, “has a brother in Nablus. He called to say that there were four bombings there too. They hit another Fatah office at Nablus University. We also heard that there were bombings at Rafia Gaza, a divided city on the southernmost point of Gaza.”
There were military roadblocks everywhere from Bethlehem to Ramallah and apparently throughout the West Bank, Gaza and most of Israel. The IAC members, with their U.S. passports could get through the checkpoints. Palestinians who had been living there all their lives, however, were unable to get through. They were on lockdown, imprisoned in their own land, Flounders explained.
The day before, even with the U.S. passports, it took the delegation two hours to get from East Jerusalem to Beit Lahour near Bethlehem, a trip that normally is less than 30 minutes. There they could drop off the first delivery of medicine.
“Delivering medical supplies was important,” Flounders said. “Nothing has been getting through the roadblocks that could help the doctors take care of those wounded during the Intifada and the Israeli repression. Small clinics needed to be stocked with anti-biotics, burn and wound dressings, for example.”
For the Palestinians, everyday life had become horribly complicated even when it wasn’t deadly.
“The father of the family we’re staying with went to a job in Jenin and couldn’t get back home for eight days,” said Flounders.
“Last week,” she continued, “the school the children go to was blasted by bombs—the kids were traumatized. But amazingly, everyone is so strong.
The IAC members had similar experiences the day before in Bethlehem, Beit Sahur and Beit Jala, and at the refugee camp. Even though these areas had come under bombing attack again and again, the people still said they were determined not to let the Israelis drive them out.
Violence from settler mobs
It was not just the Israeli Defense Force—the military—carrying out attacks on the Palestinians. Violent mobs of settlers and the most reactionary segments of Israeli society regularly beat and burned, even mutilated those Palestinians who wandered near the edges of their own areas.
People returning from work or from the olive groves—it’s now the season to harvest olives—were subject to attack.
In Jerusalem the day before the IAC delegation met with Palestinian and Jewish anti-Zionist activists who had set up mobile units to try to stop mob violence against the Palestinians.
“But we could see how dangerous it was for the Palestinians,” said Flounders, “even in their own villages. Groups of settlers armed to the teeth with automatic weapons walk through crowded market places with their weapons cocked, ready to fire, at people who are not allowed to have weapons.”
The settlers live in armed villages on the highest land, atop hills that overlook the farm lands and the villages of the Palestinians. “If you haven’t been here,” said Flounders, “it’s hard to imagine how close the settlements are to the Palestinian villages. These are armed hilltops around Jerusalem and Ramallah, with roads connecting them that only cars with Israeli license plates can drive on.
“They look down on the Palestinian villages. And from them, settlers can and do take aim and fire into the villages,” she said.
“It’s now almost one in the morning,” Flounders said, “and we’re about to join the protest march here in Ramallah.”
If you would like to arrange for a speaker from the delegation at your school or in your community, email iacenter@iacenter.org .
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