From Al-Bushra
Arabiyeh Shawamreh or their six children.
We had planned a joint Israeli-Palestinian protest against home
demolitions. The idea was to set up a tent on the site of a
demolition, a tent that would serve several purposes: protest,
solidarity, documentation, and compassionate listening to the
family members. We planned to move this tent from site to site,
wherever the Israeli army used its bulldozers. Yesterday's
inauguration of the tent was planned for opposite the so-called
"civil administration" headquarters -- the nerve center of
Israel's control of the occupied territories -- those who
actually do the dirty work of demolishing people's homes and
other acts of oppression.
Our bus from Jerusalem held activists from several peace
movements -- Bat Shalom, Rabbis for Human Rights, Gush Shalom,
and Peace Now. We are all partners in a coalition called the
Israeli Committee Against Home Demolitions, and our demonstration
was to be held jointly with the Palestinian Land Defense General
Committee.
Through the bus microphone, I listened to Meir Margalit explain
the action and sketch one chilling scenario. "If the soldiers
try to prevent us from holding the demonstration, proceed in an
orderly manner to the planned alternative site. There must not
be violence on our side, but if the army engages in violence, do
not separate from the Palestinians. The army will be more brutal
to the Palestinians if the soldiers manage to separate us."
It was a sobering thought as we drove across the Green Line and
toward the protest tent. Suddenly a call came across a mobile
phone and Meir took the mike again. "We have just had word that
a demolition is taking place at this very moment not far from
here." It's a rare occurrence to catch a demolition in progress,
no less with a group of peace activists; most demolitions take
place with virtually no warning, and hence no time to protest.
With no further discussion, we turned toward Anata on the edge
of Jerusalem, a town composed almost entirely of Palestinian
refugees who had lived in the Old City of Jerusalem and fled in
1967. They thought they had found refuge in Anata.
After driving the narrow unpaved streets of Anata for what seemed
an interminable time, we finally located the area and the bus
parked as close as possible. We still had to walk 10 minutes
down narrow, zig-zagging dirt roads between crowded homes until
we came to the outskirts of Anata. There we practically ran
toward the edge of the hill and looked below -- a beautiful home
set into the pastoral valley with one of its walls now crumpled
into rubble by a roaring bulldozer; a family and neighbors
sobbing nearby; and a unit of Israeli soldiers preventing anyone
else from approaching the scene.
The scene was horrific. We surged down the hill in our small
group until the soldiers blocked our progress with their guns and
bodies. There were scuffles trying to get past them, but more
soldiers joined the barricade. M.K. Naomi Chazan who was with
us demanded to see the order proclaiming this a "closed military
zone", as the soldiers claimed, and after several long minutes
the officer complied. Who knows if the order was genuine or
invented at the last minute. But the guns were real.
So there we stood on the side of the hill and watched with an
unbearable sense of helplessness as the "civil" administration's
bulldozer took the house apart wall by wall. He drove through
the front garden with a profusion of flowers and a lemon tree and
slammed the front door as if he were God Almighty. Backing away,
he slammed again until the entire front was shattered and
dangling from metal rods. Then he came from every side, slamming
and crashing his shovel against the walls. Finally he lifted off
the roof, barely suspended, and sent it crashing below. When
that was done, he went around the back of the house and crashed
through all the fruit trees, including a small olive stand. He
saw a water tank on a platform and knocked that over, the tank
tumbling down and a cascade of water drenching the trees now
uprooted and broken. He saw two more tanks nearby and knocked
those over as well. I have never seen anyone in the Middle East
deliberately waste so much water. Then he noticed a shack in the
corner of the yard and he churned over to that, his cleated
treads grinding and squealing over the rubble he had to climb
over. The shack was an easy swipe for his shovel, and we were
surprised to see two doves fly out, one white and one black,
frightened out of their wits. They flapped their wings briefly
and landed not far from their former home.
All the while, a crowd of Palestinian neighbors and young men
were gathering behind us on the mountain crest, cat-calling and
jeering. From our Israeli group, many engaged the soldiers in
challenges: "How can you sleep at night?"; "Is this what is
meant by defending Israel?"; "Don't you understand the immorality
of this action?", and the like. Every single soldier, from the
high commander to the lowest GI responded the same way: "This
is legal; we're only following orders." One woman tried to yell
at the bulldozer driver everytime there was a lull in the din.
But nothing we could think to say stopped the roar of
devastation.
By then I had managed to move down past the soldiers and was with
the family outside their former home. One woman was sobbing and
I put my arms around her. When I began to cry too, she put her
arms around me. A weeping girl joined us and we both encircled
her with our arms. I later learned that this was 14-year-old
Lena and this house had once been hers. Then suddenly, gunshots
rang out. Some of the young Palestinian men had begun throwing
stones -- from a very great distance, I note -- and Israeli
soldiers retaliated by opening fire and running up the hill after
them. The soldiers were shooting as they ran, setting off their
guns like the wild west. I saw the commander and told him that
this was illegal, a clear violation of the "open fire
regulations" of the Israeli army, which stipulate that a
soldier's life be in danger before he opens fire. I demanded
repeatedly that he tell the soldiers to stop. The commander
shrugged and didn't bother answering. After 10 minutes or so,
the shooting stopped. Amazingly, no "stray" bullets had hit any
of our group, although the Palestinians, as usual, were not as
lucky. A man approached the crowd of neighbors, said a few
words, and instantly two women let out piercing shrieks and tore
up the hill, running at top speed. The son of one of them had
been hit by a bullet. I don't know his condition. Already in
the hospital was Arabiyeh, the mother of the family, who had been
violently struck by soldiers when she tried to prevent them from
destroying her home.
By then there was nothing to do but sift through the rubble. I
picked through the rocks and talked to Jeff Halper, who is
organizing the program to "adopt" Palestinian families whose
homes are slated for demolition. Jeff had sat in the living room
of this home last week, now a pile of jagged concrete slabs,
hearing Salim and Arabiyeh talk about the problem of Palestinians
not being issued construction permits. "Just last night," Salim
had told Jeff during the demolition, "friends and family had sat
in this home watching the World Cup soccer game". Now there are
6 children without tv, toys, books, diapers, bottles, or a place
to lay their heads. Instead, they remain with the trauma of the
Israeli bulldozer turning their home and security into a
bottomless pit of hatred for this occupation and the people who
carry it out.
A lot of us picked up olive branches from the yard as we walked
back to the buses. Most of the branches, like mine, were crushed
by the treads of power run amuck. For the first time, I also
noticed the scenery around us. On a nearby mountain -- not a
distant one, mind you -- were the classrooms and amphitheater of
the Mount Scopus campus of Hebrew University. Had they looked
out their classroom window, the students studying ethics and
justice could have had a clear view of the scene of brute power
and the trampling of this family's lives. And surrounding
everything, on mountains and hilltops to our left, right, and
center, were the bright orange rooftops of the settler homes in
the Occupied Territories. The settlers have no problem
whatsoever in getting construction permits. And no one would
dare uproot their olive trees, waste their water, harm their
homes, or turn their children out into the streets.
Well, it's almost over, this long, sad story, but it must not end
here. Our group, the same people and more I hope, will be going
back next Friday to begin rebuilding this home. This is a new
tradition of non-violent resistance that began a few weeks ago,
and is gaining momentum. The Palestinians rebuild, the Israeli
army demolishes, and they rebuild again. As one of the neighbors
said, "We'll see who lasts longer."
If you cannot come to our rebuilding effort -- and even if you
can -- please, please, please use your power to get this to stop.
The messages you have sent are incredibly effective -- foreign
political leaders have begun to raise the issue of home
demolitions with Israeli leaders. Write a brief message to
several people on the list below. Tell them that the Israeli
demolition of Palestinian homes must be stopped. Say it in the
subject line, so they get the point quickly. And circulate this
letter to more people.
That's all. Thank you for listening.
Gila Svirsky