A little bit about today's very special guest entry: I met Josh on a local electronic mailing list. He's originally from Perth. Later on he moved to the States and was an exchange student for a year at U of M. He's since gone on to pretty much travel the world in search of adventure. This is an extremely potent piece of reading material, and I'm honored to have placed here.
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Two months ago, I was lying asleep in a Palestinian hospital bed. Earlier in the evening I’d been shot by the Israeli military. Both of my legs were wounded and after receiving treatment I had sunk into a heavy, drugged sleep. Unfortunately, three hours later I awoke with a flashlight, attached to the barrel of an M-16 assault rifle waving in my face. Israeli soldiers, clad in ski masks then entered my room hissing at me to shut up and be quiet, threatening me with their weapons. They held me hostage for over an hour, asking questions and finally filming me with a video camera. Still conscious of the pain from the wounds in my legs, the rifle barrel moving from my torso to my lower legs, produced a cold, immobilizing terror.
Being shot in the legs teaches you more about fear than it does about pain. The impact of the bullet itself doesn’t hurt so much, producing only a slight stinging sensation and quivering muscles. The removal of the fragment, however, is a gruelling sweat and blood stained ordeal. In my case the doctor groped around inside the wound with his fingers and forceps for over five minutes before removing the jagged piece of metal. Once the bullet is out the worst of the pain is over, but fear sinks in somewhere deeper.
Two months ago, I spent the day in the village of Asira, just outside the city of Nablus in the West Bank. Myself and fellow activists had received reports of violence (teargas and gunfire) from the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) directed at farmers in their olive groves who were attempting to harvest. We travelled to the town to assist with the harvest and monitor the military. That day, there were constant patrols but no further violence and after the successful day we returned to Nablus.
Our office in Nablus is in Muhayim Ballata a decades old refugee camp situated on the fringes of town. The camp is populated with the displaced families of 1948 and 1967 and now throngs with new generations of refugees. After years of building and harassment, the camp is a cinderblock maze, riddled with bullet holes and the occasional ruins of detonated homes. We arrived back at the camp after dark and prompted by the flashing headlights of other taxis we pulled up short of the main entrance. There were IDF vehicles, jeeps and hum-vees, at the entrance to the camp. This was no formal military raid, just a regular occurrence in the camp – vehicles arrive, shebab (youth) gather and throw stones, the IDF begin firing. Sometimes they use rubber bullets, sometimes live ammunition. Getting out of the taxi, we were informed by the shebab that someone had already been shot – a small boy, hit in the leg with a rubber bullet.
We called for the other activists in the office and made the quick decision to establish a presence near the youth. Placing ourselves in a prominent position, just clear of the shebab, as international observers we hoped to moderate the behaviour of the soldiers. The usual game of cat and mouse ensued, the vehicles driving in and out of camp – at times meters from us – exchanging mostly rubber bullets for stones. By this stage two crowds had gathered, on either side of the intersection, and we decided to split into two groups to cover each. Mark (an American activist) and myself walked at a firm pace across the road, in clear view of the soldiers, and then stood near the smaller crowd there. The shooting continued, whole magazines of rubber bullets were fired down the empty main street.
Finally, someone prepared a small Molotov and launched it at the armoured vehicles. It fell well short but exploded in a in a flash of flames and colour, eliciting a cheer from the shebab. Like the stones it was more of a symbolic act of resistance than a physical threat. For many kids, it’s the only method they know of speaking back to oppression. Shortly after this we heard a rifle shot followed by a loud bang and the camp plunged into darkness. The IDF had fired a round into the large transformer which controls the power for the camp. The shebab scattered as the sound of live ammunition filled the air. Mark and I discussed the best method to make our way back to the relative safety of our office. We peered around the corner, not moving from where we’d been clearly standing since we crossed the road. The searchlight on the jeep passed near us and then we were shot.
In the new circumstances of diminished visibility, where the Israeli soldiers could shoot with impunity and blame the darkness, they had switched to more lethal ammunition. They deliberately created a situation with a greater chance of seriously injuring someone and they succeeded in doing just that. Three shots sounded and Mark dropped to the ground. I felt the sting of the round passing across my thigh and embedding deep into my right leg – surprise, pain and fear. I was shocked at the sight of blood in the darkness.
We were ushered into the closest home and paramedics quickly arrived, inspecting our wounds by gaslight before transferring us to an ambulance and on to Raffidyah Hospital. After the painful removal of the bullet and the dressing of our wounds, Mark and I sunk into an exhausted sleep. Hours later we were woken by Israeli special forces, raiding the hospital in contravention of the fourth Geneva convention, in an operation to arrest Palestinian militants.
Held hostage, lying in bed, shaken by fear I could finally only think what it must be like for the Palestinians in the other beds. Some sick, others with gunshot wounds more serious than mine, there was nothing to stop their summary execution, their disappearing into administrative detention. And more than this, nothing (like a plane ticket and a foreign passport) to promise them that the experience might soon be over. It had already lasted decades. Fear loses its intensity, its physical grip on you and sinks inside, normalized and tragic, leaving people with the ability to drink tea under gun fire. Leaving children holding hands and walking past armoured vehicles on their way to school, living under occupation.
After the drama of the first night, spending a week recovering in hospital I began to see how lucky I had been. Other patients shared their stories Ghassan, 20 had been a month in hospital with an abdominal wound. Shot by a soldier while on his way to meet a friend. Ahmad, 14, had the same injury as me except that the bullet had shattered the bones in his thigh and the wound had become infected. He had been in hospital for three months. He was hit while inside his house in the old city of Nablus by a bullet from the street passing through a window.
The first morning I watched a middle aged man being wheeled into the room across from us. He was unconscious and partially covered by a blood stained sheet. At first I didn’t know whether he had been shot or just come out of surgery but eventually his visitors drifted over to wish us a speedy recovery. They explained that the man was from the village of Burin, a father of five. He was a builder and every day he came to Nablus to work, passing around the checkpoints in the mountain, to be able to work. That morning he was shot three times, in his stomach and upper leg. In limited Arabic I asked them if he would survive. They replied Humdullilah “Thanks to God, he will be ok.”
Hours later there was a commotion across the hall, nurses ran frantically into the room and this time I watched the man wheeled out of the room at desperate speed. And then from down the hall came the haunting, grief filled sound of his family wailing. Distinctly Arabic and telling us the end of his story: he had died, killed because he wanted to provide for his family. His death was not exceptional, just the sort of thing that occurred with painful regularity and remained amongst the untold stories of unworthy victims.
Looking at the situation in Palestine from a distance you can see the injustice of 36 years of occupation, illegal settlements and the theft of water and other resources. You see the tragedy of losses on both sides. Looking at the situation up close its hard to see the international implications, US support and military aid, partisan ideology and ‘war on terror’ myth making. Your vision is too obscured by blood and tragedy. Your thinking is distracted by the scenes of humiliation and witnessing the difficulty of life. You don’t see many clashes between militants and the military - the every day reality is composed of the world’s fourth largest military oppressing farmers and students, strangling economic, social and political life. Protecting settlers while they attack farmers, internationals and even rabbis from the Israeli peace group Rabbis for Human Rights.
As an activist I’d had weapons pointed at me before the shooting, shots fired overhead and been on the receiving end of similar acts of intimidation. In the past I’d never flinched and carried on walking, picking olives or arguing on behalf of the sick woman who needed to get through a checkpoint to the hospital. We operate on an assumption of humanity and compassion, a faith that the bearer of the weapon doesn’t really want to shoot us. That faith was shaken by many acts that I witnessed in the West Bank – soldiers shooting at farmers and stone throwing youth, threatening to shoot donkeys or trying to hit us with tear gas canisters – but it was finally destroyed by the bullet that hit me.
The humanity, compassion and human dignity – which, as activists, we place so much trust in - is being eroded by the occupation: by the mind numbing task of manning check points; by the creeping racism and dehumanising rhetoric which enables soldiers to do their work; by the ongoing acts of humiliation and abuse; by participating in operation after operation in contravention of the Geneva Conventions. While Palestinian life is being strangled and destroyed, Israeli society is being eroded and degraded – both are victims of the Sharon government and its policies. I know this because a gun was pointed at me by a man who laughed when I questioned him about the Geneva conventions. I met another soldier who told me he didn’t care about peace, but that all the Palestinians must disappear ‘because they belong to the stone age’.
The morning I left Nablus I had to collect my bag from Ballata. Returning to the camp, I saw a tank and other military vehicles moving through the streets. Fear that I thought I had conquered in hospital grabbed a hold of me again. In broad daylight, I didn’t even want to be in the line of sight of the vehicles. My body, on a subconscious level didn’t trust that I wouldn’t be shot. Before the shooting, when vehicles arrived at the camp it would cause a stir of activity amongst the activists. We weren’t happy but we were there to work, to try and make a difference and we would be curious about what was going on. We didn’t understand the threat. Now, I more fully understood the tyranny of these random invasions, I felt the threat as a physical sensation, the lingering hold of fear. I understood the occupation as an ever present threat, one that scarred bodies and oppressed lives. I had a glimpse of the tremendous courage it took to try and lead normal lives.
On another occasion, a soldier told me “I’d rather see a dead child with a stone in his hand than an innocent child with no stone.” As if picking up a stone ends innocence. As if there was some sort of link between the two cases, that the death of a Palestinian child would prevent the death of an Israeli. The reverse is true. Palestinian children are innocent, like all others, but the occupation puts rocks in their hands. Their deaths (homicidal or accidental – both occur) and wailing gunfire filled funerals produce the impulse to revenge. Each death of a Palestinian adds to the risk for Israelis. The security myth obscures this fact and ensures that the self perpetuating violence continues. There will never be a military solution to this situation. Peace requires an end to the occupation and a proper accounting of the tragedy and guilt of both sides