Click on Link to Read

1- Two Turning Points for the ISM from Michael (ISM Media Office)
2- Hussein Khalili was Released from Michael (ISM Media Office)
3- David Rovics sings for Palestine in Texas from Riad E.Hamad
4- WHAT REALLY HAPPENED IN JENIN? ( event in Seattle )
5- One Man Against the World by Uri Avnery
6- AN OPEN LETTER TO MR. BINYAMIN NETANYAHU by Luc Walleyn Michael Verhaeghe Chibli Mallat
7- Report from Jenin from Tobias Karlsson
8- Report from Rafah - Gaza-
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1- Two Turning Points for the ISM

On 14 February 2002 the ISM faced two almost simultaneous crisis in Rafah and Nablus. Both
involved incidents where members of the ISM were in danger of being killed or seriously injured by the soldiers of the Israeli Occupying Army while conducting non-violent resistance to the occupation.

Rafah

At 2 pm on Friday the ISM received word that Israeli military bulldozers were demolishing houses in Rafah town in the south of the Gaza Strip. The destruction is part of Israel's "Apartheid Wall" policy towards the Occupied Territories. Whereby Palestinians communities will be sealed from the outside world by a massive series of walls, complete with towers from which military sharpshooters can monitor their activities. The section of the Wall under construction near Rafah stretches along the entire length of Gaza's border with Egypt. To give the snipers in the wall's towers clear fields of fire, the Israeli occupation forces in Gaza intend to demolish all the houses within 70 - 100 metres of the wall As soon as they received word of the demolitions seven activists (3 US, 3 UK and 1 Dutch) left ISM Rafah headquarters in Gaza to resist them. The site of the demolitions was in an area of Rafah known of "Block O" that is overlooked by four of the wall's towers including the infamous Saleh e-Deen Tower from which Israeli snipers have murdered several of Rafah's residents.

When they arrived the activists saw a row of six houses being systematically bulldozed by two Israeli military bulldozers guarded by a tank. They were unable to approach the bulldozers directly because of landmines but found an alternative route to the devastation, which bypassed the minefield.

As soon as the activists began to approach the bulldozers they were fired upon from the towers and the tanks which directed rifle and machine gun fire at the ground in front of them. Using their megaphone the activists announced that they were unarmed international peace activists and continued to advance. The tank and the soldiers in the towers continued to fire warning shots at them but the activists refused to submit to their intimidation and continued their approach.

As soon as the activists came under fire they phoned the ISM media office to alert me to the danger they were under and I immediately made an emergency call to the US consulate in Tel Aviv to inform them what was happening and request that they alert the headquarters of the Israeli occupying forces in the Gaza Strip that there were international peace activists (including 3 Americans) in Rafah Town that were coming under fire from Israeli troops and ask them to please exercise restraint (the standard ISM procedure in such circumstances).

After being put on hold several times. I had the following conversation with US consulate staff:
Diplomat: I'm sorry but its Shabbat and we can't contact anyone in the Army because they're all on holiday.

ISM: On holiday? Then what are they doing demolishing houses in Rafah and shooting and international volunteers for?

Diplomat: I'm sorry but we don't have anyone we can contact in the Army.

ISM: Then phone the Department of Foreign Affairs and tell them to contact the Army.
[The standard protocol under such circumstances.]
Diplomat: What are they doing in the area?

ISM: They're trying to stop house... Can I speak to the consul please?
Diplomat: Please hold a minute....

Ingrid Barzel: How can I help you.
ISM: This is an emergency call about a group of International Peace Activists in Rafah Town
that are being fired upon by Israeli troops. I'm phoning you because I want you to get in contact
with the Army and advise them that there are American nationals in the area and ask them to
please exercise restraint.

Ingrid Barzel: Please advise your people there to leave the area.

ISM: Look they're in the area and they don't intend to go anywhere. They're trying to stop
houses being demolished by military bulldozers.

Ingrid Barzel: We have a travel advisory against traveling to the Gaza Strip and if these people are there they are there illegally. [This is untrue to enter the Gaza Strip one has to have a special authorisation stamp in one's passport and all the Rafah activists have one.]

ISM: What if one of them gets killed? Will you hide behind your excuses then?

Ingrid Barzel: They're not excuses. It's State Department procedure endorsed by the
Secretary of State.

ISM: So what you're saying is you take no responsibility for the welfare of your nationals dong peace work in the Gaza Strip even if this means one of them gets killed because of your inaction?

Ingrid Barzel: We do not accept any responsibility for anyone who ignores our travel advisories and illegally enters the Gaza Strip.

ISM: What is your name?

[Pause]

Ingrid Barzel: I'd be happy to give you my name. It's Ingrid Barzel.

ISM: Right, now I know how useless you are I'll never phone you again. I also got in touch with the British consulate who said they'd phone me back but seem to have got in touch with the Gaza military headquarters and the Dutch consulate which was on holiday and had an answering machine operating.

Meanwhile the ISM activists had reached the building that the bulldozers were demolishing while the tank and the towers had fired warning shots at them every step of the way. Two of the activists then stepped into the partially destroyed building preventing the bulldozers from any further destruction while the tank fired its machine gun over their heads. The bulldozer then retreated but then the tank rolled forward to within three feet of them and an uneasy stalemate followed until the tanks backed away. Then the bulldozer came forward again as the other five activists rushed to join their companions in the building and the tank resumed firing its machine gun.

This time the bulldozer didn't stop and five of the activists were able to scramble away while two others became trapped by the bulldozer in a corner of the building. When the bulldozer found its path blocked by rumble and backed off before resuming its advance the two were able to get away and stand on some barrels next to the building to photograph and film the destruction but the bulldozer then began ramming the barrels.

By this time the tank had begun firing its machine gun at some nearby houses which the activists knew were inhabited by families so the activists went to stand between the tank and the houses so that the tank was unable to continue terrorising the people in the houses although it resumed firing its machine gun at the feet of the activists.

At this point a member of the Palestinian resistance seems to have thrown a pipe bomb at one of the bulldozers. This development increased the risk to the activists because there was now a danger that they would be caught in a fire fight between the Israeli occupation forces and the Palestinian resistance so they retreated to a nearby house to watch and film the demolition. They were joined in the building by two old women who were the owners of the houses that were being destroyed who wept at the sight. When the bulldozers finished their demolitions of the block of six houses they withdrew with the tank.

When they had gone, the community who lived in the neighbourhood rushed out to the site of the wreckage to help its former residents salvage what they could from what had once been their homes. Among the items they retrieved were a bicycle, a water tank, and electrical cord and some planks of wood. After 20 minutes of searching the rubble the soldiers in the towers began firing at them, forcing them to abandon the wreckage.

A man told one of the activists that this was the pattern of such salvage operations:

the sentinels generally give the people about half an hour to retrieve what they can before firing on them.

Nablus

At 3.50 pm, just as the Rafah crisis was drawing to a close, 12 ISM activists based in Rafah were trying to deliver chocolates to the Abu Sanfar house in East Nablus which the Israeli army of occupation had been using as a firing position for forty days while detaining the three families resident in the house in two of its rooms.

When the activists approached the house they were confronted by Israeli soldiers commanded
by Ariel Ze'ev who is known by Palestinians and ISM activists living in Nablus to be an insane sadist. Ariel and his men quickly became violent toward the activists and then, at 4.10 pm, seized Hussein Khalili, a Palestinian member of the ISM, and dragged him back to the house before firing warning shots at the activists, forcing them to fall back.

Immediately, the activists phoned the ISM Media Centre to alert me of their situation and I immediately called the Hamoked and Gush Shalom human rights organisations (the ISM's allies in the struggle against the occupation) and Denis Brenstein of Flashpoints Radio in the USA before drafting an email to our supporters informing them of what had happened. Through our combined efforts we were able to alert people around the world of Hussein's plight and issue a joint appeal for them to phone the District Coordination Office of the Israeli Army in the Nablus area to demand Hussein's immediate release.

Meanwhile, an Israeli member of the ISM and another activist returned to the Abu Sanfar house to negotiate Hussein's release. When Ariel realised that one of the activists was an Israeli Jew he became furious and promised that he would make Hussein suffer more because of her and that he would arrest a Palestinian every time he saw her. He also said that he would hold him for two weeks if necessary "as revenge" for what she had done.

He then went into the house and took Hussein into he garden of the Abu Sanfar house where his men bound his hands behind his back forced him to kneel on the rocky ground in the rain while Ariel Ze'ev kicked him in the back.

Hussein was forced to kneel in the rain for what he estimates were forty five minutes. Eventually, Ariel went inside and a new group of soldiers released his hands and took him under shelter where they verbally insulted him and told him that the only good Arab was a dead Arab and that he was just a fucking peacemaker. They also told him that the Israeli activist was a whore for helping the Palestinians and that what she had done made her no longer Israeli and that she should be kicked out to the country. When Hussein protested that the activists had only come to the house to comfort the children the soldier said that they did not care and that they were in Nablus to kill all the Arabs.

"Even the women and children?" Hussein enquired.

"Yes!" they replied. "They throw petrol bombs and stones at us and threaten our lives so we will kill them too!"

While Hussein was being abused, the Nablus area DCO was being inundated with phone calls. We have no way of knowing exactly how many people phoned in to demand his release but ISM activists watching the Abu Sanfar house saw an Israeli lieutenant-colonel arrive in a hummer soon after the phone-in campaign started. He told the activists that he had made a decision that Hussein would be held in the house until 10 pm and then released.

Shortly thereafter I began receiving calls from people from around the world asking what more they could do. I said all that they could do was to forward the email to their everyone in their address book. One man told me that he had already emailed it to over 200 people. A woman asked me if she should contact the US consulate in Tel Aviv but I told her it would be futile since they no longer accept responsibility for their own nationals in the ISM.

At 8.50 pm Hussein Khalili was set free. He told his captors that he was afraid to go out into the streets in the dark because there were tanks and soldiers on the streets who might shoot him if they saw him but was told that all the soldiers in the area had been warned about him and that he would be safe. He then made his way across the road to a neighbouring house where he was given tea and water and used the phone to phone his companions in Nablus who came over to take him home.

As soon as I received word of his release I alerted his wife and then sent out an email to our supporters informing them of the success of our phone in campaign. Even so the Nablus area DCO continued to be flooded with phone calls until mid way through the following morning.

Two supporters have informed me that as soon as she got through the officer on duty said: "Hussein Khalili has been released before they could even state the reason for their calls.

Conclusion

On February 14 2002 the ISM's mission in Occupied Palestine came as close as it has ever come to collapse. Though its international activists have often encountered a level of hostility from their missions in Israel which are expected to protect them, this is the first time a consulate has stated explicitly that it will take no responsibility whatsoever for the welfare of its nationals performing peace work in the Occupied Territories.

Had Ariel Ze'ev made good on his threat to hold Hussein for two weeks and had the ISM proved powerless to protect one of our own from such arbitrary abuse, it would have proven to both the Palestinians and their occupiers that we are now an irrelevant movement.

Yet thanks to the efforts of our supporters throughout the world we were able to confound Ariel's threats and secure Hussein's release and safe passage in less than four hours. Though many activists made their calls to the DCO after Hussein's release, they should not feel that their calls were wasted. This marks the first time the ISM and its allies have organised a phone-in campaign on such a large scale at such short notice and with such an effect.

Throughout Occupied Palestine but particularly in the Nablus area, ISM activists have come under increasing pressure from the Israeli occupying forces in an effort to intimidate them into ineffectiveness through threats and low-level violence. We believe that this is part of an Israeli plan to step up its campaign of terror against the people of Palestine once the US commences its invasion of Iraq.

The remarkable effectiveness of the campaign to free Hussein Khalili on Friday has demonstrated to the architects of this terror that the ISM can no longer be considered as only a handful of brave activists scattered throughout the Occupied Territories but has now matured into a truly global movement capable of mobilising a very large number of people around the world in defence of Palestinian human rights.

Thank-you to everyone who participated in the phone in. Thank-you for your messages of support. And thank-you for forwarding the emails to your friends. We've still got a long way to go before Palestine becomes a free country but, because of your efforts, ISM activists working in places like Rafah and Nablus can continue their work in the knowledge that they are not alone, even if their governments have now renounced their responsibility to protect them.

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2- Hussein Khalili was Released

At about 8.50 this evening Hussein Khalili was released from Israeli Abu Sanfar House.

Unfortunately, I have no more details on his condition except that he is currently with his family and his phone is engaged (probably by his wife who is in Switzerland and is also a member of the ISM).

Thank-you to everyone around the world who spread the word of his detention and also to those who phoned the DCO in the Nablus area demanding his release. Thanks also to those who phoned through their support and concern to me, which I was able to pass on to his wife when she phoned me to ask what was being done on his behalf.

Everyone in the ISM is very relieved at this great news but we all recognise that we still have a long way to go. The three families at Abu Sanfar are still prisoners in their own house. The unspeakable Ariel Ze'ev and his men are still using the house as a base to terrorise the people of Nablus. In the past three days Israeli Occupation Forces operating in Nablus have taken
away Hussein's brother, father, cousin and father's uncle and another uncle and cousin have been declared as wanted men by the Occupying army. This is not at all untypical of what is happening to many families throughout the occupied territories where people are terrorised and abducted by the Israeli military on a nightly basis.

Nevertheless, this definitely represents a small win for human rights not only in Palestine but around the world and it is really encouraging for us in Palestine who are striving to bring justice to this part of the world to know how many people around the world are willing to support us in what ways they can.

The email below was forwarded to me by the spokesman for Gush Shalom, an Israeli human rights group that often allies itself with the ISM in crises such as this.

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3- David Rovics sings for Palestine in Texas

Dear Friends,
Please forward our link http://www.pcwf.org/events/arabicmusic.htm and ask your friends in Texas to come and hear David Rovics sing his anti war and pro Palestinian songs. Also, we will be showing a movie, Palestinian children art work made for the art contest that took place last year in the Rafah and Dhesheh refugee camps. Also, we will be featuring clothing items and Palestinian embroidrey items for sale and serving Arabic food.

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4- WHAT REALLY HAPPENED IN JENIN?
Voices of Palestine & Hayaat present...

Seattle premiere of the award-winning documentary film "Jenin, Jenin" exposes Israel's war crimes and ethnic cleansing against the Palestinian people. Dr. Riad Abdelkarim will talk about his experiences in the devastated camp shortly after the atrocities, and will answer your questions.

Sunday, February 23rd, at 6:00pm
Univ. of Washington - Kane Hall 220
Students $2 / Public $5

Details and store at: www.jeninjenin.org

Sponsored by: Palestine Solidarity Committee, American-Arab Anti- Discrimination Committee, Arab Student Union, Muslim Students Association, Students for Responsible Foreign Policy, Freedom Socialist Party, Seattle Radical Women, Community Action Network,
Arab Film Distribution, Solidarity Design, Seattle Media Watch, Palestine Information Project, and Eat The State!
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5- One Man Against the World
Avnery on new axis
15.2.03

--- A great, civilized nation democratically elected a fanatic demagogue, who preached war. Actually, he did not really receive the majority of votes, but, somehow, his ascent to power was arranged nevertheless.
--- Soon after assuming power, he manipulated a dramatic incident in order to tighten his grip upon the country and prepare for attack on smaller nations. An immense propaganda machine turned "enemies" into devils, the incarnation of evil.
--- The call for war enabled him to unite the whole people behind him, to silence all opposition, gradually abridge human rights, overcome the economic crisis and embark upon a voyage towards world dominion.
--- He loved being photographed in uniform, walking along lines of soldiers, pretending to be a great military leader ---
I mean, of course, Adolf Hitler.
The German people, which gave him power and followed him with closed eyes even when he committed heinous crimes, paid a heavy price. It has learned the lesson. Now it abhors war, any war, from the depth of its soul. Hundreds of thousands - young people, children, grandchildren and grand-grandchildren of that generation - march these days through the streets of Germany to protest against Bush's war. Their leader, Schroeder, was reelected solely because he expressed this deep longing for peace. The most warlike people has turned into the most anti-warlike.
That's great, isn't it? Not at all! American and British leaders condemn Germany for its refusal to go to war. The Israeli government heap scorn on its head. Wet rugs, these Germans! Damn pacifists! Cowards! Pitiful people who refuse to fight!
All this less than 60 years since Hitler's suicide. Who would have believed.
And this is not the only miracle that is happening these days. Not by any means.
A personal memory (excuse me if you have read it before): when I was 8 years old, two years before my family fled Germany after Hitler's coming to power, I was a pupil in the third class of an elementary school in Prussia, a Social Democratic bulwark at the time.
Once the teacher told us about Hermann, the national hero, who had succeeded in 9 AD to lure the Roman army into a trap and annihilate it. The Roman commander, Varus, fell on his sword and Augustus Ceasar uttered his despairing cry: "Varus, give me back me legions!" On the
spot where the historic battle was supposed to have taken place, there stands now a huge statue of Hermann. "Hermann stands with his face towards the Erbfeind (hereditary enemy)!" our teacher proclaimed. "Children, who is the Erbfeind?" All the pupils in the class shouted in unison: "Frankreich! Frankreich (France)!"
Now Germany and France, the hereditary enemies, stand together, shoulder to shoulder, against Bush's war plans. The Americans curse and abuse them, but they stand firm: Enough of war. Enough of destruction and bloodshed. Other ways to solve problems must be found.
That is another miracle. But even this is a minor one compared to the third, historic miracle that is happening in front of our eyes: President Putin appeared in Berlin and Paris, embraced Chirac and Schroeder and added his voice to theirs. One front from Cherbourg on the
Atlantic to Vladivostok on the Pacific. That has never happened before. From earliest times, European history is full of alliances of some states against others. Germany and Russia divided Poland between them.
France and Russia allied themselves several times to contain Germany. Napoleon tried to unite Europe and did not succeed. The Texan cowboy is succeeding where the Corsican emperor has failed. Bush has invented the childish term "Axis of Evil" to group together Iraq, Iran and North Korea. That's nonsense. But in the meantime a French-German-Russian axis has come into being and is facing the United States.
(The term "axis" to design a coalition of states was also invented at the time of Hitler. The original axis of evil included Germany, Italy and Japan. When using this term, Bush intended to recall that memory.) It is too early to say if this new axis will hold on and if it will be strong enough to face the enormous might of the United States. But even if it will be broken this time, its very birth is a harbinger of things to come.
These three countries, contemptuously called by the American Secretary of Defense "Old Europe", are, on the contrary, united by considerations pertaining to the New Europe. This Europe worries the Americans. It is becoming an economic superpower, able to compete with,
and perhaps overtake, the United States. A symbol of this is the fact that the euro has indeed overtaken the dollar. As I remarked in a previous article, the war in Iraq is primarily a war against Europe and Japan. The American occupation of Iraq will ensure American control not only over the vast oil reserves of Iraq itself, but also of the Caspian Sea and the Gulf States. The hand on the oil tab of the world can choke Germany, France and Japan, because it can
manipulate at will the price of oil throughout the world. Lower the price, and you choke Russia. Raise the price, and you choke Europe and Japan.
Therefore, preventing the war is an essential European interest, in addition to the profound longing for peace of the European peoples. Washington does not even hide its desire to bring Europe to its knees. Lately, there is a crude American effort to create a coalition of peripheral countries in order to oust Germany and France from the leadership of the European Union. America is organizing a bloc of the former Communist nations, who are about to join the Union, together with the UK, Spain and Italy. The Paris-Berlin axis, aided by Moscow, is designed as a defense against this ploy, too. This war, then, goes much beyond the Iraqi problem. It is not a war against Saddam's microbes. It is, quite simply, a war for world dominion, economic, political, military and cultural. Bush is ready to spill a lot of blood to achieve this (as long as it is not American blood).
Israel is involved in this game without quite knowing what it is doing there, a boy in a game of world-league bullies. It has nothing to gain, it can only lose.
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6- AN OPEN LETTER TO MR. BINYAMIN NETANYAHU

Brussels, 13 February 2003

Mr. Benjamin Netanyahu
Minister of Foreign Affairs
Israel

Dear Mr. Netanyahu,

Yesterday you declared that the Belgian Supreme court made "a scandalous decision, which legitimizes terror and harms those who fight it. This turns the tables -- when those who fight terror turn into the accused and the terrorists are victorious."
As counsels of the plaintiffs, 28 Palestinian and Lebanese survivors of the Sabra and Shatila massacre, we cannot accept your language, tone, or characterization of yesterday's landmark ruling. Our clients are not "terrorists," but ordinary people who were raped, tortured, and wounded; who were forced to witness -- and relive everyday since -- the slaughter of their children, parents, husbands and wives, or who had their close relatives "disappeared." By calling these victimized survivors "terrorists," after all that they have endured for over twenty years, you have brought shame upon yourself as Foreign Minister, and upon your country, which, to its great credit, acknowledged the responsibility of Israeli politicians and military in
this crime against humanity two decades ago, yet has never gone one additional and crucial step further by legally prosecuting the perpetrators and compensating the victims.
As Minister of Foreign Affairs of Israel, you should not accuse the Belgian Supreme Court of legitimizing terrorism simply because it accepts the principle that Belgian courts have universal jurisdiction over perpetrators of war crimes, genocide, and crimes against humanity.
Your country was the very first country in the world to endorse universal jurisdiction for such crimes in its national legislation.
Israel arrested war criminals like Eichmann and Demanjuk in other countries, or sought to have suspects extradited. Israel has failed, however, in respecting and discharging its clear
obligations under the Fourth Geneva Convention to arrest and prosecute those responsible for the Sabra and Shatila massacre, expressly qualified by the United Nations as an act of genocide and perpetrated in territory then under the control of the Israeli Defence Forces.
Your statement gratuitously inflicts additional pain and suffering on our clients. The Middle East has been plagued by violence and revenge for over half a century. Our clients' legal action constitutes the very first attempt by victims of mass violence in the region to seek redress
through non-violent legal action before an independent court, and we expect any decent person in the world to respect this choice. We are issuing this public request that you apologize for your cruel remarks.

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7- Report from Jenin
This was sent to Amnesty International and human Rights Watch today.
To whom it might concern,

At around two am on tuesday, feb. 11 some 50 Israeli soldiers busted in to the house of the
Seba'ana family in the Jenin refugee camp. They ordered the inhabitants out in the muddy,
cold night and then searched the house. The officer in command, feared in Jenin under the
name Captain Jamal, gave the order to detain Esma Saba'ana, the mother of the family. Esma
is seriously ill, she is suffering from cancer in her brain and has been subject to two major
operations. When detained the soldiers denied her to bring any of her medication against the
disease and the severe pain it causes. She is scheduled for another operation in the next few
days and the arrest will probably deny her this opportunity. Therfore detaining her causes a
serious threat to her life and health and we urge you to take action against this.

No charges has been brought against her, the Israeli system subjects Palestinians to be held
as "administrative detainees" without any court-procedure. The detention-order is signed by an army officer and is valid for a period of up to six months. After this a new order can be signed for a new six month period, sometimes making Palestinians serve years of imprisonment under hard conditions, without the right to defend themselves in a trial.

Five of the six children in the family, a girl 7yrs, a boy 10yrs, boy 15, boy 16, and a girl 18, is now taken care of by their relatives since their father is already in jail. He was put under administrative detention five months ago, also the oldest brother, age 18, has served almost a year in prison.
The families theory is that Esma was arrested because the family father has refused to sign a
document confessing to the Israeli accusations against him. By detaining the mother the army
hopes to put pressure on him in order to make him sign.

The family has also suffrered from the occupation before, in April 2002, when their house in the
refugeecamp was destroyed by Apache-helicopter missiles.

Note: We have tried to get a statement on Esmas medical record but failed to get in contact with the responsible Doctor. However, if you are interested in engaging in her faith we can provide additional information in the next few days.

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8- Report from Rafah - Gaza-
14 February, 2003 1:30 pm Rafah

We get a call that there are houses being demolished in Block O, one of Rafah's many refugee
camps. Usually this work is done at night so it's too dangerous for us to do anything, but when
it happens in daylight we like to try. There were 7 of us internationals, equipped with two video
cameras, a megaphone, and an array of still cameras and banners. There were two bulldozers
going to work on now unihabited houses, some already partially destroyed, that were right along the front line next to the newly constructed steel wall.

We were in the view of 4 Israeli towers, and one tank patrolling the area. We approached the
operation through what used to be farm land, displaying our banners and shouting through our
megaphone "We are unarmed, international, human rights obsearvers" and the like. Very slowly, we drew nearer to one of the bulldozers, who seemed to be ignoring us. Once it pulled back a bit to have another go at the building, one other activist and I jumped down into the way of the bulldozer, between it and the house on which it was working. It had already destroyed half of it, so we were standing inside the decrepit house. The bulldozer withdrew and the tank approached.

We stared at eachother for awhile, and then the tank withdrew and the bulldozer returned. By this time the rest of the intenationals had joined us in the house. The door of the bulldozer opened, and out came a percussion grenade, designed to send a loud resonating boom. Though it really wasn't that much louder than gunfire, which we've all gotten used to by now. Then the bulldozer decided to resume work, despite the fact that we were standing there. It was a game of chicken, and the bulldozer won. We had the choice of moving back, being barried by rubble, or climging onto the bulldozer. We were not prepared for the latter two options so we moved.

Some evacuated the the building quickly, but another activist and I were trapped into one corner. We tried again to get in the dozer's way, but it was clear that it didn't care, and would injure, or possibly kill us if we didn't move. We were afraid that one of the inner walls would fall on us, so we evacuated as soon as the bulldozer withdrew again. We stood near by for awhile, watching a nd trying to decide what to do. The tank drove up onto some rubble and gained and elevated postion, and began shooting into houses surrounding the area, especially in areas where they saw movement, but at no point did it fire at us. They especailly targeted the house from which we had come, and we decided that we should try and protect the houses from gunfire, as we were clearly useless at protecting them from destruction.

We moved back and in front of the targetted houses, and continued to wait, until a few young
men began throwing homeade pipebombs at the tanks. We withdrew quickly, and waited for
the operation to finish. The pipebombs were as ineffective as our action, the Israeli Destruction
Force continued until they'd destroyed 5 houses. They finished in less than an hour and withdrew.

Immediately the area was flooded with Palestinians, especially children, obsearving the rubble,
playing on the mounds, and gathering what few useful items were left. I began to help gather
wood, as it gets cold here at night and people always have fires. Many rely on the hot coals to
heat their houses all night. It felt incredibly pathetic, that all I could do was gather wood from the
rubble of what used to be the homes of families, many of which were forced here from their homes in Israel after 1949. Some have had to relocated several times, as Israel continues to "aquire" their land and destroy their homes. Now they're even attacking the refugee camps, how many times must these people be victims of Israeli aggression?

February 15, 2003 Rafah
We had a small demonstration in support of the people of Iraq today. It was an international day of action, with huge demos all over the world. We heard that the one sceduled for New York had been deemed illegal, so we held a sign that said "Rafah Against Polticial Repression in New York". We also had signs from our respective cities, saying we were against the war. I held one for Kansas City, MO, USA, my home town. There were many Palestinians, lots of children, a fair amount of media and a great deal of Israeli and US flag burning.

It was cut short by rain, but it was nice to be in sinc with people all over the world, even for a little bit. I am quite afraid of what is going to happen in the case of an Iraq war. I think that Sharon will use it as an excuse to crack down on the West Bank and Gaza, but especially here in the Gaza Strip, where a full invasion is possible. We are trying to prepare for it, brainstorming various contingency plans, and making "activist kits" containing a banner, a flashlight, and basic medical supplies which we will always carry. The Israeli Army will face quite the battle, as the armed resistance here is incredibly strong, so we will have to be very careful with our actions. All of you should pray that some miraculouse thing prevents the Iraq war, or that at least Israel doesn't try and invade Rafah or any part of the Gaza Strip.

It has been confirmed that the resistance blew up a tank in southern Gaza today, killing 4 Israeli
soldiers. It is always difficult for me to rejoice about death, however I must say I always experience a feeling of joy when I hear of a victory for the resistance, seeing as I beleive that they are right and I've seen them lose so many times. The 4 soldiers in no way make up for the hundreds of children Israel is killing, but I feel that it is good for Israel to know that they cannot oppress these people without risking something.

This is a difficult conflict, which can be quickly oversimplified when I'm surrounded by one side.
Objectivity is rather hard when I'm surrounded by Israeli tanks shooting at children and destroying the homes of families.

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