An Invasion and Shaheed in El ‘Ein Refugee Camp
Today my morning began under siege in El 'Ein Camp ('Ein Beit El Ma) in Nablus, and ended sadly at the funeral of a 26-year-old.
As 10 of us international volunteers left at 6:30am to pick olives in 2 villages, we got a call that El 'Ein had been under siege since 2am, there was a shaheed (martyr), and at least one home surrounded by soldiers. We changed our plans when the health committee workers said they could meet us at the edge of the camp, and maybe we could help by entering under their escort and assisting to get people out.
When we exited the taxis we encountered 2 jeeps of soldiers who yelled and ordered us to get out and leave, and that we might get shot. We stuck as a group and walked past them, then proceeded down into the camp where we walked right past about 6 or 7 jeeps and armored personnel carriers on the main street, some with soldiers sleeping in the front seats. We stood between them and more jeeps and a bulldozer that were down the hill blocking another entrance to the camp, as the mosque announced and sung for the shaheed, and then the army announced a curfew.
We ducked into the narrow alleys following Nasser, a health committee worker, who brought us to various homes where he heard there might be sick people who want to get out, or places where we could get refuge to assess the situation as we heard banging and gunshots from the occupied homes. We knocked on the door of one home to retrieve a young boy and escort him to an ambulance, but the family did not answer and the neighbors told us there were soldiers in the house. In all, over 20 homes had been occupied, with many soldiers locking family members in one small room while they smashed the windows and created holes in the walls to shoot out of.
I sat for a bit in a home with the mother of 2 shaheeds while her son, a fighter who had been up all night trying to find a way out of the camp, put down his gun to hand us tea and oranges. When he coughed she pulled out cough syrup and instructed him to take it. While he sipped it from the cap I thought about the ways back home that people who try to defend their homes and families are demonized into terrorists, and meanwhile I was sitting with a mother weeping and praying for her son's safety, while he was drinking her cough syrup like a good son and serving us tea just like any caring and humane person would do. I wished that everyone I know could be there to witness this simple act between a concerned mother and her son.
We then went to a nearby home where an elder woman lived who had been sick for a long time, who we heard might need to leave to get medical attention. When we met her inside she was more concerned about the 3 young boys who were upstairs with the soldiers, who had barricaded the door to upstairs when they occupied the upper level of the home. An international woman knocked on the door and had a conversation with the soldiers, saying we wanted to see that the boys were ok because their family was worried about them. In response we were yelled at with threats of "Get the fuck out of here or we will explode this door and you will die! You have 30 seconds to leave or we will blow up the door! Get the fuck out or you will die!" My friend who had confronted them told me that the soldier who was yelling looked scared, and was clearly shaking. Another told us "Leave, get out of here, the boys are ok", but of course we didn't trust them and we remained.
Afew minutes later the 6 soldiers left that home, and we went upstairs with the family to see the boys and the destruction. They had smashed a hole in the wall to shoot out of, and pissed all over the bathroom floor. This was just the beginning of the awful home destruction I saw today, and I'm sad to say it wasn't the worst.
When we attempted to leave the house, the group of 10 was split deciding where to go, because gunshots and sound bomb explosions were close, and rocks were falling from roofs around our heads. We continued to duck into homes as some brave women of the camp led us in and out of alleys to try to access the first floors of homes that were occupied upstairs. At one point gunshots were fired by soldiers next door to us and I could see the dust flying where the bullets were hitting the wall above our heads. Some of us ran back into the house, and a few others wanted to leave to join more medical workers, but were stalled for a while because of shooting right outside the door.
Eventually we split into 2 groups – the other going back out to the edge of the camp to see if ambulances and medics needed accompaniment for injured people, and my group stayed inside with the family of the sick woman and the young boys. The internationals and the family sat around the walls of the sitting room, and for about 2 hours listened to intermittent gunfire and explosions outside. We also heard soldiers just outside destroying a wall that had a shaheed poster on it of Daoud, the son of the woman who's home we were in. She talked fondly of him and occasionally looked out the door to announce "Yes, the soldiers are still there."
Around 11am the soldiers left the camp and immediately we heard the bustling of children on the streets and in the alleys. We walked outside to see bullets and plastic pieces of sound grenades littering the streets. The 26-year-old shaheed, Baha' Salah Al-Khater, was carried through the alleys on a board held above the heads of his friends. He had been shot while crossing the street soon after the army entered the camp, and bled to death an hour later because the army would not allow medics to attend to him. This was the first time I've seen a dead body since I've been here, and it was sad and a little unnerving. Inshallah, it will be the last.
The other half of our large group came back to us, after escorting Al-Khater's family to see his body, which they reported was a very upsetting experience. As the group left, 2 of us stayed in the camp for another few hours to visit the homes that had been occupied and document the damage. If I posted every photo and told the story of every family I talked to (and had tea or coffee with) in those few hours, you might be reading this all day. I did learn that a 14-year-old girl had been shot in the leg by soldiers while she was sleeping in her home. When she screamed the soldiers threw a sound bomb through the window into her bedroom, leaving her younger sister temporarily deaf. I also saw a large hole that soldiers had made in one family's home with a sledgehammer, and then crawled through pussing a large heavy dresser onto the floor in the nieighbor's house. The dresser fell just moments after the women sleeping on the floor in that room heard the noise and quickly got out.
What sticks out in my mind the most and really illustrates the complete disregard of Palestinian lives by Israeli soldiers, are the couple-foot-wide holes made in homes like this, the small rooms that families showed me that their families were locked in for hours while soldiers shot out of their windows, shattered glass mixed with pieces of cement all over beds and sofas, a smashed family photo in a frame, an elder woman asking me "Why, why?" and young girls sweeping up the aftermath from the floor as I walked through their home with a camera. One family told me that 24 soldiers with large dogs took over their home, and another showed me where soldiers had taken the clothes out of every dresser and drawer and threw them into piles with glass and cement. Overall they had trashed over 20 homes, just as they treat the Palestinians in them like trash.
We ended up joining the funeral march as it passed us on the main street, and spent a while watching with the women of the camp as a beautiful song played from a taxi about a mother who didn't want her son to go out and fight. I didn't know the shaheed or his family, but as I watched them cry I felt oddly close to them and teary-eyed myself. In yet another home a family translated the television news update for us, which thanked the ejaneb (foreigners) who helped the people of Ein Beit El Ma Refugee Camp today. I felt sad, wishing that we had been able to do more, and not really sure what exactly we had done in the first place.
As we left the camp, a woman we had met at the funeral told us "We don't think you are friends of the Palestinians. We think you are Palestinian, because of the work that you do here." I don't know that I deserve such a sweet compliment, but I do know that I feel as protective of and concerned about the people who have welcomed me here and shared their difficult lives with me, as I do about my own neighborhood or community at home.
As 10 of us international volunteers left at 6:30am to pick olives in 2 villages, we got a call that El 'Ein had been under siege since 2am, there was a shaheed (martyr), and at least one home surrounded by soldiers. We changed our plans when the health committee workers said they could meet us at the edge of the camp, and maybe we could help by entering under their escort and assisting to get people out.
When we exited the taxis we encountered 2 jeeps of soldiers who yelled and ordered us to get out and leave, and that we might get shot. We stuck as a group and walked past them, then proceeded down into the camp where we walked right past about 6 or 7 jeeps and armored personnel carriers on the main street, some with soldiers sleeping in the front seats. We stood between them and more jeeps and a bulldozer that were down the hill blocking another entrance to the camp, as the mosque announced and sung for the shaheed, and then the army announced a curfew.
We ducked into the narrow alleys following Nasser, a health committee worker, who brought us to various homes where he heard there might be sick people who want to get out, or places where we could get refuge to assess the situation as we heard banging and gunshots from the occupied homes. We knocked on the door of one home to retrieve a young boy and escort him to an ambulance, but the family did not answer and the neighbors told us there were soldiers in the house. In all, over 20 homes had been occupied, with many soldiers locking family members in one small room while they smashed the windows and created holes in the walls to shoot out of.
I sat for a bit in a home with the mother of 2 shaheeds while her son, a fighter who had been up all night trying to find a way out of the camp, put down his gun to hand us tea and oranges. When he coughed she pulled out cough syrup and instructed him to take it. While he sipped it from the cap I thought about the ways back home that people who try to defend their homes and families are demonized into terrorists, and meanwhile I was sitting with a mother weeping and praying for her son's safety, while he was drinking her cough syrup like a good son and serving us tea just like any caring and humane person would do. I wished that everyone I know could be there to witness this simple act between a concerned mother and her son.
We then went to a nearby home where an elder woman lived who had been sick for a long time, who we heard might need to leave to get medical attention. When we met her inside she was more concerned about the 3 young boys who were upstairs with the soldiers, who had barricaded the door to upstairs when they occupied the upper level of the home. An international woman knocked on the door and had a conversation with the soldiers, saying we wanted to see that the boys were ok because their family was worried about them. In response we were yelled at with threats of "Get the fuck out of here or we will explode this door and you will die! You have 30 seconds to leave or we will blow up the door! Get the fuck out or you will die!" My friend who had confronted them told me that the soldier who was yelling looked scared, and was clearly shaking. Another told us "Leave, get out of here, the boys are ok", but of course we didn't trust them and we remained.
Afew minutes later the 6 soldiers left that home, and we went upstairs with the family to see the boys and the destruction. They had smashed a hole in the wall to shoot out of, and pissed all over the bathroom floor. This was just the beginning of the awful home destruction I saw today, and I'm sad to say it wasn't the worst.
When we attempted to leave the house, the group of 10 was split deciding where to go, because gunshots and sound bomb explosions were close, and rocks were falling from roofs around our heads. We continued to duck into homes as some brave women of the camp led us in and out of alleys to try to access the first floors of homes that were occupied upstairs. At one point gunshots were fired by soldiers next door to us and I could see the dust flying where the bullets were hitting the wall above our heads. Some of us ran back into the house, and a few others wanted to leave to join more medical workers, but were stalled for a while because of shooting right outside the door.
Eventually we split into 2 groups – the other going back out to the edge of the camp to see if ambulances and medics needed accompaniment for injured people, and my group stayed inside with the family of the sick woman and the young boys. The internationals and the family sat around the walls of the sitting room, and for about 2 hours listened to intermittent gunfire and explosions outside. We also heard soldiers just outside destroying a wall that had a shaheed poster on it of Daoud, the son of the woman who's home we were in. She talked fondly of him and occasionally looked out the door to announce "Yes, the soldiers are still there."
Around 11am the soldiers left the camp and immediately we heard the bustling of children on the streets and in the alleys. We walked outside to see bullets and plastic pieces of sound grenades littering the streets. The 26-year-old shaheed, Baha' Salah Al-Khater, was carried through the alleys on a board held above the heads of his friends. He had been shot while crossing the street soon after the army entered the camp, and bled to death an hour later because the army would not allow medics to attend to him. This was the first time I've seen a dead body since I've been here, and it was sad and a little unnerving. Inshallah, it will be the last.
The other half of our large group came back to us, after escorting Al-Khater's family to see his body, which they reported was a very upsetting experience. As the group left, 2 of us stayed in the camp for another few hours to visit the homes that had been occupied and document the damage. If I posted every photo and told the story of every family I talked to (and had tea or coffee with) in those few hours, you might be reading this all day. I did learn that a 14-year-old girl had been shot in the leg by soldiers while she was sleeping in her home. When she screamed the soldiers threw a sound bomb through the window into her bedroom, leaving her younger sister temporarily deaf. I also saw a large hole that soldiers had made in one family's home with a sledgehammer, and then crawled through pussing a large heavy dresser onto the floor in the nieighbor's house. The dresser fell just moments after the women sleeping on the floor in that room heard the noise and quickly got out.
What sticks out in my mind the most and really illustrates the complete disregard of Palestinian lives by Israeli soldiers, are the couple-foot-wide holes made in homes like this, the small rooms that families showed me that their families were locked in for hours while soldiers shot out of their windows, shattered glass mixed with pieces of cement all over beds and sofas, a smashed family photo in a frame, an elder woman asking me "Why, why?" and young girls sweeping up the aftermath from the floor as I walked through their home with a camera. One family told me that 24 soldiers with large dogs took over their home, and another showed me where soldiers had taken the clothes out of every dresser and drawer and threw them into piles with glass and cement. Overall they had trashed over 20 homes, just as they treat the Palestinians in them like trash.
We ended up joining the funeral march as it passed us on the main street, and spent a while watching with the women of the camp as a beautiful song played from a taxi about a mother who didn't want her son to go out and fight. I didn't know the shaheed or his family, but as I watched them cry I felt oddly close to them and teary-eyed myself. In yet another home a family translated the television news update for us, which thanked the ejaneb (foreigners) who helped the people of Ein Beit El Ma Refugee Camp today. I felt sad, wishing that we had been able to do more, and not really sure what exactly we had done in the first place.
As we left the camp, a woman we had met at the funeral told us "We don't think you are friends of the Palestinians. We think you are Palestinian, because of the work that you do here." I don't know that I deserve such a sweet compliment, but I do know that I feel as protective of and concerned about the people who have welcomed me here and shared their difficult lives with me, as I do about my own neighborhood or community at home.
posted by Steph at 9:47 PM
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