At the end of last year a young man from an agricultural village in the West Bank was issued an order to appear before the Shabak for an unspecified reason. He did not go. In the first month of 2005 the youth was passing through a check point and was arrested.
We were in the village on the day that he was arrested and spoke to some of his friends. They were not surprised and some spoke as if this was to be expected, and yet we knew how upset they actually were. They all went to visit his family in the evening and on walking in discovered that he had returned. Their joy however was unmistakably mixed with fear and the knowledge that this was not the end of the Shabak’s involvement with this family.
The youth had been beaten in the back of the jeep and had spent two hours in the police station before being released. He had walked for an hour towards his village before managing to hitch a ride the rest of the way.
He had been issued with a further order to appear before the Shabak the following week.
He was determined not to go but was also aware that if he did not go there was the possibility that the army would come to his village and invade his family’s home, terrorizing his younger sisters and brothers and his mother.
We had the opportunity to speak with this young man about his experience and the very real threat many villagers face in his situation of being forced into compliance with the Israeli Authority. I had not realized before how powerful a weapon this sort of tactic would be and although we knew how delicate the conversation would have to be, felt that this young man would be willing to share his thoughts on his position.
“This is true for some people,” he said, “But for those who are weak. Not weak on the outside; perhaps they are very strong and can fight and throw stones a long way, but I mean weak on the inside. I am not weak.”
The bus interrupted our first conversation with him on this subject but he came back to us the following day and said: “Yesterday you asked me a question, but I want you to understand that a man who falls before the Shabak sells his country.” And I could see how hateful this thought was to him.
The following week this youth visited us on the day he was to go to the Shabak. He was very quiet and I could only imagine how afraid he actually must have been. All day his friends awaited his return and I saw his mother carrying her ten-month old baby around as she stoically continued her daily chores. Many of the village mothers greeted her and I thought how each one of them must be suffering with her, how each one of them must daily fear that their sons will be picked up like hers was, and will suddenly have his name on some secret list that until the Occupation is over will make living an ordinary life impossible. I thought how many of them actually had sons serving ridiculous sentences in some prison that they could not visit and I found myself in a terrible state of tension throughout the day.
In the late afternoon the young man returned and walked into the room where we and his friends were passing the time playing cards.
There was such a feeling of relief as we saw him enter and heard him quietly greeting everyone and then he announced to us that he must return to the Shabak next week for another interview.
Then I realized how endless this process would be. We could be relieved that he had returned this day, and maybe again next week and the week after that, but this was nothing, his family would be facing the same threat for the next month and the following month, and for years to come.
Perhaps a time would come when he would refuse to play the Shabak’s game any longer and to retain his own sense of dignity would not go to their office. Then what would happen? He would become a ‘wanted Man’ and the army could justify an invasion of his home and the arrest of him.
How often do we read the words: ‘army invades a village in the West Bank and conducts military searchers of houses known to shelter men wanted by the Israeli Authority’?
“Army Invades” means the terrorizing of a whole village and the shooting with rubber bullets and with live ammunition of women and children (and Internationals) sheltering on the rooftops.
“Conducts Military Searches” means entering a family home and ransacking it, putting bullets through every wall and window and braking every dish and glass in the house.
And what does “Looking for Wanted Men” mean? How many of these men were made to be “wanted” because they could not play the Israeli game? How many of these were “wanted” because they had no other way to resist the occupation than by staying true to their Falastiin?
Two days after the youth came back to his home we received news from a woman that we knew in the village that her brother was taken in the middle of the night.
He was one of these wanted men. He had been ‘sold-out’ by a village collaborator and now his fight to free his Falastiin was over. I had met him twice in the past and while it is not appropriate to write much about him I was both times struck by his composure and dignity although he was once covered in mud and both times had spent nights on the run.
One of his brothers had been killed, the other at 16 years bore terrible scars from shooting, one sister was blinded by a bullet of the army. Was it a wonder that this young man had taken arms to fight an army that had so tortured him?
And now as I write I know that he has spent the first 24 hrs of his imprisonment in some unidentified jail and that he is wondering as I am which of his own country men could have done this to him. Had they been threatened as our first young man had been and had they failed to resist the pressure of so massive a force as the Israeli Authority is? Or what other pressures and thoughts tormented them and motivated them to turn upon their own people?
These questions have been haunting me for the past days, and last night with the thought of this mans imprisonment, I could not sleep at all.
Is collaboration within the Palestinian Society so strong that it will in the end undermine the whole process of resistance or is it, by its very nature, a force that in the end will fail?
At the moment I can not answer this question, as I hear the world proclaiming the Truce and the Handshake I think of the issues that are so vital to the Palestinian people and that are not being addressed. Of the thousands of prisoners that are being held and interrogated and punished for crimes that they have not committed, of the thousands of young men made to visit the Shabak week after week until they are forced to comply with the Israeli Authority or are made into ‘wanted men’ and so will have to live out their years on the run or in prison, of the women and men who ‘disappear’ and leave their friends and relatives despondent of ever seeing them again, and of course the building of the accursed Wall that will make traveling in the West Bank worse than it already is and will economically devastate an already too poor country.
Are these really the ingredients of a viable peace? Or even of a truce that will give the people a time to assess their position in all this? Do the Palestinians have one moment to think when they are faced with checkpoint harassments and roadblocks and arrests and invasions every single day?
On Wednesday we heard immediately of Hamas launching rocket attacks in Gaza, and yet it was a Palestinian youth who died, killed by the Israeli Army, before any attacks were launched by Hamas.
And we all knew this would happen, and we all accept it when it does. What else can we do?
The young man from the beginning of this article will return to the Shabak next week and the week after and one day he will just not return to his home or maybe they will forget about him. The man arrested 24 hours ago will be tried in some closed military court and no one will know what happens to him and his family will be left to mourn the loss of yet another one of its members, and the Worlds Eye will be focused elsewhere: On big meetings and major catastrophes, on economic politics and sporting events, and it will continue to ignore the small and personal tragedies that combine to make this struggle in Falastiin so heartbreaking and so immense.
Text: Renee
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Please also see other recent house reports on IWPS's website:
"Prayers on the Embattled Land of Iskaka Village," http://www.iwps.info/en/articles/article.php?id=613, January 28, 2005. Ridwana and Renee's account of a village's inspiring nonviolent resistance to the latest round of Apartheid Wall construction. Beautifully illustrated with Ridwana's photos.
"Relative Calm in the West Bank," http://www.iwps.info/en/articles/article.php?id=623, January 26, 2005. Ridwana and Renee contrast this phrase so often heard in the Western media with the realities of incursions and checkpoints on the ground.
"Killing and Demolition in a Palestinian Village", http://www.iwps.info/en/articles/article.php?id=622, January 14, 2005. Dramatic account of a day in Qarawat Bani Zeid, when two Palestinian activists were killed and a house demolished, as the villagers watched in horror and helplessness. With heartwrenching photos by Renee.
"The Plight of Three Villages Against the Apartheid Wall", http://www.iwps.info/en/articles/article.php?id=624. Dorothee takes us inside the villages of Deir Balut, Rafat and Az Zawiya with interviews and photos, as they struggle to preserve their land and life against the encroaching Apartheid Wall.
Copyright (c) 2005 by IWPS. All rights reserved.
This copyright protects IWPS's right to future publication of our work. Nonprofit, activist, and educational groups may circulate these reports and photos (forward them, reprint them, translate them, post them, or reproduce them) for nonprofit uses consistent with the goals of IWPS and the Palestinian liberation movement. Please do not change any part of it without permission.
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For more information about International Women's Peace Service please see www.womenspeacepalestine.org or email mailto:iwps@palnet.com. To find out about joining IWPS as a volunteer, please contact iwpsvolunteers@yahoo.co.uk.
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Copyright (c) 2002 by IWPS. All rights reserved.
This copyright protects IWPS's right to future publication of our work. Nonprofit, activist, and educational groups may circulate these reports and photos (forward them, reprint them, translate them, post them, or reproduce them) for nonprofit uses consistent with the goals of IWPS and the Palestinian liberation movement. Please do not change any part of it without permission.
****
For more information about International Women's Peace Service please see www.womenspeacepalestine.org or email mailto:iwpspalestine@netscape.net. To find out about joining IWPS as a volunteer, please contact iwpsvolunteers@yahoo.co.uk.
IWPS-pal-reports is the list of International Women's Peace Service for distribution of periodic reports on our activities in and around Hares, Salfit, Palestine.
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