Home
Documents Archive

Brooke Atherton Reports 25/8/2002

Cycles of Violence and Conceptions of "Terrorism"

terrorism 1. the act of terrorizing; use of force or threats to demoralize, intimidate, and subjugate, esp. such use as a political weapon or policy 2. the demoralization and intimidation produced in this way (Webster's New World Dictionary)

On September 11th, I think that "terrorism" is on the mind of many people in the U.S.; I know it is on mine. In the context of my experiences in Palestine in and around Nablus, I am really struggling with the question: Can it be true that "terrorism" only comes from militants but not armies, only comes from makeshift explosives and old weapons but not "smart" bombs or state of the art weapons, only comes from hijacked planes and cars but not F-16s, Apache helicopters, or tanks? I am also struggling to understand why state sanctioned violence against civilians, ordered by government officials and executed by organized militaries is not included in an understanding of a cycle of violence, but rather "terrorists" are portrayed as taking an offensive, violent position out of nowhere or out of fanaticism. Meanwhile, our soldiers are glorified for killing our "enemies." The double standards that I feel exist both here in the U.S. and in Israel/Palestine boggle my mind.

I know that today, rightly, we will hear much of the people killed on 9/11 and possibly of people in other countries in other times that were killed in "terrorist" attacks. Today, I would like to share with you some stories from Palestine, not to take away from the grief and loss of those who will be widely remembered and mourned today or Israeli civilians who have been killed, but because I think these kinds of stories will not be heard so widely. I want to add to our understanding of cycles of violence and the many forms of "terrorism" that sadly exist in our world today. As long as it is common to use the term "terrorism", a term which to me feels almost devoid of true meaning in the age of the "war on terrorism," I will call what I describe below "state terrorism" that the Israeli government perpetrates on the Palestinian people with full funding and support from the U.S. government.

The stories I share below are about day to day demoralization, intimidation, and subjugation. The stories do not include many tales of indiscriminate killing of civilians, extrajudicial assassinations, home demolitions, and more, not because such actions are not common practice of the Israeli government, but because I did not witness such actions directly. For a perspective on this aspect of the crisis in Palestine and its relationship to suicide bombings in Israel, please read this website about a family in Balata refugee camp near Nablus: http://www.thestoryofjihad.org.
For detailed statistics on the Palestinians and Israelis killed during this Intifada, you can visit the following websites: Palestinian Center for Human Rights http://www.pchrgaza.org
and B'Tselem - The Israeli Information Centre for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories http://www.btselem.org.

*Some names have been changed.

8.26.02 Monday

Arrest of 2 Boys in Old Askar

At 9:30 am, Israeli tanks drive down the main street of Old Askar refugee camp, shooting as usual. The tank stops at one end of the refugee camp and sits ominously in the middle of the road for about half an hour. During this time, two boys between the ages of 12 and 17 are arrested by the Israeli military police for carrying rocks (The Israeli military must consider the possibility that boys might throw stones at tanks to be quite a security risk.) The two boys are taken to the Israeli military base in Huwara, a nearby town, where the Israeli army regularly detains Palestinian men and boys without any legal process as far as I understand.

8.27.02 Tuesday

Stories of People Killed and Injured by Soldiers in New Askar

Today I went to a meeting of members of the refugee committee for the disabled in the part of Askar refugee camp called New Askar. The children in New Askar go the school in Old Askar. Every morning and afternoon that there is school, the children must cross a large field between New and Old Askar upon which Israeli tanks regularly fire. The road through the field has become a major tank thoroughfare in the last 10 months. On March 20 of this year, an eight-year-old boy Mohammad Al-Mugraby was killed while walking to school when a tank shot him in the head. His sixteen-year-old cousin told me that she is now very frightened and does not want to go to school because she feels it is too dangerous and that she cries when she sees the tanks.

After meeting with the refugee committee for the disabled, we watched a video someone in New Askar had made about the tragedy they experienced on April 5th when the Israeli army killed 5 men and injured 15 people from their community in one day. Starting on April 3rd of this year, Israeli soldiers surrounded Askar camp and did not allow any movement in or out for 15 days. In the morning of April 5th an Israeli soldier injured a man from their community in the head in the mountains above Askar. He made it to Askar but from there an ambulance was not allowed into the camp to take him to a hospital. He died after three hours. Because their camp was under, it was not possible to leave the camp to take him to the cemetery. They buried him in the children's garden, the only possible place in this crowded refugee camp of asphalt roads and cement houses.

Later in the same afternoon, an Israeli tank shot a rocket into the main street of New Askar; the hole in the asphalt is still visible today. The rocket killed 4 men, one was blasted into pieces and they had to gather him up for burial. These 4 men are also buried in the children's garden. The same rocket injured 15 people, including10 children. None of the injured was allowed to go to the hospital until 2 days had passed because of the siege of the refugee camp. During this time, the people of New Askar turned the basement of the mosque into a makeshift clinic. One young girl whose father was killed by the rocket was shot in the head by an Israeli soldier 2 days later, and she was forced to wait for one hour for the soldiers to allow the ambulance to enter the camp and take her to the hospital.

During the siege, tanks shot at everything, cars, houses, and even people's sheep. A tank destroyed the store of a disabled man, his only source of income. Much of the evidence of the soldiers activity can still be seen today - the hole from the rocket in the main street, bullet holes in walls all over the camp, bullet holes in windows of many cars, and injured children still recovering from the wounds they have received by the occupying Israeli army.

8.27.02 Tuesday

Arrest of 17-year-old Boy

Today, Ahmad, the 16-year-old brother of Ziyad, one of the local organizers here in Askar refugee camp, went with one of his 17-year-old friends, Nassir, to sell vegetables in a nearby village, Masaken Shibeya. The two young men were breaking the daily curfew, as many Palestinians must do in order to work and have money for their families. For over 70 days, Nablus and its surrounding areas have been under 24 hour curfew, meaning that people are required by the Israeli military to stay in their homes. During this time, curfew has been raised for a few hours on average once a week, if the people are lucky.

As Ahmad and Nassir were walking in Masaken Shibeya with their vegetable cart, Israeli soldiers stopped them. The soldiers proceeded to destroy the wooden vegetable cart by shooting it to pieces with M-16s. The soldiers hit the two young men and told them to tell the Palestinians that they would bring the D-9 (Caterpillar bulldozer) and destroy many houses in Askar Refugee camp. Then, Ahmad was released because he is 16 and does not yet have his official Palestinian identification papers.

Nassir, who does have his identification papers, was handcuffed, blindfolded, and taken to a Palestinian home that is currently being forcibly occupied by Israeli soldiers, who use it as a base for military operations and detention of Palestinians without any legal process. Nassir was held in this occupied home for a few hours, during which the soldiers kicked and hit him, and held a gun to his head saying they want to kill him. When the Israeli soldiers were done with the boy, they took Nassir in a military jeep to another refugee camp and literally kicked him out of the jeep, still blindfolded and handcuffed. After the soldiers left, people in the camp came to his aid and once free of the blindfold and handcuffs, Nassir walked home. This is not such an unusual day in the life of a 17-year-old Palestinian boy.

8.28.02 Wednesday

Visit to Occupied Home in Masaken Shibeya

Today we went to visit a Palestinian Family whose home has been occupied by the Israeli army for 48 days, with a break of one week after the first 27 days. Parts of their house have been covered in sheets of camouflage mesh and the front yard looks like a parking lot for tanks and Armored Personnel Carriers - there are two of each parked next to the family's vegetable garden. The purpose of our visit was to take the family some food and negotiate with the soldiers to allow the mother to leave the house for an hour in the morning to have her blood sugar level checked at the clinic in Askar refugee camp, she is diabetic. In order to enter the family's home we had to ask the permission of an Israeli soldier standing guard near the front gate of the home.

There are 19 family members in the home, 4 nuclear families, the father, mother, and their children, of which three of their sons are married with their own children in the home. There are 8 children in all. The family used to live on three floors, but Israeli soldiers now live on the top two floors and the entire family of 19 is forced to live on the bottom floor.

During the first 27-day occupation, the family was not allowed outdoors even into their own backyard. If the family needed something from the top two floors, the father was taken up blindfolded. If curfew was lifted, which happened once a week or less, a couple of family members would be allowed to leave for two hours to buy groceries and medicine for the entire family of 19. During this time 160 Israeli soldiers used the top two floors of their home. The soldiers stayed up late at night singing, dancing, and shooting guns into the air. The soldiers would turn the tanks, which are very loud, on and off all nightlong. This went on for 27 days, after which the soldiers left for a short while.

When the family returned to the top two floors of their home, they found destruction and disrespect of their property, their home. In the walls, the soldiers left many nails and greasy handprints. The soldiers broke the family's VCR, stereo, fans, and many other things. The soldiers had cleaned their weapons with the family's towels and blankets.

Two days after the soldiers left, they returned and occupied a neighbor's house. After the Israeli soldiers had spent 5 days in the neighbors home, the captain came back to the family's home and told the father that the Israeli military wanted to use his home again and gave the family 2 hours to move back into the bottom floor. Today is the 21st day of the soldiers' second occupation of the family's home. This time the situation is a little better for the family. There are only 50 Israeli soldiers using their home. It is somewhat quieter at night, except when the tanks leave and return shooting. The family is at least allowed into their own backyard. If curfew is lifted (which happens less than once a week) any family member can leave for as long as curfew is up, usually a few hours.

The Israeli military has occupied the family's home for 48 days total. The parents lamented to us that the 8 children have been prisoners in their own home for most of their summer vacation. If curfew is not lifted on a daily basis starting Saturday, the children will not be allowed to return to school either. Because of the intensive military occupation of the region, and now in their own home, 4 men in the family who were working as builders and drivers have not worked in 5 months.

8.28.02 Wednesday

The Father of Rami

This afternoon the Askar Refugee Camp children's summer camp held their final program. The children of all ages performed songs, poetry, dances, and short plays that they had rehearsed meticulously every day for the last two weeks. The children were strong and beautiful.

As I watched the program in the packed gymnasium, a man who looked my father's age caught my attention. He said, "Hello, do you know they killed my child?" He is the father of a young man in his late teens named Rami who was killed earlier this summer by an Israeli soldier who shot him 3 times at 5 meters distance while Rami was innocently walking across the street in Askar refugee camp with a friend. Rami's father told me that he and his wife and living children weep every day for his son.

8.28.02 Wednesday

Commandos in Askar Refugee Camp Late at Night

Tonight, commando soldiers came into Askar refugee camp - it is unclear why they were here or what they meant to accomplish. The only action that I heard of them taking did not seem very relevant to "the security of Israel", the reason most soldiers give when I ask them why they are doing whatever act of violence, humiliation, or disruption of daily life against the Palestinian people that I find them engaged in. Ahmad, the 16-year-old who was beaten and harassed by Israeli soldiers yesterday, was playing soccer with his friends in the main street of Old Askar after dark. A friendly dog came and began playing with him. The dog led him around the corner and into the schoolyard of the girls' school. In the schoolyard, he encountered a large group if Israeli commando soldiers, who beat him with the butts of their rifles.

8.29.02 Thursday

Soldiers Questioning at a Nablus Home

This afternoon we got a phone call that Israeli soldiers had visited a home slated for demolition in Nablus. We rushed to the house, unclear as to whether the soldiers were still at the house or if they planned to demolish it that day. When we arrived at the home, the soldiers had left much earlier, but the family invited us in to tell us what had happened. At 11:30 am, an intelligence car and two tanks came to the street above the family's home. The intelligence officers asked questions of their neighbors on the street and then came to the home of the family we were speaking with. One of the intelligence officers had a map with much information about their community on it. Then the intelligence officers came to the family's door and started asking questions, never explaining why. The family invited the soldiers into their home, but the soldiers refused.

The soldier asked if this was the home of a militant, who had been killed, to which the family replied honestly that it was. The Israeli army is currently engaged in an illegal form of collective punishment which is to destroy the homes of Palestinians who are killed while engaging in militant resistance to the occupation, and even Palestinians who are wanted by the military for undisclosed reasons, often unfounded. In this way, the army makes an entire extended family, sometimes up to 40 people pay for the actions or suspected actions of one person while they are usually already suffering the loss of that family member's life. The soldiers asked how many brothers were in the family and if they were married or not. The soldiers also asked how many people lived in the house. After a half-hour questioning the neighbors and then the family, the soldiers left. The family is very nervous about what the Israeli military may come back and do, they are afraid the soldiers will come with explosives and blow up their home. One of the adult sons in the family explained, "This is part of our daily life. The soldiers come and go every day?Everybody in the Palestinian people feels himself wanted [by the Israeli military]."

8.29.02

Checkpoint and Explosion at Muhafadah

Today, the Israeli army performed another military "operation" in Nablus. At 3:00pm the soldiers closed the main road between Mablus and two refugee camps Balata and Askar nearby. By 3:30, the Israeli soldiers had stopped 20 Palestinians on foot and three trucks, telling them to wait with no explanation of why or indication of when they would be allowed to return to their homes. When I arrived, to women with two young boys were talking with the soldiers. One woman was crying. Their home is less that 200 meters away from where they stood, but a tank stood in between the women and their home and the soldier would not let them pass. The woman who was crying has a small baby who is still breast-feeding and the baby was in her home, hungry. The soldiers gruffly refused the women's pleas and shooed them away. An elderly man with x-rays came with a younger man walking with a cane. They had been to the hospital and were trying to return home. One soldier made the younger man drop his pants in the middle of the street to prove he was injured, and then the soldier still did not let the man pass. For the next two hours, the elderly man approached every soldier in the area, even approaching the soldier in the tank who was taking care to aim both his M-16 and the tank turret at anyone who made contact with other soldiers or approached the tank. The soldiers continuously ingnored this man's request to return to his home.

One woman in her forties hit her limit after two hours of waiting; she and the other women and children approached the soldiers in a group. The woman demanded that they be allowed to return to their homes. She asked the soldiers if they were ever stopped like this in their towns in Israel. She asked one soldier if he had a wife and children and when he relied yes, she asked if he would like his wife and children to be treated in the way the soldiers were treating her and the other women and their children. The soldier replied yes. The woman continued to demand with strength and eloquence that they be allowed to return to their homes, that they be treated like humans and not animals. The soldiers laughed in her face and told her to go away. After this the soldiers became even more flippant; they laughed and played music over their jeep's loud speaker, they revved their jeep engines and joked around incessantly. I spent ten futile minutes attempting to advocate for a woman who in the morning had come from Huwara, a village nearby, with her toddler in an ambulance to the hospital and Nablus. She and her son were trying to return home before dark. The only responses the soldier would give to my questions about the woman and her son returning to their home were: "Will you go to the movies with me?" "I really love you." "Why won't you go out with me?" "Will you go out to dinner with me?" over and over. All the while, for over three hours, twenty Palestinians, men, women, young, and old, were forced to wait on the side of the road and denied even the right to return to their homes.

During this time, we heard rounds of gunfire and three explosions elsewhere in the city. Later tonight, we discovered why the Israeli army closed the road. The Muhafadah, the local municipal building of the Palestinian Authority, is on this road. During the Israeli army's April invasion of Nablus this building was heavily shelled, and practically destroyed. When I saw the building on my first day in Nablus, the huge gaping holes in its walls from the shelling were the buildings' most remarkable feature. Despite the fact that the building was already in near ruins, the Israeli military decided to finish the job by blowing up the building. At around 9:30 last night, we heard the loudest explosion I have heard since I arrived in Palestine. The building collapsed, demolished beyond repair. The Israeli military claimed that arms were being stored in the basement of the building. To me this is a convenient excuse, similar to the explanation that they gave for blowing up a famous and historic soap factory in Nablus earlier this year because they thought it was being used as a "bomb factory." This seems like another example of the Israeli military's continued efforts to destroy Palestinian infrastructure and symbolically deny Palestinian's right to self-determination by destroying its government buildings (a common practice of the Israeli army in the West Bank).

8.30.02 Friday

Soldiers Announce Curfew in Askar

Today, the Israeli military lifted the curfew in Nablus for four hours. This was the first time in over a week that curfew had been lifted, and the streets teemed with people. It was such a beautiful sight to see alive the city that I know best as a virtual ghost town. We could not walk in the streets without bumping into people. Crossing the street was mayhem with taxis, cars, and buses whizzing by, honking and attempting to navigate the streets that have been dug up and damaged by military bulldozers and tanks without the benefit of traffic signals which must have been broken much earlier in this intensified illegal Israeli military occupation of Nablus.

The day was joyful, but as dark came, the Israeli soldiers announced the reinstatement of curfew with special force. In Askar refugee camp, the soldiers usually announce that curfew has been reinstated (as if people don't know) by driving the tank down the main street and shooting perhaps a little more than usual. Tonight, the Israeli soldiers not only brought their tank, but some soldiers came in jeeps and penetrated the inner streets of Askar camp on foot, an action they rarely take at this hour, and shot with their M-16s (paid for by the U.S.) up and down the narrow alleyways of the camp where children still stood playing and shopkeepers were closing their doors.

8.31.02 Saturday

Closure of Beit Farik Check Point

Today, curfew was lifted from 6am to 6pm; the most consecutive hours curfew has been lifted in a very long time in Nablus. This was a wonderful thing because today was the first day of school; I awoke to the sound of children and their parents bustling in the streets of Askar refugee camp before 8am! The universities were open for students to take final exams and many people went to work for the first time in weeks. Numerous villages surround Nablus as well as the nearby refugee camps. Often when curfew is raised in Nablus, the military closes the checkpoints into Nablus from the surrounding villages although the communities are highly interdependent, similar to the dependence of the smaller cities in the Bay Area upon San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose.

For most of the day, it seemed that the checkpoints were surprisingly moving smoothly, and then at 4:30, we got a phone call from a Palestinian who lives in the village of Beit Farik. He and about 150 other Palestinians were stuck at the checkpoint between Nablus and their village attempting to return to their village before curfew was reinstated at 6pm. The soldiers were not letting a single person cross the checkpoint to their village and some had been waiting for over two hours. As we approached the checkpoint (all the while tanks patrolling the fields around us for people attempting to go around the military checkpoints), we saw a large group of people standing in the shade of a building around a bend in the road and about one-hundred yards from the check point, out of shooting range of the Israeli soldiers on duty. There were women, men, and children; old and young; mothers and fathers; students, workers, lawyers, teachers, people of all professions. The checkpoint is still quite a walk from the village of Beit Farik itself and by 5:00 when we arrived, the people were concerned about their ability to get home before curfew was reinstated. The soldiers were preventing the people from obeying the Israeli military's own rules - that the people should be in their homes by 6pm.

The men who had called us asked us to walk up to the checkpoint and negotiate for the people to pass to their village, their homes. When we approached the soldiers, we asked for the commander, usually the only one empowered to make any sort of decisions in the field. We asked him who could make the decision as to whether the people could go to their homes, he said he could. We asked him why he was not allowing the people to pass. The soldier replied that in the morning the check point had been closed and that the people from Beit Farik had walked around the checkpoint to enter Nablus (a story refuted later by some of the Palestinians waiting to cross back to their village who had crossed into Nablus through the checkpoint that morning). The soldier explained that because they had broken the rules in the morning, that they would be kept out of their village as punishment. We asked him where the people would sleep, he said in Nablus or in the stockyards nearby. After more conversation, he finally said that he would call a higher up to see if he could allow people to return to their village (although earlier he had said that it was his decision to make), we agreed to give him 15 minutes to do so.

As two of us internationals returned to the group of Palestinians to explain the status of the negotiations, the entire group began to move towards us. Whether they thought that we were returning to give them good news or that they knew that our presence had little weight unless combined with people pressure on their part is unclear, but their people pressure was key. As the group of Palestinians returned to the checkpoint, the soldiers began slowly allowing women and children through, and eventually allowed older men through as well. By 6:00, only about twenty men were still waiting. Four men had been pulled aside and their identification papers taken by the soldiers. Another 12 men were told to return to Nablus. The soldiers shouted at them when they attempted to linger at the checkpoint while the internationals attempted to negotiate for them to pass through the checkpoint. One man, a lawyer, explained that when he told the soldier he was a lawyer, the soldier said he didn't like lawyers and turned him back. We were unsuccessful in assisting this group of men and they slowly walked towards Nablus; we hoped that they found another way to their village through the mountains above us.

Finally, only the four men who had been pulled aside were left. The soldiers were refusing to talk to us, nothing seemed to be happening, and it was getting dark. We decided to call a number for an Israeli army spokesperson, when I got a woman on the line she asked to speak to the commander, but he refused to speak with her. After a few minutes of insisting and explaining that she was on his side, he finally took my cel phone to speak with her. They spoke for a while, and when they were done, the soldiers gave the identification papers back to the four Palestinian men and began to walk with them to the other side of the checkpoint. As the men were halfway through the checkpoint, the soldiers grabbed one of them and took him to their Armored Personnel Carrier where they blindfolded and handcuffed him and forced him inside the APC. At this point, there was little we as internationals could do except call a human rights organization that documents the detention of Palestinians and can sometimes connect the detained Palestinian with a lawyer after his release. The soldiers revved their APC and drove away with the Palestinian man inside.

9.01.02 Sunday

Curfew Prevents Children from Going to School 24-hour curfew is maintained in Nablus and around. It is unclear when children who started school yesterday will be able to return to their classes.

9.2.02 Monday

Soldiers Enter Homes in Old Askar in the Middle of the Night

3:00 am

I am sleeping in New Askar. Israeli soldiers come to the home of Ziyad, my friend and another local organizer here, looking for his younger brother, Mohammad, who has three young children. His family does not understand why the soldiers are looking for him. 40 soldiers enter the home, making the men, women, and children go into the street to wait while the soldiers ransack the home, shooting bullet holes in walls, dressers, bookcases, glass cabinets, beds, baby clothes, and more. The soldiers pull linens and other objects off of shelves and out of drawers, leaving broken and tattered piles in each room. When Ziyad exits his home, he is carrying his one-year old baby. The soldiers make him put her on the ground and lift up his shirt. A soldier tells Ziyad, "Don't play with me. Don't talk to me." Then the soldiers pick on Ziyad's even younger brother, Ahmad, who has been beaten twice by soldiers in independent incidents just this week. The soldiers ask Ahmad how old he is and he replies that he is sixteen. When the soldiers ask his mother, she says that he is sixteen and two months. The soldiers then shove Ahmad around, saying, "Are you sixteen or sixteen and two months?" Throughout the ordeal the commander is shouting, "I am Nimrod. You play with me, you play with fire. I am very extreme. I am like Sharon. If Mohammad does not turn himself in, we will kill him and destroy your home." The soldiers aim their M-16s at the family so that no one can move.

4:15 am New Askar Refugee Camp

I have had four phone calls from Saif, another friend and local organizer here in Askar, since 3:45am. It is quiet here in New Askar - I can hear crickets and the crescent moon is hanging low in the sky - but a fifteen minute walk from here in Old Askar, Israeli soldiers have been in the camp for two hours. Saif tells me about the soldiers coming to Ziyad's home and the homes of other families in Old Askar as well. For now, it seems that the military jeeps, tanks, and Armored Personnel Carriers have left the camp and are now up on Askar mountain, entering homes and arresting people there. Soldiers may still be on foot in Old Askar, we can't really know. I am trying to stay awake in case the soldiers come to New Askar.

4:45 am

I just stood for a while near the front door with Samir and Haya, the eldest son and second eldest daughter in the family who I stay with. We heard a round of gunfire and then many tanks and jeeps on the roads around us. Saif saw a bulldozer and a tank on the road in between New and Old Askar, but thankfully it seems the bulldozer has moved on without visiting New or Old Askar.

After the roar of the military tanks and jeeps, the morning prayers over the Mosque's load speaker are comforting. Saif calls to tell me to sleep, that the soldiers have left the area completely. For tonight.

Brooke Atherton

Home
Documents Archive