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Children's demonstration against the occupation at Muqata Checkpoint

Background

A military checkpoint has been in operation opposite Mukhata - the IDF exploded PA prison and police authority building in Nablus - for nine days now. A tank and APC and occassionally armoured jeeps stand at the dust-bowl junction between Old Nablus and Ballata refugee camp - the point where East meets West Nablus. Directly behind the checkpoint are three blocks of flats and a number of homes nestled into Askar Moutain - a huge rock-moss mound dotted with clumps of forest, the odd military sniper post and winding narrow roads. Checkpoints are crucial to IDF (Israeli Defence Force - Israeli Army) operations in the Palestinian territories. They are the lynchpins of the occupation. The Israeli state controls all roads in East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza, with the exception of roads in Area A - surmising just 18% of the total area of the West Bank and the Gaza strip. That means they control the arteries of commerce and public mobility, 82% of it. Area A is the name given to land contolled solelly by the Palestinian Authority. In Area B Israel controls all security matters, while the PA is responsible for some social and civil services. Area B accounts for 24% of the total area of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Finally, in Area C, Israel manages all security and civil affairs. Area C accounts for 59% of the West Bank and Gaza Strip's total area. These internal colonial carve-ups were a result the Oslo Accords (1993), in effect from 1996.

Checkpoints Curtail all movement. Daily tasks and activities are criminalised such as: getting to hospital in emergencies - ambulances can be stopped for hours at checkpoints, to be searched for weapons, so says the IDF but they've never carried out extensive checks in front of me. One suicide bomb-belt was found - in front of much media, this year. No other armaments have been reported since. Over 80 people have died since the second intifada (September 2000 - ?) after being held up at checkpoints and being prevented from accessing essential medical attention - cancer patients, those dependent on dialysis, women giving birth, those injured by Israeli fire etc etc. Going to school - children have been able to go to school just once since the new term started. Curfew was lifted for one day on August 31. Ever since they have had no-where to go, and no education, although work is being done to set up autonomous schooling spaces in the refugee camps. Going to work or shopping - the economy in Nablus has ground to a halt. Once the industrial heartland of the Palestinian territories it is now a daily ghost-town. Many people cannot go to work, cannot earn money, can barely feed their families, and cannot obtain medicine, babymilk or groceries. This applies more stringently to the people forced to actually live amongst Israeli soldiers who've set up camp, inside their homes,using them as look-out points, human shields and operations bases, plus the people who have the soldiers on their doorstep, such as those living above the checkpoint at Mukhata. We'd been doing checkpoint-watch pretty much every day there for the past nine days, monitoring soldier activities. Children from the surrounding area regularly gather by the wrecked prison to throw rocks (Plenty of them around - the IDF makes regular roadblocks using Caterpillar and local Palestinian bulldozers. Roads are simply cracked open, dug up, and rock and cement piled up into mini mountains. Water pipes are regularly, deliberatly smashed open and local supplies polluted). It's a depressing ritual. The kids have nothing. They detest the occupation, they are oppressed daily by Israeli Soldiers, both directly physically and also through having tanks and bulldozers screech up and down their streets. Local Palestinain Authority buildings have also been systematically destroyed by the IDF - a tactic to break down all Palestinian Authority infrastructure.

The soldiers regularly shoot at children. Only last week whilst hanging out with the stone-throwing streetfighter kids I try to apprehend an Israeli commander. He and a colleague are using the exhaust fumes of an advancing tank as cover to get closer to the group of kids, all young raggedy boys aged 10-17, Im with. As the tank pulls back up to its position in front of the flats, the kids point wildly to a white square building in between the Mukhata, The Nablus Childhood Happiness Centre and the checkpoint. 'Rzesz! Rzesz! (soldiers, soldiers)' they shout, pointing at the white building. 'I know I know', I say pointing up at the checkpoint. 'No No No!' (cue sound and motion of machinegun fire TAT TAT TAT E E E E and more manic pointing at the white building). It's only when I see them emerge that I realise what they're doing. They open fire, we duck behind a trench of rubble. Bullets ricochet off the walls. The kids run to hide behind some broken rocks and a wall-skeleton building. I get up and go bounding up to them. They're taking aim. I direct my question at the commander - a young, arrogant, good-looking Israeli. 'You're not really going to shoot those....' 'FUCK OFF'. It's a curt acid command. 'Oh right right, so, tell me, how many kids have you killed in your service?' I continue. His response is a round of ear-searing rapid fire at the scattering kids. Later he'll tell me he nearly shot me, that he came This Close to shooting me and that I should never stand in front of a soldier's gun and that he can arrest me at Anytime, tie my hands up with plastic cord. He puts the gun down. Keeps his gaze trained straight ahead. '27'.

The Demo

The Demonstration is oragnised by ISM volunteers and local residents in the blocks. An ex PA official living next door to the flats in a plush house helps us too. The idea is to reclaim the area in front of the flats and have children play games, draw posters and generally have a laugh and enjoy themselves as an act of resistance to the soldiers, in front of the soldiers. It's a tactic of defiance of the occupation and an alternative to the usual stone-luzzing ritual. It's also a way of showing kids that there are alternative forms of resistance. It's also good to flummux the soldiers. The ones on shift today are the same lot which policed our last kids' demo to the occupied house in Massakh Shabiyn. They tried to gas us with noxious tank-fumes for about 3 minutes. They don't talk much. They don't smile. They take their own 'initiative'. They believe in what they're doing. As kids tried to gather for the demo outside before we all came up they were shooting at them. Only yesterday they were firing intimidation shots at us. Before we even start the tank's barrel is trained squarely at us. It's hard not to wince when walking past it.

Around 100 kids turn up, tentatively at first, holding the placards we all drew together yesterday. They chant at the soldiers. The soldiers tell us we have to get back. We take a tiny colletive step back and continue. The kids are all over the shop but they're enjoying their chance to vent their frustration. So are the adults present too. Many a heated chant of 'Free Free Palestine' and 'Sol-diers OUT! Sol-diers OUT!' can be heard. Demonstrations here are pretty much nonexistant here - how do you collectively protest against a military curfew? The presence of internationals is one of the only ways collective acts of civil disobeience can take place. The soldiers have orders not to shoot us. Palestinian civillians yes. Internationals no. Bad PR. And Israel does employ an American PR agency - Leiden Communications http://www.israelmarketing.com/israelsecuritydefense.html - millions of dollars every year to keep its image clean.

Following a bout of shouting and general fist-shaking, we have a drawing and painting session and a plastic sack race. The kids hop, leap and wriggle in white plastic sacks, whipping up dust and getting breathless with exertion. We join in too. Everybody is clapping and laughing and the atmosphere is festive. Neighbours bring us out trays laden with tiny china cups of of smooth Arabic coffee and glasses of sweet tea - it's utterly surreal, sipping tea at an impomptu kids' sports day, performed in the street, amidst swirling clouds of grey dust, all under the gun barrel gaze of a forbidding Israeli tank, revving its engines every so often, and two soldiers standing around armed to the hilt; semi-automiatcs, teargas canisters, stun-bombs and curled-lip looks of disgust on their faces.

But we're having a laugh. We enter into problems with how to leave though. The kids are worked up, the soldiers are getting frustrated. They're having to keep one eye on us and another on all the traffic they're holding up and people they're ID-ing. Some of the older kids want to throw stones. Other kids, and their parents, just want to go home, they live in the next apartment building. The soldiers won't let them. One keeps hoisting up his gun and aiming at anyone who tries to walk the 20 feet distance past the tank. People are getting angry. We just want the kids to move back so that we can get into a group and then the internationals can maybe shield them as they make the short walk to get home. We try for a full 20 minutes. The kids move back and then move forward again, shouting at the soldiers and facing them down, just facing them down.

I never thought I'd hear myself saying it but I wished at that moment that the London 'Rhythms of Resistance' Samba Band was here. The samba band is much maligned by many activists in the UK who see it as unweildy, irritating, only capable of banging out 3 diffferent beats and a retrograde, pacifist, and way too fluffy tactic to be deployed on demonstrations. Why dance infront of a line of class enemy cops waving a feather duster and wearing a pink tutu when you should be clobbering them with bottles/stones/bricks or at least doing something more militant than dancing, revelling in symbollic action etc etc These are the usual critiques. But they would have been ideal in co-ordinating and facilitating a safe exit strategy.

Anyway. While some of us try to negotiate with the soldiers to let the kids go home without being shot, the lot of them just leg it across anyway. Problem solved through lucky distraction. Letting them know that the demo is over and we are going and therefore won't be able to protect them anymore is more difficult. When we're around they think theyre immune and can luzz rocks at soldiers without getting shot. Only yesterday one of us was shot in the Old City (ricocheting bullet, nowt serious, just a graze). We eventually opt for a very big, collective 'GOODBYE!! MAAS SALAAM!!!' and make huge waves at them all. The ones still around get the message. As we trail back, tired and encrusted with dust, a couple of kids run up to me and give me little scraps of card. One says 'Thankyou' in English. Another has the picture of the Palestinan flag with FREE PALESTINE written on it. It's really sweet. It's really hard to show kids here especially that you're on their side. That you may be from the UK but you hate the government there and that you're not a collaborator or agent or, a liberal pacifist advocating no aggression towards the Israeli army etc etc

As we amble off and turn the corner we hear an explosion of gunfire. Some of us have stayed. I get a call. The soldiers are firing on the kids again. They're pointing their guns and the barrel of the tank at anyone who evern tries to look out of their window. The occupation is back on.

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