Home
Documents Archive

ISM & Askar

ISM and Askar

I've been in Askar refugee camp, Nablus for the past eleven days now. We travelled up here, four of us internationals (our numbers here are TINY now, we really need more people)after completeing our training as 'official' ISM volunteers. Official in that you have to sign a contract commiting yourself to no drugs, alcohol, violence - that includes NO stone throwing at the soldiers Even if the kids are all bang on at it and you're standing in, literally, Piles of stones, handsize, hard and grab-needy stones, and, even if you are beaten/shot/maimed/killed on the an ISM action, it's not the ISM's fault. The training was pretty funny. It took place in a clean and airy partly built hotel in Beit Sehur, an affluent suburb east of Bethlehem. It started off with a round of 'if you think such and such an action is violent, please stand on this side of the room, if you can't decide, stand in the middle, and if you think its non violent, stand here'. Examples included - shouting 'SHAME' at a group of soldiers roughing up some Palestinians, pushing a line of soldiers as an arm-in-arm line of peace activists, activists throwing stones at a tank, a Palestinian child throwing stones at a tank, and a Palestinian child throwing stones at You. All I can say is that its lucky the 'if you think this is non violent' side had a nice big sofa on it and the tea and coffee table near by.

Our main co-ordinator for the training was a small, earnest Japanese woman named Maki*. As we are going to be staying in the houses of local Palestinians - mainly the homes of the families of suicide bombers and martyrs which are under threat of revenge attacks - usually a total bulldozing, we were taken through the do's and don'ts of Palestinian culture: don't sit with you leg up at a right angle , crossed over your knee - showing the bottom of your foot is considered very direspectful. If you bring a gift to the family - make sure its never bread - they will think you think they haven't even got enough cash for bread and are Destitute - better to make it chocolates and coffee and then give it very matter-of-fact, don't make a song and dance about it, otherwise you might embarrass the family; give the gift to the father of the house; no low cut tops, vests or shorts; and do not kiss or touch men in public. I smashed that one in Gaza when I saw my friend Jim for the first time in ages - he's out there working for an NGO called 'The Scales' as in The scales of justice. They're pretty boss, they organise regular 'Face the Public' days when sheepish, people-shirker politicians are forced out of their air-conditioned offices and into refugee camps to, er, face the poverty embedded people they're supposed to be facilitating better lives for. As if they ever could. Anyway, I hadn't seen Jim for ages and I just did the usual, bounded up to him, in public, in a coffee caf and gave him a huge hug and big smacker on the cheek. His mates (two guys) just turned away in dismay.

We also get an intro into the politics and roots of ISM. The first ever ISM action, December 2000 saw locals and internationals march up to an Israeli Military base, walk straight past the soldiers guarding it, march raucously through, banners and Palestinian flags aloft, and up to the top where they took down the Israeli flag and raised the Green, White, Black and Red. That's quite an achievement in an occupied police state. It also openly supports the families of suicide bombers - pretty controversial, but remains steadfastly non-violent in all its confontations with the IDF and settlers. The Israeli media have tried to discredit the ISM by saying its full of anarchists and communists. Everyone from Anarchist Youth Network UK people, Wombles, huge Ya Basta! Italy contingents, comedian Jeremy Hardy, and Mc Donalds smashing GM crop torching farmer Jose Bove have come out on ISM missions.

The best part of the training is handling the various projectiles the Israeli Army is likely to shoot at us and getting a bit of facts of facing down the fourth strongest armed state in the world and life under military occupation in general. After passing round some weighty sound bomb shells, tear gas canisters, rubber bullets (rubber Coated steel balls), sharp pointed M16 bullets, Uzi bullets, and tank shells, Maki adopts a very stern, serious voice. We pay attention. 'What you will see here is very very depressing. Many people feel very upset by what they see. Yes. You may get beaten or shot. You may see your friends get shot and Palestian people shot or beaten very very badly. You may need counselling after this (nods up and down). Yes. And the counselling, it Might work. (nod nod) It Might work'.

Askar.

The camp is a 20 minute walk from Old Nablus, about 60km north of Jerusalem, and is divided into two parts - Old and New Askar. Old Askar is a dense warren of basic concrete tenements, packed together tightly, parted in places by narrow alleys, but all linked together by dusty shop-dotted lanes. The streets are grey-white, infact everything is grey-white, ingrained with the ever-drifting dust which gets everywhere, starches your hair, your clothes, your skin, blows into your eyes, up your nose. Add to that the bulldozed Hamas, PFLP and Al Aqsa leader's houses, tank-pushed mangled piles of cars and big gaping holes and piles of rocks blocking the main roads, all courtesy of the IDF, and random bullet-hole-riddled burnt out buses and vans (doubling up as baricades for brave camp resisdents at night)and you've got a poverty stricken shanty town that looks like it's been hit by a typhoon. The asphalt of the one main road through the camp, 4 'lanes' wide, is etched with white tank-tracks. Mounds of waste in knotted black plastic carrier bags get burnt on a regular basis, some in scorched iron skips, others just in piles by the road-side. The acrid stench grazes your nostrils.

Nablus is known throughout Israel and the occupied territories as 'Fire Mountain' perched between hills, with Askar camp seettling at the foot of Mount Askar - a brittle sun-baked mound of rock and wildmoss. The 'Fire' reference refers to the history of militancy in the region, all stoked by the fact that two massive settlements - Elon Moreh and Himar - flank the place. It is also home of the radical An-Najah university (closed for most of the Intifada) - the student council of which is controlled by Hamas*. The University has earned its radical reputation due to the combativity of its students (many of whom join the various (largely Islamic) armed factions operating within the institution and carry out suicide bomb attacks in Israel. Their lively demonstrations, snapped by IDF operatives as seen on the IDF ops website, involve absailing down the side of buildings, platforming step-by-step bomb preparations for large student audiences and holding regular memorial rallies for martyrs, complete with the odd theatrical historical re-enactment of a suicide bomb bus attack. Nablus is also the industral heartland of the Occupied territories, drawing in merchants and shoppers from all over the territories. However, since curfew was imposed 8 months ago, entire streets stand still, and shop-fronts stay locked, the only hustle in town coming from the stone archway covered Souk in the Old City, a market street in Ballata refugee camp and a few shops, falafel stalls, crushed flourescent syrup ice carts, yogurt trolleys, and street grocers still open for business in Askar. Some people here haven't worked for 3 years. Since the second intifada, it's estimated that the Palestinian authorty has lost $11bn in revenue, all severed due to the curtailment of all movement - personal and mercentile - by the occupying Israeli Army. Checkpoints: these consist of a tank, APC (armoured Personel Carrier - a weird khaki steel rhombus vehicle which moves like a tank, only faster), an army jeep-van or two and around 3 commando-style troops, all armed to the teeth with M16 automatics, stun grenades, tear gas canisters, plastic cord for tying prisoners' hands, a field telephone, and water tanks nestling in rucksacks, reaching their mouths through hard plastic straws, helmets and utility belts - phew.) The checkpoints can crop up without warning at key intersections between towns and areas, forcing locals and medical services to take haphazrd routes up and town mountains, adding hours to their journeys. Palestinians can have their ID cards randomly confiscated too, meaning indefinate detention in their villages as passage through checkpoints without ID can result in instant arrest.

Nablus residents (numbering around 150,000 - making it the largest city in the West Bank outside of Jerusalem) have been allowed to leave their homes for an average of four hours per week. The lifting of the curfew is erratic and unpredictable. It was lifted for the first day of school just last week (Aug 31) but then reimposed again, and hasn't been lifted since. Children are unable to get to school. It's a problem for them and their parents. A similar tactic of intellectually impoverishing whole generations was adopted by the South African apartheid regime. The state strategy, in demonising those living under an internal colonialism as backward, inherently retarded, and unmanageble, attempts to actualise this through the routine prevention and denial of education.

The IDF has also occupied the homes of those unlucky enough to live on the outskirts of camps, positioned at good vantage points for snipers and providing key locations for military operation launches. One such family is the Alar Samfeh family, living on the edge of Askar. The house was forcibly occupied by soldiers in June to be used as a make-shift base for terrestrial operations in the area. The 19 people living in the home were prevented from leaving and as a result lost their livlihoods - builders, land surveyors- for the past three months. During the occupation, if the father of the family wanted to move from one part of the house to another he was forced to be blinfolded. Soldiers destroyed chairs, tables and a music system, and towels and linen were regularly used to clean oily guns. Greasepaint handprints were also left all over the walls.

Tank Dust Lunch - September 2

All us Internationals staying with the families of various martyrs in Ballata, Askar, New Askar and Old Nablus join local Palestinian activists in organising a demonstration with women and children to go and deliver food to the Alar Samfeh family. The idea is to march from the Askar Mosque, out to the house (only a 20 minute walk) and have a picnic outside the house/military base, and try if possible to deliver food to the family. We bring 100 falafel, houmous and salad pittas for the kids. The women from the Askar community women's centre come too - they control the megaphone, and the kids who are yip yipping around, all excited and carrying the placards we made last night (Zolnierze WON, Dzieci do Szkoly - Soldiers OUT, Children Back to School - Polish, The Occupation Drives Violence (tank in motion drawing)Japanese peace symbols and the word peace in arabic and many others. There are about 200 of us. We manage to get as far as the first intersection before the house when the sound of a tank (akin to a light aircraft revving up before take-off)begins to grind against our ears. All of us internationals - about 10 - English, Japanese, American and German, are at the front holding hands, trying to keep a bit of order to the demo and act as a barier between the soldiers and the kids. We brace ourselves for the tank. It comes roaring up to us, stops, spins its barrel, wildly, round and round and points it squarely at us. We stand firm. It then begins to rotate its entire body in circles churning up dust and scream-spewing out billious clouds of carbon monoxide. It disappears in its own thick grey exhaust. People cover their mouths with their t-shirts, turn away, cover their eyes, cough and splutter, but all stand firm. It eventually stops, gradually reappearing as the noxious fumes clear. It stands there angrily, chains heaving to a halt. Then the military plod turn up in a jeep. Negotiaters - an international and a Palestinian step straight up. We ant to go to the occupied house. No dice. So we end up staying where we are and eating the falafals while kids take turns on the megaphone - singing freedom songs, shouting out demands, luzzing the odd stone (but Nothing like they usually do). We chant along to. 'Mur-der-ers!' 'Mur-der-ers!' 'Let the child-ren go to sch-ool!' 'TURN YOUR TANKS! ON YOUR SELVES! - (me). The demo loses its momentum on the way back - we don't retreat, we just all take the decision that we'll go. We werent even supposed to stay at the intersection, let alone sit down and have a picnic. The kids are jubillent. A group of women from the women's centre take me under their wing - literally, we all link arms heartily and even though I can barely speak a word of Arabic they chatter away to me warmly and smile a lot at me even though I just keep saying 'I don't undestand! Sorry!'. Everybody agrees that the demo was a great success. People have barely left their houses for months let alone taken back their streets collectively and had the chance to give the soldiers a piece for their minds.

Kiss the IDF

It's 2am when myself and the girl and randmother I am sharing a room with are awoken by the sound of gunfire. I'm staying in the house of family who's son had taken himself to Jerusalem to explode himself. He never got there. He detonated himself by accident on the way, blown skyward on a roadside. Posters of him - a shy faced kid, no older than 18, but gripping a mighty great gun in his hand, held up high (the wonders of photoshop)- cover every wall is Askar and Ballata (As do posters of all the martyrs. They are the wallpaper here. With no film industry, their faces represent superstardom, they're heroes, they're have immortality, in the popular cosciousness, they are stars-of-the-cause. The posters are colourful, glossy, professional. Al Aqsa mosques gleam in the background. The faces of dead leaders, Abu Ali Mustafa etc hover hazily in the background, gold tinted. Guns criss-cross behind their heads if not in their hands. The Titi family martyr - one of the most highly respected in Ballata - is pictured talking on his mobile, smiling, easily) We can hear tanks churning around and the RATT TAT TAT of gun fire. Its close. I peek out of the window and see a bearded (this is not meant to reinforce bearded-islamic-nutter stereotypes by the way) man-on-a-mission dude come striding out of his house with a rifle. Im convinced he's going to be shot to pieces but I actually bump into him the next day. He's unscathed. Anyway. There's nothing we can do. We just sit back and listen to the shooting. An hour or so later I get a call from XXXX. He's just had around 15 IDF soldiers pile out of four military jeeps come round his house - 4 in night-vision goggles, all ordering his family out and up against the wall and taking their strict instructions from YYYY - the infamous Askar camp IDF commander. XXXX comes over to get me - his house is only round the corner. The atmosphere is mildly panicked. His family - 15 or so women, men and children, all sit muted in the front room drinking hot sweet tea out of short thick glasses. They say quick and nervy Salam Aliekums to me before he takes me round to show me where soldiers had fired their guns. Holes gape in the walls, a few of the marble steps on the stairway are broken, a huge cream coloured wardrobe, drawers and mirror combo in his wife's bedroom stands smashed and wonky. He's usually pretty calm and capable but he's twitching away tonight. We go up to the roof and look down at the neighbours chatting frettfully in the street and watch a tank move slowly, silently far in the distance, along the road to New Askar, on patrol. 'They said 'we want to destroy your house. The next time we come, we will', tells me XXXX. 'YYYY, he kept saying - DON'T TALK. You Playing with Fire. He hold my face like this - DON'T TALK'. It transpires that the target of the raid is XXXX's 23-year-old brother. He's wanted. And nobody knows where he is - for three weeks now he's been untracable. I'm told he's not part of any organisation but the IDF want to question him. And if he hands himself in now, he'll only be inside for three months. If he doesn't, his family gets it. XXXX continues 'YYYY, he tell me, you're brother, he's very good,[...]'.

I stay over.

The next day we get a call from XXXX saying he's located his brother and he wants to give himself up. Myself, Fenula, a 17-year-old (!) beautiful peace activist from Ireland but living in Germany plus Hella* a 32-year-old German activist married to a Palestinian are asked if we will accompany XXXX's brother, just to make sure he isn't shot on his way. The plan is for us to walk, by his side, up to the same junction where we were fumigated by carbon monoxide from the tank yesterday and observe him being led to his fate. The Isareli interrogation period for new arrestees is 18 days. Enough time for interogation, torture, wounds to heal, and lips to start loosening. We wait in XXXX's living room for his brother to materialise. Still, we do not know what he's Wanted for and who he's been involved with. Somtimes its beter not to ask. People don't want to start divulging too much information round here. Especially not to internationals new to the situation and new to their 'hood. As is is, some of the kids here shout CIA' and 'Israel Agent' at us!

XXXX's father, a stubbled, long robe dressed, man who reminds me of Terry Gillingham winds a beaded necklace round his fingers nervously as XXXX answers the third call of the day from YYYY. He's getting impatient. And he wants noone with him. Noone. Just him and his father. And he won't be harmed, he won't be shot. They just want to talk to him. We sip our hot sweet tea and try not to stare. We're in a room full of men. Silent,supportive, scared men. The long lost brother turns up. Putting a face to the situation really brings it home. He looks barely out of his late teens. Wearing jeans and a t-shirt, trying hard not to look fazed, to look casual, but alert, he sits down in between his father and XXXX. XXXX gets off the phone. It's time to move. 'You will not leave his side?' asks another brother as we get our things together. Camera and mobile and tape recorder, all jammed into my bumbag - no big bags, no rucksacks, empty hands. We assure him we won't. As we walk up the street, the five of us - me, Wanted brother, bead-turning father, sorted sprite girl Fenula and experienced Hella - people stop talking in the street and give the brother nods and Maas Salams (peace be upon you), serious faces stare at us from every direction. Some confused but pretty courageous kids try to follow us. Poking the gound with sticks and eying the two miltary jeeps stood in the distance with sullen antagonism. As we walk down the long dust road - 4 lanes wide with burnt out car wrecks stranded in the middle, charred mounds of rubbish and smashed pavements to our left and right, the father tells us, 'stay back a bit, hey. stay back' in Arabic. We move a little bit farther back but we're still only a few steps behind. As we get closer to the jeeps, the brother and the father both begin to motion to us 'back, back' and increase their speed. I get angry - this is pride, this is political correctness, we're supposed to be helping. monitoring, letting the IDF know we've seen this, Human Rights groups know this man's name and that he's coming into custody, if anything happens to him......

But we have our orders. Not from just the family, or more importantly the brother, whose decision it ultimately is, but now from the soldiers. We receed about 40 feet back from the father and son and just stand there, powerless, and watch them both approach the jeeps. Two soldiers greet them. They men kiss Arabic - cheek to cheek, cheek to cheek. One soldier hands the father a plastic bag. None of us are really getting what's going on. I cant believe theyre kissing, I can't belive the routine, the false nicety, it seems so sinister, such power-play. After embracing his son and standing back, hand on heart, and watching as the soldiers lead him into an armoured jeep, we watch the father walk hastily back up to us. He's wiping his face. When he reaches us we join him in his walking 'They tell me, they Promise, me, not one hair on his head, not one, will be harmed. Not one. He gave me his word'. He walks on, sweating. The bag contains limes and two bottles of water - a thank-you gift for co-operating. All we can do is walk. Still none of us know just what he's actually supposed to have done, what he's actually been taken away for.

YYYY strikes again. 15-year-old with a bomb-belt. Islamic Jihad split. We can't be seen to be collaborators.

This is something that happened just two days ago.

Extra bits:

My (new) family

I am staying with the Bushkar family, in New Nablus, a 10 minutes walk through dry rocky scrubland, and an army checkpoint if youre unlucky. On May 19th of this year, 18-year-old Osama Bushkar dressed in an Israeli soldier's uniform, took himself to a busy market street in the coastal city of Netanya and blew himself up. The Israeli media said he killed 3. His family and local sources claim it was more like 15-22. The attack was carried out under the banner of the PFLP (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine) the Middle East's if not the worlds most sophisticated armed assassins.

* not real name

*Very popular Islamic organisation with deep grassroot links with Palestinian communities, carrying out suicide bombings and armed attacks against both Israeli civilian life and state institutions, as well as organising food, medical and social welfare programmes for some of the poorest Palestinians still alive. A recent poll put their popularity at 30%

Home
Documents Archive