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TITLE: Another Report from the Gaza Strip |
AUTHOR: Alison Weir |
DATE: February 28, 2001 |
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I just came back from Khan Yunis - the Israeli military closed off the road, so we and hundreds of other people had to leave our vehicles, climb down tothe beach, go along there for about a mile, and then climb up to the road on the other side, where there were taxis and buses waiting to pick up people. I was with a family and we all rode a horse-drawn wagon through the surf. The people I was with were just trying to get to their jobs, one as a doctorand one as a civil engineer, and one had his wife and baby with him. Otherpeople trudging along the beach were various men, women, and children of all ages, many lugging bags, heavy parcels, etc. Luckily it didn't happen to be pouring the torrential rain we've had some other days... The Israelis do this sort of thing at will. As one man said, "This is insulting. This is insulting to a human being." We passed the Chief Justice of the Palestinian Supreme Court... who also, of course, was not allowed to go on the road. Last night the Israelis tried to kill a member of the Palestinian peace team who had been a signatory at Oslo -- he lived only because he happened to have left his office an hour before. The people with me were outraged -- this was a man who had tried to negotiate for the pitiful peace Palestine was willing to settle for. Another dignitary, the president of the Palestinian National Assembly,needed to go to a conference yesterday. The Israelis wouldn't let him out of Gaza. Tomorrow Colin Powell is coming to meet with Yasser Arafat, who isn't here yet. Everyone is wondering how Arafat will manage to get in...perhaps by helicopter. It is truly unbelievable to see the incredibly insulting and demeaning way that Israel treats Palestinians. They are squeezing them and squeezing them and squeezing them... there were people on the beach today trying to take crops out to sell, using donkey carts to try to take them down the beach, occasionally getting stuck in the sand. Yesterday I visited Mawasi, a lovely agricultural district along the beach that Israel has closed off and is steadily destroying. I saw 100 year-old palm trees they had bulldozed, acres and acres of palms, olive trees, vegetables, that Israel leveled. I talked to farmers whose families have worked on this land for untold generations, who now have no livehoods, their fields destroyed and confiscated. I was lucky to even get in to Mawasi. It's been closed off, and everyone warmed me that it was dangerous. The grandmother where I was staying was so upset at the thought that she used what English she could: "No go! No go Mawasi!" ButI managed to walk through the checkpoint and the soldiers with their M-16s ever ready let me pass. Some local people met me on the other side and took me to meet various families, farmers, the local officials. They all, as always, asked me to tell America what is happening to them, to protect them from Israel. This is a very simple place, the officials were wearing kafiyahs, thread-worn coats. At one point we were driving next to the beach and they briefly stopped the car so I could walk down to the water and pick up a seashell. As I headed back to the car I saw an Israeli Military truck approach slowly. They saw me, and continued on. When I got in the car,the people said, "If you weren't with us, we would be in too much trouble..." You can feel the fear when we even see a soldier or a settler in the distance. These people are being terrorized ... One woman who teaches science in Khan Yunes said that when she tried to come home from work last Thursday with her two sons Israeli soldiers wouldn't let them through the checkpoint. She was forced to travel down to Rafah to stay with a sister. After a few days she tried again. This time they let her through, but then she and her sons got caught in a sudden crossfire between Israeli soldiers and a few Palestinians shooting out from their bullet-riddled community. She said she and her sons had been terrified, and her sons don't want to go to school anymore. She's teaching them at home now. Kids' educations are totally disrupted here... again, randomly and arbitrarily. Roads get closed off, schools closed, and children are deprived from learning. I've taken pictures of all of this -- some on the digital camera,some on film. Unfortunately, the equipment to email the pictures is in Dheisheh... hopefully I'll get everything through the various checkpoints between here and there, and in a few days I'll be able to start sending photos of all this. It's tragic being in Mawasi... the sea beautiful, the palm trees lovely, the people friendly... everywhere we went people insisted on serving us strong sweet coffee in delicate cups... and you knew that all of this was being destroyed. Including the people -- several have been shot and killed in recent weeks. This is an incredibly lush place beautiful tomatoes, strawberries, guavas, mangos... and the Israelis are plowing them all under. Again and again, I can't believe the incredible arrogance, cruelty, selfishness I'm seeing. Israel wants this land, so it is taking it. It doesn't even bother coming up with an excuse for most of this... they just do it. The people here are in their way... And since no one is stopping them, and we are supplying them with the never-ending means, they continue... Thanks so much for your concern and for forwarding my emails. It is so incredibly important to let Americans know what is being done with our money and in our name... people would not stand for this if they knew it! I am amazed at how effectively the pro-Israel network has, so far, managed to keep the truth from leaking into many of our news outlets... For now, at least, the Internet may be the only way for people to learn about what is really happening. Just now, I'm writing this from the internet cafe in gaza city,a freelance photographer from Seattle I've met walked in. He had tried to get to Mawasi, but everything was totally cut off, for awhile the Israeli military even stopped the people coming from Khan Yunis who were walking along the beach... kids with school books, women with babies... just stopping them all, for no reason. Then he went to the hospital here, Shiffa, he saw a 14 year old boy who had just been brought in. the boy was shot in the back. Ron said he saw the wound the bullet went in the back and was still lodged in the abdomen --making a bump sticking out the front. The kid was running away. The soldiers shot him in the back. This is not rare but it is still horrible.Americans have to stop this. Israel will keep shooting kids in the back until we all say Enough.Thanks for sending this on to every one you can. The censorship has to stop. people who say there are two stories to this "conflict" are full of bs -- tell them to come to Palestine. There are two stories just like there were two stories concerning south africa's apartheid. Here there is the brutalizer and the brutalized. It is not complicated. I am seeing it daily. - Alison END |