Jalla bye!

My time is up. My visa is running out. And my energy level is rather low. I have grown very fond of this place and its inhabitants over the past three months. Inshallah, I will return soon. Until then, salamaat!

The IDF is in the coffee shop! Again.

The IDF must love coffee. It seems like it's a favourite activity of theirs to go into coffee shops undercover so they can arrest everyone inside.

The new Tulkarem team, who are here for the handover, got a rather dramatic introduction to the city. On their first day, the Israeli military entered the city centre with several jeeps and tanks in the middle of the day looking for a member of Islamic Jihad. They had obviously been tipped off by one of the numerous Palestinian collaborators of his whereabouts.

Life, interrupted
Earlier, four men dressed in normal Palestinian garbs had entered a coffee shop in one of Tulkarem's most busy junctions and ordered four coffees in perfect Arabic. But as soon as the owner walked towards the counter to prepare the coffee, the Israeli undercover agents drew their guns and ordered everyone down on the floor. In an instant, several military vehicles came swarming into the city and out jumped Israeli soldiers with their guns pointing all over the place.

IDF taking over the streets

The jeeps and tanks took strategic positions around the junction, knocking into civilian cars along the way. In order to disperse the watching crowds, the soldiers threw a few sound bombs around, whilst all the time shouting 'wacha, wacha' which is the Hebrew-accented version of 'warra, warra' in Arabic, meaning 'go back'.

Soundbombs

Inside the coffee shop, all the people who were unfortunate enough to have chosen to enjoy their coffee in this particular place, were blindfolded, handcuffed and taken away. Including the owner, Mohammad.

The coffee shop visitors are taken away

Abusing the future
Mohammad is fourteen. Because his father is dead and his elder brother is handicapped, he's responsible for providing for the family. He has quit school and is now running the family's coffee shop. However, age is not an obstacle to the Israelis, as they treat those who are thirteen years and above as adults under military law.

Mohammad was taken to the military compound and separated from the others. He was the last person to be interrogated. The soldiers asked whether he knew the wanted person and what kind of relationship they had. They told him that the wanted person had said that they were friends. Mohammad insisted that their relationship only extended as far as coffee shop owner and regular customer could go. After a while, the interrogation stopped. Then a female soldier came in and beat him in the leg with the shaft of her machine gun. Then they released him and dropped him off far away from the city.

Muhammad

As I listened to Mohammad's story, I wondered what kind of impact this experience would have on him. Comparing Mohammed to what I was like at fourteen - a girl without any significant worries - made it all the clearer to me how conditions and circumstances dictates the lives we lead.

Good Friday

Guillaume and I spent last Friday afternoon with Motaz, Muawya and the latter's two sons on a hill overlooking the villages around Tulkarem. We really needed a change from all our checkpoint watching of late. After the sun set, we went to Muawya's house for a meal. Masa kwayyes ktiir.

Lockdown

We've been locked down in Tulkarem today. Flying checkpoints were erected all around the city to make sure no one could leave. And that means no one.

Some people got stuck between permanent checkpoints and flying checkpoints unable to go anywhere. The heavy rain made sure everyone got soaked. All ambulances had to be coordinated beforehand by the ICRC or they wouldn't be able to pass the checkpoints. This is not always as straightforward as it sounds, especially when there's a critical situation.

Today, the lockdown resulted in the death of a woman. The soldiers at one checkpoint wouldn't let her and her husband pass, while the soldiers at another checkpoint wouldn't let the ambulance pass. I think the soldier who wouldn't let her through summed up the situation pretty well with his comment to the husband: 'To die, to die - it is none of my business'.

Flying checkpoint south of Tulkarem

Flying checkpoint north of Tulkarem

Flying checkpoint east of Tulkarem

Oh by the way, if you're wondering why there are no checkpoints to the west of the city - there is the Wall.

The Crucible

PROLOGUE
Abu Azzam is an influental farmer from the Palestinian village of Jayyous. He has dedicated his life to fighting the Wall and annexation of the village's agricultural land.

Abu Azzam has a middle-aged son, Ghassan, who is a law professor at An-Najah University in Nablus. A couple of weeks ago Ghassan was arrested and a taken for questioning by the Israeli military. No one is really certain what he's accused of. It is secret. Secret because the information has been gathered by Israel's Shin Bet agency, whose methods must remain undisclosed. As you can probably imagine, secret accusations makes it somewhat difficult for the defense lawyer to work Ghassan's case.

Ghassan has already had one hearing where it was decided that he needed to be kept in detention for more questioning. Today was the day for the second hearing, and as Abu Azzam is not allowed to go and EAPPI's Jayyous team was unable to attend, Guillaume and I decided to go.

We met Abu Azzam at a conference in January

Chapter 1
The trip to Petach Tikva, an Israeli city north-east of Tel Aviv, was interesting enough in itself.

We left the West Bank through the infamous 'hole in the Wall', which really just means passing by Abu Hosni's house in lower Shufa, where there's a gap in the highway fence onto a bypass road that leads into Israel. Allegedly, many Palestinians from the Tulkarem area use this as their gateway into Israel.

We had arranged for an Israeli taxi to pick us up on the east-side of the green line and take us through Jbarah checkpoint and into Israel to our final destination. However, Petach Tikva turned out to be quite far away in taxi-terms. We watched the meter with increasing concern, quietly counting our money in the back seat. It ended up being a rather pricey trip...

Chapter 2
The hearing took place in Petach Tikva's police station. We met up with some Israeli human rights activists and headed to the room where the military hearings were being held. Outside the room, a handful of prisoners were lined up as on an assembly line.

The hearings were surreal, like a Seinfeld episode. The man next to the judge was reading the paper. The judge himself looked like he was in his early twenties and very bored. It seemed like he had made up his mind on the verdict ahead of the process by the absent-minded way he listened to the evidence. The prosecuter, who might as well have been a Shin Bet representative, kept smiling sardonically at all the defendants and making snide comments and jokes. The Druze soldier who acted as a translator kept mumbling his words to the floor.

And the man with the most ungrateful job in the room, the defense lawyer, was allowed five minutes with each client before every hearing, always unaware of what charges he was to defend them against. I noticed that it was the same lawyer for all the prisoners - and I wondered: a volunteer or an appointed lawyer?

Not that it made much of a difference. Each prisoner was granted about ten minutes in front of the judge where they heard the evidence against them, were read their sentences (extension of the detention in all the cases we witnessed) before they were ushered back to their cells. Next!

Chapter 3
Abu Azzam's son was actually allowed to speak - courtesy of our presence apparently. And the Druze soldier actually lifted his eyes from the floor and looked into Ghassan's eyes when he translated from Hebrew to Arabic. Unfortunately, the soldier was not quite as competent at translating the other way around, and most of the time that Ghassan was allowed to talk was spent on arguments between the judge, the prosecutor and the defense lawyer over the translation.

Abu Azzam's son is a big man like his father. He has the same warm and jovial way about him. But today he looked worn down and broken. This man, whose plan is to go to the US to teach at a university, seemed very small despite his size. There might be a very tangible explanation for this change. During the trial, a woman from the Israeli women's organisation Machsom Watch passed us a note. It said that he had been interrogated for 21 hours every day for the past week, blindfolded and tied to a chair.

Afterwards, we spoke to the defense lawyer who could tell us that he thought the charges were based on something someone (who could not be named because of security reasons) had said about Abu Azzam's son. The lawyer interpreted the evidence presented by the prosecutor towards Ghassan being accused of leading of an underground Hamas faction at An-Najah university.

In my opinion, such argumentation sounds rather too vague for a court to make a decision. It seemed like the proof was all based on hearsay. Sort of like a witch hunt where one woman accuses her neighbour of casting a spell on her cows. At least this is how it comes across to me who is accustomed to a court system where fair and open trials are the norm.

Unfortunately, it seemed like reason and good judgement were absent in the courtroom today and the Ghassan was taken back to prison to await a new hearing on February 20. And some more interrogation...

Chapter 4
Palestinian prisoners is huge strain on both the Palestinian and the Israeli society, for very different reasons.

Almost every Palestinian male over the age of twenty that we've met have been imprisoned at some point in his life. Imagine how crippled a society becomes when a large chunk of their teenage and twenty-something male population spends two years or more in prison. Sometimes it seems like it's a crime to be Palestinian. The safest thing is to stay at home and not interact with anyone. But what kind of life is that?

For Israel, there is the obvious cost issue of keeping several thousands imprisoned. According to the Israeli human rights organisation, B'Tselem, there are about 8 500 individuals kept imprisoned at the moment. Around 800 of these are held under administrative detention - a practice kept from the time of the British mandate which allows the Israelis to hold individuals (read: Palestinians) for six months without any trial. A period that can be extended for another six months without trial. And this can go on for eternity if deemed necessary.

The military courts are like the invisible hands of the Israeli occupation. It is not obvious to the average Israeli and the rest of the world what is going on, and there is always a military code than can back up any kind of decision, thus making a claim to 'legality'.

Time will tell if the Israeli military court decides whether Abu Azzam's son will sink or float. Either way, he and his family are being punished.

EPILOGUE: Home sweet home
Since we'd spent all our money on the taxi to Petach Tikva, we thought that taking the bus back home would be clever.


Of course we managed to get lost. Suddenly, the towers of the Israeli city Hadera were disconcertingly close. Thankfully, a helpful guy sent us in the right direction (we made out that we were going to the settlement close to Tulkarem rather than to Tulkarem itself).

When we finally passed Jbarah checkpoint on foot, we saw that there was a military jeep outside Abu Hosni's house. Facing Israeli soldiers did not seem too tempting after our day in the military court, so we decided to crawl through another hole in the highway fence instead.

I, clumsy as always, managed to get stuck on the barbed wire. Some Palestinian worker pitied me and helped me get untangled. After some fumbling and climbing, we were up on the road. We jumped into a taxi, happy to be back home, in Palestine.

We wrapped up the day with two bottles of Cremisan and a heart-to-heart. Funny how injustice brings out the philosophers in us... Vive Guillaume!

The organic farmer next to the chemical factory

Trying to keep the pollution out of the greenhouses with netting and pieces of tape

It seems like life never turns out the way people wish for in Palestine. As Fayyez at-Tanib was on his way to continue his studies abroad, he was arrested by the Israelis and his dream was cut short. So, after his release he decided to become a farmer.

His farm, however, has ended up being stuck between the Wall and a chemical factory. This factory, specializing in pesticides, has been deemed so unhealthy by the Israeli court that the owner, Geshuri, was forced to close it down in Israel. But, he found a solution. He moved it to the West Bank.

Between the greenhouses and the Wall

Fayyez has tried to fight the Geshuri factory since it was established in 1987. He has been rewarded with several threats against his family and an attempt on his life. So far his fight has been in vain. Instead, a dozen more factories have settled in the area. And when the Wall was built, Fayyez lost 68 per cent of his land.

But despite all the drawbacks, he keeps on working. In fact, he only grows organic vegatables and fruits. It does seem strangely ironic. Especially as the water tank lies open to all the pollution from the factory. Yet I can't help but admire his will to keep going, and not through the simplest means available, but by putting in extra work in something he really believes in.

The yellow paper draws the insects towards it, making pesticides superfluous.

These bees stimulate the growth of the tomatoes

The water tank - and the chemical factory in the background

What is this fruit called in English? Anyone?

Drivin' me crazy

A father and son from Jenin, whose music is, well... lively...

This is Guillaume's new favourite CD. Trust me, Bedouin music at 4:45 AM is not a blast. All six songs sound somewhat similar to me. Kinda like Ace of Base in Arabic.

A lose-lose situation

Ruins of a previously demolished house in Far'oun

House demolitions happen almost daily in the West Bank - particularly in and around the Jerusalem. The most common reason is that the Palestinian house owner is unable to a obtain building permit from the Israeli authorities in Area C (area under full Israeli control).

This is, however, not the case in the village of Far'oun south of Tulkarem. Here, two houses have been served demolition orders because these houses are too close to the Wall. The thing is, these houses were built before the Wall was. Not to mention that the Wall is built on Palestinian privately-owned land and not on the internationally acknowledged green line. Nevertheless, the message from the Israeli authorities is clear: These houses must be removed. For security reasons.

The view from the roof terrace of one of the threatened houses - demolished houses all around. In the background you can see the Wall, here built as a fence.

The owners of the two houses have taken the case to the Israeli court, which has granted them an extension on the demolition date. We went to Far'oun and met one of them. He seemed pretty certain about the outcome. His family had cleaned the house for its belongings and vacated it. Hearing horror stories of families that were only given five minute warnings and lost everything they owned under the rubble, has made people precautious.

All valuable are removed and the family is living with relatives

There was resignation written all over this man. He knows it is a lost cause no matter how hard he fights. After the last court hearing, a representative from the Israeli military told him that even if he wins the case, they will find a way to fabricate a reason to have the house demolished. 'We will get someone to shoot at the Wall from your house, and then it will have to be demolished for security reasons', he had said. Security. Of course.

Maybe the last time the owner walks through the gate of his house

Last year, seven neighbouring houses were demolished. The year before another two.

Ramifications of a suicide bomb

Yesterday's suicide bombing in Dimona, which killed an Israeli woman, has dictated the lives of the Palestinians in the West Bank today. It will probably continue to do so in the days and weeks to follow. The restriction of movement in and around Tulkarem has become limited to say the least. No males under the age of 35 are allowed to leave the city. It doesn't matter if you live in Jericho or Jenin. You will have to stay put.

Walking past the queuing car up to the checkpoint

A Bethlehem-EA who had been visiting Tulkarem for a couple of days, called to inform us of the new restrictions in the early afternoon. She had had a difficult time passing the Al Ras/Jbarah checkpoint south of Tulkarem, but, being a foreigner, was let through at last. After hearing of more incidents with less successful outcomes at several checkpoints, we decided to go and check out the situation ourselves.

When we arrived at Jbarah checkpoint, there were about 50 young-ish men waiting to go through on foot. They had come to the checkpoint in taxis and servises to go home from work and universities, and had been told to step out and wait. Now the soldiers were ignoring them and they were just standing around.

Whenever they tried to approach the soldiers to ask them if they could let them through or how long it would take before the restrictions would be lifted, they were shouted at and told to pull back. Upon our arrival, we were greeted by a French-speaking soldier who immediately developed a strong dislike for Guillaume. He told us that this was a good lesson for the Palestinians. 'Next time they will think twice before voting for Hamas', he said. Clever chap.

Increasing number of men waiting by the checkpoint

Increasing number of cars waiting by the checkpoint

There were those who tried to walk through the fields around the checkpoint. They were stopped by soldiers waiting in the bushes who sent them back to the checkpoint. As time passed, more and more cars arrived and the group of men grew steadily. Some of them had young children with them, but this was not an ameliorating factor in any way. The soldiers had their orders and did not budge an inch.

Catching the last sun rays and trying to keep the mood up

After an hour and a half, there were over 300 people waiting in cars and by the road. As it got colder and darker, people lit fires to keep warm. Palestinians are used to waiting, so many just sat down and hoped for the restrictions to get lifted. Others, however, were desperate to get home. 'We did not blow ourselves up in Dimona, so why are they punishing us?' could be heard repeatedly in the crowd. Questions that we couldn't answer were directed at us. 'Where will we sleep tonight?'. 'Why are we treated like animals?'. More and more people were asking us for help - a sick old woman in a car, a bus full of children, a man with an infant - but the situation didn't leave us any room to act. The chaos, the desperation of the people, started feeling heavy on our shoulders.

With nowhere to go, fires are necessary to keep warm

In the end, the animosity the French-speaking soldier felt towards Guillaume ended our watch. He started threatening us that if we didn't remove ourselves from the checkpoint, he would have us arrested. He physically pushed Guillaume to underline his point and called him 'a short leftist from Europe' (more on how Guillaume experienced the day here). We knew then that our presence would only continue annoy this soldier, and since we couldn't do much about the waiting men, decided it was time to leave.

When we arrived home, exhausted, sad and cold, the phone started ringing. It was people we knew - friends, contacts, acquaintances - who wanted our help. They had husbands, sons, brothers stuck at various checkpoints around Tulkarem. We could only reply: 'There's nothing we can do. We are so sorry for what is happening'. I believe we both felt completely useless in that moment.

Our evening ended with a visit from our friend Samar and her colleague who lives in Jenin, the northernmost city in the West Bank. After waiting in vain for six hours at Anabta checkpoint, Samar's friend decided to turn back to Tulkarem. He was one of the lucky ones, he had somewhere to sleep. He told us that people had been ordered to stay in their cars at the checkpoint, and anyone who had tried to open their car door were reminded to keep it shut as the soldiers responded with gunfire.

Suicide bombings are despicable. So is collective punishment.

Italian style

- It is like Italian style! No really, it is!

The female students at Kadoorie University are talking about the appearance of young Palestinian men. With their hair swamped in shiny hair products, wearing tightly fitted tops and jeans, often covered in print, a Palestinian youngster's dress style might be reminiscent of the fashion inTurkey or southern Italy. However, I am sure a fashion-conscious Milanese would be horrified about the "Italian" labelling.

You see the same style everywhere, whether you're in big urban and liberal cities like Ramallah or in traditional and small villages like Attil. Personally, I've grown accustomed to the style, and now I even think some of them look almost good. Almost being the key word here.

Girls in Palestine love glitter. I hate glitter. Hence, most of my purchases have been on the other side of the Green Line. But I do admit that my aesthetics have changed slightly. I now think that a little glitter goes a long way, whilst at home I used to think that no glitter went all the way. I wonder if it'll remain this way when I get back home...?

A visit from Jordan

Rob came. He saw. He conquered. At least the heart of my team mate. Shater!

Drinking Glühwein

Somewhere in West Jerusalem with Guillaume, Garrick and Daniel. Such a group of lookers - what is a girl to do?

Winter barbeque

FYI, I now know how to make a mean kebab. We spent yesterday evening together with a few (male) friends. As a good and virtuous woman, I stepped up to the task and contributed. Actually, it's not too different from making meat balls.