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| Al-Awda New York, The Palestine Right to Return Coalition | |
Webmaster's Note: the following is a series of letters written by Al-Awda member Shirabe Yamada from the Deheisheh Refugee Camp in Palestine.
Letter
from January 9, 2001
Letter
from January 10, 2001
Letter
from January 12, 2001
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January
9, 2001
Dheisheh Refugee Camp, Palestine
Dear Friends,
I arrived in Palestine 2 nights ago, staying at Dheisheh refugee camp (near Bethlehem, West Bank) where I had lived until one month before the current Intifada broke out. One this one-week visit, I am planning to convey to you as much as possible of what I see here.
In Bethlehem area, things have been rather quieter in the last several weeks. There have been less bombings and clashes, and people attribute it to the religious holidays (Christmas and Ramadan just finished) or in anticipation of results ongoing negotiation. Still, the night before my arrival, shellings from nearby settlement of Efrat struck houses in Dheisheh camp. "My brother's home was hit by two tank- shells, leaving two big holes on the wall," told me Ahmed, one of Ibdaa Dance troupe members.
Difference from before the Intifada can be felt the most after dark. Streets are deserted, for the fear of Israeli bombings which usually start at night.
Another noticeable difference is pictures of martyrs that decorate every street corner, store front, and house wall. This Intifada has already claimed more than 300 lives, 20 of them from the Bethlehem area alone. Everyone here knows each of their martyr's names, where they lived, and the story of their death.
Yesterday morning, my friend Ziad from Dheisheh took me on a tour around the area. On this tour, I was able to get the sense of living under siege. Israelis, in addition to the Closure policy that restricts the movement of Palestinians within West Bank, has imposed a stricter policy called Internal Closure. Today, most Palestinian vehicles are not allowed to exit Areas A (15% of West Bank) which are island-like pockets in the sea of Israeli controlled Area C (65% of West Bank). The route Ziad took me defined a physical outline of the enclave that most Bethlehem area residents have been confined into. To the north, his car could only reach Beit Jala village, and to the west, he could go no more than half-way into Beit Sahour village, part of which is Area C with an Israeli military installation. To the south, he could take me only as far as Al-Khader village, borders of which are surrounded by a network of Bypass Roads (road linking West Bank settlements to serve Jewish settlers).
"Israeli soldiers shoot from up there down to the village," looking up the bypass road on hillsides Ziad explained. The exit of Al-Khader was blocked by mound of concrete debris. On the hills not far from there, blue lights of Israeli military vehicles were visible. On the hilltops of Artas village, right next to Dheisheh, "you can often see tanks moving about," said Ziad. The extensive network of military stations, checkpoints, Bypass Roads and settlements is at work to physically confine the Palestinian communities and to militarily surround them.
The village of Beit Jala was hit the worst by the Israeli bombings in the last months. On lands confiscated from this scenic Christian village lays an Israeli settlement of Gilo, where tanks and snipers fired on beautiful stone houses, apartment buildings, and ancient churches of the village.
Most damages are seen in the valley and slope facing Gilo. Houses had shattered windows, blown up columns, charred or bullet-riddled walls. Burned and disfigured cars left on the street bear witness to the heavy shelling that the village came under. I saw a family loading up trucks with household items, clearly on their way to evacuate from the village.
Beit Jibrin Refugee Camp also experienced several nights of heavy shelling. The smallest of the 59 Palestinian refugee camps, Beit Jibrin is a densely populated shantytown, crowded with makeshift concrete houses and muddy ally ways. Two main streets that encircle the camp meet in front of Rachel's Tomb, a religous-site-turn-to-fortress. The tomb, guarded heavily by Israeli soldiers right in the middle of a Palestinian neighborhood, has been a spot of tension and friction where stone-throwing Palestinians encounter live bullets and tear gas.
Handala Center, a children's cultural center in the Beit Jibrin camp, has been closed since the beginning of the intifada. "The children can't come to the center when there are clashes and bombing, because it is too dangerous," explained my friend Azza, a co-founder of the center. Azza also pointed to his windows and walls punctuated with holes from bullets and shrapnel. Merna, his 13-year-old niece, told me stories from shellings. "It was like a rainy day because Israeli bullets destroyed all our water tanks," she points to rooftops where families store water for the time of shortages (which is basically every summer) in tin tanks.
Many houses had outside walls riddled with bullet holes. Merna's house was hit by 7 shells in one night. "This was from Gilo, and this was from tanks at Rachel's Tomb, all made in USA" she went through a collection of bomb shells and sharpnel, and pointed to corresponding holes on walls and windows of her home. It must have been by some miracle that nobody in her family was hurt, given the intense and indiscriminate shellings into this densely populated camp. "Palestine is a jail. We live in a jail," said Umm Yunis, grandmother of Merna. "How are you able to study in the situation like this?" to my question Merna answered with a smile: "No problem. We learned to finish everything by 4PM, before bombing starts."
As I write this, I hear sound of ambulance on the main road just outside of Dheisheh camp. There are clashes going on in al-Khader village. This morning, bombing damaged two houses in Beit Sahour village. Three youths have already been hospitalized today. Mu'sab, a 10-year-old from Dheisheh, just walked in with a rubber-coated-metal bullet he picked up at the scene of clashes.
shirabe
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Dear Friends,
We must have been traveling on back roads for over an hour when our shared-taxi came to a slow halt. In front of us was a mound of large rocks and soil, blocking the road before it was connected to a main road. Our driver jumped off, and so did all other drivers of a caravan of Palestinian service-taxis on their way to Hebron. After a brief exchange of words about alternative routes, we turned around and continued our journey, on narrow mountain roads, through isolated communities where villagers would advise on open routes, and passing next to Israeli settlements guarded by tanks and heavily armed soldiers. Our trip to the village of Surif near Hebron took more than 2 hours from Bethlehem - it would have been a 45-minute scenic drive without the Closure.
I was accompanying Najla and Toshiko, staff members of Sunbula, a non-profit organization that assists self-help craft groups in refugee camps and economically disadvantaged villages by providing skills training and selling their products. Veteran back road travelers, for their job requires frequent visits to remote villages, Najla and Toshiko commented that each of their travel has been a discovery of new routes: "How persistently Israelis block every possible road and how creative and knowledgeable these drivers are for making it to our destinations."
Surif was a quiet yet impoverished village nestled on rolling hillsides of southern West Bank. It showed typical features of underdevelopment under three decades of the Israeli military occupation, such as unpaved roads and poor school buildings.
Women of Surif Craft Cooperative greeted the Sumbula staff with warm smiles. The cooperatives employs 10 staff persons, and provides income-generating opportunities for over 400 women who bring in pieces of Tatriz (traditional Palestinian embroidery) work to the Cooperative to be sewed up into products. Sunbula assists 12 such groups throughout the Occupied Territories, and sells the products at their store in Jerusalem. Najla handed them materials that were not reachable to the village due to the Closure, while Toshiko busily inspected quality of finished products. Vibrant conversation, sprinkled with jokes and laughter, filled the room as the women worked in an inventory room, at sewing machine and ironing board. "Intifada brought in an extreme economic difficulty to our village," told me the director of Cooperative. "The village economy largely depends on physical labor inside Israel at construction sites.
Because of the Closure, our husbands cannot reach their jobs. In many households women became a sole breadwinner by selling crafts through Sunbula, which used to bring an average of $100 per person each month. Now it's down to less than $50 because tourism in Jerusalem has declined." Packing tablecloths, purses, napkins and aprons, beautifully decorated with patterns and colors unique to this village, Toshiko said, "we will take as many products as possible, and see what can be done at the store."
Our journey back to Sumbula's office in Jerusalem was literally a trip into a different world. After another lengthy trip through a different route, which passed through newly installed Israeli military posts and checkpoints, street scenes in the Israeli West Jerusalem were almost surreal - people sitting at trendy cafes, elderly couples walking a dog, and children with their neat clothes running home with colorful schoolbags bouncing on their back. However, in front of Damascus Gate where bustling transportation center for West Bank cities are located, I was pulled back to the reality of the other side. To my remark that there was a heavy presence of Israeli soldiers, my fellow passenger on a shared-taxi to Bethlehem replied: "Another Palestinian has just been killed around the corner, on Salah Eddin Street."
shirabe
PS: if you are interested
in obtaining Sunbula's product catalog, please write me (shirabey@yahoo.com)
or contact Sunbula directly at: sunbula@patnet.com.
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Dheisheh
Refugee Camp
January 12, 2001
Dear Friends,
"Wahad! Tineen! Thalata! ('1, 2, 3' in Arabic)" cheerful voices bounced off bear concrete walls as young boys and girls kicked dust off the floor with steps of Debkeh (traditional Palestinian dance), in a half-finished community hall at Ibdaa Cultural Center. Several circles of dancers were turning and hopping in front of my eyes, improving complicated steps and movements with each round they danced. The novice dancers, ages 11 and 12, were being taught by a group of older kids, 15 and 16 year olds of Ibdaa Dance Troupe. The young teachers, who have performed in several European countries and US, enthusiastically instructed and observed with care their students. The students practiced with great seriousness, their cheeks turning rosy and eyes shiny.
Activities at Ibdaa Cultural Center, which consisted of various educational, social and cultural programs to empower the deprived children and youths of the camp, experienced serious setbacks with an arson fire the end of last summer. As defiant and committed community members were about to restarting the programs after much rebuilding effort, the Intifada broke out. In the turmoil and violence that dominated life, the Center was no longer able to carry out many activities, especially their outdoor programs such as sports training and educational field trips.
Bombings, shootings, and deaths of their fellow youths have profoundly been disturbing the children in the camp. Dheisheh has already lost five of its youths from this Intifada. Three of them were killed continuously within 5 days in November, when Bethlehem's martyrs cemetery ran out of burial space. Someone from Dheisheh donated a piece of land, where the youths of the camp buried the three right next to each other under an olive tree, crying. Each time I visited the cemetery, I saw fresh flowers, new pictures and letters being placed on their tomb stones. Their youthful smiles are seen everywhere in the camp, whose alleyways are covered with new posters and slogans of Intifada Al-Aqsa.
"My children still wake up from nightmares, screaming that soldiers will come to our home and kill us all, although the situation has been calmer in the last several weeks,” said Wafa, a working mother with 3 young boys. “My little brother became always scared after the bombings,” said Manar, a 15-year-old member of Ibdaa Dance Troupe who leads the dance practice. Bedwetting, lack of concentration and hysteric behaviors are also commonly seen among the children in Dheisheh. I have also noticed that so many small children are throwing rocks on the camp’s alleyways, playing Intifada game – scenes that were not seen this often when I lived here before Intifada.
Sometimes, surprised parents would find their children on a television throwing stones on live broadcast of clashes. Some parents and leaders of Ibdaa Cultural Center would go and drag the camp’s children home. “My nephew was wrapping his face with a scarf, to avoid being seen not by Israelis but by his family,” said one of my friends with a bitter smile.
Mothers in the camp are upset and hurt by the internationally accepted myth about cold-blooded Palestinian parents who send their children to be killed by Israelis. “Why would they think like this? I love my children and I want the best for them,” said Wafa. Susanne, her co-worker with 2 small sons, added: “Aren’t mothers the same everywhere in the world?” Miyasr, a schoolteacher with 5 children, shook her head sadly and angrily to read a statement by Queen of Sweden, who accused Palestinian parents mentioning the same myth.
Responding to mounting concerns of the parents of Dheisheh, Ibdaa Cultural Center launched on emergency programs aiming to help children coping with Intifada. Various workshops, such as drawing, paper crafts, theater, and music workshops have been attended by over 300 children so far. Local musicians, theater group, artists, psychologists and social workers volunteered their times, and as well as the older children in the camp. Two mornings ago, a drawing workshop was being led by a local artist. Told to express their feelings and emotions, students collectively worked on a large piece of colorful crayon drawing which, in addition to common features of children's artwork like trees, houses, and hills, featured Israeli apache helicopters, tanks and soldiers.
"The kids were not so enthusiastic in the beginning, not concentrating on activities," said Ziad Abbas, co-director of the Center. "Now they can't wait for the program to begin. Look, some of the kids start showing up at around 8AM for the 10AM dance practice." Some parents have commented that the activities have helped reducing their children's stress level.
Manar enjoys teaching dancing and says "I feel happy to share what I have with younger children, because it is not fair how the situation has been to them." Asked what she wanted for everyone to have, she replied immediately: "A life with dignity."
shirabe
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URGENT APPEAL: Send donations
for medical aid in Palestine !
Middle East Children's Alliance
P.O. Box 250706
New York, NY 10025
Tel/Fax: 212-666-8512
http://www.mecaforpeace.org
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