Ar-Ram

Translating: Ruth Fleishman

Qalandiya:

During the desolate, blazing and dusty afternoon, arrived a group of women and small children after visiting their beloved ones at the military prison. Once again the absence (in the name of security?) of fathers, brothers and older sons was evident.

Peddlers talked about demonstrations that were held during the weekend near the checkpoint, about gas and shock grenades that were shot, traces of which were still scattered near the wall- a ritual that had become routine and would remain so until the flams rise and consume us all.

The person that employs Ahmed - the peddler from Falafel stand that is being held in Ofer prison- updated us that four days earlier Ahmed's arrest had been prolonged by an additional 40 days.

Ahmed has been imprisoned in Ofer jail for over three months, waiting for a trial regarding false accusations that the occupation had placed against him.

El Jib checkpoint:

The sides of the road leading to the checkpoint were fenced, creating a netted pen both narrow and long.

One could deduce about the hardship of the laborers that work in the settlements from something a young man said as he was making his way on the long path between the fences after a day's work: "I should go to the doctor because of the pain in my back from standing hear every day for two hours until passing".

Ar-Ram:

All the exits from Ar-Ram to road 60 had been blocked by BP officers.

The commander on site explained that John Kerry was on his way to Ramallah and that the blockage would be removed only after three and a half hours. The rest of the road leading from Jaba checkpoint in the direction of the VIP lane had been closed to Palestinian vehicles. At the entrance to the settlements policemen stood by the side of their cars waiting for the convoy (but for three and a half hours?).

Translating: Ruth Fleishman

Qalandiya:

Despite the cold and despite the anguish of the body and the soul, a cancer patient was forced to move with the remaining of his strength from an occupied territories stretcher to the one that came from Jerusalem, from the occupied territories ambulance to the Jerusalem ambulance, he had to present his belongings before the eyes of armed men who made sure the objects and their owner didn't pose a threat to the state of Israel.

And it is obligatory to remember and recite and make it known, that the weakest ones, these tortured patients of every age and gender, that are permitted by the rules of occupation to be hospitalized only after such procedures, and that millions of human beings had already stood in that very same spot, and that hundreds like them will find themselves in the same situation, in the same ambulance (or another like it) and the same stretcher, before the same armed men and regulations, at any time of the year, at any time of the day under any type of weather.

For they are all suspects and invisible in the eyes of occupation.

.

-  Mahmud Jabari who had yet to turn sixteen was hunted down by soldiers on Thursday the 14^th of March during a run-in between protesting Palestinian teenagers and military forces.

This was the third time Mahmud had seen the inside of an Israeli prison. According to the testimony of witnesses and from my own familiarity and personal acquaintancewith the lad, Mahmud never throws stones. But they didn't hesitate to arrest him again so as to use him as an "incriminating witness" that would hand names, names of those who did or did not throw stones.  So that they could rely on his coerced testimony, with or without any relevance to the truth, to prosecute, convict and imprison other teenagers. On the following day of his arrest, Mahmud was released. Until next time.

- Our guests Guido and Damian who were making a video for the Jewish community in Argentina about the realities of the occupation were happy to interview Abdullah Tamimi, who recounted before them the story of his longings to his family's village, a place he had been to or seen.

Abdullah, who had come to terms with the fact that his family will never be able to return to its land and that only dreams of visiting the place where his ancestors are buried, kept repeating over and over again the sentence: "I am not a terrorist".

Being a Palestinian who had his rights as his property confiscated, andbeing of no status, Abdullah knows that in order to survive he must always prove himself to be of clean record and intentions. A kind of certificate of good conduct that in itself holds no guarantee for the future.

About Saris, the native village of Abdullah Tamimi's family:

http://www.zochrot.org/place/%D7%A1%D6%B7%D7%90%D7%A8%D6%B4%D7%99%D7%A1

(Many thanks for Eitan Borenstien for forwarding his link)

-Some cosmetic changes were made on the Palestinian side of the checkpoint building: the outer wall and the tower were painted and cleaned from inscription, and their uniform appearance was restored, in addition the yellow pole that blocked the traffic lane was removed.

People said that in the dead of night soldier armed with brushes came out of the checkpoint and did the job. They were so keen to cover the paintings and inscriptions that they reached the Raise's portrait, they came to close to it that they nearly covered Arafat's face which had become the symbol of the place. An order that was given at the last minute to stop the work was what saved Yasser Arafat's face. 

No cosmetic work could clear the crimes of occupation, and neither could gestures or minor reliefs such as the fixing the drinking fountain, the opening an additional lane, speeding up the crossing procedures or a smile on the face of an armed man.   

Behind all this exists a well operating monstrous and evil machine, one that has to be uprooted and not beautified. 

Ar-Ram

It seems that the town is vanishing behind stacks of rubbish which are piling up on every street, between traffic lanes and along the separation wall, and their small drifts to great distances. 

Translating: Ruth Fleishman

Qalandiya:

Despite the cold and despite the anguish of the body and the soul, a cancer patient was forced to move with the remaining of his strength from an occupied territories stretcher to the one that came from Jerusalem, from the occupied territories ambulance to the Jerusalem ambulance, he had to present his belongings before the eyes of armed men who made sure the objects and their owner didn't pose a threat to the state of Israel.

And it is obligatory to remember and recite and make it known, that the weakest ones, these tortured patients of every age and gender, that are permitted by the rules of occupation to be hospitalized only after such procedures, and that millions of human beings had already stood in that very same spot, and that hundreds like them will find themselves in the same situation, in the same ambulance (or another like it) and the same stretcher, before the same armed men and regulations, at any time of the year, at any time of the day under any type of weather.

For they are all suspects and invisible in the eyes of occupation.

.

-  Mahmud Jabari who had yet to turn sixteen was hunted down by soldiers on Thursday the 14^th of March during a run-in between protesting Palestinian teenagers and military forces.

This was the third time Mahmud had seen the inside of an Israeli prison. According to the testimony of witnesses and from my own familiarity and personal acquaintancewith the lad, Mahmud never throws stones. But they didn't hesitate to arrest him again so as to use him as an "incriminating witness" that would hand names, names of those who did or did not throw stones.  So that they could rely on his coerced testimony, with or without any relevance to the truth, to prosecute, convict and imprison other teenagers. On the following day of his arrest, Mahmud was released. Until next time.

- Our guests Guido and Damian who were making a video for the Jewish community in Argentina about the realities of the occupation were happy to interview Abdullah Tamimi, who recounted before them the story of his longings to his family's village, a place he had been to or seen. 

Abdullah, who had come to terms with the fact that his family will never be able to return to its land and that only dreams of visiting the place where his ancestors are buried, kept repeating over and over again the sentence: "I am not a terrorist".

Being a Palestinian who had his rights as his property confiscated, andbeing of no status, Abdullah knows that in order to survive he must always prove himself to be of clean record and intentions. A kind of certificate of good conduct that in itself holds no guarantee for the future.

About Saris, the native village of Abdullah Tamimi's family:

http://www.zochrot.org/place/%D7%A1%D6%B7%D7%90%D7%A8%D6%B4%D7%99%D7%A1

(Many thanks for Eitan Boronstien for forwarding his link)

-Some cosmetic changes were made on the Palestinian side of the checkpoint building: the outer wall and the tower were painted and cleaned from inscription, and their uniform appearance was restored, in addition the yellow pole that blocked the traffic lane was removed.

People said that in the dead of night soldier armed with brushes came out of the checkpoint and did the job. They were so keen to cover the paintings and inscriptions that they reached the Raise's portrait, they came to close to it that they nearly covered Arafat's face which had become the symbol of the place. An order that was given at the last minute to stop the work was what saved Yasser Arafat's face. 

No cosmetic work could clear the crimes of occupation, and neither could gestures or minor reliefs such as the fixing the drinking fountain, the opening an additional lane, speeding up the crossing procedures or a smile on the face of an armed man.   

Behind all this exists a well operating monstrous and evil machine, one that has to be uprooted and not beautified. 

Ar-Ram

It seems that the town is vanishing behind stacks of rubbish which are piling up on every street, between traffic lanes and along the separation wall, and their small drifts to great distances. 

Translation: Ruth Fleishman

Two back-to-back procedures at the same time and at the same place.

It was cold. The air was polluted. But the harmful and cruel regulations were more polluted. The victims: two babies.   

In less than five minutes two ambulances from the west bank arrived at the entrance of the checkpoint and were ordered to wait.

The first ambulance was transferring a baby of ten days from Qalqilya with respiratory distress, on the way to the checkpoint her condition worsened. According to the driver, the ride from Qalqilya takes an hour and a half, on top of that there is the twenty minutes detainment during the examination of the documents, the inspection of the mother's belongings and the completion of the back-to-back procedure: carrying the baby from the west bank stretcher to the Jerusalem stretcher, getting her inside the ambulance from Jerusalem and heading off to Mukased hospital.

The second baby was of four months, he came from Gaza and suffered from a kidney disease. This baby was hospitalized in Ramallah and when his illness took a turn for the worse, the medical crew recommended that he be transferred to Augusta Victoria.

The ambulance was detained at the entrance to the checkpoint. "No co-ordinations had been made" said the soldiers. At Augusta Victoria (where they were waiting for the child) they said that all the co-ordinations had been made. The soldiers insisted: "No they haven't". Augusta Victoria repeated: "Yes they have".

Time crawled and there was no one to solve the problem.

A guard from the Civil Security Company said: "I might be a combatant but I have a heart". He tried to help: he spoke to the soldiers, he spoke to the ambulance crew, he walk restless from one side to the other, but he couldn't do anything to help solve the situation.

It was only after 55 minutes that a DCO officer arrived from out of the blue and suddenly all the necessary co-ordinations were found and authorized. 

-         On our way to the Israeli side of the checkpoint we were detained in the side room, which is small and filthy, it has a net for a ceiling and on it lied leftovers of food, and on the walls words and addresses were carved, the most distinct was the word "MUHABARAT".

And then Dov arrived, he is the police officer that was alerted by the soldiers to come and deal with me after I refused to report to the soldiers what I was doing in what they thought was A' territory. Dov the police officer released us from the room in which we were held and said: "that’s what happens when you let 18 year old irresponsible girls to do the job", as well as: "If you want you can press charges".

I don't.

Ar-Ram:

Four armed soldiers stood on the hill in front of the entrance to the town, they were aiming their rifles and shooting gas grenades at the main road. Their enemies were four boys of about ten years (no more than ten), that appeared from behind a building, threw stones at the soldiers, hid again, waited for the grenades to be fire and started over. The Cab drivers that stood on the side waiting for customers, were the main victims of the gas fumes that mixed in the air, they said this had been going on for about an hour or an hour and a half.

Translating: Ruth Fleishma

People said that four army busses transported those who had been evicted from Bab-El-Shams, approximately a hundred and fifty people. Those who had been evicted stayed at the site and held a protest for two hours. The Israeli authorities defined the eviction as "non-violent". The results of this non-violence can be seen in following link:

http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fpalsolidarity.org%2F2013%2F01%2Fpalestinian-village-of-bab-alshams-violently-evicted%2F&h=VAQEmQF8s

By the square that stood bare under the pleasant winter sun I was invited to join a group of young people. They talked about Ahmed who had been arrested ten days previously and had yet to return: "They just take the ones that are easy to catch and not  those that actually throw stones", they talked about how hard it was to make a living, about the idleness that had been forced on them, about the despair, they also spoke of Igal from Beit-El who is responsible for the confiscation of the property of stand owners who don't have a business license (the area is part of the jurisdiction of the municipality of Jerusalem), of arrests, of interrogations and prison: "Do you know room number twenty at the Russian Compound?- it’s the worst", said a young man who talked about an interrogation that went on for two weeks in that awful room, where they tied him to the chair with his hands and legs cuffed and his eyes veiled, and when he asked to see a doctor for the pain he was in, they said they would agree only if he confessed to shooting at the checkpoint. A witness that had been convicted and was already serving a sentence of six years was brought in to incriminate him. And now, a year after he had finished doing his time, he has yet to restore his life.

Ar-Ram:

A New Post Across from the Entrance to Ar-Ram.

Three soldiers at the site said that their job was to defend the entrance to the base Rama (after a rifle had been taken from the guard's post) and shoot at those throwing stones on military vehicles.

And so, a wall defends a wall, a post guards a post and shielded military vehicles need human guards armed with rifles and grenades.

Jaba Checkpoint:

Two trainers and a dog were practicing on Palestinian vehicles.

The soldiers crossed the road and said it was alright by them if I took photos as long as I didn't take one of their faces.

But I won't make any settlements with the army. I remained on the other side of the road. Far away but free.

From there I saw the two trainers signaling the soldiers which of the vehicles to stop, I saw the passengers being taken out, their IDs taken as they were told to stand back, then the dog was led to the car, it walked around it, sniffed, from time to time it jumped and placed it's paws on the cars, at times it found what had been planted for it, and at the end of the round the trainer rewarded the dog with signs of affection and put it back in the unit vehicle- until the next car arrived.

The CP was more or less deserted all afternoon (although 2 passageways continued to operate) due to the battle taking place outside, around the northern square and further along the road to Ramallah.  Groups of young men and boys were throwing stones and fire crackers at soldiers who returned fire with tear gas canisters and rubber bullets.  Large groups of older men stood by and looked on from a safe distance.  The scene was quite   surrealistic. 

We met two ambulance drivers in the northern square who told us that there had been no serious injuries that day, only a few slight wounds.  But other bystanders told us that a 20 month old baby had been killed yesterday when a tear gas canister had come through the window of his house and ignited the bed where he was sleeping.  We heard this story from several people but have no way of knowing if it is true.

Passersby told us that demonstrations were taking place in Ramallah too.

 On our way home we witnessed another battle taking place at the northern entrance to A-Ram.  Once again soldiers were shooting tear gas at demonstrators who were setting tires afire and rolling them down a hill at the soldiers and oncoming traffic.

Translating: Ruth Fleishman

Qalandiya- the DCL:

The shortest way to the DCL offices is a long one. You should have plenty of time on his hands and be patient in order to break through the soldiers' indifference and arrive at the destination. To be precise: 30 minutes. The lines weren't camped with people nor was there any malfunction- as the telephone receptionist claimed.

The way back from the DCL to the only possible side of the checkpoint, the Palestinian one, had been changed. One must walk through twisting passages that lead to the parking lot that is on the northern side of the checkpoint.

How is a person in a wheelchair supposed to pass there?- or perhaps as a rule, for various reasons that have to do with infrastructure that is unsuitable for the handicapped, it is not recommended for them to be in need of the checkpoint.

Ar-Ram:

Driving along the wall from the insi

de was an opportunity to document some of the new inscriptions.

One of them exchanged the rage and insult to humor: "Wall for Sale"- and some on else added the price: "Free".

Jaba checkpoint:

For three weeks in a row there has been use of "the dog regulation" at the checkpoint.

The road to Qalandiya was one great traffic jam, particularly along the Wall that encloses the city of Ar-Ram.  It took us one-half hour to travel the last 200 m. to the southern square where we saw that traffic was once again being directed into Ar-Ram through the huge gate in the Wall, causing all the trouble.  However, only when we passed through the CP and reached the northern parking lot did we understand that we had reached a "war game" arena.  Groups of young men and boys (from Qalandiya Refugee Camp?) were throwing stones at the vehicle CP and retreating under an answering hail of tear gas grenades fired at them by a company of soldiers.  Waves of attack and retreat continued all afternoon.  We saw no one wounded and no ambulances arrived, but the smell of tear gas hung in the air, burning eyes and nostrils, while the "games" disrupted operation of the CP.  When we arrived at Qalandiya there was still a line of some 30 people in the bus passenger passageway.  But the buses stopped driving into the CP while the battle continued and this passageway appeared to have shut down.
 
Only two passageways were active in the pedestrian CP, with 20 or 30 people waiting on line in each.  Those waiting complained that the soldiers were opening the turnstiles into the examination area only once every fifteen minutes, but when we made eye contact with the soldiers and then stood there observing, we saw that the intervals grew shorter.  The (female) soldier in Passageway 1 kept trying to direct people from her line to the line in Passageway 3, in spite of the fact that the number of people in both lines was the same.  She kept shouting in a vulgar and insulting manner into the PA system, implying that those on line were too stupid to understand.  She acted in a degrading and shameful manner.  Due to closure of the bus passenger passageway, conditions in the old CP rapidly became more crowded.  There were lots of students coming home from their studies in Ramallah and many women with small children on their way to Jerusalem.  When the internal passageways became half full, the soldier controlling the turnstile in the northern shed closed it so that shortly there was also a long line of people waiting in the shed.
 
We left Qalandiya at 5:30 PM and joined the huge traffic jam on the road to Lil/Jabba.  Traffic in the two other CPs (Lil/Jabba and Hizmeh) was "davka" flowing freely.

We reached Qalandiya at 3:45 PM.  Two passageways were open with only a few people in line in each one.  We saw no one waiting in the DCO shed.  Entry to the CP from the northern shed, controlled by the soldier in his post, was closed.  There were five people ahead of us in the line.  After a wait of 5 minutes, the soldier on duty was told to evacuate the CP due to discovery of a suspicious object inside the CP.  All those on line at the entrance retreated into the northern shed and were joined shortly by those who had been waiting in Passageway 4.  Only after 10 minutes did the information reach those in Passageway 1 (some of whom managed to get through to Jerusalem in the interim).  Closure of the CP continued for two hours.  The CP only reopened shortly before 6 PM (as reported by friends who remained).

We left Qalandiya at 5 PM.  On our way back to Jerusalem we drove through the entrance square to A-Ram where we saw that the huge concrete slabs blocking the entrance to the city had been removed.  There were no soldiers and no one was throwing stones.

The CP was closed to Palestinians today.

In the southern square we were surprised to see that the huge gate in the Wall was open and through it many vehicles were entering A-Ram.  We learned the reason for this unusual event from the peddlers and taxi drivers trying to make a living at the northern side of the CP.  They told us excitedly that the main entrance to A-Ram, a city of 60,000 inhabitants, had been blocked since the previous night due to stone-throwing by some groups of young men.

Inside the CP 3 passageways were open at 3:30 PM, instead of the usual 2 that serve the masses that need to cross to Jerusalem on ordinary days.  The turnstile in the northern shed remained open during our entire shift and there were no lines to speak of.  On the other side of the CP we could see that only a few people were waiting in the passageway earmarked for bus passengers.

On our way back to Jerusalem we drove through the entrance square to A-Ram.  We saw that entrance to the city had been closed by huge concrete blocks.  Two groups of about 10 masked youths stood on either side of the entrance.  They looked ready for battle but were not throwing anything at the passing vehicles.