A Small Taste of Freedom

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1. Two roadblocks removed in Asira al Shamaliya- Anna

Two roadblocks were removed Thursday by the Palestinian residents of
Asira al Shamaliya village (four kilometres north west of Nablus),
during a demonstration supported by about 40 ISM activists and Israeli
Anarchists against the Wall.

Palestinians with the support of international and Israeli activists
began gathering in the town centre at about 9am and marched to the
outskirts of the village where Palestinians removed a gigantic rock
that was blocking the road. A Palestinian tractor driver then assisted
in moving two concrete blocks out of the road, opening the road for
the people of Asira al Shamaliya to travel to Nablus for the first
time in five years.

The road, which leads to a military base, was not only blocked by the
military at the beginning of this Intifada but residents were
forbidden from driving on it. One resident who rode through the
mountains on his donkey to take his vegetables to sell in Nablus was
shot dead by the Israeli Occupation Forces.

The closure has caused tremendous hardship for the village. One house,
owned by Abu Anwar, a refugee from Lyd is isolated from the village on
the other side of the roadblock. Abu Anwar's family is forbidden by
the Israeli military to drive to Nablus and access any of the city's
services, and at the same time, they are cut off from their own
village by the concrete blocks.

As cars streamed out of the village Thursday for the first time in
five years, Palestinians were chanting "Drive, Drive, Drive to
Nablus". The tractor and some Palestinians, ISM activists and Israeli
activists then drove along the military road to a second roadblock and
removed that one too. The village considered the demonstration a
victory. However, about four hours later, Israeli soldiers set up a
flying checkpoint on the road and detained all the cars and their
drivers on their way back from Nablus to Asira al Shamaliya. After
intervention from ISM and Israelis, the soldiers released all the
detained Palestinians and their cars but followed the people back to
the village in five jeeps. Border police arrived and they threw sound
bombs and fired live bullets into the air.

It is not known whether the IOF will re-erect the roadblocks but the
Palestinians have vowed to remove the roadblocks again in peaceful
demonstrations, in order for them to have freedom of movement.

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2. UPDATE ON ASIRA ACTION- Ray Smith

As expected, the Israeli Occupation Forces wouldn't let the villagers'
action go unanswered. A few hours after the opening of the road to
Asira, the army came back with several vehicles to block the traffic.
I haven't got information yet whether they also brought one of their
bulldozers to physically block the street again although it seems
definite that they are not planning to leave the road open.

Pictures of the great action are on
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article3837.shtml

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3. The Power of Mind and Heart – Ernie

I've been avoiding the Old City in Jerusalem lately in an attempt to
remedy a case of serious overload during the recent Orthodox Holy Week
(which one day I promise I will report on) after which if I heard one
more church bell chime I thought I was going to completely lose my
mind. But just now I walked through it to get here to my favorite
internet/laundry/faxing/phone-calling center (Mike's), and
re-experienced the surge of conflicting emotions this place evokes in
me: love, hate, fear, belonging, alienation, sadness, rage, turmoil,
peace, hope, and hopelessness. And it reminded me of a few day to day
sorts of observations I've wanted to share with you that keep getting
pushed aside in favor of reporting on events and activities.

Influence on the Mind
"Dirty Arabs". You've probably all heard this slur at one time or
another. This myth is propagated here intentionally by the simple
deliberate inaction of the Jerusalem municipality. It took me a long
time to understand what was happening. For years I have noticed that
the "Arab" or Muslim Quarter of the Old City is always filthy. The
cobbled streets are covered with a black slime, the blood and flesh of
slaughtered animals, decaying vegetables, scores of alley cats digging
through piles of rubbish fighting over scraps. The stones of these
labyrinthine dimly lit streets are often perilously slippery with
stuff you just wouldn't want to fall down in for anything. The
Christian and Armenian Quarters are significantly less disgusting.
And the Jewish Quarter is veritably pristine with its immaculate newly
cut paving and building stones, its bright street lamps and open
squares. I have often wondered why this is so. There is more than
one reason. One is that the Jewish areas were destroyed to some
extent in past wars and so the buildings and streets are actually new.
Another reason is that fresh produce etc. is mostly not sold anywhere
other than the Muslim Quarter, which also has the densest marketplace
in the Old City. But the most obvious reason I have only recently
learned is that the Israeli run municipal services, such as
sanitation, do not serve the Muslim population equally to the Jewish
one. The Jerusalem municipality just doesn't clean the streets or
pick up the garbage as often or as well in non-Jewish parts of the
City. They divorce themselves in part from responsibility. They site
security as a reason. As a result, tourists, other visitors and
Israelis get the impression that the Arabs are just filthy people.

It is a subtle but effective influence on the mind. Is seeps over
into a sense that the "Arab" Quarter is more dangerous. There are
Israeli soldiers always at its gates checking the IDs of young
Palestinian men. There are security cameras everywhere. I have often
heard tourists counsel each other not to enter this part of the City
at night, but in fact I for one have never encountered any kind of
trouble here at all. But even I am sometimes afraid.

Another thing I've noticed is that Israelis most often refer to
Palestinians as "Arabs," another subtlety that affects the
understanding in not so obvious ways. I was having a beer with some
young Israeli girls one evening who were curious but much uninformed
about the peace work in the West Bank they'd heard about. They told my
companion and me that we really shouldn't go there. "They kill their
brothers" one said, because of a recent story that made Israeli papers
about a terrible riot that broke out in a town in the Galilee region
(inside Israel) between Christians and Druze. They also assured me
that there are no "Palestinian Israelis". They called the Palestinian
people who have been granted Israeli citizenship "Arab Israelis" (FYI,
not given full rights like Jewish Israelis enjoy, but a sort of second
class citizenship).

In my experience, these people universally identify themselves as
Palestinians first, whether they happen to be Christian or Muslim,
whether they happen to live in Israel or in occupied Palestinian
territory, or whichever documents they are required to carry. As far
as I can tell, people living on one side of the line (or the Wall) or
the other may have had different life experiences and family
histories, but these differences do not erase national identity.
There is a deliberate effort to highlight differences between them
with language, to erase the Palestinian identity of those granted
citizenship and elevate them to some kind of human-hood, while
demonizing those unlucky enough to have been pushed out or to have
been born on the wrong side of a line.

Caged In
I hope this does not sound like pontificating. It's just that in the
relative quiet of the areas I am frequenting on this trip I have
noticed this kind of mind control at work that I really must
articulate. Another kind of mental assault I see going on is the in
the building of the Wall. Today I traveled to the traditionally
Christian areas of Bethlehem and Beit Sahour just south of Jerusalem
(though Bethlehem itself is increasingly Muslim). The entire area,
comprising about 4 towns and 3 refugee camps is day by day being
completely surrounded by the Wall - variously called the Apartheid
Wall, the Annexation Wall, the Separation Barrier, the Security Fence,
etc.

Apologies to those of you who already know all too much about it, but
for those of you that don't, the Wall is a massive Israeli
construction project snaking its way through the West Bank built
almost totally on Palestinian land, and mostly not on the "border"
with Israel. It has been undertaken by the Israeli government
ostensibly to protect Israel from Palestinian terrorists trying to
enter Israel. It was ruled illegal by the International Court of
Justice in The Hague (the legal body of the United Nations) last
summer. The Court's finding has been almost completely ignored by
Israel and the USA, and the UN itself has done nothing to enforce its
ruling. Construction of the Wall continues to destroy acres and acres
of Palestinian farmland and homes, to destroy olive and citrus groves
and greenhouse crops, to surround whole cities and regions, and
severely limit Palestinian civilian egress through gates and
checkpoints. Lands and precious water resources are simply
confiscated from Palestinian owners by Israeli authorities often with
one day notice and usually with no compensation. Valuable uprooted
trees are sold on the Israeli market with no proceeds going to their
owners.

But reporting on the Wall and reading about it is one thing. Seeing
the horrific thing with one's own eyes is another. On my last trip
here there was no Wall in Bethlehem. Now it is a monster that cuts
through the beautiful ancient landscape of rocky ground and stone
houses like some kind of massive stone serpent. Concrete slab after
concrete slab towering 25 feet high cutting right across roads and
though backyards, isolating houses on the "wrong" side, cutting off
shepherds from grazing land and farmers from their crops. And it
traps people inside. Beautifully stenciled graffiti on the inside and
outside of the opening in the Wall near the north checkpoint reads,
"AMERICAN MONEY ISRAELI APARTHEID" and the website address for the
Bethlehem Bloggers (bethlehemghetto.blogspot.com).

An engineer, working with the Holyland Christian Ecumenical Foundation
(HCEF) to reconstruct homes damaged by Israeli attacks and neglected
by a totally inadequately funded municipal local government, said to
me today: "It's like a zoo, they treat us like animals". He said for
the past 2 and a half years Christian residents of the Bethlehem area
have only been permitted to leave for Christian feast days, and then
only between certain hours. Other than that they can't even risk
approaching the checkpoint guarded by sniper towers unless some
special permit has been obtained. Even at the checkpoint, the lucky
few who can pass through (such as foreigners like myself) have to walk
through a no man's land for about 15 minutes and often have to wait
and hour or 2.

But this is not a matter of mere inconvenience, or of the soldiers
needing enough time to do thorough security checks. There is an
intentional agenda of demoralization and humiliation at work. Sonia,
who works with HCEF told me today of a recent day when she and her
sister crossed the checkpoint together. They waited and hour and a
half together in the rain. They chatted and laughed with each other
while waiting. When they got to the soldier who would check their
papers the soldier asked, "Why are you laughing?" They said they were
just laughing. He threw their documents onto the wet ground in front
of them. What could be the reason for such an act? This is not one
incident in isolation, but part of a systematic humiliation, an
attempt to break the spirit of a people.

That day Sonia and her sister vowed to one another to always smile and
laugh at the checkpoint and never let the soldiers see their spirits
broken or their hope killed. I am always amazed when people who
suffer so much talk about how their faith in God sustains them and
keeps them from heading down the path of violence and despair. It is
humbling and a bit confusing. Why, why do they have hope, have faith?
Why do they push back the hatred that seems to be the inevitable
product of such relentless and intentional mental and physical abuse?
I do not know. But really, countless people have told me,
Palestinian Muslims and Christians alike, that while they do not
believe the State of Israel or the government of the United States
have honest intentions to make peace here, they themselves want peace,
and believe that the Israeli people do too.

Sense of Responsibility
They know Americans are ignorant of realities here, and there isn't an
interview I do or conversation that I have where I am not told how
important it is to them that ordinary people like me from the US come
see for ourselves their lives. The people here are hungry to get
their stories out. They worry with me that my video will be good
enough to show Americans what's happening, and I only hope it will be.
They bend over backwards to help me in whatever way they can to do a
good job of it. If I despair, as I do sometimes when the depth and
complexity of the problems here and my own tininess hits me, that's
what I try to keep in mind. Other people's hopes are actually riding
on my little efforts. And any word at all getting out, especially to
America, where the media is so hopelessly one-sided, and where so much
responsibility for this situation rests, is a good and important thing.

I know I've neglected again to tell you about Orthodox Easter, which
was both spectacular and grueling, but things of the moment keep
taking me over. Speaking of which, it looks like the video workshop
is going forward at the Evangelical Episcopal School in Ramallah.
With the help of a few friends, in June I will give a 3 week course to
5 kids 15 to 17 years old, boys and girls, some Christian some Muslim.
They will learn how to shoot and edit video and make a segment of the
overall documentary I'm working on. We are still a bit short on
funds, so if any more of you have been thinking about contributing
toward equipment costs, now would be the perfect time! To those of
you who have already made financial (and spiritual and emotional)
contributions, thank you so very much for being a part of this. More
than ever I feel this is truly worthwhile and your help is without
price. The school will be able to pass on the equipment and skills
to future students and the finished video itself will be a very useful
educational tool in the US - Insha'allah ( = God willing in Arabic).

Love, Ernie