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CounterPunch
January
21, 2003
Life and Death
in a Closed Village
Nablus: Another
Nakba
by ANNE GWYNNE
If crossing Kalandia and on to Ramallah brought
tears, then travelling to Nablus from Ramallah by UPMRC ambulance
is beyond tears, beyond words, beyond description, beyond anything
I could have imagined experiencing. All senses are numbed; you
ride on a sea of despair.
The roads are empty--for Palestinians
are not allowed to travel in their own country. On the Western
side of the huge dual carriageway, miles and miles of 'confiscated
land' lie empty--with every living thing removed by order of
the illegal Israeli Occupation Force. The East side is garlanded
with miles of high electrified fencing--barriers which enclose
the thousands of illegal houses of the illegal Israeli occupiers.
We face road block after road block, wait after wait, search
after search of the ambulance with the icy wind blowing in through
the thrown-open doors. Everything is removed from the ambulance
and everyone ordered out--except me with my bullet-proof EU passport.
Desperately ill patients lie on the roadside in the rain--the
wet cold chills to the bone. Doctors and drivers are insulted
and bullied by insolent Israeli soldiers. At one roadblock, a
young soldier spent 10 minutes picking at his spots in our door-mirror,
while his mates searched the ambulance. At the Huwarah checkpoint
(the last before we reached Nablus) an ambulance from the other
direction was stopped and held for 30 minutes with its maximum
emergency indicators going. Our ambulance waited 25 minutes there--I
thought this was a long time; later in my stay I would consider
this a short wait.
At the road block /checkpoint everyone,
as usual, gets out at the one end and then walks until some minibus
or taxi comes along to pick them up--but only, of course, if
they have the money to pay and, with 70% out of work, most do
not. So they keep on walking in straggling crowds on an exposed
hillside, in torrential rain and with a freezing wind sweeping
across the hills. Over-burdened, wet, cold, probably hungry people
carrying children on one arm and baggage in the other, endlessly
tramping through expanses of muddy water, piles of rubble, huge
holes, and road-sides torn up by tank tracks.
The Doctor told me that the Director
of a local school had a heart attack in a village which is 'closed.'
A CLOSED VILLAGE is an area of settlement to which all roads
have been blocked by massive barriers half a mile or so from
the houses: an area into which, and out of which, no one and
nothing is allowed to pass. So the ambulance could not go there.
A neighbour drove the school director around the mountains to
the checkpoint, where the Israelis would not let him through
without proof that he was suffering a heart attack. In the long
wait, the man died and the driver asked the guard "Is this
enough proof for you?" This is a death which is not put
down in the statistics as 'killed by the Israelis,' but, of course,
it is.
This morning, a 5-year old child was
taken to hospital suffering from acute appendicitis. The Israelis
refused to let her mother accompany her because they said that
the ambulance then became a taxi! Imagine a tiny 5-year-old in
acute pain, forced to stay alone in the hospital for an operation.
This would not happen anywhere else.
And then we reach the outskirts of Nablus,
formerly the most beautiful city on the West Bank, the powerhouse
of Palestine. We drive in along the once-elegant main road with
its dual carriageway boulevards and colonnaded promenades of
shops. Now they are strafed and covered in bullet holes with
hundreds of shot-out windows; everything at street level is boarded-up.
Where was the street? 'This is not a road', says our driver--'where
is the road?' We bumped and bottomed and rocked and jolted along
a wilderness with huge mounds of rubble and piles of rocks to
negotiate--a journey whose jolting pain must have contributed
to the death of many an injured person.
The bombing of more than 200 factories
has destroyed most of Nablus' formerly thriving industry. Two
schools and a mosque have been demolished, and more than 300
houses completely destroyed--tanked or bulldozed; whole blocks
have been gutted by bombs from F16's or missiles from helicopter
gunships. I saw the Municipal Building reduced to ashes together
with ALL the civil records of 186,000 people, and the Ministry
of Health, which has been denied access by 20-foot high roadblocks
to either side. We passed a house where eight people were bulldozed
to death ('a mistake,' said the Israelis), the house where a
75-year-old woman was shot to death, and another where three
young women were killed. Further along, I saw the house where
9 people were massacred, and another where two women were killed
and a third lost her legs. During this preview of the sights
of Nablus, we passed rows of gutted shops (now re-stocked with
the help of bank loans), a school covered with bullet holes,
and another with huge shell holes in the walls.
At the UPMRC Centre stood an ambulance
with bullet holes in the sides and rear, but also in the handles
of its stretchers--bullets in the handles of a stretcher! It
seems that soldiers routinely shoot at Medics' hands as they
carry the injured and dying. At the Centre, bullets constantly
ping along the roof as soldiers from the notorious checkpoint
on the hill take pot shots at the city--or the 'settlers' on
the hilltops do. Nablus is exquisitely situated in a bowl with
a flat base surrounded by the white rocky mountainsides which
glow in the sun. On the hills to the West and to the East are
Israeli Military Camps numbers 1 and 2, and on the other hilltops
the guns of the 'settlers' are ready to kill. From these encampments,
the tanks and armoured cars roll in every evening to enforce
the 6 to 6 curfew. Anyone venturing outside can, and often is,
murdered by Israeli guns.
This afternoon, we passed the street
where courageous residents have removed a huge iron gate which
effectively cut Nablus in two. Sidewalks do not exist, because
the tanks which roam the city in search of prey during the night
are so big that when they turn any corner they tear up the pavement
leaving huge holes, often taking the corners of houses with them
too. Gardens and trees have been destroyed by tanks--wide avenues
of palms and tree ferns have simply been uprooted and driven
over. Walking, driving, working, and learning are all impossible
here--impossible that is to anyone but the people of Nablus,
whose bravery and strength seems without limit. Their resolve,
courage and determination never to leave their city is palpable--everywhere.
Their welcome is warm, they are full of affection and friendship,
their banter is laughter-filled, and in their eyes is a look
so direct that you feel they see right inside you and that they
let you see into their souls. Their sense of fun pervades everything
and their hospitality and generosity is legendary.
On my first morning, the delightful youngsters
of the Medical Volunteers insist I join them for a breakfast
they prepared themselves--delicious pitta, hummus, fuul, tea
and fun. The notice on the door of the kitchen reads "help
yourself, by yourself--no need to ask--what is ours is yours".
They are extremely interested in each other and in me, and they
want to know what my country is like. They ask if there is anyone
in the world who cares about them. They want to know everything--language,
foods, customs. Denied the universal right to education and cooped
up in villages for three months at a time, prevented from attending
school and university by the closures--it is amazing how much
they know. Their intense curiosity is touching.
The Medical Centre here was set up 6
months ago. Nablus has six hospitals, the largest containing
80 beds. Two are Municipal (free) and 4 are private. There are
sufficient beds in normal times, but the incursions, murders
and injuries place a great strain upon these resources. The clinic
here charges 5 shekels to see the doctor and three shekels for
medicine, which can be very costly. If anyone cannot pay, he
does not have to--the director feels that even this little money
can mean the difference between a meal for the family and no
meal at all.
So, I come to the end of my first day
in Nablus--everyone has a story to tell but I have been typing
for a long time and it is very cold in the evening with no heating--no
one has any oil for that because the Israelis do not allow it.
All this would be a tough movie to watch--but these are real
people, suffering every moment of their lives. This is a great
city in the middle of Palestine--how on earth can we let these
crimes happen?
Anne Gwynne,
Independent International, is currently working with the Union
of Palestinian Medical Relief Committees in Nablus. She can be
reached at: gwynne_anne@hotmail.com
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