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CounterPunch
November
3, 2002
Report from
Jenin
Why Are They
Here?
by ANNIE HIGGINS
The streets are abuzz with life; merchants are
plying their trade; vegetable vendors call out their prices and
find a brisk business. Life has changed since yesterday. This
is the first day of relatively normal life in Jenin for nine
days, and it is greeted with welcome, but also with apprehension
as to what will happen next.
The Israeli Army is not in evidence today.
They seem to have withdrawn for a while; they never withdraw
permanently. The curfew is said to be in effect again at 8:00
p.m. though I have not seen or heard tanks.
How does today compare to the last week
and a half? A huge deployment of tanks have been patrolling and
chasing civilians constantly, arresting children and adults,
including patients and workers on ambulances. Jeeps have been
around every corner, and soldiers on foot conducting house to
house searches, shooting and kicking doors, arresting residents
and bakers.
What is the purpose of their Jenin mission?
It is not clear.
They have killed two people during this
invasion, but this toll is no higher than usual. They have injured
a number of people, but again at about the standard rate. They
have certainly made their presence known, however, occupying
different houses from night to night, placing snipers on the
roofs and doing their best to terrorize city and Refugee Camp
residents. Before they leave a house, many soldiers pillage cash,
jewelry, cell phones, and other items of value. The Army occupied
several mosques, and will probably leave them as they have in
the past, polluted and humiliated.
But people I have talked to put such
things into perspective: "God is here." Whatever steps
the Army takes to demonstrate its power to do evil, most people
feel that the real power is in respecting God and His creation
in a way that material might cannot imitate. Nonetheless, they
also ask: How long? How long must they endure this abnormal situation?
How long will people with the privileges of freedom be silent?
Children have not attended school because
of this invasion. That is a crime in itself. I saw the Director
of the Jenin High School today in town, buying supplies and doing
errands like everyone else. He would rather be taking charge
of his students and faculty. But he carries on with a smile.
The streets bear the scars of the tanks'
grinding and plowing, in addition to the rubble from edges of
buildings and statues they have blundered into and broken. The
tanks come from inside Israel. Do the Israeli roads bear these
scars? No. Thanks to the Swedish trucks which transport the tanks
to the Occupied Palestinian lands, the Israeli roads escape injury.
Water, electricity, and telephone service
have been cut in different parts of the Camp for various time
periods. Some people are still waiting for water. Civic minded
neighbors took to arranging for tanks of water, and then accompanying
them to fill people's tanks, since the municipality is not able
to fulfill the needs. I was so looking forward to riding the
tractor pulling the water tank up and down those steep inclines
of narrow winding alleys, but was then deployed for bread distribution.
Homes Blown
Up: Thursday morning, 31 October,
the Army occupied itself...with house demolitions. Between 3:00
and 5:30 a.m. they dynamited five homes in the Camp and at least
one in town. The blasts were very powerful, and blew out the
windows of many nearby homes, in addition to partially destroying
neighboring houses. If this happened to my home, I am sure I
would express some vigorous emotions. The most surprising thing
to me was that people found it worth mentioning how unusual it
was that a woman from one of the houses was crying without solace.
Looking at the wreckage, with the whole roof collapsed onto the
house in one piece cracked down the center, I was not surprised.
The next door neighbor of this home told
me how the soldiers had come to the adjoining houses and warned
them to evacuate because of the blast, and one soldier had carried
her sleeping daughter in his arms to a neighbor's house. It is
a tender scene, and I hope for an increase of the sentiment,
but looking at the wider frame of the picture places it between
the absurd and the surreal, with a kick of evil. And it is not
comforting that the soldiers forced another family just across
the alley to stay in their home and shut the door. Fortunately
they were not hurt. It was a mighty explosion: People felt it
five miles away but where I was, one street away, there was no
doubt about the Army's presence.
The Army's
Presence: The driver of the unfilled
bread truck, pickup truck size, tried to find a way to avoid
the tanks in our route from the Camp to the only bakery open
in town. They had the main streets of Jenin blocked, so I got
out to approach the tank on foot. By this time, I find the tanks
absurd and almost boring. I stood in front and called out to
the metal monster: "Hello, we are just going to get bread.
We are on our way to the bakery." No reply, and it is a
good idea to get an okay from a human before going around a tank,
even if they are boring. I tried again: "We are going to
get bread." "I know," the reply was broadcast
to me. I have always dealt with a human who pops the top of his
head out of the tank's top porthole. I waited for some kind of
okay. Then the tank behind him revved its engine, roared in an
about face, and took off in the other direction. My tank in turn
did the same. What a success--I got rid of the tank! The driver
and I laughed as I got back into the bread truck.
Later, I met up with the ambulance workers
who had just been released after their arrest. One said, "We
were in the tank, blindfolded and handcuffed, when you were going
to the bakery. When you said you were going to get bread, I said--we
need bread in here!" That resilient Palestinian spirit:
He could laugh about the ordeal and then carry on driving the
ambulance that has to face tanks.
Meanwhile, back at the bakery...A young
man locked the door of a shop across the street, not knowing
there was a group of soldiers around the corner from the shop.
The soldier who had said to me, "Oh, so you are Santa Claus"
regarding the bread delivery, ordered the boy to come over and
began questioning him. As I approached to observe, he kept telling
me to go away. I crossed the street and asked him to leave the
boy alone. He was not one of the gentle soldiers. His comrade,
though, asked me to listen to his side of the story, and told
me that Palestinian mothers raise their children to be terrorists,
and that this boy, like all Palestinian children, was a terrorist.
"Who has the arms? You do. He is not armed. He just came
here to close the shop door. He is not harming you. He is not
a terrorist. Let him go," I said, presenting my side of
the story. I admit that I was a bit surprised when they let him
go his way. The harsh soldier asked where he wanted to go, and
let him get a bag of bread from the bakery before going home.
Many stories. Those are a few. Yes, we
are dealing with humans here.
The good news: Children open up when
I ask them to sing or tell a story or read from their school
books. They miss the stimulation of school. They brighten up
easily, and love to be called into the action of creativity.
Annie Higgins
teaches arabic in Chicago. This is her second visit to Occupied
Palestine with "International Solidarity."
Yesterday's
Features
Alexander Cockburn
Blowback,
Wellstone and Hitchens
Michael Neumann
Memo to
Christians
Re: Activism and the Israel/Palestine Conflict
Fran Shor
Militarized Masculinity and Homegrown Terrorists
Mary Hughes-Thompson
Olive
Orchards and Armed Zealots
Susan Davis
Proverbial Wisdom:
Right Place, Wrong Time
Jason Leopold
False
Profits:
Sec of Army Thomas White and Enron's Cooked Books
Adam Engel
Samson Agonistes:
Confessions of a Terrorist/Martyr
Russell Mokhiber and
Robert Weissman
A Day
at the American Enterprise Institute
John Stanton
Should States Secceed?
Gavin Keeney
Parting Shots
Anthony Gancarski
Concerned Citizen: Episode 6. Talk Show Host
David Krieger
The Children
of Iraq Have Names
M. Junaid Alam
No to War Rap
New
Print Edition of CounterPunch Available Exclusively
to Subscribers:
- The Shafts of Death: Bush, Coal Mines, and Death
in the Tunnels;
- Speak Memory!: Carter and the Draft;
- Daniel Pipes' World: Smearing Pro-Arab Academics;
- Ashcroft's Gays: the War on Free Speech;
- Saddam's Amnesty: Could It Happen Here?
- Criminalizing Dissent: a history and preview;
- Iraq 1987: When the Going Was Good;
- Egypt in Turmoil: an Anthropologist's Account;
- Green and Grounded: Profiled at the Gate.
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October 26
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