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April 5, 2002
Alexander
Cockburn
Sharon's
Wars: How the
News Gets Through
April 4, 2002
Ray Hanania
Sharon's Latest Lie About the Church
of the Nativity
Mike Leon
Rightwing
Assault on Madison Progressives Misfires
Tom Turnipseed
Stop the Killing Now!
Nancy
Stohlman
An
American Under Siege in a West Bank Refugee Camp
Christopher Reilly
Kissinger, Chile and Justice
at Long Last?
M. Shahid
Alam
The
Lies of Thomas Friedman
April 3, 2002
Don Henley
Dear Loathsome Trade Hacks
Bernard
Weiner
An
American Jew Talks
About His Shame
David Vest
Sting of Stings
Tzaporah
Ryter
Under
Fire: an American Student in Ramallah
Gabriel Ash
America's Bravest
John Chuckman
Of
War, Islam and Israel
Robert Fisk
The Siege of Bethlehem
Alexander
Cockburn
The
Sins of the Church
April 2, 2002
Uri Avnery
Murdering Arafat?
Jeff Chang
Is
Protest Music Dead?
Lev Grinberg
Israel's State Terrorism
Norman
Madarasz
Bullying
Brazil
Robert Fisk
Farce and Terror
in Ramallah
Steve
Perry
Let's
Roll! ®:
The Marketing of Lisa Beamer
April 1, 2002
Stanton / Madsen
America's War Inc.
Rep. Dennis
Kucinich
Peace
and Nuclear Disarmament: a Call to Action
Bahour / Dahan
Bloodshed in Palestine:
A Way Out
Molly
Secours
Tennessee's
Kangaroo Court
Phyllis Pollack
The Making of Exile
on Main Street
Dave Marsh
DeskScan:
This Week's
Top 10 CDs
Francis Boyle
The Big Lie:
Palestine, Palestinians
and International Law
March 31, 2002
Jordan
Flaherty
Last
Night the Israeli
Military Tried to Kill Me
Kristen Schurr
Live from Bethlehem
Maha Sbitani
The
Israeli Army Took Over My House
Robert Fisk
Lies Leaders Tell When
They Want to Go to War
March 24/30, 2002
Alexander Cockburn
The Year
of the Yellow Notepad:
Plagiarism and History
Rep. Ron Paul
Slavery and the Draft
Fidel
Castro
A
Better World is Possible
Edward Said
What Price Oslo?
José
Saramago
Justice
and Democracy Denied
Azmi Bishara
Talking to Tanks
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Clearcutting
Montana
Alexander Cockburn
50 Years of James Bond
Wilhelm
Reich
Gethsemane
Claud Cockburn
The Horror of It All
Dave Marsh
What's
Playing at My Houe
David Vest
Remembering Tammy Wynette
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Waylon
Jennings:
an Honest Outlaw
March 23, 2002
Mokhiber/Weissman
A
Corporate Lawyer
Speaks Out
Saeed Vaseghi
The US and Iran's Quest
for Democracy
Brian
J. Foley
Does
Pedophilia Scandal Spell an Opportunity for Catholics?
Sheperd Bliss
American Soul and Empire
James
Packard Winkler
Occupation
and Terror:
Politics from a Gun Barrel
M. Shahid Alam
A New International Division
of Labor
T.W. Croft
Enron's
Attack on Our
Economic Security
March 22, 2002
Robert Jensen
Corporate Power is a
Threat to Democracy
Tommy
Ates
The
Future of Black Academia
Rep. Ron Paul
Why are We in Ukraine?
March 21, 2002
McQuinn,
Munson, & Wheeler
Stars
and Stripes:
Killing for the Flag?
John Chuckman
How Change is Wrought
David
Vest
Hail
to the Chaff
March 20, 2002
Kay Lee
Censorship at Angelfire
Robert
Jensen
The
Politics of Pain
and Pleasure
Sheperd Bliss
Notes from Hawai'i:
Trouble in Paradise
Rick Giambetti
Prozac
and Suicide:
an Interview with
Dr. David Healy
Philip Farruggio
Bullies
Lori Allen
Live
from Ramallah:
The Madness of Occupation
Resources:
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CIA, Drugs & the
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Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The New Crusade:
America's War on Terrorism
By Rahul Mahajan
The Memphis Blues Again:
Six Decades of Memphis Music Photographs
Photos by Ernest Withers
Text by Daniel Wolff
The New Intifada:
Resisting Israel's Apartheid
Edited by Roane Carey
A Pocket Guide to
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April 5, 2002
In Ramallah
Grueling Reoccupation Grinds On
By Charmaine Seitz
The
Palestine Report
He was the tallest of the Palestinian policemen.
Thin, his olive drab uniform ballooning over his boots, he swayed
momentarily as a helmeted Israeli soldier stood behind him and
tucked the muzzle of a gun into the Palestinian's right armpit,
keeping his finger on the trigger. Only then did the line of
crouching soldiers descend down the driveway into the Ramallah
apartment. The Palestinian, his hands in the air, shielded them
on their way.
As the Israeli army enters the eighth
day of its military reoccupation of the Palestinian-controlled
towns of the West Bank, charges of war crimes abound. The situation
is so bad that the usually tight-lipped International Committee
for the Red Cross has issued a statement of "regret"
for the "frequent and often serious instances" in which
medical personnel have been hindered in their duties. But reports
of ambulance workers unable to reach Palestinian wounded, Israeli
soldiers raiding hospitals and troops using Palestinians as human
shields continue to stream in.
WITNESSES TO
A WAR CRIME
The Palestinian employed as a screen
in Ramallah was one of eight regular police -- men given guns
under Palestinian-Israeli peace agreements -- who had spent six
days dodging the Israeli tanks lumbering through the besieged
West Bank city's streets. The eight men had heard ominous and
nagging reports of comrades who had been killed.
But they had also received a phone call
from a friend, a policeman who was captured and returned in a
bus to his home in Gaza. For 18 months, the policemen had not
seen their families, the road through Israel closed to them as
the Palestinian-Israeli confrontations raged on. Accordingly,
they asked neighbors near the empty apartment they had broken
into, seeking refuge, to call the Red Cross and arrange their
surrender. The Red Cross car arrived in the mid-afternoon on
April 3, its bright red and white insignia flapping in the cold
wind. A Red Cross officer shouted to the neighbors in English
that they were there to arrange the safe surrender of the men.
"When the army comes, take your children to the back of
the house," he told the neighbor. "Hopefully, everything
will be OK."
But the army took a long time. The policemen
paced inside the small apartment. "Please, can we ask you
two questions?" they shouted to the Red Cross. Stay inside,
they were told. An Israeli sniper had been positioned just across
the street.
Finally, the army showed up. Some 15
soldiers spilled out of jeeps and armored personnel carriers
to point their guns down the driveway toward the men. One by
one, the Red Cross officials called the Palestinians out of the
apartment. Each carried a white piece of cloth. They were visibly
shaking, their arms hoisting Kalashnikovs and their chests wide
open to the battery of automatic rifles before them. Down an
adjacent pathway, two soldiers scurried past to take positions
behind the surrendering police.
Each man was recorded by the Red Cross
and by the Israeli army. An army photographer filmed the handover,
and the video was later distributed to the press.
Then, as the seven other policemen sat
on the curb with their hands clasped behind their heads, the
Israeli soldiers broke the Fourth Geneva Convention. In full
view of the Red Cross only meters away, one Palestinian was picked
out and used to shield the soldiers as they entered the apartment
where the police had stayed. Once inside, the soldiers tore the
place apart, turning cabinets over and smashing furnishings.
It was not a methodical search for bombs or weapons. It took
all of four minutes.
The Israeli military spokesperson was
unavailable for comment. A Red Cross spokesperson says that her
colleagues denied seeing this incident, but that, "as soon
as soldiers put their weapons down and surrender, they are considered
protected persons under the laws of war."
GETTING BY
UNDER CURFEW
The 40,000 residents inside Ramallah's
municipal boundaries have now spent one week behind closed doors
under Israeli-imposed curfew. For much of that time, water mains
feeding the homes of several tens of thousands of residents have
been severed. Electricity has gone and returned and flickered
out again. The days are cold and rainy and gas heaters families
use to warm themselves by are slowly running out of fuel. At
the first lifting of the curfew four days into the Israeli invasion,
lines of Palestinians, their faces pale with the days indoors,
crowded to refill their gas canisters. Others sought out open
stores for sparse staples -- bread, milk, bottled water, batteries
and, of course, cigarettes.
"We made a plan," one young
man (few these days want to give their name) said on the first
day of the curfew. "We have two kilos of rice and we have
to make it last for the four of us." Despite the warning
signs of an Israeli invasion after a suicide bomber killed himself
and 25 others on a Passover eve in a Netanya hotel, these bachelors
had not prepared. On day two of the invasion, he and a friend
braved streets sewn up with snipers hidden in tall buildings
to get to a local store and bring back more food. "We put
one of the guys on the roof to watch the movement of the tanks
and to call us if they were coming near." On that trip,
they bought rice and beans for three days.
The other problem in his apartment has
been the water. "Showers were prohibited," he says,
able to joke about it now that the pipes have been fixed. When
the army lifted its lockdown for a few fleeting hours, the men
split into two groups, one looking for vegetables and another
looking for dry goods, including plastic plates and spoons that
did not require washing.
All of this crisis household management
takes places beneath a veil of fear. These men are adults under
the age of 40 -- the age group being rounded up by the Israeli
military. An estimated 1,000 Palestinians have been arrested
in the Ramallah area alone. No one knows their condition or how
many have been released, as the press has not been allowed to
see them. "In the beginning our spirits were very high,"
says the young man holed up with his three friends, "But
after three days, we all became very depressed."
In the Ein Misbah area near the center
of town, residents were startled on March 31 by a voice squawking
in Arabic over a loudspeaker: "Come out by the time we count
to ten, or we will blow the place up." The elderly woman
and family living in the four-story apartment building raced
down the steps, only to find four Israeli soldiers crouching
in front of the door, guns trained on them. This time, the soldiers
did not break anything in their cursory search of the building.
"They were terrified," the woman said, with some relief.
Other homes have been less fortunate.
One foreigner tells of how soldiers came four times to her home
to search. The last time, they took five young men with them
to a nearby apartment building that is being used as a temporary
holding facility. A tank sits out front, barbed wire strapped
across the road, and most of the families inside have been confined
to one apartment. When two of the men had not been returned,
the foreigner went to the house to ask about them. She was told
they would be taken to the Beit El military settlement near Ramallah.
She was allowed to talk to the men, who had been fed and covered
with blankets, and to give them cigarettes.
"DEFENSIVE
WALL"
No one knows how many Palestinians died
in the first leg of Operation Defensive Wall, as Israel terms
its ongoing offensive in the West Bank. The Palestinian Center
for Human Rights in Gaza reports that as of April 3 at least
54 Palestinians, mostly civilians, including five women, six
children and two handicapped young men, had been killed. Twenty-three
of those were buried in a mass grave in the Ramallah hospital
parking lot during the break in the curfew when families were
able to come and identify the bodies. Officials say that they
will be moved to cemeteries just as soon as movement is allowed.
Ziad Abu Asia, a doctor at the Red Crescent
Hospital, reported by phone that he was transporting two elderly
people to the hospital in an ambulance. "We are going in
a zig-zag," Abu Asia said, "because every way we go,
the tanks block us. Yesterday, we could not move at all."
The Palestinian man, 75, and woman, 68,
had been trapped for five or six days in their home near the
offices where Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat has been stuck
in Israel's ever-tightening "isolation" since December
of 2001. The man has not eaten in two or three days and the woman
had fallen inside their home and broken her knee, Abu Asia says.
"They look very sick, they are dehydrated and they have
diarrhea."
The ambulance revs in the background.
"They [Israeli soldiers] are blocking the road to the hospital,"
Abu Asia explains, and the ambulance turns to another entrance.
His driver is not interested in one more confrontation with the
Israeli army. Yesterday, the driver was stopped and forced to
strip by Israeli troops. By his account, they then proceeded
to beat him up.
Even the hospitals have not been safe.
Soldiers searched the Red Crescent Hospital April 4 at approximately
1 pm. All communications were cut off and Israeli troops arrested
doctors Qasem Assaghier, Mohammad an-Najjar and nurses Ayman
Labad and Ammar Srour and hospital worker Husni Barghouti, reports
the Palestinian LAW human rights organization.
TIRED HYSTERIA
As the occupation forces settle in Ramallah,
fierce fighting continues in Nablus. Reports from the town betray
a tired hysteria -- not enough sleep and too much fear. "They
have been shelling and shooting all night," says a mother
of eight. "The entire old city has been shelled with airplanes,
with tanks. Listen, can't you hear it?" Electricity has
been cut to the entire city, which is provided by the Israeli
grid. As in Ramallah, the news is sparse and difficult to verify.
"They are saying there are 13 dead, but no one knows for
sure." Palestinians in Bethelehem, Nablus, Qalqilya, Tulkarm,
Jenin and Hebron -- the other West Bank towns fully or partially
reoccupied over the last week -- had days anchored in front of
their television sets, days to think about what was to come.
But no one, it seems, has been able to do much to stop Operation
Defensive Wall from coming.
Charmaine Seitz
is managing editor of the
Palestine Report.
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