Almond blossom, checkpoint hopping and an execution.
It’s 9.00 am in central Ramallah on a beautiful sunny warm day. I search for a Service that will take me back to Jenin, the most northerly and troubled West Bank town, and the place where the Occupation is probably its most brutal.
Jehan’s brother will meet me on arrival – it’s probably best not to arrive unknown and unannounced in Jenin – the IDF regularly sends in undercover execution squads so the locals can be cautious of strangers. I’m going to Jenin to interview AF who has recently been released from two and a half years of administrative detention.
As soon as the Service has its full complement of nine we ease through the bustling Ramallah streets and onto the highway north. Along the way we pass through four checkpoints and our ID’s are checked at one. “An Australian? Who's the Australian?” Asks the soldier. He comes up to my window and asks what I’m doing in the West Bank? “Oh, traveling around” I respond blandly. “Travel around Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, but why here, do you have family or friends here?” – “No”, I respond, “just traveling around” – “Well good luck” he replies, with a somewhat mystified look on his face. I get the impression he is more concerned about my safety than anything else. He seems unable to comprehend why a non- Arab would be traveling in a Service going to Jenin. A little fear goes along way in this part of the world. As we pull away the woman next to me invites me to have coffee with her when we arrive in Jenin as I don’t appear to know anybody. I thank her but explain that I’m meeting with people – “Ah” she says, “for the soldiers?” -“Yes, for the soldiers.” We both smile and nod. Well, it is an illegal occupation, the very least one can do is be bland.
Jehan’s brother meets me on arrival at 11.30 am. We chat as we walk along the crowded streets. Apparently an IDF undercover execution squad was in town two hours earlier, doing what they do. One dead, apparently no attempt whatsoever to apprehend the man – an old fashion street execution.
We meet AF in a shop with his little boy who is surprisingly clingy and nervous. We jump in a taxi and head for AF’s home in the Jenin refugee camp (see Blog 12). We’re met at AF’s home by a woman who will translate for us. Over the next hour and half AF tells me how he was detained in May 2004 in a mass round up in the camp and how his heart broke every time his detention order was renewed, over and over again. How he missed his wife and five children and how his wife and two youngest children were only allowed to visit him twice (for half an hour on each occasion) in the 32 months he was detained in the Negev desert, Israel. The prison authorities only permitted three persons to visit at a time – most detainees are visited by their youngest children in the hope that they don’t forget their father. The clingy little boy did forget his father and was very angry with the man who returned home on 25 January, 2007. It looks like they’ve re-established the bond now but he’s none too keen on strangers.
AF was a journalist who wrote for the Jenin Study Centre, which was accused of having links with a banned organization – for that he received 32 months of administrative detention. AF has never been charged or tried with any offence relating to his period of detention.
One thing you quickly learn in Palestine is that once invited into somebody’s house, rich or poor, you will be served tea, coffee and probably a meal. Over lunch I ask AF if there is anything else he would like to tell me. He says:
“Why isn’t the international community concerned with this injustice? Detainees are transported for up to 60 hours in order to stand before the court at Ofer for one minute, hands and feet shackled, and told they will be detained for the next six months for nothing. Why can’t anybody stop these arrests?”
I deflect the question because I can’t give him a meaningful answer and so ask him about his wife. AF’s face immediately lights up and a huge smile spreads across his tanned face –
“She is the best woman in the world, she keeps me strong; it was the thought of her that kept me going in prison. She makes me a good man.”
Over lunch the translator tells me how tough life is in the camp and how many men have been killed recently by the IDF –
“But it is through suffering that the strongest friendships are made – if I help my brother when he is suffering, then we are bound together forever.”
We part after lunch and I meet up with Jehan’s brother who finds me a Service heading back to Ramallah. On the trip back I’m daydreaming in the sun thinking about the morning and how beautiful the green hills are, carpeted in red poppies and almond trees in blossom. It suddenly occurs to me that the road is very narrow and bumpy and bears very little resemblance to the highway we came on. My suspicions are confirmed when we leave the road altogether and start heading across open farmland. I look at the man next to me, he shrugs, we smile. For the next 20 minutes we meander across fields passing four other Services coming in the other direction – we slow down so that the drivers can update each other about checkpoints. Putting two and two together it’s apparent that perhaps some of us have “ID issues”.
For the next couple of hours we zig-zag across the West Bank by-passing the nasty checkpoint closest to Jenin. If we had come back via the highway we would have been stopped at four checkpoints – this way we only passed one checkpoint 10 km from Ramallah and the traffic was such a mess we were just waved through – somebody is probably breathing a little easier tonight.
Another memorable Palestinian kind of day – and it’s only tea time.
It’s 9.00 am in central Ramallah on a beautiful sunny warm day. I search for a Service that will take me back to Jenin, the most northerly and troubled West Bank town, and the place where the Occupation is probably its most brutal.
Jehan’s brother will meet me on arrival – it’s probably best not to arrive unknown and unannounced in Jenin – the IDF regularly sends in undercover execution squads so the locals can be cautious of strangers. I’m going to Jenin to interview AF who has recently been released from two and a half years of administrative detention.
As soon as the Service has its full complement of nine we ease through the bustling Ramallah streets and onto the highway north. Along the way we pass through four checkpoints and our ID’s are checked at one. “An Australian? Who's the Australian?” Asks the soldier. He comes up to my window and asks what I’m doing in the West Bank? “Oh, traveling around” I respond blandly. “Travel around Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, but why here, do you have family or friends here?” – “No”, I respond, “just traveling around” – “Well good luck” he replies, with a somewhat mystified look on his face. I get the impression he is more concerned about my safety than anything else. He seems unable to comprehend why a non- Arab would be traveling in a Service going to Jenin. A little fear goes along way in this part of the world. As we pull away the woman next to me invites me to have coffee with her when we arrive in Jenin as I don’t appear to know anybody. I thank her but explain that I’m meeting with people – “Ah” she says, “for the soldiers?” -“Yes, for the soldiers.” We both smile and nod. Well, it is an illegal occupation, the very least one can do is be bland.
Jehan’s brother meets me on arrival at 11.30 am. We chat as we walk along the crowded streets. Apparently an IDF undercover execution squad was in town two hours earlier, doing what they do. One dead, apparently no attempt whatsoever to apprehend the man – an old fashion street execution.
We meet AF in a shop with his little boy who is surprisingly clingy and nervous. We jump in a taxi and head for AF’s home in the Jenin refugee camp (see Blog 12). We’re met at AF’s home by a woman who will translate for us. Over the next hour and half AF tells me how he was detained in May 2004 in a mass round up in the camp and how his heart broke every time his detention order was renewed, over and over again. How he missed his wife and five children and how his wife and two youngest children were only allowed to visit him twice (for half an hour on each occasion) in the 32 months he was detained in the Negev desert, Israel. The prison authorities only permitted three persons to visit at a time – most detainees are visited by their youngest children in the hope that they don’t forget their father. The clingy little boy did forget his father and was very angry with the man who returned home on 25 January, 2007. It looks like they’ve re-established the bond now but he’s none too keen on strangers.
AF was a journalist who wrote for the Jenin Study Centre, which was accused of having links with a banned organization – for that he received 32 months of administrative detention. AF has never been charged or tried with any offence relating to his period of detention.
One thing you quickly learn in Palestine is that once invited into somebody’s house, rich or poor, you will be served tea, coffee and probably a meal. Over lunch I ask AF if there is anything else he would like to tell me. He says:
“Why isn’t the international community concerned with this injustice? Detainees are transported for up to 60 hours in order to stand before the court at Ofer for one minute, hands and feet shackled, and told they will be detained for the next six months for nothing. Why can’t anybody stop these arrests?”
I deflect the question because I can’t give him a meaningful answer and so ask him about his wife. AF’s face immediately lights up and a huge smile spreads across his tanned face –
“She is the best woman in the world, she keeps me strong; it was the thought of her that kept me going in prison. She makes me a good man.”
Over lunch the translator tells me how tough life is in the camp and how many men have been killed recently by the IDF –
“But it is through suffering that the strongest friendships are made – if I help my brother when he is suffering, then we are bound together forever.”
We part after lunch and I meet up with Jehan’s brother who finds me a Service heading back to Ramallah. On the trip back I’m daydreaming in the sun thinking about the morning and how beautiful the green hills are, carpeted in red poppies and almond trees in blossom. It suddenly occurs to me that the road is very narrow and bumpy and bears very little resemblance to the highway we came on. My suspicions are confirmed when we leave the road altogether and start heading across open farmland. I look at the man next to me, he shrugs, we smile. For the next 20 minutes we meander across fields passing four other Services coming in the other direction – we slow down so that the drivers can update each other about checkpoints. Putting two and two together it’s apparent that perhaps some of us have “ID issues”.
For the next couple of hours we zig-zag across the West Bank by-passing the nasty checkpoint closest to Jenin. If we had come back via the highway we would have been stopped at four checkpoints – this way we only passed one checkpoint 10 km from Ramallah and the traffic was such a mess we were just waved through – somebody is probably breathing a little easier tonight.
Another memorable Palestinian kind of day – and it’s only tea time.
(p.s. I've scratched around and added a few photos to some of the blogs)
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