Letters from Israel-Palestine

Update9- Beaten Up in Deir Qaddis
Date: Friday, the 19th of March 2004

What's it like to get beaten up by Israeli soldiers?
Painful.

Here's the situation: leaders of the town of Deir Qaddis inform us that bulldozers are expected to show up around 7:30 in the morning, so people are assembling around 7 in the nearby town of Budrus to organize and head there. The military operation is a standard bill of Wall construction, the bulldozers cutting swaths across Palestinian farmlands, while soldiers and border police prevent people from stopping the work. I'm in Jerusalem, and find out through the grapevine about this particular action, and decide to participate. Getting there on time means getting up around 5:30. Working on little sleep, Erik and I didn't leave till around 8:30, arriving in Deir Qaddis about 10:30.

Today's laundry day, so I show up in my trademark bright green medical scrubs, and purple fleece jacket, because I'm washing everything else. Not having any useful pockets, I hand off my cell phone and camera to Flo, the legal coordinator, who has a waistpack. "If I get arrested, you might not get it back," she reminds me needlessly. I'm planning on leaving in two days, and if anyone's getting arrested it'll be me, I think to myself.

The scene upon arrival is the small Palestinian village of Deir Qaddis. Cement houses, a mosque towards the center of town, farmland including the cornerstone olive trees, lots of stony scrubland. Standing at the edge of town, there is the terraced hillside in front of us, and at a stone wall, dozens of Palestinians with maybe a dozen internationals/Israelis and a handful of media. Women are standing in one group chanting slogans ("No to

the wall," "Watch out Sharon," something about Jews), with young men several meters away chanting their own slogans. Soldiers are dealing roughly with some internationals and Israelis as we arrive, and within fifteen minutes they arrest an Israeli named Omer. Sound grenades are the only things employed for maybe a half-hour; most of the villagers don't realize that you don't have to run away from them, that you can just cover your ears. Next

comes the tear gas; one canister thrown right in the middle of a large group of people, seemingly without provocation. That made a lot of shebab mad, and group of young men start throwing rocks at the soldiers, which in turn invites more and more tear gas.

Most of the villagers at this point moved back to the main road of the village to get out of the way. The shebab, easily targeted in the field, moved uphill of the soldiers, and eventually the soldiers' attention was entirely consumed by the kids with slingshots. After maybe five minutes of volleying tear gas, the "rubber" bullets (real bullets with a thin layer of plastic on the outside) came out, in two varieties. Stacatto blasts echoed through the village, and there were one or two young men injured.

The soldiers' energies elsewhere, a group of women and a few older men (both less likely to be targeted by soldiers) headed to the rock wall. The soldiers didn't respond to our pressing closer to the bulldozer, and there was a clear opening between us and the bulldozer. They went for it, and we followed.

By the time we got right in front of the bulldozer, the soldiers were heading down to meet us. Having met confrontation, the yellow Caterpillar bulldozer retreated to the top of the hill, the driver unprepared to deal with opposition. There are about eight of us internationals there, and thirty Palestinians or so. The soldiers approach us with wooden clubs raised, and attempt to push us backwards. We all sit down, and then comes the tear gas. We disperse, reassemble. Then comes the clubs.

A line of about seven soldiers, most of them adolescents with fear in their eyes, take small swings at members of our group, as they push us backwards over the rocky terrain. They hit old men, old women, internationals, Palestinians. A middle-aged Palestinian man seems to be passed out, and that de-escalates the situation for a little while, while soldiers try to figure out what to do.

Down the hill comes two border policemen, looking for blood. The difference between soldiers and border police is significant: soldiers can't arrest you, and are new to the game, largely they are living in two different worlds, and comfort themselves with the knowledge that they are going to be done with this bullshit in just a couple quick years. The border police, on the other hand, can and will arrest internationals, are in the game for the long-haul, and are jaded and extremely brutal. Everyone knows this; in many towns, young men throw stones at soldiers, but remain out of sight when border police are around.

They use their clubs as weapons, not tools, and hit us in the hands, the legs, the abdomen, the chest, the neck, shoulders, back, forcefully smashing their wooden sticks against our bodies. One seemingly absurd moment showed this distinction quite well. A border policeman (let's call him Uzi, after the gun he carries) took a big whack at Gabe (an international), and when he went off a few feet, the soldier next to Gabe asked if he was alright and did he need some water? Gabe, not expecting this soldier to act like his ally, asks Are you serious? Are you fucking kidding me?!, but even so this soldier took us off-guard, and we stopped retreated, sensing the danger had passed. Just as Gabe was responding to him, Uzi takes another strong whack at Gabe, and the soldier toughens and gets in a few whacks of his own, to show allegiance to the border policeman.

The group of soldiers, led by Uzi, push us faster than we can comfortably walk, and attempt to isolate a couple of internationals so that they can be arrested. We hold on to each other tight, arms and hands and bodies linked, grabbing a body part of anyone who Uzi attempts to drag off. Just as I was getting backed up against a large boulder, Uzi takes a few good whacks at my left (good) hand, and I let go of who I was holding, and feeling trapped, make a run for it.

As I gather myself, they've already arrested Flo. I start going through my mind ways to get her back, and try get allies for a rescue mission. "It's a suicide mission," they all tell me, after she's been isolated from the group and is being led down to the jeeps. I feel terrible, unable to do anything. The last thing I want to do is get Flo and myself beaten up by some heroic tomfoolery; in retrospect, I think I could have traded places with her if I had only made a move before she had handcuffs on.

We hang out for an hour more on the main road of Deir Qaddis, spend the better part of the next hour trying to get a "service" taxi to Budrus, and arrive back around four in the afternoon. Beat up and limping, I go about trying to find a ride to Jerusalem. No more services for the day, which means I have to commission a "special" private taxi, at a cost of 80 shekels, around 20 dollars, for an hour and a half long ride. Two days before I leave, I have to pack, so I do it. I want to sleep in a real bed tonight, anyway. Abby and Nathan are super-tired when they arrive back to the apartment, but after hearing about my day, give me some attention, which I appreciated immensely.

***

One question a relative has asked me since my arrival back in the States and my telling of this story, is something like, "Weren't you kind of asking for it? It's not like you're innocent, you knew you were going to a dangerous area." One one level this is marginally true. Not to divulge responsibility from the persons physically beating me, I knew that this was a high-conflict area. I knew that I could expect some sort of violence, because that's how the Israeli military imposes Israeli policy (on Israelis, Palestinians, internationals... especially on Palestinians).

On the other hand, this was a village I was in. This was not a highly confidential military zone. I could have been visiting my grandmother, and hanging out in her olive trees.

Perhaps as a society we internalize victimization so highly that we think that when someone protests injustice and receives even further injustice, it is their own doing. I was invited by the people of Deir Qaddis to help stop a foreign force which was, either by intention or effect, going to destroy their way of life. I did what I could and would do without using one millimeter of violence, and from a gauge of forcefulness, the military won today, as they do every day. But we maintained the moral and ethical high ground, and I can still sleep at night; then again, I'm not sleeping in Rafah, I don't hear the sounds of gunfire and tanks in the night, it's difficult to sleep with that kind of racket going on.

I come back to the United States somewhat concerned by one way in which I find it incredibly weak: we have very few brave souls who will uphold real justice by forcefully opposing all injustice; whether imposed by common criminals or upheld by laws and courts and police and judges. Could another genocide be carried out today on American soil? Who would stop it? Fortunately for the physical safety of us US-ers, the government ensures enough exploitation and conflicts in the rest of the world that we need no domestic disputes.

Salaamat-

jake