WHAT WILL THE NEIGHBOURS SAY

    Greg Wilkinson

- Peace Activist from Llanelli

reports from Palestine  25/08/02

When the doctors and nurses spoke of ‘Nazis’ they may not have known some of our visiting party were Germans…Besides the ‘Nazis’ the medics were talking about were not Germans, but the people who blew out the windows of their brand-new hospital in Tulkarem and left a big family homeless in the street.

Early Friday morning (Aug 23^rd), the Muslim weekly holiday, the front windows of the Al-Zakat hospital were shattered, sunscreens and internal fittings torn away, and at least one patient sprinkled with shards. As for us, we could stand in the prayer hall, its sky blue carpet a sea of glass, and look out of the window at more serious damage down the road. The main target of the Israeli troops was a small residential building, several apartments housing on extended family. We went to see the owner of the house, about 30 metres down on the other side of the road.

Talal Mansur Saleh Shrim, a man roughly my own age (65), sat in a chair in front of the ruins. Two of his sons were in prison, he said, and we assumed this meant for ‘terrorist’ offences. That was the reason the soldiers had given him for blowing up the house and leaving three generations in the street, though the family insisted that the boys in prison had killed no Israelis.

For the family, there was no warning, just a bang on the door in the early hours. ‘Get your IDs and out!’ and no use the grandfather protesting that the house was his, not his sons’, that none of the people actually living there had committed any crime

There was more damage. To an orphanage behind the hospital, and to the next door neighbours’ home. Dr Riad Abdul Karim Awad, his wife and seven children, were also ordered out into the street, where they remained from 2.30-5.00 a.m. For their own safety. The front of their house was ruined (see picture), not just the window glass but frames and surrounding blockwork, fittings and furniture wrecked in living room, bathroom, kitchen. Even the washing machine window was smashed. Dr Riad, who is Dean of Engineering at the Nablus Al-Najah University, asked the soldiers if he might move his car. They refused, but we didn’t go and look at it.

Nor did I ask what sort of Engineer he was, whether his skills might aid repairs, though we were amazed at the amount of clearing up already done by the time we arrived in the afternoon. Neighbours had come in to help, and the town Council sent men to clear up the rubble outside. An electricity substation had been damaged, but power was back on. Flags flew over the rubble

But I’m sick of writing about rubble, and the people left to scratch about in it.  Earlier this month it was in Doha, Bethlehem, last week in Nablus, where I went with another food convoy, to find half a dozen families coming to terms with the loss of homes. Again, in Nablus, one house was targeted, the rest destroyed by carelessness, malice or incompetence.  No one pretended the demolitions had anything to do with the guilt or innocence of the people dispossessed. In Doha, soldiers told the family of a suicide bomber ‘We know you’re innocent.’ In Nablus and Tulkarem, the offences were not suicide bombings at all: two of the accused were alive in prison, the other in hiding.

When I asked what the international press was doing with this sort of story, a British TV man said ‘Less than 10 dead, not news.’

 In defiance of Geneva Conventions – forbidding collective punishment - the Israeli High Court permits the destruction of suicide-bombers’ homes, with minimal warning. But in Nablus and Tulkarem, it was not a matter of suicide bombers, and no warning was given at all. People were ordered into the streets, told what was about to happen and forbidden to return for either valuables or necessities…What’s the point my of recording these details, fingering out more words, when atrocity is the order of the day? When I asked what the international press was doing with this sort of story, a British TV man said ‘Less than 10 dead, not news.’

Our governments are kept informed by their pros on the spot. Who do they, as signatories of the Geneva accords, not act to ensure compliance by Israel? The United States is providing five billion dollars for the ‘fight against terrorism’ and has at least a say in how the money’s used. (Besides, two of Dr Riad’s sons have US passports). As for the Europeans, Israel’s principal trading partners, their association agreement with Israel stipulates respect for human rights and must now be in question.

 END THE OCCUPATION

(If, as is likely, the occupation of Palestine can only be maintained by such abuses – plus assassinations, arbitrary arrest and detention, the confinement of a whole population by curfew and roadblock – then that’s all the more reason for bringing that occupation to an end.)

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