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The Coverage--and Non-Coverage--of Israel-Palestine
In the fall of 2004, we visited the Palestinian Territories. Such a simple statement, and such a complicated reality. Let me try again… In the fall of 2004, we visited a large, open-air prison. A prison whose guards keep people out, when they choose to, as well as in, humiliating and violating those they dislike; a prison into which the jailers periodically shoot and send regiments of destruction; a prison full of mini-prisons and convoluted rules that change with the wind. A complicated, teeming prison in which there are wedding festivals and dancing; where babies laugh and the tea is flavored with mint and sage; and where desperation silently waits. In fall, 2004, my daughter and I traveled to Palestine—to the West Bank. And the Israeli guards let us in. But then we went to Nablus, a historic and ancient city in the northern sector of the West Bank. We stood in the crowded line full of women, men, and children waiting to pass through the double turn-style gate into this interior, mini-prison, until it was our turn, and as we walked, one at a time, through that lonely, eerie twenty feet, the soldiers’ guns trained on us, the soldiers waved us back. “You are not allowed in,” they pronounced, and ignored our protests and our American passports. But later we found a back way in, over the hills, and then we saw a little of what they didn’t want us to see, and heard about the rest. We visited Balata refugee camp, one of the dense communities around the West Bank and Gaza created by the 1948 Naqba, the “Catastrophe,” when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were forced off their land with the creation of Israel. These refugee communities are often on the outskirts of town and bear the major brunt of Israeli invasions. Their residents are among the poorest and most desperate in Palestine, and they contain pockets of resistance to Israeli military occupation. We talked to a man in his late twenties who had recently adopted nonviolent methods of resistance. He told us that he used to have a group of close friends—about eight other guys that he’d grown up with. They would always hang out together, joke around. When Israeli forces launched a major invasion into Balata and Nablus—100 tanks descended on the area in April 2002—many joined the Palestinian resistance. One by one all these friends have been killed, and now “Sami,” as we’ll call him, was the only one still alive. We learned that Israeli forces in armored vehicles periodically invaded Balata, occupying homes and shooting residents without provocation. While sometimes there were small numbers of Palestinian men with guns trying to resist these invasions, often there was no armed resistance at all. In many cases there were only kids throwing stones at these invading vehicles. The Israeli soldiers would then shoot these kids. The main street down which these Israeli armored vehicles would drive was bullet riddled and teeming with children. We also interviewed two old ladies whose home had occasionally been taken over by Israeli soldiers, who would then shoot out the windows at the people below. We saw a cemetery where children played—it was one of the few open spaces in this dense community—and people described how Israeli soldiers would taunt the children. Several kids had recently been killed there. We were told of an incident that had occurred approximately two weeks before. There had been another of these regular Israeli “incursions” down the main street. The vehicles had stayed there for twenty minutes, asserting their control, and there had been no resistance against them. At one point an Israeli soldier poked his gun out the porthole of his vehicle, aimed at a boy nearby, and pulled the trigger. The boy, who looked to be about 13, was shot in the lower abdomen with a metal bullet coated by rubber. A Reuters photographer had photographed this incident, and an Associated Press cameraman had filmed it. We were told that the video of the incident had been sent to the Associated Press bureau in Jerusalem, and that it had been erased. We were shocked. On what possible basis could this footage not be considered newsworthy? We decided to look into this incident further. In Balata there was a handful of international peace activists, members of the International Solidarity Movement, who were there to act as witnesses, and who attempted to intercede nonviolently in instances of aggression in order to reduce the violence in the conflict. Several of these people, an American woman and a British woman, had witnessed this event and described it to us in detail. They had recorded the number of the Israeli armored vehicle, and had written down the names of the two photographers who had filmed the incident. We talked to both photographers, who confirmed the facts. We found the hospital where the boy was still being treated, interviewed the boy himself, his father, his older brothers, and the doctor who had treated him. All the facts confirmed what we had been told. The boy was named Ahmed, and it turned out that he was actually 14, though he looked considerably younger. He had been shot with a rubber-coated steel bullet, which had penetrated his bladder. He had undergone an operation, and was still recovering. The boy told us he was afraid of Israeli soldiers. He showed us a scar on his leg, where he had been shot previously. While we were in the hospital, we came across several other kids who had been shot. One had a fractured femur. He said he hadn’t even been throwing stones, but that next time he would. Another boy had been shot in the chest. The doctors had barely saved him. Another boy, a visitor, showed us a scar at the corner of his mouth and missing teeth from when he had been shot. We had a camera along and filmed all of this. After a few days we returned to Jerusalem.
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