While war raged
in Lebanon throughout
the month of July and death was a daily occurrence in Gaza, other regions in this war-torn
part of the world also experienced weeks of torment and torture at the
hands of the Israeli Military.
Among these
regions is Nablus.
A city filled with tragedy and the knowledge of how unjust and
unforgiving the occupational forces can be. Invasions, incursions and
curfews are not new to the people of Nablus, nor are the sights of bleeding
children and mourning families.
Many people say
if you want to know the Occupation of the West Bank and what it actually
entails then you must go to Nablus and spend some days wandering in the
Old City and surrounding districts talking to residents, nearly every one
of whom have lost members of their family in the decade-long struggle
against Occupation; you need to talk to the students of An Najar University and listen to their stories of
suffering and how many difficulties they must overcome if they want to
continue their education; you must let the sorrow of the city soak into
your unconsciousness.
And so I went to
Nablus and wandered the Old City
streets and talked with families and with students and listened to their
stories.
It was not the
first time I had visited the city, but the first time I had spent more
than a day there.
The people of Nablus are welcoming
of a stranger into their streets. It is not so common for them to see
foreigners there and many stop you to ask what you are doing in Nablus and how you
see their city. It is a hard question to answer; you want to tell them
about the beauty of the ancient stoned city and its unique geography,
nestled in the valley of two imposing mountains, daring the northern
slopes of one to build almost to its peak; but you can not, because this
is not the feature that strikes you most noticeably as you enter the
outskirts of Nablus.
You are first
struck by the ruins of the Municipality building and the destruction of
the as-yet un-rebuilt Mucata. You are struck by
the houses, windowless and scarred with bullet holes that line every
street you walk down; you are struck by the overwhelming feeling that
this city has seen war again and again and has had no time of respite to
begin to rebuild.
And how can you
tell the eager residents of Nablus
that all you see in their city is the ravaging signs of war and hardship
and the heartbreaking signs of children with no future?
The latest of
these fierce and deathly times has left numerous residents of Nablus dead and many
more wounded.
It began in June
when the Israeli army invaded the center of Nablus at midday. They came in twenty
jeeps to arrest one man. On that day they shot three people dead and
imposed a curfew on the whole of the city.
Since then they
have been in the city every night and sometimes during the day.
They have killed
civilians including two children 14 and 16 years old. They have totally
demolished the Mucata and have bulldozed an
apartment block that housed 9 families. They have invaded the refugee
camps and have carried out assassinations against militants whose posters
now cover the walls of every shop in the city.June,
July August and September 2006
The streets now
empty at 9 pm and the only sounds in the night time are those of gun-fire
and explosions.
'This is Nablus.' My taxi
driver said. This is the prison of the West Bank.
I was to speak
with Fadi, a leader of the Al Aqsa Brigades in Nablus. A friend from Nablus had talked to Fadi and Fadi had agreed to
speak with me on Saturday about his life and his resistance against the
occupation.
But he is now dead.
I arrived in Nablus the day after
he was assassinated by Israeli Special Forces.
The city salutes
him and every shop displays his poster, prepared by himself for himself.
He stands one-armed and defiant. He lost his right arm in the struggle a
year ago.
I came too late
to speak with him. So instead of his story I will write of him, as told
me by his family, his friends and his city that is now mourning his
death.
Ahmad is a
medical relief worker and has worked as an ambulance doctor for three
years. I met him by chance in a youth project office in the center of Nablus.
I asked him
about the last month in the city and he shook his head and said it has been
a 'hell-of-a-time'. He has been evacuating wounded and dead people almost
daily, the most heartbreaking of these he said was
having to try and evacuate Fadi after he
had been fatally injured.
It was late at
night in the old city of Nablus.
Fadi
was warned not to enter the old city, but he did and was shot by snipers.
He had a massive
hole through his belly.
Ahmad told me
how he tried to stop the bleeding by pressing two pillows against each
side of Fadi's body, but it was impossible to
stop the bleeding and he and his two helpers were being shot at the whole
time and the ambulance could not approach. His two friends were wounded.
'Fadi was still alive. But he couldn't speak. He just
looked at us and pointed. I suppose he was telling us that he was going'
I asked Ahmad if
he knew Fadi. He answered, yes, that he did and
it was not the first time he had tried to evacuate him after an Israeli
attack.
'Once he had his
whole insides hanging out of a horrible hole in his stomach and I had to
push them back inside and he said ''thankyou
Ahmad!'' and there was the time when he had his arm blown off.
'But this time
was a nightmare. We were trying to drag him through the street and we
were right in the sights of ten or so snipers sitting on the rooftops. I
could see red laser beams all over my chest. I finally had to turn and
run for cover and that is not an easy thing to do when you are a trained
emergency worker.
After half an
hour we managed to drag Fadi to a building, but
by the time we reached the hospital he was already half-an-hour dead.
He was a good
man. Ask anyone here.
'Every one knew
him and every one loved him.'
When evening
came I wound my way up the mountain to a quiet sanctuary, surprising in
such a battle-wearied city. The sanctuary is in the garden of an old
woman who has been trained as a psychologist and spends her days working
with the women of Nablus.
Too often the bearers of tragedy.
'The women must
carry too much.' She said. 'Sometimes all their frustration and fear and
torture come out of their hearts when they sit here in my small garden.'
We talked for
hours and I never thought I could hear so many stories at once that would
bring tears to my eyes.
'.Can you
imagine?' she said, late in the evening. 'That women come to me and talk
and begin to cry and then to shout and then to beat the earth with their
bear fists. Can you imagine what that is like?
When the mothers
tell me about their sons taken from them. Killed in front of them, or
arrested from their family home. Some mothers tell me that their fourteen
or fifteen year old sons rush to them when the army arrives in their
street and cry to them to hide them. Some say that their sons ask to be
put back inside their bellies because they would be safe there.
Can you imagine
this? Fifteen year old boys! And the world hears of them only as
terrorists.'
One mother came
to the sanctuary and for an hour sat on the stones and howled till her
heart would break: 'I could not hide him! I could not hide my son!' She
cried over and over again.
To us, arrest
may not seem like the end of hope, but we do not know the reality of the
arrest system in Palestine.
The women of Nablus
know.
They know that they will not
hear news of their son for maybe 21 days after his arrest. They will not
know if he is alive or dead. All they will know is that he will be facing
interrogation and torture alone. That his court hearing will be held in
Hebrew. That his charges will be kept in a 'secret file' and that they
might not see their sons again until they are grown men. This they know.
'And sometimes'
the old woman told me 'the mother needs to cry her anguish, however
heartbreaking it is.
'One young woman
is married to a wanted man. She comes to me because she has become
useless. She can not sleep in the night and can not wake in the day. She
lies in her bed because she is paralyzed with fear.
She has two
daughters. The eldest started school today. Four days ago the young
woman's husband visited her with three new dresses for their daughter.
The husband said he did not want anyone else to have to prepare his
daughter for her first day at school. Later in the evening he sat with
his young family and listened to his youngest girl singing a song he had
taught her. He said to his wife quietly, 'I don't think I will hear this
song again. He was killed yesterday.'
I knew then it
was Fadi the old woman was telling me about.
She stopped talking because she too was crying.
'I loved him
like a son' she finally said; 'and his wife like
a daughter.'
She wept because
however strong she is and however many tragedies she bares with her
clients, she too sometimes needs to weep.
It was hard to
sleep that night. I sat at the window and watched the sleeping city below
me, wondering how many homes were nursing broken families and broken
hearts.
I could see the
ruined outlines of homes that had been bulldozed and could see the pile
of rubble that had been the Mucata, razed to
the ground three weeks before.
I realized that
it would take months to hear the stories this city harbors, months before
I could appreciate the depths of despair the people are driven to by the
harshness of the occupation.
I wondered what
future was in store for all the children I had seen that day rummaging
through rubbish in the Old
City because there
is not even a school for them to go to. I found myself wondering at the
little twelve year old boys I had seen running after the militants who
roam the old city with guns slung over their shoulders, looking to them
like they ought to be looking to their teachers.
I found myself
asking the question if it was so very surprising that these youngsters
turned to the military factions of the city and joined them, and by so
doing, giving up any hope of a future except that of imprisonment or
death at the hands of the Israeli forces.
Because that
could well be their future anyway
I finally slept
as the dawn call to prayer sounded over the city.
When I returned
to Ramallah I knew that it was true about Nablus.
If you wander
the streets of the Old City and listen to even a few of the tales that
are imprisoned within it, you will understand better the reality of this
occupation, and the sadness of the city will seep into your unconscious
'But beware of
becoming hopeless.even the women who cry in my
garden grow strong again and return to their homes and continue to attend
to their daily work. If they didn't do this Israel would have destroyed
us long ago.'
Eliza Ernshire can be reached at eliza_ernshire@yahoo.co.uk
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