Democratic Palestine : 28 (ص 23)
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- Democratic Palestine : 28 (ص 23)
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some of the training and day care these committees were doing
is now being deemphasized. Instead, the women are going to
villages and camps to find out where the needs are greatest.
They are providing a real source of information to the medical
committees as to where the needs are.
The existing women’s groups have been reoriented to the
needs of the uprising. For example, many women are teachers,
so many of the women in the committees are now working with
the teachers’ union to convince them to open the schools, as
has been called for by the United National Leadership of the
Uprising. It is not easy to force the schools open. You need the
cooperation of the teachers and parents, to say that they are
ready to open the schools by force.
Now in many places, the schools have been occupied by the
soldiers, since so many forces are needed in the occupied ter-
ritories. It is no longer such that they are soldiers by day and go
home at night. They are sleeping in the schools. In Nablus, I
saw whole schools occupied by soldiers. In Gaza, I saw camp
after camp where soldiers now live. In East Jerusalem, they
have taken over a hotel.
To get back to the role of the women: Another thing they are
doing is sewing flags, as these have to be produced quickly and
in big quantities. Almost all the flags I saw were handsewn.
There was a women’s demonstration in Jerusalem on Interna-
tional Women’s Day. It lasted only five minutes because the
soldiers came immediately and started shooting at the women.
It shows how threatened they are. They arrested five women
who stayed under interrogation for five days. By the way, I
didn’t see any Israeli female forces in the territories at all.
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CONDITIONS FOR SURVIVAL
There is no difference between the West Bank and Gaza
Strip in terms of the people’s goals, but the situation in the
Gaza Strip is different, because the people don’t have land,
and a higher percentage work in ‘Israel’. I think that who is
going to survive the Israeli blockade best is the felaheen
(peasants). Even from my own experience, I could see how
conditions had become more difficult. Before, when you went
to a village, the people brought all the food they possibly
could. Now you get what they themselves are producing or able
to pick. In the cities and camps where the people have no land,
it’s going to be more difficult to survive because they have to
buy commodities.
There are differences between the situation in the West Bank
and Gaza Strip. It took longer for the West Bank to become
totally involved in the uprising, but it’s very clear that this has
happened. In the West Bank, there is a large business class, a
large bourgeoisie, but these people are now clearly part of the
uprising, and I think that is the real critical point in the strikes.
In the Gaza Strip, the people are under constant attack, but
they are constantly revolting. We had more trouble travelling
in the Strip than in the West Bank. Even though they are more
besieged, they are also more in control of their area. You can-
not move in Gaza without getting Palestinian approval.
The hospitals in Gaza are really incredible. We saw horrible
things. Al Shifa, the major hospital, has been raided and tear-
gased; wounded have been taken out. We also saw Ansar II
prison camp which was built for maximum 200 people, but
now holds 800. In the hospitals, it is really horrible to see peo-
ple with casts from their fingers to their shoulders because of
beatings where the soldiers just hold their arms out and beat
them. In fact, the soldiers have new clubs now, made of
plastic, so they won’t break.
THE NEW FASCISTS
The women in our group were all different in some way; they
had different levels of knowledge. One of them was a pretty
well-known writer in the USA, who happens to be Jewish. On
this trip, seeing the victims of the beatings, the razor cuts,
boiling water poured on children, she broke down at one point,
crying and saying that she was ashamed to be a Jew, and that
the Israelis’ reign of terror reminded her of Nazi Germany.
One day we went to Al Khalil (Hebron). The city was curfewed
and she went up to the commanding officer and asked why he
was doing this. He said he was just following orders, and she
said, «That’s what the Nazis said». This is not the kind of
woman who would randomly make such a comment; she really
believed that what she saw was Nazi-like treatment. Everyone
is a potential victim, the soldiers enter any house at random
and beat whoever they want. There were people who had been
beaten with rifle butts and clubs; then the soldiers take them to
military areas and start to slice their backs with razors - this is
sick.
About the little girl who had boiling water poured on her:
The soldiers were looking for her brother in a Gaza camp.
They went into the house and couldn’t find him, so they
poured boiling water over a four-year-old. I was in one house
in a village near Nablus. Soldiers were chasing some children
and claimed they were in this particular house, but.couldn’t
find them. Nonetheless, they beat the mother, three of the
daughters and one of the sons of the family. The mother suf-
fered a broken wrist; they all had to receive medical treatment.
This is the same village where soldiers dropped a couple of kids
from their helicopter.
When the group left, they were all strip-searched, even the
nuns, and interrogated separately for two hours each. Their
notebooks were taken and kept for a long time. I left later, and
was escorted by several agents from the airline counter to the
plane. I couldn’t even say good-by to the friends who had
brought me to the airport. Every single thing in my luggage
was taken apart. It was disgusting, and this is what some call
«the only democracy in the Middle East.»!!! )
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