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Dear Everybody, Sorry for sending the e-mail without the attachement,,
probably it was a technical problem with the attachment. I will put more photos of the destruction in Bethlehem
area as a result of hte F-16 shelling sonn on our website, as a follow up for
the e-mail last night. I can tell you that many people in Bethlehem are did
not sleep last night expecting the Israeli soldiers to be in their houses any
time of the night. So, you will find them under the photo section. Yours George Rishmawi =================================================== ======================================= By: Huwaida Arraf Four-year-old Ahmed Khader’s heart raced with fear;
the children of the neighborhood told him that we were the Israelis back in his
home. The eight of us were not occupation soldiers. Rather we were
foreign civilians (5 Americans, 2 Belgian and one Irish) who had come to the
Balata Refugee Camp to express our solidarity with the people who had been
invaded, terrorized and pillaged on a 4-day raid of their home – a refugee
camp – by the Israeli military. The Israeli Armed Forces had just pulled out of the
camp that very morning of Monday March 4, 2002 when we arrived, and Ahmed, who
had been locked in one room (8' X 10') with other members of his family for the
4 days of the Israeli raid, feared that they had returned. Ahmed’s aunt
explained that we were friends, and the boy cautiously warmed up to us.
Ahmed wouldn’t talk about what had happened to them. He did however
admit that he was scared, that he “wasn’t brave.” Four days earlier,
armed Israeli soldiers had broken into the Khader home and ordered the 3 women (including
one pregnant and one elderly) and the three children aged 4-9 years, that were
in the home, into one room. They then proceeded to take over the rest of
the home. For the next 24 hours the women and children sat in the room,
without food, without relief. And since the Israeli army had cut the
electricity in the entire camp, little Ahmed and his family sat in the dark.
The soldiers did once give the family the option to leave, but promised them
that they would never come back. Already refugees and with nowhere else to
go, the family stayed. The next day the soldiers gave permission to the
women and children to go to the bathroom and for one of the women to quickly
make sandwiches for the kids…. We walked into a small, meager home, where an elderly
woman was sitting on the floor – a static-filled television set the only piece
of furniture in the small room. The woman turned to us crying as news of
Bushra Abu Kweik and her children’s killing* was being reported on the
television screen. “They’re killing all of our beautiful children.
They already took our homes and now they come after us in our refugee camps…”
I asked her if the Israeli soldiers had come into her home and she pointed to
the gaping hole in the wall behind me… ** Everyone in the streets wanted us to see the damage
that had been done to their homes and shops. It was not possible to see it
all. Balata is home to approximately 22,000 Palestinian refugees who had
been forced out of their homes in 1948, from towns and villages in what is now
called Israel. All had been abused and traumatized again by the Israeli
Armed Forces. Everyone had a story. All of the homes we saw were
severely damaged - windows blown out, walls dynamited as soldiers moved from
home to home, and some homes completely destroyed…. In the narrow streets and alleyways of the camp, people
could be seen clearing away rubble. An elderly dark-skinned man began
talking to me. “I lost my son, my mother and my home, but I still thank
God. I have my humanity.” Although I was running late for an
appointment I stepped into what remained of this man’s home where I was
introduced to his 12 daughters. A week earlier, Abdallah’s son was
killed by Israeli forces surrounding Nablus. Abdallah’s mother died two
days later. The next day, the Israeli Army entered his home. “I
tried to speak to the soldiers in Hebrew as I’ve worked in Israel for over 30
years and know Israelis and Hebrew well. One soldier saw a poster of my
slain son on the wall and put out his cigarette butt in between my son’s eyes
in the photo. He called him a terrorist and said he deserved to die as we
all [Palestinians] do.” Abdallah’s daughters quickly forgot their
reserve and began hurling questions, statements and accusations at me:
“The American president says we’re the terrorists, but who’s doing the
terrorizing?” What kind of people would steal the gold off a woman who
has so little? On top of taking our homes, killing our sons and coming
after us in our refugee camps, they take women’s gold! You tell them.
You tell the world that we’re not the terrorists. We want our freedom
and we will not give up our land. Never.” “I’m glad my mother
died when she did,” said Abdallah. I want to tell the world what I see. I want to
scream out against this injustice and madness, but who’s listening? The
refugees who I met in Balata asked me to be their voice, but is the world
willing to listen? I’m attaching a couple of photos from our visit to
Balata. If you are a journalist and would like more information or help
with arranging an interview with anyone in Balata or any of the foreign
civilians that visited Balata, please contact me at +972-52-642-709 or by email
at huwaidaa@yahoo.com. If you would like to help the residents of Balata in
their efforts to rebuild their homes, and with the costs of the programs that
are being established to work with the traumatized children, you can send
donations to: Bank: Arab Bank You may also contact Ms. Samar Hawash at
+972-9-238-3384; +972-9-239-1843; or +972-59-719-785 or by email at pwwsd@zaytona.com Thank you for listening. *An Israeli tank shell fired from the settlement
of Psagot targeted the car of Bushra and her children in the Amaari refugee
camp. The Army was out to
assassinate Bushra’s husband, Hussein Abu Kweik.
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