PGHIMC - Pittsburgh Independent Media Center

Prayer on the Blood of Family and Friends
by International Solidary Movement (Palestine) Tuesday, Apr. 12, 2005 at 4:45 AM

Shooting in Deir Ballut, Occupied Palestinian Territory. by Anna, International Solidarity Movement (ISM)

A) Prayer on the blood of family and friends by Anna

A few days ago I received the call I have been dreading... Four
people shot in Deir Ballut. Four people shot anywhere is a tragedy,
but I have a special affection for Deir Ballut and the people in it.
My colleague and rushed to the village, my heart pounding the whole
way, wondering which of my dear friends i might never see again. Two
friends directed us to the land, where the shootings had occurred.
one could hardly hold back her tears. We were stopped halfway there
by a familiar sight: the soldiers had declared the area a closed
military zone, and nobody was allowed any further... except, of
course, the wall workers and the bulldozers which continued their
destruction in the background. A group of women sat crying at the
soldiers knees. one woman grabbed me and told me that her brother
had been shot in the gut. she begged me to do something, to tell the
world. i was paralyzed, not knowing how I could ease her pain.

two men stepped forward and negotiated with the soldiers to be
allowed down to the land, where some people had remained after the
shootings. i walked behind them, explaining to the soldiers that i
felt there should be an international observer as i passed by. they
didn't stop me. they did, however, stop a professional journalist
and photographer who works for the french press because he is
palestinian. Their reasoning: first you are an arab, then a
journalist. for a while, i was the only reporter at the scene.

we walked quickly down to the land near the wall-work, where we
found most of the mothers of the victims. they wailed when the saw
me, holding up the bloody clothing for me to photograph. one jacket
had a bullet hole in the shoulder and the back. i wondered whose son
had been wearing it just a few hours before. i sat with the women in
solidarity, and asked them to tell me the story when they were
ready.

apparently the abdillah family had come down to their land to work
that morning, as they had been doing for several weeks. each day
they worked their land on one side of the valley, while the
bulldozers destroyed it on the other. they were tortured by the
injustice, but could do nothing. i asked if they sometimes threw
stones at the bulldozers out of anger, but they shook their heads.
what would be the point? plus, they knew the security guards for the
wall and sometimes even drank tea with them. they weren't the enemy
either.

but today that changed, said a man approaching who had heard me
speak to the women. his name was marwan. he explained that he and
four friends had walked a few meters towards the security guards
that day, to appeal to them to stop the destruction of their land.
they then yelled at the wall-workers to leave. According to him, the
security guards then open-fired on the group, hitting his four
friends almost simultaneously. he moved his hands past his head to
convey the feeling of bullets flying past his ears, and thanked god
that he had been spared. apparently, the closest sniper had been 10
meters away, and the rest were much further. He confirmed that not a
single stone had been thrown.

marwan led me around the area of the shootings. he pointed out drops
of blood on a few rocks, and then i began to notice the stains
myself... they were everywhere.

there were pools of blood thinning to paths where the victims had
struggled to walk away. i learned that one young man my age (25),
samir, was shot in the leg and actually made his way the 3 or so
kilometers (2 miles) back to the village with help from his friend
and a donkey. his injury seemed less serious than the others, who
had to wait for ambulances to arrive via, ironically, the path of
the wall. majid, samir's 30 year-old brother, was the one shot in
the shoulder and out the back. hamada, his cousin of 24, was shot in
the chest. the oldest victim khalil, 58, was shot near his groin and
out his backside. his 75 year-old mother was by my side the whole
time until she found the blood of her son on the leaves of a plant,
which she held up for all to see. i didn't know whether to take a
photograph or cry. i did both.

as we mourned, a nearby soldier pointed me out to his partner and
grinned. i wanted to vomit. how could he be so inhuman? he was not
the only smiling soldier, and i was reminded of all the innocent
young men and women of israel who have been dehumanized by their
military training. how far this is from the traditional compassion
of judaism! this occupation is destroying us all.

but it wasn't soldiers who shot samir, majid, hamada, and khalil. it
was guards from a private security company hired to protect the
bulldozers working on the wall. If it were the army, i could almost
guarantee there would be no investigation. Does that go for private
guards too? i can't understand it; what could those guards have been
thinking? were they so threatened by 5 familiar unarmed men yelling
at a distance from them? surely they aimed to kill if they hit one
in the chest and another in the shoulder... these guards are
subsidized by the israeli government to ensure the safety of the
jewish people of israel... what about the safety of everyone else?

i am unable to imagine what those guards were thinking, and for this
reason i found marwan's story unbelievable. but my skepticism
vanished when i went to visit samir and hamada in the hospital the
next day, and they both told the exact same story. hamada greeted me
with a big dazed smile and a weak handshake. he had been shot in the
chest, but thankfully the bullet went through his left breast from
side to the side, not front to back. so his heart remained
untouched, and it looks like he will be fine.

samir, a few doors down, was in far worse shape. after his long
struggle back to the village, he was turned back at the checkpoint
separating deir ballut from the road to ramallah. (this is the same
checkpoint where a pregnant woman lost her twin babies last year
when she was denied access to the nearest equipped hospital in
ramallah because she went into labor during checkpoint closing hours
[i will send out an update with the whole story shortly]. clearly
things haven't gotten better. my good friend sofia almost had the
same experience, and waited 3 painful hours at the checkpoint in the
middle of the night before being permitted to pass to have her baby
in ramallah six months ago.) samir was forced to take a long and
extremely bumpy road to the town of biddya, where he was told that
they didn't have the proper equipment to treat such a serious
injury. only then was he permitted to reach ramallah, via two
ambulances because he had to be carried over a roadblock in the
middle of the trip.

needless to say, samir lost valuable time and a lot of blood during
the ordeal, and remains in a great deal of pain. when i entered he
recognized me but could hardly speak. he just kept biting his lower
lip, looking up at the ceiling with tears in his eyes. apparenlty
the bullet severed the source of blood to his feet (presumably a
major artery), and at this stage even the doctors in ramallah are
helpless. he is currently waiting for a passport (these are not
automatic for palestinians) so he can try a hospital in jordan. who
knows how his family will pay for it.

i didn't get to see majid nor khalil because they are being treated
in Israeli hospitals (which means maybe the government realizes they
are in some way to blame?), but i did go to visit their families in
deir ballut. Majid's wife welcomed me warmly and explained how
attached her husband was to the land they were losing. for him and
many other palestinians, land is like a child, connected to you in
that deep inexplicable way through interdependence and blood (the
villagers' hands are calloused with scars from the rough manual
labor). That's why he had taken the kids to work the fields with him
that day, saying "if they take our land, they might as well take us
with them." but the kids are now permanently traumatized, having
witnessed a bullet fly through their father. apparently they
gathered around him afterwards, screaming "baba! baba!" ("daddy!
daddy!").

the children of khalil are my age and have children of their own.
they appreciated my visit and told me what serious condition their
father was in because of his age and the proximity of the bullet to
his crotch. we sat in silence until the children started to goof
around and break the somber mood, as children always do so
skillfully. they asked me about my family and invited me to marry
someone in deir ballut and settle down there. it's not the only time
I've heard that this week, and each time i am more tempted. but i
told them my response to every such proposal: i am here to do
peacework, not to get married.

the next day, the village of deir ballut held a demonstration in
protest of the wall-work and the shootings. their plan was to pray
on the rocks stained with the blood of their loved ones. hundreds of
villagers and several internationals and israelis gathered and
marched towards the symbolic land. not surprisingly, the soldiers
were waiting for us along the way, and formed a line across the path
with their bodies to prevent the protesters from continuing.

the group responded to the obstacle in different ways. one group of
men started talking to the soldiers in hebrew, explaining why it was
important for them to pass. a group of women from the group "women
for life" began singing a traditional palestinian folk song and
other cheers, invigorating the group in the face of adversity. a few
children climbed the rocks above the path, holding flags in silence
as photographers documented the scene beside them. but the soldiers
were unmoved; nobody could pass. and so the resistance stepped up a
notch.

an old woman stopped yelling and started pushing. she pushed her way
through the crowd and then through the line of soldiers, who hardly
knew what had hit them. Then came another woman, whom they tried to
stop, but by the time she'd passed a certain point, they could no
longer attend to her because it meant a weaker stronghold with
the main group. and so, one by one, several brave individuals broke
through the line of soldiers. after each passage, the group cheered
with refreshed energy and determination. the group of people who had
made it through encouraged others to come join them. i saw my friend
reem trying to get around the side of a soldier and I rushed to her
side to help her. i put out my hand and a soldier scooted between
us. still i pulled, and the solder pushed back, and before i knew it
reem's husband had jumped in the middle to help his wife. he was
angry at the soldier for touching her forcefully. then his brother
joined in to help and suddenly things escalated and everyone was
pushing and shoving. i saw reem's brother-in-law being dragged on
the ground by his neck. then the soldiers began to throw sound bombs
to scatter the crowd, one after another. reem and i watched from the
side, paralyzed and clutching one another, the sound bombs exploded
in our ears and faces. we closed our eyes and waited for it to be
over. when we opened our eyes, we were relieved to see that reem's
husband had emerged from the conflict unscathed, but his brother's
arm was being wrapped from a sprain. still, i felt lucky that there
were no more injuries and my heart-rate began to return to normal. i
was thankful that the soldiers could not use tear gas because they
were so close that they would be gassed themselves, plus the wind
would take it away immediately.

the demonstrators were not deterred. when the smoke had cleared they
returned to continue their struggle. it seems those most affected by
the confrontation had been the soldiers, who seemed shaken. they
agreed to let the protesters through, but only in groups of five.
they seemed very pleased with themselves for their generosity. An
israeli activist friend and i watched them work, wondering how it
was that they saw it as their authority to give palestinians the red
or green light to go to their own land. we couldn't understand the
five person rule, except that it reiterated how things were being
done on their terms, even though most would say they had been
defeated this time.

the demonstration proceeded quickly to the land where the shootings
had taken place; it was almost time to pray. parents, siblings,
children, and friends of the victims lined up to worship together on
the symbolic land. there were still drops of blood visible
everywhere, and a young girl wore her uncle's jacket with the blood
and bullet-holes for everyone to see. the imam called a prayer on
the loudspeaker that echoed across the valley to where the
bulldozers continued their destruction. The villagers prayed in
unison, in solidarity, each connecting to the land individually for
a moment. when they finished, they began their long walk home. it
was a small victory in a long fight, but there was feeling of
empowerment and hope within us as we walked, a reminder to those
still nursing wounds from a few days before.

as i write this i learn that 3 young boys aged 14/15 were killed in
gaza yesterday when they ran towards the "security fence" to fetch a
soccer ball. the hell their communities must be going through. the
violence continues, whether or not you hear about it on the news.
these are not isolated events, we just don't usually have the
misfortune of being so close to them.

in peace and solidarity,
anna

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