Jenin:

international | anti-capitalism | news report Sunday October 12, 2003 23:01 by www.soundslikefreedom.org - sounds-like-freedom sounds_like_freedom at yahoo dot co dot uk

Give me liberty or give me death

The last 8 days of reprisal, mass arrests and curfew in Jenin, Occupied Palestine

"give me liberty or give me death" - the walls of Jenin refugee camp.
for free information from Jenin, Occupied Palestine see www.soundslikefreedom.org
Jenin woke up smaller today (07/10/2003), missing 31
boys and men, arrested during the early hours of the
morning, about 17 from the refugee camp and 14 from
the city and outskirts. The tanks and APCs used in the
operation retreated at about 6 o'clock, while the men
were held in a house in Harat Sharkiyye, later to be
taken to Salem military base for interrogation. It was
an attack at anyone associated with the politics of Jihad Islami.

Families and friends now grieve for those brutally
wrenched from them this morning. Some have gone
through this process many times before, having either
lost other sons in similar operations or seen the same
son be incarcerated and released time and time again,
one as many as four times in the last year. Others are
left reeling from the shock of having had soldiers in
their house, cocking their guns and barking orders at
them, telling them to leave the house and go outside
in the middle of the night and then taking their
sons, brothers, fathers, and husbands with them,
mostly young boys 17-20 years old. One house had five
men taken from it, the youngest a boy of fifteen. The
soldiers beat him in front of his family and took him
away with blood streaming down his head. Two brothers
were taken from a family that lost two other sons to
Israeli prisons only six months back. Two young wives,
8- and 9 months pregnant respectively, are now left to
tend to their scared and sleep-deprived toddlers
without help from their husbands. The woman who is
nine months pregnant has three other children ubder
the age of five. One of her daughters was so
traumatised she couldn't look at me without crying, my
foreign-ness reminding her of the soldiers. Apart from
the obvious grief of losing a life-partner and parent,
they also fear the financial consequences that this
will bring. Maintaining a livelihood under an
occupation characterised by its long bouts of
crippling curfew and closure is hard enough as it is
when the family unit is whole and strong, but
imprisonment and killings deal further blows to a
fragile situation. Parents are found sifting through
cardboard boxes of photos of their sons, talking about
them as if they were dead only hours after their
unwarranted and brutal arrests. Others put on a brave
face, shrugging as they relate tales of past
detainments, kidnappings and beatings that have all> ended relatively well.
The family of Sheik Bassam, the political leader of

Islamic Jihad arrested only a week ago suffered
another loss, when the army came to take Izz, their
sixteen year old son. He is not wanted by the
Israelis, but the soldiers said that "his father is a
terrorist". Izz's mother has already had to endure the
deaths of her oldest sons, twins aged 17, who were
assassinated outside her house. Her remaining children
have had enough trauma but still the soldiers come and
take what and who they can. The next day they were
tired with wide eyes, talking quickly about the
soldiers taking their brother away. It is likely they
want to use Izz to make his father talk. He is anyway,
the last male left in the family of arrestable age,
though not of killing age as his cousin was killed> when he was only a baby.

The next day (the 8th of October 2003) saw the arrests
of twenty five more young men in Jenin, and the day
after that brought the arrest toll to 71 in three days.>

Report from 12/10/2003 in Jenin:>
Today is the eighth day of manata jawal (curfew) in a
row, with curfew having been lifted for only three or
four hours one day last week so people could stock upon supplies.
The IOF arrested the wife of Amjad Esa Badi (the Jenin
head of Saraya Al Quds- Jihad Islami's military wing),
a few days after their home was demolished. Following reports
in the Israeli press, the word on the street is that she, along with
certain close relatives to other political activists, is now to be exiled
to Gaza.

Today has been fairly quiet, and most of the shops are
open, but yesterday and the day before the army was
enforcing curfew. Hummers were chasing around trying
to arrest people, and tanks/ APCs were shooting a lot.
As far as I am aware, no one was shot yesterday, but
Mah'mod, a 14 year old from the refugee camp, climbed
on to a tank or APC and a soldier opened the hatch and
hit him in the head with his rifle. I was not there,
but he has a big bruise on his head and his family are
saying this is what happened.

The day before that two people were shot, a ten year
old boy and the kid who sells coffee on stone throwers
corner. He was shot in the knee by an APC. I don't know
when and where the ten year old boy was shot, but apparently he will be ok.

They have stopped the night time raids on Jihad Islami
members as far as I am aware (presumably because there
can't be that many men on their list they havn't
taken). There are still 60+ people languishing in
Salem though, and it is unsure what will happen to> them.

I assume you have already heard the news of at least 9
Palestinians killed in Rafah, Gaza , 70+ injured and
100 house demolitions since the area was invaded on
Thursday night. The Israelis are now pulling back from
their invasion of Rafah though, or so they claim, local sources contradict this.

There are already noticeable demographic gaps in the Jenin population, a massive amount of young men having either been arrested or forced into hiding and seclusion by Israeli suspicions. Many keep watch throughout the night, so as not to be caught unawares if or when the soldiers come, and then sleep away half the day. Others no longer stay in their families' houses, preferring to move around in the hope of fooling Israel intelligence services and their Palestinian collaborators. It's not in any way a long-term sustainable situation, causing great extended trauma to both those in hiding and their loved ones. When a man is wanted, common opinion is that it is not a matter of if but of when he will be caught. Resistance to the occupation will not be tolerated and the propaganda machine manufactures tales of terror to mask what is really going on - the taking and torturing of what are clearly political prisoners. Political prisoners with personal ambitions and dreams now shattered try passing through a checkpoint, boarding an airplane, getting a work
permit... with an Israeli police record of any kind), and with people who love them now fearing for their lives, thumbing their ID polaroid, talking about them in the past tense. Their loved ones sit in "cells" too low to stand or kneel in, being interrorgated, beaten, humiliated and threatened. It is the experience of any Palestinian woman who resists the ocupation of her land and every Palestinian man whether he resists or not, because whatever he does, the first lesson he must learn is in exactly whose hands the power lies. And nothing teaches you that better than prison, the most complete theft of your liberty possible, next to death.