Message from Caoimhe Butterley from Jenin

Tuesday June 11, 2002 17:54

by Nicholas McMurry - Cork Peace Alliance

Update from Palestine from Irish Solidarity Peace Worker.

>Annie Higgins and Caoimhe Butterley report from Jenin
> -recorded by Adam Keller-
>
>[Last night we talked with two members of the International
>Solidarity group who
>managed to enter Jenin a few hours after the army invaded it last Wednesday -
>Annie Higgins, an American from Chicago, and Caoimhe Butterley of Ireland.
>You can call them at 972-(0)51-589761.]
>
>"(...) The main thing we can do is to help keep some basic medical
>services going.
>The army is halting ambulances for thorough searches even when we are
>present, but
>still it seems to make a difference when they encounter a person from a Western
>country.
>Just when the army got into the city center we were in the hospital
>and heard of a car
>being shot at by a tank, and the driver being wounded. I [Caoimhe]
>went with the
>ambulance. When we got near the scene, the ambulance itself came
>under fire. I got
>out, with my hands raised high in the air, and approached the
>soldiers, walking slowly.
>I tried neither to provoke them not to appear frightened or
>intimidated. I talked in a
>matter of fact manner and tried to reason with them. They said that
>the driver had not
>been wounded but had gotten away from the car. After some discussion
>they allowed me to come near the place. It seems they were telling the truth,
>the car was empty and there were no signs of blood. Later we found that the
>driver had found refuge in a nearby house. (...) Making contact with soldiers
>definitely helped later, when the ambulance went to pick up an elderly man from
>one of the villages, who had trouble with the pacemaker in his heart. Our
>presence and our urging the soldiers about the danger to the man's life helped
>to make searches shorter, and we got him to the hospital in time.
>
>But it does not always work. There were the four men who were shot at
>by a helicopter
>gunship and severely wounded while they were travelling in a car at Jaba
>village, a few kilometres utside Jenin. We are still not sure if they were
>specifically targeted or just had the worst of bad luck. Anyway in this case
>the soldiers were very suspicous and made long searches, with the result that
>one of the wounded died who might have been saved if we had got him to the
>hospital in time. The other three were afterwards arrested by the army and
>taken away(...)
>I had been spent some time in Jenin in March, and got to know some people quite
>well. I had not been here in April, when the big horrors happened. At that time
>I had been in Ramallah, besieged inside Arafat's compound. I am not sure it had
>been the right decision to concentrate all the internationals there. When I got
>back here in May I found that two of my friends had been killed, they both bled
>to death. I am haunted by the thought that if I had been here at the time,
>going with the ambulances as I am doing now, I might have saved them. (...)
>The behaviour of the army seems rather erratic. They go out of the city and in
>again, there does not seem to be any clear pattern. So far they did not carry
>out large-scale arrests, though the inhabitants are expecting it to happen soon
>and of course it makes the people very nervous and insecure. Sometimes the
>tanks are in one neighborhood, then in the next. Sometimes they enforce the
>curfew, sometimes they don't. Sometimes they shoot at people which they find in
>the street without announcing a curfew first. The people just never know what
>to expect.
>The people in the refugee camp observe the curfew less than those in Jenin
>proper, perhaps because they had been through so many terrible hardships
>already that they became totally fatalistic, perhaps just because despite the
>widespread destruction there are still in the refugee camp many narrow alleys
>which provide people some shelter from the tanks. (...) There is very much
>random shooting going on. The other day, I passed two tanks which were just
>shooting into the empty streets. Nobody was shooting at them and they did not
>seem to aim at anything in particular, just a few shots here and a few there
>completely at random. I managed to ask one of the soldiers why they were doing
>this. He said 'We are shooting at buildings, not at people'. When I remarked
>that there were people inside the buildings who could be hurt, he just said
>'You can be sure that we know what we are doing', and refused to talk further."
>
>===================================================
>The Palestinian Centre for Rapprochement between People
>64 Star Street, P.O.Box 24
>Beit Sahour - Palestine
>www.rapprochement.org
>=================================
>The center is a non-profit making NGO, started in 1988 during the first Intifada.
>PCR runs community service programs, youth empowerment and training programs.
>PCR is also very much involved in the non-violent resistance against the Israeli Occupation to Palestine.
>
>
>[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

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Comments (3 of 3)

iaii aeøiða: auc÷ðei aoeaa iuc÷ iaøe÷

by Seanin

Tue Jun 11, 2002 22:40

îé÷ î÷àøú'é çì÷ ùáçéí ìùç÷ðéå, ùòùå àú äîåèì òìéäí ëùðéöçå àú ñòåãéä åòìå ìùîéðéú äâîø. äîàîï âí ùìç àæäøä áøåøä ìéøéáä äáàä (ñôøã àå ãøåí àôøé÷ä): "æä ìà éäéä úòðåâ ìäúîåãã îåìðå áùîéðéú äâîø"

îàîï ðáçøú àéøìðã, îé÷ î÷àøú'é, äéä áàåôåøéä ìàçø äðéöçåï 0:3 òì òøá äñòåãéú ùäáèéç àú òìééúä ùì àéøìðã ìùîéðéú äâîø îåì ñôøã àå ãøåí àôøé÷ä áéåí øàùåï. "ëåìí äéå áèåçéí ùðôñéã áùðé äîùç÷éí äøàùåðéí îåì âøîðéä å÷îøåï, àåìí îé ùìà úúîåãã ðâãðå, æä ìà éäéä úòðåâ ùì îîù òáåøä áéåí øàùåï".

òì äîùç÷ òöîå àîø î÷àøú'é: "äééðå ÷öú òöáðééí áîçöéú äøàùåðä, àåìí áîçöéú äùðééä äúàøâðå äéèá. äùç÷ðéí äâéáå èåá åäöéâå îùç÷ îáøé÷. ëåìí ùéç÷å îöåéï".

from jenin

by caoimhe butterly - i.s.m.

Tue Jun 11, 2002 20:36

masasa73 at hotmail dot com

jenin,palestine

although i am truly thankful for any initiative that re-focuses some attention on jenin camp and the continuing re-invasion of the entire west bank,the above article was not a very accurate transcription of a brief telephone conversation which i wasn't really informed would be used for a posting and although normally i'd let it be,i today,for the first time,read some of the articles written around my stay in the compound which were pretty misrepresentive -which is to be expected from the mainstream media,so it didn't bother me-but jenin camp and the courageous,resiliant,and loving people who inhabit what is left of it hold a far greater importance to me than the decaying,corrupt and often vicious decision-makers within the pal.authority whose complicity within the repression of a legitimate and just resistance to a brutal military occupation becomes more and more apparent-and therefore i'd wish if only when talking about jenin,on this one,not to be mis-quoted,as i feel as though i owe it to both friends here and to myself,in trying to facilitate this long painful journey of forgiving myself for using bravery in the wrong place,for the wrong people,instead of being here where the true battle of courage was being fought-to speak clearly,and truthfully about a continuing level of pressure and violence that is breaking people.i've been living here,in the camp,since april 17,(although i left briefly last week to balata camp,before and during the re-invasion of balata and the rounding up and inhumane detention over a four day period of over 3000 men from there while the israeli occupation forces then occupied and trashed the camp,subjecting the women and children left behind to four days of humiliation,verbal and often physical abuse as they went house to house destroying the limited material posessions that the inhabitants of balata,like jenin, have amassed through years of imposed unemployment and underpaid labour,and attempting to crush peoples'spirits in the process-showing them nowhere that vulnerable human flesh takes refuge is beyond the reach of the israeli army)and-in the past two months have witnessed a series of re-occupations of jenin which seem to have even less military value than usual as the violence becomes more and more erratic and indiscriminate,as last saturday illustrated,when two tanks rolled into town and shot above the heads of a large group of children waiting for their school buses,and continued to fire volleys of machine-gun fire into the air as the children fled.in the re-invasions the entire populace of both the town and camp are again put under 24-hour curfew,as most palestinians have for the last 240 of 365 days while the israeli army fires indiscriminately at homes,windows and anything that moves,continues to blow up or bulldoze the infrastructure of jenin,block ambulances and invariably kill,maim or injure a few people along the way.
it is breaking people-a process which i wouldn't have thought possible even a month ago as the people of 'moyhiam kandahar'are so incredibly strong,but the incertainty of living day to day with the the knowledge that your collective peoples'blood has been cheapened to the point that a steady,daily,rising death toll elicits no response or even interest by most of the world community and with the awareness that a system of even more complete isolation,re-occupation,and brutal repression is in the process of being implemented is proving a very burden to carry.although the large-scale invasions have wound down for the time-being,these re-invasions-in some ways-are harder,as there is no end in sight-palestinians are being denied not only the right to resist but also the right to hope,to breath,and to begin to pick up the desecrated pieces of their lives.

Tue Jun 11, 2002 18:09

055-975-374

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Message from Caoimhe Butterley from Jenin

Comments (3 of 3)