“Ramallah, Ramallah, Ramallah…yani, Ramallah zay Amerika! Shu hada? Fish muqawame fi Ramallah!” Ramallah is like America. What is this? There is no resistance in Ramallah. Mohamed is smiling. This is the last time we will see each other. Our common complaints about Ramallah – which has more burger joints than shaheed posters – are being repeated by both of us, somewhat ritualistically and with smiles. We had ourselves a nice time in the last few days. Hanging out with friends and exploring the center of the Palestinian Authority and that of Palestine’s social-elites. Visits to Birzeit, to the center, and around town. On the way down we crossed burning olive groves, set on fire by Israeli colonists. The flames allowed to do their job by nearby Border Police units, apparently defending the burning mess. We’re once again at Qalandiya checkpoint. Again. A giant grey monstrosity of a wall is behind Mohamed. The hideous checkpoint that has mutated over the time since I first got here is now behind me, incorporating new ‘security’ features into its nightmarish version of a minimalist-functionalist facade. Newly installed revolving turn-styles are creaking. A new sound in the architecture of apartheid. The guard in the watchtower charred by the flames of a Molotov and painted black by boya is staring at us. We hug. Mohamed has tears in his eyes. This is my last contact with anyone from Nablus before I turn to hit the checkpoint in the direction of Jerusalem.   more »

In the popular folklore Nablus is known as jaba’al l-nar or The Fire Mountain for its long history of spirited resistance to foreign invasion and popular rebellion against local notables. Last night was a long night. I didn’t sleep. Instead I was recollecting thoughts about my last nine-months here, thinking about my future life outside Palestine. This is my last night in Nablus, my last night in Balata. This is the last time I will hear the muezzin’s morning call at 4am in the morning. When I leave tomorrow, I will leave changed from when I got here, but nothing will change here in Balata. The cruel realities of the occupation will continue. This is not to say that there is some type of immutable reality here of pain and suffering like in some 19^th century orientalist travelogue. In fact, things are changing here constantly - but the harsh rhythms of death, punctured by the sounds of mechanized tank treads grinding on refugee-camp pavement, don’t look like they will abate any time soon. I’ve been running around for the past week saying my goodbyes, frantically gathering email addresses, phone numbers and mailing coordinates to ensure that I will somehow stay connected to the people here. There’s a lot to say, but it will probably take time for all my impressions to come out. Sometimes the less said the better.

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10 military jeeps spent most of the day patrolling Nablus today, raiding the casbah, the duwar/Faisal street area, the Balata refugee camp, and imposing curfew on Rafidiya - which was the scene of recent execution-style killings and sniper attacks perpetrated by the IDF. Soldiers deployed in Rafidiya were particularly undisciplined in their behavior as they taunted motorists, played power-games with Palestinians unlucky to be caught breaking the curfew, blared sirens to disrupt the call to prayer and even threw a sound-grenade on the roof of the mosque near where their jeeps were parked for no other reason than to harass the few worshipers inside. In the evening pitched clashes between the local resistance and the military broke out near the Al-Jasmeen Hotel on the edge of the Old City. Further away, on the jaba’al shamal (northern mountain), 19 year old Beriza Durgham Menawi was shot in the heart and killed instantly while standing on her roof observing the Israeli military operations in the area. Tonight, the mosques are broadcasting eulogies to the ‘shaheeda l-batal Beriza Durgham Menawi’ over loudspeakers while the military operations continue.   more »

Early this morning the sounds of pitched battles could be heard by friends in town. One fellow ISM volunteer staying in the Old City described the situation in the following terms in an SMS: “Sum explosions, shooting &apache at this end. Dnt knw wot they r doin. Mayb we shud chek it out in the morning. (05:20:50).” Now the news is slowly filtering in that at least five people have been killed. The mosque here in Balata still hasn’t been able to gather the names of those killed, but it’s already read statements from the Al-Aqsa Brigades and the Al-Awda Brigades denouncing the killings. Medical teams are still being denied access to the area of the clashes, so the death toll could be higher. From reports on the ground there is a group of D9 bulldozers moving into the area at this moment – presumably to demolish the home - and tanks were also brought in and are still on the streets. Haaretz is reporting the IDF’s claim that its forces were fired upon while conducting a routine nightly raid. Details are sketchy. I’ll post more information as it becomes available. In the meantime I will be with the joint ISM/PMRS’ team being formed to assist in efforts aimed at negotiating medical access to the site. Please call the DCO and demand that the Israeli military withdraw its forces from the city: + 972 2 5486218.   more »

(Photo: AFP/Mahmud Hams)

Today a group of right-wing rabbis from the Yesha - the Hebrew acronym for Judea and Sumaria (a designation used by the settler movement in Israel to denote the West Bank) – released an open letter to Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz demanding that the government step up its operations in the Occupied Territories, even if such operation resulted in the increased loss of civilian lives. Arguing that ‘[t]here is no war in the world in which it is possible to delineate entirely between the population and the [enemy] army’ the rabbis posed the rhetorical question of whether “the IDF [should] fight the enemy, if civilians [on the other side] will be killed, or should the IDF refrain from fighting, and thus endanger our civilians?” The rabbis’ conclusion? “Our lives come first.” The letter continues by stating that “we will not view favorably those who prefer the lives of our enemies on our own lives.” At around the same moment that the not so subtly racist letter was penned, Israeli Air Force (IAF) jets fired missiles into the Sheikh Ahmed Yassin Stadium, a Hamas-run sporting complex in Gaza, killing fourteen Palestinians and injuring 12. In the nearby city of Khan Yunis, a young school-girl Raghda Al-Asar (13) was also shot in the head by IDF fire during military operations involving tanks deployed near a school in the city. Doctors proclaimed her clinically dead a few hours after arriving to the local hospital.   more »

At the duwar in Nablus, the hunger strikers’ tent is packed with families of Palestinian political prisoners who are being held in Israeli jails. Since August 15, nearly all the 7,000-8,000 Palestinian prisoners held in prison facilities throughout the region have gone on hunger strike at one point or another in the last few weeks. This is one of the largest manifestations of non-violent direct action during this Intifada. The prisoners’ demands are simple and are generally aimed at achieving the rights reserved to them under the Fourth Geneva Convention – including the right of being allowed physical contact with their children and loved ones. Today, though, is a special day here in Nablus as the body of the martyr Aisha Azabin (55) has been brought to the tent in the center of town directly from Ramallah where she died yesterday from health complications induced by her decision to go on hunger strike. The giant sheet that serves as the roof of the huger-strikers’ tent has been repaired for the occasion – having been shot up and damaged in an Israeli military raid a few days ago – and under its shade there is a curious murmur.   more »

The Shaheen family had guests over. The carefully prepared pastries still in evidence, although now strewn on the floor, or left unfinished on the table along with dark Arabic coffee. Some signs of what was occurring before the IDF entered their home tonight, during a wedding party for their daughter, still in evidence. And then…the customary sites now: overturned sofas, furniture strewn about, bullet holes all over the place – including nearly a dozen at head level near the front door – papers everywhere, and again, broken faces, annoyed at the intruders, journalists, medical volunteers, shebab and, of course, activists that come on the heals of the military raid. Some of the men recount their story. Forcibly taken, blindfolded and cuffed to Huwara. Interrogations and some ‘light’ beatings. During the raid, from the row of ambulances sitting on an adjacent street outside, we could see the shop owner of a corner-store nearby made to sit on the ground by the soldiers milling about. A pregnant woman got clearance to be evacuated after hours of waiting. Women and children were all emptied out of the building and left in the street. On other streets shebab throwing stones and burning barricades. In one home a woman is evacuated after inhaling tear-gas from a canister launched by soldiers over a school and into her home. Two Palestinians wounded tonight, at least one critically. Some clashes between the soldiers and fighters also took place. The crackle of Kalishnikov’s and M-16s rips across a purple sky framing minarets and city lights.   more »

Walking to the bank machine. Market day. A Thursday. Families are out buying goods, food, provisions, shopping before Friday – when everything is closed. There are mostly women in the crowd, children milling about. The human concentration is thick, heat outside, hijab in abundance. And then…panicked faces, people running in multiple directions. It suddenly feels like I’m in some horror movie – the expressions on faces extreme, terrified. And among the crowd, on the street, there are three Border Police jeeps in evidence heading to the Hunger Strikers’ tent in the duwar. A shot rings out into the crowd from the last jeep in the small convoy. The man in front of me crumples to the ground. Blood is slowly gushing from his head – a squishy hole just above his eye. I rip some material from one of the green-wheeled stalls next to me and apply pressure to the wound as other men pick him up and we carry him to the nearest ambulance. And so the day begins. More occupied houses, four more injured (including a father and his small girl, sniped at by soldiers across the way). Heavy shooting at a bakery nearby. Blood on hands again. Empty Old City streets. Cramped movement. Heavy presence of armored vehicles, bursts of Apache helicopter gunships overhead. The IDF finally pulls out in the evening. The city broken once again under a cool breeze at twilight. A flu virus is going around these days as well.   more »

The ‘break’ didn’t last long. Last night at 2am the soldiers came back to the old city. This morning at 6:30 am we were woken up by a call from our coordinator in Askar and told that the military was rounding up men in the refugee camp. By the time we reached the premises of the UNRWA Askar Girl’s School, some 1,000 men between the ages of 16-40 had been rounded up and detained by the IDF in overcrowded school rooms or outside in the sun. Familiar scenes, cramped premises, men hooded and shackled on the grounds of a UN facility – with no UN staff around. Razor wire dividing the playground with soldiers milling about the area. We manage to negotiate the right for family members to bring food, water and medicines to the detained men – but in other areas of the camp we’re unable to prevent the house-to-house searches, home occupations, beatings and general property destruction perpetrated against the Palestinian refugees.

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Friday was a relatively quiet day, but the calm – naturally – didn’t last long as the IDF reinvaded the Old City and imposed curfew again at around 2:00am on Saturday morning occupying some 15 homes. House-to-house searches have resumed – including the IDF practice of blowing holes through the walls of houses to move between homes. For a report prepared by the ISM Media Office on the activities of ISM volunteers and Medical Relief teams in the Old City, click here. For pictures of the destruction and actions in the Old City click here and here. Among the wounded in Nablus was a boy who was shot in the neck. In Balata, meanwhile, 5 jeeps returned at around 4 pm – after being absent for nearly a week – entering deep into the camp and enveloping the whole area around the cemetery in tear-gas. The long-suffering Walweel home was occupied again. 8 Palestinians were injured – including a 13-year old boy who was shot in the mouth just before the soldiers pulled out of the camp, another shot in the groin area by a live round and a Medical Relief volunteer who was shot in the chest by a rubber bullet. Furthermore, three international volunteers with the ISM who went to check on the status of the Walweel family – Franz Bortenschager (Austria), Todd Greenwood (UK), and Uve Claussnitzer (Germany) – were kidnapped by the Israeli military. Their ordeal is described below as related to us by Aaron (USA), another ISM volunteer who was left behind in the house after the soldiers moved out of the premises.
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Nablus, 10:30 PM – According to PMRS volunteers, the detained men have been released. I’ve just returned from the El-Ein camp where a group of internationals was monitoring the situation. The pictures below were taken by an Italian volunteer that has been working with ISM Nablus. According to Adam Hanieh of Sumoud, the photos "illustrate typical treatment of Palestinians arbitrarily detained by the Israeli army (hooding and shackled). Over 20,000 Palestinians have been detained during mass, arbitrary arrests in the West Bank over the last 2 years." The presence of the white DCO jeep in the vicinity of the men is an indication that senior commanders in the Israeli occupation force are complicit in such abuses. For a comprehensive report on the violations of international humanitarian law perpetrated by the Israeli military with respect to detainees and prisoners, click here for a recently released report prepared by Sumoud in partnership with the Adameer Prisoners' Support and Human Rights Association.

Nablus, 1:30 PM - This is a quick alert to update you on the current situation in Nablus. Today, marks the fourth day since the IDF re-invaded the city and imposed a curfew over the Old City, the surrounding neighborhoods and the El Ein refugee camp – ostensibly to locate Qassam-like rockets, which according to Haaretz, quoting military sources, were tested in Balata on August 7^th (the claim is absurd for people who’re living in the camp though, after all it’s not like it would be easy to miss the fact that missile testing was going on in such cramped conditions!). Since the invasion began, one house in the Jasmeena Quarter of the casbah was demolished, two civilians have been killed, and dozens injured (PMRS figures put the casualties at slightly over 30). The IDF has been carrying out house-to-house searches, entering and trashing hundreds of homes, as well as occupied dozens of houses over the last few days. One of those killed on Tuesday was 10 year old Khaled Al-Kutsa, who was shot in the Old City by IDF fire. The most recent news, confirmed by credible eyewitnesses on the scene, is that the IDF has rounded up all the men between the ages of 14 to 40 in the El-Ein Refugee Camp and is holding them in the UNRWA run school inside the camp. Please contact the Nablus DCO (+ 972 2 548-6218) to lodge your protest against the IDF’s unlawful actions and to demand the immediate release of the Palestinian men currently being detained in El-Ein.more »

As already mentioned yesterday, the Israeli Public Security Minister Tzachi Hanegbi set the tone for the Palestinian political prisoners’ hunger strike campaign that began today. At a press-conference Hanegbi declared that, “The prisoners can strike for a day, a month, even starve to death as far as I’m concerned.” And so, with all the sensitivity one would expect from someone capable of such utterances, the 1,500 prisoners at the Nafah, Eishel, and Hadarim prisons – who began their hunger-strike today – were stripped of any access to news (radio, TV, newspapers), cigarettes, and family visits. Israeli Prison Service official Eli Gabizon said that the authorities are ready to use IV tubes if necessary to force feed prisoners in order to fulfill Hanegbi’s promise that, “We will ward off this strike and it will be as if it never happened.” Furthermore, Yosi Boni, head of the Border Police in the East Jerusalem area has even invoked the hunger strike as an excuse to erect more roadblocks in the Jerusalem area. The hunger strike is supposed to spread among Palestinian political detainees in order to encompass most Israeli prison facilities by the end of the week.   more »

Sometimes you just have to go with your gut. The IDF invaded the camp again right after the Friday noon prayer. We were heading up to grab some kebab when suddenly shopkeepers started frantically packing their stuff up and kids, women and old men began running to get home or slip into a friends store before the metal shutters were slammed down to shut out the chaos breaking out outside. Maybe it’s because three people told me that I should be careful because I might be shot in the head today, or because most people were crouching in alleyways, or maybe because everybody had a bad gut-feeling about going out into the streets today, or maybe because it was Friday the 13th, or maybe because the IDF kept firing at anyone who popped a head out of the alleyway, but for some reason we all decided to hang-back today and take it easy.   more »

It’s really fucking dark in the alleyway and as I look up I see an actual tree inside Balata framed by the moonlight. The camp is all concrete and trees are really rare, other than near the UN compound and a few near the cemetery. Beside me a boy is fiddling with a balloon. Other shebab are singing “The Lions of Faluja” – a song that has quickly become one of the most popular tunes here. I’m with a PMRS team and we’re crouching in the alley to avoid the clashes between fighters and the IDF taking place on the main street…This morning…frantic buzzing on our intercom at 8:30 am. Shebab are telling us that there are jeeps in the camp. The IDF seems intent on harassing and unbalancing the remaining wanted into making some type of mistake. This is why the raids are more frequent and unpredictable, although they only end up terrorizing the civilian population that are disproportianetly affected. And today they seem to be out in full force. In our immediate vicinity there are 5 jeeps circling around the mosque this morning. We hear that there are jeeps near the cemetery as well and we decide to check the scene out there. The military is driving in and out of the camp, shooting at people in alleyways and on the streets. Within minutes someone is hit. He’s bleeding from the shoulder as Phil and some others rush to the UNRWA hospital to give him some medical attention. A few hours later Abed Abu Rizik and Ahmed Zaki are shot in the arm and stomach respectively. Abed’s arm was shot off while getting away from a jeep that had pulled up to the alleyway and opened fire on the group of youth inside it. Abed was hit and I can see blood spurting from a dangling arm, a bloody pattern sprayed all over the wall behind him – the arm looks like a mess, it makes no sense to me visually. I’m too stunned by the sight of distorted lumps of flesh to act on this one, although PMRS crews quickly pick him up and carry him to a nearby ambulance.   more »

Again shebab are at our door this morning - a whole crew of them. They are agitated about some soldiers on the fringes of the camp who’ve apparently beaten a man seriously. As we make our way down the main street, shebab in tow, the picture begins filling out. Firas, the watchman of the Haj Nimer Tamimi Trading and Transport Co. bus compound – located in an open field in Rujeib village on the southern edge of the Balata camp – was hit repeatedly by IDF troops when two jeeps entered the premises at 7am to quarter their vehicles in the compound. As we approach the site, we can see Firas in the window of the watchtower waving over to us. Siama, Rebecca and Federica head over to negotiate with the soldiers and we’re eventually allowed to bring him out of his tower. Visibly shaken he needs a chair to sit, too weak and frail from the beating and denial of food/water for the past few hours to stand. We call ambulances but they are too tied up to respond. After half an hour – and more military jeeps appearing on the scene - we call a cab and rush Firas to the hospital, constantly looking behind us in fear that an Israeli military jeep was following us.   more »

It wasn’t enough that the soldiers had to throw sound grenades at an open air cultural festival – packed with families – in Rafidia two nights ago and then trigger clashes in the El-Ein refugee camp, but then they had to go start occupying houses like mad for the next few days and terrorizing the people inside. And then today, they simply went on a rampage leaving behind a bloody mess. Haaretz is reporting 26 injured and we know of at least one dead, Salim Al-Qusa (17) - shot in the chest by snipers that had occupied the Freitekh building. Two others sustained rubber-bullet wounds to the head, including Sami Abu Mostafah (14/15) who was dropped by a IDF jeep this evening in Balata. The ISM volunteers on the scene carried his limp body to the PMRS ambulances nearby. The boy’s eyes rolling back in his head, body twitching and blood spurting from the back of his head is a scene I’m sure we’ll all be processing for a while…Latest news is that he’s being treated at the Nablus Specialty Hospital on An-Najah Street, but that his condition is still critical. I take it as a good sign though that the muezzin in the camp still hasn’t read any statements about his martyrdom a few hours after the incident occurred.   more »

Well...it’s not like they ever actually left. After all there are always the routine nightly raids in Balata and the Old City, there are always the house occupations and there’s of course the terror sniping unleashed by IDF Special Forces several days ago in the duwar (resulting in four casualties), but today the IDF returned in the sense that its military operations have been stepped up. From the occupied houses that were evacuated this morning in the Old City and on the Ebal mountain (north of the Watani Hospital) – including the Freitikh, Al-Ayesh, Al-Hajji, and Al-Teety buildings in these areas – to the military raid this evening in Balata, to the occupied house on Al-Quds street, to tonight’s Apache over-flights, clashes in Rafidiya, rumours of more occupied houses, jeeps and Merkava tanks patrolling Amman Street (between Askar and Balata camps), and the omnipresent search light casting its silvery/white-glow from the At-Tur mountain base on the collection of cement buildings in the valley below, it’s clear to everyone that the IDF is preparing something. Unconfirmed reports coming in through SMSs, MSN Messenger chat, and phone calls is that 3 people were shot in Beit Furik and that there are injured in Askar as well. But what exactly is being planned by the IDF – an assassination, hounding the wanted, or simply planning an operation/invasion - nobody, as usual, knows…   more »

This afternoon, clashes at the duwar. Special Forces and snipers were infiltrated into four buildings around the center of the city. Heavy clashes and gunfire rippling though the air. I was in Balata doing interviews for this research I’ve been commissioned to do, but I’m getting consistent calls from the ISM volunteers updating me on the situation. There are rumors of injured and killed soldiers – but as usual those prove more wishful thinking than reality. In fact, by the time the military pulled out, three Palestinians– Ayman Abu Leil (14), Mohamed Zablah (19), and Nasser Edin Shalabi (35) – were injured and Awad Hashash (29), a political activist with the PFLP from the Balata camp who ran a kiosk downtown, was killed by a bullet to the head. Tonight, there’s more speeches from the mosque and another jenazi/funeral in the twilight of Balata’s green-domed mosque, breaking a relatively long-stretch in which nobody has been killed in this city and the surrounding refugee camps.   more »

Today, I got news that my grandmother had passed away. It suddenly hit me that she was one of the reasons that I ended up in one of the worst corners of the Middle East. In her youth she had joined the anti-fascist resistance in Yugoslavia, fighting the Nazis under Tito’s Partizans. After the war my grandfather – her husband - ran weapons to the Greek communists who where fighting former fascist collaborators that had become American and British allies under the twisted-logics of the Cold War. In one of our last conversations she told me the following: “I know what it means to live under occupation, and this is why I understand everything that the Palestinians are doing. If I was younger, I would definitely join you in Palestine today.” The woman was one of the strongest people I knew and her death has really left an impression on me. She was a committed atheist, so saying she’s in a ‘better place’ now would probably offend her. The only way of moving forward I guess is to honor her memory by continuing the struggle for the ideals she fought for.   more »

Ghassan Shakah…Whenever the name comes up in the international media I know that what will follow will be a series of lies and distortions serving his agenda and that of his US backers - trying to paint Nablus as some sort of ‘lawless’ wilderness that needs a firm hand. Of course, the fact that ‘facts’ as introduced by Shakah - the former, highly unpopular mayor of Nablus - go unchallenged by well-trained news-agency ‘reporters’ (i.e. glorified transcribers/stenographers of elite world-views) should not be a surprise. However, it’s been extremely strange for me to be so close to where international news is being produced – I mean literally manufactured – and simultaneously witness the complete disconnect between what is being reported as ‘fact’ abroad and what is actually occurring on the ground. Of course, the ‘kidnapping’ of two days ago here in Nablus falls into this general pattern of media-manipulations by one of Palestine’s key ‘reformists’ – yet another euphemism deployed by the press, and used in this case to denote pliant, pro-American elements in the Palestinian Authority and its leadership.   more »

Not exactly a ‘normal’ day this one. You know things are wrong when you step outside your front door step to head to your favorite breakfast place only to find yourself in the middle of a kung-fu action flick with thirty guys punching each other in the face and cracking sticks over each others heads. This was Part 2 of the Tarawi vs. Hashashi family feud that broke out in the spring of this year, when a Hashashi killed a Tarawi because they refused to shut their shops during a general strike in the camp declared for a martyr from the Hashashi family. Within a few minutes today’s melee was broken up, but it resumed moments later and three people where knee-capped and sent to hospital. It seems like the Tarawi’s aren’t too popular in the camp, because they are relatively rich, keep commercial stalls near the mosque, and are related to Jamal Tarawi a high-ranking official in the Palestinian security services.   more »

Yesterday, I successfully renewed my visa. On Monday night, after the settler demo, I had gone to a friend’s house who wrote a letter for me in Hebrew stating that I’d been living with their family during my stay in Israel and that they wanted me to stay in the country for an extra month to join them on an excursion to the Galilee. At the Ministry of Interior office, I was confronted with one of those austere looking women holding down a bureaucratic office job they hate. The look of scorn on her face palpable and dispiriting. I was expecting an immediate rejection of my application based on the cold stare I was getting from across the desk. However, the moment she opened the envelope and began reading the elegantly written Hebrew letter that my friend Jacqeline had penned, her entire demeanor changed. “How much longer would you like to stay?” she suddenly asked, with a beaming smile that transformed the harsh features of her face. Within minutes I had a new stamp in my passport, extending my stay till early September.   more »

Yesterday, Mohamed Mahmoud Canaan – a student at An-Najah University - was crossing the Beit Iba checkpoint on his way home to visit family in Jenin. At one point a soldier picked him out of the crowd of young men waiting in line. An argument broke out between the two. The soldier began hitting Mohamed hard in the face and all over the body, working him over. Other soldiers tried to restrain him, in the process Mohamed got away. The soldier who had pulled him over reached for his gun, while others tried to stop him from shooting. Two shots where fired, hitting him twice in the right arm. Machsom Watch activists on the scene filmed the whole thing, and negotiated Mohamed’s evacuation to Rafidia Hospital. He was to be married in two days, now he will spend his wedding in a hospital bed.   more »

Shebab are at our door this morning. “Fi jaysh djamb l-falafel Abu Halima!” Not clear if the Israeli military is occupying a house or not in Balata. Owen and Phil go to check out the scene barely awake. When I catch up to them I find the shebab already well on their way to trashing the house suspected of housing Israeli troops infiltrated during the night. Sounds on the scene, immediately audible: windows shattering and the thud of rocks being flung against the building’s metal side doors. Kids are kicking the shit out of the door and throwing anything they can get their hands on. I’m speaking to some of the older guys to get the full story as a pink plastic chair flies by my field of vision, hitting the second floor window. Next thing I know another group of shebab is rolling over a tire. Soon it’s a burning mess. The shebab are trying to smoke the troops out. We observe as smoke begins to billow from the windows on the upper floors.   more »

I’m starting to feel tired. I’m really sick today, bed ridden for most of the day but have to run around the city coordinating and liaising with other ISMers in order to put the final touches on preparations for the International Day of Solidarity with Nablus. We’ve been meeting with key organizations in the city, in the camps and in the villages and coordinating the activities for the day with the Governor’s office – something that has made me feel uncomfortable given a weariness from identifying too closely with the Palestinian Authority at a time when it’s legitimacy is on the wane and popular forces are seeking major reforms. Today’s kidnapping of a local official from the Ministry of Tribal Affairs (I know, very strange!) by some folks for Balata, has only added to the unease.    more »

Convergence at the fork in the road on Jerusalem Street. One road leads to the Balata Refugee Camp, the other to Nablus. The assembled crowd – ISM volunteers, PMRS activists, representatives from the Yafa Center, and a delegation of French internationals here on an educational tour – are seeking to prevent a repeat of the violence of the last few days. The aim is to prevent the military from returning to the camp and killing another kid. Failing to prevent an entry, the alternate plan is to surround the jeeps with internationals holding signs using non-violent direct action tactics. Local and international media representatives are on hand for the action, waiting on hand to provide extra protection from potential military reprisals. Coordination is proving a nightmare and it doesn’t seem like the various groups will be able to pull together for an effective action.    more »

In the last few days Gaza has exploded in political upheaval following the appointment of Musa Arafat to the top security post in the Strip and the centralization of the security services. Intelligence and police buildings throughout the occupied sea-side region have been besieged by crowds of demonstrators and armed men belonging to the Popular Resistance Committees (an umbrella group of various resistance factions in Gaza opposed to the installation of a pliant and repressive Palestinian security apparatus). The appointment of Musa Arafat – a relative of Abu Amar’s – came on the heals of the kidnapping of four French nationals and of Gazal Abu Jabali, the now deposed former head of Palestinian intelligence in the Strip. Increasingly, discussions throughout Palestine are focusing on the Sulta (Authority) failures and the corruption at the core of the Palestinian leadership that has completely derailed the national liberation struggle. In their place, a new generation of militant resistance leaders is emerging that is highly critical of the old leadership and that are increasingly expressing the opinions of ‘the street.’   more »

I'm told that a few days ago the military entered the camp, declaring curfew and occupying around a dozen houses. Running clashes with shebab lasted all day, but in the end there where no arrests or shaheeds. Some of the boys in the camp sustaining light to moderate injuries. Last night clashes at the Zatara checkpoint. And today…a long-Friday. Morning meetings at the UPMRC youth center, followed by afternoon political speeches over the mosque loudspeakers in Balata. More talk about the resistance, Iraq, and Islam. Visits to the Yafa Center. Hanging out with the kids from the Warsha center. Watching a DVD of their plays about the Nakba and one about checkpoints. Then singing. Some current intifada songs, old PFLP songs about Che, Giapp, and Ho Chi Minh, and modern Arabic pop tunes that the kids prefer. Translations of a Spanish screenplay about a wedding in Tulkarem. And this evening…again, jaysh in the camp.    more »

This afternoon I left Ramallah after a grueling ISM core group meeting. All the regions are reporting lower turnouts and desire to do actions among communities. The intifada is loosing wind in some ways – reduced now largely to the Gaza Strip and Nablus. Intimidation tactics are routine, including shooting at foreign activists, detentions and arrests. Two internationals that had spent some time in Nablus where arrested recently after they began filming soldiers harassing people at the Beit Furik checkpoint – focusing in on a soldier who had pulled a gun on a little boy. The general trend at the checkpoints in the last while in Nablus has been increased harassment by IDF units of Palestinians. Closure and siege continuing unabated. The arrested activists where taken to the Ariel detention facility, located near the West Bank’s largest settlement and received pretty harsh treatment at the hands of the feared Border Police.

The scene was somehow familiar to me. I’m at the Atmara Taher building again, near the Nablus Specialty Hospital on An-Najah Street. The Israeli military has, as it did in early April, surrounded the building again. Ten men, five women, and six children are being held by the soldiers near the building. They are being used as human shields in case one of the three suspected ‘wanted’ men that the IDF is looking for in the building decide to fire back. Again, a handcuffed man in a black undershirt is being led around by the soldiers as they perform room to room searches in the apartment complex. At a building a little further down the road it is possible to see two soldiers taking up sniping positions near two men who are handcuffed and made to squat on the ground. Some international volunteers are negotiating for the release of the women and the children.   more »