Here is a chilling account of the arrest of the father of one of the children whose testimonies Arab News published yesterday. It was transcribed in Arabic and translated into English by Ms. Manal Issa, administrative and finance officer of Ramallah-based Khalil Sakakini Cultural Center. She also has scanned a number of drawings of children under siege. Please contact her ([email protected]) for the Arabic version of the testimony and copies of the drawings.
Monday April 1, 2002
I was arrested yesterday with a number of young men. Our hands were tied and we were blindfolded. We were taken to an open space where it was very cold and the rain was pouring. We sat on the ground hands tied, blindfolded and heads bent. We were forced to remain in the same position for 13 continuous hours. They would beat us brutally, yell at us and urinate on our heads. The blows were coming from all sides, on our faces and genitalia. One of us was taken away, we asked about him after a while and were told he had been taken home. After midnight our heads were covered with bags and we were told to go home. The soldiers confiscated our IDs and said they would kill us all, but three by three. They said they had already killed a number of us and would finish the rest in the coming days. The man who had been taken away is a 17-year-old neighbor of mine who has a brain tumor. After we returned home, we were told he had spent the whole night under torture.
Now let me describe how we are living: Ramallah woke up at 4 a.m. today with a non-stop two- hour long pounding by helicopter and tank of the headquarters of the Preventive Security headquarters in the adjacent Beitunia Road (off from Ramallah’s industrial zone). That complex housing a hotel, a restaurant and daycare center had 400 people inside it at the time of the bombing. We do not know how many casualties there are since ambulances were prevented from entering.
There was more shelling yesterday evening in different parts of the town, including the breaking into, and destruction of the part of the Qassaba cinematheque and theater in downtown Ramallah. This theater which was home to an extraordinary evening last Thursday night of poetry and music and dance with Mahmoud Darwish, Nobel laureates Wole Soyinka and Jose Saramago and other writers on a solidarity mission with Palestine. More information on this destruction can be obtained by calling the theater director, Mr. George Ibrahim, at: 00 972 52 617 819 or 00 970 59 200 640.
A two-hour break in the curfew was announced today by the Israelis. This is a bad sign as it means the siege will last a long time. People who went out described a scene of desolation: Tanks at every crossroads closing access to major roads, trees and electricity poles broken, traffic lights broken, scores of destroyed cars, most roads’ asphalt dug out, rendering the roads unusable. Imagine someone destroying in a few hours all the proud achievements of the Ramallah municipality in the last 4 years. The municipality itself is under occupation since Saturday. During the two-hour break, the call to prayer - adhan - was heard for the first time in five days.
People in downtown Ramallah-El-Bireh continue to suffer the most from lack of electricity and water. My brother-in-law I wrote you about was into his 5th day without electricity and phone. The break allowed him to leave on foot and walk to my mother-in-law’s home where they will live in a 3-bedroom apartment for God knows how long. My neighbor’s relatives are suffering the same fate, with the added trauma of having a teenage son arrested by the Israelis on Friday in their mass round-up and with no news of his whereabouts. So far about 700 young Palestinian have been arrested in these racist and senseless mass arrests in the Ramallah-Bireh metro area alone.
Meanwhile, garbage goes uncollected. More important, tanks fired on the building of the Medical Relief Organization where a number of Italian peace activists are barricaded in a show of solidarity with Palestinians, and on the doorstep of which the corpse of an executed Palestinian man was thrown yesterday. The 28 bodies of killed Palestinians that had been piling up at the Ramallah hospital morgue were buried today in the hospital’s courtyard, as Israelis did not allow the bodies to be returned by ambulance to their families and receive proper burial for the last 5 days. More information can be obtained from the Ramallah hospital by calling 00 970 or 972 298 22 20.
In my neighborhood, a group of Israeli soldiers went into a number of homes yesterday, and searched them room by room. In one home, they stole $2500 in cash and lacerated with a knife all the living broom’s sofas.
In conclusion, these are the sociocidal facts, and small traumas of daily life under siege. As you see, this is a sample of the daily lot of big and small crimes committed against a small segment of the Palestinian population. Even a fraction of these crimes committed against any other people would have elicited condemnation and foreign intervention. But our plight is a war of perceptions and images. We are portrayed as fighting the heirs of Anne Frank, while in fact we are being turned into the decimated native Americans of the digital age.
We are grateful to the generous individuals and private and non- governmental organizations who are petitioning their governments and media and who get our message out.
Please please, try to use these e-mails in letters to officials in the US or to the media for publication, not for us, but in the name of our shared humanity. We thank you and hope to hear of your efforts.
(The writer’s name withheld on request)
