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FROM THE AUGUST ISSUE OF
    SALAM REVIEW
 HTTP://WWW.SALAM.ORG


LENA DOESN'T LIVE HERE ANYMORE

July 10, 1998

Friends,

Yesterday was a day I won't ever forget.  Neither will Salim and
Arabiyeh Shawamreh or their six
children.

We had planned a joint Israeli-Palestinian protest against home
demolitions.  The idea was to set up
a tent on the site of a demolition, a tent that would serve several
purposes: protest, solidarity,
documentation, and compassionate listening to the family members.  We
planned to move this tent
from site to site, wherever the Israeli army used its bulldozers. 
Yesterday's inauguration of the tent
was planned for opposite the so-called "civil administration"
headquarters -- the nerve center of
Israel's control of the occupied territories -- those who actually do
the dirty work of demolishing
people's homes and other acts of oppression.

Our bus from Jerusalem held activists from several peace movements --
Bat Shalom, Rabbis for
Human Rights, Gush Shalom, and Peace Now.  We are all partners in a
coalition called the Israeli
Committee Against Home Demolitions, and our demonstration was to be held
jointly with the
Palestinian Land Defense General Committee.

Through the bus microphone, I listened to Meir Margalit explain the
action and sketch one chilling
scenario.  "If the soldiers try to prevent us from holding the
demonstration, proceed in an orderly
manner to the planned alternative site.  There must not be violence on
our side, but if the army
engages in violence, do not separate from the Palestinians.  The army
will be more brutal to the
Palestinians if the soldiers manage to separate us."

It was a sobering thought as we drove across the Green Line and toward
the protest tent.  Suddenly
a call came across a mobile phone and Meir took the mike again.  "We
have just had word that a
demolition is taking place at this very moment not far from here."  It's
a rare occurrence to catch a
demolition in progress, no less with a group of peace activists; most
demolitions take place with
virtually no warning, and hence no time to protest. With no further
discussion, we turned toward
Anata on the edge of Jerusalem, a town composed almost entirely of
Palestinian refugees who had
lived in the Old City of Jerusalem and fled in 1967.  They thought they
had found refuge in Anata.

After driving the narrow unpaved streets of Anata for what seemed an
interminable time, we finally
located the area and the bus parked as close as possible.  We still had
to walk 10 minutes down
narrow, zig-zagging dirt roads between crowded homes until we came to
the outskirts of Anata. 
There we practically ran toward the edge of the hill and looked below --
a beautiful home set into the
pastoral valley with one of its walls now crumpled into rubble by a
roaring bulldozer; a family and
neighbors sobbing nearby; and a unit of Israeli soldiers preventing
anyone else from approaching the
scene.

The scene was horrific.  We surged down the hill in our small group
until the soldiers blocked our
progress with their guns and bodies.  There were scuffles trying to get
past them, but more soldiers
joined the barricade.  M.K. Naomi Chazan who was with us demanded to see
the order proclaiming
this a "closed military zone," as the soldiers claimed, and after
several long minutes the officer
complied.  Who knows if the order was genuine or invented at the last
minute.  But the guns were
real. So there we stood on the side of the hill and watched with an
unbearable sense of helplessness
as the "civil" administration's bulldozer took the house apart wall by
wall.  He drove through the front
garden with a profusion of flowers and a lemon tree and slammed the
front door as if he were God
Almighty.  Backing away, he slammed again until the entire front was
shattered and dangling from
metal rods.  Then he came from every side, slamming and crashing his
shovel against the walls. 
Finally he lifted off the roof, barely suspended, and sent it crashing
below.  When that was done, he
went around the back of the house and crashed through all the fruit
trees, including a small olive
stand.  He saw a water tank on a platform and knocked that over, the
tank tumbling down and a
cascade of water drenching the trees now uprooted and broken.  He saw
two more tanks nearby
and knocked those over as well.  I have never seen anyone in the Middle
East deliberately waste so
much water.  Then he noticed a shack in the corner of the yard and he
churned over to that, his
cleated treads grinding and squealing over the rubble he had to climb
over.  The shack was an easy
swipe for his shovel, and we were surprised to see two doves fly out,
one white and one black,
frightened out of their wits.  They flapped their wings briefly and
landed not far from their former
home.

All the while, a crowd of Palestinian neighbors and young men were
gathering behind us on the
mountain crest, cat-calling and jeering.  From our Israeli group, many
engaged the soldiers in
challenges:  "How can you sleep at night?"; "Is this what is meant by
defending Israel?"; "Don't you
understand the immorality of this action?", and the like.  Every single
soldier, from the high
commander to the lowest GI responded the same way:  "This is legal;
we're only following orders." 
One woman tried to yell at the bulldozer driver everytime there was a
lull in the din. But nothing we
could think to say stopped the roar of devastation.

By then I had managed to move down past the soldiers and was with the
family outside their former
home.  One woman was sobbing and I put my arms around her.  When I began
to cry too, she put
her arms around me.  A weeping girl joined us and we both encircled her
with our arms.  I later
learned that this was 14-year-old Lena and this house had once been
hers.  Then suddenly, gunshots
rang out.  Some of the young Palestinian men had begun throwing stones
-- from a very great
distance, I note -- and Israeli soldiers retaliated by opening fire and
running up the hill after them. 
The soldiers were shooting as they ran, setting off their guns like the
wild west.  I saw the
commander and told him that this was illegal, a clear violation of the
"open fire regulations" of the
Israeli army, which stipulate that a soldier's life be in danger before
he opens fire.  I demanded
repeatedly that he tell the soldiers to stop.  The commander shrugged
and didn't bother answering. 
After 10 minutes or so, the shooting stopped.  Amazingly, no "stray"
bullets had hit any of our group,
although the Palestinians, as usual, were not as lucky.  A man
approached the crowd of neighbors,
said a few words, and instantly two women let out piercing shrieks and
tore up the hill, running at top
speed.  The son of one of them had been hit by a bullet.  I don't know
his condition.  Already in the
hospital was Arabiyeh, the mother of the family, who had been violently
struck by soldiers when she
tried to prevent them from destroying her home.

By then there was nothing to do but sift through the rubble.  I picked
through the rocks and talked to
Jeff Halper, who is organizing the program to "adopt" Palestinian
families whose homes are slated for
demolition.  Jeff had sat in the living room of this home last week, now
a pile of jagged concrete
slabs, hearing Salim and Arabiyeh talk about the problem of Palestinians
not being issued
construction permits.  "Just last night," Salim had told Jeff during the
demolition, "friends and family
had sat in this home watching the World Cup soccer game".  Now there are
6 children without TV,
toys, books, diapers, bottles, or a place to lay their heads.  Instead,
they remain with the trauma of
the Israeli bulldozer turning their home and security into a bottomless
pit of hatred for this occupation
and the people who carry it out.

A lot of us picked up olive branches from the yard as we walked back to
the buses.  Most of the
branches, like mine, were crushed by the treads of power run amuck.  For
the first time, I also
noticed the scenery around us.  On a nearby mountain -- not a distant
one, mind you -- were the
classrooms and amphitheater of the Mount Scopus campus of Hebrew
University.  Had they looked
out their classroom window, the students studying ethics and justice
could have had a clear view of
the scene of brute power and the trampling of this family's lives.  And
surrounding everything, on
mountains and hilltops to our left, right, and center, were the bright
orange rooftops of the settler
homes in the Occupied Territories.  The settlers have no problem
whatsoever in getting construction
permits.  And no one would dare uproot their olive trees, waste their
water, harm their homes, or
turn their children out into the streets.

Well, it's almost over, this long, sad story, but it must not end here. 
Our group, the same people and
more I hope, will be going back next Friday to begin rebuilding this
home.  This is a new tradition of
non-violent resistance that began a few weeks ago, and is gaining
momentum.  The Palestinians
rebuild, the Israeli army demolishes, and they rebuild again.  As one of
the neighbors said, "We'll see
who lasts longer."

If you cannot come to our rebuilding effort -- and even if you can --
please, please, please use your
power to get this to stop. The messages you have sent are incredibly
effective -- foreign political
leaders have begun to raise the issue of home demolitions with Israeli
leaders.  Tell your officials that
the Israeli demolition of Palestinian homes must be stopped.  Say it in
the subject line, so they get the
point quickly.  And circulate this letter to more people.

That's all.  Thank you for listening.

Gila Svirsky


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Salam Review is a monthly electronic magazine about
the struggle for peace and justice in the Middle East.

Find the magazine at http://www.salam.org.
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