Hello all,

I head off to the airport in just a few minutes. Hopefully this new yahoo group thing is going to work out it seemed like the easiest way to get reports back to everyone. If for some reason anyone doesn't want to get my reports please let me know. If there are other folks who want to be added please let me know that too. Feel free to forward anything I send back to anyone who is interested. I hope that if we encounter situations that may be helped by a phone call or other action back here that at least some of you could help in that respect. I will let you know of any potentially helpful action. Thanks a lot everyone who supported me to help make this trip a reality. My next message will be from Palestine. Feel free to write me at this address grok@riseup.net. I'm not sure how much email access I will have so no guarantees but I will try to respond to any questions or comments.

Peace,

Garrick

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Hello all,

I haven't had computer access for several days. We have been in Ramallah for almost three days now. Ramallah has been under curfew for seven days. What that means is that everyone in the city and its a pretty big city has to stay in their houses 24 hours a day. The Israeli military lifts the curfew every few days for a few hours at a time and people must scramble to purchase basic supplies such as food. Of course no one other than store owners (and them for only a few hours every few days) can work so there is very little income throughout the city. We have been staying at Sheikh Zaid hospital, the main hospital in Ramallah and the major trauma center in the west bank. People may have read the reports about this hospital having to bury 21 people in two mass graves in the parking lot back in April because the bodies kept piling up inside the hospital and the army would not allow a lifting of curfew even to bury the dead. Those graves are still there the families of those murdered by the Israelis have decided to leave the graves there as a symbol of the brutality of the Israeli military and a testament to the martyrdom of their loved ones.

Yesterday many of us walked to a village outside of Ramallah called Diribziya. Curfew is absolute for Palestinians but we as internationals can get away with a lot more. We walked with another group of people from the International Solidarity Movement who are staying in the village to help out with a summer camp for children. People in the village were worried the army would try something to prevent the camp from happening or intimidate the participants and so they requested an international presence. This walk was unbelievable. It was about 20 kilometers or about 12 miles there and back. Along the way we saw many ways in which the military destroys Palestinian infrastructure. Simply driving there tanks, APCs and bulldozers over roads tears them up. But in many places they have deliberately destroyed roads or created roadblocks so that people cannot get through. The worst of these was blocking the road connecting Diribziya and something like 30 other villages to Ramallah. It was a series of ditches, earth emankments, barbed wire and boulders toatlly blocking access. These villages are very dependent on commerce with Ramallah and so you can imagine the negative effects this has on supplies and such, not to mention the fact that it further cuts Palestinians off from each other in their own country.

I'm really sorry to interrupt this message. I have to go. There is much more to report. Suffice it to say that the situation here is unbelievably bad. gunfire and shellfire are regular here and Ramallah is not nearly the worst from everything we have heard. I will write more when I can.

Garrick

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Hello all,

It's Tuesday afternoon here. We got into jerusalem early yesterday morning. It is surreal being here again. Yesterday as we were having dinner and talking about the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) with someone who has been here for a while she got a call saying that a 12 year old boy had been shot in the back in the Al-Fara refugee camp near Nablus. Later on in the evening I met someone from Big Noise Films (people may have seen This is what Democracy Looks like, Zapatista or Black $ Gold) he is hear filming for a documentary about Palestine as well as a larger project which will have Palestine as a piece of it. He told us about how he had been in Jenin a few days ago when the Israelis attacked a market and how they had watched a four year old girl die in front of them. Things are much worse here than when I was here earlier this year. I can tell and I haven't even left Jerusalem yet. Tomorrow we will be trained and then figure out where we will be. (We actually got here just as people were leaving to Ramallah to do training but seeing as how we had been traveling for more than 24 hours we decided that we probably didn't need to go directly to a city under curfew.) At this point the latest we've heard is that Hebron, Bethlehem and Ramallah are occupied and the refugee camps around Nablus and Jenin have Israeli troops in and out of them a lot.

Since we kind of had a free day today I and some other folks walked around the old city of Jerusalem. This place is still amazing. So much history packed into such a small area. There are a lot of great folks here and a lot more expected.

Garrick

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Hello all,

I think that my updates have not been getting out to everyone I mean them to get out to. Hopefully by using this address I will fix that problem. If anyone has not received my previous updates and would like me to forward them, please write to me and let me know, I will forward them as soon as I can. Please continue to use my other address, grok@riseup.net for personal coorespondance when you can. Again people should feel free to forward this and if anyone would like to call me, my number here is 011-972-56-489346. If people have media contacts that would like to speak to people like myself with the International Solidarity Movement or with Palestinians please do not hesitate to clal me and I will try to set up whatever people need.

That said, so much has happened and there is so much to report. I am now in Gaza, I have been here for the last three days.

The first thing I wanted to say is that I mentioned the rounding up of men at the Al-Amari refugee camp near Ramallah in my last report. That night after I sent that message we got new information about another incident in the camp. At noon on that day, 6/30 soldiers entered the home of a family in the camp. They forced everyone in the family into one room and proceeded to watch television for several hours. Given the timing they were most likely watching the final game of the world cup though this is just an assumption on my part. At about 4:00 pm they received orders to leave. in their haste they bumped an 18 month old girl, Munia Adel Rehan into the stairwell. She fell down three flights of stairs. The family followed the soldiers out into the street begging them for help with their injured daughter. The soldiers ignored both Munia and the family. The family then called an ambulence. The Red Crescent ambulence arrived within 10 minutes but the soldiers would not let it reach Munia for another half hour. Members of the International Solidarity Movement were at the hospital where she was finally taken and took much of this testimony from Munia's mother. They said she finally arrived at the hospital at 7:00 pm. She had a large lasceration visible at her hairline and she was very lethargic and sleepy. Though they were still waiting for test results the doctors were very concerned that she might have permanent brain damage.

What the fuck did an 18 month old girl do to deserve this kind of treatment?

End Part 1

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For the last three days we have been in the Gaza strip. Thios means we are no longer in the middle of a military operation but we are in one of the worlds largest prisons. 1.2 million people live in this prison in a strip about 6 miles wide and about 25 miles long. Of that land about 1/3 is taken by 3-5 thousand Israeli settlers, leaving 2/3 for the 1.2 million Palestinians. I do not have much time but I will give you some highlights.

We saw the checkpoint in the middle area of the Gaza stirp two days ago. When we got there there were hundreds of cars sitting there in the extreme heat just waiting. The checkpoint had been closed all day, no one had gotten through. Our contact here is convinced that the only reason they opened the checkpoint is because the soldiers saw us from the US and Canada approaching. These checkpoints have absolutely nothing to do with security, they are merely to harrass the population. When they opened it up they did not even do so much as check anyone's id, much less search any cars. If there was actually some kind of security risk would they have just let all these people pass through. It's really sick.

Yesterday we met with mayors from two of the municipalities inthe area Nuseirat (where we are staying) and Boreig. These and the orther areas of the middle area of the Gaza strip are extremely short of water. (If people are not aware, a lot of the reason for why Israel occupies Palestinian land, the Golan Heights and formerly southern Lebanon is to steal the water from these areas. They do that in Gaza as well often selling the water under illegal settlements back to the Palestinians hwose water it rightfully is in the first place.) Aside from the water under the settlements there are two wells here outside of the Netzarim settlement. One of them is not working but it is close to the fence around the settlement. Every time Palestinian workers have attempted to go to the well to fix it and make it operational again they have been shot at and had to flee. This has happened even when they have gotten permission from the Israelis. We are working to see if there is any way we can help. If the workers are willing we told them we will accompany them to the well to make sure they are able to fix it. We spoke with soldiers at the settlement who basically gave us beaurocratic bullshit. We would like to go even without permission but need to see if the Palestinians are willing to do this.

On the way back from the settlement we saw an army bulldozer destroying an orchard with orange trees and olive trees. This has been happening a lot here in Gaza in the last two weeks (it happens all the time all over Palestine but has apparently been particularly bad). Even knowing that it happens and seeing someone actually sitting in a machine and destoying a farmers cropss for no reason is so disgusting. These particualr fields had to be at least a kilometer and a half from the settlement. There is no reason.

The situation here is horrible. I urge everyone to do whatever they can to support the Palestinian people against the fascist policies of Israel. People are dying every day, crops are being destroyed every day, homes are being destroyed every day, people are being rounded up without charges every day. One of the Jews in our group has said that if you stand by and do nothing it would be like standing by and doing nothing knowing that the holocaust was going on. I find it hard to disagree with her. I also find it hard to disagree with the comparison of Israel to Nazi Germany, straight down to writing things on mens arms and using dogs to round people up. Pleasee do what you can, contact your representatives in Washington and tell them that as a taxpayer you are absolutely disgusted by what is happening with US support here. Speak out against Bush's imperialist agenda in attempting to tell the Palestinians who there leaders should be. If the US decides for the Palestinians then there is no independence. (then again the people of the US don't even get to decide who there leaders are anymore as we saw with Bush himself). Work for justice. The US must end all aid to Israel if it truly supports democracy and justice around the world (I'm under no illusions that it does but perhaps the people can force it to.)

Please feel free to write me with any questions or comments at grok@riseup.net or give me a call. I'd love to hear from more people to know that there are people at home listening and working for some kind of change. My access to email is intermittant but I've at least been able to check it every few days.

In solidarity, with rage and love from occupied Palestine,

Garrick

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I wanted to give you all a few of the stories and quotes from Palestinians in and around Ramallah since these are never reported in the media.

These are some quotes from a worker in the hospital we stayed in for three nights in Ramallah. I will not give his name becasue he is afraid the Israelis want to arrest him.

"what we want exactly, we want to live in peace"

"This intifada does not come from Arafat or Hamas, it comes from all of us, we all have intifada in our hearts"

"9 of my friends have been killed"

"I will stay here and I will not leave and I think the same is true of the Jews. We must make peace together but without Sharon"

"We are human beings, not animals"

"tell your people the truth. We don't want you to lie. In my country I cannot move."

"I have not visited my family in 3 years, it is 10 minutes away by car"

"We will not let anyone take this country from us. The only way this will happen is if all Palestinians are killed."

I thought these quotes from a much larger conversation were all incredible. And I feel like it is extremely important to relay the words of the palestinians in their own words.

I also wanted to relay the stories of a few Palestinian we met in the rehabilitation center in Ramallah.

Mahmoud:

He was working his land near Nablus in November. At that time settlers had already uprooted over 240 of his olive trees. 4 settlers came and shot at him from far away. One of the bullets hit the main nerve in his leg and severed it. He still walks with Crutches.

Arkham (age 23):

He lived in the Jenin refugee camp. When the Israelis attacked in March one of his friends was shot and was lying in the street. He and another friend got a car and drove to their injured friend. They picked him up and put him in the car but as they tried to get away they were fired at from behind. His friend was hit in the shoulder. He was hit in the back of the neck and is now a total parapalegic. Both of his other friends were arrested and remain somewhere in the Israeli prison system despite their injuries though he does not know where they are. He will never use his legs again.

Hussam (age 13):

He lived in the village Beta near Nablus. He was standing at the gates of his village watching 3 Israeli soldiers far away on a hilltop. They suddenly opened fire on him, he thought for target practice, Obviously a 13 year old boy with no weapon presented no danger to the soldiers. He was hit with 5 bullets. Proof that they were extremely far away was that the two which hit him in the arm did not even penetrate all the way through, they stayed in his arm. One hit him in the spine. He will also be paralyzed for the rest of his life. The main thing he wanted to tell us was "tell the truth about what is happening here" I only hope that I can do that in some small way.

I will collect more stories and send them. I feel it is extremely important to do this because so few people are doing it. Israeli dead and wounded always have names in US media, Palestinians are almost always just numbers.

Garrick

And if you think it sucks in the West Bank and Gaza, try visiting Syria or Jordan.