Come see the paradise

When I arrived in Tel Aviv last Wednesday, no one was there to pick me up. I had been up about 20hrs by then as I had to take a flight from Amsterdam to London and London to Tel Aviv, on the same day. It was 3 hrs until I got my ride to Jerusalem. And I went straight to the hospital and watched open heart surgery for a 5 yr old. But my alienating
24 hrs in Jerusalem didn't last.

I have been here nearly a week now and it’s been nothing short of an experience. The second day a few of us had to go to Nablus (which is in the West Bank) to escort our child to Jerusalem. Between here and there, there are 5 checkpoints. Most of which were okay. Basically you have the Israelie Military checking your passports and generally being not nice, at all. Being an occupying force, they can refuse entry along any point without reason, expecially to any Palestinians. Male Israelie citizens have to do a mandatory 80 days service a year where the women do 40 days.

We got to Nablus and met with the PCRF social worker Ikram and she escorted us to the village where we met with a lovely family who showed us the village sites and very kind and hospitable. Me and Warren (nurse) slept underneath the stars on the roof. Between 5 cups of Arabic coffee and dogs barking all night, I got 15 mins. We were up to see the sun rise and to challenge our checkpoints. We picked up another child who needed surgery on the way. We had gotten through 4 but the last one was a problem as we were entering Jerusalem. He ‘team’ (3 people) had gotten through first and then we found that the army wouldn’t let the child (Jamal, 8 months old utterly adorable baby) through as they didn’t have the ‘proper’ paperwork. We stood our ground with shooting the confrontation telling them we wouldn’t be going any where without them. Extra soldiers with machine guns came, the police came. We stood our ground. It was 40 mins before we had a break in the standoff. They would let the child and mother through. But they wouldn’t let the other child through. More talk. Eventually they let the child but not the parents through. It was very tense. Me and Claire were left behind and we were to be escorted to a police station to look at what we shot. I tried a slight of hand and was giving Warren the tapes which were in a bag but they stopped that and Warren stayed with us. A chief of police came and he let us go through.

We arrived at the hospital before 12 noon.

If you are with a baby who needs heart surgery and men with machine guns won’t let you pass a ‘border’ which the Israelie Goverment made, I don’t know… But we weren’t moving a fuckin inch for those bastards until all of us went through. It’s a terrible state to live in if you are Palestinian here, and of course worse in Gaza. We met a 10 year old boy (in the hospital) from Gaza who had been shot twice while playing football with his friend. The Israelie army fly F- 16's low across residential areas that create sonic booms in the middle of the night. Subsequently, amongst other effects, children develop Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. They blew up the power station and now electricty is limited unless you want to buy from an Israelie company. A few months ago, they shot at a family on a beach with a rocket and killed them all. If you are Arab with Palestinian ID, you are a prisoner in your own town and you are treated like something they stepped on. If we were not foreigners, we would have been beaten with fists, boots and buts of guns at that checkpoint. A large majority of the Palestinians I have met here have been gracious, funny and full of warmth. It makes me extremely sad and angry knowing these people have to live in such inhuman conditions.













- J