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Eyewitnesses to 'pure horror'
Three British peace activists, who spent last week under siege in Ramallah, spoke to Omayma Abdel-Latif about Israel's war of terror"They wanted to starve the living to death, did not allow the dead to be buried and gave no permission to heal the wounded; this was a systematic process of wiping away an entire population."
24-year-old Sukant Chandan broke into tears when he recalled the events he witnessed in Ramallah last week. He spoke of the "acts of pure horror" that Israeli soldiers inflicted on the residents of a city that they declared a closed military zone to journalists.
"I saw dozens of Israeli soldiers running through the streets, pointing guns at every one. They had with them a young Palestinian man who had apparently been heavily beaten -- blood was coming out of his mouth and nose -- in a bid to terrorise the people. The Palestinian people, however, were not intimidated," Chandan said. "In just one week they killed and kidnapped dozens of people and looted the city. We had people calling to tell us about the dead bodies left in houses nearby. We have lost count of how many they killed," he added.
Chandan, a media student at Sussex University and a member of the Socialist Workers Party, was part of a delegation of nine British peace activists who went on a relief mission to the occupied territories. The delegation was coordinated through an organisation called Che-Leila (Che Guevera and Leila Khaled), a federation of three societies that express solidarity with the Palestinians at the University of Sussex. Chandan arrived in Ramallah on 28 March, the night when Israeli tanks moved into the city. "We woke up the next morning to the sound of shelling and bombing. Two hundred tanks were besieging Ramallah. It was very difficult to think how we were going to carry out our relief efforts of delivering food and medicine."
The Israeli army had a policy in mind, says Chandan. "We proceeded to do our work in ambulances in the Medical Relief Centre, a Palestinian NGO, distributing food, clothes and medicine to the people of Ramallah. As we carried out our duties, we were brutally harassed and terrorised by the Israeli army. We had dead bodies dumped at the door of the centre where we operated. Two of our delegates were shot at while travelling in ambulances to collect convoys of food outside Ramallah. I think that something like six shots were fired around the ambulances by Israeli snipers. These are the kind of policies the Israeli army is using to obstruct humanitarian relief efforts. The Palestinians' basic needs -- eating, tending to their sick and their children -- came under attack. It was obvious that there is a systematic Israeli policy aimed at eliminating them. The Israeli soldiers would only harass us in the daytime, when we were distributing food and medicine to the people. They wanted to starve the living to death, did not allow burials and gave no permission to heal the wounded; this was a systematic process of wiping away an entire population."
Rami Ali, another British citizen and a member of the delegation that spent all of last week under siege, spoke of the Israeli army's atrocities. "I don't think that the Israeli soldiers are properly trained in observing international law, or any law for that matter. When we went down the streets, we had guns pointed at us. They did not shoot us directly but they shot around us. Some girls in the team were wounded by shrapnel as a result of this sadistic practice. They looted before our eyes; they looked like a gang of hooligans and thieves, rather than a professional army. Two people in my group have had soldiers coming to their house who stole money from them. They also took away food and clothes. There are serious questions about the ways in which the Israeli army conducts itself. What they did was utterly illegal by all standards. They breached all international conventions governing the way armed forces operate inside civilian areas."
Ali protests that there are conventions about allowing medical relief to get through to wounded combatants and civilians.
"I saw dead bodies scattered in the streets of Ramallah, on the third day of the occupation, and we reported it to the media. We pleaded for the Red Cross to be allowed to pick up the bodies but to no avail. They told us that the Israeli soldiers are not allowing them in. These soldiers are war criminals; they have to be held accountable for all the crimes they have committed. I saw them pointing guns at women, children and older men. There was no respect for their humanity in any shape or form. They were conducting their own war of terror against the whole Palestinian people. But the pathetic lie that the media kept parroting after the Israeli propaganda machine was that it was seeking militant Palestinians. On the contrary, those soldiers were seeking to annihilate the whole population." Ali said
Salma Karmy, a 21 year old human science student at Sussex University, has visited the West Bank on several occasions when it was "calm" but, as she explains, she felt profound shock at visiting Ramallah this time: "The Sharon administration has created an occupation like none the world has seen before. The Israeli army has targeted humanitarian institutions. Not only were they shelling and bombing PA buildings, the municipalities and the local infrastructure, but they were also targeting humanitarian buildings such as hospitals. They prevented people from coming in and out of hospitals so people who were on their way in for an operation, or even the dead who were to be buried, were prevented from entering. They targeted the Red Crescent's ambulances as well as other medical relief charities."
In one incident, Karmy recalls that the Israeli soldiers stopped an ambulance she was riding in and threw out all the food and medical supplies on the floor. "When we were travelling, we had to move in ambulances but even this was risky because they were shot at."
In another incident, "the Israeli soldiers raided our flat, which was adjacent to Arafat's compound and literally ruined the house and threatened us that they will physically hurt us if we did not show them around. They asked about weapons and Palestinians."
Despite Ramallah being declared a closed military zone to journalists, Ali says that the volunteers managed to document what was happening on the ground, including the suffering felt by people inside Ramallah and East Jerusalem. "We have the papers and photographs which document the Israeli atrocities and horror that were committed against civilians in Ramallah. A lot of NGOs had their material confiscated at Tel Aviv airport. We have obtained footage from inside Ramallah, interviewing youth who have been imprisoned and tortured, as well as politicians. We have a lot of pictures of Israeli soldiers pointing guns at women and children. Basically it is an audio-visual documentation of the brutality inflicted upon an unarmed civilian population at the hands of the Israeli army," Ali said.
Ali says that there is "a great deal of anger among Palestinians" whom he talked to, inside Ramallah, who feel "betrayed" by Arab governments. "The Arabs, it seems, have chosen to fight their battle against Israel on TV. It is too easy to sit in your armchair and watch the suffering. It is too easy to read it in the newspaper and do nothing about it. When we were there, we were told that, just by being present, we were helping them. I don't understand how they [the Arabs] can allow themselves to react in such a passive manner to what is going on. These governments are in no way representative of their countries' public opinion. I feel that I was able to do more there than an entire Arab cabinet."
Karmy vented her anger on a different target. "I am disgusted by the Western world -- especially the British government which is funding and allowing the perpetuation of a brutal occupation -- and for the media for not obstructing objective accounts from getting through. I will put pressure on my government to stop supporting the terror state that is Israel. I will go back as often as I can to support the people there," Karmy said
Both Chandan and Ali criticised the British government for its "hypocritical attitude. They [British officials] claimed that they were concerned about our safety and wanted to evacuate us from Ramallah, but these so-called champions of humanity are the ones supplying the Israeli army with weapons with which to oppress the Palestinians. They are the same people who are terrorising the people in Ramallah and in other Palestinian cities."
Chandan admits to having felt guilty when it came time to leave. "When you see the complete humiliation that the people of Ramallah were going through, and when you witness Palestinian resilience, you feel guilty at having to leave them, However, we will hold meetings, cultural events and vigils to raise money and we promise that we will continue sending delegation after delegation to Palestine until it is free and Arab," Chandan said.
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