Diaries: Live from Palestine

We visited the home of Umm and Abu Mahmoud. Their son, Mahmoud, died during the attack on the Jenin Camp. Mahmoud was a 31 year old merchant. His wife was pregnant with their third child, but she miscarried after learning that Mahmoud was killed, reportedly by a bullet wound at the back of his head.

On April 17, we entered the Jenin camp for a third time, accompanied by Thawra. We had met Thawra the night we first entered Jenin. She came into the crowded, makeshift clinic organized by Palestinian Medical Relief Committee workers, cradling Ziad, an 18 day old infant born on the first night of the attack against Jenin.

It’s like this: There are 3 million-plus stories out there. Today is the first day I felt overwhelmed by the scale of it.

Last night I returned from the West Bank, Jerusalem and Gaza. I met with religious and political leaders from both sides, spoke with Red Cross workers and people from UNRWA returning from Jenin and Ramallah, and had talks with a Jewish American man and a Japanese woman who’d been trapped in Ramallah, both attempting to go back in with medicines despite the shrapnel still lodged in the Japanese woman’s leg.

On Wednesday I left the wasteland of Gaza and came to East Jerusalem where it is easier to base oneself for traveling. For two days I stayed in the Jenin refugee camp, returning only late this evening. I know I will have to write about it soon in much greater detail than here, even though I know many people are doing this. The sorry truth is that it will not be nearly enough.

Images from Nablus. Hospital workers prepare the bodies of killed Palestinians in Nablus. Thirty-five bodies were buried in Nablus yesterday, when the curfew was lifted for a few hours.

I went out of my house today, for the first time in four days. The Israelis allowed us to buy food but we can only be on the streets for two hours. The city is destroyed. Cars on the side of the road crushed flat like pizza. Tanks rolled over them.

Nestled in the rolling hills and mountains in the north are numerous small Arab villages scattered among the olive trees and agricultural fields. Spring red poppies and wild flowers are in full bloom tucked among various breeds of tall grasses.

Curfews, arbitrary arrests, destruction, and unprovoked Israeli aggression all continue throughout Palestinian towns and cities across the West Bank.

Nine Americans, and a French national have been detained at Ben Gurion airport. The activists who arrived here early this morning are currently still being detained in the airport — and have been informed they will be deported at 1am tomorrow morning.