Diaries: Live from Palestine

“Hi, I just received a message from Nablus that five hundred Palestinians are besieged in the old city of Nablus, could you confirm this? We have a telephone number, but we know that the telephone lines have been cut and that even people cannot be reached on their mobile phones. We are afraid that a massacre is going to take place.”

First of all, to be honest, I didn’t expect people to reply [to my first message]. But the replies are very important, especially now, because they’re not only for me - I’ve been calling friends and telling them about your support. This support is so important. We live in a prison and feel like we are so alone here so it’s very encouraging to have such replies.

On Friday, March 29 while sitting in an Armenian coffee shop in Jerusalem’s Old City, a radio broadcast came on in Arabic with gunfire in the background. Something was amiss, and all the owner could tell us was that it involved Ramallah. The attacks had begun on the very day I had hoped to pay a visit to the city with my friend visiting from Belgium.

Helicopter gunships fired into crowded areas of Nablus and Jenin again today. Nobody knows how many are dead. Yesterday’s count stopped at 44. Ariel Sharon hasn’t finished his ‘operation’ yet.

Writing an update of the situation in the West Bank today requires few changes to the updates of the previous ten days; names of villages, numbers of wounded, and the names of the dead appear to be the only difference.

On Thursday March 30th, 2002, we left our house, located close to the governorate of Ramallah at around 5 pm. We were expecting a concentrated attack on President Arafat’s compound. The compound is barely a 100 meters away from our house.

The sun was finally shining, I start to feel a little better but the feeling is temporary - were I at my place in Ramallah right now, it wouldn’t even be safe enough to step out on the balcony. The shutters would be drawn, I would be in darkness, and my usual short supply of food would have been exhausted long ago.

On Thursday, March 29th, 2002 , I knew that there will be re-occupation, and because we live right next to the governorate of Ramallah, where our president resides, I decided to move with my daughter and my granddaughter to my other daughter’s house. This was a house that we thought was safer, as it is located in the middle of Ramallah, and situated inside the Anglican Episcopalian compound.

Imagine that you have been locked inside your house for 10 days. You cannot leave your house because there are tanks and soldiers in the street, on every corner there are snipers who shoot to kill. Imagine you cannot go to work, your children cannot go to school or to the nursery and you have to do your best to explain to them what a tank is and what the soldiers are doing in the streets of your city.

Al-Khadra Mosque, oldest mosque in Nablus, located at the southern entrance to the Old City was destroyed last night by Israeli forces in their continued military assault on Palestinian towns and cities. Bombardment by air and land continued throughout the night on the Old City of Nablus and on the Balata and Askr refugee camps.