Diaries: Live from Palestine

Today, between 5,000 and 6,000 people — Israeli peace activists, Palestinians in Israel and Palestinian MK’s in the Israeli Knesset — marched to the Kalandia checkpoint.

As you have already heard and seen on television, scores of people have been arrested over the past few days, and many homes were invaded. This catastrophe did not spare the Birzeit University community, be it the students, the faculty or the staff. Due to the curfew and the disconnection of phone lines and electricity, the below information is all we were able to get concerning our staff, faculty and students.

The situation in Ramallah is as follows: many parts of the town continue to be without water. Even with the problems of water solved, it will not reach most homes because 6 out of 9 electrical feeding stations are down. No electricity means no water, no sewage pumping (serious for public health) and no ovens can work to bake bread, among other problems.

I need water. I was just caught in teargas. We were at a demonstration before the checkpoint (the one that was previously known as the Ram-checkpoint). Thousands of protesters, Palestinians (a huge number from “inside”), Israeli’s, Italians, French, Dutch, Belgians, Swiss, and other foreigners, and a lot of international media (probably because they are prevented from covering Israel’s assaults on Palestinian cities) were present.

We have no bread; I need milk for my two month old baby; I need medicine because I have diabetes; I need medicine for my high blood pressure; I’m scared - I’m alone trapped in a restaurant in Ramallah and the Israeli snipers are on the rooftop of the building I’m in; I don’t know what to do - my children are scared; I’m a doctor - there are 38 apartments in the building I work in and the families here need bread, water, milk - I also need medicine to treat some of the people here.

From my encircled apartment in Lower Ramallah, I write to you after 5 days without electricity or gas. Hopefully I will survive with my laptop and the lentil soup which I make bearable, day after day, with peppers. Vegetables, bread, and meat seem like a luxury.

People in the International Red Cross do not send any ambulances unless the Israeli army give them a permit. A group of 30 young Palestinians were shot at and, until now, 3 a.m, they have been denied all medical help. This is the third such case documented in Ramallah in the last two days. If you have any medical corps, any contact with humanitarian organisations, please do whatever you can to send them to see what is going on on the ground.

“The children are in the bathroom, they are scared to watch”, said a woman who called me. “Their mother and their big brother have been killed and are in another room of the house. They are afraid to watch.

I just called my cousin in Ramallah. She told me that she just went out to get some groceries. As she arrived in Manara Square and Israeli soldiers saw her car, they shot in the air to scare her away and make way for an Israeli tank to pass. She told me that they believed that the curfew was lifted until five o’clock, however, according to other sources, the curfew was supposed to be lifted until six o’clock.

Al-Jazeera TV footage showed the bodies of five Palestinian men executed when Israeli soldiers found out where they’d hidden in a building in Ramallah on Sunday. They had feared for their lives and apparently had good reason to do so. Four were shot with a single bullet to the head. One was murdered with sixteen bullets, mostly fired into his face and chest. Their weapons were confiscated. They lay on the floor, mostly face down. Dark streaks of dried blood covered the walls of their room. Clearly they’d been considered innocent until proven guilty by the great democracy of the Middle East. I wish this were the worst of the crimes now on film.