Dear friends,
I started writing these notes with a certain ironic, perhaps because of my courage to keep morale high, aware that to which I was getting into.
After 7 days in the West Bank or in the West Bank, as they say in the international language, I can not play more.
I was in the city of Bethlehem, Hebron, Nablus, and in the Aida refugee camp, Nablus, Deishe, Balata. In the last two I slept, in the "homes" of Palestinian families. I met dozens of people have welcomed me as a friend or relative, we talked a long time. They showed me everything. Everything is written on the walls, streets, bodies, in the poster, the faces in the photos. Incredulous and chilled rappresentatnti I wanted to meet the Un, the Red Cross, and various international peacekeeping forces, NGOs Palestinian, Israeli and international. Unfortunately I only had confirmation from them, which is that which I was shown and told by boys and men in tears was not an `invention. Unfortunately it's all true, everything is published by official bodies.
I have seen these families, these young men and women, old people, children, crushed like rats or cockroaches, destroyed forever in their entirety `human massacred physically, morally, and psychically.
I've seen the refugee camps, 1 square mile of land inhabited by 25,000 people: understand the significance of this relationship? 10, 12 people in "houses" of 9 square feet, 1 bath in the open air for 600 persons, a general practitioner per 6000 people. There are drugs: all diseases are "cured" with antibiotics and painkillers.
The refugees were deported from their villages by Israeli army in `48 and thrown into the West Bank. Israeli historians say that these 700,000 people if they are "go it alone". `Even so, what is certain is that the war over Israel prevented this gesture escaped from their homes to escape the war to return to their homes. All the displaced families have a large key hanging on the wall of iron is the key to the house in which 48 were taken following the end of the war thinking that they would return home. The Un Resolution 194, 1949, at the end of war, requires Israel to permit the return of all refugees under international law. None of them more able to return, or review just for once their home. Already in 50 Jewish immigrants lived in those houses. 194 is a magic number for all Palestinians. It is the number of disaster.
In 60 years there have been five successive generations inside the camps, the population is qudruplicata. But the refugees have a special legal status. They live in what Israel considers its territory, subject to Israeli jurisdiction, but are not entitled to vote have no right to leave their camp at the cost of losing even the few rights they have as refugees, in any event can not go out West Bank.
These squares of land are mazes with "roads" 50 or 70 cm wide, bare concrete houses 3 or 4 floors high. not have the right to costrutia off the pitch: to make room for new families must go to the `high. children play in open spaces of 2 feet by 3.
The population is so dense that wherever he lives, goes, comes out, someone gets stuck: in Gaza c `and` high density is the most human of the planet. if you have a gun in his hand close your eyes and shoot somewhere necessarily kill someone. I was told of bullets that killed three people ... a single bullet. `When the army operations is" surgical "to try this or that militant meaning is this:
a team of 10-14 soldiers in the field erupts at night. an Arab soldier imposes a curfew, saying something like "close yourselves at home, everything that moves on the street will be 'hit." C `and` a commander adult, and a dozen teens armed with anything. The hours before going on a mission to make him a virtual training, a 3D game in which they shoot at everything that moves ahead. Qando are they know they have to run in this maze, there is `no light, infrared goggles have not seen a cock, they are afraid to die, know that only terrorists and cockroaches live there` s men are already used to shoot at Palestinians virtual ...
shoot everything that moves. the morning after the raid on the street `collect carcasses of dogs, cats and donkeys. Sometimes humans. Old leaving to go to the bathroom, a woman who runs to resume the child and ran away from home `,` the nurse who leans out the door to rescue a wounded man.
come to the house where they think the person you are looking for. do not knock 'not to spoil the surprise: they blow up the door with a bomb. every time someone in the house semplicemtene is killed in this operation. I have already said they are houses of 9 square meters.
enter. if there is `the master's better. unless there is `the master of the teens do what they want.
the director of the cultural center of the Balata camp that I met is gone like this: the soldiers entered his house as I have described, they suspected that he might be affiliated with any fighting organization. Before the whole family have insulted and beaten. They beat the mother and the children more great. The more young children looked on. Interrogated him for hours, beating him savagely. Then he took him to jail. In
months have arrested five of his children more great. The smallest quanche month later is going to blow himself up in Tel Aviv.
All of these children, boys, saw his father beat him into the house without reason, to extort a confession or a name. Everyone has lost a cousin or a brother. Now there are more prisoners: when looking for a fighter in a field and find him, kill him, even in cold blood. `There is more place in prisons. However, the `impunity is guaranteed to all soldiers. No one is ever convicted of war crimes, despite all the international declarations and the International Criminal Court. Sharon himself had been condemned by the International Criminal Court as co-responsible the massacre in the camps of Sabra and Chatila (3000 people killed in cold blood in one night) and is becoming premier, and built the wall of apartheid ', which in turn is condemned by the International Criminal Court. But Israel lives in a dream. The settlers locked in their bunkers, the socialist-Zionist fanatics locked in their kibbutz, young hedonists of Tel Aviv ... Nobody knows what happens from here.
past in various Israeli cities try to talk to Jewish people:
"West Bank? What do you mean?"
"I palkestinesi? Be` just a few hundred thousand people could go and live in Jordan and inpace leave our land "
" I've never heard of Palestinians, settlements, west bank, chip `I started to make the university` "
" In Israel there is `no problem, we all live in peace, Jews and Arabs. `But the Palestinians are terrorists and should be expelled from Israel. This is our land. "
" Refugees "I feel sorry for them but can not return. It is the price of the war of` 48. "
"Two states? It is impossible. Netanyahu says Obama to hold good but instead we are continuing to build settlements. There must be a single Jewish state."
The Israelis were not in Hebron. It is a city of more distant from the Palestinian territory of the State of Israel, wedged between the Dead Sea and the Negev desert in the south
It is a city inhabited by Arabs, about 15,000, but after the war of `67 and` was occupied by a few hundred ultra-Orthodox settlers, soon followed by Israeli army has completely militarized city, expropriating homes of Arabs to make military bases and Jewish homes.
situaizone now is this: 15,000 Arabs (Muslims and Christians), 700 Jews, 2000, 600 Israeli soldiers who defend the Jews. The point here is that there is `the tomb of Abraham, revered by all three monotheistic religions.
The town has been cut in two by a wall, and dozens of checkpoints. The Jews have their quarter-fort inaccessible to anyone, in the heart of the city. Dedcine dozens of roofs and are manned by soldiers who tend the gun pointed at anyone who moves to road, 24 hours 24. I want you to see the pictures, but I can not upload them. It's like being in a film about Nazism in reverse: 4-year olds running down the street and 30 meters more soldiers who follow them up with the sight of machine guns. It is all in my photo card. If `I'll be able to get her in Italy ... In Hebron
these 600 Jews have taken up residence on the upper floors of buildings facing the Arab market (of course with separate entrances and militarized). From the windows they throw bricks, concrete blocks, chairs, iron bars, bags full of acid on the people who go to the market. The inhabitants have long drawn wire mesh to 3 feet above the ground for these objects impediure affecting hundreds of people every morning crowding the market. These networks are the memory of hatred and crime. We step in and look at everything that is still entangled.
"Unfortunately, the network is useless against the metal bars, bags of acid and cement blocks that break through."
It can not be true. I'm watching these people in the face. It can not be true.
`I'm going to try the UN route. I want to tell me that it is not true, that those Arabs are liars make this all staged.
L `UN is represented here by a dedicated international team called TIPH. `It` s been formatada ten years after the prayers of the population to have an international presence. The TIPH has power only to document, can not intervene in any case. They are armed only with a camera. There are a few dozen people running around the city 24 hours to 24.
I met two: an elderly Danish and a young Swiss. Flood you with questions.
It is all true. I talk about their work. Their double frustration: Why do not intervene first. Members Italians in particular, often have to give up, Why are chosen from the body of the Italian police, and when they witness a crime and should not be taken to head downward. They do not know what the hell to do with that camera, and some end up after a few months to alcoholics in a bar that serves alcohol to Christians.
Second frustration: their relationships to have value "confidential", that is void, and may not be published. Pero `c` and `a few videos on You Tube, they tell me, passed on the sly. Go find Hebron on you tube ...
In the camps at best there are teams of Western psychologists who work on the trauma of children who see their parents murdered in cold blood in front of them. When not go wrong there is `no one cares about them. Of these tens of thousands of children, some crazy, sinking into depression and despair. A few hundred of these fighters will become. A few dozen of these will become suicide bombers. The massacre took place from 200 to 2007 and the war in Gaza this year with its 1400 dead in 20 days, Israel is guaranteed a third Intifada between about ten years', when these children will have 15 or 16 years. And authorities there will be no Palestinian or Israeli forces, or fornza intertnazioanel that will be able to `stop a guy who is mad with despair and just wants to kill himself once and for all and to express their trauma unsurpassed, especially revenge, pure, useless , destructive revenge. Allah focuses very little with this. Paradise is an afterthought to these people who blows himself up. These are all `hell already and do not expect to ever be able to get out. Ne `I` in this life to another.
"C` and `point of no return in people's lives.` Beyond that point everything can happen. The Israelis constantly push new generaizoni of Palestinians beyond `that point." I said the director of another cultural center in a field. "We are like mice. Our largest problem is not how to liberate Palestine. But not as mad. How to stay human in the face of all this. "
This is a genocide going on slowly and inesorabilmetne for 60 years, with a logic and a calculated strategy to the table. The objective is already achieved with the construction Sharon Wall. With the wall Israel has de facto annexed everything you ever wanted in this land: natuirali resources, courses of water, fertile land, holy places, illegal settlements, strategic points. All this in what the community International is considered the territory of the phantom Palestinian state. The wall Sharon is built entirely within the p [alestinese isolating a city from `other through bags and recess until almost across the Jordan` s land area. That which remains for the Palestinian state is a sieve of misery and despair, which punctuates the fantastic artificial world of the 400 settlements scattered everywhere. Now it `
, from this illegal status quo, even the Israeli right is willing to deal for the" solution was one step. "
Friends, now in Jerusalem, today, `I am going to visit the four Palestinian families evacuated from their homes a few days ago to settle in the Arab area of \u200b\u200bJerusalem new fdamiglie Jewish law with miserable subterfuge. `` I am going to
Friday Bilin, near Ramallah. This village has been surrounded for 3 / 4 from the wall, and the people is isolated from its lands to the property, closed by the `other side of the wall and now available to settlers. Here every Friday since 2002, the entire population went to the front wall to protest peacefully with kites, slogans, sit in, `against apartheid. It is the most important association Palestinian peace. Every Friday from 2002 `s army from the control tower, after 10 minutes of demonstration, firing tear gas and rubber bullets into the crowd ...
I thought I would have found the spirituality in the Holy Land. But here, from Jerusalem and it's all so saturated with a `` `avvelentata humanity, evil, mad, in pain or in spofondata, hatred, or idiocy in`, `that there is room for the spirit.
I want to find an empty seat to ask God for all that lost, since no one is able to forgive or apologize, or acknowledge mistakes. And the first error, the original sin of this whole story is certainly European colonialism, the destruction of the Arab world after the First World War, the will to solve the problem once and for all Jews, and their guilt unmanageable outside the home.
The only hint of spirituality that I found early hour on this earth, is the smile, the mother and `hospitality fellowship, to the dignity, the moral force of these people destroyed by the pain that I have hosted a son, a brother, a friend. And speaking, stammering, broken by emergence of the `dispersion, their history, I apologize because they did not want` anxious, I was a host, wanted to have a nice evening, trying to joke, to lighten ...
"Excuse me, but I can not speak of` other, when I start I can make me, this is my life, I'm 23, I was born and raised here, are anto with nothing and I lost everything, friends and relatives , but they will not ever get out of here. I do in theater, I read poetry, Darwish you know?, I can not lose their culture, art, because `if not become a beast, an animal made only of hatred, as they want me to become. "
` Will I always be a sweet and painful memories of you Majd, your face dark and fair, your boy's voice, your way to make fun of Ramadan smoking two cigarettes at a time, your fingers thin and sensitive, your "home" where your mother gave me the coffee, the dozens of stories you told me, of all the scars, my friend, Sadiq.
