הטרור שאתה מתעלם ממנו :
רוצה שייפסקו הפיגועים? צודק רוצה שלא יהיו התקפות לגיטימיות של כוחות הכיבוש? גם זה צריך לקרות במסגרת תהליך מדיני. אבל אל תתעלם מטרור יומיומי של הכיבוש, שהיה ויהיה על עוד אנשים כמוך לא יתמודדו עם הצד שלהם. וכל עוד הוא יהיה, האלימות תימשך. דיווח של הוואידה מ ISM , על המעצר שלה ועל מה שחוותה : From: Huwaida Arraf> Dear Friends, Thank you for the calls and the emails. I am embarassed to have taken up your time with my case when there are so many other Palestinians that need your help. The officer filling out my release papers commented that I "must have many friends all over the world." I was put under arrest today for "obstructing the work of soldiers" and though I didn't go to prison, I'd like to ask a few minutes of your time to tell you about what happened today, and the larger prison that all Palestinians in the Occupied Palestinian Territories are in. I arrived at the Huwwara checkpoint at around 12:30pm with a newly arrived American volunteer, Rick; we were on our way to Nablus. The queue was long, at least 70 people, and it didn't look like the three Israeli soldiers that were manning the checkpoint were letting anybody through. A few of the Palestinian men, who had already been at the checkpoint for over an hour, seeing my companion was an international, advised us to walk around the checkpoint to avoid what would surely be another 3-hour wait, at least; "If you have an American passport, you'll pass, no problem." Though we were in a hurry to get Rick to the ISM training in Nablus, there was no question that we'd refuse to take advantage of the racist system that would allow an American into Nablus, but require a resident of Nablus or a surrounding village to wait for hours, to be checked by Israeli soldiers and then given a verdict of whether he/she could go home, to work, or to school. So we waited. Soldiers make Palestinians stand in a female line and a male line and so our Palestinian friends, who were trying to save us time, urged us to at least get into the shorter female line. We did. A half an hour later a soldier came over and let a handful of women pass. I was one of the ones singled out to pass. Rick came with me. When we approched the soldier that was to check our IDs, we noticed a family, a man, woman and two children who were standing aside. Apparently the soldiers did not want to let the man through (he had a British passport) and his wife, a Palestinian from Nablus, was refusing to leave without him. They were also refusing to turn back. The soldiers kept asking of the Brit, his "hawiyya" - ID, insinuating that he had a Palestinian ID (in addition to the passport) and was just refusing to show it. I then noticed two yound Palestinian men, in their early twenties, crouching up against the cinder blocks that form the checkpoint, their hands tied behind their backs. An old woman was pleading with the Israeli soldiers, her son (one of the young men), was sick and had back problems and was on his way to Rafeedia Hospital in Nablus. She was trying to show the soldier her son's papers and x-rays, but he wasn't interested. "His back! His back!" she cried, but the soldier only yelled at her to go away. I interfered to ask the soldier why he was yelling at the old woman and holding the young men. He said he wasn't interested. I learned from the two men, Rashed and Ramsy that they had been held for 3 hours by that point (since about 9:30am) and the soldiers had confiscated their ID cards. They weren't told why. I got on the phone with HaMoked, an Israeli human rights organization in Jerusalem that often turns in complaints of abuses to the Military District Coordinating Office, and gave them the names of the young men. Rick and I decided that we would stay by Ramsy and Rashed until HaMoked was able to get back to us. Ramsy stood up to show us that his cuffs were on way too tight. It looked like he was losing circulation. I pleaded with one of the soldiers to loosen his cuffs, Rick pointing out that the boy could be seriously hurt. The soldier screamed at Ramsy to kneel "or else." Another soldier, calling himself a beast, said "I want to kill him today." The soldiers told me to leave the area, as I was in a closed military zone. A young man, named Nael, came through, asked the soldier if he could pass because he got word that his father passed away last night and he wanted to visit him before he was buried. The soldier told him to shut up and get back in line. When Nael persisted, the soldier called him a "son of a b*tch" and began pushing him. Nael stood his ground and the pushing got very rough. Another soldier ran over screaming and put his M16 to Nael's head. They grabbed Nael and pulled him away, one soldier still screaming and threatening to shoot. Rick and I followed and whipped out our cameras, "Hey, hey, calm down. Calm down!" Nael was also put in cuffs and told that he would be arrested and that he "would be seeing a jail cell and not [his] father." Another call to HaMoked.
