On the morning of Wednesday, February 18th, I awoke in Ramallah to a phone call that Jayyous village was under complete curfew, with hundreds of Israeli soldiers and police invading the village and conducting house to house searches. No one could go to work or school that day.
Me and a woman from Germany jumped in a service (Palestinian shared taxis) and headed towards the village, which is located in the Qalqilya district, a little more than an hour's travel away. Three other ISMers were also headed to Jayyous from Nablus, and we hoped to all meet up inside.
The large-scale military action appeared to be an act of collective punishment for the series of demonstrations that have been staged by the village against the further confiscation and destruction of village land caused by the re-routing of the annexation wall. 277 dunums of land will be razed for the new path of the Wall, with a further 5,585 dumums to be permanently confiscated when the Wall is completed. According to Stop The Wall, the settlement of Zufim is planned to expand onto much of the confiscated land.
The construction of infrastructure for the new part of the Israeli settlement known as “North Zufim” has already begun, with the construction of an electricity network that will allow for the creation of housing units.
As we were almost to the village, we suddenly saw two earthmounds blocking the road, guarded by two IDF soldiers. The soldiers would not let any of us pass, telling us that the entire town was designated a "military closed zone" by the district command office (DCO). One of the boys in our service was on his way back from a doctor's visit, and he had a bandage over his eye. Even though both he and his father were residents of the town, they were not allowed to enter.
After about half an hour, we were able to negotiate with the soldiers to let the boy and his father inside, though he father first had to suffer the indignity of pulling up his shirt and unbuttoning his pants to prove that he was unarmed. More soldiers in two jeeps arrived. One of the jeeps contained an arrested youth who was handcuffed and blindfolded. The solders were adamant that me and the German activist could not pass.
At this point, there was not enough cover to walk around the soldiers without being seen, so we headed to the neighboring town of Azzoun. From there, we met up with two other Swedish ISMers and called for a taxi to take us the long way around the village to try our luck at the northern entrance.
It took us more than half an hour of traveling on back roads to reach a street leading to the northern entrance. The road was blocked with an earthmound but was unguarded. So we got out of the taxi and walked quickly around the blockade, up a hill through the fields, and made it into the outskirts of Jayyous.
No one was walking the streets inside the village and we could hear army jeeps using loudspeakers to order everyone to stay inside. A door opened, and a family told us to quickly come in. We went up to their roof to see what was happening, and we stashed our bags and passports with the family. After calling the three ISMers that were supposed to meet us inside, we learned that they had been caught by a border police patrol and driven out of the village.
At this time, we saw a group of seven soldiers beating on the door of a house across the street. The door opened, and the soldiers occupied the house. Fearing the house would be ransacked or its male inhabitants arrested, we went over and stood at its entrance. The soldiers were shocked to see us and wanted to know what we were doing there. We replied that we were human rights workers simply observing the situation.
Suddenly, a man in his early twenties was led outside of the house in cuffs. We quickly surrounded the soldiers, began filming them and yelled at them to stop. As I tried to snap a couple of photos, a soldiers grabbed my camera and kicked me in the shin. I grabbed my camera back, and we began to scuffle for it. He ripped my shirt, but he was not able to get it back and eventually gave up after his commander walked over.
The detained man was taken into a jeep, and returned, uncuffed, a few minutes later. He told us that the soldiers had slapped him a couple of times, and then let him go.
For a few hours, we tried to assess the situation in the center of the village and avoid being seen by soldiers. There were at least a few hundred inside, and we could see several houses that flew the Israeli flag, clearly occupied by troops. We interviewed a man with his arm in a sling who told us that his wrist had been broken after a soldier hit him with an m16. We also spoke with several families who had had their houses occupied earlier in the day. They told us how their houses had been ransacked by soldiers.
After this, we decided to head to the village school where we had heard more than 100 boys had been taken. The school was being used as a mass detention center. We made our way slowly, stopping to duck behind walls whenever army patrols would drive by. When we arrived at the school, the soldiers had just left. The main gate was broken open and blindfolds and plastic cuffs littered the schoolyard. Many windows to the classroom had been broken, and the soldiers had forced their way in by breaking open the doors. Desks lay strewn over the rooms, and broken glass was everywhere.
We learned more than 100 boys had been kept in the schoolyard and called in for interrogation one by one. Many of the boys were beaten. 15 were arrested from the school and are currently being held at Huwarra military camp. The rest were released.
After we left the school, a border police jeep zoomed up to us out of nowhere and ordered us to stop. Within minutes, more than 25 border policemen arrived on the scene and we were told that we were under arrest. Playing the doom tourist card, we asserted that we were visiting some friends for lunch in the village, and that we had left our passports at our hotel in Jerusalem. After about half an hour, the policemen, clearly not wanting to bother to arrest four internationals without identification, took each of our picture and let us go with the warning that if we were seen again we would be put in jail.
A nearby family then invited us in for dinner, and we lay low inside their house. Around 7pm, army loudspeakers announced that the curfew would be lifted for the next three hours. Immediately, hundreds of people came out of their houses and headed towards the shops to buy food and cigarettes. Around 10pm, everyone was nervous that the army would return. We stayed with a group of shabab (young men) who had not been detained earlier in the day and feared they would be targeted next. While warming ourselves around some coals, one of the ISMers became interested in the book I was reading which was Assata Shakur's autobiography. She began reading one of Assata's very relevant poems to us, and it was also translated into arabic so that all of the shabab could understand.
"I have been locked by the lawless.
Handcuffed by the haters.
Gagged by the greedy.
And, if I know any thing at all,
it's that a wall is just a wall
and nothing more at all.
It can be broken down."
The army did not come back that night, and there was no curfew the next day. But for 15 boys, the ordeal did not stop there and this very minute they are still being held and interrogated without charge at Huwarra military camp.
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