Letter from helen in Aida Refugee camp, Palestine
Friday 13th December
Theres a terrible, terrible relentlessness to
occupation and curfew, an oppressive weight which
crushes ones mental and physical energy. The
conversations, the inactivty, the helplessness. Last
night one man was killed in Bethlehem, shot dead
inside his home, another killed today in Tulkarem, 6
people injured, including children, two houses
destroyed in Bethlehem. Its normal. We had the same
conversation yesterday and the day before and will no
doubt have it again tomorrow and the day after. Every
day its the same 2 or 3 killed, several injured.
Thats a good day. On bad days 6 -12 or 15 may be
killed.
A stanza from The Rime of the Ancient Mariner goes
over and over in my mind each day:
Day after day, day after day
We stuck, nor breath nor motion
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean.
We are all painted into our homes; the albatross
weighing heavily on each of us. There had been some
hope that they would leave before Christmas, but today
there was an announcement from the IDF commander here
Were staying. A polite request from the Vatican
may mean that pilgrims will be allowed in to Bethlehem
on Christmas Eve, but the soldiers and the tanks will
not be far away, ready to reappear when the
celebration of Christs birth is over. For the second
year in a row, Arafat has been denied permission to
come to Bethlehem, a Palestinian city, to participate
in the service in the Nativity Church.
The kids in Aida have had just a few hours of school
in the past 24 days. They stay at home, play, some try
to study, but its not easy. Some of the boys play in
the streets to get outside, breaking curfew and often
having the jeeps come and throw tear gas and sound
bombs at them, or even shoot live ammunition at them
as has happened on three occasions in the Camp. The
women cook, sometimes break curfew to buy food or to
visit relatives. Afaf goes to a makeshift clinic each
day in the Camp of course shes not allowed to do
this. They have about 70 patients a day. When she went
into the UN clinic where she worked in Bethlehem last
week when there was lifting of the curfew for a couple
of hours, they had 500 patients! The men sit around
and talk and smoke, some try to work, but it is always
risky. One of my friends is getting married next year
and is trying to build his house. But he cant get the
materials the shops are all shut. So he must sit and
do nothing instead. Mahde is 20, both his parents are
dead. He used to have a job in the kitchen of the
Intercontinental Hotel, but that closed two years ago,
and he hasnt had a real job since. Sometimes he gets
work driving a truck. Yesterday he left his home at
5.30 a.m. to try to get to work, but he was caught and
sent back. He tried again, he was caught again. But
the soldiers were good, he told me, they didnt hit
me. I have seen Mahdes bruises when he has been
kicked by the soldiers. Its normal. Sometimes the
soldiers are good. Ghassan is the cutest baby I have
ever seen a laughing happy baby of 9 months. But he
got bacterial meningitis a few days ago. The soldiers
allowed him to be taken to Hospital, and they have
allowed his mother to visit him. Sometimes they are
not so good a pregnant woman in Bethlehem was
refused access to a hospital when the occuaption began
and she and her unborn child died.
Many of my friends here were born after 1967 they
have never known a life without occupation, soldiers,
tanks, helicopters. And what is their crime? They live
in a Refugee camp, because their parents were thrown
out of their homes in 1948. They talk of their
villages, but mostly now they just talk about how many
were killed today, how many homes were demolished, how
many were injured, how many were arrested. I see the
listlessness, kids being denied education, men and
women being denied the possibility of work, people
being denied hope. So they sit around and talk and
there is no escape nowhere to go, nothing to do,
nothing else to talk about.
I move from my home a few metres across the street to
the Childrens Center, where I check e-mails and
write. There are of course, no activities in the
Center for the children now under curfew. Then I move
back to my home. Sometimes I visit people in the Camp,
but not often. I break curfew too walking along the
streets hoping I dont run into soldiers or tanks.
Tomorow they have said the curfew will be lifted from
8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Can we believe it? Of the three days
that curfew has been lifted so far, they have changed
the times on two, making people rush back into their
homes a couple of hours in advance. I will go to
Bethlehem as will thousands of others. It was almost
impossible to move there last time. And then at 4 p.m.
we will all be painted back into our corners of the
Camp.
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