Marhaba dear family and friends I am sorry that it has taken me so long to write. I have been in Budrus and I did not want to use the internet in house I was staying at because it is so expensive. I have had few opportunities to get to a computer with internet. I have been staying at Abu Ahmed’s house in Budrus, which has been absolutely lovely. I am learning (slowly) how to make Palestinian cuisine and Arabic coffee and tea, the key to all of it is lots of oil, sugar and salt. Everything you are told not to eat in the states is thrown at you here, and how can you say no? Abu Ahmed’s daughter Iltezam has been teaching ,e Arabic, as have many other girls in the village. I only have two weeks left here before I come home for the holidays. Tomorrow I will go to Nablus and visit Balata Refugee Camp. Hopefully I will be able to write soon. Hope everyone is well Lots of love, S’ra Arrests in Budrus: A Show of Solidarity Boys throw stones in Palestine, but why? Do they really think that they will be able to hurt a soldier, stop the building of a settlement or the wall or stop an incursion into their village or city? Maybe they will hit a soldier and the solider will get a bruise that will last a week or so, but they will not be killed by this stone. The soldiers fire rubber bullets and live ammunition, which kill, taking lives away. The portion of the Annexation Wall being built now in Budrus is located extremely close to the school. Each morning the bulldozers and jack hammers wake up and start work before the students and teachers arrive to the school. When the boys enter the school, they can see the construction site from the field where they sometimes kick a soccer ball around before school starts. Each day the drilling drains out the sound of children’s laughter and the chirping of the birds. Behind the construction area is an Israeli military training base, a constant roar of gunfire. Soldiers stand close to the bulldozers and construction equipment, looking across at the school, in a forest where the children once where able to go play. They have their guns pointed towards the schoolyard and yell at the children if they stray from the schoolyard to go play in the olive groves between the wall and the school. The wall is wrapping around their village and eight other villages. Soon there will be only one entrance in and out of the entire area. It could take hours to get to Ramallah, where the closest universities and hospitals are, not to mention jobs. So why do the boys throw stones? The stone is a symbolic act of resistance, defiance to the Israeli occupation. The boys sometimes throw stones before and after school at soldiers that are too far away to hit. In return the soldiers fire tear gas, sound bombs and rubber bullets. The schoolyard is littered with the remnants of these weapons. Lately the soldiers have been entering the village more regularly. Two days this week they went to the school in the morning to arrest three young boys who threw stones. The teachers refused them entrance into the school. The soldiers do not know the boys names but they can recognize them. The teachers knew which boys they were looking for so they had the boys change their clothes and snuck them out of the school. Other internationals and I went to the school the last two days to try to deter the soldiers from coming back, they never arrived and hopefully they will stop coming to the school. Of course if the soldiers were not protecting the workers who are building the wall, the boys would have nothing to throw stones at. If there were no bulldozers or humvees, they would play soccer like ordinary boys after school. Budrus hosted their 49th demonstration against the wall on Tuesday. Over 150 village members, 60 Israelis, and 25 internationals came to protest. It was planned and coordinated by the village and Israelis. Thirty-seven Israelis were detained and four arrested at the protest, when asked for identification, they all gave the name of Ahmed Awad, a man from Budrus who was arrested three months ago for non-violently resisting the wall. He has been held in administrative detention for three months, a special legal system established by the Israeli government for Palestinians, a legal system which grants Palestinians no rights. Over forty Israelis intended to get arrested to show their solidarity with Ahmed Awad. They have the privilege to participate in civil disobedience like this, because they know they will be released, a right that Palestinians do not possess. Under administrative detention Palestinians can be held without charges being filed against them for an indefinite period of time. The demonstration on Tuesday turned into a battlefield of young boys throwing rocks and Israeli soldiers using tear gas, sound bombs, and rubber bullets. Tear gas infiltrated many houses close to the school. One Israeli woman, fell on top of a sound bomb which exploded underneath her, singeing her hair and skin. The ambulance that carried her was tear gassed. Soldiers occupied a house in the village and went to the roof to throw more tear gas and sound bombs. Eventually when night fell the soldiers finally left Budrus and families went to eat dinner after an exhausting day of inhaling tear gas and trying to escape the soldiers. Earlier this year when I was in Budrus, Ahmed Awad, also known as Abu Hassan, invited 15 internationals and Israelis to his house for lunch. Each of us was served five different types of soup, half a chicken, a huge bowl of rice, bread and all the tea and coffee we wanted. We all left barely able to walk, feeling gracious for his family’s outrageously kind meal. Ahmed is a sheep and goat herder. Much of the land where he took his sheep and goats to graze is under Israeli control now. While he is in jail his brother is tending to his animals, a job they both share. The Israelis that came for lunch that day were neighbors and invited guests, not occupiers and invaders. These kinds of gestures strengthen the ties and trust between two people who have been isolated from each other, and who have been taught to hate each other. The people of Budrus and many Israelis have become genuine friends, a hopeful sign for what will be a long process of trust building and living together as neighbors. Meeting Mousa’s Family Yester day I had the honor of meeting my friend Mousa’s family, my friend from Vermont, not to mention a marvelous gardener. Mousa comes from Abud, a village of 2,200 people in the Western Ramallah district. His family was most gracious, with tea, delicious food, and babies to coddle. Christians and Muslims share the village and live side by side. This community has been spared enclosure by the Annexation Wall. However, they feel the effects of the occupation daily. Three illegal Israeli settlements surround Abud. Bet Arie, built in 1982, confiscated 800 dunums from Abud (four dunums equal one acre). Then in 1988 the construction of Ofraim took another 650 dunums from the village. Most recently in 2001, the Israeli military built a military settlement, Naveh Iyyre, for the storage of military vehicles and equipment, which seized 60 dunums of land. Transportation on two of the three main roads into Abud is impeded by roadblocks, huge cement blocks placed in the middle of the road. The cement blocks are still present on the the road that is currently open. The blocks are on the side of the road so the military can completely enclose the village at any moment. Almost daily the military enters the village escalating the situation. They have no reason except to provoke the village. The soldiers have asked the mayor why the boys throw stones at the jeeps. He eloquently replied, “If the soldiers did not come into the village, the boys would not throw stones.” The economic situation in the village mirrors the rest of the West Bank and Gaza. Since the beginning of the Second Intifada almost all Palestinians are not allowed to enter Israel or the settlements to work. Two hundred fifty people from Abud once traveled to Israel and the settlements for employment. Now they are either unemployed or seeking work in Ramallah, like everyone one else in the region. With such high unemployment rates, wages have plummeted in Ramallah. Just like most rural villages in the West Bank, every family in Abud has olive trees. Before 2000, these families exported olive oil to the Hebron region, Gaza and Jordan, but since the Second Intifada, the Israeli government has imposed closure (the inability of people and products to move out of their immediate vicinity). In the last few years the importation of olive oil from countries like Spain, have driven the price of olive oil down, making it impossible to survive off the sale of olive oil. In 2001 the Israeli government cut 3,500 olive trees in Abud, which lined an exclusive Israeli settler road. The Israeli military claimed that Palestinians could hide behind the trees and shoot at settlers as they drove by. For the sake of “security” Abud lost 3,500 olive trees. The military cleared one hundred meters on each side of the road. According to Elias Azar, the mayor of Abud and Mousa’s second cousin, due to the severe economic hardship, approximately half the population of Abud lives outside the village (another 2,200 people). They have moved to the Ramallah or to Jordan or the United States if the could obtain visas. While I was in Abud, I went to meet Dina, a spirited mother of five beautiful children. Last year her husband was murdered in front of her children, no one knows why to this day. This story is similar to the story of so many other martyrs. Now Dina must support her five children and elderly mother on her own. She cleans the classrooms at one of the schools in Abud. While I sat with the family and practiced the little Arabic I know, I looked into those children’s eyes and wanted to cry. Those children, aged 7 to 12, watched the murder of their father, their eyes were no longer innocent, and their childhood was stolen from them in a matter of minutes. This image, an image of absolute horror, will be with them the rest of their lives. Yet their never ending smiles remain in my memory. ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> $4.98 domain names from Yahoo!. Register anything. http://us.click.yahoo.com/Q7_YsB/neXJAA/yQLSAA/MknplB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> Yahoo! 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