Haringey Stop the War Coalition
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An eye-witness in Bethlehem

Ted Curtis

I had been to the West Bank with the International Solidarity Movement before my visit in April, that time arriving via Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv; the hassle that the staff give you there beggars belief, so this time I came through Jordan and across King Hussein Bridge. It’s more expensive, with entry and exit taxes that would normally be covered by your flight ticket, but it’s worth it if your budget can run to it.

I met other activists in Amman and at the bridge and we took a taxi together, across the edge of the Judean desert and on to Bethlehem. When we reached the main checkpoint we discovered that there had been a curfew in force all day, part of a wider collective punishment for the terrible passover suicide bombing that had taken place in Netanya the night before, and taxi drivers were being angrily turned away by the IDF. A Palestinian friend from the previous campaign happened by, and told us that if we jumped down onto the footpath we could walk around the edge of the checkpoint safely. We took his advice and were almost around the corner and on the home strait when a soldier noticed us and called us back, screaming and levelling his gun at us. We walked back to the road and were standing around on the kerb wondering what we ought to do next when another servis – a Palestinian shared taxi – screeched to halt just in front of us.

“OK, get in my friends, it’s OK” a kheffiyed youth beseeched us, leaning out of the passenger window. “Where do you want to go?”

“We want to go into Bethlehem through here but they’re not letting us. There’s been a curfew all day. Do you know if any of the other checkponts are open?” we asked him.

“Yes, Beit Jala checkpoint is open. My sister lives there and I’ve just spoken to her. Come on, get in! I will take you there.”

We agreed a price and piled in, and in less than five minutes we were staring at an obscure little backwater road, completely inaccessible to vehicular traffic. Our guide stepped out of the van and showed us where to walk, and when we reached the other side another car pulled up and its driver asked us where it was we were off to. He then called us a taxi on his mobile, and soon we were on our way to the Star hotel, close to Manger square. I wondered were we might have been left without this ubiquitous modern miracle, the cellphone. Only a few short years ago, I recalled, many of our demonstrations in England were only just about held together with short-range walkie-talkies.

We checked into the hotel and a big sleep followed, and then an evening meal where new faces were made welcome and older acquaintances rekindled. The next day or two were filled with a rudimentary non-violence training programme and then on the Friday afternoon, those of us who had been before and knew a little of the workings of the IDF made our way down the hill out of Bethlehem. We marched past Beit Jala hospital towards the little town itself, and when we reached the corner where a small ring-fenced statue of St. George appropriately slaying the dragon welcomes you, we encountered what inadvertently became our quarry – or perhaps us theirs – a couple of APCs. The march came to a halt and all singing and chanting immediately ceased. An APC – Armoured Personnel Carrier – is really no different from a tank, albeit a little smaller. It carries a crew of six soldiers, all armed, dangerous and ready for action, and the only really difference lies in the absence of a gun turret. There seemed to be some confusion at this point as to our precise objective. Were we there to confront the ‘tanks’, or to march past them into Beit Jala for a solidarity visit? I was of the latter persuasion, but I nonetheless hung around with the others whilst a consensus that never came was reached. The APC’s commander seemed to be equally confused. He was waving at us to get back, but employing no verbal directives at all. Everybody seemed to be just milling around. When the bright-orange percussion grenade came, it was hardly a threat: we knew what it was from our training, and had plenty of time to get out of the way and block up our ears. Now our problem was one of inefficient organisation. What did we want to do next? Were we staying with the APCs, were we going to try to march past them to get into Beit Jala proper in solidarity with its poor beleaguered residents, or had we made our point adequately already? At this point some of our Palestinian organisers were urging us to make a dignified retreat, but the majority of the Italians from Ya basta! seemed intent on staying and possibly staging a sit-down protest in front of the APCs. The point I am making here is not that either position was the incorrect one, but that the objective of our protest should have been decided well in advance of the march, and that it should have been clearly understood by everyone.

The following day passed largely without incident in the Bethlehem locality: but the tension was clearly rising. Although the people were as friendly as ever, armed men from the Tamzim – the local defence militias – were becoming increasingly more visible on street corners. On the Thursday morning, I had woken in my hotel room to a newsflash from CNN. Ariel Sharon and a council of war were holding an aggressive press conference, detailing their intention to now smash the PLO’s “terrorist infrastructure” once and for all. Sharon told of how he was calling up 20,000 reservists in this latest brutal operation, purportedly a reaction to the suicide bomb at Netanya, but also curious in its proximity to the Saudi peace plan that had been officially announced at the pan-Arab conference in Lebanon the day before. The television kept alternating between the Israeli cabinet’s resolute statements of aggression and the beginning of its reality in Ramallah, where tanks had been shelling the Mukhata – President Arafat’s famous governancy compound – since 6am. In the days that followed we would learn of the truly horrible actualities of the high council of Zion’s mealy-mouthed platitudes. Soon after, five Palestinian Authority policemen would be disarmed and then shot dead in the street in Ramallah in cold blood, and just a couple of days later a similar fate awaited another thirty: lined up, blindfolded and then all machine-gunned to death from a nearby Merkava tank. However, to the best of my knowledge neither of these incidents was ever reported in our mainstream media.

Our Easter was to be spent joining in a march from the Greek Orthodox church – who were commemorating the death of Christ at a slightly later date than their Catholic counterparts – to the Catholic church, in the Bethlehem suburb of Beit Sahour. In spite of a couple of placards depicting Saddam Hussein, and even three or four members of (presumably) Hamas getting on top of a building at the rallying-point of the march, burning a hastily home-made Israeli flag and letting off a few rounds into the bargain, the whole affair passed off without incident. I was able to catch up with a friend from the December campaign, who lives locally and now works as a medic for the Palestinian Red Cross Society. One member of our group wondered aloud to me just what we were doing marching in time to images of the great dictator, but I didn’t feel myself fit to judge the political affiliations of those who have to live under the gun.

We had also been spending our nights in the local refugee camps acting as human shields to the impending full-scale invasion. There are three camps in Bethlehem: Al-Azza, Aida and Dheishe. The last two suicide bomb attempts had been conducted by former residents of Dheishe, so this was expected to receive the first of the IDF’s attentions when they inevitably came in. However, there was already a presence of some thirty Italians staying there, so we were split between the other two camps. I went to Azza, where our evening’s reception and orientation was cut short by bursts of rapid gunfire from the nearby IDF checkpoint. The Israeli army do this day and night, we were told, picking off individuals at random from the camp’s main street, but when they started firing into the camp at night it was best to be indoors. Along the walls of the social centre where we were assembled to receive our accommodation details there were posters of their latest victim, a 14-year old Muslim girl. All of the residents of Azza are Muslims, originally Bedouin tribespeoples from the Beer Sheeva region in the upper Negev desert. Myself and my housemate were taken down several dark alleys, running, whispering, and turning back until we finally reached the danger-spot opposite the Paradise hotel at the edge of the camp. Live gunfire rang out sporadically around us. Before we crossed the street, our guide turned to us several times for confirmation. “You understand that they are shooting at us?” he asked. “That you could be killed at any time? You understand this?” We both nodded and then quickly whispered our assent aloud, unused to the darkness. “Then run like a rocket!” we were told.

Once inside with our family, the night passed in relative ease. Ocassionally more shots would ring out, but our genial hosts – the brothers Nasser and Yassir – assured us that this was pefectly normal for them, day or night. I managed to capture a little of this on minidisc, but in retrospect it sounds a lot less threatening than Chinese new year, and nothing like the death and grief that it truly portends. My amateur journalist’s apparatus was a lot more useful in amusing the children. The next night we were moved into the apartment of a single man, who is due to be married this June, but who hadn’t seen his fiancee for over five months as she lives outside of Bethlehem, and he isn’t allowed to move freely about in his own country. We were told that we would be safer there, as the apartment was in a central courtyard and shielded by other dwellings. “It will be a tall night!” another young man told us, a policeman called Omar who was normally based in Beit Jala but who couldn’t be there at that time because it was considered “too dangerous”. The IDF had supposedly pulled out of Beit Jala in the days before but, as we had seen, they clearly hadn’t. This was taken to be yet another sign of something very major and imminent in the offing. Meanwhile, the media was reporting some 47 IDF tanks being massed at Bethlehem checkpoint for the past two nights. But it wasn’t to be a tall night that night. We waited.

Easter Monday was the day before the Israeli army finally came into Bethlehem, but first we were to be treated to a nominal aperitif of their US-sponsored firepower, and their callous disregard for the status of civilians and journalists. We had decided to march back to Beit Jala, and possibly deliver a few supplies to the villagers there. This time the APCs had pulled back along the road into Bethlehem a little, and we were able to walk past the church on the corner of the hill. When we got to about 100 yards from the military presence we again ceased our singing, and two negotiators were nominated to move toward them slowly with hands in the air. These were Lilian Pizzichini, a journalist from east London, and Kunle Ibidun, a peace activist and IT consultant from Bristol. Without warning, live ammunition was fired at the ground just in front of their feet. The bullets fired were later identified as being perforated in order to immediately fragment and cause random injuries without a direct hit being necessary to cause harm: such amunition is illegal under international law. All of the time that we were pushed down the hill the APC’s commander was speaking into a headset, apparently acting on instructions from above. Kunle was hit three times by shrapnel and was taken to the nearby Beit Jala hospital, together with a Palestinian cameraman working for the Al-Jazeera network. More shooting followed with the three APCs moving slowly towards us, moving us down the hill back in the direction of Bethlehem. In the ensuing confusion, a total of seven international civilians were injured, including one who appeared to have been shot directly in the stomach and who had to have the bullet removed in immediate surgery. Despite this confusion, however, the march moved slowly backwards past the church and at no stage was any panic or anger, apparent. Also covering the demonstration was the BBC’s Orla Guerin, who was chased down an alleyway together with her camera crew under rapid fire. Later, following the apparent massacre at Jenin refugee camp, a spokesman for Israel told BBC radio 4’s PM programme that the press was being kept out of the area for its own safety. I was amazed that the BBC expressed no reaction at all to this comment. I have to say that I wasn’t particularly frightened at the time, but this was only really because I wasn’t quite sure what we were being shot at with.

After all of those injured had been released from the hospital, a few of us tried to relax and get a hold of the day’s events. Kunle had discovered upon returning to the hotel that his father had just died of a stroke, and was consequently planning to go back to Britain the following day. A friend, who had never wanted to be in direct confrontation with ridiculous levels of military hardware in the first place, would be joining him, but the remainder of us were vowing to stay. I had decided not to go back to Azza camp for a third night in order to catch up on my writing. As the evening wore on people ran round the hotel, busying themselves in readiness of the coming mass incursions. A few could be heard crying or getting a little emotional in other ways behind closed doors, as the reality of what had been done to us during the afternoon sank in. Whilst some dealt with the intense situation by making innumerable lists or locking themselves into broom cupboards, my own contingent dealt with things by drinking all of the beer in the hotel, although to be fair it’s a very small bar. The next night, French journalists would take care of the whisky and the brandy. The left-wing comedian, Jeremy Hardy, found that he was able to cope by using his new captive audience to practice his one-liners upon, honing them to perfection. We sat up chatting until about 11:30, when we were informed that the IDF had taken over the Ibda’a social centre at the entrance to Dheishe, and were using the position to shell into the camp. We could now hear Apache helicopter gunships buzzing about over the city intermittently, and we were advised to vacate the restaurant which is on the hotel’s 5th floor, is made largely of glass, and is the highest point in Bethlehem. We retired to the lobby downstairs where some Tamzim were just leaving to go out onto the streets. For many of us this was one of the hardest things: knowing that many of these people, with whom we had recently shared jokes and cigarettes, were now going outside to their probable deaths.

We sat up until about three, when it became clear that a shift system was in operation and that it was OK to sleep. I managed to snatch an hour before the invasion started in earnest. For the next couple of nights we would be kept awake by relentless machine-gun fire and the chop-chop-chop of heicopter rotor blades. After the first night the electricity was cut off, and when the hotel manager ventured outside to set in motion his emergency generator, he was shot at by IDF snipers. There was often a tank directly outside of the lobby. We were told to keep the curtains permanently drawn and to stay away from windows, the top floor was now off limits, and a moratorium was put on showers. Once a day we would eat stale pitta bread and local cheese, and occasionally there would be a cooked meal. Kunle was becoming worried that he would miss his father’s funeral, and the British and American consulates were contacted to try to evacuate those who wished to leave. Aisa, a Japanese national, was in constant pain and barely able to walk after being hit three times in the leg by Israeli shrapnel, but was offered only the vague promise of a taxi by her own government. She eventually came out with the Americans. A convoy of armoured vehicles from the two embassies arrived at Bethlehem checkpoint on the second day, but they returned to Jerusalem after three hours of negotiations with the IDF produced no result. By this time, a few more of us were wavering in our resolution to remain come-what-may, as we had by now been in telephone contact with loved ones back home and it was becoming clear that this might be our only opportunity to get out. It was also obvious to me that there was very little that I could do personally, locked down tight in a hotel, unable to move, and consuming other people’s food. Late one night a desperate plea had come through from a family in the vicinity of the hotel. They had refused to open their reinforced front door to the IDF, who had fired a volley of armour-piercing bullets straight through it, killing the mother and the eldest son. This had happened two days previously, and the father was left with two mouldering corpses and a brood of hysterical toddlers. There was simply nothing that we could do. As soon as we stepped out of the door we would have become targets for snipers.

The next day the Anglo-American relief convoy, also carrying a little food, arrived again at Bethlehem checkpoint. There were the same protracted negotiations, but this time they were eventually successful. I was first made aware of this by live commentary from CNN, an altogether surreal state of affairs. Don’t kill your TV yet. There were now seven ‘Brits’ wanting to get out, and also a number of Americans. When the convoy eventually arrived, it was even more surreal than the television. Whilst we had only two drivers, the Americans had brought with them a screaming squadron from the marines. As we drove back towards Israel, past Rachel’s tomb, the scale of the IDF’s rampage of vandalism became a little more apparent. The streets were flooded, not from any storms but from deliberately smashed water pipes, and they seemed to have driven their tanks over every single street lamp in the city. When the Israelis eventually pulled out of Bethlehem – as they would surely have to – the cost of rebuilding was going to be immense.

(C) Ted Curtis 2002. All rights reserved.

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