BEIT HANOUN
by Marianne Blume - 20 May 2003


Dear friends,

I don't write often, because by dint of living in injustice and absurdity, one has the impression of repeating itself and, often in vain.
But today, the overflow is higher than usual. I'm fed up with hearing, reading in every language that suicide bombings sabotage the roadmap and all peace efforts, fed up with listening to the litanies against Arafat and all those whom Israel doesn't like, fed up with not reading nor hearing anything about Israeli terrorism which nips in the bud any hope for peace.
Then, I decide to share with You a small part from our daily life.
Yesterday, May 19 2003, a former student called me, with a strange voice I didn't recognize. He asks me to come over as quickly as possible to see... and bring with me foreigners if I can. He stops, and I guess he's moved, he's crying. The Israelis have demolished the house of his father-in-law and the house of his cousin. They demolished another house as well, damaged the mosque, and then set about the trees, following a good old habit. The tanks and the bulldozers are still there. I hesitate, anguished by the idea that I would not be able to do anything and that I may encounter one of those hideous insects spitting bullets on anything passing by. With a friend we decide to go there. To reach the ezbah of Beit Hanoun we can't use the main road (Salah al-Dine), as tanks are occupying Beit Hanoune since 4 days. We are forced to go by a side road i don't know. And we arrive. The men are sitting as for mourning, women together a little further away. The atmosphere is so heavy, we don't know what to say. We listen to what happened the previous night. Men are extraordinarily calm, but faces are marked by fatigue and anxiety. Women are present with their children who don't understand what happened, or who understand too well and are too wise. They tell their story gazing at the pile of what could be saved, the eyes full of what is lost. The elder children search for their schoolbooks and notebooks, because their exams have started.
What i saw is indescribable. I saw one house razed to the ground and buried under sand by the demolishers. I saw the family, helped by neighbours, digging to find what could be recovered. Their desperate search looked like some morbid game, for nothing is left, not even the tractor crushed with the rest. I saw a young woman wandering on the rubbles where all her hopes have been swallowed up. I saw goats and other animals crushed with the rest by the bulldozer. I saw wrecked apiaries and uprooted trees. I saw overexcited children who couldn't find any other way to express the unspeakable by gathering and watching out for the coming and going tank, firing sporadically at the farmers who tried to cross the road. I saw other damaged houses, crashed into by the bulldozers and which seemed to stand by miracle. I saw the electric station serving the ezbah, vandalised. I saw, or rather I didn't see the recently rebuild road: the Huns passed by here. And nevertheless, I didn't see any tear, except in the eyes of my student who already can't stand this absurd life anymore: he recently has had a child and wonders with anguish what he will be able to do for him.
I breathed the smell of dust and turned over earth, the smell of death too: the blue flies congregate where the animals' corpses are buried.
And then, I heard the stories, so sober I got goose pimples. The soldiers came, ordered them to leave the house immediately without taking anything, no money, nor milk for the children, nor important papers, nor covers, nor... All this at night. All got out without resisting, to witness from further away the annihilation of their belongings. Elsewhere, the soldiers set about a father, his 5 years old daughter ran crying towards her father. The soldier put his gun on her temple and ordered her to lift her hands. Elsewhere a woman asked the soldiers to let her at least take out the animals, the dog and the sheeps. And the soldiers refused. "They pity nothing", this woman told me, "Why the animals?"
Now, the families have found refuge at relatives homes. Twenty persons more in one shot, in one house which shelters already as much. People who lost their home and their subsitence means: no more olive trees, no more lemon trees, no more herd, nothing left. Nothing left in a village where people already had nothing.
I tell You the story of one night in the ezbah Beit Hanoun because I saw it. Anybody could tell You a similar story and even a bloodier one happening in Rafah, Khan Younis, al-Qarara, al-Moghraqa, Nusseirat, Jabaliya or other places. That's the daily life. And when radio or TV or in papers they tell you that "after a period of lull, suicide bombings have started again", You should know that lull, here, in Palestine, is death, destructions, daily humiliations. Terrorism is the occupation and its repressive procession. terrosism is the daily assassination of a people and its future. And that's as well, sabotage of every roadmaps one can imagine.




Marianne Blume
Gaza