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Last days in Palestine Donna Tue, 7 May 2002 Hi all, Tonight is Friday 3rd May. I'm spending my last night in Palestine here in Al-Quds (known in English as Jerusalem) I'm staying in a youth hostel just outside the Damascus Gate. I left Gaza today, I spent a week there. There are very few international people in Gaza observing the atrocities that the Israeli Occupation soldiers and the Israeli Occupation Settlers commit every day. There doesn't seem to be any press there, not even Al-Jazeera. So the oppression there is ongoing and extreme. Israel Govt. has been threatening to invade Gaza for a few weeks now. The entire population is very tense from this constant threat. The Israeli Occupation Forces are attacking every day somewhere in Gaza and every day innocent civilians are killed by Israeli Occupation soldiers and Israeli Occupation Settlers, however this is not on the scale of an all out invasion, which could happen any day. Can you imagine waiting every day for a brutal Nazi-like heavily armed Army to invade your city? Knowing full-well that the soldiers have no respect for your life and would kill you as quick as they would kill a mosquito or a fly? or maybe even quicker? Yet you need to continue to live your life and work or go to school or raise and support a family. Can you imagine the tension? On top of that, your daily life is constantly being constrained by an Occupation Army which controls every aspect of your life. So sometimes you can go to work, or go to school or go to market and sometimes you can't. Sometimes the Israeli Occupation Force comes into different areas within the Gaza Strip with jeeps, tanks, bulldozers, etc. and all the life stops. Nobody can enter the town and nobody can leave, until the soldiers leave. While they are in the town, they do as much damage as they can. Often shooting innocent civilians and killing them. Night time is the most dangerous. The Israeli Occupation Forces put snipers wherever they want and shoot to kill anyone they see outside, even if they are children. It is a very important part of Palestinian culture to visit one another, especially family. This cultural aspect is severely impacted by curfews put upon Palestinians throughout the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Many people have been shot and killed for just walking down the street or pathway. Yet the Israeli Zionist propaganda machine constantly reports that the Israeli soldiers shot Palestinian terrorists. Yesterday, while thousands of Palestinians were waiting at the Khan Younis checkpoint to cross into Dir Al-Balakh and from Dir Al-Balakh into Khan Younis, 5 tanks with guns and one bulldozer entered a very small village near Dir Al-Balakh, Wadi Salkah, and destroyed field crops and irrigation pipes which hadn't been destroyed the previous time the tanks and bulldozer came. You have to understand that this is a very special bulldozer. It has a very large plate or shovel at the front - it is very tall, I have never seen anything like it. At the back is a very large digger type arm which digs down into the street or dirt as the bulldozer travels around. I think that Israel designed this bulldozer especially for Palestine. The tanks and the bulldozer destroy anything in their pathway. Their pathway is all crops of food and the livelihood of the Palestinians living there. In any case, there were no news cameras there, no international people there, only the Palestinians were there. It was a real miracle that no Palestinian was shot or killed during this horrendous attack. There are something like 16 settlements in the Gaza Strip which are constantly growing in size, i.e. the Israeli govt. confiscates more and more land. First to expand the Jewish only settlements and then to build Jewish only roads, and then to expand the Jewish only settlements again. Gaza has NEVER been part of Israel, it was never annexed by the Israeli govt. The Israeli Occupation soldiers and settlers should not be there. They are breaking all International Laws that exist. Yet the Israeli presence there continues to grow and expand and hamper the daily lives of Palestinian men, women and children. That Israeli soldiers stand at a checkpoint within the Gaza Strip and control who and when Palestinians can pass is so absurd that I want to scream to the world to wake up. Israeli Occupation Forces armed to the teeth and sitting in a tank or inside the towers that stand at the checkpoint. The towers have slits in them for the machine guns to stick out and for the Occupation soldiers inside to look out. These nazis will prevent people from crossing an illegal check point on their own land. The Palestinians are ANGRY. They want the genocide of the people, the land, the culture to stop. They are calling on the world community to hear their shouts that the genocide must stop, that they must be allowed to live in Peace. They are calling on the people of the world to end the genocide. They can't understand how the world stands by as the attacks continue, as the Church of the Nativity is attacked, shot at, set on fire and no leaders in the world stop it. The situation in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank is dire. I don't know what the situation is for the Palestinians living inside "Israel", I'm assuming it is very difficult. The policies of the U.S. govt. must change. The constant monetary support for Israel and the constant resolutions being passed which condemn Palestine and the Palestinians for protecting their lives and their land and condone the terrorism of the Israeli Occupation Forces MUST STOP. Please do what you can to come to Palestine and see for yourself. Even if you can only come for a week, it is important for you to come and observe and also to show the Palestinians that you are in solidarity with them. in solidarity, Donna
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