Attaching Names and Faces To Statistics

By Susan M. Akram

Numbers alone don't tell the tale, but they give an indication of the pervasiveness of Israel's violations of the human rights of Palestinians in Israeli-occupied territories.

More than 280 Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza have been killed since December 1987.
Several thousand Palestinians have been beaten by Israeli soldiers.
More than 5,000 Palestinians are currently imprisoned, of whom 1,700 are under administrative detention.
More than 150 Palestinian homes have been demolished by Israeli authorities.
And 60 Palestinians have been ordered deported during this year alone (1,500 since 1967).

I knew that Israel was systematically violating Palestinian human rights before we paid our own way and the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee made arrangements for us to spend three weeks with Palestinian families and experience life under Israeli occupation. My purpose was to document the violations because I knew that US laws, such as Section 502B and 116 of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, prohibit US military and economic aid "to any country the government of which engages in a pattern of gross violations of internationally recognized human rights."

The delegation did not travel or stay together. We each spent time with many different Palestinian families throughout the West Bank and Gaza. So we were able to see and experience the atrocities that reporters, other delegations, and human rights observers have only glimpsed. American TV, newspaper, and radio coverage had in no way prepared me for what I saw.

16-Year-Old "Terrorists"

Instead of meeting Palestinian "terrorists," I met Laila, a 16-year-old girl who had just had surgery to remove an eye. She lost her eye when Israeli forces invaded her refugee camp to break up a demonstration. Laila ran out to get some of the little children out of the way when a soldier a few feet from her lobbed a metal tear gas canister at her face.

I met Miriam, whose brother and cousin were both shot and killed within 40 days of each other. Miriam's cousin was running away from Israeli troops dispersing a demonstration when he was cornered by a soldier and shot in the head by a dum-dum bullet. Eyewitnesses saw the soldier put the gun up against the young man's forehead. (Dum-dum bullets spread on impact. His head was blown apart.)

Miriam's brother was killed as he was trying to pull a woman who had been demonstrating away from the grasp of an Israeli soldier. Another soldier shot Miriam's brother in the back and, as he spun around, again and again in the chest. Miriam told me her brother's body was held hostage by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) until the family agreed to have only a small funeral. Military Commander Gen. Amram Mitzna himself told the family they could have the body only if they agreed not to participate in further protests. The day before I left the occupied territories, I learned that Miriam's uncle was among the 27 Palestinians most recently given deportation orders.

I met the owners of three homes that had been bulldozed to the ground in Jalazon refugee camp the day before. Israeli soldiers came to the camp close to midnight. They gave the families 15 minutes to dear out their belongings before their homes were torn down. One house belonged to a 60-year-old woman. The military had been looking for her son. They couldn't find him, so they destroyed her house. A tent of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency had been erected on the rubble of one of the homes. The family came out to meet us; eight little children emerged from that tent. Their father was already imprisoned before the demolition order was issued. Under occupation law, a family is not allowed to rebuild on land where a house has been demolished.

Life Under Siege

I learned what it was like to live "under siege." I spent time in Amari, Beach, Jalazon, and Nuseirat refugee camps, getting a taste of how to order one's life when each day may bring a new horror: curfew; house-to-house army searches followed by savage beatings; tear gas; cutoffs of electricity, water, food, and medical supplies; and army or settler raids with indiscriminate use of live ammunition. I recall nights in Gaza waking up to the sounds of screaming and shooting, and finding out that an area was besieged by troops dragging people from their homes and brutally beating them. I was never able to stay more than one or two nights in any one home because of the constant fear of the families with whom I stayed. The presence of an American was an added risk to their lives.

I spent a night at the home of Musa, a trade unionist recently released from prisons whose family had moved six times in the last couple of years. He had been under town arrest and had been severely tortured during two periods of imprisonment for his union activities, although he was never formally charged with any crime. I began, like Musa and his wife, to listen carefully when a car turned down the street, to stop talking when we heard voices near the flat,
and to watch when unfamiliar cars parked near the building. The last day I saw Musa he told me they would soon be moving again because police were carrying his picture and had questioned a friend about Musa's whereabouts.

Violations of Geneva Convention

Deportations from occupied lands, collective punishment, demolition of homes, and imprisonment outside one's own territory are all violations of the fourth Geneva Convention of 1949. Israel routinely engages in all of these illegal actions. Not only has the US failed to condemn the violations of human rights as the Foreign Assistance Act and other laws require, but it continues to fund such violations. The Reagan administration and prior administrations have, from time to time, given Israel a slap on the wrist for continuing to build settlements in the occupied territories, for demolishing Palestinian homes, for the massive use of administrative detention and for the use of excessive force in attempting to crush the intifadah. But renewal of Israel's annual grant of $1.8 billion in military and $1.2 billion in economic aid for fiscal year 1989 means the US government is ignoring the language of its own Foreign Assistance Act and funding Israel's travesties.

The day settlers came to Gaza City accompanied by police and started firing live ammunition into the neighborhood, my companion and I ran out to take pictures. But we quickly dropped the idea when settlers aimed their guns at us. As we ran into an alley, one of the settlers threw a US made tear gas canister toward us. Later, doctors told us of army raids on hospitals when soldiers forcibly removed wounded Palestinians from their beds, threw tear gas inside hospital wards, and actually followed demonstrators inside a hospital in Gaza and proceeded to open fire. The arms and ammunition used were purchased with grants from US taxpayers and the Foreign Assistance Act, but they certainly were not being used for defensive purposes as required by US law.

Susan Akram is an immigration and refugee law attorney with Greater Boston Legal Services in Massachusetts.