Al-Awda New York, The Palestine Right to Return Coalition

NEIGHBORHOOD DESTRUCTION IN PALESTINE

By Samia A. Halaby

A photo essay documenting an inspection tour June 29-30 and July 1, 2001. The team was composed of one member of the New York branch of Al-Awda (Palestine Right to Return Coalition) and one from Idust Foundation in Colorado, one from Laka Foundation in Amsterdam. They worked in cooperation with the Union of Health Work Committees in the West Bank and Ghazze (Gaza). The author, and organizer of the team, is a Palestinian activist born in AlQuds (Jerusalem) prior to the establishment of Israel on Palestinian soil.

Part One - Al-Bireh and Beit Sahour (Towns in The West Bank)

The charred remains of palm trees lie quietly on this roadbed. This was recently a busy boulevard on the outskirts of the town of Al-Bireh in Palestine. It is now covered with the remains of battle and is known as Martyrs' Square. This is where many youth heroically fight Israeli aggression and it is where some of them die. They defend their families with slings and stones against the highly armed and cowardly Israeli military attack on their residential neighborhoods.

This Apartment building is where some of the Palestinian defense youth might have lived. It stands empty now as Israelis are shooting at it from the military settlement of Beit El.

In the very center of the photograph you can see Beit El just above the charred skeleton of a school bus. Located in the midst of a residential neighborhood, this Israeli settlement expanded and occupied the surrounding Palestinian apartment buildings as well as the neighborhood hotel, the City Inn hotel, which is the tall building with a terra-cotta roof.

From Al-Bireh, our team traveled to Beit Sahour and we visited a residential neighborhood and examined a row of demolished and damaged homes. This stone house is where Doctor Johnny Matarweh used to live with his six brothers and all their families. In the Palestinian tradition of the close family the brothers pooled their life savings and built a home of six apartments for their families. It stood on the edge of one of the growing residential neighborhood of Beit Sahour.

Using US made weapons, Israeli bombardment of Palestinian homes is a slow tortured process. I had visited Dr. Matarweh's home in January when it was not yet so completely destroyed. At that time it had a large gash in the wall into his children's bedroom. The bedroom opens onto the hallway where the Christmas tree once stood. Dr. Matarweh returned grateful that his children were unharmed and set up the Christmas tree again. He arranged the bullets and missile fragments under it as gifts from Israel on Christmas 2000.

Behind the olive orchard in the photo above is visible a mound of gravel hiding the Israeli military encampment. The tanks come at their insidiously unpredictable intervals up to the home and bomb it along with the row of neighboring homes. Our team inspected the deep grove made by tanks between the military camp and the homes of Dr. Matarweh and his neighbors.

A Palestinian mother made the families clothes on this sewing machine before it was burnt as a direct result of Israel's attack on private homes and neighborhoods -- part of a deliberate plan to choke an entire society.

From the heat of the fire the dining room fan melted and now is like a hanging tulip of rusted metal. These photos tell a very little bit of what Israeli occupation means. It is condoned and funded by the government of the U.S.A. and justified on the basis of religious interpretations of ancient history. Behold the results of Zionist zealots.

In this photograph, believe it or not, is the aluminum screen melted down onto the marble window sill of an adjoining home which burnt after it was bombed. As we documented the destruction we also tested for radiation and interviewed the residents several of whom were injured.

On this kitchen floor you can now read a bit of history. Blue mugs, white dishes, blue and white striped kitchen towels mix in with the scattered, burnt, and charred remains of the family life. It is this living of Palestinians that Israel likes to bomb. Some Jewish families send their sons to Israel to do this work of killing families. They say that they are fulfilling a dream. They say this is their religion. This logic is just as twisted as that plastic kitchen sink visible in the photo below.