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The Other Ground Zero

The rain was pounding hard against the windscreen of the taxi–thud, thud, thud. The trees were swaying back and forth as the wind picked up and began to howl angrily. Sitting in the back of the taxi huddling close together to keep warm Siama, Farhana and I made conversation with the other passengers. My limited amount of Arabic wasn’t getting me very far...but Siama was managing a lot better and explained to the other passengers why the three of us had decided to make this journey. The driver inched up the mountain road at a snail’s pace - the rain and the darkness making it virtually impossible to see the route ahead.

Siama was making frantic phone calls to ensure that some friends knew that we were on our way to visit them. We were on our way to Jenin, travelling on the mountain roads to avoid the Israeli check points and tanks that had now set up almost permanent base outside the city. The Israeli occupation force was controlling who could leave and enter the City and the refugee camp. Eventually we made it into the city of Jenin–the rain continuing to fall heavily and creating huge puddles and flooding some of the roads. We got to the family’s house that we would be staying with and climbed up the stairs to the top floor of the house. Exhausted from the journey and grateful that we had arrived in one piece, we fell asleep.

The Azzan (call to prayer) woke me the next morning–I could hear the rain against the window- still beating hard. I opened my eyes and took a deep breath ... thinking to myself ‘I can’t believe that I’m here- actually here in Jenin’. I was reminded of the ‘debate’ that my father and I had the first time that I left for Palestine in the summer. I remembered being very sick at home and spending months trying to get myself better. I remember watching the TV pictures of the unfolding madness taking place in the West Bank and hearing about what the Israeli army were doing in Jenin. Reading the newspaper column inches and listening to the debates about whether the Israeli army had committed war crimes, if there had been a massacre in Jenin, how many of those that had been killed were ‘militants’ and how many were civilians’. I remember praying hard and crying whilst watching the TV news coverage and asking myself why we humans were so hell bent on destroying each other and why we are so ignorant and unwilling to learn the lessons from history. I told my father that I could understand why he didn’t want his daughter to go to Palestine, but I knew that it was something that I had to do. We sat up together and watched the rolling news coverage, my father wiped away tears from his eyes and said yes–it was the right thing for me to do.

And so here I was in Jenin eight months after the April incursion. Allah had answered my prayers and allowed me to make it to this city and this refugee camp that had now taken on the same status as the camps of Sabra and Shatilla in Lebanon and become part of the painful history of the Palestinian people’s right to existence and justice. I made my way to the second floor landing and pulled the blind open–the view was amazing. I could see a huge area of land–empty and eerie. Beyond I could see the minaret of the mosque and the mountains. The flat, green, lush land and the border of Lebanon–mist clouds hung above the mountains as the rain continued to fall.

Later in the morning we were introduced to a friend of the family, who was given the responsibility of taking us around the camp and showing us the destruction and the scars of the April incursion. Some of these scars were openly visible–others not so openly visible. We were told by our family that the people in the camp were very suspicious of outsiders, but if we stuck with Ala (the friend) we would be made welcome. Ala–like most of the proud people of Jenin was very friendly and warm. He told us that our first place of visit would be Ground Zero. We walked through the streets until we reached a huge open area–that was empty minus a bulldozer and a tent. I remembered seeing this area of land from the second floor landing of the house. ‘This is Ground Zero’, Ala told us. ‘This is where the refugee camp used to be. Now there is nothing.’

We walked on the site of the camp where people’s homes had once stood. Now there was rubble and the odd bit of rubbish. Ala began to relay the story of the now infamous April incursion into Jenin refugee camp. The Israeli army, under the orders of Sharon and General Mofaz (the former head of the Israeli ‘Defence’ Force), had been given orders to ‘shoot anything that moves’ and to root out all the ‘militants’ from the refugee camp. There were eleven days of intense fighting and eleven days of bloodshed, evil and horror that will always live with the people of Jenin and the people of Palestine. It should also live in the minds of all right thinking people everywhere in the world.

So this was the forgotten Ground Zero. No memorial ceremonies were held here - no dignitaries, Presidents and Prime Ministers came to this Ground Zero to pay their ‘respects’. No one lighted candles and cried for these victims of terror. No media organisations camped out on this Ground Zero–beaming live pictures to our comfortable living rooms–telling of the horror that these people had witnessed. The men, women and children of Jenin camp didn’t jump from burning sky scrapers–instead they were killed as their homes were bulldozed with them inside sandwiched in between the concrete and bricks. Instead they were shot in the head and fired on by apache’s and killed with rockets that had been directed into their homes. The dead were left to rot for eleven days before they could be identified by loved ones and buried with dignity. This Ground Zero–like so many other Ground Zero’s in the non-western world didn’t command one minute silences around the world. This Ground Zero wasn’t avenged by the West by starting a war against the terrorist regime that had orchestrated the killing. Instead the West turned a blind eye to this Ground Zero.

We walked into the derelict and destroyed homes of people and saw the bullet holes and walls and windows that had been blasted by tanks and apache helicopters. We saw houses that had red ‘x’ marks spray painted on the doors - so to be identified by the Israeli army. I couldn’t help but think that this was what the Nazi’s did to the Jews in Europe–identify the homes of Jewish residents and then carry out killings. Throughout the day we walked around surveying damaged homes, seeing hospitals and schools with bullet holes riddled in the brick work. We were taken to the graves of those that had lost their lives during the eleven days of killing. I lost count of how many graves there were once I got past the thirty mark. We paid our respects and then walked on. My head was now aching–so many questions swirling around my head. Who owned the word massacre? I wondered and who decided when the word would be be applied and in what context? How did the media decide when this word would be used? Who was a militant? Who was a civilian? As far as I can understand any Palestinian boy or man over the age of ten is perceived as being a militant by the Israeli army and therefore becomes a legitimate target for them. It seems to me that the lives of white skinned Westerners–those who hold British, American, Canadian, Australian (the list goes on...) passports matter infinitely more than the lives of any other–any Palestinian any Chechan, Bosnian, Kosovan, Ethiopian, Black Zimbabwean, any Black British (the list goes on...)

We heard the most horrific stories from the family that we stayed with. The women of the house told us how they were trapped inside their house overlooking the refugee camp and hearing the bulldozers destroying people and their homes. They told us about the screams of people being killed echoing around the camp and the stench of death that hanging over Jenin for eleven days and nights as the soldiers cleansed the area. They told us of a father whose son has been shot dead. His father who was with him survived by pretending to be dead. He lay with his son’s body for eleven days and nights waiting for the soldiers to leave so that he could bury his boy. We heard how people’s body parts had been scattered for miles around the camp- their limbs were torn apart by missiles and bombs. We were told how cats and dogs ate human remains and licked blood off the walls of the buildings and rubble. When one of the sisters in the family told me this- I couldn’t help but cry–it reminded me of a book that I had read before leaving for Palestine about the massacre in Sabra and Shatilla camp in the 1980’s. The starving Palestinian refugees who had survived the militia men and the massacres in the camp–asked religeous leaders if they were permitted to eat dogs in a bid to stay alive. I was all of eight years old then. Now nineteen years later I was in Jenin being told about how dogs and cats were eating the remains of Palestinians. History repeating itself. And the same man–Sharon giving the orders to slay these people as he had done all those years ago in the camps of Sabra and Shatilla.

Despite all that the people of Jenin have been through–all of it... they showed us incredible love and kindness. They shared their testimony with us and laughed and smiled despite feeling so much pain. There isn’t a single person in Jenin who hasn’t been touched by the years of illegal occupation–and the April incursion. Even unborn babies died- suffocated in the womb–died after their mothers miscarried due to living under such extreme circumstances. Women sleep with their hijabs on and their shoes next to their beds waiting for the soldiers to drag them out of their beds in the dead of night and humiliate and search them, turning their homes upside down, destroying objects and violating them and their living space. I was told that most people don’t sleep until after 3 am. Between midnight and three o’clock is the darkest part of the night and the chosen time of the army to force there way into people’s homes. People live on the edge–not sleeping properly, not having anything to do. There are very few jobs, very few reasons to have hope and very few things to do to get time to pass quickly.

Whilst in Jenin I saw many F16’s flying above... Seeing those killing machines made my spine tingle. It’s those same F16’s that will be dropping bombs on Iraqi civilians any day soon if that cowboy Bush and his ever loyal poodle get their way. You know, I haven’t even written about half of the things that we saw when we were in Palestine, but let me please tell all of you guys this: Nothing happens by accident, nothing. All this mayhem that we are seeing unfolding around the world. It didn’t happen overnight, it didn’t happen after one crisp Autumn day in New York when thousands of people lost their lives. It has been happening for a very long time and we are all part of it. Living in the West... we are responsible for zapping the majority of the worlds natural resources. Our obsession with ourselves, our greed, our consumerism–it’s funding all of this madness. We all have a part to play–from supporting companies that invest in apartheid states such as Israel to turning a blind eye to those nearer to home, those suffering on our own door steps.

The British media is focusing all of it’s attention on the ricin story - highly toxic substance that has been found in a flat in north London. Apparently we are on a state of high alert in this country to terror. The people of Palestine, along with many millions of others around the world live with terror in their daily lives. They wear the badge and have the T-shirt. The terror that they face hasn’t been orchestrated by a bloke with a beard and a dodgy kidney hiding somewhere in a cave, but but by all the things that I have listed above and our so called leaders. What I want to know is–will the public and the media focus on the toxic substances that are being shipped to the Gulf in preparation for Bush and Blair’s war on terror? Will people be up in arms when Bush and Blair continue to pound the broken and desperate people of Iraq with bombs and depleted Uranium? Some how I think that we know the answer to this already.

Shaista Aziz