Posted on 27-11-2002

I Was Shot Down In Palestine
Caoimhe Butterly, Irish Peace Worker talks to Annie Higgins in Jenin
Refugee Camp, Palestine, 22 November 2002

In today's reinvasion of Jenin Refugee Camp, the Israeli Occupation Forces
made the bottom section of the camp into a closed military zone in the
morning, using about twelve tanks, ten jeeps, and at least two Apache
helicopter gunships. I had been trying to get between the unarmed children
and the tanks, when I received a call from a friend who wanted me to
evacuate her sick daughter as the Army would not let any ambulances
through. I went with a friend who is a Palestinian journalist, and we were
immediately arrested, along with another international volunteer, and taken
to a place where about twenty Palestinian men were being held. They were
blindfolded, handcuffed, stripped to their trousers or underwear, and
beaten severely. After I was detained for two hours and interrogated
briefly, the Israeli soldiers said that I was free to go. I asked
permission to remain with the men, hoping to minimise the violence, but the
soldiers refused, saying it was not allowed. When I refused to leave, I was
forcibly dragged away, pulled down the road, and told that if I returned to
the area I would be shot.

I went back the way I had come, past the United Nations compound. There I
spoke briefly with Iain Hook, Project Manager of UNRWA [United Nations
Relief Works Agency] in Jenin, who said he was trying to negotiate with the
soldiers for women and children to go home. He came out of the UN compound
waving a blue UN flag, and the soldiers' only response was to broadcast
with their microphone in English, 'We don't care if you are the United
Nations or who you are. F*** off and go home!' They were trying to go home.
Iain said that things were not going well. He insisted that he wanted to
provide safe passage for his forty Palestinian workers and himself using
legal means, i.e., official coordination with the Army. Some worried
parents had begun to knock a hole in the wall at the back of the compound
to evacuate children who were there for a vaccination programme. We
accompanied some of the children home.

After this, I headed again to the sick girl's house. On the way I met a
group of children who told me that a ten-year-old friend of mine, Muhammad
Bilalo, had been killed and three children had been wounded by tank fire,
one of whom sustained brain damage. So I went to where the children were
gathered, and the tanks were firing on them erratically. I walked down the
road between the children and the tanks until I was fifty meters from the
tank, where I tried to dialogue with the soldiers. I implored them not to
shoot live ammunition at unarmed children. At that point, they stopped
their shooting. A few moments later, an APC drove up to the tank [an armed
personnel carrier, like a tank with all the armour except a cannon]. I
could see their faces very clearly and I imagine they could see mine also.
I had seen both of these tanks earlier in the day. A soldier raised his
upper body and his gun out of the hatch of the second vehicle and began
shooting. At first he shot into the air, and most of the children
dispersed, running into an alley on the left side of the street. About
three small children remained, however, and I tried physically to get them
to the alley, dragging and pushing them. I looked back over my shoulder and
could see the soldier in the APC pointing his gun at me from about one
hundred meters. Near the entrance to the alley, I was shot in the thigh.
When I fell they continued shooting in my direction. I crawled part of the
way up the alley, and then some of the youngsters dragged me up the rest of
the way. No ambulances were allowed into the camp, so I was carried on a
makeshift stretcher to where a Red Crescent ambulance could reach me near
the entrance of the camp. While I was in the Emergency Room of Jenin
Hospital, Iain Hook of UNRWA was brought in. He died a few minutes later.

We have been told that when he was shot, the Israeli Army prohibited a
clearly marked UN ambulance from evacuating him and transporting him for
nearly an hour, during which time he lost much blood. Finally the ambulance
crew evacuated him by taking him out by the back wall that employees had
broken down earlier.

Having been present in the Camp all morning, I can testify that any
Palestinian fighters had stopped shooting a good two hours before either of
us was wounded. When I passed the UN compound in the morning, it was
surrounded by Israeli Army snipers and soldiers who were shooting
erratically into the Camp. Two people were killed and six wounded. All but
one were shot by tank fire outside what the Army deemed a closed military
zone. I was not caught up in any kind of crossfire as the Israeli
Occupation Forces are falsely stating, and I don't believe that Iain was
either.

The massacre has not stopped. Human rights violations and war crimes seen
so blatantly across the world in April of this year continue on a daily
basis in Jenin. Yesterday, with the casual killings that marked it, was not
an unusual day in Jenin. It has become a potentially suicidal act to engage
in the most basic acts of survival. The Israeli Occupation Forces engage
again and again in a shoot-to-kill policy without regard as to whether its
targets are civilians or armed fighters. Israelis have been shown in April
that they can get away with a massacre, and that all the international
condemnation in the world cannot get one ambulance in to evacuate a wounded
person.

Thus the lack of accountability on Israels part has become bolder as the
events witnessed yesterday become almost standard. These are not military
campaigns. They are acts of terror designed to humiliate, brutalise, and
bully Palestinians into subjugation. They are being denied not only the
right to resist, but to exist.

annie higgins 972-67-540-298
caoimhe butterly 972-67-598-293