Volunteer blog: “Aren’t they human beings, are they? Do they realize what they are doing? “
By Marta Fortunato
A personal eyewitness account of the home demolitions in al Giftlik last Wednesday.
First Demolition
My hands were trembling while I was trying to film the bulldozers demolishing the house. I didn’t want to film. I felt like stealing a private and intimate moment. I looked at the soldiers, stuck in their position, holding the guns, protecting the bulldozer. The official of the Israeli Civil Administration, wearing a yellow jacket, was giving orders to the machine.Then, I heard that noise, which froze the blood in my veins.
That noise which I have heard before in documentaries. Hearing it live is something different. The bulldozer, after reversing for some meters, went forward and destroyed one of the walls of the house. Then the whole structure was rolled up on itself and crumbled. Some other fatal shots, and then it headed to another house. I made this video to witness, to tell the brutality of this act to those who were not there. But if it had followed my instinct, I wouldn’t have done it. I wouldn’t have even taken a photograph. I wouldn’t have asked the owner to talk behind a camera. I just felt that I wanted to cry. But did I have the right to cry, while the men and the women of the family were trying to help each other and to be strong?
They had half an hour to take their belongings. There were pillows, furniture and clothes scattered everywhere. The kitchen and most of the kitchenware remained under the ruins like many other things. Ayman is married and has 5 children. He had been living for several months in the house which he built with his life savings. Three months ago the demolition order, just because he was living in area C, under total Israeli control. And for this reason he doesn’t have the right to build. Illegal buildings, the Israelis say. Yes, they are illegal under the Israeli law, because the Israeli law is discriminatory and racist. All the settlers living around him are allowed to build and to expand their colonies on stolen land, while the Palestinians are denied basic human rights. Access to water, electricity, or the right to build their own infrastructure, all prohibited in area C.
The soldiers were protecting the bulldozers, with a malicious smile on their faces. Maybe they think that it’s just a video-game, that destroying a house makes you earn points. My friend Ibrahim is shocked, like me. “Aren’t they human beings, are they? Do they realize what they are doing? “. I hope that they don’t realize. I wish it. But I don’t really believe it. They take pictures of us, to the international volunteers, so that they can blacklist them at the airport. And of the Palestinians, so that they can detain or arrest them. Our faces are covered by a scarf, the camera hides the few visible features of our faces. However, in these moments you are not afraid. You just feel angry and powerless.
They leave. I think they finished. But, as the members of the family told us, the bulldozers didn’t return to the military base. It ‘s likely that there are new demolitions. And indeed it is. It’s the turn of a metal house, I hear the noise of the bars that break while I constantly control that the soldiers don’t come close to us. “Run away as soon as they finish demolishing” some Palestinians, who, like us, observe and film the demolition from far away, advice us – “the soldiers usually confiscate the cameras.” It’s impossible to get closer, the army declared the area closed military zone. Security reasons. Just because they want to demolish a house. On the way back we see another demolition. Ibrahim sits on the ruins of what had been his home until two hours before. His young wife holds her only child in her hands. He is seven months. She is shocked, she can’t even cry. Silently I look at the king size mattress under the ruins, the make-up scattered on the ground, broken. A brush, a comb, a silver nail polish. A wardrobe with a big mirror that enlarges and amplifies the tragedy. Its doors open, empty. They did not even have half an hour to save their belongings. They are looking for their belongings under the ruins. My friend Ibrahim is right, they are not human, I don’t want to believe this.
I do not want that all this becomes normal for me, I don’t want that this anger and this sense of powerlessness that I feel now disappears. Once I used to feel really angry crossing the checkpoints and sawing the workers waiting for hours stuck in the cages. But now I’ve got used to it. It ‘s like this, here in Palestine. You get used to. Everything becomes normal, in this land. Even the demolitions. Even the human rights violations.
This blog was originally published in Italian by Marta Fortunato. She is a journalist volunteering with Jordan Valley Solidarity and the Alternative Information Centre (AIC).
