First paragraph (Teaser):

 
An update from the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) mailing list:

1. Residents of Assira march directly to Nablus
2. Nablus - by Lena
3. Hebron Palestinian families in crisis: settlers escalate violence - CPT
4. There we sat in jail

Rest of the text:

 
An update from the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) mailing list:

1. Residents of Assira march directly to Nablus
2. Nablus - by Lena
3. Hebron Palestinian families in crisis: settlers escalate violence - CPT
4. There we sat in jail

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1. Press Release: Residents of Assira to march directly to Nablus

Thursday, May 11th 2005 - Students and workers from Assira Al Shamaliya, accompanied by Israeli and international peace activists, will march from their village to Nablus on the Sebaatash Road, which has been closed by the Israeli army for more than four and a half years. A military base is stationed there.

Since the beginning of the second Intifada Nablus has been under siege and movement in or out of the city almost impossible. This has had a devastating impact on the local economy and the neighboring villages. Although, for the past two weeks, people of all ages have generally been permitted to pass through the checkpoints, it is still impossible for vehicles to pass, with the exception of thirty-five taxis and less than one percent of the population of the city who have managed to obtain vehicle permits.

Produce permitted to enter or leave the city must pass through a trade checkpoint and be transferred "back to back" between vehicles on either side of it. This requires the truck owners to have permits which must be renewed every one to three months. It is impossible for traditional small family businesses to cover the expenses incurred, adding to the poverty caused by the occupation.

Nablus, a city of 200,000 people within the checkpoints, was once at the economic heart of Palestine. This was largely because of agricultural and dairy production in the nearby villages and the flourishing markets in the city. Shops and markets are now full of Israeli goods, often produced in the settlements. It is difficult and sometimes impossible to buy locally produced goods such as olive oil in the city.

Assira Al Shamaliya is ten kilometers from the Nablus. Since the closure of the Sebaatash Road residents have been forced to take a detour of twenty five kilometers and pass through a checkpoint. The people of Assira are demanding that the Sebaatash Road is re-opened and direct access to the city resumed.

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2. Nablus - by Lena

Nablus has the historical reputation as being at the heart of Palestinian resistance. The Israeli government apparently claims that this is still the case, which is the reason given for the fact that the conditions of the occupation have been harsher here than elsewhere.

After the start of the second Intifada in September 2000 residents of Nablus were forbidden to leave the city and non-residents were forbidden from entering. People who needed to pass the checkpoints could only do so in ambulances and even then they would be delayed for extended periods of time.

About a year ago people under the age of 45 were allowed out of the city and this was then reduced to 35, then 25, until two weeks ago when people of all ages have been allowed to cross the checkpoints on foot. Vehicle access is almost non-existent.

Within the area of the surrounding checkpoints the population of Nablus is about 200,000, which includes four refugee camps and six or seven villages. A number of other villages lie outside the checkpoints, but these are regularly cut off from the city.

Curfews in the villages and closures at the checkpoints have rendered it exceptionally difficult for the villages to provide Nablus with the food upon which it once depended. Although these days it is easier for people to move around, there are still big problems getting agricultural produce in, and apparently the situation now is that a significant proportion of fresh fruit and vegetables are being supplied by the settlements. It is perhaps difficult to appreciate just how messed up this is unless you have a bit of an idea about the general situation here.

In 2001 a huge trench was built between Nablus and four neighbouring villages which was then filled with sewage from the settlement of Elon Mora. Thereafter all movement between the city and the villages was funnelled through two crossing points - one also houses an occasional checkpoint and the other is just a pipe crossing over the open sewage: only recommended for people with good balance.

Settlements and military bases are on top of most of the hills around the valley in which Nablus is situated. The settlements are distinctive by their location and the uniformity of the buildings - red rooftops on white square buildings. An extensive network of roads serves the settlements, which are out of bounds to the Palestinian population and carve up the entire West Bank and Gaza strip.

Once the settlements are established they expand and spread "like a cancer", as a Palestinian friend once described to me. As well as the area of land that they cover, the surrounding area is also out of bounds to Palestinians, regardless of whether they own land there or not. In one place that I visited the last time I was here this was a radius of about five kilometres from the settlement. If Palestinians enter this area they risk being shot at, either by the army or by the armed inhabitants of the settlements. These people are scary: In many settlements they form a civilian militia made up of people who are fanatical religious fundamentalists. The settlements are paramilitary communities.

Things in Nablus are much less dramatic now than when I last stayed here in November 2002 - I haven't seen a tank yet (what have they done with them? Loaned them to the Americans to use in Iraq? Perhaps they were on loan in the first place). Buildings have been rebuilt, the roadblocks - huge piles of rubble which would appear overnight turning busy streets into dead ends - have been cleared and all the shops are open. Curfews in the city haven't been imposed for extended periods this year; sometimes they were enforced for months on end. In one village near Nablus they have spent one year out of the last five under curfew, if you add up all the days. The last major military incursion into Nablus itself was in September last year, although there are smaller scale incursions almost every night, particularly in the refugee camps and the old city.

The psychological impact of the occupation has been acute and the economic impact is still crippling. Since September 2000 per capita income in the West Bank has decreased from $1600 to $700, and this does not take into account the escalation in prices bought on by scarcity and the risks involved with transporting produce. In Gaza the figures are even worse: from $1400 to between $300 and $400 - about level with countries in Sub-Saharan Africa that are in the throes of conflict.

I have been staying in Balata refugee camp, the largest in the West Bank in population terms with about 35,000 people, but in an area which is only 800 meters by 500. Refugee camps in Palestine are long- established places which house people who were evicted from their land in what is now called Israel, either in 1948 or in 1967. Yesterday I met a woman who is over 80 years old who still lives in the house which the United Nations built for her when she arrived in 1948.

Meeting people in the camp is like being taken on a tour of human tragedy. We spent an hour or two yesterday in a family home and as they bought out coffee, juice, biscuits and fruit we listened to the stories of the people in the room. One woman had lost a son who was killed by the military a year before, whilst her other son was in jail serving a sentence of sixty years.

A woman of about 25 had herself spent two years in prison, and had lost her hearing in one ear as a result of one of the beatings she received. She described the conditions of solitary confinement and the actions of the prison guards who, sometimes high on drugs, subjected them to humiliating treatment.

Next to me was a woman who smiled and joked with me as she fed her two year old child on her lap. When she was seven months pregnant a soldier had thrown a sound bomb between her legs, and the pressure of the explosion meant that she had had to have an emergency caesarean. The child was born two months premature and will probably never be able to walk. One side of his brain is not working properly and half of his body sags, devoid of any strength. He had operations on both of his lungs, and he sat wheezing on her lap as she gestured towards the child and her heart. Her husband translated: "Her heart is bleeding for this one", he said.

Throughout the period of the `ceasefire' the military have continued to enter Balata camp at night-time, shooting down the streets at the young boys throwing stones, who never agreed to stop their resistance. To begin with, the fighters did not retaliate: they wanted to get their lives back, to stop running down the narrow alleyways of the camp, to spend a night with their families and not expect the next bullet to be headed towards them. As far as they understood, the ceasefire would mean that they were no longer 'Wanted' and could continue their lives as ordinary people. However, the army killed two people from the camp about a month ago and a couple of weeks ago they came in and arrested six people. As a result of a young fighter from the camp ran through the streets, shouting at people to end the ceasefire. That night, when the army came into the camp, a big clash ensued - the first in months. No- one was killed then, but the next day Special Forces - a branch of the army - came into the camp undercover, lured the man who had shouted in the street out of his house and shot him. He was taken to Huwara military base where he was bleed to death and his body was then returned to the camp and dumped in the street for medics to collect.

Last night one of the three international women in the flat where I am staying had a phone call at 9.45: Special Forces were in the camp. We put down our bowls of half-eaten food and rushed out to meet the local Palestinian ISM co-ordinator and an international who is working on some projects in Balata. They were in the middle of a crowd of young boys, and explained to us that two boys had been taken by special forces and then released. Our friends had walked down the road near the building that special forces were in, and shots had been fired from it in their direction, possibly to scare them off. It was now unclear where Special Forces were and what they were planning on doing. Before long an army jeep pulled up on the opposite side of the main street where we were standing. The boys with us started shouting and ran to grab stones from the floor as a second jeep pulled up nearby. We heard that there was also army at the graveyard at the other end of the camp. A phone call told us that there were fighters behind us and that they intended to resist the incursion.

In this situation there is nothing that we could do - the last place for us to be is between armed Palestinians and the Israeli military. We formed a line and began retreating down the street at right angles to the main road, which is one of the three main streets of the camp. We held our arms out to indicate that we were unarmed and tried to look as 'international' as possible. Back at the flat a series of phone calls updated us on the situation - the army were stationed at all entrances of the camp; in one place there were about 10 jeeps. We agreed that if someone was injured and the medics arrived and wanted us to be there we would leave the flat and accompany them. There were also Special Forces in the camp, a fact that worried the long term international that I was with because it seemed to indicate that one or more assassinations were about to take place. Possibly they were after one of the teenagers that we had seen earlier that day, walking through the camp with their automatic weapons over their chest (which one?). I saw nothing like this the last time I was here. We spent a couple of hours trying to distinguish between different noises and working out where the gunfire was coming from. Some of it sounded pretty close and a loud explosion happened nearby. Eventually we went to bed, not knowing what to expect this morning.

Thankfully, no-one was killed or injured last night and no houses occupied. We learnt that settlers had come to pray (??????) at a place called Joseph's Tomb, which is across the road from the camp in Balata village, between the camp and Nablus itself, near where we initially saw the army jeeps last night. This evidently entailed a large military operation and explains why they surrounded the camp, preventing anybody from leaving or seeing what was happening.

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3. Hebron Palestinian Families in Crisis: Settlers Escalate Violence
CPT

May 8, 2005

HEBRON, WEST BANK – Palestinian families in Hebron who live near the Tel Rumeida settlement are in a crisis situation. Tel Rumeida settlers have escalated their violence and harassment of Palestinians over the last two months, as a proposed new settler road (in violation of the Road Map and Hebron Protocols), will further encircle Palestinian homes and expand the settlement. This road is in addition to a recently completed apartment complex inside the settlement. CPT offers opportunities for reporters to access Palestinian families and witness their isolation and the vandalism and harassment they endure daily. Settler attacks include harassment and stoning of Palestinian children on their way to school; blocking access to Qurtuba girl's school; stoning and vandalism of homes and other kinds of violent attacks.

These and many other Palestinian families in Hebron continue to struggle to simply exist, go to work and school, and live in their homes, all the while enduring settler violence and the Israeli military's indifference. These families are available for interviews and are eager to share their stories. Christian Peacemaker Teams can help journalists or camera crews access Palestinian families who are living as virtual prisoners in their own homes for interviews. Access to their homes is increasingly difficult and dangerous for Palestinian families. Reporters will be able to follow the path that Palestinians are forced to walk, past fields and sometimes over roofs, to access their homes. Footage can also be taken of vandalism and racist graffiti.

The Israeli military and police have done nothing to prevent these attacks or prosecute those responsible for their violence, though many complaints have been filed.

Hani Abu Haikel, a long-time resident of Tel Rumeida, recounts how his father refused to leave his home in Tel Rumeida due to settler attacks, saying, "I am at the end of my life. I want to stay." Now, Hani also refuses to leave and calls this "the final battle."

The following is an account of some recent attacks, harassment and difficulties families have experienced:
- April 4: Settlers and Israeli soldiers take over the Siyaj house
- April 22: A settler attacks Mohammed Abu Aisha with a battery- operated drill. (Picture available)
- May 2: Settlers place razor wire and a tree as a blockade to the front entrance of the Abu Haikel house. Palestinians immediately remove blockade. (Picture available)
- May 3: Settler cars block entrance to Palestinian Qurtuba girl's school. Settler Anat Cohen slaps CPT member Dianne Roe and shouts while Roe attempts to protect access for Palestinian girls to enter school. "Go to Auschwitz and take all the Arabs with you."
- May 4: Settlers vandalize Dr. Tayseer's home. Settlers stone the home and the cut the phone line and water pipes. Border police were present while the vandalism continued unchecked.
- March 14: Settlers stone the Al Azzeh family house
- Various Dates: Settlers stone the Abu Haikel house and throw rubbish on their garden (Pictures available)
- Women and teenage settlers attack Sharabati family sons and detain them
- Hani Abu Haikel is stoned while picking and spraying his grape leaves
- Rima Abu Haikel, pregnant and in labor, has great difficulty going to hospital on cold, wet night, walking through mud to be able to reach a road because regular access is denied
- Israeli soldiers do not allow Israeli police access to the Abu Haikel family
- May 5: Israeli soldiers block access to a diplomatic tour group organized by Hebron Rehabilitation Committee. Diplomats include representatives of the Palestinian consulates of South Africa, France, Switzerland, Ireland, and United Kingdom, who were to tour the site of the proposed new road for the use of Israeli settlers from Tel Rumeida only. Israeli soldiers declare the area a closed military zone.
- New racist graffiti can be found all over the area: "Gas the Arabs, JDL" (Picture available)

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4. There we sat in jail - by Gabe

4th – 5th May, 2005

"It appears the Anti-Wall movement has been co-opted by environmentalists" "You should go to Baghdad or Kabul, that's where all the action is at?? The previous quotes are criticisms made against me for my participation in an action on May 4th in Bi'lin, West Bank.

The action consisted of six Palestinians, three Israelis, and four internationals, including myself, chaining themselves to olive trees that were to be destroyed that very day to make way for the Israeli annexation wall. The landowners were given a one day warning that seventy of their olive trees were to be destroyed in order to make a path for the wall, which will effectively reduce the size of the village lands from 4000 to 1700 Dunums. In addition to the people chained and locked to the trees, an additional fifty or so Palestinians were present, along with several more Israelis and Internationals.

The action was planned spontaneously due to the short warning, thus we arrived in Bil'in at 11:00 the night before, awaking at 5:30 the next morning in order to beat the soldiers to the construction site. We had already been chained to the trees for about half an hour before a hummer arrived, slowly creeping by, then retreating to inform the border police of our presence. As the sun rose over the hills, more Palestinians and activists began to show up, along with an increasing presence of military police jeeps, a hummer, and several dozen border police/police/soldiers.

The media began to show up in force as well, with Al-Jazeera, Al- Arabiya, and Israel's Channel One, along with Reuters photographers and several independent journalists.

I had a difficult time telling what was going on due to my immobility, but Palestinians came around with tea, and others came around to tell me what was happening. The army warned of a coming order for a `closed military zone' and we heard warnings of "10 minutes", "15 minutes", multiple times before they ever acted. It wasn't until about 9:30 in the morning when the military finally received a `closed military zone' order, and said they were only arresting Israelis.

A pack of about twenty or thirty soldiers began going around from tree to tree, cutting the inhabitant down with a pair of bolt cutters and pulling him or her down from the tree. One international was mistaken for Israeli, and was immediately arrested, with the four border police carrying him away to the row of awaiting jeeps. The Palestinians were cut free and released.

My tree was the third to be stripped of its protector. The border police surrounded me, cut my chains and pulled me down from my roost. They then pushed me out of the way and moved on. This practice went on until one of the Israeli activists, who was cut down from her tree, was being arrested against her will. An international activist, Atle, attempted to de-arrest her, and was immediately surrounded by twenty or so border police and soldiers. Seeing Atle being beaten on the ground by a giant camouflaged mass, I handed my camera to someone else and sprang into action, attempting to de-arrest him. We were holding each other's arms and bodies, trying to prevent the military from separating us for an inevitable arrest. It was difficult to tell what was happening on the ground, we were basically trying not to be beaten to death by the soldiers. One of my arms was pinned underneath a soldier's knee (an image that would be seen across the Arab world on Al-Jazeera), and another soldier was punching me in the neck. Two more soldiers were twisting my legs in opposing directions.

Eventually they separated us, and I was handcuffed and carried by four soldiers to the military jeeps, where other internationals were sitting on the ground, with plastic handcuffs around their wrists. There we sat, as the soldiers triumphantly paraded around the captured security threat: a group of peaceful activists. Later I was placed in a border police jeep along with two other internationals, and we sat there as the bulldozers and earth diggers were driven by in a procession fitting of the IDF's "purity of arms."

We were then driven to a bluff nearby, where the police filled out the necessary paperwork and photographed us. During this time, the two female internationals I was with were not allowed to go to the bathroom for several hours. There was one police officer who kept coming around counting us, seemingly incapable of remembering that there were only three of us. At about one o'clock, I was moved to another jeep with the three other male internationals. Each pair of us was handcuffed to each other, and we were driven to the police station at Givat Ze'ev settlement. The arrested Israelis, numbering five in total, sent a text message to someone's phone stating they were in solidarity with us.

At Givat Ze'ev our handcuffs were removed and we were corralled into the police station locker room, which had a conference table with chairs around it. Here we sat, with a bored Israeli conscript who had been assigned to the police station for the day `guarding' us. He looked like a giant child, his M-16 assault rifle draped across his lap in a dejected way, sitting awkwardly in a chair too small for him. We were given a loaf of white bread and some old apples, and we sat there for eight hours as we each took turns being interrogated by the police.

My turn came at about 5:00 p.m. I was led into a small office with white walls. Moshe, the fat police officer who would interrogate me for the next short, but completely absurd, 30 minutes. He opened the interrogation by asking me where I was from.

"America," I replied. His eyes gleamed with recognition:

"Ah, America, I Salute you!" and with a gesture worthy of any military man, he raised his right hand to his brow, extending his left hand in greetings. I laughed to myself and shook his hand. He then went right into it:

"9-11," he said. "Now you may be one of those peoples who believes that it was Israel that caused 9-11, I don't know." Moshe shrugged his shoulders, as if he already knew the answer to his question.

Moshe asked me what I was doing in Bi'lin. Remembering the mantra, I told him, "I am a peaceful American citizen and friend of Israel. I want to cooperate, but I have been advised by my embassy not to disclose legal information without counsel present." Moshe got flustered and said "You are not answering my question!". I said "Are you denying me the right to answer in the way I see fit? I want you to write down what I said." Frustrated, Moshe hesitantly began to write onto the paper in front of him. A series of questions followed. "Why did you assault the police?" "Were you chained to a tree?" "Why did you enter a closed military zone?" Disregarding the fact that it was I who was beaten by the police, and the fact that I had already been chained to the tree when the closed military zone order had been issued, in Hebrew, I refused to answer his questions, citing the advice of my legal counsel.

Moshe then stopped the questioning, and launched into a virtuous speech about the atrocities occurring around the world.

"There are millions of people dying around the world in Africa, in Afghanistan, why aren't you there? Haven't you heard about what's happening in Ivory Beach?"

Trying hard to keep a straight face, I said to him with false concern, "No, what's happening in Ivory Beach?" Moshe threw his hands into the air.

"You know, things. I get my news from Fox News and I see these things. But haven't you ever thought about it?" Completely stunned by this absurd and surreal scene, I just stared at him and shook my head. The interrogation was over, it ended as it had began: completely political, with absolutely nothing to do with the charges I was facing of assaulting border police, entering a closed military zone, and resisting arrest. I returned to the locker room in peals of laughter. We remained at the police station, and our lawyer came to talk to us about our prospects. None of us had our passports, thus the authorities were having a hell of a time trying to figure out who we were. But they were also dealing with us very seriously, and they eventually turned our case over to the Ministry of the Interior, whose purpose in these matters is to deport internationals.

We stood outside for a long time. The Israelis had already signed the conditions for their release: staying out of Bilin for fifteen days. They were free to go, but remained with us until about 7:00 p.m., when we told them that they should leave, and thanked them for their solidarity.

We were given some more food: white bread, peaches in a can, some jam, grape drink. At about 7:30 p.m., we were led one-by-one into a room where we were read the charges against us, and told we were to be detained for 24 hours by the Israeli government, and then deported.

The two women internationals were sent to Hadera; the four males were to be sent to Ariel settelment- refered to as Samaria. At 8:00 p.m., A Swedish international and I were put into a car with three guards armed with assault rifles and pistols, and driven for about an hour to the settlement.

We sat in the police station until the two other male internationals arrived at 10:00 p.m, both of them handcuffed. At about 11:30 p.m. we were called one by one for a medical exam by a self proclaimed `doctor type person,' who took our blood pressure and asked if we were drug users or had any medical problems. The office was meant to grant an air of legitimacy to the whole procedure: a poster of the human eye on the wall, a model of the human spine, and several other random medically themed items were present.

We were each taken back to the jail about thirty minutes apart from each other, so by the time the last person got into the jail cell it was about 1:30 a.m. I was called back at about 12:15 a.m., and after the `exam,' was led by a chubby, obnoxious policeman named Kobe to have my possessions catalogued. Kobe then led me to a small room where I was to be strip searched. I objected at first, requesting a manual pat down instead, but they insisted, and I removed all of my clothes up to my underwear. Ironically this thorough check, under the watchful eye of Kobe, failed to catch any of the things I had in my pockets, such as the key I used to lock myself to the olive tree, or a piece of paper with phone numbers on it. After this `standard procedure' I was led down the narrow hallway of cells to my new temporary home. The white metal bars slammed shut behind me. Inside were two pairs of concrete bunk-beds, with a wafer-thin mattress on them and two grey wool blankets. One by one we entered the cell, and finally when we had all arrived, Kobe brought a pack of crackers, an old red bell pepper, and a cup of yogurt for us to eat, then disappeared for the night.

None of us were hungry except for a Swedish international, who sat on the corner of his bed for the next thirty minutes, crunching the dried crackers as we all tried to sleep, with the sounds of crunch crunch crunch resonating, with the prisoners screaming and talking in the background. I remember thinking how prison is nothing more than terrorism, the sole purpose of which is to break down the human spirit into an animal. How awful and ridiculous and hilarious it was, and I was only there for one night, on top of the fact that I wasn't a Palestinian who could simply be tortured and beaten at will.

At one point in the night, an American international made the mistake of giving his name to the prisoner across the hall. For the next ten minutes, the only thing we could hear on the ward was echoes of "Nathan! Nathan! Nathan!" Kobe then came out and yelled at everybody to shut up. Stifled laughter could be heard from the cells.

At 5:30 a.m. the next morning, Kobe awoke us by running down the hall, yelling at everybody in the cells. He came to our cell and said "Wake up! Don't sleep! Don't lie down!" I couldn't help but envision Kobe as the bored fat kid in gym class, who wanted to be friends but only knew how to bully through physical and mental force. For some reason we tried to comply with his orders, so for the next hour we slept with our backs propped up against the cement wall, thus not violating Kobe's orders to not "lie down." After a while, we realized how absurd this attempt at intimidation was, and we lied down and slept hard until 8:30 a.m., when Kobe came around again and yelled "get up!" I guess this time it was for real.

Kobe then began to prescribe nicknames to us. I was "China," or "Chinatown," presumably because I am half Chinese. We were led to the front desk, where our things were shown to us and we were told they would be with us on our ride to Ben-Gurion airport, our next and final destination. We were led into the prison exercise yard, a 15 meter long by 3 meter wide concrete room, with a tarp over the ceiling to obstruct the view of the sky. Some more guards came in and led us outside into a police `paddy wagon.'

Kobe said to us, "bye bye! You're leaving Israel!", then extended his hand for us to shake. We stared at him blankly, and he stepped down from the van trying to save face, saying "Good luck!"

Inside the van there were two small windows with criss-crossed metal bars so that all one could see was a divided and fragmented image of the passing settlements outside. The walls were covered with writing in Arabic and Hebrew. At this point we had all resigned ourselves to the inevitability of our deportation. It had become hilarious, and we joked about the police and the nonsensical nature of our deportation.

We arrived at Ben-Gurion about an hour later, and through the window we could barely make out that two of our friends and our lawyer had arrived with all of our bags. Our lawyer approached the van and said, "Wow, they drove you in a Palestinian van! You should be honored!"

The van doors were opened, and we were allowed to meet our friends and lawyer. They told us that the two women internationals had been mistakenly taken to another location, and that due to the fact that they had no legal counsel present, they were going to be released on a technicality. We were brought upstairs in the police station to a room where illegal immigrants are deported from Israel. We read the rights of the detained, and number 11 addressed the primary role of illegal immigrants in Israel: "If you wish to seek employment with another employer, please contact the Ministry of the Interior and we will examine your suitability."

All of a sudden, the police said that they would release us if we provided our passports. All of us were sick of waiting around and we figured that if they wanted to deport us, they were going to anyway. None of us wanted to go back to jail either. So our lawyer gathered our passports, which they had to go collect, and turned them over to the authorities. We were photographed and fingerprinted again, and were released under one condition: that we cannot enter a closed military zone. The punishment of course is completely nonsensical, as we couldn't enter a closed military zone to begin with anyway. But then again, our `crime' was completely nonsensical as well. Thus looking at this experience through the framework of the absurdity of Israeli state policy, it makes perfect sense. It is the natural response of a state whose desire it is to inflict terror and intimidation in varying degrees through random enforcement of its institutions. Luckily for us internationals, the degree was slight. The scary thing about it is that there is absolutely no predictability as to what the state might do. So what was all the waiting around for? A scare tactic? Inefficient operating systems? Simple negligence? It could be said that it was all three. The experience itself highlights the practices of the state as having nothing to do with security, and everything to do with the insane response of people as the result of insane policies. But as is said in war or science, "An abnormal response to an abnormal situation is normal."

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(this update was originally circulated via the ISM's palsolidarity mailing list -- minor editing, formatting and links were applied before its posting here)