qalandian nights

Occasionally they come several times a week, sometimes only once. Always before dawn, usually between 2 and 3 a.m. Sometimes their faces are hooded, or they’re disguised as Arabs, sometimes not. Sometimes they come on foot, quietly, other times in jeeps. Sometimes on their way out of the camp they shoot people, the way they shot
18-year old Tamer Kusba in the back while he was washing the pavement near the supermarket where he worked. Usually they come to arrest people (with or without lists, usually without), who usually end up sitting for months on end in jail without a trial. They always sow destruction inside homes as well, break and shatter things, trash the place, at times under the pretext of looking for weapons, at others – not even that. Sometimes they steal and beat people up. Many children have been wetting their beds at night for a long time now, and many youths are afraid to fall asleep, and so are their parents.

That week they came at 3 a.m., Abu Omar tells us. They knocked on my door. I looked out through the window and saw a DCO jeep. I woke up my son and told him to get dressed, there are soldiers at the door. I told my wife, too. I waited for them to knock again, perhaps, but they didn’t, and I was afraid they’d break in so I looked again, and they were gone.

Two days later they came at 2:30 a.m. I heard jeeps, got up, looked out the window, and saw them at our neighbors’. Muntaser’s home. The one who’s in Ofer prison.
They opened the door and many soldiers entered. Searched the house, and took his two brothers away, 22-year old Mustafa and 20-year old Muhammad. There are now four brothers in jail. Muntaser and his brother were arrested a while ago, as I told you then, and now these two.
Their poor mother… Four sons in prison.
The night the soldiers picked up Muntaser’s two brothers, they arrested eighteen people. No one knows why. If it’s Captain Zakai’s order or what.

And then they came again (November 26th, 2008). Many soldiers. A neighbor tells us they trashed everything in his house and broke down doors. They picked up twenty-two guys that night. And eighteen before that. I don’t know what happened. Qalandiya’s quiet, after all. No demonstrations, nothing. What’s the problem? What do they want with us?

They always come at 2, or 2:30 a.m. and then they start, Hitham tells us… I can’t explain to you how they break in, like beasts… They start beating on doors, yelling “Army! Army! Open up!...” to scare everyone. I’m not lying to you, Aya.

If someone doesn’t want to open the door, they have this machine they attach to the door, they push a button and it smashes its way in. They break down the door that way. Many houses have been broken into this way, houses that stand empty, with no one inside - and so the house remains open.
Sometimes the soldiers knock on the door and the people don’t open because they’re scared, so the soldiers break in.
It costs 1000 shekel to fix such a door. One thousand shekel!

That night, November 26th, 2008, the night they killed Um Sa'id, no one heard them. They came on foot from different directions. There was just no way for anyone to even try to get away.
They came ready with a wanted list. They came to our neighborhood too, they came to my cousin and picked up his son. They live right across from me, in their 3-story house.

A while before they came to me, I was already awake. I had slept and my daughter cried so I got up and opened the window overlooking the street, don’t know why. The soldier told me to close the window and turn off the light. In the street I thought I saw more than 200 soldiers. And jeeps, and guns and helmets. My wife was asleep, she wasn’t aware of anything. And our daughter had fallen asleep again.
I turned the light off, then, so they wouldn’t do anything to us, and closed the kitchen door. And I watched them without their noticing me.
All my neighbors were outside, more than twenty-five people. With their babies. And little children. And my own relatives, in their pajamas.
Everyone out on the street, no, I wouldn’t lie to you. Not right in the street, just outside the house.
The army was searching their house for weapons, so they say, but found nothing. They trashed everything, the bedrooms, smashed the beds, closets… Everything. The washing machine. The construction tools, work tools, they threw out everything. And all done with force. They crashed chairs and tables against the floor. You know, they entered the kitchen, and a soldier smashed all their dishes on the floor. Everything is broken… Is that a place to search? Among the glasses and plates? Looking for people between dishes? For weapons? It’s all done just to cause damage, to destroy.

It's the children who really break my heart. Their little children. Who had to see it all. They’re little but they already understand. The youngest is three years-old. The oldest fourteen.
My cousin’s older brother, who was arrested, has six daughters and two sons. The other brother has four daughters and two sons. Another brother – his oldest is eleven and youngest three years-old.
So they all stood outside, hardly dressed, in fear and cold. And I see everything with my own eyes. Through the window. The children – this gnaws their minds. They way it all happens – it doesn’t escape their view.
My cousin told me the kids peed all over themselves for fear and sheer cold.
How can such a thing be done…

You see, they come in the dark. That’s not something they’d show on television. No cameras, nothing. But if the camera catches a 14-year old picking up a stone, they show it on all the channels. And what they do to children in the dark – they don’t show that.
It hurts, it really does.

They came to my house around 3 a.m. “Army, army, open up!” I opened, so they wouldn’t break down my door… Maybe they came to me because I had opened the window earlier, to punish me.
Until then my wife had been sleeping, she didn’t know what was going on. But when they knocked on our door, she woke up and the children began to cry. Twelve soldiers came to my house. They said they were on a search and I asked to see a search warrant. The soldier said: What are you… and just pushed me, hard. I asked him: Just wait a moment, let me wake up my wife so she can get dressed. He mimicked me in such a voice, “… so she can get dressed… get dressed…”
But we were speaking loudly in the doorway so my wife woke up and got dressed,
I didn’t have to tell her anything, and right away she went to the children’s room and picked up my 10-month old baby in her arms, and our 2.5-year old daughter by the hand, and stood, afraid for me, and for the children, and the children cried.
But they are very little, maybe they won’t remember this. I hope so, at least.

Then the soldiers began to search and house and I told them I want to go into the bedroom with them. I was afraid of what they’d do… I said to them, you’re not searching without my standing there. He looked at me like this, as if what I was saying was… I asked, do you have a warrant to make this search and he said, shut up, and swore at me – some in Arabic and some in Hebrew, I can’t even repeat to you what he said. And then he said, get moving… And mocked me. They put my wife and children in the room, and I told the soldiers I could complain. Ah, you know about the law, he said, for laughs. I stayed with them. They went into the kitchen and opened the cupboards, looking in. I told them to behave because I’m a human being. And they really didn’t do too much because I was standing there, and they saw that I know about the law, so they only broke the bedroom closet doors because they forced them open and pushed around the clothes.
Why with force? Why?
Every door costs 250 shekels, but it’s not the money I’m worried about, it’s their racism. I’m telling you the truth.

They were in my house for about 20 minutes, then they said, “we’re going upstairs” and asked how many people live here. They just asked like that, then left and went upstairs, more than 25 soldiers. They set up a guard-post up there.
They came down at about 6, or 5:45 a.m., having finished all their business, and took all the young men with them. Then they walked down to the quarries, where their jeeps were waiting.

Why did they come to me? To look for weapons? I don’t even have food, I have no money for food, so I’d possess weapons?

After they left my home, I took my wife and kids over to my father’s downstairs and wanted to go over to my cousin’s house. He works nights and his wife and children are alone. So I took my old mother with me to go over there together. And the soldiers told me, “Why are you out here? Go home! Curfew!” I told them I was going to my cousin’s house, he works nights, and his wife is alone in a 4-story house, but they wouldn’t let us go there, and my mother went back. I said I have to go there, I wouldn’t give up and finally they let me.
This was another unit, not the one that came to my house. Lots of soldiers were in the street. All over the neighborhood, and on top of the houses. Everywhere.
I went inside my cousin’s house and found his wife and children in the room where the soldiers had closed them in, all crying. And I saw Israeli soldiers inside the bedroom, and she there alone without her husband, I mean why do you even go in there? In Israel this wouldn’t happen. If anyone would do the least little bit of all that they do here, he’d pay dearly for it, he’d be charged. It’s all because we’re occupied, and we’re Arabs, and that’s the way they are with us… I don’t know…
I saw them, Aya. They searched ugly. Real ugly. A soldier smashes everything in the kitchen on the floor... Everything is thrown down. Just for the sake of breaking it all. That’s how you search with your hands among glasses and dishes? They broke everything. Everything on the floor. And the closet doors.
I asked the soldier, “Why are you doing this? Would you do this to an Israeli?”
And he said, “Don’t interfere, step aside.”
He spoke Hebrew. He doesn’t speak Arabic. And then he said, “Get into that room with them, keep them quiet so they won’t cry.” He was not speaking nicely. And I stood there. So they forced me into the room, and everyone there was afraid, upset. Little children. The older girl is sixteen, there are eight children, the youngest is two years-old. All sitting closed in a room, crying, afraid… I didn’t want to do anything because of the little ones. So I went in. Not speaking. But they felt a little better, seeing me. Uncle, uncle! The little ones cried. I’m afraid, I’m afraid! They yelled and cried, and we were there together.
After about 20-30 minutes, the soldier came and said, “we’re done, finished the search”.
I said, You’ve broken everything.
Didn’t search for a thing.
And they left.
At 4:30 a.m. I left my cousin’s house. There were soldiers in the street. Stop! Where are you going! Curfew! Go away!... They swore at me, but let me through, and I went home.

That night they came to pick people up. I saw them taking my cousin and three others from our neighborhood. Saw them with my own eyes. They have a list. They came with a list. They knew where every single one lived, where his home was. They didn’t search for anything. They come, collect everyone’s IDs, then arrest the guy. First they beat him up. Then they grip his hands in back, shackle them tight, real right so it hurts, blindfold him, and put him in the jeep.
They also hit him on the head with chairs… Then they hurry off in the jeep, without letting him give his mother a hug, nothing.
That night, they picked up 22 guys this way.

They trashed a lot. Not in my house, just six closet doors, I told you. Because I know the law. Every door costs a lot of money, but they don’t think about the damages they do and the fear they sow. They did much more damage in the homes of the people they arrested. They destroy and they don’t care. Because they do it on purpose.

Afterwards people said in the camp that soldiers stole cellular phones, and gold and money. You know, one guy kept dollars and shekels and Jordanian dinars at home. They took shekels and dollars, and didn’t touch the Jordanian money. Because they have no use for it. Jordanian dinar is no good outside Jordan so they didn’t take any. Ever heard such a thing?

If someone was robbed here, he should complain of course. But what will the judge say? Who robbed you?
How will he remember such a thing?
It’s as though there is law, but there is no law here. There is nothing.

Isn’t it a pity? What have we done to them? We lived together, I have spent more time in Israel than in Qalandiya. How they behave with people, that’s not nice at all.
We build their homes and they destroy ours.
Have you seen what’s going on in Hebron?
The police remove the settlers from the houses, then the soldiers and Border Patrolmen help the settlers and beat up Palestinians.
The Israeli people, the settlers and the soldiers are all the same.

I’m no racist, never have been. But inside Israel no one would dare force himself like that into a home at 2:30 a.m., order the children out into the cold air outside. It’s all because of racism that they behave this way with us.
I hate saying this, but the Israeli soldiers are racists.

I’ll tell you only one more little thing. It’s a 4-year old boy whose uncle was picked up, and they were in the room, and he told his father that he had to pee. So his father told the soldier the child had to go to the bathroom.
You know how the soldier answered? Let him pee over himself. Write this down.
That’s what really cuts into my heart.

And the whole world is silent. The whole world is silent.


Translated by Tal Haran