6/01/07– Beit Leed
From (Street Medics on Tour)
.... on tuesday we (minus Ruth) travelled to Nablus to Asqa refugee camp with the lovely folks who put on the Tel Rumeida Circus for detained prisoners. They did a show with fire juggling and pois for around 300 very excited kids from the camp while Astrid and Euan skirted round the edges with cameras looking useful.
The next day we travelled from Nablus to Beit Leed, a village near Tulkram. We were going to Beit Leed because almost every week during the past two months 1000 soldiers have been helicoptered and trucked into the 8000 person village, at night, to simulate attacking and taking it over. Beit Leed apparently looks similar to a Lebanese village and people think this is why their village is targeted by the army for their weekly practice.
When we arrived villagers told us how soldiers sneak onto people's roofs and climb houses with grappling hooks as well as letting off sound bombs, shooting with live ammunition and shouting and screaming as they fill the village. People miss a nights sleep every week and children in the village are waking with nightmares. As well as the noise disturbance, having their houses surrounded by hostile and unpredictable soldiers is unsurprisingly incredibly stressful. One man told us about the feeling of knowing that he had no way of protecting his children if he needed to and asked what attitude towards Israel people expected the children from the area to grow up with when they experience soldiers attacking their homes every week. The army hasn't faced any resistance while carrying out these attacks and they've never arrested anyone during the exercises- suggesting to the villagers that the reason the army carries out this training in Palestine harass and terrorise them.
Using an occupied population as unwilling extras in army war games breaks international law and we'd come to Beit Leed to help record what's happening there. We arrived in the evening so after interviewing people and a meal it was soon time to head out. The soldiers generally arrive between midnight and 1am and stay until sunrise, so by midnight we had positioned ourselves on the main road into the village, with video cameras ready. It was quite a weird feeling to be waiting for 1000 soldiers to show up and wondering how they would react to a group of people standing around in yellow and orange hi-viz vests trying to record them committing a war crime. We listened to the dogs barking for clues about the direction the soldiers might be coming from and grew a little more paranoid with every rumble of an approaching vehicle. The roads were generally deserted except one rogue taxi which hurtled past with headlights on full about every ten minutes, convincing us that the army had arrived every time. In case this wasn't eerie enough the weather alternated between rain and a stormy dusty wind. And then the street lights died.
At around 1.30 there was still no sign of the soldiers. We heard that some had been spotted under some trees a bit outside the village but heading out into the dark for an unannounced game of hide and seek with soldiers didn't seem like the best plan so we moved back to a different spot on the main road and carried on waiting for them to enter the village. We sat around getting more and more bored, tired and paranoid (the two people coming down that hill are definitely soldiers-look at how they're walking...) until 4 when it was decided the soldiers weren't coming. We went to bed disappointed that we hadn't managed to get footage but glad that the people in the village had had an uninterrupted nights sleep.
Later that morning we started the monster journey back to Tel Aviv for the training, arriving late enough to make Ruth worry she'd have to do the first night by herself. It's great to see the Israelis again and the training went well, but more on this (and the eurovision!) to follow soon,
-Kez x (Street Medic)
