48 Hours in Nablus: "My commanding officer doesn't want me to talk to you any more." So he started to whisper, "what's your phone number?"
by Paul Larudee of California

April 10, 2002

This is, almost word for word, my brother Paul Larudee's report in a phone conversation with me the morning of April 11 (at a ridiculous hour of the night here in Lawrence). This accounts for the somewhat awkward transitions and so on.  I think I have not made any major
errors of fact, but I was writing down what he said as fast as I could, so I may have made some minor and unintentional errors of fact.  Mehrene Larudee


PAUL:  We're in Nablus now. At the mosque, the fruit is ripening on
the orange and lemon trees. This morning I was picking fresh grape
leaves so the women can use them in cooking.

As far as I know we are, except for the press, the only
internationals in Nablus except maybe a few professionals who may be
married to Palestinians or something like that.

If you have a chance, if you can find any media that are interested
in talking to US citizens here, please tell them to call us at
011-972-56-589-156. I have already given an interview to KPFA Radio

[NOTE: this interview is apparently available as audio at the
following site [Paul is evidently the person identified as "Tony
Larudy"!...I don't have the time to listen to it right now]:

http://www.palestine.indymedia.org/news/2002/04/9874.php

About three days ago [so, April 8, I think] we [a group of
internationals, I think Paul said 6] decided to go to Nablus by
walking over the mountains. The first people we saw invited us to
stay the night. The 54-year-old father had just gotten back from
Hawara village after being detained there for four days. It appears
[I think this was the father's estimate] that they have held
thousands of people there, though not all at the same time. His hands
were shackled, and he was given no food or water during the entire
four days. The whole time he was made to kneel or lie down and not
permitted to stand. In talking about, he was clearly enraged.

The following day we went to try to reach Rafidiyah Hospital in the
city  of Nablus. As we did we saw an armored press vehicle which had
pulled up on the opposite side of the street and stopped. Two of us
walked over there. It turned out to be Suzanne Golden from the
Guardian in England and her press photographer. They were afraid to
pull out into the street (the same street we had just crossed)
because they would be shot at and it was too dangerous.

The directions we had been given took us down the same street that
had recently been fired on. We walked down, and then saw some Israeli
soldiers. They told us to stop where we were, to open our backpacks
so that they could see them from a distance, and said one person (I
was elected) should bring them our passports.

They asked us what the hell we were doing there. We said we were
going to meet someone in the hospital.

"How did you get here?" they asked.

"Over the mountains," we said.

"Where did you spend the night?"

"In the mountains", we replied.

"What is your purpose?"

We said we wanted to see what was happening in Nablus, and we wanted
to help avoid more violence and to keep the peace.

They were satisfied with these answers.

I asked for directions to the hospital, and a soldier said "there's
no hospital around here", but he said that if we walked toward the
center of town we might be able to find it.

We made a right turn and ran across an old lady walking down a small
street and asked her (I asked because I'm the only Arabic speaker in
the group). She said, I'll take you.

We ran across some more Israeli soldiers who stopped us and asked us
, "Why are you walking here?" We said that some soldiers up the
street had told us to come that way. They said it was very dangerous
on the street and asked why we didn't go some other day. We replied
that all the streets are that way, and we had to go some time. So the
soldier said, "go this way and pray a lot while you're going."

The first hospital we came to was a private hospital, and the
personnel there said they were taking in as many patients as they
could, and were overworked.

[I think at this point Paul said that they eventually arrived at
Rafidiyah Hospital and the following remarks are about that hospital.]

In front of the hospital were patients who had already been treated
and released but could not go anywhere, because they were not fit
enough shape to walk that far (for example, home), and the streets
were dangerous.

A French journalist had just been shot. People said he was getting
out of one of the press vehicles which had several reporters in it,
and that he was the one who was shot simply because he was the first
one that got out. Israeli troops basically do not want journalists to
be in the area, so they try to discourage them.


------
Paul says: Yesterday [April 10]  I went out in an ambulance with the
head physician of the Union of Palestinian Medical Relief
Organizations [not sure of exact name] yesterday; they have a field
hospital set up in a mosque, and other field hospitals in other
places. Our ambulance trip turned into an almost all day thing. They
treated some children, really hysteria more than anything; the
parents were worried, but the children weren't really ill. In another
case, a young man had a wound from a bullet which had grazed his
chest - a fairly large wound, but he was lucky ; the wound was
cleaned and he was going to be OK.  We went to Rafidiyah Hospital to
plead for fuel for the ambulance. But nobody had any.

A man heard that his mother was alive in the rubble - he thought he
was dead; and they thought HE was dead, but both were OK.

We went looking for a pregnant woman.  On the way, we met tanks, and
the soldiers made us get out and partially strip to make sure there
were no suicide bombs not strapped to our chests.  One Russian
Israeli soldier offered his opinion that foreigners are shit. We
never did find where the pregnant woman was. We went to another
hospital which had enough medical supplies but was running out of
food. The only vehicles permitted to move in the streets were
ambulances, and even ambulances were not supposed to but the Israelis
don't want to fire on every ambulance.

We started to head back to pick up food from someone's house to take
it to the field hospital. On the way we were on a road that turned
out to have four tanks on it, and a house and school that had been
commandeered by about 100 Israeli soldiers.  We were told to wait,
and they checked our ID. We waited & waited & waited. There had been
a call from Red Cross in Geneva, and a Swiss guy came up.  A woman
was having a miscarriage in the house that had been commandeered (the
doctor said it was not unusual for this to happen due to stress); the
family had been confined to one room of the house. The woman came out
on a stretcher. A soldier in second story of the building called out
and asked about baby and woman.  He said, "Do you think I helped to
kill the baby?" He was making fun of it, laughing about it. The
doctor asked him, "Do you think it's funny?"

So the soldier looked at me then and said, "Who are you?" and I
replied something, and then he said "You like Arafat."

I said, "It doesn't matter if I like him or not. He's not my
president. He was elected by the Palestinians."

The soldier said, "Arafat is a murderer, he kills Israelis? We don't
like Sharon very much either, but we need him, because we have to
defend ourselves." The man also said his brother had been killed.

I said, "I'm sorry for your brother. I don't want people to be killed.
I'm sorry for all the people killed, and all the people that will be
killed in future."

He said, "The Palestinians want to get rid of us all and take all our
land." [or words to that effect]

I said, "Somehow Palestinian occupation of Israeli land doesn't look
like the problem right now."

He said, "Why do they do suicide bombings?" And then I told him that
young Palestinians feel hopeless, they feel that their future has
been taken away from them and their lives are meaningless. They want
to give meaning to their lives, and the only way they can do that is
by becoming suicide bombers.

He was extremely quiet after I told him that, because I think he
began to understand. And then he said, "My commanding officer doesn't
want me to talk to you any more." So he started to whisper, "what's
your phone number?" I pulled out my business card and he told me to
drop my card on the ground. Later on someone took it up to him.
-------


One thing that happens sometimes to young men who are detained and
then released is that, since they have no transportation home, they
have to walk. The detention center gives them a piece of paper saying
they have already been detained and can go. But then, young men
walking are very likely to get stopped again and sometimes sent back
to detention centers again.



Last night tanks pulled up and started spraying the neighborhood. One
of the ambulances was sprayed with ammunition last night. They shot
up its rear view mirror and so on. And it sounded like more missiles
hit the old city.

Today [April 11] we'll go to the old city and take some photos, and
continue helping out the ambulances.