"They had guns, we had rocks"

The other day I included pictures of the settlements on top of the hills along the way to the Dead Sea. Looking at those pictures again I realize they don't express the gravity of the situation, so today at my first day of work at the Palestine Wildlife Society I took a picture out the back window of the settlement that has its sights set on taking over Bethlehem.

This settlement, Jebel Abu Ghanin, is on Palestinian land

Here is an idea of how much the settlements have [illegally, by international law] spread over Palestinian land since the establishment of Israel:


In 2001, the Second Palestinian Intifada started after Sharon visited Alqaska Mosque to provoke the Muslims and declared that it was the site of the destroyed Second Temple. The Palestinians did not start the Intifida as non-violent resistance; they used guns to fight the Israeli soldiers. The Israelis retaliated and instead of shooting at the people who were shooting at them, they started firing at civilians, using 500mm guns and bombs. They bombed many houses and they forced the people to leave their homes to survive. One of those areas was the neighborhood that I am living in right now. Across from Jiries' house there is an Israeli military camp, called Ush Ghirab (next to the community center), which the Israeli army used to shell the houses across from it. If you click on the picture above, the enlarged version shows the Israeli military watchtower in the distance.

This the the wall inside of Jiries' dining room, the missing chunks are from bullets:


The house I live in now was shelled every night for 2 years. The family I live with had to relocate into town (Bethlehem) every night so that they would avoid the bullets. The bulletholes can still be seen in the walls outside and inside. Jiries was the head of the Palestinian National Committee that relocated people into different houses- he rented apartments for people, fronted the money, and was later reimbursed by Arafat's government. To get them to stop firing at his apartment building , which was filled with foreigners, Jiries wrote to the Secretary of the State through the American counsul to inform them that the Israelis were shelling American property. With the interference of the State Department, the Israelis stopped firing at his house but continued to shoot at his neighbors. Isam is Jiries' brother who lives upstairs- during the Second Intifada his daughter Rawan was in their house when she heard a few gun shots, and the second she walked out the door to escape from the house a bullet wizzed inches from her face. The house next to us, where Jiries' uncle with 7 children lives, was bombed from an Israeli helicopter. These are just a couple examples of the terror that has been experienced by hundreds of families in the Occupied Territories.



This is the building that Jiries rents out to foreigners, in the upper right you can see where a rocket hit it. Jiries said in one night that building was hit with around 40 rockets within 2 hours.


So how does this affect you?
This is a short clip on US aid to Israel compared to the money we send to the rest of the world, it is only 2 minutes long, please watch it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8A6oXdjkhY

Another youtube link that might be of interest to you is this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXFd48-W7JQ
It dozens of pictures from all around Beit Sahour- right around 3:50 you see pictures of shelled houses- the one the has an entire wall blown off is Jiries' neighbor