Just writing to tell you about one of the things that has made me feel
the worst here so far.
I have been staying almost every night for the past 6-7 weeks with the
Abu Ayesh family in the Balata refugee camp (more info about Balata
here:
www.un.org/unrwa/refugees/westbank/balata.html). Their
son Amer Ayesh performed an operation in 1948 near Quaqila 5 months
ago in which 3 soldiers were killed. There are also 2 other families
that live in this house.
Several days ago some neighbors had told the Ayesh family that they
had seen soldiers looking into the men's room window where me and the
two sons were sleeping at about 3 in the morning. This concerned us
and we were ready for soldiers coming the next night, but nothing
happened. The 2nd night all was quiet as well. It all went bad
yesterday night.
At about 2:00 am, Jihad (one of the sons, about 15 years old) woke me
up saying "Steve Jeesh" over and over while tugging my leg. I was
walking to to door from the men's room to the main living room and
Jihad and his mother went to the door before I could say anything and
had already opened it. We immediately had guns pointed at us, and the
soldiers wanted all the men immediately. I had my passport and phone
in my bag in the men's room and when the soldiers asked me for ID I
told them that it was in the room, they said "you have other ID?" and
told me I could not go back into the room. I gave them my drivers
license. The men were ordered outside, myself included none of us
were permitted to even get anything from the house even our shoes.
We were sat outside in an alley, while the women were permitted to
gather some things. The families were placed outside in the alley, we
(me and Jen the other ISM) started to find ways to delay the soldiers
long enough to get other ISM people to the house. The soldiers asked
why we were here and Jen and myself replied with "What are you doing?
Why are you here? We were with the family." The soldiers replied
"You know why we are here" and said nothing else.
The soldiers started to move the families and neighbors to a nearby
house and we decided that I would stay with the family and Jen would
go talk with the soldiers back in the house using the excuse that she
forgot something important. She delayed the soldiers for about 30-40
minutes until they forced her out. She then joined me with the family
as they requested to me earlier that I stay with them. During this
time other ISMers were having problems with soldiers getting to the
house, at one point one of the soldiers asked them if they were
friends with "the guy from Ohio." They replied that they did not know
me and then lied to the soldiers that there were other internationals
in homes right next to the Ayesh house.
Usually if we buy enough time, at least until the sunrise the soldiers
will leave because then they get rocks thrown at them during
confrontations. All in all we delayed them until 4:45 am when they
blew up the house. I still feel rather horrible at what has happened
and I feel that I somehow failed or let down the family.
