Urgent: Eyewitness report from Ramallah
Posted by The Editor, an American eyewitness in Ramallah, April 2, 2002
Dear friends,
This article comes from an American eyewitness in Ramallah, I suggest
visiting the following site if you are interested to know more about what
is really going in Palestine. Thank you.
http://electronicintifada.net/new.html
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Tuesday, April 2, 2002
Urgent: Eyewitness report from Ramallah
Posted by The Editor
Ramallah, Occupied Palestine -- My name is Tzaporah Ryter. I am an American
student from the University of Minnesota. I currently am in Ramallah. We
are under a terrible siege and people are being massacred by both the Israeli
army and armed militia groups of Israeli settlers. They are shooting outside
at anything that moves.
I am urgently pleading for as much outside help
as possible to help save lives here.
I arrived in Ramallah last Thursday. I had come
back for a visit to the Palestinian city where I had been previously living
and studying. On Thursday afternoon, the Israeli army began sealing off
each entrance to Ramallah and there were rumors that they planned to invade.
People were rushing back home from across checkpoints
and also people were trying to flee. People were not allowed to go out
and many working people -- with homes and children to return to -- were
not allowed in, everyone was trying to take cover. Those traveling in began
desperately searching for alternative ways and traveling in groups, but
the Israelis were firing upon them and everyone was running and screaming.
Women carrying their children were trying desperately
to flee from Ramallah, carrying infants and toddlers, and their young children
were running along in the rain through the fields, slipping and falling
on the rocks, trying to reach safety. Israeli jeeps were speeding across
the terrain pulling up from every direction and shooting at the women and
children, and also at me, as we ran in opposite directions. They were chasing
down people, hunting them like that in the fields.
When I reached Ramallah, people were panicking and
trying to buy bread, rice and milk from corner stores, but most supplies
were already gone. We bought what we could and went inside to wait for
what was coming.
When night fell, Israeli tanks began to invade and
also we saw Israeli troops coming on foot from the valley, and surrounding
our house. I could hear them calling to each other in Hebrew. They were
against our door and all around. They were firing everywhere a barrage
of bullets and there was tank fire. We had to lay on the floor and keep
silent. We stayed there, on the floor, for nearly four days in the darkness.
We knew that our circumstances were better than
others because old people or infants or people with medical emergency needs
had no help. It was very cold, with most families packed all in one room.
Some people are without life sustaining medicines like insulin, and they
are altering their doses dangerously if they have any medicine left to
take. People are becoming dangerously sick from lack of food and water
and heat. The fear and terror only makes things worse, but it cannot be
avoided.
In the daytime, we heard them shooting people in
the streets, and could hear them screaming and screaming. No ambulance
was allowed through. Then their screams stopped and there was just silence.
We had a telephone and would receive calls from
all over telling us what was happening. Everyone is in grave danger and
Israeli soldiers were killing people everywhere. They are arresting medics
and ambulance drivers, including foreign volunteer medical workers.
They keep taking doctors and medics, just now another
call. Again, this time the wife of a doctor telling us her husband has
been taken from the ambulance.
Large groups of people have been found in rooms,
shot dead, there are blood marks where they have lined people up on their
knees and shot them, with their ID cards laying on top of them. They are
taking people from their homes, blindfolding them, removing their clothes,
taking them away or lining them up and shooting them against the wall.
People are making phone calls and saying that these
soldiers and militia have come in and are shooting people and then the
line cuts off.
The numbers of these killings I fear are much greater
than the numbers confirmed in the press, because the human rights offices
and the media centers have been stormed, and everything is shut down. No
one can move without almost certain chance of being shot by the Isreali
snipers, who are everywhere.
The Israelis are demanding that all journalists
leave Ramallah and today another foreign journalist was shot. They do not
want any more internationals here and are deporting people. It seems quite
clear that they do not want eyewitnesses which is only heightening my own
fears.
The hospitals have also been surrounded and invaded
and Israeli troops are taking the injured people and interrogating them.
Today a woman, a patient, tried to walk out from hospital. The Israelis
shot her in the neck and killed her.
The Palestinian Ministry of Health is saying that
they fear the spread of diseases because of the number of unburied corpses.
The numbers are only growing in reports of the mass
killings here and Israeli troops continue to round up people. People are
calling frantically, missing a relative and we do not know where they have
been taken, including children.
The numbers we have now exceed 600, and we are estimating
between 700 and 800. All human rights groups and legal advocates are being
denied any information of where the detained are being held. From what
we know confirmed is that 10% of those taken so far have been children
under age 18.
On the fourth day I decided to try to move. People
were running out of supplies and I also was so worried about people, and
had to check to see if they were okay. If I didn't, I feared panic would
overtake me so badly that I really had no other choice but to try and go.
It was not safe where I was in any case and at least
if I left I would still have my sanity. It was really terrifying as there
are some internationals here, usually traveling in groups, and the Israelis
are saying on the radio that they will arrest or shoot the internationals.
They did shoot some yesterday and regardless, it's not as if snipers differentiate
and they are everywhere.
My friends told me not to go, and were really scared
for me, but I had to go. When I went outside, there were cars all shot
up and hit by multiple bullets and shells in the middle of the road, unparked.
There must have been people in them but I don't know where their bodies
are. There are no reports of them, but they must exist.
I got to the corner trying to go to the bakery for
bread and food for people. Some people were calling and calling with only
one cup of rice left. I made it to the corner but they opened fire on my
first try, and shot at me, so I had to turn back.
After that I tried again and it took me one day
to make it a block because I had to start over again and again. I had to
climb through the valley, and as I passed house by house, people were warning
me and pointing out what path seemed safest for these two minutes. In the
next two minutes, it would be something different. They really helped to
keep my path safe.
Today is Day Five and they are still rounding up
people like this and we hear them shooting all day long.
This afternoon the Israelis suddenly lifted the
curfew, suddenly announcing that everyone had two hours to go out to get
food. However, the Israeli soldiers also took food from many of the stores,
looted, and there is no bread or things. People went to get whatever they
could.
Even though the Israeli army said it had lifted
the closure for two hours -- in which we still were not able to transfer
medical supplies and still was not long enough to everything that was badly
needed -- the Israelis continued shooting people in the streets indiscriminately
on their way, so people were running around trying to make it to the store
or find a safe route only to have to run back home again. It was an added
cruelty and terror tactic in this macabre situation, a sick joke: starve
people and then shoot them when they try to find food with your permission.
In an apartment building in Beitunia neighborhood
where I used to live, they took 60 people who were my neighbors, including
several familes, and pushed them into one room since last night. The Israelis
told them that they are to be used as "human shields", as the apartment
building is across from a building that they were invading.
One child needs to go to the hospital since last
night and, initially, the families were able to call outside. Now, the
Israelis have taken their phones.
There are reports that they are rounding up men
between the ages of 14 and 45 in that neighborhood, and these civilians,
from these same Palestinian families trapped in that building, were just
used to walk in front of an Israeli tank as it invaded the Preventative
Security Compound.
Reports also have alleged that the Israelis were
saying that some could leave but shot them when they attempted to leave.
The buildings there are burning, and people are trapped inside.
We keep calling to try to find people but there
has been no electricity and most people's phones are dead now. I do not
know what is happening to many people. The only solution to this is to
try to brave the deadly streets in order to check, but its almost impossible
and terrifying to leave the house at all.
Each place I come to, I am afraid to leave not only
for myself but for everyone else in this horrifying position. Israeli death
squads have been yanking people into the street. I also hear only shooting
and shooting, with no return fire. This suggest that unarmed civilians
are being gunned down mercilessly everywhere and I am so scared for everyone.
I feel like maybe if I leave one place, one area or neighborhood I will
never see the people again alive.
There are more explosions outside now and more shooting.
Another explosion. More firing, it just doesn't stop.
This is a massacre. The foreign delegations tried
to get in but were turned back, the International Committee of the Red
Cross is trying to help but they are being ignored. Please help.
I am not only scared for myself and for people here,
but if this cannot be stopped, I am truly scared for all of humanity, for
a world in which we send men to the moon but cannot stop ethnic cleansing.
On the news in America, we see hardly anything of
demonstrations. What are you doing over there?
There do not seem to be any reports of what is happening.
In truth, its got to stop. Please go out to the streets, please demand
a response from your representatives. Be loud, march up to the capitals,
refuse to leave until the Israelis withdraw. Act now! Tell them the Israelis
are murdering innocent people whose only crime is being born in their own
homeland, a Palestinian under a military occupation.
Demand international protection for the Palestinian
people, scream that this is an affront to humanity and that it is time
that the US not only stop supporting Israel, but that the US stop its abuse
of human rights within its own borders. This is about all of our struggles.
For the love of God, please stop this slaughter. Please help.