As mentioned in a previous post, I'll be occasionally posting writings from Will's chapbook, "This is the Life", along with the letters that Rachel Corrie sent home from Rafah.  There has been a fair bit of discussion on Olyblog about Rachel, the ISM, and the Israel/Palestine conflict in the last couple years, and I've decided it is unproductive to discuss the ISM without directly posting the writings of ISM activists.

The wells that Will mentions in the second piece here are the same (at least I'm pretty sure) as those written about by Rachel. 

Will's writings carry a "copyleft", which gives explicit permission to reproduce providing that doing so is not to make a profit.  Much of this writing can be found on this blog, where I've been slowly posting it for Will.       -Phil

BRAZIL 

After refugees were displaced to Rafah in 1948, several foreign governments aided with the construction of housing for refugees. One neighborhood of Rafah is called Brazil because the Brazilian government helped to build it.

Monsoor carries the metal brazier upstairs, walking backwards, cigarette burning down to filter in his mouth. He takes two legs, I take one. Logs burn between us, spilling the occasional coal on the tile stairs.

“Monsoor, I’m impressed!” I say.

“It’s no problem,” he says, “We do it this way.”

We sit quiet in the dark by the wood fire, coals glowing orange and purple. We smoke, talk, drink tea. He asks about my family, my work, my education. He gets on the phone with a woman; they talk mellow in the night.

“You like to talk to my girlfriend?” he asks, handing me the phone. She speaks no English; I speak no Arabic. We say a few words to each other, words heard as babble and gibberish. Hand the cell phone back to Monsoor.

He lets me sleep in a big bed with grinning cartoon puppies on the quilt. I awake 4 times before dawn to nearby machine gun fire. On other nights locals have laughed and pantomimed dance steps as the guns go off, saying “This is the music of Palestine.” Abu Jamil even said, “Without it we cannot sleep.” At least 95 percent of the gunfire comes from Israeli tanks and towers.

In the morning I get up and walk outside. In front of the house lie mangled wrecks of twisted rebar and concrete, which were once houses where families lived. I can still see the ruts made by tanks which rumbled into town only three weeks ago. Monsoor’s mother stands in the yard surrounded by children, her quiet face wrinkled with lines of patient wisdom. A boy points beyond the demolished houses.

“The Tank!” he says.

I see dust, hear the growl of monster diesels. Two tanks are moving. Might as well have a look. Raise my hands in the air like surrender, like angel wings, like a shrug, and climb over the dirt and junk to face the tank. It sits heavy as a grey-green steel rhinoceros, a stubborn creature of bulk and violence, a machine ignorant of flight and metaphor. This tank is of the variety commonly seen patrolling the periphery of Rafah: small, for a tank, and lacking the single barrel which protrudes from the turret of the larger Merkava tanks. Instead, this tank’s turret has various slits from which the narrow barrels of machine guns poke. It is designed for shooting people, not other armored vehicles. There are no armored vehicles in Rafah to shoot.

I have appointments to keep. I turn and walk away into streets full of sunshine and shouting children.

Municipal Water Wells Destroyed by Israeli Occupation Force

1/31/03

Wednesday night Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) targeted and destroyed two municipal wells which provided approximately 50 percent of Rafah’s water. Water use is now restricted to 2 hours per day. The Rafah Municipal Department of Water and Wastewater told IOF commanders the exact location of these wells prior to the attacks. These wells were crucial to maintain basic health and sanitation in Rafah.

Workers from the water department connected private agricultural wells to the city water system in order to supply basic service. This irrigation water is unsafe for household use, but locals who cannot afford to by bottled or filtered water must drink it. The two destroyed wells were the largest and most productive of 6 wells which provide all municipal water in the Rafah area.

Armored bulldozers used for this demolition entered the Al Hasash neighborhood in Northwest Rafah from the militarized zone which isolates Rafah from Mawasi, a Palestinian village on sea coast. Recently a sewer installation near the Abu Zuhri wells targeted Wednesday night was also damaged by IOF demolition crews.

Ashraf Ghneim, director of the water department, stated that he sent letters to European Union representatives in the area informing them of the situation. The EU often provides aid to maintain infrastructure in economically depressed Gaza, where the unemployment rate approaches 80 percent. Ghneim also stated that the Abu Zuhri wells may have been destroyed as reprisal for two IOF soldiers killed Tuesday night by Palestinian fighters. The water department has in the past requested that resistance fighters not operate in this area because their presence may provoke such attacks.

The Abu Zuhri wells drew from the same aquifer as a nearby settlement. Some Rafah residents speculated that the wells were target for this reason.

Activists from the International Solidarity Movement cooperated with the water department in an attempt to protect another well located near the IOF militarized zone. Activists from the United States, Britain, and Sweden hung a banner from the pump house which read “Internationals live here.” They spent the night at the well.

Conclusion: