War, no matter on what purpose, has always been terrible. Lives are taken, infrastructures are destroyed, and rights are violated. Those are not unusual. But the worst is when one loses all without even able to defend themselves. Those unarmed civilians, that is. Wafa Abu Shmais knew it far too much, having spent her entire life in Nablus; a city home to over 100,000 people which has constant political instability due to the Israeli-Palestinian conflicts. Having no relation to the conflict; she is an English teacher, the mother of four children, a wife and daughter, Palestinian, and Muslim.
She had seen oppression happened very often in her time. Her worst nightmare was during the three week invasion by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) in April 2002 which they called as a self-defense. True or not; in any case terrorist attacks originated from Nablus did not mean that the whole city deserved the collective punishment. Wafa was among them, spending her days during the curfew by jotting down a diary: “Soldiers in My House”.
Ramallah, Qalqilyah, Tulkarem, Jenin and Bethlehem were besieged earlier that year, when Wafa and her family realized their time would also come. They were right. At 9 PM, Wednesday April 3, tanks and other heavy machinery began to move towards Nablus from the north and the south; accompanied with intense noises of explosions that shook windows and doors—and shattered some. Apache helicopters supported them from the sky—shooting missiles. Upon this, Wafa’s husband decided to move the whole family with his parents who lived next door, below the level of the main street. From their windows, the entrances to the house were visible.
Horror filled the children as they entered their grandparents’ house; they were Nana (14), Vino (12), Nammor (10), and Nadeen (3). Half an hour later, the electrical generator was turned off. Darkness covered the city, but was soon broken by the lights of the tanks. Four hundred tanks were expected to come. People hid in fear. IDF declared Nablus as a closed military area; press was not allowed to enter, making it impossible to enter or leave the city. These people were literally alone.
It was raining the next day. Balta, a nearby refugee camp, was targeted. A soldier called through the loudspeaker for a family in the camp to leave their house with their hands up within the count of ten. One started to count down 10, 9, 8, and as soon as he reached 1, there were loud explosions. Dust and the smell of dynamite covered the air. A three-story building had been completely destroyed within seconds. Bulldozers arrived, destroying everything in their path.
Friday and then Saturday, more tanks and bulldozers came. There was no electricity, no water, and no telephone. Mobile phones were already run out of power. There were only more countdowns for families to leave their house; more houses were destroyed. The next day, Wafa’s father-in-law went out for a breath of fresh air. He had walked about 100 meters when snipers in a nearby house shot at him. Though brave as he was, what could an old man do against fully-armed soldiers? Quickly he came back running. Neighbors shouted to tell that three nights ago the soldiers took over a house and stayed since then. The snipers shot at anything that moved.
Monday April 8, the children all looked depressed and tired. Nammor asked whether he could go out and play with his friends, in which Wafa replied, “Do you want to get killed? Even if you’re only lightly wounded, you’ll die because there won’t be any ambulances to get you to hospital.”
He asked tentatively, “I am a child, why would they kill me?”
At this point his grandfather pointed out, “Don’t forget that they shot at me and I am 80-years old. Their bullets won’t distinguish between an old man and a child.”
“When things are over, you’ll be able to go out to school and do whatever you want,” trying to encourage him, Wafa then murmured rather to herself, “There has always been rain after long droughts.”
The rain they expected, however, did not fall that night. There were even louder noises outside instead. It was so dark they could see nothing, but the strong hammerings followed by three explosions were inescapable from their hearing. They only thought that the soldiers were looting shops, but it was not really a shop: the soldiers occupied Wafa’s house. They rushed to get a closer look, but a soldier stopped them, “Go Home!” then started to fire after a few seconds. Shocked, Wafa cried bitterly.
One week since the invasion began; things had been more unbearable. They were running out of water and food. The snipers kept shooting and throwing stun grenades from inside Wafa’s house. It was ironic since no one fired at them. People were too afraid to go out.
The news reported that about 100 people had been killed so far in Nablus and a number of houses destroyed. It was like a horrible natural disaster—only that this one was caused by people; as those heavily armed soldiers “defended themselves” against sewage pipes, trees, electricity poles, and the unarmed civilians who were trapped inside their own homes with shortage of supplies.
One day the sound of breaking glass was heard from inside Wafa’s house: the soldiers were smashing glasses against the wall in front of them. It disheartened her to imagine the damage done inside the house. She had no insurance. To calm herself down, she and her mother-in-law then prepared the lunch from some dried food—as it was all they had left. But it caused three more shooting as her father-in-law ran to the neighbor to ask for a bottle of yogurt for lunch.
The evening news on the BBC carried the news about hundreds of dead people and tens of rotten bodies in Jenin camp, which were taken to Israel by the soldiers to be buried there. “Why? Was it an attempt to cover the amount of victims?” she asked angrily.
The children saw soldiers carried three huge boxes of food and drinks on the next day. They put the boxes up to Wafa’s house and threw a pile of garbage sacks in a tank size on the street afterwards. At this point the Israelis said that they had taken over the cities, purified the country of terrorists and that their mission was over. But they still made no sign of leaving; neither did the soldiers in Wafa’s house. They stayed; kept singing; kept throwing buckets of water. On April 15, three female soldiers joined the rest in the house. Heaven knows what they were doing.
Another night came. Things ran as usual, only more insane. The soldiers shot like maniacs. There were huge explosions before dawn and an Apache helicopter was flying low. Tanks and military vehicles clanked in distance along with intense shooting. It was difficult to decide whether they were coming or leaving the city. In the morning, however, a neighbor came to bring the great news that the soldiers had left!
Wafa was the last to arrive at the broken door only to see the emptied guest room. She ran to the living room where she found all the furniture heaped in one corner of the hall: the chairs, tables, even the pictures on the wall. Sands, toilet papers, and cigarette butts were everywhere. Still could not believe what she had just seen, she entered the kitchen to find worms wiggled from inside the refrigerator. Other rooms were in no better condition. Nothing remained in its usual place. There was a magazine with pictures of naked women on the girls’ desk.
“The soldiers have used my house for their own purposes, which were unacceptable and illogical what so ever. But why did they sabotage its contents before they left? Weren’t they supposed to be thankful for us for using it?” Wafa ran around in a daze, not knowing whether to laugh after the soldiers had really left, or cry to see the mess they had done to her home. There came the cleaning job. She heaped up piles of clothes and blankets in a room size. With many neighbors came to help, it was already dark when they finished.
Things remained the same in the next few days. Sorting things and cleaning were all they did with their sore hands—still without water and electricity. Nammor found 15 bullets inside the house; mostly spent. In a drawer, Wafa found her underwear with a white dry stuff on them. The soldiers had been using her underwear to masturbate. She thought with disgust, “I believe it wasn’t war against terror. It was terror itself. How could taking my house by force be justified as fighting terror? I was not even consulted for the keys. I was only staying at my parent-in-law’s house next door. None of the soldiers apologized for what they did as civilized people would do in such situations. How could destroying my furniture and tearing up the kids’ textbooks be considered as fighting terror? Who can explain to me that the magazines of naked women that they left in my kids’ rooms were ways of fighting terror?”
It was Thursday when finally electricity and water were fixed. The Israeli also told the Red Cross staff that the curfew would be lifted between 1 to 6 PM. The news gave courage for the family to drive to the old city only to see destruction along the way. The road was filled with pools of water, rocks, and uprooted roots. Garbage sacks everywhere made the air smelled awful. There were damaged cars, electricity poles lying on the road, and wearied people. Four schools were hit. The biggest mosque was completely destroyed. Houses were reduced to piles of rubble. Wafa cried. There were over 200 houses that had been taken over by the soldiers, and about 350 people in Jenin were slaughtered; according to the news.
An Israeli woman criticized her government whom she said to have prevented humanitarian aid and the Red Cross rescue operations from doing their duty in Jenin. She went on to say that they were the first to send food, tents, medical aid and trained dogs to Turkey, when there was earthquake earlier that day. “Why did we do it in Turkey and not in Jenin, which was less than one hour away from Israel?” she added.
That evening was again heavy with shooting which became more intense after midnight. It terrified the children that they moved to their parents’ room. In the morning they learned that the shooting was part of the withdrawal. It was a relief that they had gone—for now.
Despite her overwhelming despair, Wafa was grateful that all her family members were safe. Listening to others’ stories gave her strength. She knew a family of seven members whose house was shelled by the Apache helicopter. The whole family died under the house ruins, leaving two children alive to face an unknown dark future. A man was shot dead and his body was left in the streets of the city for days and by the time the curfew was lifted, rats had eaten parts of his body. It was when she knew that the biggest miracle was to stay alive.
This has been originally posted here on September 27, 2005
