14 June 2008: Israeli troops invade Bethlehem
The destruction inside the apartment.
The bathroom was also partly destroyed.
Collected bullets after the invasion.
At about 1.30 pm, the mayor told us he had breaking news about an incident in Bethlehem; the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) had entered the town.
We got to Bethlehem at 6 pm and saw a bulldozer already on route 60. Upon entering Al Khader town, we passed by a dozen army vehicles. The road between the Deheisha camp and Doha municipality was blocked. Stones covered the ground. We decided to get out of the car and approach the scene to see what was going on. We passed close by what looked very much like a military truck full of soldiers, although the writing on the side of the truck actually read "police". They did not stop us, and the street seemed quiet. But then we heard three or four shots and saw a crowd of people running away, a block away from us, briefly crossing the street we were standing on. We stopped. The next thing we heard was someone shouting something in Hebrew. We turned around and discovered that one of the soldiers in the truck we had just passed was calling us back. We walked towards him, and when we got closer we asked him if he spoke English and what was going on. He answered: "It is very dangerous! Go away!"
So we went back to the car that was waiting for us, picking up a used sound bomb from the ground as we went. Within five minutes, the army vehicle had left and we could not see any more IDF (most had indeed left already before we arrived). Back in the car, we decided to try to get a closer look. The driver of our car drove slowly ahead and he and our co-passenger asked people along the way what had happened.
We now found out from the people in the streets that the IDF had blocked off a residential area in Doha (across the road from the Deheisha refugee camp) at noon and had entered an apartment building to search the apartment of Abu Aker. They wanted to arrest one of the sons in the house, Muath. We went closer. The driver took us all the way to the apartment building.
Inside, on the second floor, the front door of an apartment had been blasted open, and the whole apartment was a mess. Lots of people were there, including some internationals and press. One of the press gave us two bullets: one rubber-coated and one plastic-coated. A woman in black, whom we later identified as the mother of the wanted person, asked Anna where we were from, and Anna replied that we are in a church programme. The woman then immediately said "welcome".
In the apartment, some kind of a projectile had made a hole in the roof of the bathroom. As we passed, someone picked up bullets from the floor (ordinary live ammunition, not rubber-coated), and we took photos of them. An old woman was sitting on the floor of the bedroom, possibly in shock. As we were leaving, people were already cleaning up and fitting in a new front door.
Below the apartment, on the bottom floor, the glass window of a shop had been smashed, and we were told it was smashed when the door of the apartment upstairs was blasted open.
On the street just outside we met the governor of the Bethlehem district, Mr Salah al Tamari. He told us that he had tried to get to this apartment for the last 2.5 hours. When the IDF blocked off the area, the youth had responded by throwing stones at them. The IDF then used sound bombs and tear gas against the crowd. They had also shot at them. We heard that several people were injured. (See Maan News Agency and International Middle East Media Center (IMEC) for further information.)
While we were talking to the governor, a young man came up to us with a short note in Hebrew. It was from the captain of the IDF soldiers who had gone into the building, he told us. It said that one of the sons in the family, Ateef Moussa, was summoned to a meeting on Sunday morning (the following day). When the soldier had written this note he had told the family that if the son did not show up, the family would be arrested. He also threatened to kill the wanted son, Muath.
