A demo in Nabi-Saleh. Two weeks after the murder of Mustafa Tamimi. We assemble at various houses in the village, and set out on our march towards Ein-Haled, beyond the road. The wonderful youths of Halamish, the nearby settlement, have expropriated the spring, renaming it "Yair's Spring", building a tabernacle and beautifying the place, They are protected by an immense military force. The soldiers, armed from head to toe, are based in a barrack which has been adjoined to the settlement.
We are heading towards the spring, chanting slogans against the occupation and in memory of Mustafa Tamimi. We reach the top of the hill and start descending. A row of soldiers is spread in front of us, and even from a distance, they fire a large number of tear-gas canisters at us. The wind is blowing from west to east, drawing all the gas towards our path. We continue our descent, and the soldiers become confused. One of them shoots gas canisters directly at us, and we keep descending. The soldiers are instructed to run towards us. They obey, come up to us and manhandle us. They kneel us down on our knees and tie us up with plastic handcuffs. The photographers are taking footage, and then a soldier from the IDF unit approaches. She asks them to take a few steps back. Another soldier, with an earphone, is asking the IDF Spokesperson's photographer to take photos of the photographers, so that "they can be incriminated for throwing canisters". A group of border policemen arrive in their jeep to take us away. They are forced to drag us to their jeep.
(12:30)
After a few minutes we are inside the jeep, and one of us is sitting in the lap of the border policeman (his name is Husam, apparently a Druze), who has just arrested us. We both look into his eyes. Husam doesn't know where to fix his gaze and he seems to be quite embarrassed by the situation, demanding that we not look at him and lower our eyes. When we disobey, he slaps us.
We reach the military base, near the Halamish settlement, and we are pushed from the jeep, about 10 metres from the soldier standing guard at the entrance to the base, who is looking at all this. A border policeman by the name of Yinon Hadad is walking around us furious, cursing us, and holding his head with his two hands. Yinon, Husam and another border policeman by the name of Almog Levy blindfold us using flannel cloth, and when our eyes are covered they hit us on the head and kick our legs, saying "now you can walk...you have strong legs". Following the kicking Doron grunts in pain, and then we can hear one of the border policemen saying "There, you can speak", and another border policeman, the one who is kicking us, says "you want to hear this again?" He then kicks Doron's leg with force, causing him to fall down. The border policemen pick him up immediately, perhaps not wanting soldiers walking inside the base to see all this violence. Obviously, those who wanted to see the violence at that time could see it, but over there, as in the Israeli society at large, people chose to ignore.
---
We were transferred to the custody of the soldiers, and as a last minute punishment the border policemen tightened the plastic handcuffs.
The soldiers led us into a room in the base, where we found a few beds, as well as a lieutenant named Matan, who ordered the soldiers to tie each of us to a different bed in opposite corners of the room, not before we were body-searched. After a long while, during which we were seated on the floor, handcuffed, tied to the bed, and blindfolded, Doron's eyes began to burn. He repeatedly asked the soldiers to remove the flannel. The soldiers refused, and when Doron removed it himself they threatened him, saying they would put a sack over his head. The strong burning sensation brought him to tears, and he practically begged, which must have struck a chord with lieutenant Matan. The latter agreed to remove the cloth as long as Doron kept quiet.
One of the soldiers entered the room. He asked us for our names, and other personal details, and when we failed to respond, he said "you know, assaulting a policeman or an officer, especially if he is Jewish - That is a very serious offense!"
Two policemen from one of the special units (Ehud Jubani and Tomer Elia) entered the room, removed Shai's blindfold, asked us for our names, and left.
Every slight movement by each of us moved the bed to which he was tied, generating noise. This brought soldiers to the room. At one time, when Shai moved "his" bed a bit, lieutenant Matan came in, examined the binding, and found out that Shai was not bound to the bed, in spite of his order.. "Are you playing with me?...I'll teach you a lesson", Matan said, and moved Shai to another room, tying his hands to the bed at a certain height, such that his body position had to be extremely uncomfortable in order to avoid pain in his hands. This binding forced Shai to search for a position which does not cause pain, and when he did manage to lie down, the soldiers lifted him up and claimed once again that he had torn the plastic handcuffs. Police officers Ehud Jubani and Tomer Elia searched his bag again, and took out various articles and a map of the Israeli settlements in the west bank. Ehud Jubani began to speak to Shai in Arabic, explaining that he and Tomer are of Muslim descent, and they are dark-skinned, so how could he possibly think that he can teach them anything about Arabs. He explained to Tomer that the look in Shai's eyes actually means "shame on you". In front of the officers, the soldiers tied Shai up once again and blindfolded him. This time he was tied to the bed in a way which made movement impossible, with several plastic handcuffs. In his attempts to alleviate the pain in his hands, he had to shift to various uncomfortable positions.
As punishment for Shai's handcuffs becoming loose, the soldiers strengthened Doron's binding too.
Now Shai was suffering from decreased blood circulation to his left hand. He began to shout to the soldiers, asking for a medic. The soldiers ignored his screams, and Doron, who was in the other room, began to make noise in order to get their attention. Two soldiers entered the room where Shai was being held. They told him he was the cause of his own pain and that everything was fine with his hand. One of the soldiers, who claimed he was a medic, told Doron "Even though I'm not obligated to tell you this: I've examined him and he's fine".
Doron asked to go to the toilet but the soldiers ignored him. After a while, a soldier (with the rank of first-sergeant) came in and told him that they had been instructed not to allow him to go to the toilet. Doron kept begging, and lieutenant Matan came in, cut the plastic handcuffs with a knife, and allowed him to go to the toilet.
A soldier entered Shai's room. He identified himself as a veteran of Hashomer Hatzair (a socalist-leftist-Zionist youth movement). He told Shai that his girlfriend was a pacifist and that he had friends who refused to serve in the territories, but he could not understand what kind of ideology makes people like us end up where we were at that moment. Some discussion of torture and a short lesson on the geography of the place where he was standing, using a "Peace Now" map with occasional reminders from the civics studies high in the Israeli high school curriculum, made the soldier cut Shai's handcuffs, tying him up once again, but according to the IDF procedures: "one plastic handcuff around each hand, and another one in the middle, not tightened to the maximum". He did insist on keeping Shai tied to the bed, however. He argued that this was legitimate in the case of a possibility of harm being inflicted on the soldiers by the detainee. The flannel blindfold remained in place as well. Soldiers who came in to check were told by the soldier that he was having a lesson. Apparently, the fact that "his teacher" was bound to a bed and blindfolded did not seem to pose any problem regarding the "lesson".
(16:50)
An order was given to take us away. We were taken down from the floor where we had been held, to the police car. At the exit, Shai's blindfold was removed. We were transferred to the Shaar Binyamin police station, where officer Munther Hatib interrogated us for:
- entering a closed military zone
- obstructing a police officer in the course of duty
- lying down on the ground with the intent of disrupting a policeman
No allegations of assault were mentioned. We were also shown a decree forbidding us from entering area A, something which does not regard the Nabi Saleh area whatsoever. We were released, following some bargaining with the interrogator, with a restraining order preventing us from reaching the area in the next 10 days. We left the station, without money or phones (which we had left with our friends, knowing that personal possessions tend to disappear in police custody) , telling the officers we intend to hitchhike our way from Shaar Binyamin
