May 14, 2002

House-to-House Searches

[Bethlehem, Palestine] There's been a disturbing pattern to the stories I have been hearing about Israeli house-to-house searches in the area. In almost every case, the soldiers take a man from a community home and use him as a shield for their work. The stories I have heard are very similar. My friend Elias was used as a shield and he told me his story yesterday.

During curfew, soldiers came to his home at 2 in the afternoon. They grabbed his younger brother, but Elias asked the soldiers to take him instead. Elias was barefoot and asked them to let him slip on his shoes, but they would not allow it. They grabbed him by the collar and roughed him up a bit. Then soldiers took Elias to a home in his community. They asked him to yell messages in Arabic telling his neighbors to come out. The family did not immediately come out, so the soldiers sent Elias to the door. They asked him to ask the family to open it. Mother and daughter finally came out. The soldiers remained outside while they demanded that Elias search the house for men or explosives. Elias did not know the family very well, and did not know what he would find inside. He had seen various people come and go from the area, but he had paid little attention to them. Elias was praying that he would find nothing. (What would you do if you found a man? Tell the soldiers and risk some of his friends killing members of your family later? Be accused of being a collaborator and face the rather severe penalty from that? Not tell the soldiers and have the soldiers shoot you for harboring terrorists? You might be shot before you could do anything. And if shooting broke out, you could easily be caught in the crossfire. Any scenario is not a very good one.) Elias slowly went from room to room, searching for people or traps. He was sure that he would be killed by someone or something before the incident was over. But Elias did not find anyone or anything inside. When Elias came outside the soldiers asked him to look in a nearby locked shed. Elias talked to the daughter quietly and she told him that gunmen had once stayed there, so she was reluctant to open it. He asked if they were there now, and she said "no", so Elias told her to open it. The soldiers forced Elias to enter the shed first and they followed. Again, Elias was unsure of what would happen. Maybe there were still men inside who would start shooting. Maybe they would surprise the men, and the soldiers would start shooting first. Elias would be caught standing in the middle. They examined the shed, but again found nothing. The soldiers then took Elias down to the street for a talk. The soldiers asked how his life was, how things were going for him personally. He told them that he was a university professor, but because of the situation and the closures, he was without a job. So the Israeli officers told him they would find him a job if he could help them find the men they were looking for. Elias asked why they would get him a job, when they wouldn't even let him get his shoes! The soldiers kept asking questions about where gunmen were. Where do they stay? Where do they meet? Who keeps them in homes? They asked specific names, specific places. Since Elias is a Christian, the soldiers told him they only wanted Muslims. He noticed that the soldiers were already well informed about the area. Elias had nothing to hide and nothing to offer, so they took him back into the house. They followed him inside this time and asked him to open each door and cabinet as they held their guns behind him. They searched downstairs and upstairs and found a few clues. Soldiers found several packages of cigarettes in an upstairs room. Then they found a man's footprint on a wall. Soldiers grabbed a ladder and climbed to a tiny crawspace under the roof. There they found two unarmed men who gave up quietly. Elias had never seen either of the two men. Soldiers told Elias to sit down with the men as they were held under rifles. Elias said he would like to go home. Soldiers told him to either sit down or be arrested with them. Elias sat down. Now Elias wondered if the soldiers would accuse him of working with the two men. He waited while the soldiers rounded up the woman and daughter to interrogate them. Soldiers finally told Elias to go home as they grabbed the men and took them away. Soldiers remained with the two women as Elias left.

Elias' story is fairly typical of those I have heard. In some cases soldiers have beaten the human shield they were using. In some cases soldiers have damaged items in the homes, particularily doors and computers, as they searched. I have heard that soldiers have taken money from homes, and in a strange and rather bizarre attempt at humiliation, it has been widely reported about soldiers defecating and urinating on coffeetables, on expensive carpets, in kitchens, living rooms, food supplies, offices etc. during their temporary visits.