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"I lost all my memories"<br><br>
<br>
Ha'aretz, June 3, 2004<br>
Twilight Zone / End of the Rainbow <br>
By Gideon Levy <br>
<br>
One of the 120 homes demolished by the IDF in the Brazil refugee camp
<br>
belonged to architect Manal Awad. This was the third time since 1948
<br>
that her family has been left homeless - and the second time that <br>
Ariel Sharon was responsible. <br>
<br>
Now all 19 people are crowded into a tiny two-and-a-half-room <br>
apartment belonging to one sister, on the edge of the destroyed area
<br>
of their refugee camp. The curtain blowing in the breeze allows <br>
intermittent glimpses of the view from the window: mounds of rubble
<br>
all the way to the end of the street. This is the Awad family: <br>
Mother, elderly aunt, son, daughters and their families. On Thursday,
<br>
May 20, two bulldozers approached their home, threatening to raze it
<br>
with the occupants still inside: Operation Rainbow. The 85-year-old
<br>
aunt barely managed to climb out. She says that in 1948, when she <br>
fled from her first home, and in 1972, when the IDF razed her home <br>
again, it was easier for her - she was still young then. One of the
<br>
daughters, architect Manal Awad, says that it's not just stone walls
<br>
that have been destroyed, but also memories - in the photographs and
<br>
books that are lost forever. Her sisters tried to save the coffee <br>
table that she had designed, but couldn't. The table was crushed <br>
along with the other contents of the house. Among the wreckage, the
<br>
only thing she could find was the new narghile she had bought for her
<br>
brother in Tunisia. <br>
<br>
The IDF did its work very thoroughly here: The houses and their <br>
contents were completely crushed. Here and there, some recognizable
<br>
items can be seen - part of a dress, a smashed water boiler, the torn
<br>
pages of a book. Entire houses have been wiped off the face of the <br>
earth, and now they are just mounds of dirt. The chief of staff, <br>
Moshe Ya'alon, said without batting an eye: "We know of 12 houses
<br>
that were demolished since the start of the operation." Platoon
<br>
commander Brigadier General Shmuel Zakkai corrected him the next day,
<br>
saying the actual number was 56 houses.<br><br>
But neither figure is correct. In the Brazil camp alone, according to
<br>
Mustafa Ibrahim, an experienced investigator for the Palestinian <br>
civil rights commission, 120 houses were destroyed. Visiting the <br>
place, it's hard to count, but one sees that many dozens of houses <br>
were demolished, judging by the many mounds of rubble. All the talk
<br>
about smuggling tunnels also appears less than credible. The Awad <br>
family's home, for example, is approximately 800 meters away from the
<br>
Philadelphi corridor; there are no tunnels that long. This was <br>
demolition just for the sake of it, a punitive campaign of vengeance
<br>
against innocents rendered homeless for the second and third
times.<br><br>
In Operation Defensive Shield, we destroyed the center of the Jenin
<br>
refugee camp - 350 houses - but the destruction was dense and <br>
concentrated. There were battles there as well. In Operation Rainbow,
<br>
we demolished houses in a scattered fashion, without a battle, so <br>
that the Brazil camp now looks like Sarajevo in 1993. It's hard to <br>
find the logic in the demolition campaign: A group of houses here and
<br>
another one there, this house yes and that one no, seeming more the
<br>
result of whim than any real planning. To the 120 houses in the <br>
Brazil camp that were thoroughly destroyed must be added a similar <br>
number of houses that were partially destroyed - not to mention the
<br>
crushed cars, the roads and utility poles that were uprooted, or the
<br>
Taha Hussein school, part of which has been reduced to rubble. The <br>
residents describe how the bulldozers approached from all sides; they
<br>
were trapped inside their homes, and terrified. (One resident <br>
telephoned me then and told about his neighbor and the man's 12 <br>
children who were trapped in a house that was about to be demolished,
<br>
begging for something to be done to save them.)<br><br>
This past Sunday, long after the end of the operation, as a bonus, we
<br>
demolished another 23 houses in the adjacent Block J, in another <br>
nameless, forgotten operation which doubtless is of tremendous <br>
security importance.<br><br>
Manal Awad sits in her modest office in the Rimal neighborhood of <br>
Gaza City, tearlessly mourning her demolished home. She is the <br>
director of the Women's Mental Health Center in Gaza. She is 30 years
<br>
old, dressed in an elegant sport jacket and speaks fluent English. <br>
She was in her office when the bulldozers arrived at the family's <br>
home, where her mother and aunt and sisters were. They had sent her
<br>
brother out of the house before the bulldozers came, thinking that if
<br>
it was only women left there, they'd be safe.<br><br>
"I'll never forget that day. My sister called and told me there was
a <br>
tank next to the house. I told her not to dare peek out the window.
<br>
We're experienced - in Tel al-Sultan, they shot at anyone who peeked
<br>
out of the window. On the radio I heard that they were starting to <br>
raze houses with people still inside. We were afraid that this time
<br>
it would be especially bad, but in our worst dreams we never imagined
<br>
that our home would be destroyed. <br><br>
"I tried to reassure my sister, but when I called back she told me
<br>
that the bulldozers were right in front of the house. I told her: You
<br>
have to get out of the house immediately. She said the guest room was
<br>
already collapsing. They were afraid to go out because there was a <br>
bulldozer in front and another one in back, as well as tanks. My <br>
mother took a hammer and tried to break through the wall to get to <br>
the neighbors. My sister brought a ladder for them to climb out. My
<br>
85-year-old aunt, who walks with difficulty, managed to climb the <br>
first couple of rungs, but then she stopped and said she couldn't go
<br>
on. She said that in 1948, she could run away, but not now. My mother
<br>
and sisters pushed her up, the neighbor pulled from the other side <br>
and she finally got over, I don't know how.<br><br>
"It was the first time in my life that I ever heard my mother cry
<br>
like that. She's a strong and sensitive woman, but she never cried <br>
that way. Not even when my father died 23 years ago and she was left
<br>
alone with six daughters and a son and an elderly aunt. She fought <br>
for us all her life and now I felt that she needed my support and I
<br>
wasn't by her side. I was helpless. It wasn't easy to hear her crying
<br>
on the telephone. She said to me: `I won't leave the house.' Those <br>
were the last words I heard from her. My sister said: `Now it's the
<br>
end. We're running away.' I didn't know what happened to them, <br>
whether or not they were alive. I only got the good news an hour <br>
later - they had reached the neighbors. They thought that the <br>
bulldozers would stop and not demolish the neighbors' house, too, but
<br>
that also turned out to be wrong. My mother was so angry and shouted
<br>
against Sharon and against Bush while the bulldozers were pursuing <br>
them to the neighbors' house. It was also demolished. My sister came
<br>
out of the neighbors' house waving a white flag. I tried to picture
<br>
the layout of the street, to think where they could have run to, with
<br>
the tanks there. I was afraid for their lives. All of those images <br>
keep coming back to my mind.<br><br>
"In 1948, the family fled from our village near Ramle to a cave. In
<br>
1972, Sharon demolished our house in the Shabura camp, when I was a
<br>
baby. Now this is the third house. My mother is a strong woman, but
<br>
now she's broken. It's the end for her. She always dreamed about the
<br>
first house that they fled from, but she was attached to the house in
<br>
the camp. Now it's all meaningless. Her life was for nothing. She <br>
hoped that our fate would be different. Peace. Maybe not peace, but
<br>
at least a better life.<br><br>
"I wasn't with them, but I felt what they felt. I lost all my <br>
memories there. A house isn't just walls. I can buy new furniture, a
<br>
new refrigerator. But that's not it. The photographs with the family
<br>
history - every one holds a memory for me. Photographs of our loved
<br>
ones and our joys and our sorrows - all destroyed. We also had a book
<br>
collection. It wasn't so big, but it meant a lot to us. Each one had
<br>
his favorite books. Nothing is left. The house is destroyed. Life is
<br>
destroyed. Thirty years of life was wiped out.<br><br>
"When I was finally able to go to Rafah on the weekend, a friend
<br>
offered to accompany me. I told her there was no need, that I was <br>
strong, but she warned me that I'd be in shock when I got there. She
<br>
was right. Nothing was left of the whole street. We live in the old
<br>
part of Brazil, and we always said that if they did demolitions, we'd
<br>
just hear the noise, but that they'd never come close to us, because
<br>
we're far from the border. But for some reason they started with our
<br>
house. I'm sorry that I'm just talking about myself ... I hoped so <br>
much that I'd be able to save something.<br><br>
"A week has passed and I have the feeling that it's just going to
get <br>
harder and harder. I thought I'd recover. It was a simple refugees'
<br>
house, but on the inside it was beautiful to me. I've been all over
<br>
the world and seen some amazing houses, but I always missed that
one."<br><br>
Here is where the family home stood. A pile of rocks. Manal's mother,
<br>
Shukrin, emerges from the ruins - a small woman in black - and here
<br>
is Manal's brother, too. And here is the Mansour family's house, and
<br>
the house of the Hassan family and the Hamad family. Nothing is left.
<br>
The elderly aunt, Aliya, sits on the floor of the apartment that is
<br>
their temporary refuge, staring at the carpet, her expression masked.
<br>
Manal took her to see a doctor in Gaza; he said that her spine had <br>
not been injured during the escape with the ladder.<br><br>
Aliya vividly remembers the first escape, from Abu Shusha, and the <br>
second escape from the Shabura camp, when Sharon came "to widen the
<br>
corridor." It's the same now. Aliya tells about their first days in
a <br>
cave after fleeing Abu Shusha, and how they trekked from there first
<br>
to Yavneh and then to Gaza. Her niece Shukrin adds some details. They
<br>
speak softly, the signs of the most recent trauma still very <br>
apparent. It happened twice in the month of May - May 1948 and May <br>
2004. Only in 1972 did it happen in December.<br><br>
Yusuf, the husband of one of the sisters in whose home they've taken
<br>
shelter, chuckles: He hasn't yet counted how many people are now <br>
living in his tiny house. "Like sardines, but at least everyone's
<br>
together." This morning, when a Palestinian bulldozer came to clear
<br>
away the rubble opposite his house, his daughter burst into tears. <br>
She thought the Israelis had come back to demolish some more.<br><br>
We go outside to wander along the long pile of rubble. There is <br>
destruction on both sides of the sandy road. By one pile that used to
<br>
be a house, children are still scavenging for pieces of metal to load
<br>
onto a donkey cart. The apartment of Yusuf Bahlul (who once worked <br>
for Sonol in Gaza), on the top floor of an apartment building <br>
overlooking this refugee camp, took a direct hit from a shell and is
<br>
also ruined and covered in soot. Everyone here speaks Hebrew, from <br>
the years when they used to work in Israel.<br><br>
A small television table stands alone in a living room whose walls <br>
have all collapsed. In the Brazil camp, an old woman tries to push a
<br>
crushed water heater. Her strength is gone. A post-disaster calm <br>
prevails. The Philadelphi corridor is visible at the bottom of the <br>
street, and every so often a menacing Israeli tank passes by. The <br>
stench of burst sewage pipes pervades the air as children display <br>
their latest finds from the rubble. <br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
Residents of Brazil camp search for any possessions they can find in
<br>
the rubble. "I lost all my memories." (Miki Kratsman)
<br>
<br>
<br>
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</a> <br><br>
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