Visiting Muhsein N., at the Shuafat Refugee CampFriday, 2.12.05, afternoonTami G, Vivi Tz, Aya K (reporting)Muhsein waited for us at the entrance to Anata. A tall lean man, well-groomed, gray moustache. Tami, Aya, Vivi, how do you do. He hardly looks, hardly sees, obviously very tense, looks through us. We start walking. Main street. Crumbling asphalt. Garbage everywhere. Negligence. These people pay municipal taxes to the city of Jerusalem, he tells us, pointing around. That doesn’t do a thing. No mail delivery, no repair work, no garbage collection. UNWRA collects the garbage, but those are 4 workers for 40,000 residents. And when people don’t pay up, do they come? we asked. Oh that… Sure. This guy here, his car was confiscated because he didn’t pay his television tax. On the other hand, the internet hasn’t been working lately and a technician was asked to come for we pay for service and use, but were told the technician wouldn’t come here for security reasons.What about Sderot, say? Don’t technicians go there? Or Kiryat Shmona? Let alone the settlements? We turn left, descending further, this is the entrance to the refugee camp, he says. Goes without saying. All of a sudden everything that looked poor and neglected becomes even poorer and more neglected. Suddenly the streets narrow down. One could almost stand in the middle and touch both sides of the alley with one’s hands. Indescribable neglect. Sewage running down the streets, garbage, masses of people, in the windows, in the alleys, children look derelict, their clothes sometimes torn, unclean, looks everywhere, large eyes, watching, dozens of eyes following us. Everything is crowded, ruined. Stench throughout. “Here, if anyone takes a shower, everyone knows about it”, he finally smiles. ‘Even when he doesn’t, everyone knows” Vivi adds, and we laugh. The road is very steep. Downhill. At some point one sees the houses of Pisgat Ze’ev emerge. I think to myself, how can they not be ashamed, the abysmal difference between the neglect they see from their hilltop and their houses built on land stolen from Shuafat. Surreal.How stolen? Muhsein explains. They bought some. Say they bought one dunam and took fifty. That’s the way it goes.Muhsein’s house is built right on the edge. The ravine glides down right underneath, and Pisgat Ze’ev sits on the hilltop right across.”Oh, they’re just leaving”, says Muhsein, nearly disappointed. On an apparently newly-hewn route in the opposite hill, an army jeep, a bulldozer, another jeep. Riding off in the distance.Earlier he told us how every day (as Roni H and Tamar A already reported) children throw stones at the Occupation symbols – the machines and jeeps – and the soldiers retort with teargas and rubber-coated bullets.The kids come out of school, he says, and it starts.Muhsein tells us that this morning, at 7 a.m. already, his house was full of teargas. He said the soldiers, seemingly out of boredom, throw stones at the houses, so people complain, and then the whole camp is flooded with teargas.Muhsein has photographed this, by the way. How the soldiers throw stones at the children and the houses of Shuafat.Then we saw little children running to the tip of the hill and throw stones, a huge ravine lying between the bulldozer making its way far off from the stones.They’re throwing stones at the sky, I thought. At the sun, the horizon, freedom. “Go away!” their throwing hands scream. “Get out of here!” The little angry backs cry out. The stones screech it out, falling far, far away from the bulldozer. No chance of approaching it.And they were gone. Already gone, jeeps, bulldozer. And still the children went on throwing stones at the empty ravine.Of all the images, my mind fixed itself upon Ikarus. Who flew up towards the sun, wanted to touch it, and melted inside his passion. This is how the children’s outcry flies up towards the sun, and dies midway, crumbling into the silent abyss.We descended one last steep filthy stretch towards Muhsein’s house. “I built the stairs”, he said and we couldn’t figure out whether he was proud or sad that this was not done for the Shuafat refugee camp dwellers.Two small children welcome us. A son and a daughter. “They are twins” he tells us while they shake our hands. “Six and a half years old. When they were born, all this wasn’t here”, he points to the houses of Pisgat Ze’ev, as though answering all the accusations that have been hurled at him that he has not lived here all the years that he has, that he was not here for the last ten and a half years but just now built his house, all the lies recruited in order to demolish his house, that is to be demolished no matter what. They are the proof, for if he weren’t here, he wouldn’t have seen that there hadn’t been any Pisgat Ze’ev over there. That he is innocent.We entered. From his balcony he shows us the red mark on the rock that shows how his house is going to be demolished, halved, ruined, nothinged.Thus the State explains to Muhsein, the tax payer, that it is going to demolish his house and his life. With a red line drawn on the rock, that says everything. A sign he understands. The Occupier does not waste words.Muhsein was born in Cairo to a family of Naqba refugees exiled in 1948. When he was five, they came back to Palestine, lived in Beit Hanina. Ten and a half years ago he built his house at the edge of Shuafat refugee camp, conquered in 1967 and occupied by Israel, considered by it as belonging to the expansion project of the greater Jerusalem. Thus it was until the Wall plan. He bought his plot of land from Shuafat residents. When he wanted to register it in the official land registry, he was told to sign a form declaring that his land belongs to the State and he is allowed to use it. He did not agree. His right to his house is stamped with a wax stamp.Nine years ago, a municipal official came to his house. Found him at home. You’re lucky, he told Muhsein. Otherwise we’d have demolished your home. Meaning it had been possible to say he didn’t live there. But he did, he and his wife and the laundry hanging out to dry, and the municipal bills and the electricity, all paid in full.”Lucky”, the inspector concluded. But since then his house has constantly been photographed, says Muhsein.As Roni has already written, after some Shai from the Jerusalem municipality visited Muhsein about 5 months ago, and the foundations for the Wall had already been laid, or hinted at, Shai offered him money to leave his home. Mohsein did not ask how much, said he didn’t want to find himself inside a dilemma, did not want to be tempted, did not want to leave. This is his home. He immediately received a demolition order for his house. The neighborhood committee appealed to the High Court of Justice that established his home was not to be demolished on grounds connected to the Wall. But as Muhsein says, we win against the security grounds and then comes another claim. Another bureau. Another logic. In the meantime, two weeks ago he was subpoenaed to be accused in court for having built his house 5 months ago, and thus after works had begun, meaning illegal construction, meaning being threatened with demolition. He is represented by Danny Zeidman and for the moment no official demolition order hovers over his head. But that doesn’t really make a difference. In the meantime soldiers are putting him through psychological torture. As Roni wrote, whether it is beating him, confiscating his camera when he takes pictures of his life being ruined, the ever-present threat of demolition… On the Thursday before our visit they came and told him that if he doesn’t produce written proof within an hour and a half – that there is indeed NO demolition order, we’ll demolish…Impossible not to detect his mental state. He is on the border. Exposed. Irritated. Walking a very tight rope. He has piles of newspapers on the entire history of these harassments and lies. Testimonies. Newspaper clippings. Photographs proving every last one of his claims. He has filmed footage of soldiers throwing stones.Recently he has written his will. He shows it to us. Because you never know what might happen.The strange thing is that he doesn’t seem to connect his situation necessarily with Pisgat Ze’ev. At least he doesn’t talk about that. Apparently he is forgiving many of the injustices that are born of the settlement’s mere presence. For years he has been going around Pisgat Ze’ev and trying to show them that Shuafat residents are not culprits, are not bad, he has peace caps, he explains to anyone willing to listen to him, that they only want to live. There have already been occasions when, he says, there were thefts at Givat Ze’ev, probably by Shuafat children. This is what he supposes, and this is what Pisgat Ze’ev people suppose as well. Who came recently and said that their bicycles were stolen. Mohsein hurried to pay for the purchase of new ones, out of his own pocket. So they won’t consider us bad neighbors, he explains. The Pisgat Ze’ev people, incidentally, who naturally didn’t suspect Mohsein of stealing their bykes, didn’t hesitate to accept his money for them.On the roof he rocks from side to side. Look here. And here. He shows us all the signs of injustice, all the signals. He finds no rest. “Give us animal rights” he says. “There was a discussion in the Knesset whether cats’ claws may be clipped or not. Give us rights as you do to animals.”Sunday, 4.12.05. Mohsein spoke with Iris who spoke with Norah who says soldiers are surrounding the house. Mohsein thinks they are going to demolish it. He is holding a methane container and threatening to commit suicide. We spoke with him. He said that they’re calling him to get off, and he won’t. Time went by. We called reporters, who called authorities who all denied they had sent soldiers. Everyone denies they’re going to demolish his house. No answer, then, what do they want from him.Eventually he agrees to ride with soldiers in their jeep and they promise him to all go talk with Danny Zeidman, his lawyer, at Pisgat Ze’ev. Instead, they took him to Police HQ in Jerusalem (the “Russian Compound”) for questioning.At this point the police spokesman releases a press notice that whoever was threatening to commit suicide with a methane container on a roof was taken off the roof and brought in for questioning by the police. At the investigation they claim he endangered soldiers’ lives as well. Finally he was released.While he was away, a bulldozer started biting into the land close to his house, land that is his own. We were in contact with his wife, so she would tell us if they reach the house. We all hoped Danny Zeidman would somehow achieve something with the means at his disposal. Some stalling, before the bulldozer arrives.When Muhsein came back from his investigation, they had already finished work.They took half my land, he said.