Nablus Under Siege

Dear Friends

 Greetings from Nablus which has been languishing under
 a continuous curfew imposed by the Israeli military
 since June 20th with only sporadic lifting for a few
 hours every two weeks or so. Every single dimension of
 social, economic, cultural, and human life has been
 disrupted. And now, we have been struck by the latest
 Israeli aggression against the old city of Nablus,
 more specifically the Kasabah neighborhood, in which
 at least 3 Palestinians were killed, scores injured,
 homes demolished and the history of our ancient and
 beloved town erased from existence. This attack
 against our past, present and future can only be
 withstood with the support of freedom, peace, and
 justice loving people around the world.

 It is from our specific location under siege--with
 food and medicine running out, water cut off and
 electric generators destroyed, children terrorized,
 and social, economic, and political developments
 stunted-- that we issue an appeal to all of you for
 you are our last and only hope. We ask you to
 intervene and use the resources at your disposal to
 pressure Israel to lift the curfew off Nablus and the
 other Palestinian communities that are held hostage to
 the whims of Sharon and his bloodthirsty government.

 We are trying desperately to carry out our journalist
 mission and inform our public in Nablus of the
 developments on the ground. However, as you may
 already know, our job is dangerous and complicated.
 Not long ago, a colleague of ours, Nasser Ishtaia, of
 Reuters, lost his 4-day-old daughter, as they were
 stopped endlessly at Israeli checkpoints; other
 colleagues of ours were killed, injured or arrested by
 the Israeli military for no reason. In April, Israel
 decided to reoccupy all towns and villages in the West
 Bank. During that time, our station was shelled almost
 killing two of our reporters who refused to leave the
 station and insisted on giving the Nablus population
 news of what was going on. Unfortunately, heavy
 bullets and rockets shuttered our studios completely
 destroying two transmitters and other equipments
 valued at over $50,000.00 dollars (the sum may seem
 small to people in the US and Europe but it is a huge
 investment to us here).



 Things are getting worse as days pass by. Unlike
 journalists elsewhere, our mission is not only to
 report the news. We do not exaggerate when we say that
 we are the lifeline of this community. Before April
 and the direct Israeli re-occupation of Nablus, we
 used to give out a bulletin on the "road situation"
 every 15 minutes to inform our public of what
 back-roads people could take to get the injured and
 the ill to hospitals or to get some important
 documents processed (sometimes people outside of
 Palestine do not realize that no one would make a trip
 and pass Israeli checkpoint unless their trip were
 absolutely necessary. It is not just the danger
 involved in taking such a trip, but the hardship of
 walking long distances at the risk of being turned
 back and most importantly at an exuberant cost when
 people have no money for food, medicine, or water and
 electricity bills). These bulletins were heard by the
 population of Nablus and the surrounding villages and
 refugee camps, such as Balata, Askar, and Ein. We
 would issue an emergency bulletin every time someone
 spotted an Israeli patrol near the open roads and
 called on by Jawwal (local Palestinian mobile phones)
 to notify us. Now that the roads are completely
 blocked and no one comes in or leaves Nablus, we serve
 as the only source of information as we sadly announce
 the names of the martyrs to allow people to attend
 funerals and offer condolences--the only form of
 social support people can give to each other in the
 face of a continuous 24-hour curfew.

 Life style has changed for everyone in Palestine: The
 high school general matriculation exams usually end by
 mid June. In Nablus, the Tawjeehi exams were delayed
 until the end of July. The delay in the taking,
 grading and posting the results of the exams (August
 6th) has already deprived Palestinian high school
 students from much needed time to apply for and seek
 acceptance at Palestinian and other Arab universities.
 Most of the spots have already filled up and the road
 blocks and border closures, combined with the high
 cost of travel when 75% of Palestinians live below the
 poverty line (at $2.00 per day for a family of four)
 will surely make it impossible for Palestinian
 students to enroll in colleges in September thus
 losing a year and maybe more of their future. Under
 normal circumstances, newspapers and school post the
 results of the high school exams. But since we are
 under curfew, no newspapers have reached Nablus for
 quite a while. Schools are the other place at which
 students find out their results. But most schools in
 Nablus have now been occupied by the Israeli military
 and turned into armed posts. As a result of these
 obstacles, we decided to keep operating our radio
 station in order to announce the name of each student
 and the average she or he received in the exams on the
 air. Although this decision has cost us funds we do
 not have, not to mention the risk we took to get to
 the station to make the announcements, we were more
 than happy to bring some good news to our public that
 has had nothing but bad and worse news day after day.
 Students called to thank us and parents were
 celebrating their children's success; this made it all
 worth the risk.



 Our services have also included receiving calls from
 ill people requesting medicine or medical advices.
 When we receive such a call, we contact doctors,
 neighbors and paramedics to provide medical aid to
 those who cannot otherwise obtain it. We have also
 called and have been called by families who were held
 hostage by the Israeli military. For example, on
 August 4th, we called Mr. Nidal Shafiee, who was
 locked up along with 97 other relatives and neighbors
 who live in the Freitekh building in the old city of
 Nablus. Mr. Shafiee explained on the air that the 98
 people had no electricity, no water, and no baby milk.
 We contacted the relief committees who were able to
 get in through the Israeli military siege to provide
 help.



 All of our services are free of charge. We are listed
 as a commercial radio station. We started out as a
 medium to promote social justice and human rights. We
 used to offer cultural and social analysis and cover
 all local and national news. We would get sponsors for
 various shows, especially from merchants who wanted to
 promote their business. Since the outbreak of the Aksa
 Intifada, however, we have not been able to raise
funds to pay the salaries of our staff nor cover the
 phone, fax, mobile, or internet bills. We used to have
 a link to the internet to broadcast live but we had to
 suspend it for lack of funds. Even before the recent
 Intifada, the Israeli military has seized our
 transmitters from the top of the Jerzim mountain under
 the pretext of stopping pirated Israeli radio
 stations. And although the Palestinian Authority has
 made it clear to its Israeli counterpart that we are a
 legitimate and fully licensed radio station, our
 transmitters were never returned to us nor were we
 compensated for their loss. As a result, we could no
 longer have broadcast coverage all over Palestine; we
 had to limit ourselves to Nablus and the northern
 parts of the West Bank. Now, even this is threatened
 by the Israeli occupation on one hand and the lack of
 funds on the other.



 We therefore call on all of you to please help us in
 our mission. Continue and escalate your efforts to end
 the occupation of our land so that we could live
 freely and peacefully like all people on the face of
 the earth; we deserve no less than other human beings.
 And we also ask you to help us raise funds to support
 this station that is truly the only lifeline to the
 people of Nablus. We promise you that we will continue
 to resist all attempts to uproot us from our land and
 erase our identity. We hope that you can offer the
 support to allow us to maintain our sacrifices.



 For Justice, Peace, and a free Palestine,



 Amer Abdelhadi

 General Manager

 Tariq Al-Mahabbeh 97.7 FM

 Nablus Under Siege


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