Tuesday, April 2, 2002 Urgent: Eyewitness report from Ramallah

Ramallah, Occupied Palestine -- My name is Tzaporah Ryter. I am an
American student from the University of Minnesota. I currently am in
Ramallah. We are under a terrible siege and people are being massacred by both the Israeli army and armed militia groups of Israeli settlers. They are shooting outside at anything that moves.

I am urgently pleading for as much outside help as possible to help
save lives here.

I arrived in Ramallah last Thursday. I had come back for a visit to
the Palestinian city where I had been previously living and studying.
On Thursday afternoon, the Israeli army began sealing off each
entrance to Ramallah and there were rumors that they planned to
invade.

People were rushing back home from across checkpoints and also people
were trying to flee. People were not allowed to go out and many
working people -- with homes and children to return to -- were not
allowed in, everyone was trying to take cover. Those traveling in
began desperately searching for alternative ways and traveling in
groups, but the Israelis were firing upon them and everyone was
running and screaming.

Women carrying their children were trying desperately to flee from
Ramallah, carrying infants and toddlers, and their young children were running along in the rain through the fields, slipping and
falling on the rocks, trying to reach safety. Israeli jeeps were
speeding across the terrain pulling up from every direction and
shooting at the women and children, and also at me, as we ran in
opposite directions. They were chasing down people, hunting them like
that in the fields.

When I reached Ramallah, people were panicking and trying to buy
bread, rice and milk from corner stores, but most supplies were
already gone. We bought what we could and went inside to wait for what was coming.

When night fell, Israeli tanks began to invade and also we saw Israeli troops coming on foot from the valley, and surrounding our
house. I could hear them calling to each other in Hebrew. They were
against our door and all around. They were firing everywhere a barrage of bullets and there was tank fire. We had to lay on the floor
and keep silent. We stayed there, on the floor, for nearly four days
in the darkness.

We knew that our circumstances were better than others because old
people or infants or people with medical emergency needs had no help.
It was very cold, with most families packed all in one room. Some
people are without life sustaining medicines like insulin, and they
are altering their doses dangerously if they have any medicine left to take. People are becoming dangerously sick from lack of food and water and heat. The fear and terror only makes things worse, but it
cannot be avoided.

In the daytime, we heard them shooting people in the streets, and
could hear them screaming and screaming. No ambulance was allowed
through. Then their screams stopped and there was just silence.

We had a telephone and would receive calls from all over telling us
what was happening. Everyone is in grave danger and Israeli soldiers
were killing people everywhere. They are arresting medics and
ambulance drivers, including foreign volunteer medical workers.

They keep taking doctors and medics, just now another call. Again,
this time the wife of a doctor telling us her husband has been taken
from the ambulance.

Large groups of people have been found in rooms, shot dead, there are
blood marks where they have lined people up on their knees and shot
them, with their ID cards laying on top of them. They are taking
people from their homes, blindfolding them, removing their clothes,
taking them away or lining them up and shooting them against the wall.

People are making phone calls and saying that these soldiers and
militia have come in and are shooting people and then the line cuts
off. The numbers of these killings I fear are much greater than the
numbers confirmed in the press, because the human rights offices and
the media centers have been stormed, and everything is shut down. No
one can move without almost certain chance of being shot by the
Isreali snipers, who are everywhere.

The Israelis are demanding that all journalists leave Ramallah and
today another foreign journalist was shot. They do not want any more
internationals here and are deporting people. It seems quite clear
that they do not want eyewitnesses which is only heightening my own
fears.

The hospitals have also been surrounded and invaded and Israeli troops are taking the injured people and interrogating them. Today a
woman, a patient, tried to walk out from hospital. The Israelis shot
her in the neck and killed her.

The Palestinian Ministry of Health is saying that they fear the spread of diseases because of the number of unburied corpses.

The numbers are only growing in reports of the mass killings here and
Israeli troops continue to round up people. People are calling
frantically, missing a relative and we do not know where they have
been taken, including children.

The numbers we have now exceed 600, and we are estimating between 700
and 800. All human rights groups and legal advocates are being denied
any information of where the detained are being held. From what we
know confirmed is that 10% of those taken so far have been children
under age 18.

On the fourth day I decided to try to move. People were running out of supplies and I also was so worried about people, and had to check
to see if they were okay. If I didn't, I feared panic would overtake
me so badly that I really had no other choice but to try and go.

It was not safe where I was in any case and at least if I left I would still have my sanity. It was really terrifying as there are some internationals here, usually traveling in groups, and the
Israelis are saying on the radio that they will arrest or shoot the internationals. They did shoot some yesterday and regardless, it's not as if snipers differentiate and they are everywhere.

My friends told me not to go, and were really scared for me, but I had to go. When I went outside, there were cars all shot up and hit by multiple bullets and shells in the middle of the road, unparked. There must have been people in them but I don't know where their
bodies are. There are no reports of them, but they must exist.

I got to the corner trying to go to the bakery for bread and food for
people. Some people were calling and calling with only one cup of rice left. I made it to the corner but they opened fire on my first
try, and shot at me, so I had to turn back.

After that I tried again and it took me one day to make it a block
because I had to start over again and again. I had to climb through
the valley, and as I passed house by house, people were warning me and pointing out what path seemed safest for these two minutes. In the next two minutes, it would be something different. They really
helped to keep my path safe.

Today is Day Five and they are still rounding up people like this and
we hear them shooting all day long.

This afternoon the Israelis suddenly lifted the curfew, suddenly
announcing that everyone had two hours to go out to get food. However, the Israeli soldiers also took food from many of the stores,
looted, and there is no bread or things. People went to get whatever
they could.

Even though the Israeli army said it had lifted the closure for two
hours -- in which we still were not able to transfer medical supplies
and still was not long enough to everything that was badly needed --
the Israelis continued shooting people in the streets indiscriminately on their way, so people were running around trying to make it to the store or find a safe route only to have to run back
home again. It was an added cruelty and terror tactic in this macabre
situation, a sick joke: starve people and then shoot them when they
try to find food with your permission.

In an apartment building in Beitunia neighborhood where I used to
live, they took 60 people who were my neighbors, including several
familes, and pushed them into one room since last night. The Israelis
told them that they are to be used as "human shields", as the
apartment building is across from a building that they were invading.
One child needs to go to the hospital since last night and, initially, the families were able to call outside. Now, the Israelis
have taken their phones.

There are reports that they are rounding up men between the ages of 14 and 45 in that neighborhood, and these civilians, from these same
Palestinian families trapped in that building, were just used to walk
in front of an Israeli tank as it invaded the Preventative Security
Compound. Reports also have alleged that the Israelis were saying that some could leave but shot them when they attempted to leave. The
buildings there are burning, and people are trapped inside.

We keep calling to try to find people but there has been no
electricity and most people's phones are dead now. I do not know what
is happening to many people. The only solution to this is to try to
brave the deadly streets in order to check, but its almost impossible
and terrifying to leave the house at all.

Each place I come to, I am afraid to leave not only for myself but for everyone else in this horrifying position. Israeli death squads
have been yanking people into the street. I also hear only shooting
and shooting, with no return fire. This suggest that unarmed civilians are being gunned down mercilessly everywhere and I am so scared for
everyone. I feel like maybe if I leave one place, one area or
neighborhood I will never see the people again alive.

There are more explosions outside now and more shooting. Another
explosion. More firing, it just doesn't stop.

This is a massacre. The foreign delegations tried to get in but were
turned back, the International Committee of the Red Cross is trying to help but they are being ignored. Please help.

I am not only scared for myself and for people here, but if this
cannot be stopped, I am truly scared for all of humanity, for a world
in which we send men to the moon but cannot stop ethnic cleansing.

On the news in America, we see hardly anything of demonstrations. What are you doing over there?

There do not seem to be any reports of what is happening. In truth,
it's got to stop. Please go out to the streets, please demand a
response from your representatives. Be loud, march up to the capitals, refuse to leave until the Israelis withdraw. Act now! Tell
them the Israelis are murdering innocent people whose only crime is
being born in their own homeland, a Palestinian under a military
occupation.

Demand international protection for the Palestinian people, scream
that this is an affront to humanity and that it is time that the US
not only stop supporting Israel, but that the US stop its abuse of
human rights within its own borders. This is about all of our
struggles. For the love of God, please stop this slaughter. Please
help.