Leila Jarara, age 21, student of English culture at a-Najah University in Nablus.
I live in 'Asira a-Shamaliya, which is four kilometers north of Nablus. Because it is so close to Nablus, it is regarded as a suburb of the city, even though it is officially an independent village and has its own city council. I live with my family of eight. I am a third year student of English culture at a-Najah University in Nablus.
There used to be a paved road that connected 'Asira a-Shamaliya to the northern entrance of Nablus. So, I would leave my house in the morning, fifteen minutes before my classes started at university. That was before the Israeli army dug trenches that cut across the road and placed mounds of dirt and boulders on the road in order to prevent residents of the village and neighboring towns from passing through to and from Nablus.
I used to leave my house in the morning and return in the afternoon. But since they destroyed the road, there was only one semester that I was able to study on a regular basis.
The Israeli soldiers set up "ambushes" both during the day and at night and catch people walking on the non-paved road that is parallel to the destroyed one, on their way to or from Nablus. Like every resident of neighboring villages, I have been caught a number of times every week and am delayed each time for hours in the hills, between olive trees, only a kilometer away from Nablus.
Since I could never be sure I would make it to my classes on time and because my grades dropped as a result of these restrictions of my movement, I decided to move to Nablus, close to the University. For the past two years, I have been living in Nablus with a group of female students who are all residents of the villages near Nablus. It is unreal that I cannot go home every day and live at home, when my house is only four kilometers away.
Now I live with eight girls in an apartment with three rooms, a common room, a kitchen and one bathroom. It is very uncomfortable and also costs me a lot of money. I pay 400 shekels rent every month in addition to other bills expenses like water, electricity and food. My expenses have increased by 80% compared to when I lived in my parents' house, before the road was destroyed. This is a big burden for my family and my father, who is our sole breadwinner. My family worries about me because of all the army incursions and house searches in Nablus. I also worry.
Today, Thursday 24 July 2003, I wanted to go home to 'Asira a-Shamaliya for the weekend. I asked the taxi drivers at a taxi stop along the hilly path between Nablus and 'Asira if the road was open. One driver told me that it was open. He told me that it had been closed in the morning. Since nobody had arrived from there, it was clear that soldiers were preventing passage. It was 2:00 PM and the driver told me that a group of people from 'Asira had arrived not too long ago. They had told him that the soldiers left at 1:00 PM, after having caught a group of people in the morning and ordering them to go back to 'Asira.
I decided to go with the driver in his taxi. Within five minutes, the taxi filled up with passengers and we drove to the northern edge of Nablus, where the hilly path that crosses 'Asira starts. We got out of the taxi and started to walk. When we were about 400 meters from the village, we realized that there were several soldiers about ten meters away from us. There were seven of us in total, four women and three men. One of the soldiers motioned for us to go over to him. There were four soldiers there, each sitting about five meters away from the other. They all had M16 s and they aimed them at us.
We went up to the soldier who had motioned to us and he ordered us to give him our ID cards. He took our IDs and told us to sit under the olive trees in the wadi. The wadi was pretty deep, so people who are on their way to Nablus or 'Asira cannot see what is going on in there. There was a group of about ten men and women sitting on the ground in the wadi. The soldier told us to sit down next to them. Later, more people who had come from the direction of Nablus joined us.
The soldiers caught me at 2:30 PM and held me there until 8:15 in the evening. Two of the soldiers guarding us spoke Russian. The other two were dark-skinned.
During the time that I was stuck there, the number of people held there reached almost 70. About half of them were women. There were also four children there with their mothers, including a one-year old baby that was sick and was on his way home from the hospital. The baby had a high fever but the soldiers did not release him, his mother and his sister. They were there with us until the end.
While we were held there, the soldiers allowed us to go and get water from a house about fifty meters away. The house was far from the village but belonged to it. There wasn't any cold water there so we had to drink hot water from the water tank on the roof.
Leila Ahmad Faiz Jarara is 21 years old and a student at a-Najah University in Nablus. The testimony was taken by 'Ali Daragmeh, on 24 July 2003, at the southern entrance to 'Asira a-Shamaliya.