[Cont'd from last issue.]

We stood there while three Israeli police officers looked over our passports. The sun was setting and the rolling green hills of the lower Galilee lay spread out before us in the perfect light of dusk. Off in the hazy distance, somewhere not too far, was Jenin.

As curious Palestinian boys looked on, the Israeli police officers manning the checkpoint on the Green Line talked amongst themselves. We stood there quietly, hoping they'd buy our story. We were, after all, just Christian tourists on a trip around the Holy Land. It was just bad luck that we were in the Holy Land during the largest Israeli deployment since the invasion of Lebanon.

In truth, we were a small ad hoc group of international human rights observers from the US, England, Italy, and Sweden. Our goal was twofold: to reach Jenin with badly needed supplies for the hospital and to monitor -- if not dampen -- the unfolding human rights catastrophe. We'd heard reports telling of dozens dead, tens of houses demolished and hundreds of displaced persons. And we also knew that no internationals were there to witness it or stop it.

Eventually one of the Israeli police officers at the Green Line checkpoint handed us our passports and said we could enter the West Bank. We hurriedly got on our way and were met by Palestinian representatives on the other side of a small hill. We were all quickly shuttled off to the small town of Taybeh.

We were received at the local school, which had recently been turned into a refugee relief center. Taybeh had already absorbed almost 200 refugees from Jenin, all of which were men that had been rounded up, arrested, imprisoned, tortured, and released by the IDF. More men were being released by the hour, a dozen or so at a time. All of them naked. All of them showing signs of physical and mental trauma.

After resting for an hour, we were taken to the town of Roumia, which had also already taken in some 300 male refugees from Jenin. In Rumia, we were able to interview and photograph two men from Jenin that had been detained and tortured by the IDF. The first one, who had extreme difficulty breathing and walking, lifted up his shirt to reveal his back, which was completely covered with bruises and burns from cigarettes. His face also had similar burns. He told us that his house was the first one in the Jenin refugee camp that the soldiers had entered. They took him, stripped him naked, and used him as a human shield, marching him in front of their tanks, using him to knock on doors and enter houses.

The other man we interviewed had worked for UNRWA for 17 years, and provided his UN ID card as proof. He had been rounded up with all the other men in Jenin, stripped of his clothes, and beaten repeatedly. Showing us his cuts and wounds, he told us how he was forced to walk on broken glass, and then forced to sleep on it. During his brief internment, he was hit so hard by an Israeli soldier's M16 that half his face had been paralyzed.

The IDF soldiers had told him to say hello to Koffi Annan for them.

When it came time to ask questions, we wanted to know about the women, the elderly and the children left behind in Jenin.

But they didn't know -- no one knew the status of those left behind in Jenin. It was impossible to reach anyone there. They'd been told to leave their homes, but they also knew that being out in the streets meant certain death. All that anyone knew, according to the men who had just been released, was that Apaches, tanks and bulldozers were destroying homes in Jenin whether or not the occupants had fled into open, into the sniper's sights.

That night we all stayed in the home of one of the residents of Taybeh. There were several busts of Lenin in the living room that we all looked upon with curiosity and interest. The next morning we found transport to take us to Bourkeen, a town bordering Jenin.

On the way there, traveling one-lane dusty roads, I started to wonder if these would be my last moments. The seriousness of our project -- to sneak into a town under a relentless military siege -- began to sink in, and I shuddered. I looked at the orange in my hand and wondered if it would be my last orange. I wondered if I really wanted this to be my last orange, my last meal, my last taste. Would these be my last breaths? To die like this, far from my home, my family and my friends, was this worth it? Would these be the last things I'd ever see: olive trees, donkey carts, cinderblock houses?

But I don't want to die, I thought. And that thought itself, in its sincerity, was the scariest thought I'd ever had.

When we arrived in Bourkeen the situation seemed impossible. IDF soldiers were guarding the road and there were patrols everywhere, including an Apache circling overhead. Getting into Jenin would be much harder than any of us had thought. A few of us, thinking the situation impossible, and our flights home leaving in the coming days, decided to head back to Jerusalem; the others decided to try and go it on foot, sneaking house to house with a Palestinian guide.

Those of us leaving said our farewells, split from the group, got a taxi, and headed to Taybeh.

On the road back, my mind breathed a heavy sigh of relief: I wouldn't be dying today.

But what of my brave, brave friends?

The ones that tried to go on foot never did make it past the IDF patrols. They also had to retreat back to Taybeh, some of them meeting up with us in our East Jerusalem hostel the next day.