“May God help us, may He see us through to peace,” my aunt said over the phone from her house in the besieged West Bank town of Ramallah. That was the response she gave when I called this week, worried sick about the situation our family faced in Ramallah, now under 24-hour curfew with even the service of ambulances often prohibited by Israeli troops.

My aunt said the only movement was either from the handful of Palestinian gunmen with Kalishnikov rifles or the hundreds of Israeli Merkava tanks and armored personnel carriers roaming the streets.

My aunt told me the story over the phone. On the first day of the siege of Ramallah, young camouflage-faced Israeli soldiers in full battle gear demanded into the house at 7 a.m. In they came – to the shock of my family – searching the entire house and questioning my cousins.

In fact, at the moment I called, the soldiers were standing in the hallway outside my family’s flat. They said that everyone was OK. Upstairs in the building three of the flats were searched and the families forced to go downstairs to other family members while the troops commandeered the place for more than a day. The soldiers trashed much of the furniture and helped themselves to the food, water and whatever else they fancied. They used the place as a sniper post. The building was occupied for 36 hours. My family and others in the building spent some of their time helping to clean up their neighbors’ apartments.

That was the first time the soldiers came. A day later, they were back. They occupied the building again and this entire time, my aunt tells me, they were not able to leave their home. To this day, they still cannot leave their house. An order was issued in Ramallah two weeks ago, declaring it a “closed military zone.”

My family said that electricity and water to Ramallah has been intermittent. My aunt tells me that water will not be coming anytime soon to some areas of the town because of serious damage done to streets and water mains by tanks and armored bulldozers.

My family is living only on the bottles of water they can get their hands on. They have been allowed from the house for short curfew lifts in order to get some supplies. Food and water is in short supply throughout the city.

In other first-hand accounts I’ve received by e-mail, stories were told of soldiers completely vandalizing the inside of houses. In some instances, soldiers held young men found in houses at gunpoint in uncomfortable positions in front of their families and younger siblings. They were not interrogated or even suspected as militants, but they were dehumanized.

Ramallah did not used to be like this. It was the bright example of Palestinian culture and commerce, beautiful homes and a park-like, small-town atmosphere. It is a happening place technologically with many Internet caf‚s and coffee shops. The restaurants and caf‚s came alive at night.

Nine short months ago, I was there. I felt sick to my stomach last week when I saw one of the larger buildings downtown completely destroyed in a wire service photograph from downtown Ramallah. It happened to be the same building that had the Internet caf‚ I frequented. There are many stories, many very tragic for both Palestinians and Israelis.

This is but one story of one Palestinian family in one town.

Palestinian students at this very university have had troops search and destroy property in their homes, had cousins and other relatives detained without charge, only to be released a short time later and numerous other human rights violations.

Suicide attacks, deplorable as they may be, do not justify right-wing members of Israeli government like Ariel Sharon to rampage their army through Palestinian cities. Some of the most outspoken critics are Israeli human rights and peace activists. Organizations like Rabbis for Human Rights, B’tselem and Bat Shalom are outraged.

The Israeli army, in its quest to bring those responsible for attacks against Israelis, is ruining the livelihood of millions, demolishing governmental buildings built with millions of dollars of European Union and American humanitarian aid money and ending the lives of many innocents. It is merely creating the environment for future conflict.

My family, along with hundreds thousands of other Palestinians are in grave danger, currently living under siege of a man hell-bent on defying the explicit withdrawal demands of the United Nations, European Union, Israeli human rights organizations and even the United States.

I implore you with heartfelt sincerity to contact your representatives with a message of reconciliation through mutual trust for Palestinians and Israelis. The situation is desperate and immediate.

A nonviolent movement on the part of Israelis and Palestinians together is the path to combat the injustices perpetrated by the extremists – be they groups or governments – on each side. We must support such an effort as a nation.

“May God help us,” my aunt said in Arabic this week from the besieged Palestinian town of Ramallah. May God save the people of the Holy Land from their leaders indeed.

Omar Tesdell is a sophomore in journalism and mass communication and technical communication from Slater. He is online editor of the Daily.