30 January 2012 | Sixteen Minutes to Palestine

Weeks ago, Wedad Yassin traveled back to Ein Yabrud, a village near Ramallah in the West Bank, to visit her family and to experience Palestine’s rich cultural heritage. Her intention had been to tour through the Al-Khalil district, Ramallah, Bil’in, and Jerusalem. However, she was denied entry to Jerusalem. Nevertheless, Yassin explored Bil’in, site of the weekly demonstrations against Israel’s apartheid wall, and came across this jam’iyya or association dedicated to “enhancing and reviving Palestinian culture along with documenting Israeli crimes”.

Included is a series of photographs from Yassin’s visit to this center. Each of the shells, bullet casings, and projectiles featured in these images were collected over time by the members of this jam’iyya after they were used against unarmed protesters during the demonstrations in Bil’in. Israeli forces continue to use live ammunition, rubber bullets, and USA-made tear gas canisters against the Bil’in activists on a regular basis and have designated the area a military zone to allow soldiers to treat the civilians as hostile combatants.

Photo: Wedad Yassin, Sixteen Minutes to Palestine - Click here for more images

Wedad Yassin is a 21-year-old Palestinian-American who studies Middle Eastern Studies at Benedictine University. Less than a year ago, she participated in a study abroad program at Birzeit University where she taught English at the Jalazone Refugee Camp. She returned to Palestine for a family visit just weeks ago although she was denied entry to Jerusalem. Wedad is an aspiring professor and an ambitious photographer.

24 January 2012 | In These Times

Behind the headlines, Palestinians are using nonviolent direct action to protest the status quo.

WEST BANK, PALESTINE – On November 15, Mazin Qumsiyeh and other Palestinian activists boarded public bus number 148, an Israelis-only bus that normally takes Jews from the Israeli West Bank settlement of Ariel to Jerusalem. The bus took the group to the Hizma checkpoint, just outside the northern entrance of Jerusalem, where activists resisted authorities’ efforts to remove them. Eventually, as a camera broadcast the action online, eight people were pulled from the bus and arrested. They were charged with “illegal entry to Jerusalem” and “obstructing police business.”

Qumsiyeh hopes this recent “freedom ride” – possible because a bus driver let them ride by mistake, he said – will spark the same kind of response that its namesake did across the United States in the early 1960s, when interstate bus trips helped end racial segregation in the South. Qumsiyeh, author of Popular Resistance in Palestine: A History of Hope and Empowerment says other examples of nonviolent resistance says, include protests of the separation barrier (which many Palestinians call an “apartheid wall”) that has effectively turned 10 percent of Palestinian land into Israeli land since its construction began in 2002; school girls holding class in the street when they can’t get to their schools because of Israeli interference; and farmers braving Israeli intimidation to harvest olives. “For us to exist on this land is to resist,” says Qumsiyeh, who teaches at Bethlehem and Birzeit universities.

Most readers of mainstream media in the United States think of the First Intifada (1987-92) as the stone-throwing uprising and the Second Intifada (2000-2004) as the attack of the suicide bombers. They may have heard of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, started in 2005 by more than 170 Palestinian civil society groups. (The movement aims to curtail benefits accruing to businesses that benefit from the occupation.) But few are aware of Palestinians’ longstanding creative efforts to use nonviolent direct action in their struggle for self-determination. Those efforts, from the tax revolt in Beit Sahour during the First Intifada to creative actions led by Palestinians like Qumsiyeh, are often supported by both international and Israeli activists. And they are proliferating.

Ghassan Andoni, cofounder of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) and a leader of the Palestinian Center for Rapprochement between People, says nonviolent direct action by Palestinians opposed to the Israeli occupation started before the First Intifada. “Activities included throwing military identity cards issued by the occupation as a way to tell the occupier that we don’t recognize your authority and there is no contract between us,” Andoni said in an interview in Bethlehem in mid-November. “Then we stopped paying taxes and submitting monthly reports saying, ‘No taxation without representation.’”

The First Intifada also saw the creation of autonomous communities all over the West Bank. “We established our own economy to detach from the occupation,” Andoni explained. Large protest marches and solidarity campaigns were also organized with international activists and Israelis. ISM has staged “die-ins” in front of Israeli tanks, and its members have chained themselves to homes the Israeli government wants to demolish, and obstructed the Israeli army from imposing a curfew. As popular resistance among Palestinians has spread, Andoni increasingly sees ISM’s role as supporting local nonviolent initiatives.

Bil’in, a village near Ramallah, is one such initiative. Residents of Bil’in have mobilized against Israel’s West Bank security barrier. Since construction of the fence began there in 2005, villagers have staged various events. After the release of the film Avatar, with its story line of the occupation of Pandora and the rape of its resources, Palestinians painted themselves blue to look like Pandorans. On another occasion, they lugged a television to the fence and cheered their favorite teams during a World Cup tournament to show that normal life would go on.

Bil’in activists photograph and videotape every protest. “The camera is our gun,” says Iyad Burnat, who heads the resistance committee in the village. In 2011 the barrier was moved a short distance away from its initial location in Bil’in, on orders from the Israeli High Court. But much of the village remains on the Israeli side of the fence, and protests continue.

What is the ultimate goal of nonviolent action, beyond stopping the security wall and ending the occupation? “One state or two states?” is not the right question to start with, Qumsiyeh says. “The right question to ask is, ‘What is the right thing to do that will guarantee the safety and security and peace and humanity of everybody in the long run?’ Once we can agree, we’ll work toward that.”

Melinda Tuhus is an independent journalist with 25 years of experience in print and radio, including In These Times, The New York Times, Free Speech Radio News and public radio stations.

US-made tear gas, manufactured by companies like Combined Systems Inc. (CSI), Defense Technology, and Nonlethal Technologies, continues to be used by governments including Egypt, Israel, Yemen, Bahrain and the United States to repress popular protest movements for social justice.

In response, human rights advocates will protest again on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, January 16th, 2012, outside CSI’s Jamestown, Pennsylvania headquarters (see pastProtests against Israel’s tear gas use). In advance of the protest, reports indicate that CSI has replaced the Israeli flag that previously flew alongside the US flag outside its headquarters with a Pennsylvania state flag.

Strong evidence that CSI canister killed Palestinian protester Mustafa Tamimi: On December 9, 2011, in the village of Nabi Saleh in the West Bank an Israeli soldier inside an armored military jeep fired a tear gas canister at close range directly at the face of Palestinian protester Mustafa Tamimi during a protest against the expansion of Israeli settlements on Nabi Saleh’s land. Mustafa died from his wounds the next day. Protesters did not manage to collect the actual tear gas canister fired at him. However, residents of Nabi Saleh have collected samples of the types of tear gas canisters that the Israeli army uses against Nabi Saleh’s weekly protests, including the specific type of tear gas canister – same size and shape - that hit Mustafa. The type of canister that killed Mustafa can be seen in the January 11 and 13, 2012, photos below taken in Nabi Saleh by Bilal Tamimi. The canister has a headstamp on it that reads CTS. CTS stands for Combined Tactical Systems, a brand name of Combined Systems Inc., in Jamestown, PA. Adalah-NY received these photos from the Popular Struggle Coordination Committee.

(Click on photos to enlarge)

One piece of a tear gas canister from Nabi Saleh like the one that killed Mustafa Tamimi, headstamped CTS - January 13, 2012, photo by Bilal Tamimi.

Both pieces of a tear gas canister from Nabi Saleh like the one that killed Mustafa Tamimi, headstamped, CTS - January 11, 2012 photo by Bilal Tamimi

CSI canisters and tear gas, shot by Israeli soldiers during protests against Israel’s settlements and wall on Palestinian land, also caused the deaths of protesters Bassem and Jawaher Abu Rahmah in Bil’in, the severe injury of protester Tristan Anderson, a US citizen, in Ni’lin, as well as severe injuries to many other Palestinian protesters (more information on these protesters).

CSI is the primary supplier of tear gas to the Israeli military as well as a provider to Israel’s police (and border police). Until a January 2012 change to it’s website, CSI listed Israeli Military Industries and Rafael Armament Development Authority as among its military customers and development partners (see old webpage).  CSI’s founders, Jacob Kravel and Michael Brunn, are Israeli-Americans.

In addition to ubiquitous CSI/CTS canisters found at Palestinian protests, evidence of CSI sales and shipments to Israel is clear. An April 30, 2008, cable available through Wikileaks from the US State Department in Washington DC to the US State Department in Tel Aviv requests clearance for shipment to Israel’s police of the following equipment from CSI: 1,000 Rubber Ball Hand Grenades, 1,000 Tactical Grenades Flash Bang, 1,000 Sting-Ball Grenades, 1,000 Flash Bang Training, and 1,000 Super-Sock Bean Bags. The shipment was part of a larger $5 million agreement between the Israeli police and CSI. An Israeli government website shows that on August 4th, 2011, the Israeli police purchased 6 million shekels ($1.56 million) worth of stun grenades from CSI without issuing a tender.

The PIERS Export Database of US Trade activity is helpful in identifying CSI shipments of tear gas to a number of countries, including Egypt, Tunisia and Algeria (see further information below). However, searching PIERS does not turn up CSI shipments to Israel. The photo of a CSI container below reveals two reasons. The bottom label in the photo shows that the tear gas container was shipped via Israel’s national airline El Al, and PIERS only tracks shipments by sea. Additionally, the bottom label shows the CSI container was sent to Israel’s Ministry of Defense by Interglobal Forwarding Services, in Bayonne, New Jersey. A search on PIERS for Interglobal Forwarding Services over the past year shows over 1,300 shipments, some evidently including tear gas, by Interglobal from the US to Israel’s Ministry of Defense. But the shipments are listed under Interglobal’s name, and do not show manufacturers’ names.

The US company Defense Technology has also provided some tear gas to Israel’s police (see information on Defense Technology in the Middle East and Oakland below, and a photo of a Defense Technology tear gas container in Jerusalem below).

CSI tear gas kills and injures Egyptian protesters: CSI tear gas is also the primary tear gas that has been used by the Egyptian security forces to repress popular protests for democracy in Egypt over the last year, causing protester deaths and injuries. Amnesty International highlighted the shipment of CSI tear gas to Egypt in its December 6, 2011, call for the US government to stop sending tear gas and weapons to the Egyptian government due to tear gas-related deaths and injuries to Egyptian protesters. Using the PIERS database, Amnesty International documented three specific shipments of tear gas from CSI in the US to Egypt in 2011 that were approved by the US State Department, despite the Egyptian security forces’ record of using of tear gas to kill and injure protesters in efforts to crush protests.

As additional documentation, a July 11, 2008, cable from the State Department in Washington DC to the State Department in Cairo available through Wikileaks requests information to finalize the shipment from CSI to Egypt’s Ministry of Interior of 20,000 CS Smoke Hand Grenades, 20,000 CS Smoke Long Range Cartridge, and 4,000 CS Window Penetrating Cartridges, together valued at $621,000.

CSI in the Middle East and worldwide: CSI canisters were also seen (for example at 27 seconds in this Tunisian video) and blamed for protester deaths in Tunisia. The PIERS database reveals an April 1, 2010, CSI shipment of 5.540 kilograms of “grenade cartridges” and “ammunition launchers” to Tunisia. PIERS also shows an April 8, 2011, shipment by CSI of 12,663 kilograms of “ammunition” to Algeria. There is some evidence of use of CSI tear gas by the Yemeni government against protesters.

Other CSI customers include the Netherlands and Germany (information available via PIERS), and (via Wikileaks) Guatemala, India, Timor-Leste, Hong Kong, Argentina, Thailand, Trinidad and Tobago, Cameroon (via Israel), and Sierra Leone.

Defense Technology in the Middle East and Oakland: A Corporate Watch report shows that the US company Defense Technology has provided tear gas to Israel’s police. Defense Technology is headquartered in Casper, Wyoming, and is owned by the UK arms giant BAE Systems. BAE Systems also owns the US arms company Armor Holdings and bought Federal Laboratories, another US company that previously provided tear gas to Israel, and other countries, and was the object of protests and lawsuits during the first intifada (See section on Past Deaths from Israeli tear gas).

Tear gas canisters with Defense Technology and Federal Laboratories have also been used by the Yemeni and Egyptian governments against pro-democracy protesters.

The city of Oakland has also used Defense Technology tear gas in its efforts to stop popular protests by Occupy Oakland. Occupy Oakland protester Scott Olsen, a former US marine, was seriously injured when he was struck in the head by an Oakland police projectile, very likely manufactured by Defense Technology.

US government approval of and funding of tear gas shipments: There is clear documentation, and State Department confirmation that the State Department approves sales of tear gas to foreign governments by US companies as “Direct Commercial Sales.”  A US State Department webpage shows many examples in different years of State Department regulated and approved Direct Commercial Sales by US companies of tear gas to countries like Egypt, Israel, and Bahrain. Wikileaks cables also confirm the US State Department approval process for US tear gas sales, as have a number of statements by the State Department. However, in US government records of the US’s “Foreign Military Sales” (FMS), sales of military items by the US government to other governments, use line item descriptions that are too broad to identify whether items like tear gas are being sold by the US government under FMS. Most importantly, because US military aid (“Foreign Military Financing” or FMF) is not reported transparently by the US government, it is not possible for the public to know whether or not the billions of dollars of tax dollars given as military aid to countries like Israel, Egypt, Yemen and Bahrain are paying for US tear gas transferred to those countries through Direct Commercial Sales, or possibly through Foreign Military Sales.

(Click on photos to enlarge)

Tear gas can ister embossed with CTS collected at Bil'in protest on December 31, 2010, the day Jawaher Abu Rahmah was overcome with tear gas. She died the next day.

Extended range tear gas canister fired at protesters in Ni'lin in 2009. CSI extended range canisters like this killed Bassem Abu Rahmah, and seriously wounded Tri stan Anderson and many other Palestinian protesters.

Tear gas canister fired at p rotesters in Bil'in in 2009, with CTS headstamp - Photo by ActiveStills.

Container for CSI tear gas canisters fired at protesters in Ni'lin in 2009. Shipping information is included on the labels.

Photo from Corpo rate Watch report - "Defense Technologies container carried by police in East Jerusalem in March 2009 - Photos courtesy of Israeli activists"'

9 December 2011 | Friends of Freedom and Justice-Bilin

Dozens were wounded by poison gas suffocation in the weekly march organized by the Popular Committee Against the Wall and Settlements in Bil’in, with the participation of a delegation from Belgium, dozens of Palestinians, and international and Israeli peace activists.

Israeli Occupation Forces gas Bil'in - Click here for more images

The march began after Friday prayers from the center of the village heading to the land which was liberated five months ago from Israeli occupiers. Participants raised Palestinian flags and banners painted with the image of the imprisoned leader Marwan Barghouti. They chanted national slogans calling for the departure of the occupation and the demolition of the apartheid wall, and also they called on Palestinians to remain faithful and call for freedom for all Palestinian prisoners.

Upon their arrival to the Abu Lemon area, activists removed some of the barbed wire that cuts through the land. Then Israeli soldiers who were situated behind the concrete wall shot rubber coated steel bullets, stun grenades, tear gas canisters, and sprayed skunk water towards the participants, which caused the injury of dozens from severe asphyxia. Ambulance crews treated the wounded in the field, during while some of the participants threw stones at the soldiers.

28 October 2011 | International Solidarity Movement, West Bank

The proof is all there: photos, videos, witnesses. All of them showed that Ashraf Abu Rahmah, one of the main activists of popular non violent struggle in the village of Bil’in, Palestine, walked peacefully on the road which goes from Bil’in’s recent liberated land to the center of the village, when an Israeli jeep passed besides him. Then it stopped. The soldiers stepped down, took the flag Ashraf carried and arrested him, forcing him to enter in the back of the vehicle under arrest, on October 23rd.

Rani Burnet, who saw everything in his wheelchair – part of his body was paralyzed because of live ammunition shot by an Israeli soldier, 11 years ago – complained.

In spite of lack of evidence to support charges brought against Abu Rahmah, in spite of the witnesses and the video which prove otherwise, Captain Tzvi Frenkel, a military judge at the Ofer Military Court, ordered the indefinite extension of his arrest, until the end of legal procedures against him.

In July 7^th, 2008, Ashraf was blindfolded and bound in Ni’lin when the soldiers shot his foot. The video, seen by millions of people around the world, caused international protests. In April 17^th, 2009, his brother Bassem was shot dead while trying to alert the soldiers for not harming livestock which was passing on the road beyond the wall. A high-velocity tear gas projectile, aimed at him from a distance of 40 meter hit him in the chest, killing him. In January 1^st, 2011, their sister Jawaher also passed away because of the effects of the massive amount of toxic tear gas she had inhaled during a peaceful demonstration of December 31, 2011.

Maria Stephanya is an activist with International Solidarity Movement (name has been changed).

To some soldiers of the Israeli army, staying alone, being quiet, and carrying a flag is a crime. To them, people who act in that way should be arrested. At least we can come to that conclusion when we think about the arrest of Ashraf Abu Rahmah, from Bil’in village, who was arrested on Friday, October 21.

The demonstration had not yet finished when the Israeli soldiers, in four jeeps, went into the village. It was a surprise to everyone, but not an unexpected act, because Israeli incursions into Palestinian villages is something regular. The surprise comes because people were going home, far from the place of the demonstration. Ashraf was arrested just on his way home.

He was charged with throwing stones, but he did not throw anything not at the time he was arrested, nor during demonstration itself. He just stood with his Palestinian flag, talking to friends, looking at the bombs that were thrown, running away from the gas, sometimes coming close to the barbed wire which rolls through Palestinian land.

The ISM volunteers can testify that Ashraf did not throw stones at any moment. But he will be dragged to court tomorrow under that charge. Journalists and friends will take photos with them to prove that he wasn’t throwing stones.

Last Friday’s demonstration was one of the most violent ones in recent times in Bil’in. When the Palestinian, Israeli, and foreigner activists came near the wall, the soldiers began to throw tear gas without pausing. The park which is being built by the villagers on the lands Israel was obligated to give back, lands it had stolen after a decision by the Israeli Supreme Court in 2007, was full of gas and dust for a long time.

Ashraf Abu Rahmah's last peaceful demonstration - For more images click here

People who were on the top of the hill, far from the valley where the confrontation took place, also suffered from the burning smoke. Some cases of asphyxia were registered because of the gas inhalation, and the flames in brush and olive groves decorated the sky. Some of them became great fires, the trees and other plants.

To the economical life of villagers, it means a great loss, because the economic basis of Bil’in is agricultural, like the majority of Palestine’s villages. And to some, Ashraf being taken away on false charges by an occupying power can in some way be labeled as a loss. Yet the trees and plants and landscape that are Palestine, they can be replanted  to grow a new future. That is the nature of Palestine. Ashraf will grow back in Bil’in. In shrub, tree, or voice , peaceful resistance will continue to grow from the root that is Palestine.

Ashraf Abu Rahma, brother of Bassem and Jawaher Abu Rahma who were killed by the Israeli army in Bil’in is falsely accused of stone-throwing and was sent to Ofer Prison.  Ashraf himself was shot in the leg by the army while cuffed and blindfolded in a scandalous incident in 2008.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The weekly demonstration in Bil’in this week started as usual, as some several dozen residents were joined by Israeli and international activists for a march against the Wall. The protesters, led by the new Libyan flag, marched to the new route of the wall, where the soldiers met them with tear-gas. Since the spot was hard to hit, the soldiers retaliated by shooting canisters into the oak grove downwind behind the protesters, setting fire to some rare and ancient oaks. The demonstrators moved upwind, eastward along the wall, where clashed between local youth and the army persisted for about an hour.

When the demonstrators were heading back, the soldiers decided to cross the gate into the village and attacked the unarmed demonstrators. During their incursion, soldiers jumped and arrested Ashraf Abu Rahmah, brother of Bassem and Jawaher, the two unarmed demonstrators killed by the Israeli army in Bil’in. Ashraf himself shot in the foot by soldiers while bound and blindfolded in the neighboring village of Ni’ilin in 2008.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The soldiers promised to release him if the demonstration was dispersed, which was already the case at the time, but did not fulfil their promise. Two army jeeps then drove through the village and eventually left with Ashraf. He is falsely accused of stone-throwing & sent to Ofer Prison on a 96 hours warrant, in complete disregard of his medical condition.

Near the concrete wall which separates Bil’in from Modiin Illit colony, occupied by ultra-Orthodox Jews, there is an olive tree.  It is impossible to know how it survived the construction of the wall and how it continues to resist to the lack of a few cares that the specie demands – a lack caused by the Israeli barbed wire fence that prevents the access of the residents to the point where it is, in the buffer zone.  This survivor came to the attention of the villagers since some time ago. Today they finally managed to breach the fence and to go to the lonely olive tree for harvest.

Fire caused by tear gas canisters

The tear gas grenades fired by Israeli soldiers, who lurked on the other side of the wall, attempted to prevent the harvest, a time of year that mobilizes the entire population of Palestine. One of the canisters fell on dried plants, and the heat of the metal caused a fire which the residents were able to control. Spread by the strong wind the gases reached even the activists more distant from the site – people from the village, from Israel and from around the world –causing suffocation, burning eyes and skin.

October 14th’s demonstration was dedicated to Palestinian political prisoners on hunger strike and to the beginning of the olive harvest.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Israeli occupation forces started Sunday dismantling a section of the Separation Wall near the village of Bil’in in the northwest of Ramallah in accordance to the decision issued by Israeli supreme court about four years ago.

Witnesses told local sources that Israeli soldiers fired tear gases and rubber bullets at hundreds of Palestinian citizens who gathered to celebrate these historical moments-the dismantling of the wall-leaving several suffocation cases.

Residents of Bilin town will regain 1200 dunums out of 2300 seized by Israeli authorities for settlements construction, noting that the total area of Bil’in is 4ooo dunums.

The decision came as a result of the continued popular resistance against the Israeli Wall for more than six years . Villagers used to join weekly rallies toward the Separation Wall, which isolated them from their own lands. Most of them were victims to Israeli gunfire during those peaceful protests .

It’s noteworthy that Israel began building the Separation Wall in the West Bank in June 2002 in an attempt to protect its illegal settlements from military attacks lunched by Palestinian fighters to defend their lands and properities from Israeli ongoing confiscations.