Month: September 2011

Observations from Hebron daily life

26 September 2011 | International Solidarity Movement, West Bank

A child of about eight years old sneaks past a multitude of soldiers at as they hold back Al Rumeida residents from climbing the hill to their homes. He runs into the corner store, comes out and joyously waves his forbidden purchases at them–a bag of candy—and continues running home.  A settler funeral was going on in a Jewish cemetery half way up the hill.  Although the procession only took about two hours, Checkpoint 56 at the bottom of the hill was closed for five hours.

Palestinian women on the bus chat happily and endure the wait it takes to fill the bus from Bethlehem to Hebron. A young Bedoin woman with a small child does not miss the opportunity to try to make a sale. She shows the lone tourist on the bus some exquisitely woven money bags and pillow shams. Everyone hustles: it is called survival. Whether it is olive soap, scarfs, kafiyas, watches, Kleenex packages, or bread, Hebron Palestinians hauk their wares daily.

A merchant selling fruit juice noisily liquefies carrot juice five meters from where the supposed Settler Hebron Tour passes.  According to the sanctimonious settler, something happened to someone who lived or died some 100 or 2,000, or 3,000 years ago. The merchant grinds on.

A gaggle of children, some as young as four years old,  run and bang on metal doorways yelling in unison as they hurry through the old city alleys together with journalists and international observers, only to be stopped at intervals by many soldiers who protect the Saturday Jewish Settler Hebron Tour.  A small child pushes his metal cart through the cobblestones. The din is deafening.  Local Palestinian merchants sitting in their stalls endure it for the sake of resistance. This has been going on for years. They wait.  The Zionist settlers look terrified even though one of the strongest military in the world protect their parade.

They have been taught from a very young age that the Palestinians want to kill them or push them into the sea. It is a tragic drama where the aggressors play the role of victims although in reality, all are victims, either of deception or of cruelty.

A woman merchant is accosted by a gang of settlers during the tour.  One  tells her that her Palestinian map is wrong: that it should be all Israel. She stands up to them, albeit afraid, and declares it is indeed Palestine and if they don’t like it they can go elsewhere. “We have been here for 64 years, and we will be here another 64 years,” she said, defiantly.   And they will.

Extremist settler attacks shepherd and brutally abuses flock

28 September 2011  | International Solidarity Movement, West Bank

On the 17th of September Israeli colonists attacked a shepherd near Sha’ab el-Butom, resulting in several sheep injured and the arrest of the young shepherd.

Sha’ab el-Butom is a small Bedouin village in South Hebron Hills not even mentioned in most maps, a village that faces daily harassment from the surrounding illegal settlements and outposts composed by the most ideological settlers in the West Bank. On Saturday September 17th of September, Nahel Ahmed Mousa Aburem, a 23 year old shepherd, went as usual down the road with his sheep when one settler accompanied by a soldier from the illegal Abigail settlement approached him, shouting for him to come towards them.

“Why are you here?” they asked, and Ahmed simply answered “This is my land.”

“No! It’s a closed military area!”

Aburem then tried to explain to them that he had permission from the military and the police to stay there and go around with his sheep. It was not a good answer for the settler. With ideology based on extreme interpretation of Judaic law, his reaction was to start beating Ahmad’s sheep with stones and sticks.

3 sheep lost their eyes, one died, another one was pregnant but lost her kid, and four others tried desperately to escape. The soldier was just 10 metres away, and Ahmed asked him help to stop the settler but he didn’t react so he tried to reach the sheep and the settler threw stones at him too and tried to grab his head while Ahmed tried defend himself pushed the settler away.

This was enough to make an Israeli army jeep arrive and bring Aburem to a military base near Susiya and then to the police station in Kiryat Arba where they told him that he wanted to shoot the settler. He had to spend 2 nights in the police station in Kiryat Arba, 2 nights in the detention centre in Jerusalem, referred to as The Russian Compound, 2 other nights in Ramla prison, and then finally one day in Ofer for the supposed court hearing where they actually just gave him conditions and a bill of 5000 shekels needed to be paid for his release. His family paid, while he must meet the condition of signing his name every Tuesday in the Kiryat Arba police station.

Aburem said that he is supposed to have a court hearing by the end of October, but speculated that precarious and manipulative court procedures would play with time and be at the whim of the court.

“In any case” he said “we want to make actions in cooperation with Israeli and International activists in order to resist and keep going back to our land.”

International activists in Gaza defiant despite repeated attacks

26 September 2011 | Islam Online, Hama Waqum

The Civil Peace Service (CPS) Gaza human rights observation boat has returned to the waters off the Gazan coast after being grounded for two months due to Israeli naval attacks.

CPS Gaza aims to monitor human rights violations committed off the coast of Gaza, in which Gazan fishermen are invariably the victims.  However in July, the CPS boat, Oliva, was attacked three times, with the final attack forcing the boat to retire to shore after the engine was rammed beyond repair. On September 25th, the boat made her first trip at sea, in which she was not attacked by the Israeli Navy.

Continuation of attacks

On 13 July, the Oliva crew and captain were encircled by one Israeli Navy warship, which fired water cannons continuously for fifteen minutes, aiming for the faces of the crew, as well as their cameras and radio equipments. The engine broke in the attack and the boat struggled to escape as the attack continued.

The following day, the boat was attacked by two Israeli Navy vessels, the force of the water cracking a section of the boat’s floor. The crew was forced to seek refuge on a fishing boat in order to make it back to shore. Once aboard the fishing trawler, one crew member reported that one Israeli naval officer instructed another to sink the boat with the water.

In this attack, the Navy officers also intimidated the fishermen with whom the CPS crew had sought refuge, demanding, ‘Where are your fish? Where are your fish?’ After the crew attempted to deter further attacks on the fishing boat by informing the Israeli Navy that they were international observers, a Navy officer responded by saying, ‘Leave and if we see you here again we will shoot you and the children [on board the fishing vessel] and the Europeans or Americans,’ according to one of the CPS crew members.

We won’t be intimidated

On July 20, Oliva suffered the attack that would ground her for two months, in front of a journalist from the Guardian Jerusalem office. For 20 minutes the boat was attacked with water by two Israeli Navy boats, and then rammed by one of the Israeli warships, which had a maniacal clown poster on its side.  The engine was wrecked in the attack and Oliva had, until now, been stranded ashore.

Vera Macht, a German member of the CPS Gaza project explained that the project will continue to run and document human rights violations, “We won’t be intimidated,” she explained, “Olivia will sail out again to document abuses until international law is respected by Israel in the sea of Gaza. Fishermen are harassed, attacked, arrested and even killed by Israeli armed forces, even within the imposed 3 nautical mile limit.”

On September 25, 2011, Oliva set sail again, despite warnings that the human rights observers would be shot if the project continued. The boat cut its trip short because of weather conditions; the crew experienced reduced intimidation by the Israeli Navy and were not directly attacked.

Every Israeli attack on the Oliva has occurred within the Israeli-imposed 3-mile nautical limit, which forbids vessels from travelling further out to sea. This limitation overwhelmingly affects fishermen in catching adequate fish as the three miles have been fished extensively in the four years since the limit was imposed. According to the Oslo Accords agreements, a fishing limit of 20 miles was agreed, but fishermen have been restricted to three miles since Hamas took control of the costal enclave in 2006. This prevents Gaza’s fishing communities from accessing 85% of the Oslo-agreed fishing waters.

Joe Catron, a US citizen, was aboard the CPS Gaza boat during two of the warship attacks, “The bravery of Palestinian fishermen off the Gaza coast is like nothing I’ve ever seen. These courageous men, who continue struggling to provide for themselves, their families, and their country, despite the raw military aggression they face on a daily basis, inspired all of us. I’m honored to have played a small, fleeting role in supporting their fight.”

Israeli military conceals information about possible nerve agent used by illegal, violent settlers

26 September 2011 | International Solidarity Movement, West Bank

On Sunday, September 25th, Riyadh Abu Armile was assaulted by settlers and the army in Hebron,causing for an open investigation by human rights groups as evidence suggests that settlers may have used an unidentified nerve agent during the assault.

On the night of the attack hundreds of settlers from around  Al Khalil (Hebron) arrived in the H2 area, in the centre of the city for the funeral of Asher Palmer and his son from Kiryat Arba who died in a car crash on Friday. Despite the fact that an investigation into the deaths is yet to reach a conclusion about the cause of the crash, soldiers on the scene echoed the proclamations of Israeli media sources, which labeled the incident as a “terrorist attack” because of speculation that the crash was caused by Palestinians throwing stones. A dangerously volatile situation was then created by the decision to hold the funeral in a Palestinian area of Hebron rather than the Kiryat Arba settlement where the deceased lived.

Armile was walking near the Ibrahimi Mosque with his uncle and 7 year old son at about 8pm on Sunday, when  he was met by around 30 settlers who began throwing rocks at the family. More settlers joined the violent assault, and within a few minutes he estimated there were as many as 200 settlers surrounding him. After the family attempted to take refuge in a nearby house, settlers broke the windows and continued the attack.

Armile told us that the attackers used some kind of chemical weapon that emitted a gas, causing symptoms very similar to those of a nerve agent.

Armile said, “‘I couldn’t see and went into convulsions, saliva was coming out of my mouth and afterwards I couldn’t move my muscles for one hour.”

When soldiers arrived at the scene they beat Armile as he tried to protect himself from the settlers. After the attack they detained him for over an hour and refused access for the ambulance that came to treat him. At 9:30PM he had to be carried to the ambulance, which took him immediately to the hospital in Hebron.

The Israeli army confiscated the gas canister used by the settlers and refused to give the doctors information about the chemical agent used. He had to stay overnight in a hospital and required 13 injections. Doctors were unsure how to treat him due to the unknown nature of the chemical and warned him that he may suffer long-term health problems. During the attack his son sustained head injuries from rocks thrown by the settlers, and Armile’s uncle’s hand was also broken.

Red Cross and other human rights organizations are currently investigating the incident as they suspect that the chemical may be some form of nerve gas, which is illegal under international law. The attack comes just weeks after leaked documents from the Israeli military revealed plans to train and arm settlers against Palestinians.

The real cost of Al Rumeida roadblock

25 September 2011 | International Solidarity Movement, West Bank

For the last three days Ahmed Sau and Khalil have been loading bushell loads of  white building material on  carts pulled by a horse and a donkey as they trek up the steep hill going to Jabel Al Rahmeh.  At the other end is a truck  filled almost to the top.  Several men await Ahmed and unload the wooden cart and the trek begins anew.

As the horses struggle up the last part of the hill, Ahmed and some children help to push the heavy load to its destination. It is in these ways that the Israeli occupation affects the common people. Slowly, it attempts to strangle the economy.  A simple truck ride down the hill is turned into a laborious undertaking by several men, children and beasts of burden.

“It has been this way for at least 10 years,” commented an observer.

When asked why they were doing it this way, Ahmed who spoke no English, motioned to the yellow steel metal preventing the truck to go through.  Hurrying as evening was fast approaching, he got back on the cart and rode down the hill again.