Month: October 2011

The colonial parade of Hebron

18 October 2011 | Free Paly 

A crowded Palestinian marketplace, mid-afternoon, the sun is slowly descending, and a cool breeze blows plastic bags past the feet of a jumbled crowd of young men, small boys, women in hijab with their daughters, and old men. They have gathered, this midday mass of Palestinians, with outstretched necks and searching eyes, to stare at the Israeli army trucks that have mysteriously and inexplicably planted themselves in the midst of their crowded marketplace.

Israeli soldiers, nervous-looking young men and women in green army outfits with huge rifles, stand beside the heavily-armoured trucks, scanning the immobile crowd of onlookers with cold eyes stuffed under riot gear helmets.

It is a Monday afternoon outside of Israeli checkpoint 56 in the middle of downtown Hebron, and the air is tense in Babi Zawya square. Though the square, since the Oslo Accords, is officially under solely Palestinian civil and military control, there are  Israeli soldiers on the ground and on the rooftops surrounding the market square, pointing their guns out to the crowds and hassling Palestinians to clear the emptied street. Two long tour buses have parked themselves sideways behind the army trucks to serve as barriers, blocking the Palestinian gaze from the hallowed space the IDF has chosen to occupy. Palestinian policemen form a double barricade between the IDF and the Palestinian crowds, barking at kids on bicycles or old men who try to approach the checkpoint on their way back home. International activists from ISM, the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel, the Temporary International Presence in Hebron, and the Christian Peacemaker Team meander in and out of the crowd, taking pictures of the soldiers.

Finally, the reason for the midday military shutdown of a major artery of Palestinian traffic and commerce begins to slowly trickle out of the checkpoint.  Bit by bit, what looks like a motley crew of secular Jewish tourists and religious Jewish settlers makes its way down the freshly deserted street.

The Colonial Parade – For more images click here

Streaming past recently abandoned shop doors littered with Arabic graffiti and plastered with posters of Palestinian martyrs and political figures, some of the black-hatted Orthodox men walk with downcast eyes and a hurried, nervous gait, like aggravated businessmen, trying uneasily to ignore the row of armed soldiers and the immobile, gawking inhabitants of a city that stand beyond; teenagers in t-shirts and kepahs (head coverings) amble by, leisurely and confident, with smiles on their faces and cameras in their hands, laughing, pointing at and filming the Palestinian crowd.

Bearded men in buttoned-up, tucked-in white shirts stand with their hands on their hips, glaring at the crowd of Palestinians and waving angrily at the soldiers, as if to ask why the Arabs hadn’t been completely expelled from sight; traditionally-dressed mothers walk with smug confidence alongside little children, who are gleefully enjoying an afternoon stroll. In a repetition of history as ironic as it is tragic, this tour treads on occupied territory to visit the grave of Otniel ben Knaz, an ancient Jewish Judge who, in the Biblical Book of Joshua, conquered the Canaanite city of Kiryat Sefer, southwest of Hebron, and drove out the native Canaanites from their land.

This is Hebron in a nutshell, and these are the two peoples, the unhappy neighbors who walk day by day and sleep night by night side by side, a stone’s throw from the other’s doorstep on this single patch of land- the Jewish settlers, who have the path cleared and the carpet laid for them by the Israeli army; and the Palestinian residents of Hebron, who, for the moment, are forced to stand still in the army’s crosshairs and stare, from a distance, after the steps of the occupier. Settlers and Palestinians, occupiers and occupied, gaze at each other from across the street, the former like self-satisfied zoogoers, the latter with unblinking eyes that know right from wrong, that take into account, hold accountable, and count the days until freedom.

 

 

Burin: Zionist soldiers and colonists collaborate against harvesting

by Alistair George

17 October 2011 | International Solidarity Movement, West Bank

The Israeli military conducted arrests, mistreated detainees and continued to prevent villagers from picking olives in certain areas of Burin, near Nablus, yesterday on October 16 2011.  International activists have been prevented by the military from attending olive harvests during the past two days in some areas and settlers harassed and threw stones at villagers picking olives in Burin today.

Two villagers from Burin were detained yesterday whilst picking olives.  Hussain Hamed Najjar, 21, was arrested yesterday morning by the Israeli military and is currently being held in Ariel, an Israeli settlement.  His family claim that he has been accused of throwing a stone at an Israeli settler around three years ago – a charge that Najjar strongly denies.

A group of around 10 settlers from the nearby settlement of Bracha entered the Palestinian land yesterday morning and attempted to harass olive harvesters, under the watch of the Israeli military, by taking photographs of them.   Najjar was reportedly arrested for pushing a settler’s camera away, causing it to fall on the ground.

Najjar’s uncle, Akram Ibrahim Ali Imran, expressed concern for his nephew and insisted that he was innocent of any wrongdoing; “I can’t describe how worried I am, particularly about his family.”  Najjar dropped out of university in order to earn money to support his family after his father was imprisoned by the Palestinian Authority and is financially responsible for 9 people.

Bashir Imran, also 21, was detained by the Israeli military in the same area at the same time for unknown reasons.  He was handcuffed, hooded and left in the sun for at least six hours before being released.  He was only allowed water during this time and was intermittently kicked, punched and slapped by Israeli soldiers.

The arrests occurred after the Israeli military had ordered international activists to leave the area yesterday.  ‘Maggie,’ a volunteer with the Friends of Madama and Burin group, said that the Israeli military had threatened to prevent villagers from harvesting olives in that area unless the international volunteers left.   She also reported that the military allowed around 10 Israeli settlers to remain in the area.  The international group was prevented from being present in the same area again today.

According to Mahmoud, a farmer from Burin, around 20 settlers arrived in the area again today and took pictures of olive farmers, although the Israeli military did instruct them to return to their settlement.

However, a group of around seven settlers from Bracha settlement hid amongst the trees and threw stones at villagers picking olives in an area further down the mountain at around 10am this morning.  No one was injured and no further attacks were reported today.

Alistair George is an activist with International Solidarity Movement (name has been changed).

Day 4: When school becomes Israeli Occupation

16 October 2011 | International Solidarity Movement, West Bank

On the 4th day of demonstrations outside of a checkpoint in Hebron, on October 16 2011, IDF soldiers shot tear gas and projected ‘The Scream’ at a group of young schoolchildren and female teachers, who were attempting to hold a lesson outside of the checkpoint as an act of protest.

Since Tuesday, October 11, the group of children and teachers have been gathering outside of Checkpoint 56 in Hebron, which blocks off the Israeli settlement from the rest of the city, to protest increased security measures at the checkpoint. For the past seven years, teachers at the Qurtuba School have been allowed to bypass the usual metal detectors and cross the checkpoint through a separate gate in order to reach their school, which lies in the treacherous area beyond the checkpoint, in between the aggressive Israeli settlements of Tel Rumeida and Admot Yishai. For no apparent reason, the army announced that it had suspended this allowance on Tuesday, and that it would now force the teachers to pass through the metal detectors and present their bags for inspection every day. At the same time, the army announced that pregnant women and people with heart devices or other medical complications, though they likewise had previously been allowed to bypass the metal detectors, can no longer do so, and must now put their physical well-being at risk on a daily basis.

On Tuesday, the teachers refused to submit to inspection at the checkpoint, and instead held an impromptu silent demonstration on its Palestinian side. At 9 AM their students, between the ages of 6 and 13 and now deprived of education, marched to the checkpoint carrying signs and chanting slogans. Shockingly, nine children were sent to the hospital with injuries, as Israeli soldiers threw them up against stone walls, kicked and hit them with the butts of rifles, and forcibly dragged them through the checkpoint, and as one settler attempted to push them out of the way with her car as she drove by.

The next day, teachers again refused to walk through the metal detectors or submit to inspection, and this time, as an act of protest, students and teachers held lessons outside of the checkpoint. On Thursday, they held lessons outside of the checkpoint again, and were joined by the Director of Education in Hebron, representatives from the Governor’s office, and local and international press. During the peaceful demonstration, students sat on the ground outside of the checkpoint during lessons, and stood up at intervals to chant ‘we will not return, we want our right to education!’ This time, soldiers and border police closed off the checkpoint with barbed wire, and pushed students and teachers out of the area.

On Sunday, teachers, students, Palestinian locals and officials, along with international activists and press, gathered for a peaceful demonstration outside of Checkpoint 56. Mohammed Abutherei, Director of Education in the Hebron Municipality, was optimistic.

“God willing the army will allow the students and teachers to pass normally,” he said, “because for four days now the children cannot learn properly! Why do they do this to our students?”

His optimism was short-lived, however, when a line of about 20 soldiers and border police pushed the schoolchildren back from the checkpoint, and announced over loudspeaker that the crowd would be arrested if it did not disperse within 5 minutes.

“This is their character!” exclaimed Tamer, a Palestinian activist from the group Youth Against Settlements, based in Hebron. “This is their behavior, this is their ethics! Yes, we are terrorists,” he said sarcastically, “because we want to learn, we want an education!”

When the crowd remained, soldiers projected a high-pitched siren noise nicknamed ‘The Scream,’ and fired rounds of tear gas to forcibly scatter the crowd. In the rush to flee, one teacher was arrested, and at least 5 were injured as multiple rounds of tear gas were fired down the main streets of Hebron for 20 minutes in the middle of the morning commute.

Though the teach-ins and demonstrations have garnered much international attention, at the moment there is unfortunately little else that can be done to break the iron barricade of Israeli regulations, which need answer to no higher authority.

“We have contacted the Palestinian DCO [District Coordinator’s Office],” said Abutherei. “we have contacted TIPH [Temporary International Presence in Hebron] and many other organizations for human rights, but nobody can do anything.” In Tamer’s words, “[they] don’t have any tools to use except protesting,  calling demonstrations. ” “What can we do?,” he said.

Both Tamer, who works on the ground with Youth Against Settlements to document and demonstrate against settler and military violence, and Abutherei, who protects the rights of students and teachers through legislation in the Municipality, are suspicious of territorial motivations underlying the Israeli army’s seemingly random decision to force Qurtuba School teachers, who as individuals have peacefully passed through Checkpoint 56 for seven years, to now submit to daily metal detector scans and personal inspections.

Abutherei said, “I’m afraid the settlers want to take the school. Now that the school is closed [for these days] I’m afraid the settlers will attack the building, or try to take it over”. Similarly, Tamer claimed that “this is the first step for evacuating the school. They want to close the school because this is an apartheid state. They want to make the whole area for Jews only.”

The Israeli army may be seeking simply to make life more difficult for the teachers of Qurtuba school, or they may be seeking to escalate a conflict as a pretext for imposing harsh restrictions upon the school, or for forcibly closing it alltogether. Either way, this is only the latest incident in a long legacy of resistance centered around the Qurtuba School.

Says Abutherei, “its very hard to have education in H2 [the Israeli settlement district of Hebron]. The occupation effects [the children’s] social health. The students suffer from fear, worry and sadness. How to get an education, how to learn to read when you are attacked by settlers on the way to school? The same for the teachers…we need students to learn in safety, and not to have to worry about these things.”

 

The global intifada

16 October 2011 | Palestinian Grassroots Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign, Jamal Juma

Palestine is an international symbol of struggle against occupation, racism, and colonialism. On October 15, 2011 the world gathers in what some have called a global intifada, to stand up against imperialism.

The first time an international activist came up to me and sincerely thanked me for a speech in which I had promised that we as Palestinians would never give up our struggle until we have reached liberation and justice, I was surprised. Now I have learned to understand the importance of our struggle for the rest of the world and the responsibility that necessarily follows. As long as Palestine resists, there is hope for more than our own people.

In 2010, The South African Trade Union Congress wrote, “The (Palestinian) struggle has become a global symbol of resistance against apartheid, occupation and colonialism in our age.”

This statement describes exactly my experience in over a decade of innumerable encounters and collaborations with international activists from all over the globe. The Palestinian struggle not only has a global dimension, it has inspired people globally.

Whether it’s British activists ready to go to prison for their solidarity actions with Palestine, a deeply felt speech by an activist of the farmers’ movement in Mozambique recalling the Palestinian resistance, or the fact that a Palestinian will never go without a standing ovation in front of a Cuban audience, theirs are true expressions of global solidarity with Palestine. Other deep gestures of togetherness and common struggle were the tribal ceremony in which I received from one of the elders of the First Nations in Canada a ring to protect me from my enemies, or the residents in Norway’s most northern city forming two competing solidarity groups, or the signs reading “Occupy Wall Street, Not Palestine” and “Tear Down This Wall Street” appearing on the banners of the protesters in the popular movements of the United States who are standing up right now in their streets, demanding justice.

We have all seen the slogan, “We are all Palestinians.” The Palestinian cause and our resistance to Israeli occupation and apartheid are an intrinsic part of the imagination of many people and the global struggle against colonialism, racism, and war. People all over the world stand in solidarity because they know our struggle is also their struggle. This connection is the true global solidarity.

Our symbols of struggle, like the keffiyeh, have become symbols of struggle all across the globe. The word Intifada is understood in almost all languages of the world. The Mexican activists in Oaxaca in 2006 called their uprising an Intifada and many Kashmiris use the term as well.

Our common, borderless struggle is the reason why Stop the Wall calls each year for the International Week against the Apartheid Wall. From 9 to 16 November in Palestine and around the globe–from Australia to Canada, and from Norway to Argentina–people will mobilize for worldwide actions to participate in this global action week. This year, once again, we will be able to feel this spirit of solidarity and joint struggle for our liberation as part of the global struggle for justice, peace and humanity as part of the emerging global Intifada.

There are moral, political, and historical reasons that the Palestinian struggle is an international symbol. Each one of these reasons is in and of itself a victory for the movement to free Palestine and can be credited to Palestinian grassroots activists.

After centuries of suffering caused by colonialism’s system of racial discrimination, slavery, apartheid, ethnic cleansing, and slow genocide, the world’s people now feel a moral obligation to protect human rights. The effects and conditions of imperialism have been rejected as the mechanisms of tyranny and destruction of our species. Today, in modern times, those under occupation in Palestine face human rights violations of the kind experienced by colonial subjects, which gives the Palestinian solidarity movement a moral imperative.

The strength of our people and our steadfastness against Israeli occupation is an inspiration. Israel’s unique combination of colonialism, apartheid, occupation, and drive to permanently displace our people creates a multilayered system of mechanisms of repression. Many around the world admire the fact that the Palestinians haven’t surrendered.

Palestinians have a strong identity and a large diaspora. Those that have been deported, relocated, exiled, or who have migrated from Palestine have sought abode in the rest of the world’s countries as refugees or immigrants. The over six million refugees, despite facing pervasive discrimination, have been able to live and identify themselves proudly as Palestinians. They have not only preserved their culture and identity but also challenged conditions of poverty and isolation, so as to keep the Palestinian struggle in the hearts and minds of the world.

Historically, the Palestinian popular resistance against occupation has not isolated itself but become part of international political alliances, especially those existing before the Cold War ended. Palestinian revolutionaries identified themselves with other struggles around the world, such as the struggle against apartheid in South Africa by sending resources and other support to the resistance movement. Good relationships with progressive countries were built intentionally, while the wider network of solidarity was cultivated consciously.

And finally, Palestine in its confrontation with Israel represents the global progressive movement’s confrontation with imperialism and colonialism far beyond the Middle East. As Palestinians stand up to Israeli crimes, peace, freedom, and justice are strengthened for all.

Today, the moral and political support that Palestine has received historically from the international community is reflected back to us in the inspired actions of the alter-globalization movement. It has served as an inspiration for nearby and global spheres, from Tunis to New York City, as masses of citizens recognize the destruction of imperial globalization.

At the beginning of this year, the people in the Arab world rose up, took to the streets and squares, and made crucial steps on the long road towards a just and free Middle East. The Palestinian Intifada has become Arab; the walls of fear from dictatorship have been torn down. People in Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen, Syria, and beyond have inspired the world with their courage. They have shown that people, determined and united, can make a difference. They themselves have been inspired by the Palestinian Intifadas, the actions of popular struggle and endurance of Palestinian resistance, and the dignity displayed by innumerable Palestinian activists in front of repression, arrests, torture and humiliation. Now, uniting in a day of action on 15 October, the mobilization of people all over the world occupying streets and square has been expression of what has recently been coined the first global Intifada.

However, the global impact of the Palestinian struggle is not only an outcome of our struggle, it is the result of the very character of our oppression. The over six million Palestinian refugees who have been expelled by Israel from their homes and lands and who have been scattered all over the world for more than sixty years are now ambassadors for our cause. Furthermore, the Palestinian struggle is a global issue by creation. It was the international community gathered in the United Nations that decided the fate of our lands–completely ignoring our right to self-determination–and which has, over the decades, documented Israeli violations of our human rights and international law, condemning them regularly but never acting to stop them.

Knowing that we are linked not only by the complicity of the governments and corporations that support and profit from Israeli apartheid, but also by a common struggle with people around the world is important. It is necessary we remind ourselves over and over about this.

The October 15, 2011 day of protest has galvanized people around the globe and in Palestine. Together, as a unified front against racism and imperialism, a spirit of solidarity for liberation of all people, Palestine stands against imperialism on October 15 and every day.

Jamal Juma is the coordinator of the Stop the Wall Campaign.

Honeymoon in Gaza

16 October 2011 | International Solidarity Movement, Gaza

I had just finished off a plate of homemade bread knaffe yesterday with a family in the south of Gaza, when we got the call: farmers in Beit Hanoun, a village in the north of the Gaza Strip, requested that ISM volunteers accompany them to pick olives near the buffer zone.

The buffer zone.  I had heard of this area back in the fall of 2002 when I had come to the West Bank for the ISM’s first olive harvest campaign.  Back then, Israeli two-ton Caterpillar bulldozers were crushing homes, orchards and all other life forms to create this dead zone between Gaza and Egypt.  Israel displaced more than 10% of the population of Rafah, Gaza’s sourthernmost town, at that time, making Palestinian refugees from 1948 refugees yet again.

Today, this unilaterally-imposed 300 meter buffer zone extends all around the sliver of land that is the Gaza strip, to the north, east, and south, an effective kill zone for all who dare enter it. (To the west is the sea, also patrolled by the Israeli navy).

Nonetheless, I was excited about the idea of going out with the farmers. I love picking olives! I love being out on the land, feeling the hard purple and green fruit pop off the branches and onto a tarp spread on dirt below. And besides, we weren’t going inside the buffer zone – those trees were long gone – just in some area nearby.

L, the woman who had baked the deliciousknaffesnack, and J, her husband, had also lost the majority of their farmland to the dead zone. J had just finished telling me about it, and L was quizzing me about my love life.

“Do you have any children?” she asked.

“No,” I said.

“Why not? Children are wonderful. I have five.”

I provide the response that seemed easiest at the moment. “Well I just got married a few months ago.”

“You should be on your honeymoon!” she exclaimed.  “Where is your husband? Your husband should be here!”

Alas, I’m not sure if she really believed I was married, and I promised that next week I would bring photographs of my wedding.

The next day, Saturday, our group head to Beit Hanoun to pick olives.

“Be prepared to get shot,” said Saber, the founder of the Local Initiative of Beit Hanoun, an organization which works with farmers in the buffer zone to resist the Israeli occupation through nonviolence.  “The Israeli army, they don’t distinguish between foreigners or Palestinians,” he added, pointing to the fluorescent yellow vests and megaphone we had brought along.

Then why are we here, I wondered. Surely not for our physical prowess in picking olives. But I understood that he was making sure were fully appraised of the situation. The task may seem mundane, but here there is always a risk.

We drove out to the edge of Beit Hanoun, where the trees suddenly stopped and nothing but barren land lay between us and the border.  It was a sunny day in Gaza, and if you squinted your eyes and looked really carefully, in the distance, army towers could be seen, and beyond them, the town of Sderot in Israel.  Surely, there could be no danger from the Israelis back here, I thought, we are much farther back than the designated 300 meters.

Turns out I was right and I was wrong.

Mohamed AshureShimbari and his family had already begun picking olives by the time we arrived, on a small plot of land next to a cement block house. Every time the Israelis invaded Gaza, they locked the family in a room, and used their house as a base.  And though we were indeed, 800 meters from the border, the area was far from safe.

We began picking olives, and the elderly farmer who owned the land seemed exhausted, not from picking olives, but from living life in Gaza.  J too, though in his mi-50s and younger, had had that look as well. After his family had lost everything in 1948 and fled to Gaza, J had managed to by farmland after working in Israel for over twenty years, as an electrician, a restaurant worker — “everything” — only to see it taken yet again.

In this area of Beit Hanoun where we were picking what was now the barren buffer zone, ten years ago been filled with orchards of lemon, orange, grapefruit and olive trees.  There were also greenhouses of tomato, eggplant and cantaloupe.  Saber pointed all around, explaining what was where and how there was no clean water.  I couldn’t imagine it.  It was like pointing to the Sahara desert and saying, “ imagine these sand dunes are jungle.”

We picked for a couple of hours, occasionally breaking for tea, when someone called out “jeepat.”  Jeeps.  Israeli army jeeps were patrolling the border.  Then came a tank.  A few people stopped picking, to peer at the tank.

“What’s it doing?” I asked.

“Showing they are strong,” one of the young Beit Hanoun volunteers answered.

The army was relatively far away, but apparently, one never knows if the Israeli army will shoot at you. Since Operation Cast lead in 2009, the U.N. estimates that Israeli tank and gunfire killed five Palestinian civilians, three of whom were children and injured twenty in areas near the buffer zone.

After we stripped the trees of their olives, we dumped them into large, 40 kilo bags and then head back into town.  The day passed without incident, as it should have, but it was no honeymoon.