Year: 2011

Another young stone-collector is killed in Gaza

20 January 2011 / International Solidarity Movement, Vera Macht

It had been only eight days since the last innocent was killed. People die here one after another, killed one by one, without consequences, without justice, without an outcry in the media. Innocent civilians trying to make a living amidst the stifling four-year siege. Palestinian civilians, whose lives become only an entry in the statistics: “So that’s what I can do: register it in my notebook. It is registered, and there is an empty line after Shaban’s name. That is for those who they kill tomorrow,” wrote the American writer Max Ajl after the farmer Shaban Karmout was killed. It took eight days, and the place was filled. Amjad ElZaaneen was 17 years when he was killed on Tuesday.

Amjad collected stones that morning, the 18th of January, as he did every morning with his three cousins and his brother, the youngest of whom was eleven. Five boys, children, with a horse and a cart full of stones, about 300m from the border with Israel, and near to the village of Bait Hanoun. They had just loaded their cart full as they saw Israeli tanks and bulldozers coming to invade the land for an unknown reason. A group of resistance fighters approached the area, including fighters from PFLP and the Communist Party, to push them out and prevent them from again uprooting the land. It was a symbolic action: the country has been destroyed hundreds of times before by tanks and bulldozers, and the resistance the fighters can sustain is nothing in comparison to the brutal force of the Israeli army. Amjad and the others ran for their lives and arrived safely home.

But the horse was still there in the field, along with all of the stones they had collected with such difficulty, risking their lives to have some income that day. So they returned, thinking the situation had calmed down and that the tanks and bulldozers had withdrawn from Gaza’s land after flattening it one more time. But when they reached their horse, Israeli soldiers fired a shell at them, and Sharaf Raafat Shada, 19, was hit by a piece of shrapnel in the chest. Amjad, the oldest, tried to pull him away, to lay him on the cart to somehow take him to the hospital, but Sharaf was too heavy for him. So Amjad made the decision to try to reach Bait Hanoun in order to get help. He hadn’t gone far when a shell directly hit him into his belly, leaving a wound so large that he bled to death within minutes.
The young boys broke out in panic and ran off to get to safety. Ambulances and people living nearby arrived to try to rescue the boys, waving white flags, but that didn’t stop the shooting. It was a long time before they managed to reach them.

Ismael Abd Elqader ElZaaneen, 16 years old, is now in hospital in Bait Hanoun with bandages on nearly every part of his body. “We ran in all directions, but they fired about ten artillery shells at us. I got shrapnel deep in my back and smaller pieces all over my body. But I kept running nevertheless, until I got to the main road from Bait Hanoun.” Even the injured Sharaf somehow managed to reach refuge at the main street without being hit by the shelling again. The eleven-year old Abdel Qader Oday Elzaaneeen was slightly injured by shrapnel to his cheek. He was standing in the hospital and crying, visibly in shock, his cousin is dead, and his brothers are injured severely. “I have no idea why the Israelis have done this,” he says quietly. Amjad was too young to die today, by a grenade that has torn his stomach apart.

As his mother heard what happened, she collapsed in the hospital. Even as she regained consciousness, she continued lying down silently, her eyes closed. How can the world be still there if her son is no more.

The uncle of Sharaf, who is standing next to his bed, says: “The Israelis are committing crimes every day here. None of us civilians can enter his fields anymore. The brutality is escalating dramatically in recent times—farmers, shepherds, stone collectors—we are all murdered. They don’t have mercy on anyone, neither the elderly, nor children. People out there must begin to help us, because every day, every week and every month we have to mourn new injuries and deaths. Since 1948, we are suffering and it’s getting worse and worse. We don’t get support from anyone. But we need help. All Palestinians are potential targets. All of us. No one is excluded, no one is safe.”

Each of the relatives, waiting in the hospital, could be the next victim: as a farmer on the field, as a shepherd, or collecting stones. Today Amjad ElZaaneen was the next name on the list of innocent deaths, of senseless killings. On the long list on our laptops, on all of our consciences.

A melancholy Martin Luther King Day in Bil’in

17 January 2010 | The Huffington Post, Majida Abu Rahmah

My family endured another heartbreaking setback last Tuesday in the case of my husband, Abdallah Abu Rahmah. Although Abdallah’s prison sentence ended November 18th, the Israeli Military Court of Appeals ruled that he should be held for three additional months. My husband has been gone for 13 months already, since he was arrested in the middle of the night last December.

Abdallah was convicted of incitement and organizing demonstrations in our West Bank village, Bil’in. The unarmed weekly demonstrations call for the removal of Israel’s illegal wall, built arbitrarily through our village’s farmland. Over half of our land has been annexed by the wall, mostly for illegal settlement construction. The whole of our lands have not been returned, though we keep demonstrating.

Last Tuesday’s ruling was attended by many European representatives, including German and Spanish heads of consulate in East Jerusalem, and diplomatic representatives from France, Sweden, Denmark, Austria, United Kingdom and the European Commission. Abdallah was called a ‘human rights defender’ by the European Union, and his imprisonment has been harshly condemned by EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton.

After the ruling, Philip Luther of Amnesty International called Abdallah a ‘prisoner of conscience’ stating that he remains in jail “solely for the peaceful exercise of his right to freedom of expression and assembly.”

In 2009, President Obama addressed the Middle-Eastern world in Cairo. “America respects the right of all peaceful and law-abiding voices to be heard around the world,” he said. Despite this sentiment, the United States has done very little to help Abdallah or other Palestinian political prisoners. In response to repeated questions about Abdallah posed by journalists interested in his case, a US State Department spokesperson finally made only a mild statement that failed to criticize his imprisonment.

On this day, we celebrate Martin Luther King, Jr., who spoke out against the state violence used against blacks in American and against the people of Vietnam. A leader who recognized, that the United States must stop funding war abroad and speak out against injustices everywhere. Today, we ask Obama to remember the powerful words spoken by King.

As the people of the United States commemorate the non-violent leadership of Dr. Martin Luther King in a struggle for equality and recognition, they must be reminded of the Palestinian sisters, fathers and husbands held as political prisoners by Israel. The courageous individuals who continually pursue justice, such as Abdallah, keep the spirit of Dr. King alive in villages and cities across the West Bank.

Life and death in the buffer zone

16 January 2011 | International Solidarity Movement, Vera Macht

Death comes quickly at a place like this. On sunny winter days, when the smell of the night’s rain is still in the air, as if it would have brought some hope for the raped, barren land of Gaza, overrun hundreds of times by Israeli tanks and bulldozers. The land between the foothills of the village of Bait Hanoun and the Israeli border, guarded by watchtowers, soldiers, snipers, helicopters and drones is a land in which death is a regular guest.

But despite all that, the 65-year-old Shaban Karmout probably had something like hope when he woke up on that winter morning. His house is in the 300 meter wide strip of land in the so-called buffer zone. He built his house 40 years ago, in 1971, when Gaza was already occupied by Israel, and yet he thought to have a future there for himself and his family. Shaban began to plant fruits, his land was full of palms and trees, lemon, orange, clementine and almond trees were growing there. He had a good life.

But in 2003, just at the time of the almond harvest, the Israeli bulldozers came in the middle of the night. It took them three hours to raze the work of 30 years to the ground. Since the Israeli attack in 2009, he could no longer live there, the buffer zone had become too dangerous, where his home was, which has now been declared a closed combat zone by Israel. He had since lived in a small rented concrete house in the middle of the refugee camp near Bait Hanoun, in Jabalia, cramped in a tiny apartment with his large family.

He went back to his land, every morning, and worked there until the evening. He and his family had to make a living from something, after all. And so this morning, in the morning of the 10th January 2011, he woke up with hope, around 4 o’clock, and left for his fields. Full of hope he was because he and his neighbors had recently received a new well, their old one had been destroyed by an Israeli tank incursion. The Italian NGO GVC had built the well, it was financed by the Italian government.

On that day he was visited by an employee of the organization, to see how his situation had improved. She had an interview with him, and he asked her to come into the house, as it would be not safe outside. As she left, he advised her to rather take a short cut, you never know. He told her that he himself still had to go into the garden once more to tie his donkey. The NGO worker had just reached the village of Bait Hanoun, as three shots fell. One hit Shaban in the neck, two others in the upper part of his body. He was dead on the spot.
“It’s like a nightmare,” the Italian said, stunned. “I will never see him again. From here to the morgue in two hours. ”

In the interview that he gave shortly before his death, he told me about the unbearable situation in which he had been living. “It felt as if someone had ripped out my heart,” he described the night in which he lost all his land under the blades of eight bulldozers. And he told how he and the farmers from the neighbor fields had risked planting yet again, you have to make a living from something after all, and had grown wheat. When it was ready to be harvested, it was burned down by the Israeli army. And he told how he and the farmers from the neighboring fields yet again had the courage to plant, the children have to eat something after all, and tried to grow wheat. When the workers went to the field to sow, they were fired upon by Israeli soldiers.

What he now makes his living from, he was asked. “I collect stones and wood, and I grow some crops in my garden,” he replied. Crops, for which he had recently gotten water, thanks to a donation of a well from the Italian government. Shaban therefore probably looked somewhat optimistically into the future, the well could have restored the income from his garden to him. This was his only income since it had become too dangerous for him to enter his fields. “At any time the Israeli bulldozers can come again to destroy my house, you never know what they do next,” he said. Whether he isn’t afraid to be there, the employee of the NGO asked him. “No, I don’t mind the shooting too much,” he replied. “Even if something happens to me, humans can only die once. And only God knows when I am going to die.”

His nephew, Mohammed Karmout, stood a bit apart from the morgue. “The Israelis know my uncle very well,” he says quietly. “He’s there every day, and the whole area is monitored by cameras and drones. They know he lives there.”
And so it is quite doubtful that only God alone knew that Shaban would die at that day, while he was tying his donkey, by three shots in his upper body.

Shaban Karmout is the third civilian being shot dead in the buffer zone in the last month. At Christmas, the Shepherd Salama Abu Hashish, 20 years old, died by a shot in the back while he was tending his sheep. Since the beginning of last year, about a hundred workers and farmers have been shot by Israeli snipers in the buffer zone, 13 of them died.

Protests continue in An Nabi Saleh

14 January 2011 | International Solidarity Movement

On Friday, the weekly demonstration was again held in the village of An Nabi Saleh. The situation in the village is getting worse: from 6 o´clock in the morning soldiers closed the newly installed gate at the checkpoint so that nobody could enter the village. This makes it extremely difficult for international and Israeli activists to join the protest, and for two weeks now the village is considered on Fridays to be a closed military zone, with the Israeli army imposing a curfew on all people in the village.

Israeli soldiers in the village of An Nabi Saleh

So, this Friday, by 11am soldiers were in the village and announced through a megaphone, in Hebrew and English, that the village is closed for all people until the next day. During the midday prayer – when most people were praying in mosque – some soldiers took over a house and even refused to let the people who lived there enter it

At around 12:30 the demonstration started, but within five minutes the Israeli army began to fire large amounts of tear gas towards the protestors, and soon after a riot broke out with the soldiers in the olive fields close to the village. During this one soldier fell, breaking his arm and his leg – compare to this that the previous week two young men suffered from broken legs due to tear gas canisters -and after this the soldiers went crazy. One Israeli activist was injured by a tear gas canister whilst sitting outside drinking tea.

Soldiers were in the middle of the village for the whole day and were shooting everybody who was outside. An empty house was occupied in the centre of the village from which a soldier was firing tear gas and sound bombs towards the people in the big square in An Nabi Salah. A pregnant woman was hospitalized from tear gas inhalation and had to spend the night in the hospital in Ramallah.

The harassment and punishment from the soldiers continued for the whole day, and the shabab of the village continued to clash with the soldiers until sunset. At the end of the day the soldiers fired around 40 teargas canisters into the village for no apparent reason.

The villagers face a big problem with the repeated closure of the village on Fridays and with the curfew: it is becoming increasingly difficult to hold protests and send out a message against the occupation by Israel. Still, the village keeps on fighting.

Collective punishment continues as army raids Nabi Saleh

13 January 2011 | Popular Struggle Coordination Committee

From the hours of 12:00 until 03:00 last night, soldiers raided eighteen houses in the village of Nabi Saleh. Soldiers, in full combat equipment, raided the houses in order to photograph people, mostly young men, and check ID cards. No arrests were made. However, the intentions of the army are clear.

The pattern has been used many times in the past. The army raids a house in the middle of the night. Soldiers take a photograph of a 15 or 16 child and match the photograph with ID information. Then, some days later, during the weekly nonviolent demonstration, soldiers go from house to house with a picture book of people and arrest them. It does not matter if the suspected person is in the middle of the demonstration or inside the house watching television.

Once soldiers apprehend the suspect, they create a story that the person was throwing stones or ‘rioting”. This story is usually based on zero evidence and it does not have to be in order to be used in an Israeli military court. The only thing necessary is for a soldier to say that he saw the person throwing stones. No photographic or video evidence is needed. Not even another witness.

Last night’s raid was the second time this week for Nabi Saleh. Bassam Tamimi, one of the Popular Committee leaders of Nabi Saleh, said that the army has raided almost every house in the village this week. Every male between the ages of 12 and 22 have been photographed by the army and their ID numbers have been taken..

Nabi Saleh, a small village west of Ramallah, has engaged in an unarmed demonstration against the confiscation of their land by the neighboring Jewish settlement of Halamish for the past year There have been countless injuries, arrests and collective punishment against the village over the past year as the army has tried to crush the protest. This Friday afternoon, Nabi Saleh will once again march to its land and demand an end to the Israeli occupation.