Yesterday, 11th October at 7 pm, a group of settlers of the illegal settlement of Tel Rumeida surrounded the entrance of the Azzeh family property and built a wire fence to block the exit. Young settlers fixed the fence in place using plastic cable ties.
Hashem Azzeh and his family were about to leave the house when they found the gate blocking their way and the settlers confronted them saying they couldn’t go out that way any more. A group of Israeli soldiers were present but did not stop the action.
Two international activists arrived on the scene and were surrounded by settlers and physically and verbally attacked by them, one of them had water thrown over his camera and another was kicked. An international journalist also present was hospitalized after a settler threw bleach into her eyes. After more international activists arrived, they managed to remove the fence. Despite multiple appeals to the Israeli soldiers to prevent the settler violence by both the Azzeh family and the international activists, they took no action. Jewish Defense League leader Baruch Marzel, was left free to verbally attack Hashem Azzeh.
The Azzeh family has long been a target of settler intimidation and harassment. Last Thursday during the night settlers trespassed on the Azzeh family property and stole about 400 Kilos of olives from 40 olive trees. Hashem Azzeh had been prevented from starting his olive harvest pending a permit from the Israeli Civil Administration. Four days after his olive trees had been raided, he was suddenly informed by the administration that he should start his harvest immediately, but unfortunately he doesn’t have any olive trees left.
Wael Abu Rida. (Photo by Samidoun: Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network)
The abduction of a Palestinian-Egyptian from the Sinai on the eve of Egypt’s 3 July coup has highlighted the network of collaborators and agents working with Israel in the peninsula.
Wael Abu Rida crossed the Rafah border from Gaza into Egypt on 6 June with his family, including his one-year-old son, Mazen, who suffers from brain atrophy. The trip was nothing unusual, according to Wael’s wife, Amani Abdulrahman Abu Rida, who accompanied him.
She and other members of the Abu Rida family are refugees who were forced to flee Salama, east of the coastal Palestinian city of Jaffa, by advancing Zionist forces in April 1948.
The family spoke to the Electronic Intifada at their home in Khuzaa, an agricultural village outside Khan Younis in the southeastern Gaza Strip, close to the barrier wall erected by Israel.
“This was the fourth time he had gone to Egypt for treatment for his son,” Amani said. “We used to stay there fifteen or twenty days for treatment. Nothing had happened before.”
In retrospect, she said, strange things began to happen as soon as the family crossed the border.
“After we reached the Egyptian side of the crossing, a driver approached and insisted on taking us. It costs 450 Egyptian pounds [$65] to go to Cairo, but he offered to take us for 350. In the car, the driver started talking with Wael, saying he had heard of him.”
Abu Rida has fought for several Palestinian resistance groups. His past affiliations include stints in Fatah’s al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades and Islamic Jihad’s al-Quds Brigades.
In a 19 July indictment this year, Israeli prosecutors alleged that Abu Rida belonged to a Hamas-aligned group called the al-Aqsa Defenders (“Gaza man charged with planning terror attacks,” Ynet, 19 July 2013).
His family denies this, saying he ended his last political ties with the al-Quds Brigades after Israel’s 2008-2009 attacks on the Gaza Strip.
Target for surveillance
Whatever his affiliations, Abu Rida remained a target for aggressive Israeli surveillance.
“Sometimes if he ate something unusual, or took Mazen to the doctor in Gaza, [Israeli forces] would send him a text message telling him they knew,” Amani said. “Other times they would call him to say they would capture him, rather than killing him and making him a martyr.
“He changed his [cellphone’s] SIM card more than twenty times. But they would always call him through the new one. He couldn’t escape their surveillance.”
Because of this attention, she said, Abu Rida left his home during Israeli raids to avoid possible attempts to capture him.
“During wars and incursions, he would leave the house. But the Israelis always said they wanted him as a prisoner, rather than a casualty. I think they wanted him as a source of information.”
As Abu Rida and his family rode towards Cairo on 6 June, he and his driver “struck up a friendship,” Amani said. “The driver took Wael’s phone number and said he would call to invite him to his house in the Sinai. Then he called Wael every day while we were in Cairo.”
On 15 June, Abu Rida finally accepted the driver’s invitation to the Egyptian town of Rafah.
“The same day Wael left, he called to tell me me he was on his way back, saying he was near the al-Salam bridge [over the Suez canal, in Egypt],” Amani said. “After he had disappeared for a day, Wael again called, saying he would come the next day. I think his interrogators may have forced him to say that.
“The next day, and the day after that, he called again, each time saying he would come the following day. I felt something was wrong. I know that he was still in the Sinai, because he was calling from an Egyptian SIM card.”
By 20 June, the expected call came from a telephone number that was no longer recognizably Egyptian.
“When he called from a strange number at 1am, I started screaming at him, saying I wanted to know the truth and asking where he was. He began crying. He told me he had been captured by Bedouin gunmen,” Amani said.
“He had been taken to the driver’s house, where the driver told Wael he would invite some friends he should know. Three armed men came and invited him for a walk in the desert.
“The next day [21 June], the Israelis phoned me to say they had captured Wael and were interrogating him.”
“Kidnapped”
Following a 30-day interrogation period, the Israeli Prison Service allowed Abu Rida a brief visit from his father, Hassan Fiheed Abu Rida, and son, Mazen.
“He told me the details in a very brief way,” Hassan said. “The Israelis surrounded us during the visit, and most of them know Arabic very well. He only told me he had been kidnapped.”
On 30 July, the Palestinian Authority’s ministry of prisoners’ affairs released a statement by Abu Rida.
“After spending a week in Cairo with my son, I received a phone call from a man, the taxi driver I recognized … [from] the Rafah crossing,” he stated. “The man invited me to visit his house in [the] Sinai desert and I accepted.
“I saw several people when I arrived his house. After I drank the juice, I went into deep sleep … there was a hypnotic pill in the sugar.
“When I woke up I … [found] myself in an Israeli investigation center … the driver was an Israeli spy.”
“No respect for sovereignty”
Abu Rida’s legal team at Gaza’s Al-Mezan Center for Human Rights declined to discuss the details of his capture or charges, but spoke broadly of the nature of his abduction.
“This shouldn’t be classified as a detention, but rather a kidnapping,” said Al-Mezan attorney Rami Shaqoura. “The fact that he was captured in Egypt shows that Israel has no respect for the sovereignty of other countries. This can’t even be called an arbitrary detention, since it happened in a territory outside Israeli control.”
He added that “there is a part of his case which Israel refuses to disclose.”
The Abu Rida family noted that Wael, the son of a Palestinian father and an Egyptian mother, held Egyptian citizenship at the time of his abduction.
“Wael had been asked to come to Egypt to receive his Egyptian nationality card,” said his father, Hassan.
“Since he holds Egyptian nationality, can we deal with him as an Egyptian rather than a Palestinian?” Amani asked. “That might make it easier to release him.”
Scant attention
But amid the crisis engulfing Egypt, Wael’s case has received scant attention.
“From the moment we heard of Wael’s kidnapping, we started communicating with the Palestinian embassy in Cairo,” said Hatem al-Khor, Amani’s brother and Wael’s brother-in-law. “What happened in Egypt was an insult to Egyptian sovereignty and the Egyptian people.
“But this incident didn’t get any response from the Egyptian authorities. We also didn’t get any reaction from the Palestinian embassy. The media has focused on the political turmoil in Egypt. No one is paying attention to Wael.”
When Abu Rida was abducted, Amani said, he had all the family’s paperwork with him.
“The Israelis have all of Mazen’s medical reports and our passports. They are refusing to return them. This is our main problem. We need them back to continue Mazen’s treatment.
“After we lost our documents, we couldn’t return to Gaza formally. We were forced to come through the tunnels. Now Mazen’s situation in Egypt is very complicated.
“Because Egyptian records show he is still there, it will be hard for him to return for treatment. He is supposed to pursue his treatment in Israel, but I am not allowed to go with him.”
Like many spouses of Palestinian detainees from the Gaza Strip, Amani faces a ban on travel into Israel, imposed for unspecified security reasons, preventing both prison visits and medical treatment.
Three of the couple’s eight children, two daughters and a son, are also banned from prison visits. Israel currently prohibits children in the Gaza Strip aged ten or older from visiting detained parents.
In the 31 years since completing its 1982 military withdrawal from Egypt’s Sinai peninsula, Israel has maintained a considerable degree of control over the area.
The 1979 Camp David accords imposed strict limitations on Egypt’s deployment of military and police forces in the region only by Israeli approval.
The abduction of Abu Rida was not Israel’s first attempt to capture Palestinians on Egyptian territory, according to many in the Gaza Strip.
“There have been numerous efforts by Israel to kidnap Palestinians in Egypt,” said Osama Wahidi, a spokesman for the Hussam Association, a Gaza-based society of current and former Palestinian detainees. “Most of them failed.”
But Abu Rida’s dual nationality, along with the brazenness of his kidnapping, could make his case particularly controversial at a time of heightened regional tension.
As well as trying to maintain hope that her husband will be released, Amani is attending to her family’s most urgent concerns.
“We want to recover our documents so our son can continue his treatment inside Israel,” she said. “We have a chance to find a cure. I don’t want to lose my son after losing my husband.”
11th October 2013 | International Solidarity Movement, Charlie Andreasson | Gaza, Occupied Palestine
Every Monday here in central Gaza City a demonstration is held, and has been since 1994 or 1995. It was the first time I attended, though I’d probably call it a meeting more than a demonstration. Around 200 people had gathered in a small courtyard belonging to the Red Cross, with stretched canvas as protection from the sun. The simple wooden pews filled quickly. Those that did not fit on them stood along the walls. Several TV crews were in place. There was a short speech and subsequent interviews.
Women in the Monday Red Cross protest. (Photo by Gal·la López)
It is about the Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails. Inmates in most cases, in some ways, resisted the occupation forces, but are also political prisoners. There were banners with portraits. Some of them brought to mind images of Russian icons. There were mothers and wives of prisoners who sat with pictures of these men, many lifers.
Mona Babakh, age 50. Her son Rami Barbakh, age 37, was imprisoned on 10 July 1994 and condemned to one life sentence. (Photo by Gal·la López)
But there was also a pretty hilarious mood, chatting along the benches instead of absorbing the speech, gravity mixing with the joy of reunited friends. It had elements of a social meeting, certainly not what I would call a demonstration.
Mothers and wives of the detainees. (Photo by Gal·la López)
While I sat there, I made a comparison with ‘the Mothers’ in Buenos Aires, with their regular demonstrations against the then-prevailing junta demanding to know what happened to their men and children, but soon realized that the comparison limps precariously. Their goal was clear. These recurrent demonstrations as more in the nature of social events instead, as a safety valve, to show each other that they are not forgotten, that they support their missing relatives, where they feel that they are not alone in their loss. And it is this cohesion that is so familiar to people here, and perhaps that makes it so hard to subdue the proud people more than anything else. They have not forgotten, they refuse to forget and they are waiting for the day when they will all be free.
Detainees’ relatives protest in front of the Red Cross. (Photo by Gal·la López)
7th October 2013 | International Solidarity Movement, Khalil Team | Hebron, Occupied Palestine
The children being detained by Israeli soldiers (photo by ISM).
Update 10th October:Two of the four children are now being held in Ofer Prison in Ramallah. They have been in custody since Sunday (6/10/13) morning. More updates will be published when they are available.
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Yesterday, Sunday the 6th of October, at 7:40 AM in Khalil, four children aged 12 and under (Sami Bent, Munif Darna, Muhammad Mussa Kremeri and one unconfirmed name) were arrested whilst on their way to school after a small gathering of children threw stones at Israeli soldiers.
At approximately 7:20 AM around 100 children were attempting to walk to school when they noticed 3 soldiers standing underneath a building. This was unusual behaviour from the soldiers and some of the youths and children present began to throw stones. Whilst these soldiers drew the attention of the children, 5 other soldiers approached from an alley. These soldiers then charged the crowd of children indiscriminately attempting to detain the nearest child regardless of whether they had thrown stones or not. As a result of this 4 young children were arrested.
International activists and local Palestinian’s challenged the legitimacy of these actions to no avail. After detaining these children behind army vehicles they subsequently released an 8 year old child from their custody. However shortly after this, they arrested Sami, a 12-year-old child.
These 4 children were then placed into the back of 2 army vehicles and driven away. Upon subsequent investigation the international activists who where present learnt they had been taken to a local police station located inside an illegal settlement. The activists then attended this site in an attempt to talk to an officer and notify them the children they had arrested where innocent of the alleged charges. The police officers would not interact with the activists and refused to bring a superior officer. It is currently unknown whether the children remain in custody, however activists groups were able to confirm they were still being held at 4pm yesterday afternoon.
The children of Khalil are regularly harassed by the Israeli forces; a recent incident was filmed where Israeli soldiers fired stun grenades and tear gas canisters towards crowds of school children.
7th of October | International Solidarity Movement, Team Nablus | Deir Sharaf, Occupied Palestine
Some trees were left completely destroyed in Deir Sharaf, Palestine.
On the 5th of October, local farmers discovered that the olives from more than one hundred trees had been stolen, and that another ten trees had been damaged or destroyed. Abu Huwar farm, belonging to Yasser Fuqaha, Sidqi Fukaha, Mustafa Fuqaha and other farmers from the Meri family.
A local factory worker reported that he had seen two buses loaded with settlers pull up and unload next to the farm, in the night between the 3rd and 4th of October. About 150 metres into the field the olives had been swiftly picked from the trees, leaving small amounts on the tops, and the damaged trees bore markings from sharp-edged cutting tools. Yasser Fuqaha reported that the amount stolen from him represented about three quarters of his expected total yield, a devastating blow to his income. This attack precipitated the start of the olive harvesting season, and puts pressure on the local farmers to start harvesting the olives before they have reached optimal ripeness.
Abu Huwar has not had an easy run over the years. The local Palestinian farmers reported that, in 1996, the part of the olive grove that was on the other side of the hilltop (itself the location of an illegal settlement) had been completely uprooted by radical settlers and moved into various places on the other side of the 1967 Israeli border. Also, in the period 2000-2008, the farm and surrounding farmlands had been closed off from Palestinians by the Israeli military.
A national symbol, the olive tree represents the most essential source of income and sustenance for many Palestinians. The destruction of olive trees and theft of its yields is a serious crime and a huge loss for the local farmers.
