Year: 2013 - Page 51 - International Solidarity Movement

Interview with two Palestinian paramedics: “They don’t care if we are medics or not. They target everything”

16th June 2013 | International Solidarity Movement, Ramallah Team | Nabi Saleh , Occupied Palestine

M. and A. are two independent paramedics who regularly attend different protests against Israeli occupation of the West Bank. Israeli forces usually respond to Palestinian popular resistance with extreme violence, including the shooting of tear gas canisters, rubber coated steel bullets and live ammunition. Considering that injuries are very common and that the nearest hospital is usually far from the village where the protests are taking place, the presence of medical personnel in these demonstrations is essential and highly appreciated by protesters.

Last Friday, we had the opportunity to talk to M. and A. during the weekly demonstration in Nabi Saleh, which they regularly attend.

International Solidarity Movement: How long have you been volunteering as paramedics? Why did you choose to volunteer?

M: Since 2009. In the beginning I was working in a project with the Danish Red Cross Youth and then I joined the Red Crescent.

A: I have been volunteering since 2004. I do it because I like to help people and this is the way I want to do that.

ISM: You go to a lot of demonstrations as paramedics – why do you think that these protests are important to the community and to Palestine?

M: Well it is better to do something than to do nothing. Also, when there are medics at demonstrations people have more courage to go to the front because they know that we are there to assist them in case something happens.

A: As you know, we live under occupation so people have to move and do something to end it. We have to protest and attend demonstrations anytime and anywhere.

Protesters marching at last Friday demonstration in Nabi Saleh (Photo by Tamimi Press)

ISM: Nabi Saleh demonstration, for example, receives a lot of press coverage. What lesser known demonstrations do you cover and how are these different?

M: Sometimes there are protests at Ofer during the night and no one knows anything about this. This is one of the unknown protests. Also at Qalandiya, there is no press, there are often no medics, only a few people there. I go sometimes to these clashes. A. is always there.

A: Yes, I’m always there, at Ofer, Qalandiya. But no one knows about it. All the media is in Ni’lin, Bil’in, Nabi Saleh – the villages outside Ramallah. Those other places, nobody know about them, especially the media. However, I think the places where there is no media can be good for shabab (Palestinian youths) as they can do whatever they want for the resistance.

M: But it is also good for the soldiers, they can also do whatever they want and no one will film them.

A: This is the difference. But even if there is media, the Israeli soldiers can do whatever they want, no one can stop them, we know that.

ISM: Do you think that the presence of internationals, such as ISMers, makes any difference at demonstrations in Palestine?

M: Actually, there is difference between internationals and ISMers. Some internationals like to be here because they think they are going to liberate this country but they are actually doing nothing, they are just messing up the situation more and more. But some people, like ISMers, do something at least. They try to help in an organised way. But it depends, there are different internationals, some just come to see what is happening, some come to take photos, there are differences. It depends on which international we are talking about.

A: I will say like him, in short way, there are people who come here just to take a photo, like if this was an adventure. They think there is adventure in the West Bank so they come. And there are people who come to support Palestinian cause and popular resistance.

M: Some people think it is a game.

A: Yes, they think there is adventure – they think “let’s go to see it, to try it”.

ISM: There have been some deaths of paramedics. Do you think medics are deliberately targeted at demonstrations?

M: There is a difference between us, medics who work in the field, and people who work in the ambulances. The Israeli forces target a lot of ambulances in Gaza and also the hospital there. But, yes, sometimes they do target us as well. Sometimes they just shoot directly. If there is no media, then they’re just going to do it. They did it at Ofer and also here at Nabi Saleh several times. One time he [pointing at A] got shot – they shot him directly with a tear gas canister. Directly at him. He ducked just in time, so he didn’t get shot in the head.

A: They tried to kill me!

M: Once they targeted me when I was with just a couple of other protesters before the demonstration – because there was no media, and it was before the protest had started they just shot directly at us. So yes, sometimes they do this, yeah. They don’t care.

A: They think we are Palestinian so we have to die. They don’t care if we are medics or not. They target everything.

M: Also at Qalandiya on Nakba Day, they [Israeli forces] started restricting the ambulances from the PMRC and the Red Crescent – they don’t want them to help the shabab (Palestinian youths) because if there are more ambulances, the shabab will just keep going, because they know someone will carry them and help them if they get shot.

Palestinian medics evacuate a Palestinian youth after he was shot by Israeli soldiers during clashes at Ofer prison (Photo by Activestills)

ISM: You told us about the Israeli army aiming at your head – could you tell us about your injuries?

M: Yes, that day I was walking towards him [A] and then they started shooting directly tear gas at his back so I shouted [A] at him, so he turned and ducked and just got two shots in his legs. They [Israeli soldiers] called the ambulance and told them “Yeah, one of your medics got shot.”

A: Yes, they called the driver and asked him “how is the medic? If you want to take him to hospital, you can go through the checkpoint – you can cross it.” But actually they wanted to arrest me. I didn’t go in the ambulance.

M: A bit later, the ambulance took someone else and the soldiers stopped the ambulance for fifteen minutes – checking the ambulance.

A: They were asking the driver “where is the medic?” – the ambulance driver called me and said “they’re looking for you.” They had been targeting me – he shot me from close distance, maybe 40 metres. He saw it – and then they wanted to arrest me. About my injuries? I don’t know about him [M], but me, I have been injured many times. At Nabi Saleh, Ofer, Qalandiya, Bili’in,

M: They also once shot directly at us just over there [pointing] but I went like this [dodging] – so it hit him!

A: I am like a magnet.

ISM: So this is despite the fact that you are wearing medics’ clothes and backpacks – you are easily identified as medics?

M: Yes, it’s obvious that we are medics, so they shouldn’t be shooting us or targeting us, according to international humanitarian law. But they don’t care about this.

A: Actually, with this uniform they are targeting us, we are clear – “there is a medic, we can shoot him directly now, he is clear for us.”

ISM: So you spoke about the ambulance being stopped at the checkpoint and searched, obstructing medical care. In what ways has the Israeli army obstructed your work?

M: Actually the thing with the ambulance has an explanation – they [the Israeli army] are allowed to check ambulances for fifteen minutes – no longer than that. Because in the second intifada there was a suicide bomber inside an ambulance and they stopped it at Jaba and the Israelis brought all the media and filmed it. So since that they are allowed to stop the ambulances and check them for fifteen minutes. That was part of the agreement.

Once in Nabi Saleh they didn’t allow the ambulance to get in after a girl who got shot down the hill with a tear gas canister. For three hours we kept calling the Red Cross, the Red Crescent but nothing happened. In the end they brought another ambulance from Nablus – so they came from the other direction. And there was a guy who got shot with a rubber coated steel bullet from a short distance, grazing the top of his head and leaving him with a three centimetre cut – but he was fine. They [the ambulance crew] told him, if we pick you up and take you to the hospital then they’re going to arrest you. So he decided to stay in Nabi Saleh. After that, when a guy got shot with a dum dum bullet – that’s the only time that they let the ambulance get out. We had to take the other two guys with a service [shared taxi] to Ramallah hospital.

ISM: How many injuries do you usually treat at a demonstration, and what kind of injuries are they typically?

A: That depends! If the soldiers are having a nice day, maybe they will shoot fifteen, sixteen. But if they’re angry, more than this number. Twenty, twenty-five.

M: They use tear gas and rubber coated steel bullets – the worst is the rubber coated steel bullets, because they go randomly and hit many people. When they aim with live bullets they just shoot one guy, but when it’s rubber coated bullets, it’s spread over many. It also depends if you want to count the tear gas inhalation as an injury.

A: You can see, in Nabi Saleh there are maybe five or six injuries in the protest. Maybe more sometimes. But if you look at Ofer, eighteen, nineteen – even one hundred, sometimes even more.

M: Usually they just use tear gas and rubber coated steel bullets. I think in Nabi Saleh there was just one guy who was shot with live ammunition.

A: In Nabi Saleh, no, not just one. Three. One of them was shot on this mountain in his leg with a live bullet. Another in his hand. And Rushdi, who died last year, was shot in his leg on that mountain.

A medic treating an injured protester from rubber coated steel bullet in Nabi Saleh (Photo by Tamimi Press)

ISM: Were there medics there when Rushdi was killed?

M: No, we were not here, because they shot him on Saturday – it wasn’t a demonstration day. In the beginning they shot him with a rubber coated steel bullet so he couldn’t move, and then they shot him with live – just like that.

A: When he was on the ground. The bullet passed through his leg and stopped in his back. He died after five days.

M: In the beginning they didn’t allow him to be taken to hospital – they tried to arrest him.

A: Yes, they tried to arrest him, they were pulling him. When he was shot there were three metres between him and the soldiers and he was on the ground.

ISM: You were present at the demonstration when Mustafa Tamimi was killed – can you tell us a little bit about that?

A: I don’t know what you want exactly…I saw him when he died. Before he got shot, I was on the mountain – a bulldozer was brought into the village, so all the shabab chased the bulldozer and threw stones. The jeep turned around down there [pointing to the road into the village] and came back. There was Mustafa and someone else close to the jeep, throwing stones – they were like four metres away. Then the soldier in the jeep got an order from his commander that said “shoot him.” So he shot directly into his [Mustafa’s] face.

The canister went inside his face like five centimetres – so when I went to him and looked at him, I told everyone nearby “he has died. We can’t do anything for him.” We carried him and put him in a service and sent him to the soldiers at the checkpoint. The commander said “he is fine, but we’ll take him to the hospital now”. But then they kept him like half an hour at the checkpoint, on the ground – they took him out of the service and put him on the ground – after that they took him with a military ambulance to a village further down and then took him in a helicopter to a hospital in forty-eight, near Tel Aviv.

They took him there and the doctor said “his eye is okay” – but his eye was not okay! I saw it out, beside his face. I brought it back to his face. His brother told me, the doctor says he is okay, he will live, we will fix his face – but he’ll have to stay in the hospital four or five months for treatment. But I told them – he has died. When we carried him from the ground, he was dead. But no one believed me you know, because I’m not a doctor. But the next day they believed me, when the hospital said “he is dead.”

They [the Israeli authorities] did that just to stop people reacting – because if they know he is dead, something bad will happen. I think, if the people had known then they would have continued demonstrating and there would have been more people dead after Mustafa. But the soldiers came back and said, “he is okay, don’t worry”. They gave his family and other people from the village permits to go to the hospital to visit him. They never give these to anyone, but they gave five permits to Nabi Saleh that day. They just wanted the people to calm down that day. The next day, they said he was dead and sent him to Ramallah hospital.

Settler Tour, settler harassment in occupied Khalil

16th June 2013 | International Solidarity Movement, Khalil Team | Hebron, Occupied Palestine

On Saturday, June 15, Israeli settlers and occupation soldiers spread through the old city of Hebron as part of a very provocative weekly tour that disrupts the daily lives of Palestinians living in the area. This week, soldiers also invaded the homes of several Palestinian families and climbed onto the roofs without the families’ consent.

Activist blocks the door trying to prevent soldiers from entering
(Photo by ISM)

As it turns out, the settlers were not just innocent tourists, but bullies as well. As they were walking along Shuhadah Street, they threw a huge quantity of water at the window of a nearby Palestinian home, and it spilled through the window, down the outer wall and all over the steps. The soldiers then accused the Palestinians nearby of throwing the water and questioned the homeowner next door, as if they would throw water into their own houses, and as if soldiers of the illegal occupation had jurisdiction in such a case. The family whose house the water was thrown at has suffered many incidents of settler harassment and military intrusions of late.

Conversely, as the soldiers left one of the houses they’d invaded, the Palestinian owner said “Shabbat shalom” (Hebrew for “Good Sabbath”) to them, demonstrating the Palestinian spirit of resilience, steadfastness and hospitality even in the face of military oppression and occupation.

This weekly “tour” of Hebron disturbs the daily lives of Palestinians in the busy Souq of Hebron, which has seen an extreme decrease in trade since the Israeli occupation forces closed Shuhada street, which was formerly Hebron’s busiest market. Rather than closing the Souq, where there are several illegal Israeli settlements, Palestinian residents think the Israeli forces are trying to make life there as uncomfortable as possible and thus pressure them to move out of the area.

Soldiers crash through a living room with no regard for the family inside (Photo by ISM)

For Urif the price can never be high enough

15th June 2013 | International Solidarity Movement, Nablus Team | Urif, Occupied Palestine

On Tuesday, 11^th June, Israeli forces invaded the village of Urif and arrested nine youths between the ages of eighteen and twenty-seven. This incident is believed by the villagers to be related to the ‘price-tag’ settler attacks that the village suffered on 30^th April.

At around 1am, forty foot soldiers and four jeeps coming from the nearby Yizhar settlement raided Urif and arrested the nine youths. Without giving any information, the soldiers left in the early hours of the morning, leaving the village at roughly 4am.

Israeli soldier pointing at residents of Urif with a M16 rifle charged with rubber coated steel bullets during a settler attack last January (Photo by ISM)

The town’s mayor says the incident is part of an ongoing assault on the villagers who rightfully resist settler attacks. He stated, “nobody complains when Israel violates the law like this anymore, they are too afraid of being arrested themselves”. He also believes there is a clear pattern of targeting all the young men in the area in order to create circumstances where the only people left to defend their land are older and other vulnerable people.

The incident, as mentioned earlier, is directly linked to the confrontations that erupted between Palestinian youths and settlers and Israeli armed forces after settlers from Yizhar settlement attacked the villages of Urif, Burin and Asira. These ‘price-tag’ attacks on Palestinian villagers were followed by the killing of a settler by a Palestinian at the Za’tara checkpoint on April 30^th.

Urif, located southwest of the city of Nablus, is one of several villages in proximity to the extremely hostile settlement of Yizhar and as such subject to constant harassment and violence from settlers and Israeli forces.

Settlers from Yizhar, including the head rabbi, have distributed Islamphobic literature, describing Palestinians as a “Cancer that needs to be cleansed from the land of Israel” and created pamphlets expressing support for Israeli mass murderers, most notably Baruch Goldstein, who carried out the Cave of the Patriarchs massacre.

These settlers are also known for being the ideologists of the ‘price-tag’ practice, where any kind of action taken against settlement expansion in the occupied Palestinian territories by the Israeli government is met with harsh, violent and aggressive attacks on Palestinian communities.

Israel bars children over eight from visiting fathers in prison

15th June 2013 | The Electronic Intifada, Joe Catron | Gaza City, Occupied Palestine

On 20 May, Obeida Shamali visited his father, Ahmad Abd Alraheem Shamali, in Israel’s Nafha prison. It was the first time they had seen each other since Israeli forces captured Ahmad in August 2008.

Palestinian children in Gaza hold a protest outside the International Committee of the Red Cross, demanding the release of their relatives detained by Israel. (Joe Catron)

“I was very happy,” the seven-year-old said. He was sitting under a picture of his father in his family’s house in Gaza City’s al-Shajaiyeh neighborhood. “Before it, I imagined how his face would look when I met him, because I hadn’t seen him for such a long time.”

A fighter with Fatah’s al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, Ahmad has been sentenced to 18 years in prison by an Israeli military court.

Like hundreds of local children, Obeida had been unable to visit his father for years. In June 2007, a year before capturing his father, Israel banned all visits to Palestinian detainees by families from the Gaza Strip. To end a mass hunger strike in its prisons, it eased this restriction in May last year. Israel promised to allow visits by parents and spouses, starting two months later.

Promise broken

But children of detainees remained unable to visit their incarcerated parents for almost another year. Only last month, on 6 May, did Israel allow seven children — all younger than eight years old — to accompany 54 other members of prisoners’ families through the Erez checkpoint, which separates Gaza from present-day Israel. Some 33 children have now joined four prison visits, according to Dibeh Fakhr, a spokeswoman for the International Committee of the Red Cross, which coordinates family visits to detainees with the Israeli authorities.

A recent report on the policy by the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem described the current visitation regime. “Visits are permitted very infrequently, only once a week on Mondays, and then only at one prison facility at a time: Nafha, Ramon and Eshel (Dekel),” according to the group. “As a result, each eligible inmate receives a visit once every three or four months. In contrast, inmates from Israel or from the West Bank who are held on criminal or security grounds may receive visits once every two weeks” (“Israel prohibits Gazan children from visiting imprisoned fathers,” 23 May 2013).

“We were all flying with happiness,” Najah Shamali, Ahmad’s mother and Obeida’s grandmother, said about the news that their entire family would be able to visit Ahmad for the first time. “The whole family celebrated. Everyone obsessed about the visit and could hardly wait for it to come.”

“No justification”

But the visit might have been Obeida’s last. Israel’s new policy still bars Gaza Strip children aged eight or older from visiting their detained parents. And Obeida’s eighth birthday — on 10 July — will almost certainly come before his family’s next visit.

“These policies show that the main aim of the Israeli prison system is to destroy the well-being of prisoners,” Rifat Kassis, the director of Defence for Children International — Palestine Section, said. “There is no justification for imposing these restrictions on Palestinian children from communicating and visiting their fathers in Israeli prisons. Even the security justification Israel uses to justify its policies are not in line with its human rights obligations and cannot stand.”

According to Kassis, Israel’s restrictions on family visits violate not only its responsibilities under international law, but also its own written regulations. “Denying political prisoners, especially those who are from the Gaza Strip, from their visitation rights for prolonged periods of time and imposing restrictions on them when they enjoy this right, including putting limitations and restrictions on who is eligible to visit them, is a form of collective punishment,” he said.

“The right of prisoners to receive visitors, especially near relatives, at regular intervals and as frequently as possible is recognized by the Fourth Geneva Convention.

“These practices are not in conformity with the Israeli Prison Service instructions related to the right of visitation of prisoners. The IPS instructions reads that the prisoners have the right to receive family visits after three months of imprisonment, once every two weeks.”

At the end of April, Israel held 511 Palestinians from the Gaza Strip, according to B’Tselem. Many are detained for lengthy sentences. “Most of their children are [older than] eight years,” said Osama Wahidi, a spokesman for the Hussam Association, a Gaza-based group for current and former detainees. “Very few are younger.”

The Hussam Association campaigns around issues of family visitation, issuing statements and holding rallies at the ICRC. Many of its activities, Wahidi said, aim to draw the attention of international media and human rights organizations.

“Their positions are very bad,” he said. “When [Israeli soldier] Gilad Shalit was detained by the Palestinian resistance here in Gaza, every human rights organization talked about him. At the same time, most of them, and the international media, never mentioned Palestinian detainees. But they demanded that Shalit should be released. He was a soldier; he was holding a weapon; he was targeting Palestinian civilians.”

“We don’t have a magic wand to release all the detainees. That’s why we are trying to find ways to talk about the suffering of detainees, their families, and their children. We don’t have any other way.”

“Above the law”

At a weekly sit-in by detainees’ families and supporters at the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), several detainees’ children shared their experiences of the visitation policy.

“I send him voice messages through a radio station, and written messages through the ICRC,” said Nisma al-Aqraa, the 15-year-old daughter of Mahed Faraj al-Aqraa. She has not seen her father, a fighter for the Popular Resistance Committees’ al-Nasser Salah al-Deen Brigades, since his capture by Israeli forces in July 2007. Categorized as a “permanent sick detainee” in the Ramleh prison hospital, where he is serving three life sentences, both of his legs have been amputated.

“I saw him behind a glass barrier,” Hamze Helles complained. “I couldn’t go inside.” Hamze, who had just turned eight when Israel’s policy shifted on 6 May, was able to visit his father Majed Khalil Helles, a fighter for Fatah’s al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades sentenced to five years, in Nafha prison on 20 May, through an apparent administrative oversight. It was Hamze’s first visit since his father’s capture by Israeli forces in August 2008.

“It doesn’t make any sense to deprive a small child who will never cause any harm to Israel,” Wahidi said. “It’s not logical. But Israel doesn’t care about its reputation. It feels like it is a state above the law, that no one can hold it accountable for its crimes. Nobody in the international community has shown otherwise.”

Joe Catron is a US activist in Gaza, Palestine. He co-edited The Prisoners’ Diaries: Palestinian Voices from the Israeli Gulag, an anthology of accounts by detainees freed in the 2011 prisoner exchange, blogs at joecatron.wordpress.com and can be followed on Twitter @jncatron.

Settler harassment in Tel Rumeida

15th June 2013 | International Solidarity Movement, Saeeda | Hebron, Occupied Palestine

I am an ISM activist living in the occupied city of Hebron. I arrived home late in the evening of Friday, June 14, and outside my door some of the neighborhood kids had built a small fire and were cooking corn. They tried to sell me a piece for a couple of shekels but I was more interested in sleeping at that point of the night. I put on some music and started cleaning up the apartment, but then I heard yelling outside my house. I looked down and saw an armed settler and a Palestinian man arguing loudly. Then I saw two Israeli soldiers escorting the settler from the scene. As I was home alone, I didn’t go down myself but called two other organizations, CPT and EAPPI, to help monitor the situation. Over the next few minutes I heard more yelling and glass breaking and saw more soldiers arriving at the scene. I didn’t see any arrests. I also saw that the corn and the materials the kids built the fire with were scattered all over the place and someone was cleaning them up.

When CPT and EAPPI arrived, we patrolled the area, which was at this point quiet but filled with more soldiers than usual. We were pleased to find that our neighbor Hani and his family were all safe, and then went visit Palestinian human rights group Youth Against Settlements. There one of our activists friends Jawad finally had some answers for us. He took us to the Abu Haqel house, and acted as a translator for us as we interviewed Abu Hussein. This is what he said.

View on the old city of Hebron from Tel Rumeida (Photo by: Activestills)

When the kids were cooking the corn and selling it for about a shekel apiece, an angry settler man came up to them. He cocked his M16 and chased the kids away, shouting that if anyone took a shot at his son, he would kill that person. He then came back and spilled the corn out in the street. Abu Hussein heard this and came down and was very angry about what the settler had done. The settler shouted that Abu Hussein and those kids must leave the area, or he would burn their houses and anyone inside. Abu Hussein said that this is his home – he lives right above my house – and said the settler should leave. Israeli officers arrived and escorted the settler away from the scene and told Abu Hussein to leave, threatening to arrest his children and take them in for investigation. Supposedly a settler kid was harassed earlier in the day. Abu Hussein told them that if they want to know what happened, they should question the soldiers who are in the area all day or use their many security cameras, rather than arresting children. Abu Hussein’s son, who was in the room while we spoke to Abu Hussein, said he hadn’t seen the settler children all day.

Our neighborhood of Tel Rumeida, part of the Israeli-controlled H2 district of occupied Hebron, is the site of frequent settler attacks on Palestinian families. In most cases the Israeli soldiers look on and do nothing to stop the violence. The continued attacks are seen by some Palestinians as part of an overall effort to make life as difficult as possible for Palestinian residents so they will choose to move out of the area. However, to our knowledge none of the Palestinian residents of Tel Rumeida are giving in to Israeli pressure any time soon. This is their home, after all.