Author: ISM Media Group

Palestine Chronicle: A Son’s Spleen and Mother’s Lungs

By: Eva Bartlett

Mohammed, a youth of 16 from Azzoun village near the West Bank city of Qalqilya, has returned from his week-long stay in the hospital. He can move around more than one would expect for someone who was just 8 days ago shot by the Israeli army during one of its regular invasions into Azzoun. The bullet entered his left side just two inches from his heart, passed through his lung and, penetrating his diaphragm, passed on just one inch from his spinal cord into his spleen where it lodged. The hospital report records all of this, adding that there resulted a dangerous amount of internal bleeding and jaundice. His spleen was surgically removed and he was attached to machine which pumped out blood from the internal bleeding.

At the time of his injury, he was outside the home of his grandmother, in the streets of the village’s old city quarter. It was after 3 pm, young boys and teens had just gotten out of school for the day, the streets filled with their raucous talk and play. Mohammed walked for about 100 metres then fell unconscious. The bullet which entered his chest had gone unnoticed at first, but its effects were thereafter very noticeable.

There are claims that boys were throwing stones from the area where Mohammed was targeted. He, reporting that he was unaware of their presence in town and on rooftops, had not been involved, was dragged into the fray only in the sense that he paid the price for the accusations. Never mind that it is illegal under international and Israeli law to shoot live ammunition at boys armed with stones. Even the permitted rubber bullets, metal balls coated with a thin sheath of rubber, are already a breach of comprehension: upon impact, the metal inside often comes free of its candy-wrapper shell, inflicting serious enough damage. An M-16 bullet –pointed and deadly –has no place in civilian areas against youths, certainly not against bystanders.

After his spleen was surgically removed, Mohammed spent until December 4th in the Qalqilya hospital. Back home, he now has regular visits from the doctor –for check-ups and to change the dressing of his bullet hole wound, which is still open and needing to heal cleanly. He will not attend school for at least a month, minimum. A relative confided that Mohammed now knows great psychological stress, particularly when he hears Israeli army jeeps and soldiers, a regular presence in Azzoun. Further, he has no spleen. The function of the spleen is essentially to filter blood of bacteria and thereby keep the immune system strong. Without the spleen, one becomes vastly more susceptible to infection.

In Mohammed’s case, with his serious internal injuries, the absence of his spleen is significant. While the Palestinian Authority (PA) paid for his hospital bills, as it does in instances of injury by the Israeli army, Mohammed’s family will have to cover out of hospital expenses, including medicine, physiotherapy, and doctor’s visits.

Mohammed’s injury isn’t the only tragedy in the family. For the last 7 months, his mother, Umm Shadi, has been attached 24 hours a day to life-supporting oxygen tanks, without which she would die. Her lung disease means that most of the family’s paltry income goes towards acquiring oxygen tanks and medication. It also leaves her room-bound, able to go only on short jaunts to the bathroom or around the house.

For the first 7 months, the family had to scrape together money to cover the cost of the oxygen tanks –averaging 300 shekels per month –as well as the electricity costs for a motorized oxygen filter –averaging 200 shekels per month. Bringing the tanks from Qalqilya can range from 40-80 shekels per trip, depending on whether on the presence and number of roadblocks and ‘flying checkpoints’.*

The PA has, in the 8th month, taken on the expenses of the oxygen tanks, allocating Umm Shadi 2 tanks per week. Additional tanks must still be covered by the family, at about 60 shekels per tank, plus the tanks’ transportation fees. Again, the amount of oxygen, and its availability, is dependent on the actions of the Israeli army: a curfew, ongoing roadblocks, tampering with the main electrical transmitter (as with the November 27 invasion when the main transmitter suddenly gave out after the military had been stationed around it for a long period).

The power at Mohammed’s home went out during one visit. What is a minor inconvenience for many could be fatal for Mohammed’s mother. One oxygen tank –normally working in conjunction with the electrically-motored filter –depletes out after 24 hours without electricity, a third of the time as with the motored filter. If this should happen on a day when the two reserve tanks have been depleted and a curfew is on, a very imaginable scenario, she would soon after die.

Every three months, the family receives about 1000 shekels from PA assistance. This doesn’t meet the already great needs of the family of four sons and seven daughters. One son, the second oldest, works in a factory earning 5 shekels an hour: roughly $1.25. The oldest son, Shadi, works long hours of construction at a meager salary, earning just 50 shekels per day. Usually, he cannot work for more than a month before he must rest.

In 2000, while biking to nearby Kafr Thulth village, Shadi was knocked from his bike by an Israeli military jeep which approached from behind and continued without stopping. The fall caused serious head injuries, resulting in 7 operations during his 5 week stay in hospital. Again the result of an injury by Israeli forces, the PA paid for his medical care in hospital. For the next 4 years, Shadi required medication to combat psychological problems which resulted from the incident and surgeries.

With an elderly father whose eyes are so poor that he also cannot provide an income, a critically ill mother, Mohammed’s medical expenses, Shadi’s ability to work only part time, and the generally appalling state of joblessness, this family is struggling to make ends meet, literally struggling for their lives.

It doesn’t help that their village, Azzoun, is regularly invaded and, for the last two months, has had full lockdown curfews imposed on average at least once a week, sometimes more. It doesn’t help that Azzoun’s economy is also on curfew, the roadblocks which regularly cut off access on all exiting roads also thereby cutting off means to support a business and earn a living.

Mohammed now anxiously awaits the doctor’s verdict: how he will survive without his spleen, how many doctors’ visits will be necessary, how much all of this is going to cost the family, when he can return to school to continue his education. He also waits, with dread, for the next Israeli army invasion. Based on the last two months, that should not be a long wait.

*‘Flying checkpoints’ are so-named as they appear suddenly on stretches of road, one or two military vehicles blocking the road and imposing a new, arbitrary roadblock. They are but one of the many means of interrupting and/or preventing Palestinians’ passage in the occupied West Bank.

-The author, writing under a pseudonym, has lived in various areas of the West Bank for the past seven months, volunteering as a human rights worker and witnessing many aspects of Palestinian life under Israeli occupation. Her blogs are at opt2007.wordpress.com / and personalpalestine.wordpress.com.

Al-Arabiya: Israel decides “not to build new settlements”

Israel has given new assurances to the United States on Jewish settlement activity in the occupied West Bank ahead of a first visit to the region by President George W. Bush next month, army radio reported on Friday.

Orders have been given to halt construction activity in the settlements of Maale Adumim, east of Jerusalem, and the Ariel bloc in the northern West Bank, the radio said citing housing ministry officials.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert also gave an undertaking that Israel would invite no new tenders for housing units in settlements in annexed Arab east Jerusalem, the radio said.

The prime minister’s spokesman Mark Regev said Israel had decided to take a series of steps to fulfill its obligations under the roadmap, an internationally drafted peace blueprint that has made next to no progress since its launch in 2003.

It had decided “not to build new settlements,” “not to enlarge the geographic extent of existing settlements,” “not to confiscate private Palestinian land” and “to halt incentives” to Jewish settlers to move to the West Bank.

Olmert however refused to freeze an appeal for bids that had already been issued for new construction in the east Jerusalem settlement of Har Homa, known to the Palestinians as Jebel Abu Ghneim.

That invitation for tenders, which came after the relaunch of peace talks at a conference in the United States in November, infuriated the Palestinians.

But Olmert insisted he would not go back on it because Israel regards east Jerusalem as an integral part of its capital, even though the annexation has never been recognized by the international community.

Since Israel captured the West Bank in the 1967 Middle East war, some 470,000 settlers have moved to the territory, 200,000 of them to annexed east Jerusalem.

Palestinian anger over the invitation of new tenders for construction even after November’s U.S. peace conference overshadowed the first two round of talks between the two sides’ negotiating teams.

After talks between Olmert and Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas on Thursday both sides sought to draw a line under the row.

“Both parties agreed not to take any steps that may preempt or prejudice the issues reserved for the permanent status negotiations,” including settlements, senior Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat told reporters.

A senior Israeli official told journalists that “the issues that have stalled the talks have been defused.

“Both sides have agreed that neither party would take steps that would compromise the ability to reach a final agreement and will not prejudice the outcome of the talks,” the official said.

*UPDATED* (With Original Video of Attack) Two Badly Injured as Bil’in Residents Attempt to Thwart Settler Land Grab

On January 1st, Mohammed Khatib and Abdullah Abu Rahme of the Bil’in popular committee were badly beaten by settlers while non-violently attempting to stop the positioning of a settlement outpost on village land. Abdullah was released from Sheik Zaid hospital the same night, Mohammed returned home later the next day. Cameraman Emad Bornat was beaten also but escaped with footage of the attack after settlers destroyed his camera.

Settlers arrived around 7pm and placed a caravan on the land of Bil’in, creating an outpost to the illegal settlement of Modi’in Illit. The aim of the outpost seems to be to stop the army moving the Annexation Wall further East to give Bil’in some of its land back, as per the Supreme Court decision awarded in September. The settlers are calling the caravan a synagogue in an attempt to make it harder to remove by the Israeli military, a common practice in the West Bank.

The settlers were attempting to place a second caravan when Mohammed and Abdullah, together with Emad, quickly arrived on the scene and sat down under the caravan, preventing the settlers from securing the structure. Many other Bil’in residents arrived soon afterwards but were prevented from accessing the site by soldiers at the gate through the apartheid wall, which runs directly through Bil’ins land.

Armed settlers approached the group and were overheard saying “lets break his head” in Hebrew by an Israeli talking on the phone to Mohammed before the attack. The settlers then proceeded to attack the group, breaking Emad’s camera, who then left to protect the film inside. Over an hour after they were called, the police arrived and broke up the assault, but did not force the settlers to remove the structures, which were secured down after Mohammed and Abdullah were badly beaten. An Israeli activist arriving on the scene called for an Israeli ambulance, but the ambulance was not allowed to take them to an Israeli hospital, instead they had to wait at the Nahalin checkpoint for a Palestinian ambulance to arrive and finally take them to hospital.

According to official sources, two Palestinians and two settlers were arrested. In fact, no one was arrested, but the police offered to ‘look into doing so’ if the victims wish to press charges. Police also said the structures would be removed in the morning. The caravans were taken down early Thursday morning.

Mohammed Khatib and Abdullah Abu Rahme, members of Bil’in’s Popular Committee Against the Wall and Settlements, are among the leaders of Bil’in’s three year nonviolent struggle to save Bil’in’s land from Israel’s Wall and settlement expansion. Bil’in’s nonviolent struggle has gained support from Israeli and international human rights activists, received significant Israeli, Arab and international media coverage, and has spread to neighboring Palestinian communities.

Action Alert! Mass demonstration against the apartheid highway 443 and the apartheid road system in the occupied territories

This Friday, January 4th, Human Rights activists will meet at a mass demonstration against the system of Israeli Apartheid being imposed upon the Palestinian people. They will protest the network of apartheid roads which dissect the West Bank and which Palestinians themselves are blocked from using.

Tel Aviv meeting point : Arlozorov train station, El Al Terminal at 11:00 To sign up please contact Ilan Shalif. Best by e-mail to ilan@shalif.com with your mobile phone number in it (essential) or phone 03-6482749 or 052-4655520 (Not by SMS please)

Jerusalem Meeting point: Liberty Bell Park parking lot at 10:30

To sign up please contact Yoav Lehan 054-5280992

* Please dress in a way that will respect local residents *

Road 443 is one of the main throughways of the West Bank . Its overall length is 25.5 KM, 14 out of which run through the heart of the West Bank, with two additional ones in the No-Man’s Land. From the year 2000 on Israel started restricting Palestinian movement on the road, with the restrictions turning into complete prohibition of Palestinian movement in 2002, practically making the road into a Jewish-only one.

443 is one of the most prominent and upsetting apartheid roads in the West Bank. Approximately 40,000 Israeli citizens travel on it on a daily basis. The majority of them are not settlers but merely commuters traveling from Tel Aviv and Modi’in to Jerusalem on a better, shorter road, with less traffic. It is safe to assume that the vast majority of them are unaware to the fact that they are traveling through the Occupied Territories, and in a road Palestinians are allowed on. In many parts the road is surrounded by a wall, decorated by picturesque murals, blocking the Palestinian villages victimized by the road even from sight.

Road 443 is, needless to say, not the only apartheid road in the West Bank. 312 KM of West Bank roads are nowadays forbidden for Palestinian use. The system of apartheid roads (which also include an inferior, separate road system for Palestinian use) – together with the checkpoints and roadblocks, the wall, the siege and curfews, separate Palestinians from their lands, their workplaces, universities and each other – creating an intolerable reality lacking any real freedom of movement. The system of separation divides the West Bank into fragmented enclaves, practically destroying Palestinian economy, sovereignty and any option for a normal life.

The Palestinian Popular mobilization against apartheid,
The national committees against the wall and settlements,
The councils of the villages Beit Sira, Safa, Beit Likya, Kharbata AlMasbach, Beit Ur El Tachta and Beit Ur el Foka,
The Coalition against the Wall & the Occupation:
Gush Shalom,
Coalition of Women for just peace,
Ta’ayush,
Alternative Information Center,
Yesh Gvul,
ICAHD,
Students Coalition – Tel-Aviv University,
Anarchists against walls.

Ha’aretz: Twilight Zone / Deer hunters

By Gideon Levy

Dec. 30

After a night of rain, the sun broke through the clouds. Two brothers and their brother-in-law decided to go for a hike in the wild, through the spectacular valley of olive trees, west of Ramallah in the West Bank. Around midday they suddenly noticed a herd of deer descending pell-mell into the valley. They stood and watched, certain that in the wake of the frantically fleeing animals, other people would appear. And, in fact, a few minutes later they spotted a group of soldiers slowly making their way into the valley.

The three young Palestinians stood on the ridge of the hills that overlook the valley, a few hundred meters from the soldiers as the crow flies. Suddenly, according to the testimony of one of them, without any prior warning, the soldiers fired bursts of bullets at them. Firas Kaskas, 32, an unemployed gardener from the village of Batir, near Bethlehem, who had come to visit his brother-in-law in his new apartment, fell to the ground. He died of his wounds the next day. He left a young wife and three daughters, of whom the eldest is four.

This week the sun poured down again on the beautiful valley. We went there with Jamil Matur, the victim’s brother-in-law, who was with him on that brilliantly bright, but grimly dark day. We stood exactly where the three had been when Firas was shot and killed. Here, this is where Matur was standing; Kaskas was here, and his brother, Baha, was standing there.

A shepherd gathered his flock in the valley below, making strange groaning noises that carried a long way. In contrast, the tinkling of the sheeps’ bells was sharp and pleasant to the ears. A great calm descended on the valley, on whose stepped terraces are a number of ancient ruins. On the ridge across the way are the houses of the Mustaqbal neighborhood. The way to the valley also cuts through A-Tira, a prestigious neighborhood on the western slopes of Ramallah, a city which is today experiencing a building boom and economic prosperity. A few weeks ago, the members of the Kaskas family – Firas, his wife Majida, and their three little girls – visited Majida’s brother in A-Tira. He had just moved in, and the family went to see the new place and spend a peaceful weekend together.

On that Sunday morning the family had a late breakfast and lounged on the porch of their house. Firas suggested a walk. Majida wanted to visit another brother in nearby Bitunia; Jamil, Faris’ brother-in-law, suggested that they go into town. Finally, they decided that Majida and the girls would go to Bitunia and the three men – Jamil, Firas and Baha – would go for a little hike. Leaving their neighborhood, they walked along the ridge above the wadi. Near one concentration of ruins they stopped to watch the deer. Ramallah residents like to come here on weekends to spend some time in nature, to barbecue meat, smoke a nargileh and enjoy the view.

The three men were standing a few meters apart from each other when they noticed a group of soldiers descending into the wadi. They were about 300 meters away, as the crow flies, the valley separating them. The soldiers stopped next to the ruins on the slopes of the ridge opposite them. Jamil counted seven or eight soldiers. Then, suddenly, without any prior warning, Jamil relates, the soldiers opened fire. It came in one or two bursts, he says. Jamil immediately took cover behind a boulder, Baha lay down supine behind him, while Firas stood out in front, exposed to the gunfire. Jamil managed to call to Firas to take shelter behind the boulder, Firas turned toward him – and then collapsed.

“Are you hit?” Jamil asked in a panic.

“It’s nothing, just a rubber bullet,” Firas replied.

Jamil and Baha moved cautiously toward Firas, who was able to stand up. They supported him for a few steps, and then he fell again. Foam gathered on his lips and he gasped for breath. Jamil stripped off his brother-in-law’s clothes and saw a few drops of blood on his underpants and small holes in his lower stomach and lower back. Leaving the wounded man with his brother, he ran to the nearest house to summon help. He also waved his hands toward the soldiers, so they would not shoot at him, too. They stood mute. Employees from an ironworker’s shop and a few neighbors rushed over. They carried Firas to a private car and called a Palestinian ambulance. They met the ambulance up on the road and transferred Firas to the vehicle.

“Firas, are you alive?” Jamil asked his brother-in-law.

“It’s nothing,” Firas replied.

In the emergency room of the government hospital in Ramallah, he was still able to resist having his pants removed, but finally agreed and was taken immediately to surgery.

From the medical report: “The above-named man was brought to the government hospital in Ramallah on December 2, 2007, after being hit by a bullet, which penetrated behind the stomach region and exited in front. The patient was operated on urgently and it emerged that the small intestine was torn. Part of it was removed and the other part was stitched. It also emerged that there was heavy bleeding as a result of a torn central artery in the hip region. The bleeding was stopped and the arteries were connected. After the operation the patient was placed in intensive care. After the surgery the stomach bleeding began anew. The patient was taken to the operating room. It turned out that there was bleeding of all the stomach tissues.”

Firas died at five the next morning.

The Israel Defense Forces spokesman informed us that after a preliminary investigation, it transpired that soldiers at an army observation post had spotted three Palestinians who were behaving suspiciously.

“The three, who were identified as being busy on the ground for quite a few minutes, were suspected by the force of planting a bomb,” the statement said. “A force … was rushed to the site and launched a pursuit of the suspects, during which they called on them to stop and also fired into the air. When the calls were ignored, the force opened fire at the suspects.”

According to the IDF, “the incident was investigated at all levels of command, and the lessons will be learned and applied. The findings of the investigation will be conveyed to the Mili-tary Advocate General’s Office.”

Antigona Ashkar, from the human rights organization B’Tselem, who also investigated the event, wrote to the chief military prosecutor, Colonel Liron Liebman, saying: “The soldiers opened fire at Jamil, Baha and Firas suddenly, with no prior warning. The three were sitting on a boulder and looking at the view, and did not endanger anyone. They were surprised by the emergence of the soldiers from between the trees and remained where they were until the soldiers started shooting at them.” B’Tselem requested a Military Police investigation of the circumstances of the killing.

The B’Tselem field-worker in the Ramallah region, Iyad Hadad, said this week at the site of the killing: “It was a hunt. Those soldiers went on a hunting expedition. They killed Firas the way you hunt a deer or a stag. They couldn’t have had any other reason for shooting him.”

Jamil added: “What did the soldiers see in his hand? What did we do? Did they see a weapon in his hand? Was there a demonstration going on? Did we throw stones at anyone? They just shot us without batting an eyelash.”

In the village of Batir, Firas’ widow, Majida, in black mourning clothes, sits in her small, simple home. She is holding her infant daughter Sadil. At three months, Sadil’s father has been taken from her. The other two girls – Latifa, four, and Naama, two and a half – wander restlessly about their meager living room, blowing soap bubbles, until the whole room is filled with them.

Majida waited and waited in her brother’s home in Bitunia for Firas to arrive that day, as he had promised, after the hike. But Firas did not arrive. Not until the next day did her father come and tell her, “Firas is dead.”

Now Majida, her voice broken with crying, says: “I want to ask you and the whole world: What did he do? What was his crime? What was he guilty of? The father of three little girls – I want to know, why was he killed? Because I don’t know.”