Author: ISM Media Group

Israeli Army Invade Azzoun Yet Again

At 3:45 AM on the 24th of Dec, the Israeli Occupation Force (IOF) invaded Azzoun, once again imposing curfew in the Palestinian village without any reason. A large number of military vehicles and soldiers were spread out all over the village, randomly attacking civilian Palestinians with teargas, sound bombs and rubber bullets.

During the curfew IOF closed the centre of the city, not even allowing the ambulance to drive on the main road. A Palestinian family got permission to drive to their home in the old city, but despite the permission Israeli soldiers opened fire at the car. The front window of the car was hit with four rubber bullets. The parents and their 6 children (the youngest only two years old) got away with only minor injuries from glass splinters.

A Palestinian man was arrested while walking the 30 meters from his home to the mosque for afternoon prayer. He was arrested for approximately seven hours,being blindfolded, handcuffed and repeatedly beaten and threatened by the soldiers almost all the time. Another Palestinian man was shot in his head with a rubber bullet, something which could be fatal. This man was lucky and could return home the same evening after being treated at the town’s medical centre.

During the curfew Israeli soldiers also shot and destroyed a major transformer, leaving parts of the city without electricity for about 15 hours.

After approximately two and a half hours the army left the village, the main gate to Azzoun remaining closed during the night but was being the following day.

Attempted Installation of IOF Surveillance Camera Thwarted in Tel Rumeida

Dec. 19th, Tel Rumeida

Yesterday an Israeli work crew accompanied by Israeli Occupation Force (IOF) soldiers attempted to install a new IOF surveillance camera in the Tel Rumeida neighborhood of Hebron, but one Palestinian family refused to allow the installation of cables for the camera across their rooftop. The work crew claimed to have a military order requiring the installation of the camera, but were unable to produce it. The family contacted Kiryat Arba Police, who attended, and after seeing no work order, supported the family’s objections.

Several other such cameras have been installed in the neighbourhood recently, but in each case the family whose roof was to house the camera received notification beforehand that there was an order for its installation.

Following a lengthy discussion between the Israeli military, police, local residents and the work crew, those present witnessed members of the family halt the installation process by tossing the camera cable off their roof onto the ground. International Human Rights Workers (HRWs) visited the scene later at night to find the discarded but valuable cable guarded by two very bored Israeli soldiers.

Apartheid Masked: Settlements being built and Palestinian homes demolished under the shadow of “peace” talks.

For information, pictures, and video evidence, please contact:
Ronald 0548195210 or 0598254517 or 02-2971829

Peace Now Settlement Watch says: “Although Olmert declared a settlement freeze, we see that on the ground there is construction in settlements all over the West Bank, in all kinds of settlements, and as long as the Government does not stop settlement activity on the ground, the negotiations cannot succeed.”

A group of activists documented this continued construction in several settlements. They also documented the demolition of Palestinian houses which has continued after the peace conference, eight homes having been destroyed since Annapolis. They filmed construction in Nof Zion and Har Homa last week, and also took pictures of construction going on in Modi’in Illit, Ma’ale Adumim, Karnei Shomron, Alfei Menashe, and the Barkan industrial area.

Activists also documented the construction that is taking place on the train being built to run through occupied East Jerusalem villages of Shuafat and Beit Hanina. This train will link settlements like Givat Ze’ev to Jerusalem, and with the settlements inside and around Jerusalem, create facts on the ground which will make a future Palestinian state, with Al-Quds as its capital, impossible.

The Israeli Cabinet recently instructed the Israel Antiquities Authority to continue excavations at the Mugrabi walkway, the former site of the Mugrabi neighbourhood which was demolished in 1967, near the Western Wall in occupied East Jerusalem. A team of Turkish experts who had examined the excavations recommended that Israel stop work immediately. Their findings were published in a report which said that Israel was attempting to disrupt Jerusalem’s history by stressing the Jewish aspect of Jerusalem, and that the excavations were part of a “systematically implemented effort to destroy values associated with cultural assets of the Ayyubid, Mameluke and Ottoman periods.”

The 2003 Roadmap to Peace that Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas agreed at Annapolis to resume says unequivocally that Israel must “freeze all settlement activity, including the “natural growth” of existing settlements.”

New Statesman: The grim reality in Gaza

By: Mohammed Omer

10 December 2007

Traffic in the Gaza Strip slowed to a trickle last week, and this week medical centres have scaled back treatment in the medicines and sustenance-destitute Strip.

“Israel’s decision is a death penalty: our reserve of fuel is almost zero and it may very likely run out by the end of today,” said Khaled Radi, Ministry of Health spokesman for the dismissed Hamas government.

Radi spoke in reference to the 30 November Israeli Supreme Court decision to allow further fuel cutbacks, severe reductions which are crippling Gaza’s residents in all aspects of life. Prior to that ruling, as early as October Israel decided to begin limiting fuel, with Gaza soon after enduring serious cuts of over 50% of fuel needs, a dire statistic confirmed by the UN body OCHA.

At the Nahal Oz crossing, through which all fuel enters Gaza, the Palestinian petrol authority reported that Israel has delivered around only 190,000 litres of diesel a day since late October, falling short of the 350,000 litres needed by the Gaza Strip. This number plummeted on 29 November, with Israel delivering a scanty 60,000 litres, only marginally improving three days later, 2 December, with a delivery of 90,000 litres.

This week’s increased cutbacks resulted in a several day closure of Gaza’s petrol stations, owners striking in protest to the pittance of fuel allowed in–just one quarter of that normally received.

Gaza’s Association for Fuel Station Owners commented: “Petrol firms considered the amount negligible and so, in protest over the Israeli blockade, refused to accept the paltry offering which does not come close to meeting the essential needs of Gaza’s civilians.”

A Gaza taxi driver related his concern: “Cutting off fuel means cutting off our lives. We use it for everything, in the place of wood or coal. It’s tragic not only that Israel is imposing this siege on Gaza, but also that some Palestinians are supporting this cruel embargo, with the naïve idea of causing the people turn against Hamas in Gaza.”

Shortages of fuel have greatly affected the public transportation system, leaving students from universities in Gaza City delayed for hours standing in wait for transportation back to Khan Younies and Rafah in the south.

Trickle Effect

The fuel cuts in turn impede water access: with diesel-run pumps unable to function, leaving over 77,000 without fresh drinking water, according to Gaza’s water utility. Oxfam International has warned that soon 225,000 Gazans could suffer from inadequate water supplies, raising concerns for public health.

Ambulances and clinics suffer too, a fact reiterated by Khaled Radi, who related how fuel shortages have already brought some ambulances to a standstill: “This has affected the mobility of ambulances which are especially vital during on-going Israeli air strikes such as that of this morning.”

He added that shortages further threatened to close essential clinics, which rely on back-up generators during the frequent electricity shortages in the Strip. Two first aid health centres have already been forced to suspend treatment during electricity cuts. Those that remain open suffer from want of medical supplies, with 91 of 416 essential medicines depleted, according to the WHO.

Even basic things are scarce. Residents are hard-pressed to find a piece of glass to repair a broken window, imperative in December’s cold weather, particularly in a time when electricity and gas are scarce-to-absent.

Eyad Yousef, a 31-year-old Palestinian teacher, has been waiting for cement, unavailable for the last many months, to enter Gaza. Concurrently, prices of building materials have skyrocketed, more than tripled in the worst cases. Yousef waits for any sort of building material, but he knows that will not find anything, as he has looked all over the picked-clean area. “I have a floor of my home to finish, but can’t do so yet as no sort of building materials are available in Gaza,” he said. “I’m using pieces of nylon to cover my windows at home, but I can’t go on like this for long,” he added, saying he hopes that the international community will put pressure on Israel to open borders and let vital products into Gaza.

Death Penalty

Yousef, at least, is luckier than the newly dead: since last month at least 31 medical patients have died in Gaza, a result of Israel’s lockdown on borders and preventing of medical access to Israeli, Egyptian and Jordanian hospitals, as well as West Bank hospitals.

Since Hamas took over power in June, this subsequent Israeli lockdown has made it virtually impossible for Palestinians to get out of Gaza. The situation then deteriorated with the closing of Karni crossing, Gaza’s only commercial crossing, only opened for the most basic food essentials. Coupled with Israel’s ground and air attacks, the situation for Palestinians worsened yet further still when Israel last October announced Gaza as a “hostile entity”, further allowing Israel to justify its closed-borders policy to the international arena.

In the densely-populated region starved of medical supplies, and now facing the shutdown of clinics, Gazan citizens have been given a death sentence with Israel’s control over borders. Yahya Al Jamal 53, one case among hundreds of people, has cancer and is in serious need of medical care at well-equipped hospitals. For more than two months now he has been refused entry to Israel for treatment. His agonized father reported that his son will die in the coming days if he does not get the medication he needs, an outcome of Israel’s mass denial of the luxury of critical healthcare.

Insult upon injuries, cement – already scarce for building – is no longer available even for graves of the many recently dead.

Empty Stocks

Aid agencies like the World Food Program (WFP) reporting that food imports are only enough to meet 41 per cent of demand in the Gaza Strip.

As winter progresses, resilient citizens desperately seek to survive. In Rafah’s Saturday market, Umm Mohammed Zourub scours the stalls yet again: “I’ve been looking for new winter clothes for my children, but I haven’t been able to find any because no materials are coming into Gaza with the closed borders,” the 43 year old mother lamented.

Indeed, the cold weather has fallen quickly on an internationally-isolated and starved population. From the intense heat of summer months, where water was scarce and air conditioning a fantasy, Gazans now experience the bitter cold in the same homes unprepared for extremes, and the bitter realization that, once again, they have been left to the whims of imprisonment, Israeli air and ground attacks, and a staggering invisibility in the international realm.

“The world is not dangerous because of those who do harm but because of those who look at it without doing anything.”

Albert Einstein

www.rafahtoday.org

Property destruction in Hebron

Dec 16, 2007

Two shopkeepers from Hebron’s old city told ISM that at 3pm yesterday approximately 70 settlers and tourists, many in Jewish religious garb, came through the old city from the direction of the Ibrahimi Mosque, accompanied by roughly 15 soldiers. On the way through they knocked, scattered and stamped on merchandise from a jewelry and handcraft shop. The shopkeeper reports that he approached a soldier to complain about this, but the soldier just smiled at him. He says this has happened many times before.

The traders report that the group was predominantly teenagers young adults, both male and female, many of whom were carrying guns.

Fixing Hashem’s Pipes

Workers from Hebron municipality were today repairing the pipes which carry water to the Al Azza family, who live just below the caravans of the Tel Rumeida settlement. Last week settlers cut their pipes, leaving the family without water for more than a week, thus forcing them to buy water and carry it to their home along the steep, rocky and circuitous path which they use to access their home. The direct path from their house to the street is closed by the army as it runs right in front of the settlement.

This is a regular occurrence for the family–the pipes were smashed at least 17 times in the first half of 2007–and forms part of the sustained campaign of intimidation, violence and bribery used by the settlers to try to force the family from their home.. Before the current incident, they were last broken in September, after which the municipality put the pipes underground to make them harder to break. This most recent act of sabotage was done using power tolls. The pipes were cut within several metres of an IDF post.

When asked whether he intended to report this to the Israeli police, Hashem Al Azza indicated that he has done so numerous times before, and now feels there is no point as no consequences ever follow.

Settlers smash windows of Palestinian home in Tel Rumeida

(Dec 15, 2007) Today at around 3pm settlers in the Tel Rumeida neighborhood of Al Khalil (Hebron) celebrated the Sabbath by throwing stones through the windows of a Palestinian family home in Tel Rumeida. The house is close to the Jewish cemetary and right next to a tomb which is regularly visited by settlers.

The grandmother of the family was sitting in the living room when the rocks came throught the windows and immediately went into another room to more safely look out of another window. By the time she looked no settlers were visible but soldiers were present at the edge of her property. It appears that the soldiers were well aware of what was happening.

This is the third time in 4 weeks that settlers have smashed the windows of the family’s home. Twelve panes of glass have been broken and the cost is a strain for the family as only one family member is working, as his brother currently in an Israeli jail.