Author: ISM Media Group

On being an international inside a refugee camp under invasion

Journal by Sandra

It can be hard being a human rights activist during normal circumstances. It’s even harder during Ramadan! I haven’t had any intentions to fast, but it can be terribly difficult not to. Drinking water behind the backs of a bunch of people from the UN when everyone is looking in another direction is one way to do it. The best example though, was maybe yesterday, somewhere in an invaded refugee camp in Palestine, eating bananas inside the bathroom of one of the families we were trying to help.

The last few days might have been the biggest experience I’ve ever had. I was prepared to go to Hebron Wednesday when I was informed that the city was declared a closed military zone. As an international going there it means getting arrested, and there’s definitely better causes for being arrested in this country. Since the Al-Ayn refugee camp in Nablus, a piece of land as big as the size of two football fields and the home for 6000 people, was under occupation I decided to go there instead. I did have second thoughts as at that time I did not consider myself to be one of the brave ones.

Me and two other activists, together with a Palestinian volunteer medical team decided to sneak into the camp. They were going to deliver food, medicine, and other supplies to those in need after more than two days of curfew, and they needed our presence to prevent harassment from the Israeli soldiers. We were going through the crowded alleyways from house to house shouting, “volunteer, international… don’t shoot” every time we turned around a corner. The whole place was full of soldiers taking over houses of families, many of them with small children.

We went in to one house which was the home of 50 people, among them were a huge amount of kids. We were talking to them, giving them supplies, and I won’t forget their happy faces giving them the rest of my bananas. Not much more then half an hour later there was a giant explosion inside the camp. Black intense smoke mixed with all sorts of different burnt stuff flying around in the air. It was the house of the family being demolished because one of the people in there happened to be the cousin of one of the men wanted.

Another family gave us the mission to get a 20 year old female student from Tulkarem out of there. She was visiting friends when the camp got invaded and since then she wasn’t allowed to leave. We gave her one of our neon vests and she joined our group to be able to leave the camp and get home.

When we were passing the same soldiers for the third time they had definitely had it. There was no way out but to leave and there was no way to convince them about the opposite. The frustration among us was big and even bigger when we saw our friends right outside the camp fully loaded with bread but unable to get in. All we wanted was to receive it and hand it to the closest home for the family there to continue passing it on to the ones in need. The soldiers were not up for that at all. Walking around in the alleys you could easily tell that they were really nervous about being where they were and by the fact that we were distracting them from doing their job. They kept on repeating that we were not safe in there and they did not want to shoot us by accident. Eventually they did force us out together with the unpleasant experience of my first sound bomb. I’m telling you it’s really loud! We had no choice but to run out.

The last day of the invasion the UN finally decided to show up. But they refused to go into the camp – it was too dangerous so they said. Truth is that they are the ones in charge of it and if anyone was going to be able to do something to improve the conditions inside of the camp being occupied it should have been them. But it was us. We were the only internationals in there.

By five in the morning the soldiers had left. Mission completed, or not really though. They actually only caught two out of seven wanted men before they gave up, leaving an even more screwed up life for those they left behind. One Israeli soldier was killed but three Palestinians – among them one 16 year old boy and one 38 year old disabled man. They were no threat to them what so ever but only in the wrong place at the wrong time opening their windows to look out. Walking around today in the remains of people’s blown up houses reminded me of a war film. Walking around inside people’s destroyed homes reminded me of a brutal nonhuman reality. I kept on thinking how the hell I would be able to tell people about this. I was there but I still find it surreal.

You always learn something new about yourself; not once inside of there was I afraid. If it was because I’ve got the guts or because the situation simply was too surreal for me I don’t know, but it surely was not pleasant to have the huge rifle of an Israeli soldier pointed at me. I guess I now can count myself one of the brave ones and I put a great honour into being renamed by the guys in the medical teams when I again saw them after coming out of the camp. I carry my new name with pride – Falastiin. Even though I have to admit that afterwards my knees were pretty shaky.

For more information on the invasion and siege of Al-Ayn refugee camp in Nablus, click here: https://www.palsolidarity.org/main/2007/09/21/army-incursion-in-al-ayn-refugee-camp-nablus/

Five children targetted after non-violent demonstration

Today, the 21st September, on the outskirts of Nablus at Qusin village, a demonstration against their roadblock took place. The roadblock makes a simple five minute journey to Sarra a minimum one hour ordeal through Beit Eva checkpoint. Similarly the barrier blocks travel from Qusin to Nablus. This forces residents, workers, students through a unnecessarily more arduous journey.

Despite last week’s violent outcome by part of the IOF where the demonstration ended in mass arrests, approximately 75 local Palestinians joined by a dozen ISM activists marched peacefully through the roadblock. Additionally 5 members of the Bil’in committee joined the demonstration to show their support. Unfortunately a large number of Israeli activists were followed by the IOF, police, and Shabbat; thus preventing them from attending the peaceful demonstration. The march started at 1 pm with the participants waving flags and chanting in good humor. The demonstration crossed the roadblock in the absence of any incident due possibly to the imminent Jewish festivity of Yom Kippur and the gate already having been smashed at last week’s demonstration.

Once the march reached Sarra, symbolically joining the two villages, the participants headed back towards Qusin. Throughout the march’s return an IOF jeep followed the procession attempting to provoke rock-throwing from the large number of youth attending the demonstration. In the proximity of the village the jeep was reinforced by two military vehicles. Their aggressive stance reached the extent of driving at an ISM activist. The IOF then speeded through the village once again attempting to provoke rock-throwing from the children. Nevertheless the children restrained themselves; therefore making the demonstration as a whole truly nonviolent.

At the end of the march the mayor of Qusin invited the ISM activists to the municipal hall and truly thanked them for their strong presence throughout the demonstration. The positive outcome of the march has encouraged the villagers of Qusin to pursue a continuous nonviolent campaign to remove the infamous roadblock.

Later that day at around 5:30 pm, once the ISM activists had left the village, the IOF invaded the village of Qusin. The IOF went to the municipality and threatened to arrest every man of the village between 18 to 40 years old unless two under 18 youths were handed over. Even after apprehending the two youths, the IOF returned to the village using live ammunition. On this occasion the IOF directly arrested three more youths at around 9:30 pm. Still today 22nd September 2:30 pm they haven’t been released or been charged.

Indymedia: Al Walaja resists roadblocks and Illegal Apartheid Wall

On Friday, September 21st, the people of Al Walaja village, in coordination with international and Israeli activists, came together to protest the Apartheid wall as they have done before. This week however, they added a variation, trying to demonstrate also against the matrix of repression throughout the West Bank, represented by roadblocks in this village.

They wanted to combine the struggles, against the building of the Apartheid Wall, and against the road blocks – the older means of restricting the freedom of the Palestinians in the occupied territories. This worked with the usual success… as the policy of the state forces is to allow the removal of roadblocks during the demonstration and restore them soon afterwards.

Following is the report of a comrade who participated in the demo. The article is in Hebrew with pictures at: israel.indymedia.org/newswire/display/7504/index.php

“Like in every Friday of the last few months, this Friday too, tens of Palestinian peace activists, Israelis, and internationals, arrived for the demonstration against the Apartheid Wall which is being built in the Walaja village near Har Gilo.

As the previous demonstration that was at the route of the Apartheid Wall was dispersed with high level of violence – with nine injured demonstrators, this week the people chose the way to the main entrance road of the village. With joint efforts, they succeeded to remove the road block and enabled free traffic to the neighbouring Palestinian villages.

The Apartheid Wall is being built on the lands of the village to separate them from the colonialist settlement Har Gilo. It will encircle the village completely leaving only one entrance under control of the Israeli soldiers.

The passage through that entrance will be allowed only for inhabitants of the village and will isolate the people of Walaja from the rest of the West Bank.”

Ha’aretz: IDF brings peace activist back to Jenin

By Meron Rapaport

Early Wednesday morning, a convoy of armored personnel carriers and four Israel Defense Forces jeeps entered Jenin – not an unusual event, but one of the armored jeeps had four very unusual passengers. The four foreigners had previously spent time in Jenin as volunteer aid workers and remember Israeli soldiers mostly as the ones pointing guns at them. This time, however, they came with the army to reenact their version of how IDF soldiers shot one of them in the face, seriously wounding him.

In April 2003, Brian Avery, a 24-year-old American volunteering with the International Solidarity Movement, went outside with other group members to assist Palestinian medics in Jenin. The aid workers came under fire, apparently from an Israeli APC. Avery was hit in the face and spent several weeks in Haifa’s Rambam Medical Center undergoing a series of operations to reconstruct his face.

Avery and his friends claimed the IDF soldiers fired on them despite clear evidence that they were unarmed civilians. The IDF denied this. In late 2006, however, following a petition to the High Court of Justice, the army agreed to launch a criminal investigation to determine if Avery’s shooting was unlawful. As part of the probe, the IDF agreed to the unusual measure of bringing Avery and three other volunteers to Israel at army expense.

Avery and the other three – Jens Sandvek of Sweden, Ewa Jasiewicz of Britain and Danish national Lasse Schmidt – were interrogated by the military police and then rode APCs into Jenin to re-enact the incident. The four also testified yesterday in a damages suit Avery has filed against the state. Avery’s lawyer, Shlomo Lecker, said the four testified that Avery was intentionally shot from an APC 15 meters away under good visibility conditions. They also said the APC left without offering medical assistance.

“It was unreal, like nothing I have ever been through,” Avery said during an interview in a Jerusalem hotel after the trip to Jenin. In contrast to what they were told in advance, the re-enactment did not take place on the actual street. Instead, the four pointed through the jeep’s bulletproof windows to where each of them was standing at the time of the shooting, and military police photographed the spots.

Avery said the atmosphere in the jeep was tense, and he felt that not all the soldiers were happy about the mission. But he called the investigators themselves “very professional and businesslike.” He said the military policemen told him that the soldiers who shot at him were in another jeep, but he was not told which.

All four of the former ISM volunteers have had unpleasant experiences with official Israel. Some of them have trouble entering the country, so being here as the army’s guests was odd. So was the ride through Jenin in an IDF jeep, afraid their Palestinian friends would recognize them and believe they had become collaborators with Israel.

The ISM volunteers said the jeep ride was the first time they saw IDF soldiers looking scared. “They see everything through the bulletproof glass; it’s a kind of prison,” Jasiewicz said. Schmidt added: “You can understand how the soldiers are disconnected from reality, why they see everything in black and white.”

But the jeep ride did not change the foreigners’ belief that Avery was shot intentionally. The shooting occurred shortly after the deaths of two other ISM volunteers – American Rachel Corrie and Briton Tom Hurndall – and Schmidt is convinced this was no coincidence.

Avery said he met the “other” Israeli after the shooting: Many Israelis visited him in the hospital.

However, he felt deserted by his own government. “They offered me no help and did not demand that Israel investigate. It’s night and day compared to what the British did for Tom Hurndall.”

A legal source said that British pressure contributed greatly to the start of a probe into Hurndall’s death, which eventually landed one soldier with an eight-year prison term. The U.S. embassy declined to comment on Avery’s allegations.

“It is not so important to me that the soldiers go to jail,” Avery said. “It is important to me that they be held responsible for what they did.”

Army sources said this is not the first time witnesses have been brought from abroad to testify in a Military Police probe. They said the soldiers who were in Jenin at the time of the shooting were also interrogated, and stressed that they know of no connection between Avery’s injury and the deaths of other international volunteers.

“We do not plan to give details of the measures taken in the probe before conclusions have been reached,” added one.

Right to Enter: Israeli Authorities Deny Entry to Clergyman

17 September 2007

In a continuing demonstration of Israel’s arbitrary denial of entry policy, and disregard for the Palestinian population’s right to practice their religion and worship freely, Father Faris Khaleifat, priest of Ramallah’s Greek Catholic Melkite Church was barred entry to the West Bank on Friday, 14 September.

Father Faris, a holder of both Vatican and Jordanian passports, commented: “For the past six years, I have been traveling regularly between the West Bank and Jordan on church affairs without any problems whatsoever.” Just one week ago, Father Faris traveled to Amman for several days and returned without incident. However, on Friday, his multiple entry visa as a clergyman serving in the occupied Palestinian territory, valid until February 2008, was cancelled by Israeli authorities at the Al Sheikh Hussein Bridge without explanation and he was forced to return to Jordan. His de facto deportation has left the Ramallah parish without its sole clergyman.

Father Faris is one of thousands of foreign passport holders who have been denied entry by the Israeli Authorities over the past several years. The priest’s case is just one of numerous incidents of entry denial documented by the Campaign in recent months, demonstrating that Israel’s regulation of entry into the occupied Palestinian territory by foreign nationals remains arbitrary, abusive and internationally unlawful. Even clergymen are not immune. Israel continues to abuse its control over entry, presence and residency in the occupied Palestinian territory in a manner damaging family life, businesses and the religious and social institutions serving the occupied population.

The Campaign calls on third states, religious leaders and congregations worldwide to protest Israel’s actions harming the Greek Catholic Church and to demand a clear, transparent and lawful policy for all foreign nationals wishing to enter the occupied Palestinian territory.

FOR MORE INFORMATION
Contact: Rasha Mukbil, Coordinator, Media Committee
(c) +970-(0)59-817-3953 (email) info@righttoenter.ps