Author: ISM Media Group

IOF Harrassment in Izbat at-Tabib

IOF Harrassment in Izbat at-Tabib
by Tom Hayes, 18 April 2007

The village of Izbat at-Tabib, in Qalqillya region, has been undergoing constant harassment by the IOF this week. The army has entered the village every day, often setting up flying checkpoints close to the village.

Two days ago the IOF ordered all residents to leave their houses while they searched people’s homes. One resident said that local people were forced to stand outside in the cold facing the wall with their arms raised for over two hours.

The 250 residents of Izbat at-Tabib live in constant fear of their houses being demolished. The village is unrecognized by the Israeli military authorities, despite th fact that it has been lived in since before 1967. Most houses in the village, situated in Area C, have been issued demolition orders. Although none of the planned demolitions have taken place they could happen at any time. The villagers have not improved their houses as a result and most live in basic accommodation.

The residents of Izbat at-Tabib are calling for international support in the face of continued army harassment.

Prisoner’s Day in Tubas

Tom Hayes

Today Tubas prisoner’s society held a rally outside the Red Cross building in Tubas to commemorate prisoner’s week.

Students at Al Quds Open University in Tubas also held a vigil for the families of prisoners in the university grounds

At the university vigil students gave prisoners’ families trees to plant. Each tree was the same age as the amount of years the person had been in prison.

Palestinians in Israeli jails are political prisoners, charged under a military apartheid legal system. The detention of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails has no basis in international law.

The prisoner’s club took me to meet two families of prisoners. One was the family of a man imprisoned during the Intifada. His family told me that they had been imprisoned because the army were looking for their family member and that, in 2005, the Israeli Occupation Forces attempted a targeted assassination in Tubas using an Apache helicopter killing four people, three of them children. The attack failed to kill its intended target.

Another family told me of the conditions faced by Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli jails. Prisoners used to receive money from the Palestinian Authority to pay for food in the canteen. However, since the international sanctions on the Hamas government these have ceased. Money from prisoners’ families is not getting through and prisoners are living on bread and water. One prisoners mother told me that the prison authorities often turn off the water and electricity. Family visits are severely restricted and many prisoners families cannot enter 1948 Israel to visit their loved ones.

YNet: Chairman MK Yossi Beilin visits Tel Rumeida

Beilin calls Hebron Jews ‘deluded’
Tal Rabinovsky, 17 April 2007

Meretz chairman visits disputed Hebron building, says he intends to submit ‘bill calling for evacuation of all Jews from Hebron’

Meretz-Yahad Chairman MK Yossi Beilin received a not-so-warm welcome by extreme right-wing activist Baruch Marzel upon his arrival at the Jewish area of Hebron on Tuesday.


Photo: ISM Hebron

“Spy, foreign agent! You’re pals with Bishara!” Marzel shouted, in an attempt to disrupt Beilin’s visit.

“I intend on submitting a bill calling for the evacuation of all Jews from Hebron after the summer break. This is a new settlement, and I have been working to evacuate this deluded group since the night they invaded.


Photo: ISM Hebron

“The only question is whether the Olmert government wants to establish a new settlement in Israel today, in 2007″ despite its promise not to allow new settlements, Beilin asked.

Beilin began his tour under tight security in Tel Rumeida, where he met Hani Abu Aisha, who told him about the ill treatment, as he called it, his family suffered at the hands of the Jewish residents.

Beilin also visited a grocery store nearby the disputed building, where he tried to evaluate the way the new residents behaved towards the locals. The owner of the store told Beilin about the “cruelty and violence” of the Jewish residents of the building.

There was much disorder at the entrance of the building itself, lead by Noam Arnon, spokesperson for the Jewish settlement in Hebron.

“It was you who brought us the Oslo agreement, you who brought most of the suicide bombers, and you are responsible for all of this suffering,” Arnon said.

Beilin firmly replied, “Go home crazies!”

House Demolitions Planned in Al Hadidi

House Demolitions Planned in Al Hadidi
from Brighton Palestine, 18 April 2007

Update, 24 April 2007 Residents of five of the houses have relocated before the imminent house demolitions. At least two families are staying in their houses, refusing to leave. One resident has stated, “I will not leave my house! I will be here when the bulldozers arrive, and I will rebuild my house as soon as they (the army) demolishes it.” International and Israeli solidarity activist have been arriving in Al Hadidi over the past couple days.

Military authorities have ordered the demolition of bedouin houses in the Al Hadidi area close to the illegal settlement of Ro’i, near the Al Hamra checkpoint, in the Tubas Region.

Families have lost their case against the demolitions in the Israeli Supreme Court and the 131 residents have been told to move by 21st April.

Eight dwellings, lived in by fifteen families, are planned to be demolished leaving residents homeless. One resident has already had his home demolished four times since 1999.

Al Hadidi is a simple bedouin camp comprising of shacks made of fabric and wood and metal sheds for livestock. The military plan to completely demolish it and have told residents to move to Tamoun, leaving the area around Al Hadidi free for the settlers of Ro’i to annex.

Several families own hundreds of dunams of agricultural land, mainly used for growing wheat, in the area. They are concerned that if they are forced to move they will be unable to access their land in the future.

Some residents have begun to take down livestock sheds in preparation for the forced transfer and the ground is littered with the bodies of young lambs who have died from exposure as a result

Some residents plan to stay on the land despite the demolitions. They have been in the area since before 1967 but have been subject to constant harrassment in the last years. Since the Oslo ‘peace process’ Al Hadidi has been in Area C, under Israeli military and civil control, and Palestinian ownership has become more precarious. Now the courts, and the authorities, are using this precarity to transfer Palestians out of the area.

Pain and Pride on Prisoner’s Day in Hebron

Pain and Pride on Prisoner’s Day in Hebron
by V, 17 April 2007

Prisoners Day in Hebron was marked with a march of around 1000 people. Mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, brothers and sisters carried pictures of their imprisoned loved ones. Some were too young to have seen their relatives. Some were old enough, or their relatives’ sentences long enough, to mean they may never see their relatives again. Faces in the crowd showed both pain and pride.

The march snaked a mile down the main street for an hour, and ended with a rally and speeches for a further hour. It appeared that most Palestinian political groups were represented (I recognised flags for Fatah, Hamas, PFLP, Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Islamic Jihad). A group of prisoners’ children performed a play behind a screen. This represented the glass barrier between them and their relatives during prison visits.