Author: ISM Media Group

Hebron settlers trespass on Palestinian family’s land with IOF complicity

by ISM Hebron, November 26th

November 15

At 12 noon a human rights worker at the crossing on Tel Rumeida St. noticed that there were two settlers on top of the military outpost on Palestinian land next to a huge old olive tree. He photographed them.
He raised the alarm and asked the soldiers who told him that there was no problem and that they had all the relevant permits to run this new green electrical cable.
The Palestinian family who own this olive tree were terrified that these were preparations to cut the tree down but nothing further happened that day.

November 17

Human rights workers noticed that there were settlers in the Abu Haikal orchard next to their house. Two HRWs went to the house to talk to the family and began to film. Two others began to film from our apartment. As another HRW approached the land he noticed that two police officers had already stationed themselves on the Palestinian land and were quietly observing. Then he saw several young settler women approaching from the olive groves. He photographed and filmed them as they entered the Abu Haikal property through a gap in the fence. He called over to the police officers to ask them why they were allowing settlers to trespass on Palestinian land but they refused to answer. He moved next to the house where he could film the whole gathering. Most settlers were arriving from up the military stairs and past the military observation post through a gap in the fence at that end of the orchard. It now became clear why settlers had been running electric cables up to the observation post two days earlier “with all the correct permits”. They had been fixing up a powerful light so that the settlers could see the path through the fence.

About 80 settlers gathered in all, mostly quite young in their 20s. A group of men were dressed in black. They began to pray, to chant and to sing. It was very frightening for the family as they had been given no warning that this was to happen and it was not clear how things would develop. Some of the chanting was very loud and aggressive. This huge gathering was right next to the house where the family was gathered.

Two soldiers were patrolling back and forth around the house and one of them attempted to take photos of all the human rights workers and family members as they entered or left their house. Some of the family got very angry at this provocation. It seems the soldiers were trying to take revenge because HRWs often photograph them when they are harassing Palestinians.

After about an hour the settlers with very young children left and 15 minutes later everyone left. The group of young men in black stayed the longest, singing and dancing. It was very clear that this event had been planned in advance with the authorities and had active participation by the police and army.

November 23rd

At 2pm Abu Haikal family members heard machine noises on their land. They went to look and discovered a male settler clearing weeds with a weed-eater (strimmer) on the land behind the military post and olive tree, at the bottom of the garden wall. They called the police and after 15 minutes one of the daughters went to talk with the man and ask him to leave their land. Her aunt joined her. He ignored the request and attacked her with the weed-eater, hitting her on the ankle. He then phoned for help and five settler women came up the stairs including the deranged woman from Gaza. Two soldiers removed the Palestinians from their own land. They were then joined by 4 more soldiers.

At 3pm the settlers moved into the almond orchard (lot 52) and began to cut the grass and weeds in there. At 4pm the soldiers finally removed all the settlers from the land. By this time they had probably done most of what they wanted to do to prepare for the Sabbath celebration the following night.

November 24th

The Abu Haikals had heard that the settlers were planning to trespass on their land again for a Shabbat celebration. A human rights worker visiting the Abu Haikals called the DCO * to ask what the plans were for this, since last week’s trespass had clearly been co-ordinated with police and soldiers, as well as presumably the DCO. The DCO hung up several times and refused to answer questions. Eventually they said that they knew nothing about this.

Later another HRW at the house noticed 2 soldiers on the garden path behind the house at 4.40pm. Looking closer he realized that there were also 4 adult settlers and a child standing at the top of the stairs next to the military post on Abu Haikal land. Another HRW began filming from below and pointed out that there were more settlers coming up the stairs from Tel Rumeida settlement. Soldiers made no attempt to stop them.

By 4.55 18 settlers had gathered around the military post and they all moved into the Abu Haikal orchard together. By 5pm there were 36 settlers in the orchard, just below the Abu Haikal house. They all faced away from the house, presumably to avoid being photographed. They began to sing and to pray. Later they were dancing.

At 5.10pm two 2 settlers moved up the orchard towards the hole in the fence near the house. When they got there they discovered a squad of 6 soldiers patrolling on foot with a vehicle near the mosque. They turned back and rejoined the other settlers.

At 5.30 the HRW called the DCO again. Again they tried to hang up and initially were refusing to talk to an international. He asked if they wanted to talk to Mrs Abu Haikal. They declined and said they could not discuss rumours of possible activity. The HRW pointed out firmly that this was no rumour. He was standing looking at 40 settlers right next to the house. The DCO said he would check this out and call back in 2 minutes. He never did call back.

The HRW had noticed that there were no police present this week so he tried to call the police to get them to remove the trespassers. The police were not answering the phone and in the meantime the settlers had all moved off the land together, down the stairs and gone back into Tel Rumeida settlement. A few of them headed off towards Beit Hadassa settlement.

* DCO – District Co-ordination Office, the civilian administration wing of the Israeli military in the West Bank.

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights calls for action against Israeli practice of separating families

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

by The Campaign for the Right of Entry, November 26th

Concluding her visit to the Israeli occupied Palestinian territory, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour called on UN member states to take action against Israel’s practice of denying foreign passport holders access to and residency in the occupied Palestinian territories. Israel’s barring of foreigners is forcing the separation of spouses from their families, educators and students from their schools, and healthcare providers from their patients.

Arbour, who is the UN’s highest authority on human rights, stated “In recent months there has been an increase in obstacles imposed on foreign passport holders, including many of Palestinian origin, effectively preventing them from entering and staying in the (Israeli) Occupied Palestinian Territory (oPt) with their families or for humanitarian activities. I call on the authorities to take remedial measures to remove such obstacles.”

In order to legally reside in the Israeli (oPt), foreigners must resort to Israeli-issued visitors’ visas which expire 3 months after issuance, Enayah Samara, for example, has had to renew her visa 120 times in order to remain with her spouse and children despite repeated submission of family unification requests. The Hamoked-B’Tselem report “Perpetual Limbo” documents Israeli policy which contends that family unification for Palestinians is not a vested right, but a “special benevolent act of the Israeli authorities.”

Mrs. Samara was denied re-entry by Israel in May and continues to be separated from her family after have lived in the Israeli oPt for 30 years. Israel is refusing to process 120,000 such requests for Palestinian family unification and has recently begun marking visa renewal requests with “last permit” thus forcing the passport holders to exit to another country. Many, like Mrs. Samara, are then denied re-entry by Israeli border officials.

The academic, economic, tourist, and humanitarian sectors have been especially hard hit by Israel’s denial-of-entry practice, Birzeit University reports a 50% decline in foreign faculty and staff and, along with 10 other Palestinian universities, recently called on the international community to intervene and put an end to Israel’s attack on Palestinian academic development.

Families and other tourists coming from abroad for summer vacation were routinely denied entry by the Israelis. Combined with the international embargo on Palestinians, Israel’s actions further exacerbate its efforts to undermine Palestinian economic and social development.

Article 17 paragraph 1 of the 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) states that “no one shall be subjected to arbitrary or unlawful interference with his…family,” while Article 23 paragraph 1 adds that “the family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.” The above rights are to be enjoyed by all individuals “without distinction of any kind.”

The Campaign for the Right of Entry/Re-Entry to the oPt calls on the international community to live up to its legal and moral obligations to protect rights afforded to Palestinians under international law. We call on the United States, in particular, to leverage its historic relationship with Israel in order to protect its own citizens wishing to reside, visit and invest in the oPt, as well as to create the conditions where citizens of other countries will also be protected from Israeli denial of entry.

Contact: Basil Ayish, Coordinator, Media Committee:
0598173953
info@righttoenter.ps

Apartheid travel ban on Palestinians in Israeli cars

Three stories from Israeli and international press follow:

Haaretz: “No more hitching in the West Bank”

by Amira Hass, November 23rd

The O.C. Central Command, Yair Naveh, dropped a cluster bomb early this week. He signed an order barring Israeli citizens from taking Palestinian passengers in their Israeli vehicles within the West Bank. The order will take effect on January 19, 2007 and it exempts those who take Palestinians with permits to enter Israel and the settlements, or those who take their first-degree relatives with them.

The reason for the new order, as noted in the IDF Spokesperson’s announcement, is of course, security: to impede those who want “to perpetrate terrorist attacks on the home front of the State of Israel and in the Judea, Samaria and Jordan Valley regions.” Therefore, the order sounds like a standard IDF shell whose objective is “self-defense,” but in practice it is another component in the regime of national and ethnic separation that exists in the West Bank, a regime of privileges for the Jewish settler minority, at the expense of the Palestinians’ individual and national rights. Like other military orders and Knesset laws, which are cleverly cloaked in the guise of the security argument, this order, too, sheds cluster bombs that will continue to destroy the remaining chance of establishing Peace-relations with the Palestinians.

The security argument will satisfy the vast majority of Israelis, just as they are content with the security explanation for hundreds of road closures and dozens of military checkpoints inside the West Bank. The fact that these limit mobility to a minimum and separate between a village and its lands, one village and another, a village and the city, and from one district and another, that is, disrupt the normal life that it is still possible to maintain under the Israeli occupation regime, never deterred the army commanders who formulated the orders, never stopped the High Court of Justice judges who approved and continue to approve the orders, and it never bothered the Labor party’s MKs. Most of the Israeli public is also not troubled by the fact that it is precisely the checkpoints and roadblocks which serve the Israeli colonization policy; they are dissecting the occupied West Bank into small and disconnected enclaves where Palestinians live, surrounded by an ocean of settlement momentum and Jewish territorial contiguity.

The ban prohibiting Israelis from taking Palestinian passengers in their cars within the West Bank is part of the regime of “transportation separation” Israel has created in the West Bank. The ban complements another order that bars Palestinians with permits to enter Israel from using those crossing points from the West Bank to Israel where Israelis pass through. The Palestinians have separate crossing points. The ban is in addition to the two separate systems of roads the security establishment continues to build unhindered in the West Bank: one for the Jewish settlers and those affiliated with them (and, by accident, for the opponents of the Occupation and Israeli Arabs, as no order against their using it has been issued yet) and the other for the Palestinians. One is spacious, lit up, safe and allows for quick and brief travel. The other is narrow, exhausting, not in good shape and full of checkpoints, and makes the travel slow and time-consuming.

This is the hierarchy that is in effect embedded in “the settlement enterprise” – improved infrastructure for the Jewish residents and constant expansion and development, as opposed to decreasing the Palestinians’ space and preventing its development. The new order follows an order that already bars all Palestinians from traveling and remaining in the Jordan Valley, a third of the West Bank’s area, and the policy of “differentiation” Naveh frequently uses: the sweeping ban on all residents of the northern West Bank, or alternately those aged 16-35, from traveling south, within the West Bank. This theft of time and space from the Palestinians is vital for ensuring that “their separate development” will always lag behind Jewish development, will always flounder on the brink of a weak, inferior and degrading existence.

The new order will not hinder “terrorist elements” from linking up with car thieves with good knowledge of the country’s hidden paths, who infiltrate into the West Bank in stolen Israeli vehicles; it will not stop them from attaching stolen Israeli license plates to their cars, forging documents, dressing up as Israelis or abducting Israelis. The real aim of the order is to attack civilian targets, targets of peace. The ban on Israelis taking Palestinians in their cars affects the rights of Israelis (Jews and non-Jews) who have Palestinian friends: they won’t be able to travel together in the West Bank, visit friends together, to help them get to the doctor, their home or their olive groves more quickly.

The ban affects all the determined Israeli groups working against the occupation: Mahsom Watch, Yesh Din, Activists against the Separation Fence, Rabbis for Human Rights, Ta’ayush, the Committee Against House Demolitions. It also affects human rights groups such as Hamoked – the Center for the Defense of the Individual, B’Tselem, and the Association for Civil Rights. Activists from all the above organizations and movements meet with Palestinians, travel with them and build up friendships with them. In their meetings and joint travels on the roads of the West Bank, they serve as a reminder to the Palestinians that there are Israelis who are not soldiers and settlers, that there are Israelis who oppose the regime of privileges and that therefore, there is perhaps hope for a fair political solution.

Naveh’s order, if it is not rescinded in time, leaves behind countless little cluster bombs that will detonate and damage this hope as well.

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International Herald Tribune: “Human rights lawyers asking military to rescind latest ban on Palestinian travel”

by Associated Press

RAMALLAH, West Bank: Israeli human rights lawyers said Thursday they have asked the military to overturn the latest restriction on Palestinian movement — a ban on Palestinians riding in cars with Israeli license plates in the West Bank.

The army has cited security reasons for the ban, which is to go into effect in January.

However, human rights activists said the order is part of a wider Israeli scheme to create separate road systems for Israeli settlers and Palestinians in the West Bank and to keep Palestinians from 20 percent of the territory. The restrictions will also hamper the work of humanitarian organizations in the Palestinian territories, the activists said.

“This is a part of a network of orders that creates the physical and legal reality of separation between ethnic groups present in the West Bank,” lawyer Michael Sfard wrote on behalf of the Israeli rights group Yesh Din to Israeli Defense Minister Amir Peretz. “This is exactly how apartheid is defined.”

Cars owned by Israelis and West Bank Palestinians have different plates, black on yellow and green on white, respectively. West Bankers have always been barred from driving cars with Israel plates, but until now could ride in them as passengers. Under the new order, that would be forbidden, even in the West Bank.

The army said in a statement that militant groups have exploited travel in Israeli cars to carry out attacks in Israel and against Israeli settlers in the West Bank. The military refused to elaborate.

Exempt from the ban will be Palestinian medical staff, those with permits to work in Israel, Palestinians who work for international organizations and first degree Palestinian relatives of Israelis riding in the same car, the army said. Others would have to apply for permits.

Yesh Din, a watchdog group tracking settler violence against Palestinians, is expected to challenge the ban in Israel’s Supreme Court.

The group said its work will suffer because the travel ban will make it much harder for Palestinians to file complaints against settlers with police, at a time when many area already frightened to do so.

Lior Yavneh, research director of the group, said that last year, 299 Palestinians filed complaints at Israeli police stations in Jewish settlements in the West Bank. Many reached the police stations by riding with rights workers in Israeli cars to reach the settlements that are usually off-limits to Palestinians.

Charles Clayton, national director of World Vision, an aid group that helps about 200,000 Palestinians in the West Bank, also objected to the ban, saying it would keep apart Israeli and Palestinian staff, as well as hundreds of Palestinian volunteers, who routinely travel together to help develop small businesses and agricultural projects.

“Humanitarian work is not about treating people as some sort of distant customer. These are people we have to deal with and meet with and help. How can we do that at arms length?” he asked.

Palestinians can apply for the relevant permits, but receiving them is far from automatic and requires a time-consuming and nerve-racking process, according to those who have tried the system.

Most aid groups prefer to use Israeli vehicles to move in the West Bank because Palestinian vehicles are often held up at roadblocks, doubling and tripling travel time.

Palestinian motorists are already banned from or are unable to reach more than three dozen roads and road sections in the West Bank, according to a 2004 report by the Israeli human rights group B’tselem.

“It’s all done in an incremental way, which in the grand scheme of things creates an alternative road system for Palestinians,” said Sarit Michaeli, the B’tselem spokeswoman.

The military has also restricted Palestinian access to about 20 percent of West Bank territory, including areas near Israel’s separation barrier in the West Bank and much of the Jordan Valley.

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Haaretz: “Travel ban on Palestinians in Israeli cars limited to Green Line”

by Amira Hass, November 26th

The ban on allowing Palestinians to ride in Israeli cars in the West Bank will mainly be enforced near the border with Israel, and not throughout the West Bank, a senior Israel Defense Forces officer told Haaretz.

The officer said that he himself gives rides to Palestinians, and that he personally would not bother enforcing the rule as long as it is clear that the ride was “ordinary” and that the destination was not inside Israel.

The officer acknowledged that the ban, instituted by GOC Central Command Yair Naveh, does not “sound good,” but insisted that it was meant primarily to prevent illegal Palestinian entrants from being smuggled into Israel in Israeli cars, whose occupants are usually checked less carefully.

The order was issued, he said, to foil a trick that Israelis who smuggle Palestinians into Israel have discovered in order to evade the prohibition on doing so: Because many checkpoints are not built exactly on the Green Line (which separates Israel from the West Bank), these Israelis could take their Palestinian passengers through the checkpoints and then let them off a few hundred meters later – still in Palestinian territory, but with easy access to Israel – without breaking any laws.

However, the Yesh Din organization has asked Defense Minister Amir Peretz to overturn the rule, arguing that it, like several other orders approved by Naveh, creates a legal mechanism of separation on the basis of national origin in the West Bank. As a result, they said, it is clearly illegal, and “constitutes an international crime, the crime of apartheid.”

A statement abut the new policy issued by the IDF Spokesman’s Office last week said it was intended to fight terror rather than merely reduce the number of illegal entrants.

The senior officer explained that the order was clearly aimed at this as well, but that the number of illegal entrants seeking work is much greater than the number of terrorists.

Haaretz: Military probe ordered in 2003 shooting of American in Nablus

by Yuval Yoaz, November 26th

The Military Advocate General, Brigadier General Avihai Mandelblit, has instructed military police investigators to open a probe into the question of whether Israel Defense Force soldiers bear criminal responsibility in the shooting of a 24-year-old American citizen and leftist activist in the Jenin refugee camp in April 2003.

The investigation was opened almost two years after Brian Avery, of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), petitioned the High Court of Justice for a criminal probe in his case, and after both Mandelblit and his predecessor, Major General (res.) Menachem Finkelstein, refused to order such a probe, arguing that the military investigation after the incident should suffice.

Avery, from New Mexico, came to Jenin as part of his work with the ISM in April 2003. He extended humanitarian aid to local residents, among other things, assisting doctors treating the residents. On Saturday April 5, Avery and his flatmate, Jan Tobias Carlson, heard shooting. When the shooting stopped, the two called other activists and went to find out if anyone had been injured. According to testimony by ISM members present at the scene, Avery was standing under a streetlight and wearing a red vest with the words “doctor” on it in English and Hebrew on front and back. Four eye-witnesses said an IDF armored personnel carrier (APC) and a tank came into the street, and Avery and his companions raised their hands to show they were unarmed. The witnesses said the APC and the tank continued to approach Avery and when they were a few dozen meters away, the APC opened fire and shot about 30 bullets. Avery was hit in the face, his cheek was torn, and his eye-socket, mouth and jaw bones were smashed.

The IDF probe stated there was no proof the shooting had been by IDF soldiers.

In the petition, Avery’s attorney, Michael Sfard, said an operational investigation by the IDF was “not a reliable tool,” adding that “in a number of cases soldiers have been cleared, while the military police investigation revealed incriminating evidence and resulted in harsh indictments.”

Three months ago the High Court ordered the military advocate general to show cause why he would not open a criminal investigation into the incident.

The state responded last Thursday that the chief military prosecutor saw no reason to change the previous decision. However to remove any doubt, he decided to order a military police investigation.

The state also agreed to pay Avery’s court costs of NIS 15,000.

Sfard said “it is unfortunate that it takes three and a half years and pressure of the High Court justices for the military advocate general to order what is fair and desirable in a place where human life is not worthless. There are a few soldiers who were involved in the incident and thought the story was over. The message from the High Court is that the story is not over. Brian and I will continue to fight until the truth comes out,” Sfard said

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See also our press release into the previous Supreme Court hearing on September 20th and the resulting instruction of the Court to the IOF.

Palestinian children forced to go the long way home

by ISM Hebron, November 21st

At 11:50am: several HRWs (human rights workers) left the apartment to begin monitoring the return of Palestinian school children. The children left school with no problems. The HRWs stayed on Al Shuhada St. and monitored the area for an extended period of time in case children wanted to
play. At approx. 1pm a group of soldiers stopped in their jeep pretending they had a prisoner in the back that was screaming, the driver attempted to create friendly banter and drove away after a few minutes.

At 1:30pm on Tel Rumeida St. a settler woman came down and began to throw rocks at the children, hit two HRWs with her coat and was restrained by a male settler and soldier while a HRW escorted the remaining children away up the street.

Also this afternoon, a group of four schoolchildren encountered settler hostility while attempting to walk home by way of a path close to the Tel Rumeida settlement; the use of this path has been disputed by Tel Rumeida settlers, who often impose their will by violence against children
attempting to use this pathway. The Israeli High Court has issued an order affirming the right of the Palestinian children to use this pathway, and some do in order to avoid long walks up and down steep hills.

Around 1pm, right before the children entered the pathway, a Tel Rumeida settler, a transfer from Gaza, pulled her car between the children and the pathway, then got out of her car, stood between her white hatchback and the pathway entrance, and began yelling at the children. As the settler woman got out of her car to block the path entrance, another settler woman approached. The soldiers prohibited the children from entering and also spoke with the woman. A captain arrived and would not discuss the matter. HRWs on the scene called Machsom Watch to further assist the children getting home the quickest way. However, the children were encouraged to take the alternative, much longer route home.

At 2pm the same woman was seen in a car accelerating towards the children as they walked uphill on Tel Rumeida street. As she swerved dangerously close to them, HRWs expressed their alarm which resulted in her steering the vehicle away.