Author: ISM Media Group

Chaos Caused by Israeli Checkpoint

by ISM Nablus, Wednesday 1st November

At one o’clock this afternoon, the Israeli checkpoint of Beit Iba, just west of Nablus City was closed for all vehicles and pedestrians attempting to pass it. Located at a junction between the villages of Beit Iba, Quusin and Deir Sharaf, this is a central thoroughfare to and from Nablus, especially for students and workers from Jenin and its surrounding villages.

At five o’clock in the afternoon, buses and trucks were queued up in two lines which were at least 500 meters long on each side of the checkpoint. Hundreds of men, women and children, subject to orders barked out by Israeli soldiers, were continuously forced to move from behind the turnstiles into the car lane and then back again. A group of students from Tubas had been waiting for at least three hours to go to their homes. Tension was rising as finally the soldiers started to open the checkpoint, allowing a slow trickle of women and children to go through. One hummer and three soldiers blocked the entrance to the pedestrian passageway on the west side of the checkpoint, forcing people to wait in the way of the traffic which created chaos.

Three jeeps were also stationed in the middle of the junction, blocking the road for ambulances, trucks and buses that were -with difficulty- squeezing past them. At least twenty soldiers milled about, pointing their machine-guns into the crowd to enforce their conflicting orders. At one point, an international human rights worker approached an officer from the “Humanitarian Division” of the Israeli occupation forces, standing to the side seemingly observing what was going on. When asked what he thought of the situation, the soldier answered “very bad”. As the human rights worker expressed a concern that someone could be shot at any moment, the soldier nodded in agreement but said “there is nothing I can do. I am not from here”.

At about six o’clock, the checkpoint opened up completely and the men, some of whom had been waiting to pass since two o’clock, were finally allowed to pass. Three men who had been detained a few hours earlier were released and the line of vehicles started to move. As a large coach full of al-Najah students were forced to step off their bus while it was being searched, one of the girls remarked that “this gives us no time to study, or to spend time with our families. I ate here today, at the checkpoint! It will take me another hour to get home and then I must go straight to bed. And tomorrow I have to go through here again. This is not a life.”

Fortunately, no one was hurt today. Similar closures frequently take place at the more than 518 checkpoints, guarded gates and other forms of road blocks located throughout the West Bank, and often lead to injuries or even death. These restrictions on freedom of movement cripple the economy and prevent people from being able to plan their daily lives – yet another aspect of the slow genocide orchestrated by the Israeli government and sanctioned by the international community’s silence.

International Accompaniment Makes a Difference in Zawata

by ISM Nablus, Wednesday 1st November

“What do you think of this place? Isn’t is beautiful?” The woman asking the question, a mother of four polished and polite children, looks at us expectantly. What can we say? Wadi Al-Khrazey on the outskirts of the 2,000 person village of Zawata, west of Nablus city, is not an immediately attractive place. The olive groves, made up of two long rows of trees rooted in red sand, are crammed in between a military road and a slope leading up to the notoriously violent Sabatash checkpoint (named after the Palestinian security force that used to man it) with its watchtower looming ominously on the highest hilltop.

Yet by the time the blue sky has been replaced by dark clouds weighted down by rain, and the donkey has tottered up and down the hillside on his spindly legs for the fourth time, the place seemed to transform. We can see gophers scurrying among the rocks, paths carefully trampled over by two hundred years worth of hooves and sandaled feet, and gnarled trunks of trees spiraling into branches lovingly trimmed to perfection. We know now that the military street used to be a railway track planned by the British colonial administration, and that it led from cities as exotic as Damascus and Baghdad to the ports of Haifa and Jaffa. We sit on the uppermost chair-like branches sprinkling olives on the people below while three young girls squeeze into a wheelbarrow singing the latest Arabic pop hits. This is truly a beautiful place that before long has a whole history of joys and sorrows ringing in our ears.

Last Wednesday, a few families tried to start picking olives from their trees along side the military road, with jeeps and hummers speeding past every 10 minutes. After only a couple of hours, the harvesters were chased off their land. Soldiers stepped out of their hummer, screamed at the people through megaphones to leave the area and fired several rounds into the air. Frightened for their own and their children’s lives, everyone left. Since then, people have been reluctant to return to their land without international accompaniment.

Today, three families and a group of internationals harvested every last olive from the area. It would, however, be wrong to say that the work proceeded without interruption. Every time a hummer passed by, one of the younger children’s knees would involuntarily buckle. As he ducked behind a bush, his father Maher Saleh smiled at us sadly. A father’s powers of consolation scorned. And again, we did not know what to say. Only last night, Israeli forces entered the village under the protection of darkness and abducted two young men from their homes. This is a regular occurrence that, apart from being horrific in itself, completely undermines parental authority and children’s general sense of security.

Come to Palestine! There is a great need for international accompaniment during the olive harvest – supporting the sense of civil resistance that has people out in their fields every single day reclaiming their rights to their land. Together, we can try to make sure that every last olive is picked and that the children are allowed to play among the olive trees in peace, if only for a day.

Two Hour Delay for Teachers at Tel Rumeida Checkpoint

by ISM Hebron, November 1st

8:15 a.m., a human rights worker who happened to be walking through the Tel Rumeida checkpoint, discovered that 12 teachers and the headmistress from Qurtuba School were being refused entry at the checkpoint. At this time there were two observers from EAPPI present.

At 8:25, after a lot of argument, the soldiers at the checkpoint allowed the headmistress to go through in order to phone the DCO from the school. When the headmistress, Reem Sharif, returned she said that in September the teachers had also been held up every day for two hours so that the school session was almost over by the time they were allowed to pass the checkpoint. (Over the last year or so, there have been many incidents of soldiers arbitrarily preventing the teachers from reaching the school.)

Since then the teachers have been on strike. They had decided to return without salaries and were allowed through the checkpoint on Tuesday, October 31.

On the Tuesday, a settler came and spoke to the headmistress expressing anger that the school was open again. The settler asked whether the school would be open the following day and was told that it would be.

The headmistress suspects that the settler made a complaint and that is why the teachers were not allowed to pass the checkpoint.

Contacts made by the HRW:
8:45 Machsom Watch and the DCO. The DCO said he would take care of the problem. At 9:00 a.m. the police arrived and after a lot of discussion they didn’t handle the problem and drove away. AT 9:30 the DCO said the problem would be solved within a few minutes. At 9:50, Amir, an officer from the DCO, said that three of the teachers were not on the list of the teachers eligible to be allowed through. The teachers said, that no one had asked for their I.D. So then Amir and Headmistress Sharif worked on checking and amending the list.

At 10:05, the teachers had their I.Ds checked and were allowed through the checkpoint.

The original HRW program for the morning had been to meet at 9:00 a.m. at the home of a Palestinian family living near the Tel Rumeida settlement but the incident with the teacher pushed the time of meeting back to 10:15. The family members said they were ok with this. So, at 10:15 three HRWs met at the family home and spent the morning and part of the afternoon picking olives close to the military watchtower. Then they had lunch and an extended visit with the family. Two TIPH teams visited the olive picking site during the morning to make sure there was no trouble.

Olive Harvest in Tel Rumeida Interrupted by Occupation Authorities

by ISM Hebron, October 31st

At 8:00 a.m. six internationals gathered at the home of the Palestinian family that lives directly across the street from the Tel Rumeida settlement to help the family pick its olives. Settlers had stolen olives from a family tree the night before so it was imperative to harvest the olives before the settlers could make away with the remaining olives.

The internationals were joined by three members of CPT and by three observers from the EAPPI and everyone went to a parcel of family land that is adjacent to a military outpost and is in a closed military zone.

The group picked from 9 to 11 am, then the two internationals and several family members left for a meeting. Picking continued until 12:05 when four border police invaded a house near the olive grove where another family member resides. Two CPT people followed them into the house to record what was happening. The police told the CPTers to leave but CPT refused.

Then a small group of visitors on their way to the Sabeel conference was brought to the house by a CPT member in order to observe the olive picking. The army tried to prevent them visiting the house as the road leading to it has been closed by the Israeli military.

At this point, the police, who had come to the house for a purpose we don’t know, noticed the group picking olives right next to the military outpost. They challenged the olive pickers and most exited the field to enter into discussion with the police or watch what was going on. CPT gave the high court order to the police but this did not appear to affect their objections to the olive picking. Then the internationals and family members at the community meeting were called and returned. They began filming and discussing. Phone calls were made to the DCO and the captain. At 12:20 the police officer in charge said that the army captain would come and talk to the whole group but he never came. Then at 12:40 the police officer in charge left and four border police remained including two who spoke Arabic. They said they were there to protect us but in fact they were there to prevent anyone from picking the olives.

At 1 pm, a representative from B’Tselem came and he phoned the DCO. At this point two representatives of the High Commission of the Red Cross emerged into the yard through the grape vines. They were on a regular inspection patrol and heard the commotion. After them came a representative from ACRI (Association for Civil Rights in Israel). Finally a decision was conveyed to the police that only Palestinians could pick the olives. None of the internationals could work in the olive grove.

We then all went to the home of the Palestinian family whose olives were being picked as they had prepared lunch for us.

More Settler Intimidation in Nablus Olive Harvest

by ISM Nablus, 30th October

At 8am this morning two international Human Rights Workers (HRWs) accompanied a Palestinian family from the village of Azmut, just east of Nablus, to their olive groves. This land has found itself within close proximity to the illegal Israeli settlement of Elon Moreh, meaning that the family has been unable to harvest or cultivate this land for the past 8 years. Just 5 minutes after starting to harvest, a settler-operated “security” jeep pulled up a short distance further up the hill, and started screaming over a loudspeaker at the Palestinians, mainly in Hebrew with a little Arabic. One of the family told us he he had demanded that they “go back go back to [their] houses”. The villagers were visibly distressed, the village having long been subject to violence and intimidation from the settlers. With the settler in the jeep continuing to threaten us over the loudspeaker, the villagers left immediately. The two HRWs called the DCO (District Co-ordination Office, the civilian administration wing of the Israeli military in the West Bank) and asked for the Israeli police to intervene. Around 15 minutes later a border police jeep arrived and stopped next to the settler vehicle. However by this stage the villagers, accompanied by the 2 internationals, had retreated to a safe distance, and so it was not clear what the border police were going to do about the situation.

After the border police arrived the settler jeep remained where it was for about 10 minutes. There didnt seem to be much interaction between the police vehicle and the settler jeep; a police man appeared to say a few words to the settler(s) when they first arrived, but both vehicles remained next to each other on the top of the hill. The army certainly didn’t come to protect the villagers.

The villagers were unwilling to return without explicit assurances from the DCO that their protection from the Israeli settlers could be ensured.

The Palestinian family decided instead to harvest some olives out of sight of the settlement, and the rest of the day’s harvest went ahead without incident. This one family alone has 90 dunums of land which they are unable to cultivate due to the proximity of this notorious Israeli settlement, leaving them with just 60 dunums.

The settlement’s colonist residents have been known to shoot at Palestinians attempting to pick their olives, and the army is complicit in this intimidation, the family told us. They regularly refuse to allow Palestinians access to their land, in contravention to Israeli High Court rulings. We were also told of several previous incidents of the army entering the village and assaulting its residents.

The HRW’s were also shown a stream running into the village. Although it previously provided the village with much needed water, it is now heavily polluted by a factory in the Elon Moreh settlement, and its chemical stench spreads over a considerable area. Despite all the setbacks and intimidation, the villagers of Azmut refuse to leave, and will continue this year’s olive harvest as they have done for many generations.

Clarified and expanded: 6 November.