Author: ISM Media Group

Nablus Villagers Face Impediments to Olive Harvest from Israeli Soldiers

by ISM Nablus, 18th October

Qusin is a small picturesque village located in the green rolling hills just west of Nablus city and adjacent to the Israeli colony of Qedumim. Since the height of the Al-Aqsa intifada, the village has been spared overtly violent military incursions, but there are many other problems that prevent the villagers from going about their daily lives as normal.

About three months ago, a several kilometer long coil of razor-wire was put up by the Israeli military in order to prevent university students and workers from the village from reaching Nablus without being forced to suffer an arduous wait at Beit Iba checkpoint. Many of these people, especially the young men, are subjected to daily internment in a special holding-pen at the checkpoint. Claiming to be “checking” their IDs, Israeli soldiers hold them prisoner there for hours every day, sometimes confiscating their mobile phones and refusing them access to water and bathroom facilities. The same people are made to wait day after day even though the soldiers manning the checkpoint know their names and faces very well by now. If they attempt to go around the checkpoint, their taxi drivers are invariably stopped and made to wait for at least two hours as a punishment. In some cases, the military even confiscate or vandalise the cars.

The village council has requested that international solidarity workers accompany farmers to their land during the olive harvest, due to harassment from Israeli military forces. Two days ago, a couple of families with land on the far side of an Israeli bypass road and about 200 meters from Qedumim colony started harvesting their olives. As the electronic school bell rang out from the Israeli colony and the usually unmistakably positive but now so unsettling sound of children playing subsided, landowner Abu Ramsi explained the problems facing the village: “We are not afraid of the settlers. They are good people. But the soldiers always come to chase us off and prevent us from picking our olives.” Soldiers also prevent Palestinians from crossing the Israeli bypass road with their tractors, essential for transporting equipment and the harvested fruit.

The past two days have passed without incident. Military vehicles circled the area and at times stopped to watch the work from afar but did not interfere. Today, Israeli border police were driving back and forth on the settler-military only road for a while, before deciding to stop and assess the situation. One of them swung the jeep door open and looked ready to step out, when he caught sight of international solidarity workers armed with cameras and legal papers. Accompanied by peals of laughter from women of the village, he thought better of it mid-step, closed the door and drove away.

Every last olive on the far side of the bypass road has now been picked and the families continue picking on the near side to the village, where the risks are not so great. Inspired by last weekend’s generous downpour of rain, the slopes of Qusin are dotted with harvesters in colourful dresses and kerchiefs. Olives, chubby and sleek, fall onto tarpaulins and into buckets and pockets – a bumper harvest representing the coming year’s livelihood for thousands of Palestinian farmers all over the West Bank.

This year’s harvest will be far larger than last year’s, in accordance with how olive growth normally fluctuates (every two years there is a large harvest). In dire times like these, with the European boycott strangling what was left of the Palestinian economy, a full harvest is especially important. The importance of the olive harvest this year explains why farmers are expecting unusually high levels of violence, theft and other forms of sabotage from Israeli settlers and soldiers. In light of these circumstances, it is vital that as many international solidarity workers as possible make their way to Palestine to accompany farmers to their land, bear witness to the oppression facing them and make sure that every last olive is picked.

Remember, harvesting is resisting!

Two Reports From Qalandiya Checkpoint

Fifty People Detained at Qalandiya Checkpoint

from brightonpalestine.org, 16th October

I passed through Qalandiya checkpoint today on the way back to Hebron.

As the bus reached the Ramallah side of the “terminal” the passengers got out and walked towards the pedestrian gates. When I had passed the turnstiles I saw that around fifty Palestinians were waiting at the checkpoint. To get to the Jerusalem side they had to walk through another turnstile, put their possessions through a metal detector and follow instructions shouted at them from Israeli soldiers sitting behind reinforced glass. The soldiers behind the screens control whether this area is open or closed. As I entered, the area was closed and an old man was isolated between the turnstiles with the soldiers.

The soldiers behind the glass barked instructions at him in Hebrew and in English through a crackly microphone. Either the old man was hard of hearing or could not understand either of these languages. The soldiers told him to put his wallet and ID card on top of the metal detector. The confused man tried to put his things through the metal detector and was met by a shout from the soldiers.

By this time the number of people waiting to go through was increasing rapidly. The people waiting tried to shout to the man and explain to him what to do. The man became increasingly confused and tried to come closer to us so that we could explain. He was called back by the soldiers.

Eventually the man was able to do what the soldiers wanted and proceeded through the metal detector to the second set of turnstiles and to the Jerusalem side of the terminal.

The number of people waiting was still increasing but the soldiers took their time until there was a huge frustrated, angry crowd on the Ramallah side. It included a frail man, recovering from an eye operation, who got caught in the metal turnstiles as the soldiers operated them from behind the glass.

This kind of humiliation is an everyday, banal occurence at Qalandiya checkpoint for those with permits to pass through. For others, Qalandiya, flanked on either side by the apartheid wall and other checkpoints, separates them from their family and friends whilst keeping them confined in ghettos.

The Wall Must Fall

——

Inside Qalandiya Checkpoint on the 3rd Friday of Ramadan

from the Machsom Watch mailing list. by Roni H, 13th October 2006

When we arrived at 9:20 at Qalandiya and heard the shooting of tear gas and stun grenades, I called the Civil Administration’s hot line and received the succinct answer: “when Arabs run riot, the army has to shoot “.

Inside the checking area hell was breaking loose. About 600-700 densely packed Palestinians (maybe even more) and dozens of soldiers. It was difficult to breathe in the crowd that pushed against the turnstiles. The soldiers waited on the other side of the turnstiles and caught every man who looked younger than 45, checked his ID and pushed him back to the north. The impression was of a gigantic wrestling match, with the soldiers carrying clubs in addition to their usual arms. Some of the men tried six times to pass and six times they were sent back. Even to those who were already 44 no “discount” was given.

The uproar was enormous when the loudspeakers announced at 9:30 that “only women and man above 45 can pass. Permits are not valid because of the closure”. Several men turned to me, shouting excitedly: “Yesterday they announced in the media that men over 40 and holders of entry permits to Israel will be able to get through and now, when we have come all the way from Nablus and have passed 6 checkpoints they change the rules!”, “Is this the way you respect freedom of religion?”, “What do I have an entry permit for, when they do not respect it when there is closure. More that half of the year there is closure!”, “Only once a year we want to pray at the Al Aqsa mosque and also this is forbidden! Why is a man of thirty excluded from the prayer?”, “Is this the way you want to make peace?”, “We’ll never forgive you for not letting us pray at the holy mosque in Ramadan”. I could ! sense a wave of hatred rolling through the crowd.

When I heard the midday [Israeli] news later that day, I could not believe my ears: “Men over 40 and holders of entry permits were allowed into Jerusalem.”

The “waiting room” was crowded with hundreds of people, when at 10:00 about 20 border policemen entered, positioned themselves along the back side of the room and tried to push the younger men out of the checkpoint area. Some of them pretended to be on their way out, but made instead a fast U-turn and returned behind the soldiers.

A man with an eight year old child told me that his 10 year old has been lost and that he might be already on the other side waiting for him. I tried to call somebody from the police (although it was useless under this circumstances and it was impossible to hear one’s own voice) but realized that now I have lost this man in the crowd and could not find him again.

Because of the jostle, women could not get to the turnstiles and gathered at the left side of the fence separating the waiting from the checking area. We tried all together to call the attention of the soldiers so that they will give them an alternative way to pass through. Women in wheelchairs and women with small babies were afraid to be crushed by the crowd. At last, at 10:10 a passage on the left hand side was opened for the women and quite a number of them could get through. Their teenage sons though, if they looked over 15, were sent back. Several men tried to join the women but the soldiers screamed at them and pushed them back brutally. In order to frighten the people with a terrible piercing sound the soldiers were beating the metal walls of the passage with their clubs. Nothing helped. Everyone wanted to go through. At 10:30 this passage was closed.

In the meantime, some border policemen had positioned themselves at the entrance to the waiting area and did not let anybody in who appeared to be less than 45. Time was running out. The prayers were to start at 12:00 and the way to the old city is long and rife with additional checkpoints. Even men with Jerusalem IDs could not make their way to the turnstiles where hundreds of people were still crowded. They did not give up hope that at the last moment the gates to Jerusalem will be opened. To express their protest against the holdup they broke out into the chant “God is the greatest”.

Twenty border policemen came menacingly from one man to the other and checked their IDs. When they came across a male younger than 45 they tried to push them out of the checkpoint area – without much success. The men were adamant. Outside, a cordon of soldiers alongside the parking lot prevented the entry of additional Palestinians. Nevertheless there were men who got through the cordon and then through the entrance check and then even through the first turnstile only in order to be sent back at the last station! The anger was growing. “Israel understands only force and violence!”, “Just imagine that only one of all these thousands of people will loose his nerves and become violent!”. At 11:15 three shots were heard from outside. Because of the late hour some people were left frustrated and sad. At 11:30 a group of about 30 soldiers started again to beat against the metal walls of the waiting room, making a frightening noise and to swing their clubs over the heads of the people. Followed by the threatening soldiers they ran out in fear from the blows. All of a sudden the checkpoint was empty.

Next Friday, the last one in Ramadan, the unequal battle between civilians whose only desire is to pray at the Al-Aqsa mosque and the Israeli army who want to control the religious life of the Palestinians, will be even more vehement.

Israeli military refuses treatment for injured Palestinian journalist they hold


Photo of Emad filming the demonstration in Bil’in on Friday 2nd June 2006. Emad is on the left with the baseball cap and high-vis jacket. Click cropped image above for full image.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Emad Bornat, the Bil’in cameraman seized by the Israeli military after a demonstration on October 6th, remains in detention after military judge Dahan postponed his decision on Emad’s release yesterday. The judge ordered that Emad receive immediate medical treatment after the Israeli military had refused to carry out the instructions of an earlier judge to have Emad seen by a doctor. At a hearing on October 10th the judge ordered an investigation into the serious head injuries Emad suffered after capture, as reported by Haaretz last week. Emad still has stitches above the corner of his left eye, which the military maintain was caused by equipment falling on him in the jeep.

Emad has now spent 12 days in detention and is charged with throwing stones at soldiers with one hand whilst simultaneously filming with the other. A judge ordered Emad’s release last week but the Israeli military appealed the decision and demanded conditions on his bail. These conditions were discussed in court yesterday with the military prosecutor arguing that Emad was too ‘dangerous’ to be released before his trial, which is likely to be next week. The judge’s decision on Emad’s release will be tomorrow at 4pm.

For more information:

Mohammed Khatib, Bil’in Anti-wall Popular Committee: 054 557 3285
Attorney Gaby Laski: 054 441 8988
Israeli video-journalist Shai Polack: 054 533 3364
ISM Media office: 02 297 1824

“Those are the rules” in Tel Rumeida

by ISM Hebron, October 17th

At 12.35pm two soldiers asked a Human Rights Worker (HRW) sitting opposite checkpoint 56 (the main entrance in and out of the Israeli controled H2 part of Hebron) to not watch the soldiers at the checkpoint and to move up the hill away from the checkpoint. The HRW refused to do this and the soldiers then rather strangely asked the HRW to move over to the other side of the road. The HRW did this, as this position is actually closer to the checkpoint and affords a better view of both the soldiers and the Palestinians passing through.

At 3pm on Shuhada Street, a HRW said “good afternoon” to two passing soldiers who were walking past. One of the soldiers responded by coming up to the HRW and very aggressively kicking the door to a Palestinian house close to the HRW’s face. He obviously found this very amusing, as he laughed loudly as he moved down the street. When the HRW asked the soldier why he had done this, the second soldier responded, “He doesn’t like you”. A few minutes later, a Palestinian man who had been walking down Shuhada Street in the opposite direction to the soldiers told the HRW that the aggressive soldier had told the second soldier that he should hit the Palestinian man in order to make the HRW take a photograph.

At roughly 4pm, four Israeli border police and a regular Israeli policeman walked down Shuhada Street from Beit Hadassah settlement, one pausing to look at the HRW stationed there and to peer into her bag. The soldiers then stopped at checkpoint 56 and started stopping most young Palestinian men who passed through the checkpoint into Tel Rumeida and taking their ID cards to be checked. This continued until 5.05pm when the border police left. During this hour and 5 minutes, between 20 and 30 Palestinians were detained and had to wait in a line by the side of the road for their IDs to be returned to them. This took between 10 minutes and half an hour at a time when the Palestinians were making their way home for their evening meal after having been fasting all day for Ramadan. One man was kept for longer than the others – roughly 35 minutes. At one point during this detention, a border policeman asked the man his name, got his ID from the policeman who was holding it, waved in the man’s face, then gave it back to the policeman so that the detention could continue. At one point, the Palestinian obviously got fed up with waiting and stood up to leave, but was prevented from doing so by the border police until they were finished with his ID. When a HRW asked one of the border policemen why they had done the ID checks at this particular time of the day, he answered, “Those are the rules”.

At 8pm a man was detained for walking past the Tel Rumeida (Eli Yishei) settlement. The man was new to the area and did not know about the army restrictions on using the road. One soldier, at the Tel Rumeida guardpost, was agitated and gesticulated with his gun.

The Great Experiment

by Uri Avnery, October 14th

IS IT possible to force a whole people to submit to foreign occupation by starving it?

That is, certainly, an interesting question. So interesting, indeed, that the governments of Israel and the United States, in close cooperation with Europe, are now engaged in a rigorous scientific experiment in order to obtain a definitive answer.

The laboratory for the experiment is the Gaza Strip, and the guinea pigs are the million and a quarter Palestinians living there.

IN ORDER to meet the required scientific standards, it was necessary first of all to prepare the laboratory.

That was done in the following way: First, Ariel Sharon uprooted the Israeli settlements that were stuck there. After all, you can’t conduct a proper experiment with pets roaming around the laboratory. It was done with “determination and sensitivity”, tears flowed like water, the soldiers kissed and embraced the evicted settlers, and again it was shown that the Israeli army is the most-most in the world.

With the laboratory cleaned, the next phase could begin: all entrances and exits were hermetically sealed, in order to eliminate disturbing influences from the world outside. That was done without difficulty. Successive Israeli governments have prevented the building of a harbor in Gaza, and the Israeli navy sees to it that no ship approaches the shore. The splendid international airport, built during the Oslo days, was bombed and shut down. The entire Strip was closed off by a highly effective fence, and only a few crossings remained, all but one controlled by the Israeli army.

There remained a sole connection with the outside world: the Rafah border crossing to Egypt. It could not just be sealed off, because that would have exposed the Egyptian regime as a collaborator with Israel. A sophisticated solution was found: to all appearances the Israeli army left the crossing and turned it over to an international supervision team. Its members are nice guys, full of good intentions, but in practice they are totally dependent on the Israeli army, which oversees the crossing from a nearby control room. The international supervisors live in an Israeli kibbutz and can reach the crossing only with Israeli consent.

So everything was ready for the experiment.

THE SIGNAL for its beginning was given after the Palestinians had held spotlessly democratic elections, under the supervision of former President Jimmy Carter. George Bush was enthusiastic: his vision of bringing democracy to the Middle East was coming true.

But the Palestinians flunked the test. Instead of electing “good Arabs”, devotees of the United States, they voted for very bad Arabs, devotees of Allah. Bush felt insulted. But the Israeli government was ecstatic: after the Hamas victory, the Americans and Europeans were ready to take part in the experiment. It could start:

The United States and the European Union announced the stoppage of all donations to the Palestinian Authority, since it was “controlled by terrorists”. Simultaneously, the Israeli government cut off the flow of money.

To understand the significance of this: according to the “Paris Protocol” (the economic annex of the Oslo agreement) the Palestinian economy is part of the Israeli customs system. This means that Israel collects the duties for all the goods that pass through Israel to the Palestinian territories – actually, there is no other route. After deducting a fat commission, Israel is obligated to turn the money over to the Palestinian Authority.

When the Israeli government refuses to pass on this money, which belongs to the Palestinians, it is, simply put, robbery in broad daylight. But when one robs “terrorists”, who is going to complain?

The Palestinian Authority – both in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip – needs this money like air for breathing. This fact also requires some explanation: in the 19 years when Jordan occupied the West Bank and Egypt the Gaza Strip, from 1948 to 1967, not a single important factory was built there. The Jordanians wanted all economic activity to take place in Jordan proper, east of the river, and the Egyptians neglected the strip altogether.

Then came the Israeli occupation, and the situation became even worse. The occupied territories became a captive market for Israeli industry, and the military government prevented the establishment of any enterprise that could conceivably compete with an Israeli one.

The Palestinian workers were compelled to work in Israel for hunger wages (by Israeli standards). From these, the Israeli government deducted all the social payments levied on Israeli workers, without the Palestinian workers enjoying any social benefits. This way the government robbed these exploited workers of tens of billions of dollars, which disappeared somehow in the bottomless barrel of the government.

When the intifada broke out, the Israeli captains of industry and agriculture discovered that it was possible to get along without the Palestinian workers. Indeed, it was even more profitable. Workers brought in from Thailand, Romania and other poor countries were ready to work for even lower wages and in conditions bordering on slavery. The Palestinian workers lost their jobs.

That was the situation at the beginning of the experiment: the Palestinian infrastructure destroyed, practically no means of production, no work for the workers. All in all, an ideal setting for the great “experiment in hunger”.

THE IMPLEMENTATION started, as mentioned, with the stoppage of payments.

The passage between Gaza and Egypt was closed in practice. Once every few days or weeks it was opened for some hours, for appearances’ sake, so that some of the sick and dead or dying could get home or reach Egyptian hospitals.

The crossings between the Strip and Israel were closed “for urgent security reasons”. Always, at the right moment, “warnings of an imminent terrorist attack” appeared. Palestinian agricultural products destined for export rot at the crossing. Medicines and foodstuffs cannot get in, except for short periods from time to time, also for appearances, whenever somebody important abroad voices some protest. Then comes another “urgent security warning” and the situation is back to normal.

To round off the picture, the Israeli Air Force bombed the only power station in the Strip, so that for a part of the day there is no electricity, and the water supply (which depends on electric pumps) stops also. Even on the hottest days, with temperatures of over 30 degrees centigrade in the shade, there is no electricity for refrigerators, air conditioning, the water supply or other needs.

In the West Bank, a territory much larger than the Gaza Strip (which makes up only 6% of the occupied Palestinian territories but holds 40% of the inhabitants), the situation is not quite so desperate. But in the Strip, more than half of the population lives beneath the Palestinian “poverty line”, which lies of course very, very far below the Israeli “poverty line”. Many Gaza residents can only dream of being considered poor in the nearby Israeli town of Sderot.

What are the governments of Israel and the US trying to tell the Palestinians? The message is clear: You will reach the brink of hunger, and even beyond, if you do not surrender. You must remove the Hamas government and elect candidates approved by Israel and the US. And, most importantly: you must be satisfied with a Palestinian state consisting of several enclaves, each of which will be utterly dependent on the tender mercies of Israel.

AT THE moment, the directors of the scientific experiment are pondering a puzzling question: how on earth do the Palestinians still hold out, in spite of everything? According to all the rules, they should have been broken long ago!

Indeed, there are some encouraging signs. The general atmosphere of frustration and desperation creates tension between Hamas and Fatah. Here and there clashes have broken out, people were killed and wounded, but in each case the deterioration was halted before it became a civil war. The thousands of hidden Israeli collaborators are also helping to stir things up. But contrary to all expectations, the resistance did not evaporate. Even the captured Israeli soldier has not been released.

One of the explanations has to do with the structure of Palestinian society. The Hamulah (extended family) plays a central role there. As long as one person in the family is working, the relatives, too, do not die of hunger, even if there is widespread malnutrition. Everyone who has any income shares it with all his brothers and sisters, parents, grandparents, cousins and their children. That is a primitive system, but quite effective in such circumstances. It seems that the planners of the experiment did not take this into account.

In order to quicken the process, the whole might of the Israeli army is now being used again, as from this week. For three months the army was busy with the Second Lebanon War. It became apparent that the army, which for the last 39 years has been employed mainly as a colonial police force, does not function very well when suddenly confronted with a trained and armed opponent that can fight back. Hizbullah used deadly anti-tank weapons against the armored forces, and rockets rained down on Northern Israel. The army has long ago forgotten how to deal with such an enemy. And the campaign did not end well.

Now the army returns to the war it knows. The Palestinians in the Strip do not (yet) have effective anti-tank weapons, and the Qassam rockets cause only limited damage. The army can again use tanks against the population without hindrance. The Air Force, which in Lebanon was afraid to send in helicopters to remove the wounded, can now fire missiles at the houses of “wanted persons”, their families and neighbors, at leisure. If in the last three months “only” 100 Palestinians were killed per month, we are now witnessing a dramatic rise in the number of Palestinians killed and wounded.

How can a population that is hit by hunger, lacking medicaments and equipment for its primitive hospitals and exposed to attacks on land, from sea and from the air, hold out? Will it break? Will it go down on its knees and beg for mercy? Or will it find inhuman strength and stand the test?

In short: What and how much is needed to get a population to surrender?

All the scientists taking part in the experiment – Ehud Olmert and Condoleezza Rice, Amir Peretz and Angela Merkel, Dan Halutz and George Bush, not to mention Nobel Peace Price laureate Shimon Peres – are bent over the microscopes and waiting for an answer, which undoubtedly will be an important contribution to political science.

I hope the Nobel Committee is watching.