Author: ISM Media Group

Armed Israeli Colonists Move Freely While Army Restricts Palestinian Movement

by ISM Hebron and Tel Rumeida Project

For video evidence from this day: click here to view or click here to download. A description of each part of the video is at the end of this report.

At 1.30pm on Sunday 8th October 2006, soldiers closed the main checkpoint into Tel Rumeida, Hebron (checkpoint 56) to all people wanting to enter H1 (the part of Hebron under Palestinian Authority control). Pedestrian traffic in the opposite direction was not restricted. International Human Rights Workers (HRWs) approached the soldiers who would not give a reason for the closure other than “it is Succot” (a Jewish holiday). Palestinians wishing to pass through the checkpoint were told to climb the steep hill of Tel Rumeida and enter H1 via another checkpoint instead, regardless of the lengthy detour that this would involve. Soldiers also informed Palestinians that the checkpoint would remain closed until 7pm.

Twenty-four soldiers then passed through the checkpoint into H1 where they ordered the closure of shops, diverted traffic (causing gridlock in Hebron for much of the afternoon) and took a sniffer dog around parts of the city centre. Soldiers roamed around in H1 for no apparent reason and would not make any comments about why they were in parts of the city that had not been ordered closed.

At 3.30pm a large group of settlers and pro-settler tourists came to the H2 (the area of Hebron formally controlled by the Israeli army and police) side of the checkpoint and deliberately obstructed the path of Palestinians entering H2 for several minutes, refusing to stand aside when asked. This group were then allowed to pass through the checkpoint without being searched, while throughout the day Palestinians had been subject to unusually rigorous bag checks. Despite having their own private armed guards, the settlers and tourists were accompanied by over 30 soldiers and police officers. Soldiers later informed HRWs that the tourists had come to Hebron to visit the Cave of Otniel Ben-Knaz, which is located within the ground floor of a private Palestinian house in H1. Meanwhile in H1, HRWs witnessed the tourists making “victory” signs to the Palestinians they passed.

At 4pm the tourists and soldiers returned to checkpoint 56 and most continued along Al Shuhada Street to the Beit Hadassah settlement. Shortly afterwards, soldiers fired tear gas at Palestinians on the H1 side of the checkpoint after a small crowd had begun throwing stones and letting off fireworks. The checkpoint was then reopened and remained open for the rest of the afternoon. A small group of tourists later came to the checkpoint to take photographs of the HRWs and to tell them to “get the fuck out of Israel”.

* The video shows the following: First section: Palestinians are denied access through a checkpoint because Israeli settlers are present. Second section: border policeman drops a tear gas canister. Third section: soldiers emerge from a street they have closed off and invade the rest of the city. Fourth section: soldiers give no reason for what they are doing in the city center.

11th October. The video links to this post previously pointed to the wrong video. This has now been fixed.

Six-hundred people attend landmark conference in Toronto

Coalition against Israeli Apartheid, October 9th

Over 600 people attended the landmark conference, Boycotting Israeli Apartheid: The Struggle Continues, held from 6-8 October in Toronto, Canada. The conference represents a watershed moment in the Palestinian solidarity movement, with leading anti-apartheid activists from Palestine, South Africa, Canada and England addressing the way forward in the global campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions.

Jamal Juma’, coordinator of the Stop the Wall Campaign in Palestine, told the opening night that the burgeoning boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement represents a powerful and practical act of solidarity with the Palestinian struggle. He emphasized that this movement would succeed as it had in South Africa, “We promise you we will not give up. We will stand firm on our land; Israeli apartheid will fall.”

Salim Vally, chair of the Palestine Solidarity Committee in South Africa, gave a powerful analysis of Israeli apartheid and its resemblance to the South African situation. He stressed that the solidarity movement to isolate the South African apartheid regime was built by grassroots and popular forces organized throughout the world. That same challenge faces the Palestinian boycott, divestment and sanctions movement today.

Betty Hunter, General Secretary of the UK Palestine Solidarity Campaign, and Jonathan Rosenhead, Emeritus Professor at the London School of Economics and member of the British Committee for Universities in Palestine, spoke to the conference on the lessons of Palestine solidarity work in England. Discussions focused on the boycott campaign launched by British academics against Israeli apartheid as well as the growing support amongst British trade unionists for a BDS campaign.

The conference was organized by the Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid (CAIA), a broad movement formed in response to the call by 171 Palestinian civil-society organizations in July 2005 for the international community to implement a comprehensive boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) strategy against apartheid Israel as the focal point of solidarity efforts with the Palestinian people.

The conference developed a detailed program to move the BDS campaign forward in different sectors. Over 75 people attended a lively session on labor and the campaign against Israeli apartheid, in which veteran anti-apartheid activists from the South African struggle presented lessons on how to build support for the campaign among workers and in trade unions. A Canada-wide student network was launched to deepen the BDS movement on campuses across the country. Individuals from different areas throughout Toronto formed neighborhood committees to carry the campaign forward at a local level. Workshops were also held on media, research, art and cultural boycott, and faith-based communities.

Robert Lovelace, Co-Chief of the Ardoch Algonquin First Nation, closed the conference with a powerful comparison of the experience of colonialism in Canada and Palestine. He expressed his solidarity with the Palestinian movement for self-determination, and pledged to continue to strengthen the links between indigenous activists in Canada and the Palestine solidarity
movement.

To become involved in the campaign against Israeli apartheid, contact CAIA at endapartheid@riseup.net or visit their website: http://www.caiaweb.org

Palestinian Resident of Hebron Detained for Sitting on the Street

by ISM Hebron

On Saturday the 7th of October at 2pm about ten Israeli settlers, aged 15 to 20, harassed Palestinians on the hill above Beit Hadassah settlement in Tel Rumeida, Hebron. Palestinians were afraid to go home and international human right workers observing were attacked by settlers who tried to push the video camera out of the hands of one activist. An Israeli human right worker who came for the weekend translated their conversation. Settlers were talking about the inconvenience of human rights workers having a video camera, and their faces on tape, if they wanted to beat them up. The settlers were standing on the hill, harassing Palestinians, for about forty minutes and then left only to come back on Shuhada street twenty minutes later, causing problems for human rights workers sitting on the side of the street. The settlers were screaming that human rights workers are Nazis generally and behaved very aggressively. A settler family passed by and the son, aged five, tried to spit at the internationals which was cheerfully encouraged by his mother.

At 3.45pm a Palestinian resident named Issa Amro and three international human right workers were sitting together on Shuhada street. An Israeli police Jeep pulled up and an officer named Nabeeh Hosin demanded that Issa show him his ID. Issa complied and Nabeeh asked Issa where he lived and what he was doing sitting on Shuhada Street with the human rights workers. Issa replied he lived in the area but Nabeeh ordered him to leave. At this point, Issa got a telephone call and began speaking on the phone. Nabeeh ordered him to hang up the phone and pay attention to him and when Issa did not immediately comply, he ordered him into the back of the police Jeep. Nabeeh and his colleague got out of the jeep and grabbed Issa, violently pushing him into the back of the jeep. Seeing Issa being arrested for no good reason was totally unacceptable to the human rights workers who informed the two police officers that if they were taking Issa with them, they would also be taking them. They did not want him to be alone at the police station at the mercy of the Israeli police.

The three of them were taken to the Kiryat Arba police station where they were interrogated and suspected of “interfering with police work”. They were otherwise treated acceptably. This probably had something to do with an Israeli lawyer calling the police on their behalf and a representative from the Danish embassy arriving on the behalf of the two internationals from Denmark and Sweden. Issa was detained for four hours. The international human rights workers were detained for five and a half hours. Issa was also forced to sign a paper to ensure he’d come to an eventual trial. If he refused to sign the paper, he would have been brought to prison at once without any trial the interrogator at Kiryat Arba police station said. He confirmed during interrogations with the human rights workers that Palestinians are not allowed to sit on the street but merely permitted to walk to their homes as they are considered to be a security threat.

The Times: “Rabbi leads defence of Palestinian olive groves”

The Times of London, October 9th. by Ian Mackinnon

Editorial note: A reporter from The Times of London joined Palestinian farmers accompanied by ISM, IWPS and Rabbis for Human Rights volunteers for picking as recorded in this report on our site. His report, focusing on the Rabbis, was published in the Times and on their website, and is pasted below.

* * *

The olives are stunted, the trees in poor condition. At the top of a ladder, stripping fruit from high branches, the Palestinian farmer Omar Karni is in his element, working his way up a dusty olive grove that has been in his family for generations.

For the first time in four years, the family has been able to harvest the crop. Last time Mr Karni tried, radical Jewish settlers set fire to the tinder-dry land and beat him as he fled.

“I’m so happy to be here,” he said, stretching to reach a branch in the relentless sun. “This is my land and if I can’t come here to farm it I feel incomplete. I must do this to keep the land in my family.”

Mr Karni, 58, a Muslim, can go about his business without threat largely because of a rabbi who has co-ordinated with the Israeli Army and police to be on the spot to provide protection. Rabbi Arik Ascherman peers through binoculars towards the Har Berakha settlement near Nablus, in the West Bank, for signs of trouble. Heavily armed Israeli police patrol through the trees and an army Humvee squats across the dirt track to deter unwanted visitors.

Rabbi Ascherman, co-director of Rabbis for Human Rights, will spend the six-week olive season rising at dawn with other volunteers to put his life on the line to protect Palestinian farmers from armed Jewish settlers. Without the Jewish cleric, the farmers would be fired upon or beaten, their harvest stolen and ancient trees — some dating from Roman times — felled with chainsaws.

“This whole issue of trying to prevent the olive harvest is the ongoing struggle to get Palestinians off the land,” the rabbi said. “But if we Jews are to survive in this land we must restore hope by being here to break down the stereotypes the Palestinians have of Israelis. This is the best single thing I can do to protect my two children.”

The rabbi and his fellow volunteers — some Israeli, some foreign — will help to harvest and to police groves in 30 West Bank villages that sit cheek-by-jowl with Jewish settlements and have become flashpoints.

Last year attacks rose sharply at harvest-time, with feelings running high over Israel’s pullout from the Gaza Strip. Thousands of olive trees were cut down, others damaged, crops stolen, and several Palestinian farmers suffered serious injury at the hands of settler mobs.

Gamilah Biso, an Arabic-speaking Jewish volunteer who was brought up in Damascus, realises that her presence and that of her colleagues is vital to ensure that the olives can be harvested from the West Bank’s ten million trees to produce the 36,000 tonnes of olive oil. That accounts for one fifth of Palestinian agriculture. “If we weren’t here the farmer and his family just wouldn’t be able to come,” Ms Biso said, deftly stripping the green olives from the branches. “It would be too easy for the settlers to shoot them.”

Victory in a two-year court case brought by the rabbis and the Association for Civil Rights in Israel may help to ease tensions. It has guaranteed the farmers access to their land and obliged thearmy to protect that right. The Army recently drove away settlers who had come to steal the olives from Mr Karni’s land — yet subsequently barred the family from their 12-acre grove because they had arrived before the agreed schedule. Mr Karni’s early appearance was driven by the desperation of current Palestinian circumstances. The harvest now offers a vital economic lifeline.

“We came to raise money for the Ramadan celebrations,” he said. “No one has any stable work these days. So the harvest has become very, very important to survive. We await the harvest like we await the rain.”

Israel Arrests Bil’in Journalist

UPDATE, October 11th, 4.25pm: Emad’s attorney Gaby Laski informs us that at the appeal hearing held today, the Israeli military decided to launch an indictment against Emad. The judge will make a ruling tomorrow at 4pm.

UPDATE, October 10th: At a hearing today at Ofer military court the judge ordered Emad to be released, but the Israeli military appealed this decision and said he should be held for a further 72 hours. The judge gave the army 24 hours to mount an appeal, which will be held tomorrow.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Emad Mohammad Bornat of the village of Bil’in, video photographer for Reuters and documentary film maker, was arrested on Friday October 6th, 2006 by a Israeli Border Police unit that entered the village, firing rubber bullets and sound grenades. Emad is being held in Israeli military custody and will be brought in front of a judge at Ofer military base tomorrow Tuesday the 10th of October.

Emad, who was filming at the time, was arrested by an Israeli Border policeman. When Emad arrived at the police station in Givat Zeev, he was wounded. The Border Police soldiers claimed a radio “fell” on him in the jeep, on the way to the station. He was taken to the Hadassah – Har Hatzofim hospital and was then taken back to the police station in Givat Zeev. After he was interrogated, the police refused to view the tapes that Emad filmed. Emad is accused of “assault on an officer” and of stone throwing and was sent to the Etzion prison. Israeli Border Police have in the past been rebuked by military judges on false testimonies towards arrested Palestinian demonstrators and their Israeli supporters.

Emad has tirelessly documented the struggle of his village against the wall and settlements, and is known by many other professionals with whom he works and cooperates, giving them video material for their films and reports. He is a man of peace and a dedicated and responsible video-photo-journalist. His video footage has been broadcast throughout the world, showing the demonstrations against the wall Israel is constructing on his village’s land. It shows the routine, and often brutal, violence of the Israeli military in general and the Border Police in particular on the demonstrations, especially as used against Palestinians.

For more information:

Attorney Gaby Laski: 054 449 18988
Mohammed Khatib: 054 557 3285
Shai Polack: 054 533 3364