Protesters shut down the Brighton, UK, arms factory EDO-MBM in the early hours of September 21st. Using barrels filled with concrete and bicycle locks they closed all the gates to the factory, effectively stopping anyone from entering the building.
EDO MBM manufactures weapons components for the Israeli army, who slaughtered over a thousand Lebanese civilians this summer and who are engaged in a murderous assault on the people of Gaza. Andrew Beckett, press spokesperson for the campaign said ‘we have shut down this factory so that it cannot go on producing armaments to be used against the people of Gaza. We will keep on causing disruption to the factory until it closes down permanently’.
The workers began arriving at around 6am. By 7.30 there were over 100 workers with their cars outside the factory. They were met by protesters who used megaphones to make the workers listen to details of the carnage that their weapons wrought in Gaza, Lebanon and Iraq.
Later that morning the protesters bore witness to the surreal sight of the managing director, Paul Hills, having to climb the fence of the factory in order to get inside. He then returned brandishing an angle grinder, which he instructed an employee to use to cut a hole in the company’s own fence through which employees were eventually able to get inside the factory.
The factory was completely blockaded from 6am to 9.30am, stopping production for several hours. Having achieved this aim, the blockaders decided to unlock themselves before the police intervened. There were no arrests.
Smash EDO demonstrate every Wednesday at EDO MBM, Home Farm Road from 4pm to 6pm.
See smashedo.org.uk or contact smashedo@hotmail.com for more details of the campaign.
The masses of Israelis who regularly travel to Jerusalem via Modi’in are familiar with the large cement cubes near the signs that indicate the approach roads to the Palestinian villages on either side of the main road known as Highway 443. Anyone who bothers to look to the sides will be able to see, beyond the cubes, at the side of the ride, cars bearing Palestinian Authority license plates. Those who have sharp eyes will be able to descry the passengers climbing up and down the hills.
Few are aware that for six years now, ever since the outbreak of the intifada, the highway has been serving Israelis only. Palestinians are forbidden to travel even along the segment that is nine and a half kilometers long and passes through West Bank territory, including lands that have been confiscated and where trees have been cut down “for public needs.” Israel Defense Forces soldiers ensure that only lucky people who have been granted a temporary permit can enjoy the shortcut.
Now it emerges that there is no order that can give legal validity to discrimination among travels according to nationality. In reply to a question from Haaretz, the IDF Spokesman has confirmed that “in light of the many security risks and threats to traffic on Highway 443 in recent years, it was decided in the Israel Defense Forces Central Command to close several approach roads that connect directly from the village expanse to the highway.” At the same time, the spokesman stresses that “no order has been issued that prohibits travel on the highway,” and in any case, “there is no prohibition on the part of the IDF regarding Palestinian traffic on the segment of the highway located in the territories of the Judea and Samaria [West Bank] area.” Nevertheless, in the same statement in which it is claimed that “there is no prohibition regarding Palestinian traffic on the Palestinian segment of the road,” it is also stated that because of the security risks, some of the approach roads that link the villages to the highway are closed “permanently.”
According to the statement, some of the other roads are open and “are closed in accordance with the assessment of the security situation.”
Attorney Limor Yehuda of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI), who is preparing a petition to the High Court of Justice on the matter, sees the situation differently. According to her, most of the roads are usually closed, and from time to time special permission to use the road is given to a limited number of cars. Some of the approach roads have been blocked with boulders, others with concrete barriers, and there are those that have been closed with iron gates. A Palestinian driver who is caught on the road can expect a lengthy delay, a warning and a scare, and sometimes even the confiscation of the keys to the vehicle and also harsher sanctions. Last May ACRI applied to the GOC Central Command, Yair Naveh, on behalf of the heads of the village councils of Beit Sira, Beit Likiyeh, Hirbet al-Masbah, Beit ‘Ur al Tahta, Beit ‘Ur al Fuqa and Tsaffeh. Yehuda noted that Highway 443 is the main approach road that links the 25,000 inhabitants of the six villages to the main city in the area, Ramallah, and serves as a link among these villages.
A month later people from the Civil Administration came to the village of Beit Sira and proposed to the council head, ‘Ali Abu Tsafya, that transit permits be granted to a number of taxi owners from the village. He insisted that the highway be opened to all of the inhabitants of the village, as had been the case in the past. The visitors promised to organize a meeting with one of the responsible senior officers. Since then no one has called and Major General Naveh has not replied to the letter.
Yehuda wrote that following the blockage of the approach to the highway, the inhabitants have had to use back roads, some of them dirt roads, that pass through the villages and wind through the narrow lanes. As a result of this, trips in the area have become prolonged, dangerous and costly. Instead of a trip of a quarter of an hour in comfortable conditions on Highway 443 from the village of Beit Sira to Betunya and from there to Ramallah, the inhabitants have to wind their way along dirt roads that become impassable on winter days. The cost of the trip has more than doubled and many of the inhabitants of the villages are unable to bear the costs.
This is not a matter of preventing Palestinians from entering territories on the Israeli side of the Green Line (the pre-Six Day War border), but rather of a road that is located entirely in the area of the West Bank. At the two entrances to the territory of the state of Israel there are roadblocks that are permanently manned by soldiers (the Maccabim roadblock and the Atarot Junction roadblock). When lands of the six villages were confiscated in the 1980s and the 1990s, it was explained to the inhabitants that widening the road was essential for the needs of the inhabitants of the entire area. Including their needs, of course. In response to the petition to the High Court of Justice concerning the confiscation of lands for purposes of paving a road in the Ramallah area, the state argued that the planning “took into account the conditions and needs of the area and not only Israel’s conditions and needs.” Based on that principled commitment, Justice Aharon Barak rejected the petition in September 1983, and issued a ruling in principle that the rules of international public law grant the right to a military government to infringe on property rights if a number of conditions are fulfilled. The first of these conditions: “The step is taken for the benefit of the local population.”
At approximately 2pm on September 24th, human rights workers (HRWs) in Tel Rumeida discovered that there were six Israeli soldiers occupying an uninhabited floor of a Palestinian family’s home.
When asked by HRWs what they were doing there, the soldiers replied they were “observing”. However, most of their time was spent giving monologues to the camera in Hebrew, lounging around on the floor of the apartment, dancing, and singing loudly and making a nuisance of themselves for the unhappy families living below.
After about an hour of antics and showing off for the camera, the soldiers left.
Searching for weapons?
The family told HRWs that the soldiers come frequently to use the roof and the top floor of the house as an observation post and have shot at nearby houses from the roof in the past.
Defending the state of Israel?
HRWs noticed members of TIPH* outside the house as they left, following the soldiers.
* Temporary International Presence in Hebron, the non-UN civilian observation organisation brought to Hebron after the Ibrahimi Mosque massacre in 1994. For more information see their website: http://www.tiph.org
September 23, 2006: As we walk away down the craggy biblical landscape, she turns around to wag her finger at him and say “Remember? It is no defence to say you were only following orders”. The soldier looks perplexed and puts his hands out, letting his gun hang down from its strap. He looks like he’s struggling to find an appropriate reply – the insult of her words, echoing the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem, hitting him hard.
The soldier, an Officer, is guarding a military outpost adjacent to the colonial settlement named Susiya. The woman, a representative of Ta’ayush, an Israeli anti-occupation group, is visiting the Palestinian villagers in the area with activists from the Palestine Solidarity Project (PSP). On Monday, soldiers from this outpost accompanied seven young armed settlers to the home of an elderly couple where they watched as the settlers pushed, taunted and beat the old man and woman with sticks.
This happened four days ago but the officer on guard says that it is impossible. “It could not have happened. If I find out about any of my soldiers doing a thing like that, I will beat his ass. I will break his bones.” Nevertheless, Haj Khalil’s legs are now sore and swollen from the beating, one of the bones in his calf fractured. His wife buries her head in her hands as he talks, punctuating his sentences with nods and sighs of despair.
“It is very important for us to have internationals here. They must be here always. Otherwise they will come again,” says Haj Khalil. Ta’ayush, PSP and Christian Peacemaker Teams in Hebron are planning to co-operate on creating a permanent international presence in the area. The villagers, dotted about on the arid slopes of the Susiya valley, only a few solar cell panels and home-made TV antennas interrupting the landscape of traditionally Bedouin homesteads made up of tents, goat pens and snarling watchdogs, which all regularly fall victim to settler aggression and military complicity.
Furthermore, the villagers have been unable to tend to or even visit their olive groves for several years. The trees surround an Israeli military base, one grove right next to a field used by the soldiers for shooting practice. Among the trees lie discarded result charts, shot-through pieces of paper evidence of how soldiers learn to “zero in” on their targets. The military want the entire area from the Susiya settlement to the large town of Yatta to be evacuated of the whole Palestinian civilian population, to make it what Israel calls a “free fire zone.” This process has been frozen due to the resolute non-violent resistance of the Palestinians living in the area, but is legally difficult to challenge since Israeli courts generally do not meddle with what they regard as being ‘professional assessments’ by military experts on issues of security.
The colonists in Susiya, who arrived in the mid-80s around the same time that many Palestinian families were forced to move from their cave homes nearby to make way for Israeli archaeological excavations, did not approach the villagers today. They stood by the soldiers, their white clothing contrasting with the drab military uniforms and red earth. Their little girls wore long skirts and colourful ribbons in their hair, playing with a pet dog as they skipped back to the settlement. Haj Khalil, leaning on his walking-stick, shook his head in silence.
The Palestinian villagers of Susiya all have their own stories to tell about the fathers and brothers of these little settler girls. Most of them have bruises or scars to support their accounts of hooded men setting their tents on fire in the middle of the night, cracking their skulls open with the butts of their rifles or slashing their arms with a knife. All of them have learned that the official Israeli military policy stating that soldiers should protect both Palestinians and Israeli settlers is a sham – that while the Israeli military may sit and bond over a glass of wine with the settlers, they come to Susiya only to watch the oppression unfurl.
Devoid of protection from both the legal and military institutions of Israeli society, the Bedouin people of Susiya are left to fend for themselves, and therefore call on the support of Palestinian, international and Israeli solidarity initiatives. The villagers remain determined to continue living as they have always done, and each new breath, each stone overturned, each drop of goat’s milk bears witness to the steadfastness of their resistance.
Meanwhile, pursuing a policy of discrimination against Bedouin in the Negev, an Israeli court has rejected a request for unrecognised Bedouin villages to be connected to clean water sources. This is clearly part of Israeli state policy to ethnically transfer the Bedouin population from their land in both the South Hebron hills and 1948 land.
——-
Court rejects Bedouin villages’ request for clean water connection
Haifa district court last week rejected a petition to connect the unrecognized Bedouin villages in the Negev to clean water sources, citing the larger underlying issue of village regularization.
In its session as a water court, the court ruled that the water commissioner has no authority over considerations pertaining to town regularization in Israel, and therefore rejected to appeal by the Adalah Legal Center on behalf of over 100 Negev families.
The Adalah Center plans on appealing the decision with the Supreme Court. They said there is no connection between realizing the basic right all state residents to clean water and the legal standing of the Negev towns.
In the appeal filed by the organization against the water commissioner, it claimed that the right for a guarantee of minimal sustenance conditions is anchored in Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty, as well as in international law.
Even so, Judge Ron Shapira stated in his decision that behind the appeal lies a larger issue of the regularization of “Bedouin settlements,” and added that a public interest exists “not to encourage additional illegal settlement.”
The court ruled that it does not ignore the problem of discrimination against the Bedouin residents, but that in the court’s opinion, the problem of unrecognized villages cannot be resolved in this manner.
The Adalah Center said the ruling meant that the court decided the right to water is not absolute and can therefore be limited.
“The court’s decision in effect makes the water commissioner a tool in the hands of the government, which works to expel Arab-Bedouin citizens, residents of unrecognized villages in the Negev, through the non-provision of basic services, such as the right to clean drinking water,” the center said.
The appeal against the commissioner’s decision was submitted in April 2005, and the ruling on the matter was delivered to the Adalah Center offices last Thursday.
UPDATE, 27th of September: By now the sign has been practically destroyed by Israeli colonist settlers. The plan to build the hotel is going ahead.
UPDATE, 12.30 am: The villagers of Bil’in have successfully inaugurated their project to build a hotel on their land in the illegal settlement. A sign detailing their plans was erected and the foundation stone laid. No-one was detained or arrested. As of this writing, the sign is still standing.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
This morning at 10 am, residents of Bil’in, the Palestinian village that has become the very symbol of non-violent resistance to the Israeli occupation announced their intention to build a hotel on land belonging to the village, but occupied by Israel. Villagers erected a 5×3 meter sign-post advertising the forthcoming hotel called ‘Falastin’, and intend to submit a planning application to the Israeli Civil Administration which is responsible for civilian matters on occupied Palestinian land.
The village land is behind the illegal apartheid barrier that the Israeli military has enforced on the village. The sign has been erected in the illegal settlement of Matityahu East near to the apartments Bil’in villagers tried to move into in July, and the project was inaugurated with the laying of a foundation stone.
In a similar way to Bil’in villagers’ attempt back in July to legally move into an apartment building in the Israeli settlement, this measure is both symbolic and practical. The intention is genuinely to build a hotel on the land. At the same time, the action is being undertaken to highlight the apartheid nature of the Israeli legal system. The Israeli Supreme Court issued an injunction forbidding the occupation of apartments in the Matityahu East settlement as this land was stolen from Bil’in through fraudulent land purchases – the affidavit affirming the transfer of ownership was signed by an attorney representing the settlers, instead of by the head of Bil’in, as is required. However, Jewish settlers have been moving into apartments in Matityahu East in defiance of the Supreme Court and with the complicity of the police and military.
In stark contrast to this treatment of settlers, during the attempted move-in in July, after the Bil’in arrvived in the empty apartments in Matityahu East, the military declared the area a closed military zone and Border Police forcibly evicted the families and removed them to the other side of the apartheid wall.
In July the Israeli Supreme Court ordered the construction company responsible for the expansion of the illegal settlement to demolish two partial structures, restore some of the land to its previous pre-colonial agricultural state and build an access road for Bil’in villagers. The company demolished the structures last month in order to boost their chances of gaining retrospective permission for the other apartments built illegally, but no attempt has yet been made to fulfill the other parts of the court’s decision.
For more information contact:
Popular Committee Members:
Abdullah Abu-Rahme: 054 725 8210
Mohammed Katib: 054 5573285
Iyad Burnat: 054 784 7942
Yonatan Pollack: 054 623 7736
ISM Media office: 02 297 1824 or 0599 943 157
