Author: ISM Media Group

Israeli Army Shoots Civillians at Checkpoint, Destroys Houses in Nablus

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

The Israeli army shot two Palestinian civillians in the legs near Nablus this morning. The Sebehtash (17th) Checkpoint between the the Nablus village of the Assiri Ashamalya and the Centre of Nablus has been closed and Nablus has been declared a closed military zone.

The army has been very vocal with racist comments abusing the people at the checkpoints verbally and not letting them past this morning. Amongst the comments were “We don’t want you Arabs here”.

The violence of the army escalated resulting in two Palestinian men being shot in the legs. The ambulance is seeing to them now but is not allowed to pass through to the hospital.

This particular incident eventuated because two men who were in a car full of people who were going to see loved ones (who were suffering injuries from a car accident they had been in today) in the Nablus hospital asked for special treatment to be allowed through the checkpoint.

The soldier they asked responded by kicking them and spitting at one of the men in his face. This man pushed the soldier back. Other soldiers gathered. They opened fire, shooting the men in the legs.

There are hundreds of people stuck at this checkpoint at the moment and the tensions is still very high. Saturdays are heavy transit days for people here in Palestine but today was particularily busy because of a Committee of Internationals Doctors who are in Nablus hospital to conduct appointments for Palestinians.

House Demolition

The army today has demolished a two story building in the center of Nablus .

The demolition has rendered the house next door in danger because the second floor of the first home has been severely structurally fractured. The army is not allowing the residents of the second home out of their house because they have called a curfew. They are currently occupying several houses in the immediate area. They have also destroyed four cars.

ISM volunteers have managed to get to the area and are currently trying to get the residents out of their house to safety. All other humanitarian groups are stuck at various checkpoints.

For more information:
Kanaan: 0599-398266
ISM media office: 02-2971824

Peace Demonstrators Beaten in Bil’in

by ISM Media Office volunteers

At today’s weekly demo against the Apartheid Wall in Bil’in soldiers attacked protesters with batons and fired rubber bullets at them from close range. Around 100 protesters including international and Israeli peace activists marching from the village mosque to the site of the Wall were confronted by lines of soldiers in riot gear at the edge of the village. Without provocation or intimidation the soldiers waded into the demonstration lashing out indiscriminately at the marchers. An American peace activist, Magan, suffered a concussion and severe bruising after being beaten on the forehead whilst Anna an American activist suffered severe hand injuries.

Demonstrators attempted to sit down but the soldiers’ repeated beating led them to disperse. An Italian and an Israeli activist were beaten so badly they had to be stretchered off to the ambulance to receive medical attention. Although injured both are now able to walk again. Palestinian non-violent activists Mansour and Saif also suffered particularly heavy beatings who later in the day arrived at the hospital for treatment. A Spanish activist and two Palestinians were arrested but released at the end of the demo suffering minor injuries.

As protesters dispersed the soldiers continued to pursue them back to the village. When Saif called for activists to avoid the soldiers’ beatings he was shot at and hit twice with rubber bullets. Not content with this level of brutality soldiers shot several more protesters with rubber bullets as they walked back to the village. Shooting Saif one more time in the back, and shooting at a group of other ISM activists. Anna in addition to her hand injury suffered one rubber bullet in the back and one in the hip. The soldiers then detained two activists but they were de-arrested by fellow activists.

The severe beatings indiscriminately given out at today’s demo continue to portray the Occupation forces’ escalation in violence against peaceful protest. The villagers of Bil’in will not be intimidated by such brutality and vow to return next week to continue their struggle against the Occupation and theft of their land.

Injuries and Arrests

  • Andrianes an Italian activist beaten badly with a baton.
  • Mansour Mansour the Palestinian ISM Campaign Coordinator was severely beaten with a baton.
  • Saif Abu Keshek the Palestinian Coordinator living in Spain was beaten with a baton and shot with 3 rubber bullets in the back and one in the leg.
  • Anna from US suffered injuries on her hand as well as 2 rubber bullets, one in the back and hip.
  • Lina from Germany suffered a rubber bullet wound on her leg.
  • Jonathon Pollack from Israel suffered severe beatings with a baton.
  • Dave from Ireland suffered beatings and a rubber bullet wound to the back.
  • Magan from US suffered harsh beatings with the baton, including one to her head, resulting in a concussion.
  • Coby from Israel suffered beatings from a baton.
  • Adeeb a Palestinian suffered beatings and was detained and later released.
  • Mohammad Khatib local Popular Committee member was detained and later released.
  • David from Catalonia was detained and later released.

Twelve Year Old Boy Shot in the Back in the Name of “Security”

by ISM Nablus

The Israeli military blocked the road to three villages south-east of Nablus city for nine hours on Thursday. Iraq Burin – a breathtakingly beautiful village of 1,000 people situated on top of a cliff from where, on a clear day one can see all the way to the Mediterranean (or “the white sea” as the villagers call it), and its bigger neighbors Tel and Sara were all isolated from one o’clock until ten o’clock, supposedly because of information received about a alleged suicide bomber. Nearby Huwarra checkpoint was also completely closed from mid afternoon as soldiers held a crowd of people at gunpoint under the red hot sun, preventing them from even entering the shaded checkpoint. Throughout the day, an American made and supplied Apache helicopter circled overhead, and soldiers with M-16s patrolled the roads and overpasses on the way to and from Nablus.

Late afternoon, a long line of cars, buses and donkeys were backed up on the winding hill-road, waiting to be allowed to pass. The 10-15 soldiers manning the flying checkpoint consisting of two hummers and one jeep – were extremely slow in checking vehicles and also very aggressive, with one constantly pacing around on the bank of earth by the side of the road, proclaiming that he hates “all Arabs” and pointing his machine gun at people in the crowd. During the checkpoint procedure, all car passengers were made to exit their vehicles, and the men were forced to pull up their shirts to show their bellies and backs from a distance to prove that they were not carrying explosives. Bags, purses, and vehicles were searched with varying degrees of thoroughness.

Earlier in the day, a 12-year old boy was, for no apparent reason, shot in the back with live ammunition. He is now being treated at Rafidia Hospital in Nablus, where they report that the bullet narrowly missed his kidney. An older man was also shot in the foot by a ricocheting bullet, right in front of the eyes of human rights workers. Upon returning from hospital with his foot bandaged and painful, he was only allowed to pass through the checkpoint after long negotiation.

Despite the apparent danger, young boys scuttled back and forth through the checkpoint fetching water from a nearby well for the people waiting in the Palestinian midday heat. One man was especially grateful, having been forced to sit beside the road in the sun for eight hours because he was recognized by one of the soldiers at the checkpoint as having disobeyed an order while working his land with a tractor last week. Any such resistance against the occupation is routinely met by harsh punishment. He was finally given his ID back and allowed to leave, when a senior officer arrived at the scene.

The security concerns offered by soldiers to justify the humiliating and oppressive practice of checkpoints are painfully transparent in their arbitrariness. As soon as it gets dark, they invariably pack up and leave and the thoroughness of checks relies on the mood of the commanding officer on that particular day. Furthermore, as a man waiting at the checkpoint put it, “Security is not created by forcing men to lift up their shirts in front of their neighbours, their students and their daughters. Security is not created by making the 10-minute journey from Nablus into a six-hour one. Security is not created by shooting children in the back. Security is created by justice and respect.”

Baltimore Sun: “Unilateral Action by Israel Spawns Violence in Gaza”

Published on Thursday, August 17, 2006 by the Baltimore Sun (Maryland)

by George Bisharat

SAN FRANCISCO – With the spotlight on Lebanon, another Middle East milestone is passing largely unnoticed. However, its lessons are just as important. A year ago this week, Israel began implementing its unilateral Gaza disengagement plan — yet the region is beset by violence. Why did withdrawal of 8,500 Jewish settlers from Gaza lead to more conflict? Can Israel withdraw from Arab territories without inviting attack?

Last August, Gaza Palestinians greeted disengagement with both cautious hope and cynicism. They relished freedom from the daily humiliations of military occupation. Students longed to study, children to frolic on the beach, and entrepreneurs to build businesses. Yet many also saw disengagement as an expression of racial preference for Jews. Israel could not annex the Gaza Strip without absorbing 1.4 million Palestinians, thus jeopardizing its status as a Jewish state.

Israel marketed disengagement to Americans as a step toward peace, but Palestinians remembered the October 2004 comment of Dov Weisglass, adviser to former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon: “The disengagement is actually formaldehyde. It supplies the amount of formaldehyde that’s necessary so that there will not be a political process with the Palestinians.”

Why would Israeli politicians subvert negotiations with Palestinians? Perhaps because no Palestinian leader could agree to Israel’s planned takeover of Jerusalem and much of the West Bank.

Thus, the Gaza “disengagement” plan is also the Jerusalem and West Bank “expansion” plan. The number of Israelis settling in the West Bank this year exceeds the number withdrawn from Gaza.

Further conflict, therefore, was inevitable.

Moreover, while Israel decolonized Gaza, its military occupation continues. Israel still controls the entry and exit of people and goods into the region, patrols its coast and airspace, oversees its water, fuel, electric utilities, and sewage, and enters it with military forces at will. Under international law, “effective control” determines whether a territory is occupied.

Since the January Palestinian elections, hailed as the fairest in the Arab world, Israel has strived to undermine the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority, withholding $50 million to $60 million monthly in tax revenues owed to the authority. The U.S. and European Union have followed, halting aid to the Palestinians until the Hamas government renounces violence, recognizes Israel and pledges to honor prior agreements of the Palestinian Authority. Hamas has not yet bowed but has repeatedly signaled willingness to negotiate.

Of course Hamas should not just halt violence — it had suspended military operations for 17 months, until June — it should also renounce it. But shouldn’t the same standard apply to both parties? Shouldn’t recognition and respect for prior agreements be reciprocally required of Israel, which denies Palestinian national rights and regularly violates the Oslo accords?

Palestinian civil servants have gone without salaries since January. Gazans have suffered serious deterioration in nutrition and health. The special U.N. rapporteur on conditions in the occupied Palestinian territories warned in June of an impending humanitarian crisis, saying, “In effect, the Palestinian people have been subjected to economic sanctions — the first time that an occupied people have been so treated.”

On June 24, Israeli troops entered Gaza and abducted Dr. Osama Muantar and his brother, Mustafa, alleging they were members of Hamas. The two joined some 9,000 Palestinian prisoners languishing in Israeli jails. Many have not been charged with a crime and more than 100 are minors.

The following day, Palestinian groups attacked an Israeli army post, killing two soldiers and capturing a third.

Since then, Israel has laid siege to the Gaza Strip, closing it to travel and trade and abducting 64 Hamas officials, including Cabinet ministers and parliamentary representatives. Its jets have bombed roads, bridges, government buildings, Gaza’s main electrical generating plant, homes, fields, orchards, workshops, and offices. To date, 184 Palestinians have been killed, including 42 children, while another 650 have been wounded.

In 1982, Israel withdrew from the Sinai Peninsula as part of a comprehensive peace agreement with Egypt. Twenty-four years of peace on that border followed. But unilateral redeployments that only shift the character of Israeli control over Palestinian lives will never yield such results. Unilateralism — wherein the legitimate interests of the other party are ignored — is the flaw, not withdrawal.

Would Americans remain quiescent if a neighboring power sealed our borders and airspace, suffocated our economy, expanded into our most desirable lands and attempted to throttle our democratically elected government?

We should counsel Israel to abandon unilateralism and unremitting violence against civilians. Negotiations based on respect for international law and equal rights offer the only way to lasting peace.
George Bisharat, a professor of law at Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco, writes frequently on the Middle East.

Full Account of Israeli Army House Invasions in Hebron

The following is a more detailed account of the events first publicised in yesterday’s press release.

by ISM Hebron and the Tel Rumeida Project

Today, August 23, the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) forcibly entered and searched many Palestinian homes in the Tel Rumeida area of Hebron. The checkpoints in the area were closed, and Palestinians were denied passage to and from the area late into the evening. The military operation may have been related to two separate situations. First, the settlers of Hebron had planned a “tour of Hebron” today, and there were many tour busses present as well as far more settlers and religious Israelis than usual walking about the streets. There was very likely an increased number of soldiers present to escort the settlers and Israeli tour groups and make them feel “secure.” The second, unrelated occurrence is a shooting that happened outside of Tel Rumeida in area H1 (the Palestinian controlled part of Hebron) prior to the military operation. What follows is an account of the events as the Human Rights Workers (HRWs) present observed them.

At around 2:45pm two HRWs were stationed on Shuhada Street, between the Beit Hadassa settlement and the checkpoint separating H1 and H2, when they heard exchange of gunfire from outside Tel Rumeida in area H1 that lasted for at least a minute. There was then an immediate increase in military activity on Shuhada Street; two police jeeps, two military ambulances, and several army jeeps were rushing down Shuhada Street, lights flashing, in the direction of the checkpoint. The HRWs then decided to leave their post and head up the hill towards their apartment. At that time another HRW called the HRWs on Shuhada Street to inform them that settlers from the Tel Rumeida settlement were shooting in the streets.

The HRWs walked toward the checkpoint, where many military vehicles were congregated, and saw that the checkpoint was completely closed to passage in either direction. They confirmed from others in the area that the other two entrances to Tel Rumeida had also been closed by that time. The HRWs continued up the hill to their apartment. The first thing out of the ordinary that they noticed was that some twenty soldiers were guarding the Tel Rumeida settlement up the hill from the apartment, and seemed primed for action. All of the Palestinians in the area seemed frightened or on alert and were closing up their homes and apartment buildings.

Soon after the HRW arrived, at around 3:00pm, about ten of these soldiers rushed down the hill to the Palestinian apartment building across from the HRW apartment. The soldiers banged on the main door of the building with the barrel of a gun and demanded entry, and then forcibly entered and searched the Palestinian homes inside. While around five soldiers searched the homes in the building, one soldier was stationed at the door and another two were at the corner of the building, positioned on their knees with guns poised. At 3:25pm, the soldiers moved on to the neighboring house. In the next two house, almost every house in Tel Rumeida within eyesight of the HRW’s apartment was forcibly searched. Based on information gathered from others in the area at the time, it seems that many, likely most, Palestinian homes in Tel Rumeida were searched during that time.

During the following two hours, the military presence and activity in the area seemed to constitute a full scale military operation. Many police and army jeeps, as well as Israeli intelligence vehicles were highly active in the area. Strangely, many settlers, some of them armed, were out on the streets during the military activity, walking about as they pleased. Two settlers contentedly sat on the neighbor’s stoop and watched the military go from house to house, humiliating one Palestinian family and then the next.

During the operation, two soldiers also tried to enter the HRW apartment. The HRWs demaded to see a warrant, and although the soldiers insisted they did not need one as they just wanted to talk “person to person,” the HRWs assured them that they did need a warrant and refused to answer any questions. The soldiers left and did not return after they realized the HRW would not be cowed into complying.

During the two hours of observation, the HRW called several sources to try to understand why this military operation was happening and how it was related to the shooting that preceded it. From information gathered from the Temporary International Presence in Hebron and other sources, the initial shooting the HRWs heard was internal fighting between Palestinians. There was a feud between two Palestinian families somewhere in H1 that led to shooting, which caused four Palestinians to be injured. Settlers from the Tel Rumeida settlement apparently responded to the sound of gunfire by firing their weapons toward H1. The settlers purportedly told soldiers that they saw Palestinian militants in the streets of Tel Rumeida, and this was why they were shooting. This apparently led to the IOF becoming involved and invading the homes to seek the non-existent militants.

By 5:00pm Tel Rumeida had calmed down considerably, the systematic home invasions seemed to have ended, and the army seemed to retreat to its usual positions in Tel Rumeida. In the following hours there were an unusually high number of settlers walking about the streets, some of them apparently here for the tour. Then around 6:30pm the HRWs were called and informed that soldiers had invaded homes again in the Tel Rumeida area.

When the HRW arrived at the invaded house (Abu Haykal Family) they found that the family was forced to sit outside while the soldiers searched their home. The soldiers had the identity cards of all the men in the family. Only the father of the family was allowed inside the house while the IOF searched their property. The HRWs tried to get into the house to monitor the behavior of the soldiers and be with the father, but the soldiers forcibly prevented them. When the HRWs insisted that they were allowed into the house unless the soldiers had orders that the house was a closed military zone, the soldiers guarding the entrance made such remarks as “I am the law!” and “I’m going to be violent and arrest you if you don’t leave!” They also joked between themselves in Hebrew that they planned on beating up the HRWs later on. In response to attempts by the HRWs to film the situation, the soldiers threatened to break their cameras. After about 15 minutes, a military jeep arrived and five more soldiers entered the house. The HRWs were continually threatened with arrest for “interfering with our [the soldiers’] work.” At one point two soldiers tried to forcibly push one HRW to the jeep as if they were going to detain him, but he sat on the ground and prevented them from doing so. In retaliation, the soldiers arbitrarily ordered the entire family and the HRWs to move behind the military jeep, and were threatened with arrest if they crossed an imaginary line. Meanwhile the soldiers searched a neighboring house. About 15 minutes later, the army then tried to order the Abu Haykal family into their house and to close the door. The HRWs and some family members refused to do so, and after about 10 minutes, the IOF handed out the IDs again and left.

The HRWs then proceeded to another house in the area that was being searched. The HRWs walked up the stairs to the front door despite the shouting of the soldiers outside that they were forbidden from doing so, and the HRWs told the soldiers that they would leave only when they saw the order that this house was a closed military zone. The soldier repeatedly threatened to arrest the HRWs and made calls as if he was arranging to have this done. The HRWs then noticed that soldiers were angrily shouting and preventing Palestinians from walking down the nearby hill to their homes. A group of older men insisted to know why and moved defiantly toward the hill as if they were going to ignore the soldiers’ orders. In response the soldiers became very aggressive, cocked their guns, and began shouting loudly at the men. About five minutes later another group of soldiers, including the commander of them all, came towards the scene. The commander ordered the angry soldiers to allow the men to go down the hill towards their homes.

The exhausted HRWs then went home for the night.