Author: ISM Media Group

A snake winds through Bil’in

Carrying a 20-foot long mock snake with a dove baring the colors of the Palestinian flag in its mouth, about 100 Palestinian peace activists in the West Bank village of Bil’in on Friday were joined by 50 Israelis and 30 internationals in a march toward the construction site of Israel’s illegal annexation wall. The display represented how is snaking through Palestinian land, killing the possibilities for peace.

While Israeli soldiers attempted to turn the situation into chaos with tear gas and sound grenades, peace activists were able to maintain two lines, with their arms locked, and walk toward the soldiers until they retreated back as television cameras from Aljzaeera and other news agencies recorded footage. Soldiers injured some protesters with shrapnel from sound grenades. Others were kicked or punched by soldiers. 13 Israeli activists were detained. Four people were arrested, two Israelis and two foreign peace activists.

Friday demonstrations in Bil’in’ begin at 1 p.m. on the dot. The Aug. 5 wall protest was no exception. As the demonstration neared the last house in the village, Israeli soldiers were prepared, standing with shields and riot gear behind razor wire. They immediately declared the area a closed military zone. Palestinians shouted back “This is Palestinian territory!” and continued chanting, singing and dancing for about half an hour.

As some of the protestors continued chanting, the Israeli military started to move toward the demonstrators, firing tear gas and throwing sound grenades into the crowd. Israeli soldiers then pushed the demonstration back toward the village.

A peace activist from India was knocked down and kicked in the head. He said later that the soldiers had talked to him as though they thought he was a Palestinian. Another man — an actual Palestinian — was injured in his leg by shrapnel from one of the sound grenades tossed into the crowd by soldiers. Of the four arrested, the two internationals, one from Germany and the other from Denmark were released hours later. Two Israelis are still under arrest and accused of assault. One soldier has claimed that one of the Israeli peace activists “bit” him.

The demonstrators reformed into clear lines and linked arms and were beaten with shields by the Israeli military. Palestinians were specifically targeted with brutal force. Despite the large number of Israeli soldiers, the demonstration was able to eacefully stand its ground and move the soldiers back to the original stand-off point.

For more photos, check out IndyMedia Israel.

Boys Abducted by Israeli soldiers from West Bank village

A CALL FOR ACTION…

Thursday, August 4
by Dorothy
International Women’s Peace Service

The Israeli army invaded the village of Marda on the night of Tuesday, Aug. 2, searched homes and abducted about 15 boys. They arrested four of the boys. IWPS will do its best to furnish you with all the relevant information you might need to begin action. following this article, there is a call for action. You can help these boys.

At approximately 9 p.m. on August 2, about 6 Israeli army jeeps entered the village of Marda. Soldiers spread out on foot throughout the village and the surrounding olive groves. For about two hours, the soldiers searched houses. Residents reported that the soldiers seized teenage boys from several homes. By 11:30 p.m., the soldiers gathered about 15 boys and kept them blindfolded and handcuffed at the main entrance to the village, with four jeeps and about 20 soldiers on site. Some of the boys appeared to be as young as 13. The soldiers claimed that they were looking for boys who threw stones in the area of the road earlier that day, breaking a car window.

For several hours, the boys were kept sitting or standing, blindfolded and handcuffed. Soldiers took them one by one into a jeep for questioning; sounds of yelling could be heard coming from the jeep. The boys’ parents gathered near the entrance and tried to speak to the soldiers – one father explained that his son had been home all evening studying with a friend. The soldiers ordered the parents away from the site, and they moved further down the road. International observers were allowed to remain on site, but not to speak to the boys.

At 1:30 a.m., about 12 boys were released. At 2 a.m., soldiers said that the remaining four boys had confessed to throwing stones. One of the boys was 15; two others appeared to be 13 or 14. The boys were loaded into a jeep and driven away. When IWPS volunteers left the village at about 8 a.m., the four boys had not been returned to the village, and two army jeeps were still patrolling the main road.

UPDATE AND CALL FOR ACTION:

Dorothy of IWPS writes: Now, at 10:45 AM Palestine/Israel time, three of the youngsters taken by Israeli soldiers in Marda are still in confinement. I don’t have their IDs, unfortunately, but their names are as follows: Nabhan Ahmed Suliman ( age 14); Amir Wadal Khufash ( age 14); Asad Gazi Khufash ( age 15).

Imagine that these were your sons or grandsons or sons of friends, or whatever! How would you feel if the military came in the night and pulled a youngster from your home? Please make strong appeals, as if these were your own! Call the phone numbers listed below and insist on having these children released IMMEDIATELY!

Israeli DCL Qalqilya/Salfit
From abroad : 972-9-775-9219
Locally : 09-775-9219 ; 09-792-2359

Qedumim Military Prison
From abroad : 972-9-775-9333
Locally: 09-775-9333

Army spokesperson
From abroad : 972-3-608-0340/1
Locally: 03-608-0340/1

Ophir Pines – Minister of Internal Affairs
pinespaz@knesset.gov.il
From abroad: 972-2-675-3754 or 972-2-675-3953
Fax: 972-2-649-6171

Locally: 02-675-3754 or 02-675-3953
Local Fax: 02-649-6171

Checkpoints destroy Palestinian economy

Street theatre and demonstration in Deir Ballut
By Sarita

Deir Ballut villagers were joined today by 30 International and Israeli activists in a demonstration against the military check point blocking the entrance to their village. Deir Ballut, southwest of Salfit, and its neighboring villages Rafat and Zawiya, are projected to be imprisoned by the Apartheid Wall and have been living under continuous closures. Twenty-two houses are isolated from the rest of the village behind this check point. No one except for the residents of these houses are allowed access to the area, and villagers are routinely submitted to humiliating treatment when attempting to access either their homes, their lands, or the rest of the village. When completed, the Apartheid Wall will isolate and surround Deir Ballut, cutting it off ompletely not only from its fertile agricultural lands, but also from the rest of Salfit District and the surrounding towns.

Shouting “Free, Free Palestine” the demonstrators reached the blockade placed by the soldiers to stop the protest from reaching the checkpoint. The protestors erupted into a vivid theatrical displaythat mimicked the deadly reality of Israeli soldiers at checkpoints, carrying plastic water guns, wearing bowls on their heads to serve as helmets, and carrying a big sign to mark the theatrical checkpoint. Several friends from within the demonstration pretended to try to pass through their checkpoint and were refused and shot. The Israeli activists chanted, “We don’t fight, we don’t cry, we refuse to occupy.” The
demonstration ended peacefully and everyone returned to the village to feast.

The people living in Deir Ballut and its neighboring villages used to rely on work inside the Green Line before the beginning of the second Intifada in 2000. But with the intensification of the Occupation policy of closure, villagers were unable to reach their workplaces inside the Green Line. This meant that most of them had to return once again to agriculture as their primary work, and they have since relied on working the land as a basic source of income.*

Today’s action is part of a series of actions organized in the Salfit district that highlights the occupation and ghettoization of the West Bank. Work on the Apartheid Wall in Deir Ballut began in June 2004. The wall confiscates hundreds of dunums of Deir Ballut’s lands while isolating 80% of the village’s agricultural lands. The settlements of Badue’l and Ale Zahav plan on building an additional 550 housing units on the village’s lands. In the western area, the Wall will ghettoize three villages in total (Deir Ballut, Zawiya, and Rafat). reating a “bantustan” isolated from surrounding villages and towns, villagers will have no connection with the outside world except through the Zawiya “tunnel”, which leads to Masha village in the north. The “tunel”, referred to as a “hole” by Palestinians, will be under control of the Occupation Forces. They will regulate and determine Palestinian life and movement through it. When completed villagers (assuming they have passes and are allowed to access the Zawiya “tunnel”) will have to make a long journey to reach the key city of Salfit which provides essential educational, cultural, social and economic services. Villagers will be forced to detour far to Qalqiliya, then to the city of Nablus in order to reach Salfit city. What is now a short trip will soon require a full day’s travel — and that is if there are no Occupation checkpoints along the way to slow the trip down or make it simply impossible to pass.

(Statistics and background form the Stop The Wall
Campaign website: www.stopthewall.org)

They still find ways to have fun

by Devon

Sixty percent of the West Bank village of Kifl Haris are children under the age of 17.  on August first some of the village’s children demonstrated with us and stayed non-violent in the face of a foreign military shooting teargas and sound bombs.  I would not have been that brave when I was their age.  They grow up fast here; they have to. 

I think that whereever one goes in whatever circumstances, children will find ways to have fun.  After the action they invited me to play football and basketball with them.  An ocean of children running back and forth having a really good time is quite acontrast to the Palestinian man who got hit in the mouth with a tear gas canister earlier that day; it shattered his jaw and there was blood all down his shirt.  I think Gandhi would have been proud of the villagers that day. 

I wanted to tell you about the children’s sweet voices, but I can’t do them justice in writing.  I wanted to show you their smiles and I wanted you to hear them laugh.  I wish you could come play with them and demonstrate with them, because if you did you would touched in your heart of hearts-after that you would never forget the children of Palestine and you would forever wonder if they are still doing okay.

Settlers in the midst

By Andrew

Kids are jumping around. Dancing. A perspiring, lanky gray haired guy is fiddling nonstop and Harry Borrey, fresh from a brief kidnapping experience in Gaza is singing things like “We Shall Overcome” and telling various Israeli soldiers that he loves them. And in Hebron, there are a lot of soldiers for Harry to love…

An ISM media coordinator blogs in the distance. Read the rest of this post at thismuchicansayistrue.