Author: ISM Media - Page 19 - International Solidarity Movement

Nur Shams Refugee Camp – An Unbreakable Will

By Diana Khwaelid

We witness an unbreakable will in the Nour Shams refugee camp, located north-east in the city of
Tulkarem, despite being subjected to more than 10 incursions, killings, arrests,
destruction of roads and other infrastructure, shelling, and burning of houses and shops.

Storming the Nour Shams camp
On the evening of Monday December 25th, the Israeli occupation forces stormed
the Nur Shams refugee camp northeast of the city of Tulkarem in the north of the West
Bank.

Dozens of Israeli military vehicles accompanied by troop carriers and 4 D9 bulldozers were used by the occupation forces to destroy infrastructure in preparation for the entry of occupation soldiers on foot.
This Israeli military operation launched by the occupation forces on the camp lasted for more than 9 continuous hours.

Confronting the occupation forces and defending the camp.
Palestinian resistance fighters defended the camp and its residents and confronted the Israeli occupation forces who stormed the camp without warning. Armed clashes occurred between Palestinian gunmen who tried to defend the camp and the Israeli occupation forces who targeted residents and houses with live ammunition.

Destruction of infrastructure and roads.
The main and secondary roads were largely destroyed and neighborhoods of Nour Shams camp, mostly concentrated in the Al Damj neighborhood and Manshiyeh neighborhood. The Israeli occupation forces
destroyed the main roads by using military vehicles to bulldoze land and streets with military-type D9 bulldozers. Agricultural land with farming of crops was also destroyed.

Bombing of a house and burning of another.

The Israeli occupation forces targeted two Palestinian houses, one of which was
destroyed by aerial bombardment, and another one that was burned. Everything within it was destroyed from clothes to furniture. Other homes nearby suffered partial damage, such as glass being broken, doors being ripped off. The first house belongs to the citizen Youssef Zandiq one of the camp residents. the second house that was burned belongs to the family of the young man Musa
al-Azeb. The family of the young man Youssef Zandiq said:

“We evacuated the house before it was bombed as no one was inside. Thank God for
everything, we are lucky that there were no human losses.”

Some Palestinian homes were also stormed during the incursion, including the house of the Dahrouki family.
Israeli occupation forces also painted the logo of the star of the state of Israel, as a sign signalling that it will be bombed in the next incursion.
Despite all the violence and destruction carried out by the Israeli occupying forces during the past weeks and months, despite the human and material losses caused by the destruction of houses, roads, agricultural land andshops, the residents of Nur Shams camp still have a strong and unbroken will.

Impending Famine, Infectious Disease and Starvation. It is Christmas in Palestine.

Gaza / Occupied West Bank 12/24/2023

Hundreds of thousands of Palestinian children in Gaza are at risk of famine and preventable death from disease as the world’s observant retreat into family and faith to mark the birth of another Palestinian child. In a lightless, treeless Bethlehem, haunting displays capture the specter of a collective grief. Christ lies in the rubble. And just over 70 kilometers away in Gaza, many thousands of Palestinians are entombed in the very same reality.

Christmas falls quiet on Bethlehem. Photo Credit, ISM

Through the doorway of a thousand checkpoints, the children of the West Bank avoid the binding of their hands and the breaking of their bones as occupation forces have leapt in tandem with the perpetrators of the Gaza genocide, exacting spasms of violence on their own long descent from humanity. To the immediate west of the place of Christ’s birth, a Palestinian child’s life was stolen by the bullets of the occupation just days ago. Mahmoud Mohammad Zaaoul lay murdered in the village of Husan. In occupied East Jerusalem, faithful Muslims endured beatings and pursuit on horseback by occupation soldiers energized by their greenlit domination of the indigenous population, arbitrarily blocking prayers from being spoken in Al Aqsa Mosque by Palestinian worshippers.

It is Christmas in Palestine.

16 year old Mahmoud Mohammad Zaaoul was killed on 12/20 west of Bethlehem by occupation forces. Photo Credit: WAFA

According to a UNICEF press release dated December 22nd, the latest statistics “warn that acute food insecurity puts all children under five in the Gaza Strip—335,000—at high risk of severe malnutrition and preventable death.” As a traumatized population of genocide-displaced, the people of Gaza have been forced between districts with bombs and drones biting at their heels. Public health and sanitation conditions are non-existent.

Frigid wind and rain have exacerbated illness and flooded small handmade structures that displaced Gazans are existing within as their homes lie in ruins. The World Health Organization has been sounding the alarm about the dangerous prevalence of diarrhea in children; the swelling statistic of instances is nearing 60,000 affected. This is further worsening the already horrific sanitation conditions and rising dehydration with many spending endless days searching for water, albeit contaminated and fueling illness.

Gaza is being ravaged by not only bloody diarrhea, but a host of other illnesses which are tearing through the traumatized population. Hepatitis A, jaundice, meningitis and respiratory infections as dangerous smoke from the burning of found materials to stay warm wafts across densely packed makeshift shelters peppering the gouged landscape.

Pre-existing medical conditions did not cease to be a battle impacted Palestinians were fighting prior to the gears of genocide thrusting towards them through the joint American-Israeli operation. Dialysis and cancer patients, diabetics in need of regular insulin and the means with which to maintain and monitor their blood glucose levels, disabled Palestinians needing around the clock care, stroke and cardiac patients reliant on medication to sustain life- every normal function of their medical support system lies broken among the wreckage.

In the occupied West Bank, flashes of violence strike across heavily targeted communities from Jenin to Nablus. From Tulkarm to al Khalil. The violent raids have been ramping up with the world viewing the horror through both the careful and courageous documentation of Palestinians on the ground as well as through countless antagonistic and cruel tiktok videos shared by occupation forces, mocking and dehumanizing Palestinians as they raid and desecrate a Mosque while using its amplification for prayer to sing Jewish songs. As they sit smoking on the couches of a Palestinian family home laughing and filming bound and blindfolded Palestinians gathered on the ground before them.

Running from the terror of flying rockets, earth shattering explosions and buildings collapsing around them, 50,000 pregnant women in Gaza are among those fighting to survive. Over 180 births are taking place each day in genocide-torn Gaza. They are taking place in the rubble, in packed lobbies of shelters, in makeshift tent structures. The conditions are beyond horrific with only a fraction of hospital beds available from before October 7th across all Gaza’s districts. This says nothing of Palestinians ability to access one of the few medical facilities left in the devastated Gaza Strip.

The situation swells to new heights of crisis as the observant mark the day that Mary, having nowhere to stay in the town, utilized a makeshift crib to lay down her infant as angels sang the birth of the Christ lying in a Bethlehem manger.

Like so many children in Gaza, in today’s Bethlehem, Christ lies in the rubble.

Christmas in Bethlehem. Photo Credit: ISM

More White Roses

Tears come easily. Today I watched and listened to a hundred Jewish Israelis outside the U.S. embassy affirm that “grief has no borders,” as they collectively mourned those murdered in Gaza. Some people, like Khalil Abu Yahia were known and loved by the Jewish solidarity activists. And from the breaking in their voices as they spoke, I knew that the others who they didn’t know, who apartheid walls, checkpoints, and a prison ghetto kept them from knowing, were loved too.

Grief knows no borders and ceasefire banners at vigil in Jerusalem. Photo Credit: ISM

Khalil had the vision to see beyond the current colonial realities. As Khalil went from place to place in Gaza with his family, trying to find somewhere safe, experiencing explosion after explosion, missile attack after missile attack, he did not despair. With roofs collapsing around him, he wrote, “I am sure that the hearts of my beloved friends will always be a shelter that can never be destroyed.”

In Jerusalem I saw Israeli activists turn themselves into shelter for Khalil and other Palestinians. Everybody held a name and picture of somebody from Gaza who was killed. These pictures and with them, white roses, were placed at the United States embassy. Closing out the memorial, a speaker said: “May the memory of the righteous be a blessing.”

Out front of the US Embassy in Jerusalem, people place down pictures and names of people killed in Gaza, together with white roses. Photo Credit: ISM

I walked from the embassy to the Lion’s Gate of the Old City. I was seeking to return a prayer rug I found last Friday after Israeli police and military beat and dispersed people assembling to pray. I couldn’t find the prayer rug’s person. What I did find was occupation police on horses charging into people praying. Many people ran to not be trampled. But some people, already on their knees, stayed on their knees. I remember one of these men especially. I couldn’t tell if he was intently focused on finishing his prayers or bracing for his prayerful body to be crushed, or both, but the horses stopped just short. Occupation police not on horses, swept in to continue pushing and beating the worshippers.

To be in Palestine at this moment necessitates consciousness of incalculable inhumanity and atrocity. The worshippers outside the gates to Al Aqsa and the Israeli activists who refuse complicity with their government, have something in common. Their courage, strength, will, commitment, perseverance, and vision is, and always will be, stronger than that of the oppressors.

Sophie Scholl of the White Rose Society, before being executed by the Nazi government that she was taught to obey but then learned to resist no matter the consequences, tells whoever will listen, “Stand up for what you believe in even if you are standing alone.” Rachel Corrie, the I.S.M. activist murdered by Israel for refusing to step aside and allow a home demolition, is similarly remembered to have said, “Let me stand alone.”

I am grateful in this moment for not having to stand alone for what I believe in and seeing more white roses.

Palestinians Demand to Rescind the “State of Emergency in Prisons”

19 December 2023 | International Solidarity Movement | Ramallah

This morning, ISM volunteers joined with the relatives, friends and supporters of Palestinian detainees at a rally in Ramallah, one of many held across the Occupied West Bank, demanding to immediately rescind the “state of emergency in prisons”, introduced by the Israeli authorities in the aftermath of October 7 and which gives the National Security Minister (illegal settler Ben Gvir) unrestrained powers in relation to the conditions in which detainees are held.

Called for and coordinated by the Palestinian Prisoners’ Society, the Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees’ Affairs and supported by a wide-range of civic society groups, the rallies highlighted the huge upsurge in the numbers of detainees, and the severe deterioration in the conditions of detention, since October 7 under the emergency provisions.

Over two months, the number of Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli prisons has more than doubled to 7,800, with 4,605 Palestinians (including the 30 people arrested last night) detained since October 7. Of these, 260 are children, 150 women and 2800 are held under Administrative Detention (AD). These figures do not include detainees arrested by Israeli forces in the Gaza strip as Israel does not provide any figures on this.

Even before October 7, the number of Palestinians detained under AD was running at a 20 year high with 1,300 so detained. AD is an apartheid tool used by the Israeli Occupation Forces to persecute Palestinians. It allows for detention for a period of six months, indefinitely renewable, by a military court without charge or trial based on secret security grounds which are not made available to the detainee or their lawyer.

With the powers under the emergency provisions, the security minister has installed a brutal, degrading and inhumane prison regime. Detainees are denied access to visits by lawyers and family members and the Red Cross has been denied access to prisons to monitor conditions. Information from lawyers who have managed to speak with their clients provides evidence that detainees are held in grossly overcrowded cells, denied adequate food and medical care and outdoor exercise and association for education and recreation is severely restricted.

The use of cruel and collective punishment measures such as cutting off water, heating and electricity for long hours is common. Beatings and threats start at the point of arrest and continue within the detention centres. As noted by Amnesty International in its report of November 8, torture is routinely used. Six detainees have been killed in the Israeli detention centres since October 7, with the suspicion that these deaths were as a result of neglect and torture.

The Israeli occupation authorities are committing serious offences against detainees, offences which are in breach of international law. Under international law, torture and other ill-treatment committed against protected persons in an occupied territory is a war crime. The detention of protected persons outside the occupied territory, as is the case of Palestinian prisoners from the OPT held in Israel, is also a violation of international humanitarian law as it amounts to forcible transfer.

Relatives and advocates for the detainees made it clear at this morning’s rally that Israeli authorities must immediately reverse the inhumane emergency measures imposed on Palestinian prisoners and grant them immediate access to their lawyers and families. Israel must also allow the International Committee of the Red Cross to carry out urgent visits to prisons and detention facilities and to monitor conditions. All Palestinians arbitrarily detained must be released.

Tulkarm Bids Farewell to 5 Palestinians Killed in an Israeli Military Operation.

18 December 2023 | International Solidarity Movement | Nour Shams refugee camp

By Diana Khwaelid

An Israeli military operation lasted for more than 10 hours in the Nour Shams refugee camp.

Destruction of infrastructure

Dozens of military vehicles stormed the city of Tulkarem on the evening of Sunday, December 16, as they targeted the Nour Shams camp east of the city. The Israeli occupation forces bulldozed the main entrance in Tulkarem and destroyed the infrastructure using one of their D9 military vehicles, as they had previously done with previous incursions. It also destroyed the water network and sewage pipes and cut off electricity and the internet.

Palestinian resistance fighters defended the camp.

There were strong clashes between Palestinian Resisters and Israeli occupation soldiers, who confronted the occupation forces after they stormed the camp, for more than 10 continuous hours. The occupation forces also bombed two houses one with drones and the other with an anti-armor missile.

A state of fear

A state of fear and terror prevailed in the homes and neighborhoods of the camp’s people, both children and women, a long and bloody night described by the camp’s residents, following the Storming of the camp. The sound of explosions and fire was enough to bring terror to the hearts of Palestinians.

Obstructing the movement of medical crews and ambulances.

The Israeli occupation forces obstructed the movement of medical personnel, whether the medical teams of the Red Cross or the Palestinian medical relief and volunteer teams to move easily inside the camp to transport the injured, and the occupation forces obstructed the movement of ambulances and arrested a 16 year-old boy from inside an ambulance on its way to the hospital.

5 Palestinians killed, dozens injured.

According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, 5 Palestinians were killed in the Nur Shams refugee camp, and more than 10 injuries reached the (Thabit Thabit) government hospital in the city, whether by shrapnel due to drone, or fire live bullets .

The five martyrs are: Walid Zahra, Asaad Zahra, Ghaith Shehadeh, Mahmoud Jaber and Jihad Amarna.

A state of sadness and shock of loss.

Hundreds of Palestinians mourned the bodies of the five martyrs, and their families took a last farewell look at them, in a state of great sadness and shock women, men, and children participated in the funeral and chanted words of patience and patience to them and chanted patriotic words in the form of the Camp people in the face of the occupation until the liberation of Palestine.

Photo credit: ISM/Diana Khwaelid