29th June 2013 | International Solidarity Movement, Gal·la | Gaza, Occupied Palestine
I tried to collect some pictures offering a glimpse of the situation in the Gaza Strip, a closed, besieged place put under a blockade by the Israeli Zionist state.
Despite the everyday misery and difficulty, people carry on with their lives and try to do their best in order to survive in such an open-air jail, without losing the hope of finishing sooner, rather than later, with such a heartless situation.
The images were taken with my mobilephone as I don’t have a proper camera.
29th June 2013 | International Solidarity Movement, Nablus Team | Azzun, Occupied Palestine
On June 18, settlers hung up a banner in the town of Azzun, threatening to take over the town. Later that day, the town was attacked by settlers, supported by the Israeli army. Local residents successfully fended off the attack through massive mobilizations.
The town of Azzun is the home of about 10.000 Palestinians. It is located in the northern West Bank district of Qalquiliya, close to several settlements. On Tuesday 18th of June, settlers secretly entered the town and proceeded to hang up a banner at the town entrance stating that “On Tuesday, the village will become ours.” The unconcealed threat was signed by “The Women of Samaria”. The banner was quickly removed but the threat of a violent take-over was still present, as would become evident some hours later
Banner hung up by settlers (Photo by Ma’an News Agency)
During the late afternoon of the day that the ominous banner was put up, settlers gathered outside the eastern town-entrance for what appeared to be an attempt at fulfilling the prophecy. Luckily, the day before, attentive villagers had intercepted online information that settlers were mobilizing for a lunge against the city on this date and so they were prepared.
About three months earlier, the town had been attacked by around fifty young settlers who entered the town through the eastern-most checkpoint. After this, they proceeded to enter nearby Palestinian houses, throwing stones and empty bottles while shouting that “this is our land”. In spite of being barraged with tear gas and sound bombs by the occupying military forces, which came to the assistance of the attacking settlers, the residents of Azzun managed to fend off the assault. As a result of this experience three months ago, the locals now knew how to react to what looked like a new attempt at a violent assault on the town.
As soon as settlers started gathering outside the eastern-most checkpoint of the town, residents rushed to the site, effectively blocking the entrance to the town for both settlers and the collaborating soldiers that were accompanying them. For about six hours the residents were attacked with tear gas, sound bombs and rubber-coated steel bullets by the occupation forces. These attempts by the occupying forces to help the settlers enter the town left several wounded. In the end, the perseverance of the residents of Azzun caused the attacking settlers to retreat without having entered the town. The soldiers, however, returned the following night to continue harassing the inhabitants of the town.
These evident attempts at forcefully taking over the city are not the only abuses the residents of Azzun face every day. Because of the status of the town as a major traffic hub for the surrounding villages and towns, Azzun is routinely submitted to checkpoint shut-downs. In accordance with this, the main checkpoint of the town was completely shut down between the 15th and the 20th of June.
The checkpoint-shut-downs have the purpose of severely prolonging the transport time for anyone hoping to access one of the cities of the region, with the direct consequences for those in urgent need of medical attention of a kind not accessible in the immediate area.
Apart from these shut-downs, the military has a practice of arresting young boys on various arbitrary charges. While in custody, the boys are pressured into signing forms in Hebrew being informed that this is a prerequisite for being released. What the boys don’t know is that the forms are in fact made-up testimonies, denouncing other boys of taking part in illegal activities. This practice is adopted by military as a sort of divide-and-rule strategy where released boys and their families are under constant suspicion of being collaborator and informants, thereby playing residents out against each other. The local boys’ school can also confirm a correlation between the time of the year and the amount of arrested teenage boys. There seems to be a surge in the amount of arrest as soon as the exam-period gets closer meaning that a lot of these young men are prevented from taking their mandatory 12th grade exams.
The ISM will continue to monitor the situation in the town that is also being closely followed by another group of internationals, EAPPI.
29th June 2013 | International Solidarity Movement, Khalil team | Bethlehem, Occupied Palestine
Today, Saturday 29th June, a group of Palestinian activists demanded access to the occupied city of Jerusalem through the gate in the Apartheid Wall in Bethlehem. Their nonviolent demonstration also aimed to highlight Palestinian opposition to the US Secretary of State John Kerry’s visit, but was met with violence from the Israeli occupation military. The Apartheid Wall gate was closed in the face of the protesters, shutting them out of their illegally occupied land.
Activists head for Jerusalem, aiming to walk through the Apartheid Wall checkpoint (Photo by: ISM)
At around 11am Palestinian activists, accompanied by international demonstrators, walked towards the checkpoint in the Apartheid Wall towards Jerusalem. Access is granted by the Israeli occupation authorities for very few Palestinians –people between the ages of 18-45 are routinely denied permits. The Palestinian demonstrators demanded right of entry to their capital city, Jerusalem. Israeli occupation military immediately reacted violently at the checkpoint, pushing and shoving non-violent protesters. One demonstrator was pushed aggressively to the ground by a heavily armed Israeli soldier.
Around twenty soldiers were involved in suppressing the peaceful demonstration, and after around ten minutes of harassment of the Palestinian protesters, they closed the Apartheid Wall gate. This is the second attempt in two weeks of Palestinians to cross into occupied Jerusalem. They vow to continue to demand an end to the restriction of movement imposed on the Palestinian people by the Israeli occupation.
Israeli soldier violently pushes back peaceful demonstrators (Photo by: ISM)
Protesters held signs saying “Kerry go home” and slogans about apartheid. US Secretary of State John Kerry was permitted to enter occupied Jerusalem two days ago on Thursday 27th June, where he met Israeli occupation Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. His meeting with the Palestinian authority president Mahmoud Abbas was forced to take place in Amman, Jordan rather than occupied Jerusalem. Kerry is advocating “peace talks”, but has not taken strong action against the Israeli obstacles to peace which include denying the right of return of the Palestinian refugees and increasing illegal settlements in the West Bank and Jerusalem; as Kerry arrived into the Middle East, Netanyahu approved yet another settlement expansion into East Jerusalem. Further, the US continues to fund the Israeli occupation government and military operations to the tune of over $3 billion a year.
The Palestinians will continue to knock on the gates of Jerusalem to highlight the injustices of the Israeli occupation.
Apartheid Wall checkpoint is closed, blocking Palestinians from their occupied capital (Photo by: ISM)
28th June 2013 | International Solidarity Movement, Khalil Team | Hebron, Occupied Palestine
Two brothers aged 10 and 13 were today taken by the Israeli occupation forces whilst playing outside their home in the old city of Hebron. They were forcibly taken to the military base on Shuhada Street which is closed to Palestinians, while their mother waited watching from the street above. They were held for four hours, without their family being notified of their situation and without having access to a lawyer. The Israeli authorities lied many times, claiming that the children had been released while they were still being held. Eventually the children were released without even being passed to the Palestinian authority.
Soldiers escorting children down Shuhada Street (Photo by ISM)
At around 2pm two brothers, Yousuf and Ahmed Gaha, aged 13 and 10, were taken from outside of their home by the Israeli military. According to their mother they were playing at the time. They were taken to the Israeli military base which is on Shuhada Street, which is completely closed to Palestinians, meaning that their mother could not follow – instead she had to wait on the road overlooking the base and watch from afar. Although soldiers could see her they would give her no information about her sons, despite it being illegal under international law to hold minors without access to their parents or a lawyer.
At around 5pm international observers waiting outside the military base heard shouts and cries from children, but still the Israeli military did not release them and refused to give any further information. Several times during the four hours, the Israeli District Coordination Office claimed to both the Palestinian authorities and the International Committee of the Red Cross that the children had already been released, when in fact they were still inside the military base. Under Israeli law, individuals should not be held by the army for more than three hours without being passed to the police, but the military today ignored these rules.
Soldiers surround children after their four hour detention (Photo by ISM)
Soldiers repeatedly claimed “we don’t care” and refused to give information to human rights observers. When the children were eventually released, it was not to the Palestinian authority, as is usually the case in the arrest of minors. Rather, the two brothers were released directly into the cemetery above Shuhada Street and allowed to go to their homes. This contradicts the soldiers’ claims that they had seen the boys throwing stones and had video footage of them, as these charges often come with a criminal sentence for Palestinian children.
As the children were released, a settler from one of the illegal settlements of Hebron – farcically holding a bunch of flowers – tried to attack international observers who had been filming the events, telling them to “go home” and calling them “Nazis”, as well as trying to physically assault them. Human rights observers have observed four child arrests just this week in Hebron, and this could easily be a small proportion of the full number. There is a worrying disregard for international law and the rights of the child in Hebron – for example 27 children were arrested at random in Hebron in March 2013.
Settler tries to attack international observer (Photo by ISM)
28th June 2013 | International Solidarity Movement, Nablus Team | Nablus, Occupied Palestine
In the early hours of the morning on the 27th June hundreds of Israeli army and police of the occupation forces invaded Nablus where they arrested people, destroyed homes and shot teargas and sound bombs all through the night.
The army remained in Nablus terrorising the population from 1.30am till 6.00am, when they eventually withdrew, forcibly taking three people whose families were left to repair their homes after they had been sacked by the army.
Father of three, Alam Hafif Qarim (40 years old) lives in a block of flats with his family in the North Mountain area of Nablus. Around 150 occupation soldiers and police in more than 20 military vehicles surrounded the building at 1.30am. The people in the building attempted to phone each other and outside for help and to find out what was happening, but the landlines had been cut and the mobile phone signal blocked. The army fired teargas canisters and sound bombs around the building, in the middle of the night. Fearing for the health of their children, residents closed their windows.
Israeli soldiers broke the children’s bed (Photo by ISM)
At 2.30am around 25 soldiers with attack dogs entered the building, and attempted to force the door; when that did not work, they hammered noisily on the door shouting in Arabic that they were the army. Alam quickly unlocked the door and the 25 soldiers moved into the house. They had a bag of tools – hammers and the like – with them. Alam’s wife was told to wake the children, two girls (7 years old and 3 months old) and their 10-year-old son, where they were forced with Alam, who was handcuffed, to sit in one room as the army began to use the tools to make holes in the walls, smash windows and overturn and tear up furniture in the recently redecorated house. “They came ready,” Alam’s family member later told ISM. The family repeatedly asked the soldiers what they were looking for and what they wanted, to which the army did not reply. “They came to destroy our house and our lives, under the pretext of looking for something.”
All belongings including food and clothes were thrown into the bathroom as the destruction continued. One soldier who was careless in the destruction of the bathroom, injured himself with the tool he brought, and so the army called an ambulance to help him while Alam’s wife had to later clean up his blood in her bathroom he smashed.
A female soldier then initiated a body search of Alam’s wife and 7-year-old daughter. Alam’s 3-month-old other daughter was also not immune from suspicion when a soldier began to attack her pushchair. Alam’s wife intervened and patted it down to show that it could have nothing hidden in it and shouted at him that he “had no heart.” Later it was found that the children’s mattresses had been ripped apart in their room decorated with Mickey Mouse.
The army eventually left after 4am, taking Alam with them. Alam works in a shop that sells parts of BMWs and had been granted a visa to visit Germany to pick up parts. He was due to pick up his visa in 2-3 days.
Not far from Alam’s shop, which showed his pride in his work and in providing for his family, to live a normal life in spite of the difficulties unleashed by the occupation, is the home of 34-year-old Mazin and his parents. At 2am more than 50 soldiers burst into Mazin’s home and started to methodically destroy his family’s belongings as they interrogated him for four hours. Mazin and his parents suffer from ill health, his mother suffering from cancer and Mazin from a heart condition since he was 20, when the army shot him with 10 bullets for which he spent 6 months in hospital before being placed in prison, the same number of years as bullets, before he even had the chance to fully recover.
Mazen’s bedroon, ransacked by Israeli soldiers (Photo by ISM)
Mazin asked the soldiers for water for himself and his mother during the interrogation. The army refused. The soldiers demanded that Mazin hand over automatic weapons, of which he said he had none.
The army then sadistically smashed the home; destroyed all furnishing; threw food from the fridge over the floor; overturned the washing machine, the oven, and even hauled out water pipes. “They’re animals,” Mazin’s father said. Soldiers threw eggs at walls and broke them on chairs. They smashed the toilet bowl and attacked the walls of every room with their tools. See video here.
At one point a soldier approached Mazin; he put his hand on Mazin’s shoulder and told him: “I don’t want to arrest you. I want to kill you. I promise you, I will kill you.” Mazin’s parents were standing beside him when their son was being threatened with murder. The family noticed three stars on the soldier’s uniform, which meant he’s a battalion commander, a high rank in the occupation army.
Destroyed kitchen (Photo by ISM)
The army left the home in ruin; they took his laptop but found no illegal weapons. Later, Mazin, a FIFA-certified football coach in Nablus, found that his football had been skewered with a knife. In spite of condemnation from human rights supporters, Israel was recently chosen to host the 2013 UEFA under-21 championship.
Mazin and his parents chose to leave the house the way it was after the destruction; they hope that ‘“The world will see what life is like for Palestinians under Israeli occupation.”
Alam’s distraught family could not do this, when the army left they immediately started to clean and repair. “We didn’t sleep,” Alam’s sister said. She joined the family to help, as did many neighbours who came to support the family, as Alam is a popular man, but also through sense of duty and community.
The day after this attack on Nablus (Israel’s fourth in this last week alone), residents wondered what else the occupation army would do to their city the following night.Nablus is in Area A (according to the Oslo Accords), which means, in theory, that Israel does not have any military or civilian control over it.
