16th June 2013 | International Solidarity Movement, Khalil Team | Hebron, Occupied Palestine
On Saturday, June 15, Israeli settlers and occupation soldiers spread through the old city of Hebron as part of a very provocative weekly tour that disrupts the daily lives of Palestinians living in the area. This week, soldiers also invaded the homes of several Palestinian families and climbed onto the roofs without the families’ consent.
Activist blocks the door trying to prevent soldiers from entering (Photo by ISM)
As it turns out, the settlers were not just innocent tourists, but bullies as well. As they were walking along Shuhadah Street, they threw a huge quantity of water at the window of a nearby Palestinian home, and it spilled through the window, down the outer wall and all over the steps. The soldiers then accused the Palestinians nearby of throwing the water and questioned the homeowner next door, as if they would throw water into their own houses, and as if soldiers of the illegal occupation had jurisdiction in such a case. The family whose house the water was thrown at has suffered many incidents of settler harassment and military intrusions of late.
Conversely, as the soldiers left one of the houses they’d invaded, the Palestinian owner said “Shabbat shalom” (Hebrew for “Good Sabbath”) to them, demonstrating the Palestinian spirit of resilience, steadfastness and hospitality even in the face of military oppression and occupation.
This weekly “tour” of Hebron disturbs the daily lives of Palestinians in the busy Souq of Hebron, which has seen an extreme decrease in trade since the Israeli occupation forces closed Shuhada street, which was formerly Hebron’s busiest market. Rather than closing the Souq, where there are several illegal Israeli settlements, Palestinian residents think the Israeli forces are trying to make life there as uncomfortable as possible and thus pressure them to move out of the area.
Soldiers crash through a living room with no regard for the family inside (Photo by ISM)
15th June 2013 | International Solidarity Movement, Nablus Team | Urif, Occupied Palestine
On Tuesday, 11th June, Israeli forces invaded the village of Urif and arrested nine youths between the ages of eighteen and twenty-seven. This incident is believed by the villagers to be related to the ‘price-tag’ settler attacks that the village suffered on 30th April.
At around 1am, forty foot soldiers and four jeeps coming from the nearby Yizhar settlement raided Urif and arrested the nine youths. Without giving any information, the soldiers left in the early hours of the morning, leaving the village at roughly 4am.
Israeli soldier pointing at residents of Urif with a M16 rifle charged with rubber coated steel bullets during a settler attack last January (Photo by ISM)
The town’s mayor says the incident is part of an ongoing assault on the villagers who rightfully resist settler attacks. He stated, “nobody complains when Israel violates the law like this anymore, they are too afraid of being arrested themselves”. He also believes there is a clear pattern of targeting all the young men in the area in order to create circumstances where the only people left to defend their land are older and other vulnerable people.
The incident, as mentioned earlier, is directly linked to the confrontations that erupted between Palestinian youths and settlers and Israeli armed forces after settlers from Yizhar settlement attacked the villages of Urif, Burin and Asira. These ‘price-tag’ attacks on Palestinian villagers were followed by the killing of a settler by a Palestinian at the Za’tara checkpoint on April 30th.
Urif, located southwest of the city of Nablus, is one of several villages in proximity to the extremely hostile settlement of Yizhar and as such subject to constant harassment and violence from settlers and Israeli forces.
Settlers from Yizhar, including the head rabbi, have distributed Islamphobic literature, describing Palestinians as a “Cancer that needs to be cleansed from the land of Israel” and created pamphlets expressing support for Israeli mass murderers, most notably Baruch Goldstein, who carried out the Cave of the Patriarchs massacre.
These settlers are also known for being the ideologists of the ‘price-tag’ practice, where any kind of action taken against settlement expansion in the occupied Palestinian territories by the Israeli government is met with harsh, violent and aggressive attacks on Palestinian communities.
On 20 May, Obeida Shamali visited his father, Ahmad Abd Alraheem Shamali, in Israel’s Nafha prison. It was the first time they had seen each other since Israeli forces captured Ahmad in August 2008.
Palestinian children in Gaza hold a protest outside the International Committee of the Red Cross, demanding the release of their relatives detained by Israel. (Joe Catron)
“I was very happy,” the seven-year-old said. He was sitting under a picture of his father in his family’s house in Gaza City’s al-Shajaiyeh neighborhood. “Before it, I imagined how his face would look when I met him, because I hadn’t seen him for such a long time.”
But children of detainees remained unable to visit their incarcerated parents for almost another year. Only last month, on 6 May, did Israel allow seven children — all younger than eight years old — to accompany 54 other members of prisoners’ families through the Erez checkpoint, which separates Gaza from present-day Israel. Some 33 children have now joined four prison visits, according to Dibeh Fakhr, a spokeswoman for the International Committee of the Red Cross, which coordinates family visits to detainees with the Israeli authorities.
A recent report on the policy by the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem described the current visitation regime. “Visits are permitted very infrequently, only once a week on Mondays, and then only at one prison facility at a time: Nafha, Ramon and Eshel (Dekel),” according to the group. “As a result, each eligible inmate receives a visit once every three or four months. In contrast, inmates from Israel or from the West Bank who are held on criminal or security grounds may receive visits once every two weeks” (“Israel prohibits Gazan children from visiting imprisoned fathers,” 23 May 2013).
“We were all flying with happiness,” Najah Shamali, Ahmad’s mother and Obeida’s grandmother, said about the news that their entire family would be able to visit Ahmad for the first time. “The whole family celebrated. Everyone obsessed about the visit and could hardly wait for it to come.”
“No justification”
But the visit might have been Obeida’s last. Israel’s new policy still bars Gaza Strip children aged eight or older from visiting their detained parents. And Obeida’s eighth birthday — on 10 July — will almost certainly come before his family’s next visit.
“These policies show that the main aim of the Israeli prison system is to destroy the well-being of prisoners,” Rifat Kassis, the director of Defence for Children International — Palestine Section, said. “There is no justification for imposing these restrictions on Palestinian children from communicating and visiting their fathers in Israeli prisons. Even the security justification Israel uses to justify its policies are not in line with its human rights obligations and cannot stand.”
According to Kassis, Israel’s restrictions on family visits violate not only its responsibilities under international law, but also its own written regulations. “Denying political prisoners, especially those who are from the Gaza Strip, from their visitation rights for prolonged periods of time and imposing restrictions on them when they enjoy this right, including putting limitations and restrictions on who is eligible to visit them, is a form of collective punishment,” he said.
“The right of prisoners to receive visitors, especially near relatives, at regular intervals and as frequently as possible is recognized by the Fourth Geneva Convention.
“These practices are not in conformity with the Israeli Prison Service instructions related to the right of visitation of prisoners. The IPS instructions reads that the prisoners have the right to receive family visits after three months of imprisonment, once every two weeks.”
At the end of April, Israel held 511 Palestinians from the Gaza Strip, according to B’Tselem. Many are detained for lengthy sentences. “Most of their children are [older than] eight years,” said Osama Wahidi, a spokesman for the Hussam Association, a Gaza-based group for current and former detainees. “Very few are younger.”
The Hussam Association campaigns around issues of family visitation, issuing statements and holding rallies at the ICRC. Many of its activities, Wahidi said, aim to draw the attention of international media and human rights organizations.
“Their positions are very bad,” he said. “When [Israeli soldier] Gilad Shalit was detained by the Palestinian resistance here in Gaza, every human rights organization talked about him. At the same time, most of them, and the international media, never mentioned Palestinian detainees. But they demanded that Shalit should be released. He was a soldier; he was holding a weapon; he was targeting Palestinian civilians.”
“We don’t have a magic wand to release all the detainees. That’s why we are trying to find ways to talk about the suffering of detainees, their families, and their children. We don’t have any other way.”
“I send him voice messages through a radio station, and written messages through the ICRC,” said Nisma al-Aqraa, the 15-year-old daughter of Mahed Faraj al-Aqraa. She has not seen her father, a fighter for the Popular Resistance Committees’ al-Nasser Salah al-Deen Brigades, since his capture by Israeli forces in July 2007. Categorized as a “permanent sick detainee” in the Ramleh prison hospital, where he is serving three life sentences, both of his legs have been amputated.
“I saw him behind a glass barrier,” Hamze Helles complained. “I couldn’t go inside.” Hamze, who had just turned eight when Israel’s policy shifted on 6 May, was able to visit his father Majed Khalil Helles, a fighter for Fatah’s al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades sentenced to five years, in Nafha prison on 20 May, through an apparent administrative oversight. It was Hamze’s first visit since his father’s capture by Israeli forces in August 2008.
“It doesn’t make any sense to deprive a small child who will never cause any harm to Israel,” Wahidi said. “It’s not logical. But Israel doesn’t care about its reputation. It feels like it is a state above the law, that no one can hold it accountable for its crimes. Nobody in the international community has shown otherwise.”
15th June 2013 | International Solidarity Movement, Saeeda | Hebron, Occupied Palestine
I am an ISM activist living in the occupied city of Hebron. I arrived home late in the evening of Friday, June 14, and outside my door some of the neighborhood kids had built a small fire and were cooking corn. They tried to sell me a piece for a couple of shekels but I was more interested in sleeping at that point of the night. I put on some music and started cleaning up the apartment, but then I heard yelling outside my house. I looked down and saw an armed settler and a Palestinian man arguing loudly. Then I saw two Israeli soldiers escorting the settler from the scene. As I was home alone, I didn’t go down myself but called two other organizations, CPT and EAPPI, to help monitor the situation. Over the next few minutes I heard more yelling and glass breaking and saw more soldiers arriving at the scene. I didn’t see any arrests. I also saw that the corn and the materials the kids built the fire with were scattered all over the place and someone was cleaning them up.
When CPT and EAPPI arrived, we patrolled the area, which was at this point quiet but filled with more soldiers than usual. We were pleased to find that our neighbor Hani and his family were all safe, and then went visit Palestinian human rights group Youth Against Settlements. There one of our activists friends Jawad finally had some answers for us. He took us to the Abu Haqel house, and acted as a translator for us as we interviewed Abu Hussein. This is what he said.
View on the old city of Hebron from Tel Rumeida (Photo by: Activestills)
When the kids were cooking the corn and selling it for about a shekel apiece, an angry settler man came up to them. He cocked his M16 and chased the kids away, shouting that if anyone took a shot at his son, he would kill that person. He then came back and spilled the corn out in the street. Abu Hussein heard this and came down and was very angry about what the settler had done. The settler shouted that Abu Hussein and those kids must leave the area, or he would burn their houses and anyone inside. Abu Hussein said that this is his home – he lives right above my house – and said the settler should leave. Israeli officers arrived and escorted the settler away from the scene and told Abu Hussein to leave, threatening to arrest his children and take them in for investigation. Supposedly a settler kid was harassed earlier in the day. Abu Hussein told them that if they want to know what happened, they should question the soldiers who are in the area all day or use their many security cameras, rather than arresting children. Abu Hussein’s son, who was in the room while we spoke to Abu Hussein, said he hadn’t seen the settler children all day.
Our neighborhood of Tel Rumeida, part of the Israeli-controlled H2 district of occupied Hebron, is the site of frequent settler attacks on Palestinian families. In most cases the Israeli soldiers look on and do nothing to stop the violence. The continued attacks are seen by some Palestinians as part of an overall effort to make life as difficult as possible for Palestinian residents so they will choose to move out of the area. However, to our knowledge none of the Palestinian residents of Tel Rumeida are giving in to Israeli pressure any time soon. This is their home, after all.
14th June 2013 | International Solidarity Movement, Khalil Team | Nil’in, Occupied Palestine
On Friday, 14 June, around fifteen residents of Nil’in marched toward Israel’s apartheid wall in the latest of it’s regular protests against the systematic confiscation of their land via the wall and five surrounding Israeli colonies.
Graffiti visible on the Apartheid Wall
The wall itself is covered in creative responses to the illegality of the occupation such as “If Batman knew about this you would be in so much trouble” and “Freedom is never given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed,” a quote from Martin Luther King, Jr. The residents of Ni’lin continue their march towards the wall, towards the land that was always theirs, and towards their freedom.
The response from the occupation forces today was violent, as they launched clusters of tear gas canisters into the crowd, igniting patches of ground and asphyxiating and blinding demonstrators, some of whom needed medical attention. Two soldiers climbed the wall and began shooting into the crowd, but retreated when stones were thrown at them and before anyone could be hurt. The other protestors erupted in cheers.
One Israeli demonstrator wrote messages in Hebrew to the Israeli soldiers, telling them that they are protecting illegal settlements on stolen land and harming innocent civilians for the benefit of corporations, attaching the messages to Frisbees and empty tear gas canisters. People then catapult them over the wall – a powerful message to soldiers who go about destroying the very land they claim to own.
Citizens of Ni’lin have been protesting against the annexation of their lands since 2004. So far Ni’lin has lost over 50,000 dunums, the majority of its land, due to the settlements and the route of the wall. Saeed Amireh, of the Ni’lin popular committee, believes this is a calculated measure to expel the Palestinians from their land, as many rely on farm land for livelihood.
Youth from Ni’lin with the Apartheid Wall visible in the background
