23th May 2013 | International Solidarity Movement, Team Khalil, Hebron, Occupied Palestine
Shuhada Street, Hebron (file photo)
On Tuesday 21st May, Jamila Shalaldeh was found innocent by Ofer Military Court of assaulting 13 soldiers.
Jamila and her son Abdel were visibly nervous before her trial. Fortunately, the Israeli military judge agreed with Jamila and her family that the charges against her were absolutely absurd. He even laughed when he heard the evidence filed against her.
Initially, Jamila had been ordered to pay 7,000 shekels, later reduced to 1,750 shekels. On March 21st, the judge declared Jamila innocent and further reduced the fine to 1,000 shekels. Still, it’s disturbing that an innocent woman is forced to pay anything for having to endure a terrifying attack on her family and home.
On October 30th 2012 at 2am, more than fifty Israeli soldiers surrounded the home Jamila Shalaldeh shares with her three children and young grandson, near Checkpoint 56 on Shuhada Street in Hebron. The family awoke to soldiers hammering their front door and observed that many of the soldiers had positioned themselves on the rooftops overlooking their outdoor courtyard.
Jamila’s son Abdel opened the door and was immediately overrun. Abdel was beaten in his own home, in front of three of his family members, before being blindfolded and arrested. The soldiers accused him of posting a video (that showed a local Palestinian father being abused by soldiers at Checkpoint 56 for questioning the severe mistreatment of his ten year old son). They did not charge him with any crime, but said they were arresting him on suspicion of having committed a crime.
Abdel’s mother, Jamila, ran to her son, panicked and screaming. The soldiers pushed her around. Then she fainted. Abdel’s sister managed to videotape the entire incident, but Israeli soldiers forced the family to delete this evidence. Fortunately, a second video taken by a neighbour attests to the soldiers’ extreme aggression that night.
Abdel spent three days and two nights in prison. He was released in the middle of nowhere with no money and no phone. Upon his release, he was informed that his mother, Jamila, had also been arrested. She had been charged with assaulting 13 of the soldiers who had invaded their home. Jamila spent three days and four nights in three different prisons. She was released at night in an unfamiliar location.
While charges against Abdel were never filed, Jamila was required to attend a court hearing this past Tuesday. In particular, she was accused of biting two soldiers and breaking free of her handcuffs.
22 May 2012 | International Solidarity Movement, Nablus Team | Kafr Qalil, Occupied Palestine
The Israeli army invaded seven family homes in the village of Kafr Qalil, south of Nablus, between 1am and 2am on 20th May. They trashed the properties and people’s possessions and stayed in them for several hours apiece. Lastly, they arrested a university student, Saleh al-Amer, 22.
Saleh al-Amer had thought administartive detention was done with and he could look to his future
Instead of just ringing the bell, they obliterated the homes’ heavy metal doors, creating fear and manifesting uncertainty for the innocent residents. They were given no reason for the destruction of their property despite repeatedly asking for one. Nader Soloman, one of those who had his home invaded, having his 2 and 4 year-old daughters terrified in the process, even spoke in Hebrew but answers were still refused. The army ransacked their homes, ordered the adults and children about, broke their furnishings and emptied cupboards of clothes, throwing them on the floor to then continually walk all over them. The army remained in the homes for 4 to 5 hours.
At 2am the army changed tact and knocked on the door of the al-Amer family house, home to eleven people. The army didn’t enter the house and asked the family’s father who the sons of the household were. He said the two names and the officer requested Saleh, was then placed under arrest and taken to Huwwara military base for a few hours, before being moved to Salem prison on the Green Line for another couple of hours. At which point he was able to contact his lawyer and tell him of his whereabouts before being transferred to Megiddo prison in Israel.
The younger children are now traumatized by the event, crying when they see images of the army on the TV, while other family members are unable to sleep. Saleh’s younger sister explained to the activists who came to speak with the family that Saleh had done nothing wrong; “my brother is the most lovely person, we can’t live without my brother. He needs to come back to his house, to his family, his village, study”. Saleh had just finished his first-year university exams and was happy about the changes to the family home to accommodate him and his soon-to-be wife. Saleh studied hard and also worked to bring money into the home, he enjoyed sport and caring for and playing with the younger children.
Saleh was arrested two years previously and held in administrative detention for five months, only seeing his family once, when they were in court. At that time the army officer during his arrest told him he was being arrested so that he wouldn’t be able to go back to university.
Administrative detention is the imprisonment of Palestinians without charge or trial by administrative rather than judicial procedure. International law, as set out in the Fourth Geneva Convention, allows for it only in very extreme cases of ensuring security and even then grants the right for those interned to be held within the occupied territory with support to be given to their family and dependents. They are also due greater privileges than ordinary prisoners. The Israeli government has claimed that administrative detention is not an arbitrary form of internment, in part, because detention orders are subject to review. However they can be renewed indefinitely every six months, leaving prisoners and their loved ones with no countdown to their release.
The front doors of one house look as if they were broken with more than human strength (photo: ISM)
Huge metal chunks flew off the door and its frame into the corridor (photo: ISM)
The door will be replaced, a sense of safety is harder to come by (photo: ISM)
22th May 2013 | International Solidarity Movement, Team Nablus | Sabastiya, Occupied Palestine
In community remembrance of the Nakba, Sabastiya villagers observed 15 minutes of a full lights-out.
In community remembrance of the Nakbah, Sabastiya villagers observed 15-minutes of a full light-out. Instead, villagers gathered in the village center, a municipal park area, to remember Palestinian displacement from 1948 Palestinian villages. [Photo by Ahmad Kayed]Villagers sang Palestinian songs together in a show of community and collective continued remembrance of the devastation and displacement caused by the Nakba and the effects of the Nakba, 65 years later. [Photo by Ahmad Kayed]Villagers gathered in the village center, a municipal park area, to remember Palestinian displacement from 1948 Palestinian villages. Candles were lit as people gathered to remember the Nakba together. [Photo by Ahmad Kayed]
21st May 2013 | International Solidarity Movement, Team Nablus | Aqraba, Occupied Palestine
Seven hundred olive trees were uprooted first thing in the morning of 16th May while a bulldozer got to work destroying the farmer’s concrete water storage facility and surrounding dry stone walls and fences in Aqraba. The Israeli army, who did some of the damage along with specially contracted workers, has since returned to check that the ground has not been replanted.
The bulldozer came in very early so as to escape attention (Photo by Aqraba municipality)
Arriving at 6am, the military came in jeeps and with a bulldozer and, along with the other workers, began to trash the wire fence enclosing the area and pull up the trees on it by hand. They came without any prior notification. When the mayor made a complaint on the scene at about 8am, saying that demolitions cannot happen without the land owner being warned and signing a confirmation as such; even citing several simple ways in which the owner or, at least, the municipality could be informed. He was told that an order had been delivered and placed “on a rock” there some “two years ago”. Just getting there had been arduous for him and other council workers, as troops had been placed to block access to the site, where in total there were approximately twenty of them plus two officers. The water tank, now little more than a pile of rubble exposed in a hole in the ground, could hold three hundred cubic metres of water before. Around it, huge boulders that formally made up short walls, were dumped in such a way on the vandalised land as to prevent easy replanting or rebuilding there.
What remains of the water store (Photo by Aqraba municipality)
The young olive trees had been planted in 2011 by the owner following a move from Dubai, with the fence once going around them meant to indicate that it is privately-owned land. The site straddles the boundary between Areas B and C; arbitrarily divided up into zones where Palestinian civil control is either nominal (B) or otherwise replaced by administration by the Israeli military (C). While huge swathes of Area C are under the threat of home and property demolition where they have Palestinian and Bedouin population, much of the rest is given over to military training. Area C is notorious for Palestinians being near-incapable of gaining any form of building permit, while work without one is liable to removed soon after discovery by the occupiers. “All land of Aqraba that can be used economically is to the east reaching to the Jordan River”, the mayor said. “If we could use these lands, Aqraba would be rich, but this is not allowed in Area C. Farmers are prohibited from the land and the Israelis bring soldiers and settlers and use the land in an economic way, which means that the military order is only a trick to use the land in an economic way”. Adding as well that, “court freezes demolitions, it does not allow for rehabilitation [of the land]”.
The army not only provided support, they did some of the work (Photo by Aqraba municipality)
The land lies in the southwest of Aqraba. Further in the same direction is the hamlet of al-Taweel. There thirty families get electricity from power lines constructed by Belgian foreign aid, along with a school and a mosque. These lines, in service since 2004, are slated for demolition and a final decision on this is pending in court. A small house and shed for a farmer’s sheep there was demolished and then the animal shelter was rebuilt in protest,with the owner taken to court in February. Families there are frequently evicted temporarily to make use of their land for military exercises.
19th May 2013 | International Solidarity Movement, Team Nablus | Qaryut, Occupied Palestine
The young Qaryut boy here has his entire right leg in a cast, expecting potential surgery (photo: ISM)
UPDATED: The 13-year-old Qaryut boy attacked by settlers on 16 May completed an operation on his lower leg and foot on Friday and has since been released to recover at home. He also provided a full account of his attack and the time he spent in an Israeli jeep untreated and tortured for information he neither had nor could speak of due to the pain from his untreated injury.
The boy said he was alone on his land near the illegal settlement of Eli when he was attacked. His friend was coming to join him when settlers began shooting at the boy. He ran, but fell from a big drop in the land, being on the mountainside. Settlers pursued him but he dragged himself on his stomach by some bushes. He was in great pain but kept quiet, afraid of settlers or soldiers finding him and continuing to attack him. After some time, his phone rang when his sister and friend called him. The soldiers then found and descended on him, threatening him with their guns while he lay, unable to move, on the ground.
Below is video of the boy’s harassment when the Israeli soldiers found him; the video is taken in the village area down the mountain from the nearest illegal Eli settlement houses, in view of the land where the boy was attacked. He said that the soldiers and settlement security official (DCI) threatened to kill him.
Video by B. Qaryoute
No one from the village could come to the boy’s aid for risk of being shot at by the soldiers. Local Red Crescent representatives said that a man from the municipality was with the soldiers and was told that the boy would be treated in an Israeli ambulance and possibly taken to an Israeli hospital. However, as the Red Crescent, the boy’s family, solidarity activists and nearby villagers waited, watching the soldiers on top of the mountain for two to three hours, the boy was untreated and tortured by Israeli army officials for information.
“They said I was trying to set fire to the land by the settlement; they said I was with three others and had a lighter and a firebomb,” the boy said. “They would twist my leg every ten minutes or so when I would not give them names [of those with whom he was accused of conspiring].” The boy said he was also beat for information.
The boy’s interrogators also told him they had pictures him, evidence against him, and that a soldier had seen him. “Why don’t you ask the soldier, then?” the boy said. Reportedly the response to this question was, “No, I want to ask you.”
Finally, the local Red Crescent brought an ambulance to the entrance of the illegal settlement where they were given the boy, untreated. The boy’s grandfather said that his grandson’s flesh near his ankle was open, his leg wobbly, and black flesh showed from the boy’s yet untreated injury. The Red Crescent immediately took the boy to the nearest hospital in Nablus: Rafedia hospital 30-45 minutes away.
The area of the boy’s attack has seen several settler attacks on the nearby houses. Most notably, settlers from Eli have several times in the past year set fire to Palestinian olive trees near the house Im Fayyiz, a woman known in the village for her long-time struggle with attacks by the nearby settlers.
Qaryut also suffers from a key road-closure of a road leading to both Nablus and Ramallah. Previous peaceful demonstrations to open the road, however, have ceased due to fear of more arrests, as 15 innocent Qaryut villagers, mostly young men, were arrested in the past 5 months for peaceful activism in taking part in the demonstrations.
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At about 2pm on 16 May, a 13 year-old boy was shot at and beaten by settlers and soldiers; he broke bones in his leg running from the shots at him and from being beaten. After falling, the boy was threatened with his life by settlers, but soldiers arrived and stopped the settlers from killing him before threatening the young boy with three guns while he lay injured and immobile on the ground.
Nablus’ Rafidia Hospital took this X-ray showing the teenager’s broken bones from his attack (photo: ISM)
Initial medical attention was not allowed during the time Israeli soldiers had taken the boy into their custody, implying that he would be treated in an Israeli ambulance. However, three hours later, the boy had to be picked up, untreated, by the Red Crescent and taken to Rafidia hospital in Nablus.
When solidarity activists saw the boy, his entire right leg was wrapped in a cast. Later he described that he was sitting on his land which is close to an illegal Israeli settlement bordering Qaryut and famous for attacks such as olive tree torching. Settlers shot at him and he ran from the shots. When he fell, the settlers beat him and were going to kill him, but soldiers arrived and told the settlers could not. Afterwards, the soldiers also shouted at the boy with guns pointed at him.
The boy may undergo surgery for his broken bones.
Just two days before this attack, Qaryut faced an olive tree torching attack from another nearby illegal Israeli settlement and the village has a history of well-documented settler attacks on its land. In addition, Israeli military have closed a Qaryut road to Nablus and Ramallah for Palestinian use as the road is not far from illegal Israeli settlements on Qaryut land. Currently, 15 mostly young Qaryut men have been arrested for activism in peaceful demonstrations against the key road’s closure.
![Villagers sang Palestinian songs together in a show of community and collective continued remembrance of the devastation and displacement caused by the Nakba and the after effects of the Nakbah, 65 years later. [Photo by Ahmad Kayed]](https://palsolidarity.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/DSC_0909-600x337.jpg)
![Villagers gathered in the village center, a municipal park area, to remember Palestinian displacement from 1948 Palestinian villages. Candles were lit as people gathered to remember the Nakba together. [Photo by Ahmad Kayed]](https://palsolidarity.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/DSC_0906-600x337.jpg)
