Cindy and Craig Corrie talk about their struggle for accountability for Rachel’s death
Abby Martin speaks with Cindy and Craig Corrie, parents of slain activist Rachel Corrie, about their case against the Israeli government and their fight for social justice worldwide through the Rachel Corrie Foundation.
19 January 2013 | Popular Struggle Coordination Committee
Israeli border police arrested today 10 Palestinians and five Israelis, including three women and a child, in the area of Um El-Arayes. Four were arrested yesterday.
Today, Saturday, dozens of Palestinian residents accompanied by Israeli activists, arrived at their lands in the area of “Metzpeh Yai’r” outpost built on the lands of Um El-Arayes in South Hebron Hills. Israeli soldiers immediately declared the area a closed military zone and pushed the activists off the land. In the process, they arrested ten Palestinians and five Israeli activists. Yesterday, Friday, four Palestinians were arrested in the same area.
The nineteen arrestees included four Palestinian women, as well as a mother and her 18 months old child, three minors and an elderly man in his 80s.
The last few months have seen an escalation in the Israeli military’s policy to expel Palestinians and control access to their private lands in the South Hebron Hills. This is contrary to the Israeli High Court and Military Legal Advisor’s claim that they will facilitate easy access by Palestinian landowners to their lands.
Update: On 19th January morning Israeli forces demolished and confiscated emergency aid, including 18 Red Cross tents, provided to displaced families in Hamamat Al Maleh. The whole area was declared closed military zone and observers and journalists were not allowed entry the entire day, only locals were allowed to enter.
18 January 2013 | Jordan Valley Solidarity, Occupied Palestine
On 17th January 55 buildings were demolished in the Al Maleh area of the northern Jordan Valley.
At around 9.00 am these two communities were invaded by two busloads of soldiers, Israeli police, a number of jeeps and three JCB bulldozers. Some came from a nearby military base, and others from Maskiyot settlement complex, which overlooks al-Maleh. The bulldozer drivers were clad in balaclavas to hide their identity.
This large scale military operation happened simultaneously in two separate locations in Hamamat al-Maleh, and another further up the valley in Al-Mayta.
Upon arrival, the army declared al-Maleh a closed military zone, and refused entry to residents, observers and a delegation of medical staff whilst the demolitions took place. The masked, unidentifiable workers accompanying them assisted in removing possessions from resident’s homes.
Of the 55 buildings demolished, 23 were family homes: 5 in Hamamat al-Male (leaving 37 people homeless) and 18 in Al-Mayta (leaving 150 people homeless). In addition 33 other building, used to shelter the communities animals, and therefore the livelihood of these communities, were destroyed. Amongst the destruction, purposefully wrecked water tanks were found — in a region of the West Bank where water is deliberately made scarce for Palestinians.
Al-Maleh and Al-Mayta are two marginalized villages located in the north of the Jordan Valley, near the Tayasir checkpoint. They have been subject to repeated harrassment and demolitions and only two weeks ago were forced to leave their homes overnight, purportedly due to Israeli military training.
18 January 2013 | International Middle East Media Center
The Palestinian village of Beit Iksa overlooking Jerusalem just built a new village they called Bab Al-Karamah (Gate of Dignity) on their land behind the apartheid wall that Israel has built on their land and call on Palestinians and Internationals to join them in their popular struggle to hold on to their lands. The wall Israel is building on the village land would leave 96% of the village land inaccessible and behind the segregation wall.
Over the past 24 hours, the villagers built a mosque and set up 5 tens for dwelling on their land behind the wall. The head of the Beit Iksa village council Mr. Kamal Hababa stated that idea of building this village extension is to protect their legally owned lands and to be the second such village built to protect from growing efforts at transforming Arab Jerusalem.
Already the threatened village land behind the wall is 7411 dunums which amounts to half the total threatened lands of the eight Palestinian villages northwest of Jerusalem and 96% of the village land of Beit Iksa. Colonial Jewish only settlements built on Palestinian lands beyond the Green line in this area include Ramot, Neve Shmuel, Har Shmuel, and Givat Ze’ev.
The erection of Bab Al-Karama village comes shortly after Palestinian activists erected a village they called Bab Ashams to counter Israeli settlement construction in the area known as E1, located between Jerusalem and Jericho, which signals a new model in popular struggle against the ongoing expansion of the Israeli settlements in the West Bank.
17 January 2013 | PSCC and International Solidarity Movement, West Bank, Occupied Palestine
A demonstration will be held on Friday 18th January in Budrus to commemorate Sameer Awwad (16) who was shot on Tuesday 15th January with 3 live bullets. Awwad is the fourth to be killed near the Barrier in five days.
On Tuesday morning, while children were clearing out of their classes in the village of Budrus, Israeli soldiers who convened by the Barrier near the school shot and killed 16 year-old Sameer Awwad. According to eyewitnesses, Sameer was walking away from light clashes that had erupted by the Barrier when he was shot from the back with three bullets, from a distance of about 100 meters. One bullet hit his leg, another at the back of his neck and exited near his eyebrow, and the third entered his rib cage and exited from his chest.
Awwad was immediately transferred to Ramallah Hospital, where he was pronounce dead shortly after. He is the fourth Palestinian to have been killed this week by Israeli forces in the vicinity of the Barrier. Anwar al-Mamlouk, 21, was killed last Friday in Gaza , near the Barrier in Jabalya. On Saturday, Oudai Darwish from Dura near Hebron was killed in the South Hebron Hills, when trying to cross the barrier to find work in Israel. Another Plaestinian, Mustafa Abu Jarad, 21, was killed yesterday near the Barrier in Beit Lahia.
