16 October 2012 | International Solidarity Movement, West Bank
About thirty citizens from Jama’in, accompanied by around 15 international solidarity activists commenced the first stage in the removal of a roadblock on an agricultural road near to the village, just south of Nablus. The earth mound was built on the road by the Israeli occupation forces in May of this year. It restricts the freedom of movement of Palestinian farmers to access their lands to olive groves owned by farmers in the village. As the olive harvest season is starting, access to the fields for farmers’ vehicles has become ever more essential.
After about an hour of removing the earth mound and flattening the road with hoes and buckets, the activists managed to level the road, only leaving behind two large rocks that are to be removed with heavy equipment in the coming days. The event was organized by the municipality and international activists were invited to attend.
According to local sources the earth mound has been removed a number of times by Jama’in citizens over the past few years.
Jama’in is a village south of Nablus in the West Bank, which lies directly in between the illegal settlements of Ari’el and Kfar Tappuah, and has suffered with restrictions imposed on them by the Israeli army with access to their lands, roadblocks and road closures over the last few years, in order to expand settlements and build Israeli-only roads.
Viktor Ibrahim, Meri Verdaguer and Vicky Blackwell are volunteers with the International Solidarity Movement (names have been changed).
16 October 2012 | International Solidarity Movement, Gaza
The Israeli air force has conducted several air raids at night starting on the 12th of October, and ending on the morning of the 13th.
“I felt a huge explosion at midnight while in a cafè with some friends. The first attack hit a Hamas military base north of Gaza City (in Nafaq street). Later, empty spaces in the refugee camps of Al Bureij and Nuseirat were hit, in the central Gaza Strip. Military aircraft continued to fly sporadically that night.
At 3:20pm on the 13th I heard another huge explosion caused by an Israeli strike on a site belonging to the resistance, north of Gaza City.
F-16 fighters flew for at least half an hour longer. An attack was also reported in an uninhabited area in the Bedouin village Um Al Nasser in Beit Lahia, which is located in the northern Gaza Strip. Later I learned that in this area the shelling had damaged a kindergarten.
Israeli forces have subsequently claimed to have struck, “a site of terrorist activity in the northern Gaza Strip and two others in the central area”. Given that they are centers for the Palestinian resistance and that terrorism is daily implemented by the Israeli army with attacks by sea, air and/or by land, this statement is false. The objectives that were hit are sites of the resistance, north of Gaza City, but are also vacant spaces in the central area. In addition to these attacks took place in Beit Lahia. These statements, which have been copied by the Italian media are patently incorrect and are useful to specifically justify the attacks.
With the idea to show what happened during that evening, there was a consultation with centers for human rights and other local contacts. Today I went in the village of Um Al Nasser to photograph the damaged kindergarten.
I discovered that the ‘Um Al-Nasser kindergarten was built through the project “Education for Peace and Architecture in the Gaza Strip” that had been promoted by the Italian NGO Vento di Terra, and financed by Italian Government Cooperation.
I went there with a Palestinian activist, we were accompanied by local people to visit the inside of the kindergarten. The walls have cracks and some pieces have fallen.
Then the village men met with us outside to see the cavity in the ground caused by the bomb dropped from an F-16. The bomb was dropped near the nursery, where there is also an agricultural land and a chicken farm.
I must admit that I risked a lot to be in that place at such a late hour, it was about 6:00 to 6:30 in the evening. Drones flew over us while we were in the agricultural land about 700 meters from the border with Israel.
“Get away from us, if they hit, they will hit the entire group,” said the Palestinian activist.
At such times it is difficult to remain focused-
It was completely dark, the only light was on a cell phone. I did not want to be separated from other people and at the same time I contemplated my own personal survival. I began to imagine our bodies suddenly reduced to pieces. Nausea and dizziness encroached upon me, as drones continued to be there… right on top of us.
I took pictures quickly on the spot where the bomb exploded and on the outside walls of the asylum. I just had to do this work, then I would go. I would do this in spite of my fingers trembling on the camera.
-Luckily everything went well this time.
We also found pieces of the bomb. Once we left the kindergarten we visited a house nearby damaged by the attack. Abu Idrees Sharikh, age 52, told us that the attack occurred around 1:45 at night. He invited us to come in and began to point out the cracks on the walls of his home caused by the explosion. She told me that her daughter, Sabrin, age 16, is shocked and unable to speak. Their family is originally from Ashkelon. The families of this Bedouin village are extremely poor and live under constant threat of air strikes. They are refugees yet they do not receive any services from UNRWA because it does not consider the area included among those to receive aid. The village of Um Al Nasser is definitely one of the worst areas of the Gaza Strip concerning living conditions.
I left and went back to Gaza City.
I went to an outdoor cafè for a moment of calm. I hoped I could connect my computer and start working, but suddenly I heard an explosion at about 20:15.
There is no peace.
An Israeli raid killed two men on a motorcycle in Massoud street in Jabalia, north of Gaza City.
The first man died on the spot, Fayeq Abu Jazar, he arrived at the hospital without a head. The second man, in critical condition, died later in the hospital. Hesham Ali Su’eidani, age 43, was the leader of the Salafist group. Hesham Ali Su’eidani was also the leader of the Salafist whose release had been asked by the killers of Vittorio Arrigoni.
A second attack at about 8:30 am hit the Zaytoun neighborhood in Gaza City where there is a site of Al Qassam Brigades, which is the armed wing of Hamas. No injuries were reported.”
14 October 2012 | International Solidarity Movement, West Bank
Latif Ali with one of her trees that were destroyed.
Last night in the West Bank village of Qaryut, 12 Palestinian owned olive trees were irreparably destroyed in a late night arson attack by Israelis from the illegal West Bank settlement of Eli.
The attack follows an incident last week, on the night of October 8th, in which settlers cut the branches from 130 trees with chainsaws. The branches will take some ten years to regrow, during which time the eight farmers who owned the trees will be without this crucial source of income.
Tree damaged last week by settlers’ chainsaws.
The attacks seem to have been carried out so as to maximize economic impact. Many Palestinian olive farmers are financially dependent on the olive harvest, which begun earlier this week. In last night’s attack, the settlers seem to have targeted the oldest and most fruitful trees. They set fire to hollows in their trunks, which kills the tree. Growing a new one to their size takes hundreds of years.
The timing, too, maximized the impact of the attack. For the last two years, the Israeli government has run a permissions system for Palestinians harvesting olives in areas near to West Bank settlements: although the farmers own both the land and the trees, they have to apply for Israeli permission to access the land. Permission is usually granted for impossibly short periods of time: in this case, the Qaryut farmers were able to harvest for either two or three days (traditionally harvest lasts between four and six weeks). The first attack came the night before the first permissions began in the area, thereby devastating the harvest the night before it started.
Such incidents are not uncommon. During the last two harvests, a reported 300 trees were destroyed in Quryat alone. In 2009, the village suffered violent attacks by settlers from Eli and another nearby illegal settlement Shilo (more here and here). Such attacks are commonplace across the West Bank during olive harvest, when the symbolic and economic importance of the crop make their farmers frequent targets for settler violence.
By Matt Reed (Matt Reed is a volunteer with the International Solidarity Movement (Name has been changed).
14 October 2012 | International Solidarity Movement, West Bank
Three people – one Palestinian man, another man from Jordan and one Israeli activist were arrested on Friday 12th October in the village of Kufr Qaddoum. Ahmad Badiya Amer, 21, from Jordan, was visiting his cousin, 28 year old Ahmad Abed Fatah Amer, who lives in Kufr Qaddoum. They were reportedly kidnapped from their home, during the regular Friday demonstration which they had not attended.
The Israeli activist was arrested during the demonstration, during a time of Israeli military invasion of the village – the soldiers made repeated incursions into the village in an attempt to arrest demonstrators. Two houses were invaded and occupied by the soldiers, providing a vantage point for them to attack locals. This prompted local youth to attempt to drive them out of the village by throwing stones.
An Israeli army bulldozer and skunk truck were driven further into the village than ever before in the history of the demonstration. After firing skunk water into civilian areas, the Israeli soldiers eventually retreated.
The occurrences of today continue a worrying trend of Palestinians arrested from their homes, facing accusations of having attended demonstrations. For example, Kufr Qaddoum villagers Majd and Abdelateef Obeid were arrested three weeks ago, from their home – where reportedly one of the men had been sleeping and the other had been eating lunch with his family.
The village of Kufr Qaddoum holds regular Friday demonstrations to protest the 12 year closure of the most direct road route to the nearest city of Nablus. This road is now only accessible for illegal Israeli settlers. The demonstration has now been going on for over a year and over 30 inhabitants of the village are currently still in Israeli custody, accused of attending demonstrations. Many of these people have been arrested in the night or from their homes. The status of those arrested today is currently unknown.
16TH OCTOBER 2012 – JAMA’IN VILLAGE – MORNING DEMONSTRATION
CONTACT 054 881 0651
The International Solidarity Movement (ISM) calls on pro-Palestinian and peace activists from across the Occupied Territories to join Palestinians on 16th October to protest the roadblock preventing access to Jama’in Village. On this day, residents of Jama’in will remove an earthen mound that blocks access to their agricultural lands.
Jama’in is close to the illegal Tappuah settlement in the West Bank. There, settlers armed with automatic rifles, large dogs and blunt instruments regularly attack Palestinian agricultural workers and landowners. January saw over 100 olive trees chopped down and burnt by settlers, and at least two cars belonging to Palestinians were destroyed on the highway close to the Huwwara military checkpoint.
Access to agricultural land and particularly olive trees is essential for Palestinian villagers. Approximately eighty percent of cultivated land in Palestine is planted with olive trees, and the harvest provides between twenty and fifty percent of a farming family’s annual income. Holding a deep significance in Palestinian culture and the economy of the region, the olive harvest has become a matter of survival for rural Palestinians. It is because of this that the Israeli government and armed residents of its illegal colonies in the West Bank are attempting to disrupt access to agricultural lands.
Extremist settlers have launched a campaign of ‘price-tag’ attacks against Palestinians and their property as collective punishment for perceived anti-settlement legislation and activity by the Israeli government. The United Nations’ Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reports that violent attacks by settlers against Palestinians increased by more than fifty percent in 2011.
With a year-old roadblock preventing residents’ access to their fields, the people of Jama’in village request international activists join them in protesting the real-life consequences of Israeli occupation.
