Author: ISM Media - Page 481 - International Solidarity Movement

Settlers occupy Palestinian house in Al Khalil

by Paige and Mira

31 March 2012 | International Solidarity Movement, West Bank

Early Thursday morning approximately fifteen to twenty settlers occupied the house of the Abu Rajab family on Shuhada street near the Qeitun checkopint in Al Khalil (Hebron).

The settlers entered the house under the protection of the Israeli army and border police who blocked off access to the house and prevented Palestinians from passing by the streets while settlers moved freely.

Throughout the morning settlers continued to enter the house carrying food, pots and pans, cases of alcohol and other household supplies while internationals and Palestinians attempting to come to the aid of the Palestinians still inside the house were violently kept at a distance by the army and border police.

All non-settlers, including children from a nearby boys and girls school were prevented from walking on the street in front of the house, and were forced to take a long route home through Qeitun checkpoint.

In the past months the Abu Rajab family already has dealt with a lot. Among the many house raids that took place, where the 25+ people living there were evacuated for several hours, were two severe cases. Three months ago the left side of the house was taken over by soldiers, access forbidden ever since, forcing all the residents to live in the right part. About two weeks ago the soldiers also took the roof, damaging the water supply, which caused a leak that the family was not allowed to fix.

The illegal colonists claim that they have bought the house, a claim often made by settlers illegally occupying a Palestinian house. The location, on Shuhada street, is very much wanted by the Israeli settlers. MK Michael Ben Ari, from the National Union, showed the intent of the invasion when he stated, “It’s time to reclaim all of the homes taken by the enemies in the City of the Fathers.”

There are 8 Palestinians standing there ground. They have been in their house together with settlers for 3 days now.

Paige and Mira are volunteers with International Solidarity Movement (name has been changed).

Photos: “Land Day across Israel and Palestinian territories”

30 March 2012 | Denver Post

Land Day, which began in 1976, marks the day Israeli forces killed six Palestinians during a protest against Israeli occupation of what Palestinians consider to be their land. Palestinians around the world will commemorate Land Day with protests and demonstrations.

Red Crescent medics treat 339 protesters in the West Bank

30 March 2012 | Ma’an News Agency

Medics carry an injured protester during clashes between protesters and Israeli forces at a demonstration marking Land Day, at Qalandiya checkpoint Ramallah on March 30. (Reuters/Darren Whiteside)

BETHLEHEM (Ma’an) — The Palestinian Red Crescent treated 339 protesters on Friday at protests around the West Bank to mark Land Day, a spokesman said.

Muhammad Ayyad told Ma’an that five people were seriously injured and 55 hospitalized as protesters commemorated six Palestinians who were killed by Israeli forces in 1976 at demonstrations against Israel’s land confiscation in the Galilee.

Three people in Bethlehem were critically injured, one of whom was hit in the face by a tear gas canister. A protester in Jerusalem was hit in the jaw by a rubber bullet and in Kafr Qaddum, near Qalqiliya, a protester was hit in the pelvis by a tear gas grenade, Ayyad said.

The largest rally took place in Qalandiya, a checkpoint near Ramallah, where 249 were treated for injuries and 20 hospitalized.

Ayyad said Israeli forces injured nine medics and damaged three ambulances at the protest.

An Israeli military spokesman said forces fired rubber bullets, tear gas and foul-smelling chemical water at protesters who were throwing rocks.

Similar confrontations broke out at a checkpoint in Bethlehem, where Ayyad said medics treated 38 people including 11 who were hospitalized.

In Jerusalem, medics treated 35 people, 19 of whom were transferred to hospital. Four people were hospitalized in Iraq Burin, near Nablus and 13 were injured in Kafr Qaddum at simultaneous protests.

The march from Erez to the iron doors of Al Aqsa

by Nathan Stuckey

30 March 2012 | International Solidarity Movement, Gaza

Sometimes, the more things change the more they stay the same. On March 30, 1976 during protests against the confiscation of Palestinian land, Israel killed six protesters, injured over one hundred and arrested hundreds more. This was the first Land Day. Every year for the last thirty six years Palestinians have commemorated the heroism of those protesters and reiterated their attachment to their lands. This year was no different. This year protests occurred in over eighty countries, thousands of people tried to march to Jerusalem. Almost everywhere whoever was in power tried to prevent these marches. Gaza was no different from everywhere else.

The march from south of Beit Hanoun - Click here for more photos

Today’s protest began at a gas station south of Beit Hanoun. Thousands of people gathered for the protest, many of them made it obvious that they wanted to march to Erez, and, God willing, on to Jerusalem. Rows of police prevented this. On a stage speaker after speaker spoke of resistance and return. Off to the side, tires burned, youth on top of a billboard rhythmically pounded on it, demanding to go to north toward the border. The police were having none of this, armored, carrying Plexiglas shields and batons; they stopped anyone who attempted to push north. For three hours thousands of people stood under the sun in honor of Land Day.

At about four o’clock we were told that some people we know had moved past the police lines that were preventing protesters from reaching Erez. The Israeli army was firing on the demonstrators. Live bullets from soldiers ensconced in concrete towers embedded in a giant concrete wall shooting at protesters on the narrow road to the border. That is a constant in Gaza, all protests are met with live bullets. We set out to Erez to see the situation.

We arrived at Erez at about five o’clock. There were a couple of hundred young men on the street leading to the border. They were blocked from coming close to the massive concrete wall in which the soldiers hid by a fence of razor wire. Israeli soldiers shot at young men burning tires and throwing stones. None of the stones made it within a hundred meters of the concrete towers, but that did not stop the Israelis from using deadly force, their bullets smashed into body after body. One young man, Mahmoud Zakot, 20, from Jabalia was killed. Thirty one others were injured. There were no ambulances. Young men would be shot, their friends would carry them to waiting motorcycles, the motorcycles would roar off to take the injured to ambulances waiting by the checkpoint behind us.

The young men were not deterred by the gunfire. They had come to Erez to protest forty five years of occupation, sixty four years of dispossession, no one had any illusions about how Israel dealt with protests in Gaza with bullets. Young men would move forward with whatever they could light on fire and leave it in the razor wire which blocked the road. Other young men would try to pull the razor wire out of the way so that we could advance toward Jerusalem. Bullets would ring out; young men would fall into the arms of their friends and be put on motorcycles for the trip to the hospital. While the Israeli’s shot them the young men chanted, “The doors of Al Aqsa are made of iron” and “We are going to Jerusalem, martyrs in the millions”. Freedom is more valuable than life.

We did not reach Jerusalem today. We remember though, and we are grateful, that Jerusalem is not Lifta and is not Jarash, Palestinians still live there, it has not been ethnically cleansed. We will be back on May 15, in commemoration of the Nakba, we will return on June 5^th to commemorate the Naksa, we will return to this border until the occupation disappears.

Nathan Stuckey is a volunteer with International Solidarity Movement.

On the eve of Land Day: Al Quds anticipates the Global March

by Johnny

29 March 2012 | International Solidarity Movement, West Bank

March 30 is Land Day in Palestine. The events of the day annually commemorate the events of 1976, when Israeli authorities seized massive quantities of land from Palestinian owners, and then killed several and injured dozens to crack down on the general strike called to protest the theft.

This year on Land Day, March 30, people from around Palestine and the world will march towards Al Quds (Jerusalem) to protest the theft in progress today: the isolation and ethnic cleansing taking place in Al Quds, as well as throughout occupied Palestine through illegal settlement activity. Marches are planned towards Al Quds from multiple points in the West Bank, Gaza, inside the Green Line, Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, and Syria, as well as in Asia, North America, and Europe. The global march aims to highlight the colonization of Al Quds by Zionists and the refusal of access for Palestinians to the holy city.

According to multiple treaties and UN resolutions, Al Quds is recognized as the capital of a future Palestinian state. Israel seized control of the city in 1967. Al Quds has long been the center of religious, cultural, health, and commercial life for Palestinians, and an estimated 270,000 Palestinians reside in the eastern parts of the city (OCHA 2011).

The Palestinian population and presence in Al Quds is currently under extreme pressure from Israeli authorities and illegal settlers as the Zionist state seeks to take complete control of the city, drive out the Palestinian inhabitants, and eliminate any hope of its future as a Palestinian capital. This pressure is manifested in various ways:

Isolation

Fadwa Khader, an Al Quds resident and organizer of the Global March on Jerusalem remembers a time when Al Quds was “the most important place in Palestine.” Now, the apartheid wall and associated military closures prevent the majority of Palestinians from traveling to Al Quds for any reason. The city’s status as a center of Palestinian life is fading, due to its isolation from the rest of the West Bank. But material realities will not erase Al Quds’s place in the hearts of the Palestinian people. One needs only to view the multitude of images of Al Aqsa mosque in Palestinian homes, businesses, and streets to understand this.

Removal and Denial of Residency

In a systematic effort aimed at reducing the number of Palestinian residents of Al Quds, Israeli authorities seize any opportunity to rescind the residency permits of individuals, even those who are born and have lived their entire lives in the city. If Palestinian residents are known to have lived in the West Bank or abroad, even temporarily, they risk the withdrawal of their residency rights and may never be allowed into Al Quds again, even to visit family.

Fadi, whose name has been changed to protect his identity, is a Palestinian who resided in Jordan for example, has retained his Jerusalem IDs. Yet his children who were born in Jordan and whose mother is a Palestinian refugee, have been unable to attain their Jerusalem IDs. “My family’s history is in this city,” said Faid. “The lack of jobs, and the bleak future of Palestinians here forced me to seek these elsewhere. Now that I have returned and have brought my children with me, my children are unable to maneuver throughout the city as they are undocumented in their own father’s hometown. Israel refuses to recognize them as the children of a Jerusalemite, but we will remain here, even if that means that my children and wife live without an ID or any rights.” Fadi continued after a long silence and the evident hurt in his eyes. “This is our resistance to Zionism.”

This policy has the effect over time of reducing the Palestinian population in Al Quds and preventing residents from traveling or living elsewhere for fear of losing residency.

Pressure on existing residents

Fadwa Khader noted another component of Israel’s campaign for the complete colonization and ethnic cleansing of Al Quds: the application of pressure to Palestinian residents in order to drive them out of the city. One way this is manifested is in the denial of municipal services in the eastern parts of the city inhabited by Palestinians.

The residents here pay the same taxes as the Jewish residents of West Al Quds. Despite this, the municipality of Jerusalem does not provide adequate services to the Palestinian neighborhoods of the city. Ninety percent of the municipality’s sewer lines and paved roads and sidewalks are in West Al Quds (B’tselem). In some neighborhoods, cleaning services come only once every three days as opposed to three times a day in West Al Quds. n February the Wadi Hilweh Information Center reported the Jerusalem Municipality created a dump at the door of Palestinian neighborhoods.

Khader notes the dual nature of this denial of services: First, to make life in Al Quds miserable and untenable in an effort to convince existing residents to leave. Second, to demonstrate to the internationals that visit Al Quds that the Palestinian residents “don’t care about their neighborhoods” and live in filth.

Pressure is also applied to Palestinian resident through settlement of East Al Quds neighborhoods by extremist Israelis, evictions of Palestinian families, and demolitions of Palestinian homes. The neighborhoods of Sheikh Jarrah and Silwan have been particularly affected by this strategy. The goal of the Israeli authorities and Zionist activists is to forcibly settle Jews in East Al Quds through the seizure of land and homes and settlement of Israelis in these areas. In addition, home demolitions make life increasingly untenable for affected residents.

The Global March this Land Day will seek to highlight these issues and call for an end to Israeli Zionist settlement policy, access restrictions, occupation, and ethnic cleansing in Al Quds and throughout occupied Palestine.

Khader has a message for the international Palestine solidarity movement:

“We want to live in peace and liberty and to feel free. Can you imagine how we suffer and sacrifice for this dream?”

She noted that there can never be a real Palestinian state as long as the Israelis continue to steal land and water, to control borders, and to separate cities and villages of Palestine from each other.

Still, she is hopeful.

“We won’t give up hope. We believe in you (international solidarity activists). You are our voice outside of Palestine, calling for dignity, liberation, and an end to the occupation.”

Johnny is a volunteer with International Solidarity Movement (name has been changed).