22 January 2012 | International Solidarity Movement, West Bank
In an action that appears to have been carried out purely for the entertainment and satisfaction of Israeli settlers, the center of the activist group, Youth Against Settlements, in Tel Rumeida, Al Khalil (also known as Hebron) was stormed by Israeli soldiers at 3pm on the afternoon of Saturday 21st January. Organisation leader Issa Amro was briefly arrested and taken away without reason.
Settlers surrounded the Centre of Steadfastness and Challenge, as soldiers broke in and seized Amro while simultaneously seeming to attempt a search of the building.
Amro was forcefully handcuffed behind his back, despite his having a medical condition which means that this should be prohibited; a fact of which Israeli authorities are well aware having detained him on fifteen different occasions last year. He was then blindfolded and taken away to a military base, where he was beaten. Soldiers also threatened to kill him.
Soldiers then proceeded to assault several other activists who were attempting to document the incident, including Badia Dwaik, Tamer Atrash, Hamad Israir and Sundos Assilay, an eighteen-year old girl.
As Amro was taken away, settlers who had gathered for the show cheered triumphantly, spat at him and chanted slogans such as “each Arab dog will have his day.” No reason was given for the arrest and no provocation was made. He was subsequently released without any kind of charge less than half-an-hour later. Many more Jews were visiting the city for Shabbat and the Settler Tour of the old city, and it seems that the army wanted to put on a show for the settlers.
The Youth Against Settlements centre was previously occupied by the Israeli military before being reclaimed for Palestinians in a major victory for the organisation.
Tom is a volunteer with International Solidarity Movement (name has been changed).
21 January 2012 | International Solidarity Movement
On Sunday, the 16th of January, at approximately 2 AM, about fifty settlers, accompanied by Israeli soldiers, entered the Abu Haikal family’s field in the neighborhood of Tel Rumeideh in Hebron. After throwing stones at the family’s house, they savagely burnt the car of Hana Haikal, fifty-three years old.
by Aaron 21 January 2012 | International Solidarity Movement, West Bank
The mood was celebratory following the weekly protest this Friday in Kufr Qaddoum, after demonstrators succeeded in pushing back Israeli soldiers for the second week in a row. The goal of the protest was to open the main road to regional population center of Nablus, closed since 2003 by the Israeli Occupation Force in spite of international and Israeli courts demanding its reopening. Though the soldiers greeted unarmed protesters with scores of tear gas canisters–many at eye-level, an illegal tactic intended to severely injure and kill–no injuries were reported, and in the end soldiers, and not villagers, withdrew.
Kufr Qaddoum gains momentum - For more pictures click here
A Palestinian village in the West Bank existing since biblical times, Kufr Qaddoum (“koo-fur ka-doom”) is hedged in on most sides by Israeli Jewish settlements, illegal according to international law, the 1993 Oslo Accords, and in some cases even Israeli law. Theft of nearly 2/3 of land associated with these settlements (1100 ha of the 1900 ha pre-1967 original), combined with the Apartheid Wall and closures of multiple access points in the last 12 years, have choked the local economy and driven people from the community (according to POICA and the Land Resource Center). During 2003, in the midst of the Second Intifada, the Israeli military closed off the main road leading to the village, doubling the transit time to Nablus. After 6 years of court cases and a ruling supportive of villager’s rights–but still no results–the Popular Committee of Kufr Qaddoum decided to press the issue with a series of weekly protests which began in July, 2011.
The protest began as usual, after the Friday morning prayers, with upbeat music and a crowd of children, teens, adults, and elders from the village waving flags, singing, chanting—along with journalists and at least 20 Israeli and international solidarity activists. As the marchers neared a barbed wire barricade, gas-masked and heavily armed soldiers were visible not only lined up further on the road, but in numerous flanking and sniping positions up the hillside, which is controlled by the Israeli Occupation Forces. As protestors marched closer, without any verbal warning, soldiers began firing tear gas canisters at high velocity towards protesters, which ricocheted off village walls and bounced into yards. Extremely hot, noxious, and dangerous, tear gas canisters typically cause eye pain, respiratory difficulty, and when aimed at people (such as Friday) severe impact injuries or death. Having been fired upon, Palestinian youth and adults took up stones and lit small fires to symbolically hold ground and drive back the soldiers. After numerous volleys back and forth and a Palestinian advance, a warning was made that if protesters continued forward, more soldiers would enter the village from behind, where most of the younger children and women typically remain throughout the protest (a tactic used in other villages like Nabi Saleh and Ni’lin).
After the protesters chose to hold their position the soldiers withdrew, leaving Palestinian youth and adults singing and dancing back to the village, under a bright sun and dissipating clouds of tear gas.
According to Murad, a Palestinian resident and activist of the village, this last demonstration was a definite though incomplete success—in part because of the size (about 350 in a town of 3500) and in part because they were able to continue forward as far as they did without giving up. Although protesters did not continue up the road, Murad did not regret the decision.
“We do not fear anything they do to us,” he said, “but they wanted to enter the village, and we want to keep our people safe.”
Yet asked whether the continued protests would open the road, Murad’s answer was, “we don’t feel anything [has changed].” According to Murad, the Israeli military has told villagers that it is “looking for other solutions.” “But we don’t need any other solutions,” he added, “other than the main road.”
Mahmoud Shaker Kadoumi, another participating resident of Kufr Qaddoum, also saw the protest as a success, but also spoke of its costs to the community.
In the last 6 months, [the demonstrations] have become a habit every Friday…and every Friday—tonight there will be arrests of young people. Two weeks ago, after the protest, at midnight the soldiers knocked on doors, entered houses and arrested two young people. [Soldiers} said they were “throwing stones.” They will be held 4, 6, maybe 8 months.
Although night raids and arrests against Palestinians believed to be activists and/or stone-throwers are common in the West Bank, the regularity of arrests in such a small community takes a certain toll.
But so also does the economic and social damage of an occupation, which like in other parts of Palestine, has led to a large emigration from the village—according to Murad emigrants of Kufr Qaddoum and their children amount to many times the current population of the village—a trend reflected in other villages and occupied Palestine as a whole. According to BADIL Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights, 7.1 of 10.1 million Palestinians globally are refugees in 2010 (some internally displaced), and of those, 5.2 million live outside the boundaries of historic Palestine. While specifics of diaspora histories of the Nakba (1948 partition) and 1967 are contested—loss of land, work, accessible roads, and markets, together with military and political repression have driven wave after wave of emigration. While Kafr Qaddoum’s residents may not have ended the Occupation on Friday night or resolved their village’s economic concerns, they did take a little bit more of their road back for a few hours. The message of these protesters was clear: small victories are still victories and must be celebrated.
Aaron is a volunteer with International Solidarity Movement (name has been changed).
20 January 2012 | International Solidarity Movement, West Bank
The ongoing repression of international activists took a turn for the ridiculous on Thursday night in Al Khalil, also known as Hebron. At approximately 7:30pm on January 19th, an activist approached a military checkpoint en route to his apartment, where two soldiers on duty, recognizing him as an activist and international observer in Al Khalil, demanded to search his person and bag. Upon finding two bags of bulk tea, which they insisted were drugs, and a fork-knife-spoon camping utensil, they called the police to make an arrest.
However, upon arrival at the scene, the officers confirmed the legality of possessing both tea and eating utensils. Yet upon further discussion with the soldiers, the activist was informed that he would still be detained and brought to the police station in the neighboring illegal settlement of Kiryat Arba for interrogations under the charge that the activist had “insulted a public servant.”
The specific alleged act was explained as, incredibly, “farting on a soldier.”
En route to the police station the accusing soldier sang songs demonstrating his excitement and belief that the international would be deported for this alleged flatulent offense. Of course, following a long wait and brief interrogation, the ludicrous charges were thrown out, and the activist was released.
While he was leaving, the soldier left him with the parting warning and threat “I will remember your face. I will be your worst nightmare”.
While the comic absurdity of this event calls into serious question the maturity of many of the heavily armed members of the Israeli occupation soldiers, and the professional integrity of the Israeli police officers who attempted to proceed with these charges, it is significantly less funny when viewed in the context of the occupation, and specifically the situation in Al Khalil, where 600 illegal settlers have taken over the city center, protected by 2,000 Israeli occupational soldiers, enforcing the ban of Palestinians from certain streets and the closure of 1,800 Palestinian shops in and around Shuhada Street.
This comes with the frequently raid of Palestinian homes, and subjection of Palestinians to humiliating searches, harassment, and detention while passing through the numerous military checkpoints in the city center. Meanwhile, illegal settlers are protected when they violently attack the remaining Palestinian residents of the area and attack their property, such as the burning of a Palestinian family’s car in the neighborhood of Tel Rumeideh last Saturday, while soldiers looked on.
Even the mere presence of the various international groups that serve to observe and document these abuses in Al Khalil is viewed with unveiled disgust by both settlers and the military. The settlers frequently respond to this presence by verbally, sexually, and physically attacking internationals while onlooking soldiers characteristically turn a blind eye.
The soldiers do their part with unwarranted, long, and frequent detentions of the internationals, recent attempted raids on both the apartments of the International Solidarity Movement and the Christian Peacemakers Team, and when possible, as is clearly illustrated by this most recent incident, arrests under even the most absurd pretenses.
It is important to note that while internationals at least have the “benefit” of being subject to Israeli civilian law enforcement and it’s civil constraints, Palestinians can be arrested by the soldiers themselves, face significantly longer detentions, are tried in Israeli Military Court, and finally, often face obscenely long prison sentences.
This is why it is so important to maintain an international presence here, and illustrates why this mere presence is viewed as such a threat. The work of both internationals and Palestinians of exposing the realities of this occupation to the international community is essential in fighting Zionism’s systematic erasure of Palestinian history, culture, and theft of their right to land and freedom.
Jack English is a volunteer with International Solidarity Movement (name has been changed).
17 January 2012 | International Solidarity Movement, West Bank
On January 4th, an Israeli military commander served 8 demolition orders in the town of Khalit Al-Dar, just south of the city of Al-Khalil, also known as Hebron.
Suleiman Abu Snina, from Khalit Al-Dar, displays the demolition order he received.
The reason given for issuing demolition orders to the families is that they have built additions onto their homes without Israeli-issued building permits. In accordance with the 1994 Oslo agreements, building permits in the town are issued by the municipality of Al-Khalil, which had issued the necessary permits to the families. However Israeli authorities maintain that permits may only be issued by the Israeli government, which has, since the Israeli occupation of the West Bank began in 1967, only issued one building permit for the town, in 1980.
Khalit Al-Dar is a small, impoverished town, and the residents are mostly laborers and farmers. When the demolition orders are carried out, approximately 60 of them will be displaced from their homes. Other demolitions have recently happened here, in both 2007 and 2009.
The pressure on the residents of Khalit Al-Dar manifests itself in other ways as well. The large water collection basin in the town remains unfinished after 15 years, as the Israeli government will not allow the construction of wells in all of the West Bank. This leaves all Palestinians at the mercy of Macarot, an Israeli water company, for their entire water supply.
A view of Khalit Al-Dar
By refusing to issue building permits, towns cannot grow, and as families grow there is less and less space to live in without building extensions to their homes.
Khalit Al-Dar is surrounded by six nearby illegal Israeli settlements, Hagai, Kyriat Arba, Carmel, Arsina, Susya, and Ma’on. Once the residents of Khalit Al-Dar are out of the way, more settlements can be built, connecting the existing ones and creating more Israeli “facts on the ground” that work to solidify the stranglehold of the occupation.
Jack English is a volunteer with International Solidarity Movement (name has been changed).
