30 October 2011 | International Solidarity Movement West Bank
During a settler tour around the old city in Hebron on Saturday, where dozens of Israelis were guided around in a sort of parade, a Palestinian man named Yousef Salim Issa Al Batch, passed by and was stopped by Israeli police. He had a small fruit knife in his pocket and had forgotten his ID. As a result he was arrested and taken to the police station at the Kiryat Arba settlement at 4:15 PM.
Earlier in the day Al Batch had been cutting apples with a small knife and forgot to take it out of his pocket. When stopped by the police he was asked for his ID. He did not have it with him, and so, Al Batch called his mother to ask her to give him the ID number. The officer who had stopped him suggested that this would be acceptable so long as Yousef had not been in any trouble in the past. If he did have a previous record with Israelis, they would have to bring him to the police station.
Although Al Batch has never been arrested before and never been in trouble, the police officer decided to bring him to the police station anyways.
Al Batch was released at 8:30 PM after his cousin paid 1,000 shekels in cash to the police.
His cousin, Amer, called International Solidarity Movement on Sunday evening and said with an anxious voice:
“This is not normal, I think it’s pocket money for the police men”.
Lisa is an activist with International Solidarity Movement (name has been changed).
30 October 2011 | International Solidarity Movement, 2011
What started as a peaceful demonstration soon erupted into violence when soldiers and settlers from Karmei Tzur settlement attacked a demonstration in Beit Ummar today. The demonstration of around 30 Palestinians and internationals started from the outskirts of the village and continued through a field of olive trees to a fence which separates the village from the settlement.
A group of soldiers from the settlement entered the field and positioned themselves in front of the fence and initially let the peaceful demonstration continue. Settlers from Karmei Tzur arrived soon after and began to verbally abuse the protesters. Arguments broke out between the demonstrators and the soldiers who responded by deploying a few sound grenades and a canister of teargas. The demonstration continued but the atmosphere became increasingly tense.
The settlers and some of the demonstrators entered a shouting match between each other, and the military then decided to force the demonstration back towards the back of the olive field by using a significant amount of teargas. Encouraged by this, the group of settlers began hurling stones and rocks from behind the fence and a Palestinian journalist from a French agency was taken to hospital with a head wound.
Before being taken to the hospital, the journalist said, “The strange thing was that the soldiers didn’t stop the settlers, but they used violence against the demonstrators and journalists…they left the settlers free to throw stones.”
Three people suffered from teargas inhalation, among them a 74 year old French woman and two villagers.
Beit Ummar is a village located to the south of Hebron. There are weekly demonstration against the illegal Israeli setllement. The security fence seperates Beit Ummar from the settlement of Karmei Tzur. It has expropriated a significant amount of Beit Ummar´s land.
Anders and Aurelie are activists with International Solidarity Movement (name has been changed)
29 October 2011 | International Solidarity Movement, West Bank
On Thursday October 29, in Huwarra, around 3:00PM, soldiers detained busses and services for no apparent reasons.
The busses that were stopped were filled with children going home from school. The passengers passports were taken from them, without any explanation, and held for about 45 minutes. Two internationals on their way back from olive harvesting in the area saw what was happening and made an attempt to ease the situation.
They were met with an aggressive appearance and threatend with arrest. The soldiers showed no concern that the detained were mostly young children. They said, “This is our job. We are the law, we only protect our country from people like them” and pointed at the children.
The internationals sat down and observed from a close distance after being threatened and insulted by the soldiers.
Soon after, the detained were given back their passports and were allowed to leave and the soldiers left as well.
Another group of soldiers placed a spike carpet at a near by road, to make it difficult for cars to pass, and randomly stopped cars.
When questioned about their presence the answer was ,”This is a dangerous area, we can´t talk about it.”
Emma and Becka are volunteers with International Solidarity Movement (names changed).
28 October 2011 | International Solidarity Movement, West Bank
Israeli military fires with aim – Click here for more images
Soldiers fired teargas directly into crowd at peaceful protesters in Kufr Qaddoum. Internationals and Palestinians, including children, were gathered behind barbed wire that runs across their main road, and were not advancing when soldiers began to fire around ten canisters of tear gas at once from a short distance. Two protesters were injured while escaping tear gas, including one international woman, and many suffered from tear gas inhalation. They continued to shoot tear gas at the approximately 100 protesters for over an hour. Many civilians from the village were affected by the perpetual firing of tear gas.
Protesters were holding signs calling on the International community not to support Illegal Israeli settlements when the tear gas began from a distance of only 25 metres. A Swedish International activist was not expecting such an assault on un-advancing protesters.
“It was my first time at a protest here and I was shocked that they would fire tear gas directly at a peaceful crowd with children visibly among them.” She fell while escaping the surrounding tear gas. “I was blinded by the smoke and I fell on rocks.
Two Palestinian men picked me up and when we escaped from the gas I was covered in blood.”
When she tripped, her hand broke her fall, but was cut on the palm, requiring her to go to the hospital and receive three stitches.
The protest, held by the Popular Committee of Kufr Qaddoum, was protesting the closure of their main road, which up until 2003 had been the mean ways of transportation from Kufr Qaddoum to Nablus. The original journey of 15 minutes now takes 40 minutes by an indirect road. The Expenses to the 3500 Palestinian inhabitants have increased significantly as a result, particularly for the many students of the village who study daily in Nablus. Two Palestinians have died in the past few years, after not reaching the hospital in time for treatment.
This is the 18th protest in a row that Kufr Qaddoum has held on Fridays, after more than six years of no protests while the village was involved with legal arguments with the Israeli Court. Finally, the court ruled that they could use the road again, but that the road is not “suitable” for transportation. It was closed. The road passes the illegal Israeli settlement of Qadumim. Israel has a thorough history of closing, to Palestinian cars, roads which pass settlements.
Weekly, soldiers have responded to the unarmed protesters by firing tear gas, rubber-coated steel bullets, and sound bombs on civilians. Often the soldiers have entered the village, firing in between houses with families within them and seriously affecting the lives of civilians.
More than half of the villagers’ land, approximately 11,800 dunams, are situated in area C which means that the Palestinians need permission to work there from the Israeli District Coordinating Office. Last week, following the protest, the Israeli military revoked the permission they had previously given the village for the following weekend.
Rana H is an activist with International Solidarity Movement.
28 October 2011 | International Solidarity Movement, West Bank
The Israeli military violently obstructed a peaceful demonstration against the Israeli separation wall in Al-Ma’sara, near Bethlehem, today.
Around 25 Palestinians and a similar number of international observers marched from the village at 12:20 PM today and attempted to reach olive groves on Palestinian land just outside of Al-Ma’asara in time for this year’s olive harvest. A line of thirteen soldiers, backed by reinforcements in three armoured vehicles, pushed and shoved protesters, including a small Palestinian boy, in order to prevent them from leaving the village.
As demonstrators attempted to walk around the line of soldiers, one officer snatched a Palestinian flag from a protester and then head-butted him.
Mahmoud Alaaelddin, President of Al-Ma’sara local council and member of the Popular Resistance Committee, said “Every Friday we try to go to our land and the soldiers always prevent us from going. They don’t care if there are children at the demonstration; they use more and more violence every Friday.”
After being prevented from peacefully marching to Palestinian land, protesters chanted, sang and remonstrated with the Israeli military for around 30 minutes. The protest dispersed at 1:00 PM, with Mahmoud Zawahra, member of Al-Ma’asara’s Popular Committee of Resistance, alerting the soldiers of their continued persistence.
“Next Friday we will come with more people and we will fly kites with Palestinian flags. And for the hundredth time we tell you – you are not welcome here. You are killers and occupying forces,” he said.
Around five minutes after today’s protest ended, a small group of Palestinian youths threw stones at the military, who responded by firing a tear gas canister, causing billowing gas to enter a house and garden at the edge of Al-Ma’asara.
Demonstrations take place in the village every Friday in protest against the separation wall – illegal under international law – which has been used by the Israeli military to expropriate much of the village’s land since 2005. Work had ceased on the wall near Al-Ma’asara in 2008 after an Israeli court ruling, but it is scheduled to re-commence on 1 January 2011.
If completed, the barrier will expropriate more Palestinian land and will result in the closure of the main road that links Al-Ma’asara to nearby cities in the West Bank. Al-Ma’sara residents will be forced to take alternative routes, tripling the length of time it takes to drive from the village to Bethlehem or Hebron.
Alaaeldin says that over the past few years Israeli soldiers have come into the village late at night before the Friday’s protest; forcing entire families – including children – to stand in the cold, often for 2-3 hours.
According to Alaaeldin, the Israeli military “wants people to be afraid [to protest]. They say ‘we will arrest you, we will kill you ‘but more people come to the demonstrations and refuse to be scared.”
The Israeli military has not carried out such incursions into the village for three months, but Alaaeldin is concerned that they may start again as soldiers have taken advantage of the cold winter nights to harass people in previous years.
Alistair George is an activist with International Solidarity Movement (name has been changed).
