November 18th 2015 | International Solidarity Movement, Huwarra Team | Huwarra, occupied Palestine
On Wednesday, November 18th, 2015, Israeli forces stopped Palestinian farmers with Meta Peace Team, ISM and Rabbis for Human Rights volunteers claiming that they did not have a valid permit for that day. The group had been picking olives just up the hill from the Huwarra checkpoint most of the morning without incident. Sometime late morning the team noticed armed soldiers at the top of the hill watching. The farmers got nervous and collected the olives they had bagged and brought them to their vehicle while the rest of the group continued picking. Shortly afterwards a military jeep drove up towards the olive pickers. Three armed soldiers called down the farmer to speak with them. The military started to leave when a man in a black car wearing a purple shirt drove up and talked to the military and then they came back and demanded the farmers and internationals leave because they did not have a permit to pick that day, claiming that it was supposed to be in two days. An Israeli from Rabbis for Human Rights called the Military authorities and discovered it was actually supposed to be the following day. The team of olive pickers were forced off the land by the Israeli soldiers.
Palestinian farmer and internationals discussing picking permit with Israeli forces.Soldiers watching olive pickers from distance.
November 18th 2015 | International Solidarity Movement, Huwara Team | Tulkarm, occupied Palestine
On the 17th of November, in a meeting in the University of Al Kadoorie, in the city of Tulkarm, the institution’s Director of Public Relations, Mr. Azmi Saleh, and a group of students described the recent human rights violations that the Israeli army has carried out against the Palestinian students of the University.
Mr. Azmi Saleh, Director of Public Relations, University of Al Kadoorie.
Since the beginning of October, the Israeli army has perpetrated raids into the University while students attend lectures and exams. Mohammed, one of the students who was present, explained:
“Everyday they enter the campus firing their guns in the air and throwing tear gas canisters. We go out to see what is happening. Then they start shooting at us. We can’t stand this anymore, to see our friends and classmates getting shot and imprisoned.”
Approximately 350 students have been injured since the beginning of October, meaning injured students are being sent to the hospital on a daily basis. Likewise, twelve students have been in jail for six months. There is no knowledge about when they will be released.
This desk shows blood stains of an injured student who needed urgent first aid treatment on site, in a time when the hospital was too crowded to receive more injured students.
In addition, the Israeli army has given no official explanation as to why they are committing these crimes. The administration staff has tried to communicate with authorities in the army to know why they are doing this and try to persuade them to stop, but the Israeli army does not respond to their complaints.
The students of Al Kadoorie University expressed their fear and suffering, asking for the international community to do all that they possibly can to help stop these human rights violations.
The students are so afraid of going to the University, that these actions are clearly preventing them from continuing their studies.
During the past decades, the Israeli occupation forces have stolen more than 200 dunums of land from Al Kadoorie University. In an area where there used to be functioning greenhouses that belonged to the Applied Research Centre of the Faculty of Agriculture, the Israeli army installed a military training field, keeping it for 21 years. The Apartheid wall, which sits right behind this training field, sets the boundary between the West Bank and the State of Israel, leaving the University premises at the very edge of the West Bank.
One of the four greenhouses that used to operate in the Applied Research Centre of the Faculty of Agriculture: today sits empty inside the illegal Israeli military training field.
Behind the illegal military training field lies the Apartheid Wall and a military watchtower that sets the final boundary between the West Bank, the University’s premises, and the State of Israel.
Two days ago, after weeks of enduring these raids, the University decided to bring a bulldozer to tear down the facilities of the army’s military training field, which is where the soldiers begin their operations. The Israeli forces confiscated the bulldozer and detained the Vice President for over half an hour, with the threat of taking him to prison.
It is important to note that the students of Al Kadoorie regularly participate in peaceful demonstrations against the Apartheid wall that sits next to their campus and the Israeli industrial zone whose factories emit air pollutants that they suspect contain hazardous chemicals. Students complain that there are times that these fumes hurt their skin. Even though the reasons why the students protest are legitimate, during its military raids the Israeli army demands that they stop demonstrating.
Al Kadoorie University has approximately 7.000 students every year, coming from all the districts of the West Bank, including some students from Gaza.
17th november 2015 | International Solidarity Movement, Huwwara team | Burin, occupied Palestine
ķ The Israeli forces came to the family’s field
On monday morning, Mahmoud Yasser Eid, a 22 year-old palestinian from the village of Burin, was stopped by the Israeli forces as he went to pick olives with his mother, near the Huwwara checkpoint. The land, that the family has been harvesting for three years along with another family, is located between route 60 from Ramallah to Nablus, and the road leading to the Bracha illegal settlement. The family did not get a permit to harvest this year : “they don’t want us to work near this road because of the situation. They say it’s for safety”, said Mohammed, Mahmoud’s older brother. The family tried to access their land anyway, as olives are an important income to the family of nine children. “People here need the olives”, added Mohammed.
The Israeli forces came at around 8 am, as the mother and son were having breakfast in the field. They controlled and searched Mahmoud and made them both sit there for a few hours while they searched all their belongings. Mahmoud’s mother, Raeda, cried until the soldiers accepted not to arrest her son. They warned him that they would come to arrest him at his house if he tried to access the field again. “We didn’t sleep that night !” said Mahmoud.
During the last three years, the Yasser family was allowed to harvest on this field, but this year they were not granted permission to do so. A neighbour who was picking olives in his field nearby saw the scene and said “they [the israeli army] don’t want anyone to go to this land anymore”. The family thinks that they won’t be allowed to harvest the olives on their land in the next few years, as it is strategically located a few meters away from the main road, route 60, between Ramallah and Nablus, and near the Huwwara checkpoint.
The project of expanding part of route 60 to a wider road, with a financiel help from the US Aid, could explain the difficulties faced by Mahmoud’s family to access their land. The construction, that has already started, will make the road from Yizhar junction (west of Huwwara) to the palestinian village of Beita (east of Huwwara), through the town of Huwwara, a 21-meters wide road. This would lead to an even more limited access to the surroundings of the road for palestinian locals. “Some land might be taken by Israel”, carefully said Raed, from the Burin village council. The situation is already complicated at the moment for the villages close to route 60, and especially for Huwwara, a rare example of palestinian village crossed by a road used by both israeli settlers and Palestinians, that is under permanent surveillance from the Israeli forces.
Map of the Huwwara surroundings (ocha)
The “bypass-roads system”, was thought to enable “access to settlements and travel between settlements without having to pass through Palestinian villages”, according to a Bet’selem research from 2004. It has become a way to reinforce apartheid within the West Bank. According to the study from the Israeli organization, many of these roads had as a goal to refrain palestinian villages from expanding. And it had indeed refrained them.
The eight artists recount the hardships that Israel imposes on Palestinian artists, and the history of Israel’s oppression of the Palestinian people. They explain the Palestinian boycott call, and why they endorse a cultural boycott.
The video marks the launch of a New York-based initiative calling for more artists and cultural workers in New York, the US and around the world to pledge to respect and support the Palestinian boycott call. Artists in the video join a growing number of cultural workers who are heeding the boycott call from Palestine to refuse to do business as usual with Israel until it ends its occupation, apartheid and colonization.
Ms. Lauryn Hill, Roger Waters, Elvis Costello, Santana, the late Gil-Scott Heron, Cassandra Wilson, Cat Power, Stevie Wonder, Talib Kweli, Mira Nair, Ken Loach, Alice Walker, Mike Leigh, Arundhati Roy, Jean-Luc Godard and many others have declined to perform or participate in cultural events in Israel or with institutions complicit in Israeli human rights abuses.
16th November 2015 | International Solidarity Movement, al-Khalil team| Hebron, occupied Palestine
On 25th October 2015, 17-year old Dania Arsheid was gunned down by Israeli forces in front of the Ibrahimi mosque in occupied al-Khalil (Hebron) and left to bleed to death. One of the shopkeepers nearby the Ibrahimi mosque witnessed the events leading up to this ruthless murder and agreed to make a statement.
After school finished around 1:20pm on that fateful Sunday, Dania was on her way from the Palestinian souq (market) in the Old City of al-Khalil towards the Ibrahimi mosque. She passed the first revolving gate and the metal detector without any problems – the metal detector did not indicate any metal objects. When passing the second revolving door, soldiers at the nearby checkpoint at the entrance of the mosque called for her to come there. Upon hearing this, the witness, who owns a shop, just meters away from the revolving gate, decided to go through the checkpoint to make sure that the girl was okay.
Dania passed yet another metal detector at the checkpoint at the mosque entrance and put her bag on the table there, as requested by the Israeli forces. They searched her entire bag but they were not able to find anything. Regardless of that, Israeli forces kept asking Dania ‘where is the knife’ over and over again – completely ignoring her answer that ‘there is no knife’. When one of the soldiers suddenly shot a bullet between her feet yelling at her, she raised her hands and moved back down the stairs. Nevertheless, the soldiers continued questioning her aggressively about a knife – even though she had her hands raised and her bag had been searched with no knife found; and Dania repeatedly asserting that she did not have any knife.
After the first shot was fired, more and more soldiers arrived to the checkpoint, so that it was impossible to tell how many of them shot the 6-7 fatal bullets at Dania – a girl who had her hands up in the air, who had been searched extensively and who had at no point posed any threat. Immediately after she was gunned down, Palestinians in the area – including the witness – were forced to move back through the checkpoint into the souq. The soldiers pointed their assault rifles at the witnesses pushing them out of the area and immediately afterwards closed off the checkpoint for anyone to enter and exit for about an hour.
The first ambulance arrivedabout 15 minutes after Dania was gunned down. “They didn’t want her alive, they want her dead, they meant to kill her”, explains the witness, stating that they could have easily arrested her. At no point after her body was perforated with bullets was any first aid provided, and the shooters left her lying on the ground slowly bleeding to death. Instead of giving first aid, Israeli forces proceeded to block the view so nobody but them would be able to see the 17-year old school-girl bleed to death.
“She came [to the checkpoint] and didn’t do anything – and then she was killed.”
