Category: Features - Page 148 - International Solidarity Movement

Youth Against Settlements Co-ordinator Issa Amro arrested

10th of April 2013 | International Solidarity Movement, Hebron, Occupied Palestine

By Team Khalil

The co-ordinator of Youth Against Settlements Issa Amro was arrested yesterday at the Qiryat Araba settlement in Hebron. He was summoned to the police station at which point he was interrogated and arrested. He is being charged with “Incitement of terrorism” and is being tried today at Ofer prison in Ramallah.
Issawi Amro Co-ordinator of Youth Against Settlements

Issa is a prominent activist and organiser of non violent demonstrations in actions in Hebron. He was also arrested several weeks ago along with three internationals and two Palestinians for taking part in a demonstration on Shuhada street where activists walked down the road wearing Martin Luther King and Barack Obama masks to mark the visit of the US president to the West Bank. After his release he was banned from walking in the area of Tel Rumeida for two weeks.

UPDATE: Man shot in the face with teargas canister at Hagai roadblock demonstration

8th of April 2013 | International Solidarity Movement, Hebron, Occupied Palestine

By Team Khalil

UPDATE 8th April 2013: ISM activists visited Ameen today at his home in Al Fawwar. He still suffers from intense migraines, struggles to speak, regularly experiences dizziness and a has bloodshot eye. His X-ray shows considerable damage to his jaw, cheekbones, chin and teeth. He relies on heavy medication and is still unable to work. On top of the physical suffering, Ameen is having to pay hefty medical bills to cover the cocktail of painkillers and antibiotics he needs to take on a daily basis.

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Demonstrator Ameen Bayed after having been hit in the face with a tear gas canister.

The weekly Friday demonstration at the Hagai roadblock was attacked by the Israeli military less than one minute after participants started walking down the road. A soldier shot a metal teargas canister directly into the demonstration and hit Ameen Bayed in his face, breaking his right cheekbone and damaging his teeth. He required surgery in a hospital in Hebron city. The video below shows the moment at which he was hit (At 0.42).

During the demonstration, soldiers fired large amounts of tear gas directly at demonstrators – against the Israeli army’s own regulations, which state that gas canisters must be fired into the air, not straight forwards. Tear gas canisters can be deadly – Mustafa Tamimi of Nabi Saleh was killed when a soldier shot him in the face with a tear gas canister in 2011.

49 year old Bayed, from Al Fawar camp, was participating in the weekly action calling for freedom of movement and for the opening of the main road connecting Hebron with its southern villages and towns. The closure of this road 12 years ago makes the Palestinian residents of these villages travel an additional 12km to reach their destinations in the city.

Palestinian Children’s Day

5th April 2012 | International Solidarity Movement, Occupied Palestine Children’s Days around the world are intended to honour, protect and celebrate childhood. Palestinian Children’s Day, commemorated on the 5th of April each year, is no celebration – rather it is a day highlighting the horrific treatment of Palestinian children by the occupying Israeli authorities. In 2013, Children’s Day falls in a period in which arrests and detention of children by the Israeli military has become increasingly common. Defence for Children International- Palestine put the number of children currently detained under the Israeli occupation at 236. In the West Bank city of Al Khalil (Hebron), the rise in child arrests has been particularly evident – two weeks before Children’s Day, 30 children were attacked and detained by Israeli soldiers on their way to school, eyewitnesses stated that they were seemingly grabbed at random from in front of their school (see video below.)

Children, who are detained regularly in Al Khalil, generally have their hands bound and are confined in dark, closed spaces such as checkpoint boxes, along with soldiers who deny access to human rights observers and in some cases the families of the children. There are regular reports of beatings, threats and torture in attempts to force children to admit to crimes.

In checkpoints in Al Khalil, there are blurred pictures of children’s faces, allegedly from demonstrations, printed and stuck to the walls for soldiers to attempt to identify children as they walk past on their way to school. A recent UNICEF investigation into children in Israeli military detention describes the whole process that often occurs in arrests and sentencing of children, criticising Israel’s failings in safeguarding children’s rights under such legal policies and principles as the Convention against Torture and the Convention on the Rights of the Child. We call for an end to Occupation, so that Palestinian Children’s Day can be a celebration of childhood the rights of children, rather than a day to fight against the injustices committed by the Israeli system against the youth of Palestine.

Detained child being taken to army jeep in Hebron.

UPDATED: Two teenagers murdered at checkpoint

4th April 2013 | International Solidarity Movement, ‘Anabta, Occupied Palestine

By Team Nablus

At 22:30 on 3 April Israeli soldiers opened fire with live ammunition and killed a 17 year-old boy, from the village of ‘Anabta near Enav checkpoint and east of Tulkarm. Amer Nassar was murdered with a bullet to his chest.

Fadi Abu-A'sr was shot in the lower arm. — Fadi Abu-A’sr was shot in the lower arm.

On hearing the shooting 3 boys from the village went to investigate and saw Amer lying on the floor with soldiers standing over him. The boys tried to reach Amer, but the soldiers would not let them approach and opened fire, injuring Fadi Abu-A’sr with a bullet to his lower arm.

The Army prevented ambulance crews access to Amer for 30 minutes, threatening to shoot anyone that attempted to help. Deiyaa’ Nasser, who attempted to get to Amer was arrested by the Israeli Army and taken to an unknown location.

The body of a Amer’s cousin, Naji Abdul-Karim Balbisi, 18, was found at first light Thursday morning near a house in the vicinity of the checkpoint. He had been hoped, last night, to be missing, still hiding in a factory. He was discovered, shot from behind in the torso, laying in a field.

The Israeli Army regularly open fire with live ammunition against unarmed protestors and the general population. Amer’s death is the latest in a string of recent murders committed by the Israeli Army, and came a day after the death of Maisara Abu Hamdiyeh as a result of neglect in Israeli prisons.

17 year old Amer Nasser was today killed by the Israeli army

The occupations toll on one family in Burqa

1st April 2013 | International Solidarity Movement, Burqa, Occupied Palestine

By Team Nablus

A brief visit to any family home in the occupied West Bank is sure to be a combination of warmth and tragedy as no person here has been immune to the brutality of the occupation that has dominated the lives of Palestinians for over 60 years.

Ra'ed Haj who is unable to walk, talk or hear after he was nerve gassed — Ra’ed Haj who is unable to walk, talk or hear after he was nerve gassed

In the small village of Burqa near Nablus , we visited the Haj household , where 32 year old Ra’ed has been rendered unable to speak , walk or talk after nerve gas was fired into the bathroom he was washing up in in 2002. The Israeli soldiers reached this bathroom by knocking through wall after wall of neighboring houses, which is common practice for the Israeli Occupation Forces.
Despite also suffering from a brain tumor, Ra’ed has been repeatedly denied permission to seek adequate medical facilities by the Israeli army.

His mother and father now care for him, but worry who will continue to do so in the future. Which relatives will be there to care for him in the future is unpredictable to say the least. His brother Muhammed is currently in the notorious Jalame prison after the Haj household was raided by the army at 2am. He is still awaiting charge or trial. Jalame prison is infamous for its harsh interrogations and solitary confinement in the dark. Muhammed also suffers from regualar migraines after he was shot in the head with a steel coated rubber bullet in 2005. The same illegal ammunition was fired at his friend which took out both of his eyes. In 1994 his home was also demolished to make way for the illegal Homesh settlement.

Wether a resident of Burqa has the absurd luxury of being able to reside in his family home or not, the Israeli army constantly make their presence known by raiding the village nearly every night, making wanton arrests and damaging property.

Ra'ed holds up photographs of himself before the attack — Ra’ed holds up photographs of himself before the attack