30th March 2013 | International Solidarity Movement, Burin, Occupied Palestine
By Team Nablus
On the 30th March 1976, Palestinian citizens of Israel instigated demonstrations in protest at Israeli government plans to confiscate large amounts of Palestinian land in the Galilee region for new Israeli settlements. The thousands of people who took part in non-violent general strikes, demonstrations and marches were violently attacked by the Israeli military, who injured many hundreds and killed six young Palestinian men. Farmers watched by Israeli Occupation Forces
Thirty-seven years later, Israeli land-grabs continue and settlements continue to expand. But Palestinians in the West Bank, in Gaza, in Israel and in the diaspora unite in solidarity on Land Day each year, demonstrating to the Israeli authorities their continuing sense of a Palestinian community – a people who will continue to struggle against occupation and fight for self-determination.
Today in the village of Burin , a group of Palestinians and internationals planted olive trees in a field close by to Yitzar and Bratcha settlements. Pictures of Rachel Corrie, Vittorio Arrigoni and Tom Hundrnall were hung from the newly planted trees. Black balloons adorned with the Palestinian flag and Land Day posters were released into the air. A young boy holds a Palestinian flag in front of Israeli soldiers
The activists were joined almost immediately by several Israeli military and police jeeps. A soldier announced that we were in a closed military zone and that we had 25 minutes to vacate the land. The village mayor wanted to avoid any problems so all of the activists then left the land.
The activists were then invited to a house next to the field for tea but the soldiers said that this also was a closed military zone and that we should leave immediately.
Olive trees are planted to commemorate Land DayPoster of deceased ISM activist Tom Hurdnall is planted alongside an olive tree.Balloons are released into the sky
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).
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.
19th March 2013 | International Solidarity Movement, Occupied Palestine
The following statement by Samer Issawi was posted on his Facebook page by his lawyer Fawwaz Shloudy. It was translated from Arabic to English by Shahd Abusalama.
“Regarding the Israeli Occupation offer to deport me to Gaza, I affirm that Gaza is undeniable part of my homeland and its people are my people. However, I will visit Gaza whenever I want or I feel like it as it is within my homeland Palestine which I have the right to wander whenever I like from the very north to the very south. I strongly refuse to be deported to Gaza as this practice will just bring back bitter flashbacks from the expulsion process which our Palestinian people were subjected to during 1948 and 1967.Samer Issawi
We are fighting for the sake of freedom of our land and return of our refugees in Palestine and exile, not to add more deportees to them. This systematic practice which Israel aims to empty Palestine from Palestinians through and bring strangers in their place is but a crime. Therefore, I refuse being deported and I will only agree to be released to Jerusalem as I know that the Israeli Occupation is aiming to empty Jerusalem of its people and turn Arabs to become a minority group of its population. The issue of deportation is no longer a personal decision. It is rather a national principle. If every detainee agrees to be deported outside Jerusalem under pressure, Jerusalem will eventually be emptied of its people.
I would prefer to die on my hospital bed to being deported from Jerusalem. Jerusalem is my soul and my life. If I was uprooted from there, my soul would be uprooted from my body. My life is meaningless away from Jerusalem. No land on earth will be able to embrace me other than Jerusalem. Therefore, my return will be only to Jerusalem but nowhere else. I advise all Palestinians to embrace their land and their villages and never succumb to the Israeli Occupation’s wishes. I don’t see this issue as a personal cause that is related to Samer Issawi. It is a national issue, a conviction and a principle that every Palestinian who loves his homeland’s sacred soil should hold. Finally, I reaffirm for the thousands time that I continue my hunger strike until either freedom and return to Jerusalem or martyrdom!”
16th March 2013 | International Solidarity Movement, Occupied Palestine
American activist Rachel Corrie was killed in Gaza ten years ago today.
The International Solidarity Movement write this message in her memory.
Rachel, a 23 year old woman from Olympia, Washington, was crushed to death by an Israeli army bulldozer on the 16th March 2003, whilst protesting non-violently against the demolition of a Palestinian house by Israeli forces. As an activist she spoke out about the injustices that she saw in Gaza.
“I feel like I’m witnessing the systematic destruction of a people’s ability to survive. It’s horrifying… Sometimes I sit down to dinner with people and I realize there is a massive military machine surrounding us, trying to kill the people I’m having dinner with.”
She is remembered with love still by Palestinians and new generations of ISM volunteers – for many of whom, Rachel’s untimely death was an inspiration to become more involved in the struggle for freedom for Palestine. We honour her memory and what she was standing for, whilst she stood in front of that bulldozer ten years ago today.
The International Solidarity Movement continues to work for justice, peace and freedom for Palestine – where the occupation still strongly resembles Rachel’s words in the video below.
Our thoughts today are with Rachel’s family, and as we’re sure Rachel would have wanted, also with all the Palestinian families who have lost a loved one to the Israeli occupation.
Update on the 13th March 2013: The Supreme court will review the case of Ziad Jilani
After hearing an appeal presented on behalf of Moira Jilani, the widow of Ziad and their three daughters the Israeli Supreme Court Judges have decided that they wished to review all evidence in the case.
Ziad Jilani was killed by Israeli border policeman Maxim Vinogradov in 2010. According to eyewitnesses Maxim VInagrodov shot Ziad at point blank range in the head while Zaid had laying on the ground wounded after being shot in the back. Ziad was unarmed.
Family and friends holding posters in support of Ziad Jilani (Photo by ISM)
The State Prosecutor, who had previously not charged those who shot and killed Ziad, is now obliged to hand over all evidence to the Supreme Court by the 24th of March. The Jilani family, was more optimistic after the hearing than they had been before.
Bilal Ziad’s brother stated said, “If the Israeli Supreme Court really looks at the evidence of this case, and if they still say there are no grounds to press charges against the officers who murdered Ziad, then it means Israel has no credibility at all. They rule by the law of the jungle.”
9th March 2013 | International Solidarity Movement, Occupied Palestine
By ISM Media Office
On Wednesday (13 March) Moira Jilani and her three daughters will come face to face with their husband and father’s killer. Ziad Jilani’s widow and daughters seek justice for his killing by Israeli border policeman Maxim Vinogradov, for the third time.
Ziad Jilani with his young daugher
“I am dreading facing them for my daughters”, says Moira, “I think I could face them myself but I’m afraid that when I see the pain in my daughters eyes it will kill me”. Her husband, Ziad, was killed three years ago by Maxim Vinogradov, an Israeli Magav (border police) officer who put his rifle to Ziad’s head and pulled the trigger three consecutive times while Ziad lay helplessly on the ground, having already been shot twice fleeing police shooting at him after he was involved in a car accident after a stone hit his truck.
Now, for the third time, the family is appealing to Israeli authorities to press charges against Ziad’s killer. On the 16th of January 2011 the case was closed by police internal investigations (Machash) for the first time, for “lack of evidence”.
In the following month, 15th of February 2011, the family submitted an appeal to then Israel Attorney General, Menachem Mazuz. Despite a confession by Vinogradov that he had shot Ziad at zero range when he was lying on the ground because of the initial gunshot wound, an autopsy report pointing to an a close range shooting, dozens of eyewitnesses who were also injured that day as a result of the incident and very clear changes in Vinogradov’s testimonies before and after the autopsy, Mazuz did not see fit to change. Machash’s decision to close the case.
With the help of the al-Mazaan Center for Human Rights, on January 4th 2012, the family submitted a second appeal. This time to the Israeli Supreme Court, demanding that the new state prosecutor, Yehuda Weinstein, bring criminal charges against Ziad’s murderers.
“After Weinstein [Israel’s current Attorney General] had all the evidence we had hope that he would press charges against the killers,” Moira recalls, “but after he decided not to do so for the third time, it is hard to have hope that the court will do justice.”
According to Yesh Din in 2012 the MPCID received 240 complaints and various reports of suspected crimes allegedly committed by Israeli soldiers against Palestinians and their property in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Out of these registered complaints, only 103- not even half- have yielded investigations. Not one single indictment has been served to date.
The organization commented on the findings: “The numerous defects in MPCID investigations of offenses against Palestinians and in the Military Advocate General Corps’ supervision of the investigations, result in the closure of the vast majority of the files and a minimal number of indictments being served. This creates a feeling of lawlessness on the ground, which may be a central contributing factor in the rise in the number of killings over recent weeks”.
Moira describes this sense of lawlessness, “I still have hope, but its hard when we see everything that’s happening around us,” she says, “my husband’s case is one of what seems to be a systematic sweeping under the rug of violent incidences of Israeli soldiers against the Palestinian population under their authority. We are not just going to court for Ziad Jilani. We are going to court for all the Palestinians killed before Ziad and those that will be killed thereafter.”
