This weekend the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) conference was held in Jerusalem, despite pressure from human rights groups for it to be held elsewhere or not at all. After their insistence on holding the conference here, ignoring Israel’s blatant violations of international law and colluding with their aspirations to claim Jerusalem as an Israeli capitol, we were forced as activists with conscience to confront the participants with criticism, posters, and a giant banner.
We came upon a detailed schedule for the “Round Table” conference of high profile OECD ambassadors, and were thus able to meet them at the Jerusalem Bird Observatory, 8:30 AM on Friday. Our signs had pictures of ostriches with their heads buried in the sand, and the slogan “Don’t Close Your Eyes to Apartheid” in several different languages. They were surprised to find us there. We were told to stand at the exit, but all of the ambassadors still had to pass us on their way out. A few smiled, but most quickly averted their eyes or glared at us.
click for full sizeSaturday we dropped a ten meter wide banner off the Calatrava bridge at the entrance to Jerusalem, that again said “Don’t Close Your Eyes to Apartheid,” and had an “OECD Approved” stamp over a photo of the Apartheid Wall. As a result of Shebat, there were no police in the area so our banner remained in place for at least a few hours. Some Israeli passersby attempted to untie the banner, but were unsuccessful due to our proficiencies in knotting. A few boys tried to pull the banner back up onto the bridge, but when they saw us filming them they threw it back over and ran away.
click for full sizeDespite Israel’s persistent violation of human rights as protected by International law, the OECD — whose member countries include most of the rich countries of the world — granted Israel membership on May 27th this year. This not only symbolized diplomatic approval of Israel’s policies on the part of the most powerful countries in the international community, but also brought many potential economic benefits to Israel.
Haifa, Israel – The bulldozer driver who struck and killed Rachel Corrie in March 2003, in Rafah, Gaza, testified for the first time Thursday in the civil lawsuit filed by the Corrie family against the state of Israel, but did so under extraordinary protective measures that continue to underscore the lack of transparency in the investigation as well as the trial process.
The driver, Y.P., whose name was not released, is a 38-year-old Russian immigrant who came to Israel in 1995. He was the sole witness for the day and gave his testimony over four hours behind a makeshift partition, a measure the state claimed was necessary to protect his security. Attorneys for the Corries requested that the family be allowed to see the driver even if the public could not, but their appeals were denied.
“We were disappointed not to see the whole human being,” said Cindy Corrie, Rachel’s mother. “It is a personal affront that the state’s attorneys and Israeli government, on the basis of security, chose to keep our family from seeing the witness.”
Scores of journalists, human rights observers and members of the public were shut out of the proceedings Thursday. The courtroom has only two long rows of seats, nearly half of which were held for the first time by observers apparently from the State Attorney’s office and Ministry of Defense.
In over four hours of often confused testimony, Y.P. seemed to struggle to read and understand his own affidavit signed in April. He could not remember basic facts, such as the date of Rachel’s killing or time of day it happened. He repeatedly contradicted his own statements on the stand and testimony given to military police investigators in 2003.
Highlights of testimony include the following:
Y.P stated that after he drove over Rachel and backed up, she was located between his bulldozer and the mound of earth that he had pushed, corroborating photographic evidence and testimony from international eyewitnesses given to the court in March. His testimony calls into question that of the commander inside this same bulldozer, whose written affidavit states that Rachel’s body was located in a different location, on the far side of the mound of earth created by the bulldozer. In court, Y.P. was asked if based on this contradiction he wanted to change his testimony. He firmly stated no.
In testimony to military police investigators only three days after the incident, Y.P. said the blind spot in front of the bulldozer was 3 meters. In contradicting court testimony, he claimed the blind spot was 30 meters–ten times the distance first stated.
Y.P. knew about regulations that the bulldozer was not to work within 10 meters of people. He was aware civilians were present, but said he was given orders to continue working. He said I’ m just a soldier. It was not my decision.
He claimed he did not see Rachel before the event. Nor did he recall seeing her specifically at all that day, despite the fact that she had protested the bulldozer’s activity for several hours and was the only female activist wearing a bright orange fluorescent jacket.
Following the driver’s testimony, Cindy Corrie stated, “It was very difficult not to hear or detect anything in this witness’s words or voice that suggested remorse. Sadly, what I heard from the other side of the screen was indifference.”
The proceedings on Thursday were attended by representatives of the US Embassy, Advocates sans Frontiers, the Center for Constitutional Rights, the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), National Lawyers Guild, Adalah, and the Arab Association for Human Rights, many of whom have closely followed the hearings throughout the trial.
The next scheduled hearings are November 4 and 15 between the hours of 9:00-16:00 before Judge Oded Gershon at the Haifa, District Court, 12 Palyam St., Haifa, Israel. Additional court dates are expected to be announced soon.
21 October 2010 | Popular Struggle Coordination Committee
Adeeb Abu Rahmah sentenced to 18 months
Adeeb Abu Rahmah, a protest leader from Bil’in, was sentenced to 18 months imprisonment by the Military Court of Appeals, for his involvement in organizing demonstrations. The decision dramatically aggravates the one-year sentence originally imposed in the first instance.
Judge Lieutenant Colonel Benisho of the Military Court of Appeals accepted the Military prosecution’s appeal in Adeeb Abu Rahmah’s case today, which demanded to harshen the already heavy-handed one-year sentence imposed on him by the prior instance back in July. The court sentenced Abu Rahmah 18 months of imprisonment with bail of 6,000 NIS and suspended sentence of 1 year. An appeal filed by the defense both on the severity of the punishment and on the conviction itself was denied.
Adeeb Abu Rahmah’s sentence is the first to be handed by the Military Court of Appeals in a series of recent trials against high-profile Palestinian anti-Wall grassroots organizers. The harsh and imbalanced decision is likely to affect other cases, most notably that of Abdallah Abu Rahmah – the Bil’in organizer declared human rights defender by the EU – who was too recently sentenced to a year in jail by the first instance of the military court.
Adeeb Abu Rahmah’s case relied heavily on the forced confessions of four minors arrested in nighttime raids by Israeli soldiers. The four attested in court to having been coerced into incriminating Abu Rahmah and other organizers during the course of their police investigations. They were also questioned unlawfully, denied consol and without their parents being presents and, in some cases, late at night.
The ruling in the appeal concludes 15 months of unfair legal procedures, held amidst a massive Israeli arrest campaign, which ended with an upheld conviction of incitement, activity against the public order and entering a closed military zone.
This precedent-setting decision is the first time in recorded history of the Israeli Military Court of Appeals in which a Palestinian is convicted with a charge of incitement. Even the original one year sentence dramatically exceeds precedents set by the Israeli Supreme Court. The Court of Appeals’ even harsher sentence highlights the lack of equality before the law between Israelis and Palestinians, who are tried before two different legal systems. For instance, in a case of a Jewish settler convicted of incitement to murder, the court only imposed an eight months suspended sentence.
Attorney Gaby Lasky (Defense): “Today the court of appeals has shown that it is serving as one more instance of political repression not as an actual court where justice is served. The court admitted what we all knew – that the entire system is trying to make an example of Adeeb in order to silence the entire Popular Struggle movement against Israel’s occupation.”
Background
Having served his original one-year prison term in full, Adeeb Abu Rahmah should have been released immediately after hearing the sentence. The military prosecution, which hoped for an even harsher sentence as part of its ongoing efforts to use legal persecution to suppress the Palestinian popular struggle, petitioned the Military Court of Appeals, asking that Abu Rahmah remains incarcerated despite having served his sentence.
In a clearly politically motivated decision, Judge Lieutenant Colonel Benisho of the Military Court of Appeals decided to remand Abu Rahmah until a decision in the appeal, saying that “This is an appeal filed to set the proper punishment in a unique case regarding which a general punishment level has not yet been set.” The judge chose to completely ignore the punishment level set forth by the supreme court in similar and even harsher cases. Benisho also ignored a supreme court precedent instructing the courts to only extend the remand of convicts past the time they were sentenced to in very extreme situations.
“This tree is blessed for us and our grandfathers and ancestors have taken care of this tree for generations. I grew up with an olive tree in our back yard and it represents the peaceful life we had always lived on these lands. Now our olive groves are bulldozed and farm workers are shot at so we are here in solidarity with farmers whose lives are made impossible by the Israeli siege and occupation.”
This is how much it meant to Mohammed el Massry, a 20 year old student in Al Azhar University to enter a high risk area to help farmers begin the olive harvest and help maintain land that used to be the breadbasket of the Palestinian economy. In what turned out to be a beautiful day’s climbing, picking and bagging of black and green olives, Mohammed joined other members of the Beit Hanoun ‘Local Initiative’ group accompanied by 4 International Solidarity Movement activists to help farmer Abzel Al Baseony begin the Olive harvest 300 metres from the Erez border wall with Israel.
Beginning early on Tuesday morning, farm workers, Palestinian and international activists marched with flags, buckets, step ladders and hessian bags ready for a morning’s work picking olives, accompanied by the cameras of Arabic and international media. Around the unilaterally imposed Israeli buffer zone – a 300 metre wide belt of land along the Israeli border, farm workers have been picked off by snipers and shelling as a matter of course, often over a kilometer beyond the designated area. A month ago near to where we were picking the olives Grandfather Ibrahim Abu Sayed, his 17 year-old grandson and friend were mutilated and killed by Israeli tank shelling despite being twice as far from the border as we were.
Khalil Nasir, coordinator of the Local Initiative group sees farmers as the first line of resistance: “We’re here today to offer some support for the farmers who have continued the resistance to the occupation everyday of their lives, not letting go of these lands so near to the Israeli wall. Last month three farm-workers were directly shelled, when all they were doing were tending to their sheep and animals. We thank them for the life they left behind and we want to give farmers along the border whatever support we can.”
Shootings of farmers and destruction of their land are not exceptions – the dangers of farming in the bufferzone were comprehensively documented in the recent United Nations and World Food Programme report: “Between the Fence and a Hard Place”. It concluded that the violence used to restrict Palestinians from accessing their land covers areas up to 1500m from the border fence, meaning that over 35% of Gaza’s most agricultural land is in a high risk area causing severe losses of food production and livelihoods.
This does not stop farmers and their families from continuing to plant and harvest there, their livelihoods and resistance far too important to prevent them from working their own land. Nor are the regular demonstrations ceasing despite being confronted by frequent live gunfire and many of the demonstrators were pleased to show direct solidarity by picking the olives.
“We have been shot at near here before on peaceful demonstrations”, said 22 year old student Anwar Alaaneen. “I’m here in solidarity with the farmers in Beit Hanoun who are always under threat from shooting and shelling when their land is so close to the Israeli fence. The international community should allow us the right to farm our own land, instead of allowing Israel to continue to commit these crimes.” she added.
Unbeknown to the olive pickers, nearby in the North of Gaza in Beit Lahiya a farm worker in the Siafa area 27 year old Zeyad Mohammed Tambora now and then worked for a farmer in Siafa area, had just finished picking strawberries when suddenly with no warning his right foot was hit by a bullet. He was carried back by his 2 cousins from the farmland at about 300 meter from the fence and they escorted him to a waiting car on a donkey cart. Arriving at hospital Tuesday at about 10.00 AM Zeyad then underwent surgery to stop the bleeding. The bones in his foot are smashed and according to doctors he might have problems to walk for the rest of his life and he is not expected to be walking for a few months.
Whether its for strawberry picking, olive picking or wheat gathering, incidents like this happen on a daily basis in this region. Two days before and last week, two more workers were slightly injured by firing from the border.
The farmer whose olives we were picking laments the history behind the continuous attacks on their land and the destruction of their life before. “There used to be many trees in this area, they bulldozed them and although we have lost so much we have continued to farm it”, said Abzel Al Baseony the farmer whose olives we were picking. “Everyone is afraid coming here to farm. They take photos of us from the control towers so they know who we are yet they still just shoot whenever they want at whatever they want. I’ve been here since 1984 and my father farmed this land before me. We will keep farming.”
A 20-year-old Palestinian man, Sliman Abu Hanza, is in a critical condition in hospital after being shot in the abdomen with a ‘dum dum’ bullet at a demonstration in Al-Faraheen, Khan Younis, on Sunday.
The injury was inflicted during one of three non-violent demonstrations which took place on Sunday; in Beit Hanoun, Maghazi and Faraheen near Khan Younis – four members of the International Solidarity Movement also attended. The explode-on-impact ‘dum-dum’ bullet which hit Abu Hanza is the same type that was shot into the leg of Ahmed Deeb, 20, during a demonstration in Nahal Oz in April this year – severing his femeral artery and killing him.
All three demonstrations occurred at locations that have seen frequent protests against the Israeli-imposed ‘buffer zone’. This large area of land, along the Gazan side of the border, makes 35% of Gaza’s arable land, inaccessible to farmers because of the dangers of Israeli fire. The devastating effects on farmers and fisherman of these additional restrictions are outlined in a recent United Nations and World Food Programme report: ‘Between the fence and a hard place’ (opens as pdf).
The protests on Sunday targeted Israel’s continuous settlement building, which is in violation of international law and is further used to annex Palestinian land, a key tactic that accompanies the relentless ethnic cleansing of Palestinian Arabs from the region. Organiser and National Committee Secretary A’tah Abu Zarqa said the rallies were organised to show Palestinians’ vehement opposition to the Israeli policies that have expropriated Palestinian land on a continuous basis since Israel was created in 1948 on the ruins of Palestinian refugees. He said that the international community should never accept Israel’s attempts to unilaterally change the geography and demography of Palestine and that in light of this, Abbas should withdraw from negotiations immediately.
At the demonstrations in the Beit Hanoun and Maghazi, although live ammunition was used by Israeli occupation forces in the latter, there were no reported injuries. The demonstration in Maghazi was the first there since three protesters were shot and injured 5 months ago, including the International Solidarity Movement activist Bianca Zammit.
In Faraheen. over 200 people attended the demonstration, which began as a procession towards the border with speeches and chanting, and a large women’s group was also present. A group of young men headed towards the border fence, still on Palestinian land. Sliman and a friend Kamal, also 20, planted flags near to the border fence. Kamal described what happened:
“I was with Sliman and we both put a flag near to the fence – just a flag. When the Israel Jeeps came they opened fired on us and I ran back for cover in a ditch. Suddenly I saw Sliman shot in his abdomen. It was clear it was a single shot intended to hit him. I helped carry him back over the fields with many others. He lives in the area near to the border.”
One of the major concerns for Sliman is the fact that he had to be carried over 500 metres across fields by many of the other demonstrators and then driven off in a ‘Tuk Tuk’ bike trailer to reach medical attention. This way of transporting casualties echoed the horrific scenes during the 3 week Israeli assault on Gaza over the New Year of 2009 when over 1400 people were killed including over 400 children. Because the medical services were so overwhelmed – and were often shot at when approaching the injured – many of the casualties were transported in the boots of cars or on donkey carts. A Press TV team captured the protest on film and interviewed ISM activist Adie Mormech about the shooting.
According to the Doctors at Europa hospital where he was taken, Sliman suffered extensive internal damage to his abdomen, 3 injuries to the small bowel, the left iliac vein, rectum and some intestinal damage. He has had a series of operations been given blood transfusions – the next 24 hours are crucial. Like Ahmed Deeb, the immediate threat to his life was from loss of blood sustained from his injuries. When ISM volunteers left the hospital after visiting Sliman yesterday, he was in a critical but stable condition and was about to be moved to the intensive care unit.
Sliman is another victim of the frequent attacks on civilians near to the border, many of which ended in fatalities such as the three farm workers killed in Beit Hanoun two weeks ago, and last Friday the fisherman Mohamed Bakri killed only 2 miles out at sea by an Israeli Gunship, a month before his wedding.
Besides the crippling and internationally condemned siege, Palestinian life in Gaza is littered with such tragedy, lives ended in a flicker in accordance with the whims of the Israeli sniper on duty and who he or she chooses for execution. If Sliman survives his injuries, he’s sure to join the thousands of Palestinians who must continue the rest of their imprisonment in the Gaza ghetto with permanent debilitating disabilities.
Despite this, people continue to demonstrate in large numbers across Gaza, preferring to face Israeli violence with nothing but flags and a desire to walk on their land, despite the risks that this shooting – all too common a story – exemplifies.
A 20-year-old Palestinian man, Sliman Abu Hanza, is in a critical condition in hospital after being shot in the abdomen with a ‘dum dum’ bullet at a demonstration in Al-Faraheen, Khan Younis, on Sunday.
In Faraheen. over 200 people attended the demonstration, which began as a procession towards the border with speeches and chanting, and a large women’s group was also present. A group of young men headed towards the border fence, still on Palestinian land. Sliman and a friend Kamal, also 20, planted flags near to the border fence. Kamal described what happened: