Category: Features

2 realities

29st October 2018 | International Solidarity Movement, Ramallah Team | Gaza, occupied Palestine

Last Friday, nearly fifty Israeli and ISM protestors demonstrated at the Gaza Border in solidarity with nearly 15,000 Gaza protestors heading toward the border. This action was in conjunction with the weekly Right of Return March.


As the activists were confronted by a couple of Zionists counter-protestors and the Israeli Occupation Forces on the 48 border side, the IOF opened fire on the Gazan protestors marching to the border. The Palestinian and Israeli activists spoke on the phone via a loudspeaker from opposite sides of the border. During the conversation, a Gazan protestor was shot in the leg.


There were so many mixed emotions going through my head. This was my first trip to the Gaza Border and it was totally different from how I imagined. The area is beautiful despite the circumstances. I’d always thought Gaza was a desert area. This assumption was totally wrong. Everyday that I’m in the Occupied Territories, the more I’m seeing:

Most Israelis are living in a false reality. This was hammered in my head from the ride to the boarder. The Zionists have made an effort to “green” inside the 48 borders thus why they call the border the ”green” line. They’ve planted European landscape that is foreign to the Middle Eastern terrain. This effort has wasted valuable water resources, while there are daily water shortages inside the Occupied Territories.

Once we reached the military zone and park yards from the Gaza border. It was smoke in the air caused by the burned tires and missile strikes coming from Gaza. I noticed hundreds of crows flying in the air. Not sure what this was about, maybe the smoke threw them off path.

Gunfire and smoke in the background, I couldn’t believe that people were walking their dogs and a family of 4 was coming to the park like nothing was going on. Mind-blowing!!!!! These are the two realities: Palestinian and Zionists.

Later, i would find out, 5 people killed and close to a hundred killed in a non-violent protest. Palestinians resist occupation with violence, they’re met with heavy handed military force. Palestinians resist occupation with non-violence, they’re met with heavy handed military force. It’s a no-win situation.

“They take everything,” explains Bruqin farmer during 2018 olive harvest

October 22, 2018 |International Solidarity Movement | Bruqin, Occupied Palestine

 

 

ISM volunteers spent the day harvesting olives with farmers in Bruqin village, a day that began with Israeli soldiers confronting the farmer and his family and ordering them to leave their land no later than 5 p.m.  Since the harvest workday typically concludes around 4 p.m., this did not prove an obstacle for the harvesters.  But it was a potent reminder that the residents of Bruqin, a primarily agrarian village located in the fertile Salfit governorate area, continue to lose control over and access to their land due to ongoing Israeli military occupation.

In the last few decades, Israel has expropriated hundreds of dunams of land from Bruqin in order to build Israeli settlements, settlement “outposts,” military checkpoints, and Israeli-only settler by-pass roads.  Bruqin village has existed since Roman times.  Yet Israel’s historically recent military occupation is swiftly eroding this village’s existence.

Despite the vastness of the olive groves in which they were working, the buildings and vast structures of the hilltop settlements of Bruchin and Barkan Industrial Zone proved impossible for volunteers to overlook. These settlements are connected by settlement highway roads 5 and 446, which were both audible and visible from the land where volunteers were working.  The sound of cars zooming by on the settler roads was ever-present.

Since its creation, Barkan Industrial Zone has pumped its wastewater into Bruqin’s agricultural land, causing pollution and the spread of disease in both humans and animals.  As volunteers walked through the groves of olive trees, the stench of human waste was palpable, even in the middle of wide-open farmland.  This “policy” is a continuation of past practice when Ariel, another nearby settlement, began channeling its sewage into the northeast side of the village more than twenty years ago.

Palestinians and ISM volunteers were able to harvest the rest of the day without further Zionist interference.  In conversation with the farmer, however, ISMers asked the name of the settlement looming over them as they worked.  They were initially confused by his answer, because it sounded as though he were simply saying the name of his own village.  Carefully re-iterating and exaggerating the slight difference in pronunciation between “Bruqin” and “Bruchin” for his international listeners, the farmer explained, “They take everything.  They take our land, they take our freedom.  Then they take our names.”

 

Barkan pumps its wastewater into Bruqin’s agricultural land

 

The settlement looming over Burqin

 

Residents and schoolchildren blocked at the Tel Rumeida checkpoint for 30 minutes

21st October 2018 | International Solidarity Movement, Al-Khalil Team | Hebron, occupied Palestine

This morning, schoolchildren and other passers-by encountered the Eastern Tel Rumeida checkpoint blocked in both directions and had to wait 30 minute to pass it on their way to school or workplace, while a young man was detained inside for 30 minutes.

At 7:10 on Sunday, October 21, a young man entered the Easter Tel Rumeida checkpoint and went in the concrete check-cabin inside it. ISM volunteers heard the soldiers inside this concrete check-cabin, shouting in Hebrew language very loud and aggressively to this young man from behind their bulletproof glass window. He was then ordered to wait, possibly for remote identity check. They kept him detained inside for half an hour, until 7:40.

Schoolchildren and other residents could not enter and pass the checkpoint while the young man was being detained inside. Some of hem tried to slip trough a hole in the barrier gate, but the Israeli forces inside strongly forbad them to do so. They all had to wait until 7:40 before they could pass the barrier, and were therefore late for school and work.

The outgoing turn-gate was blocked too. An old man and a female schoolteacher could not pass it.

First, the occupation forces inside blamed it on the electricity, and then on the unwillingness of the detained man inside the concrete check-cabin to pass the security scan inside, but ISM volunteers witnessed that it was plain harassment of the young man inside and of all the others who had to wait outside.

For blocking the outgoing turn-gate, there was no reason at all.

Tel Rumeida is located inside H2—under strict Israeli military control—and home to multiple and constantly expanding illegal settlements. Palestinian citizens of Tel Rumeida are are subject to constant harassment, delays and humiliation in the checkpoints around the area. Tel Rumeida’s settlers frequently carry weapons and intimidate Palestinian residents.

Israel’s military control of Hebron consists of settlements, settler-only roads, checkpoints and military bases. Because of this, restricted access, collective punishment and lack of freedom of movement is a part of daily life for Palestinians in the Old City of Hebron, who face settler harassment and looming Israeli military presence on a daily bases.

Israeli and International Activists Join Gazan Protestors in the Great Return March

October 10 2018 | Wafa Aludini, International Solidarity Movement | Gaza, occupied Palestine

On the morning of October 10, 2018, ten activists from around the world delivered messages of support to the Great March of Return in the Eastern Gaza Strip via Skype, as a part of a ‘virtual rally’ entitled “Words Over Walls.”

The speakers hailed from countries as diverse as the US, UK, Brazil, South Africa and Norway. They included authors Mike Peled, Denny Cormier, Robert Martin, Mike Farah, and Peter Cohen and International Solidarity Movement volunteer Kristin Foss. Participants expressed their solidarity with the Marchers, their tactics and their goals. Musician and composer Mike Farah then sang an original song about the Palestinian’s Right of Return.

“All people of conscience, all people who have a heart, regardless of nationality or religion, must stand with the brave people of Gaza and support their demand to be free and to return to their land and homes in Palestine. The siege on Gaza must be broken and the prison walls that surround Gaza must come down. Palestine must be free,” said author Mike Peled.

“[I’m] just an Australian man who wanted to see the truth, so I went to Palestine and was struck by the blatant abuse of Palestinians by Israel and the loving and welcoming by the Palestinian people,” said activist Robert Martin: “Everything I had read was wrong, the media had lied and I was embarrassed that I had believed [it].”

Additionally, group of anti-Zionist Israelis went near the fence to show solidarity with the Great Return March. They met and spoke with Palestinians activists but were separated by the Israeli siege fence and the Israeli Occupation Forces, who forced them to leave.

The Palestinian Media Youth Group, also known as the “16th October Group,” wishes to thank all of the speakers and hopes to see them soon in a free Palestine. 16th October is a youth Group from Gaza that works with internationals to reveal what is happening in Occupied Palestine, and to expose the brutality of the occupation.

Video: Israeli soldiers, police harass olive pickers in As-Sawiya village

October 7, 2018 | International Solidarity Movement | As-Sawiya, Occupied Palestine

 

 

A group of Israeli soldiers, one Israeli policeman, and one Israeli settler harassed a group of Palestinian and international olive pickers in As-Sawiya village yesterday, demanding identification and threatening to expel the harvesters from the area.

Soon after the group began work, they noticed security vehicles from the nearby settlement of Alia arrive and park along the settler road above them.  The occupants of the vehicle got out of the car and stood along the road for some time, taking photographs of the olive pickers.  Soon thereafter, a team of Israeli soldiers arrived, along with an Israeli police officer in an Israeli police vehicle.  The soldiers and police officer immediately approached the olive pickers and asked for IDs. One Israeli soldier filmed the entire interaction with his mobile phone, while the police officer photographed the passports of all the international harvesters.  He returned the passports immediately, but held onto the Palestinians’ IDs for a much longer period of time, walking away from the group to make a phone call and visibly sorting through the IDs.  After the phone call, he appeared to photograph one or more of the Palestinian IDs before returning them.  The officer then tried to tell the group that they needed to leave.  The team refused, with the Palestinians insisting that this was their land and they were there for the olive harvest.

 

 

During the confrontation, a settler came and sat nearby, watching.  After the confrontation, the settler, along with two Israeli soldiers, remained on the scene for an additional 20-30 minutes, trailing the olive pickers.  Eventually all Zionists left and the rest of the day’s harvest proceeded without incident.

As-Sawiya is slowly being surrounded by Alia as it expands along three sides of the village and encroaches on its land.  The particular area being harvested yesterday was among the closest to the Alia settlement.