An injured man in carried to an ambulance - Photo: TILDE DE WANDEL
At around 11:30pm last night (Friday 30 July 2010), ‘The Arafat Compound’ Police College in central Gaza City was bombed by Israeli F-16s, in the area of ‘Al Montada’ injuring seventeen people, three of them seriously. Three children were also among the injured.
Those first at the scene described building debris scattered everywhere and burned out cars still parked on the street. One man had severe injuries to the eyes and head as a result of being hit by shrapnel from the bomb.
The enormous impact of the bomb was felt by ISM volunteers sitting in a nearby café.
Adie Mormech, a British volunteer in Gaza with ISM said: “The blast caused buildings far from the epicenter of the explosion to shake and windows were smashed. When we arrived at Shifa hospital the scene was chaos. Family members were not allowed inside to visit while the patients were being treated. Intermittently more of the injured arrived amidst a mass of waiting media.
A father carries his injured child to a hospital bed - Photo: TILDE DE WANDEL
“Others arrived at the hospital with psychological trauma caused by the enormous impact of the bomb – some were confused to the extent that they couldn’t describe whether they had an injury or not.”
One Gazan resident described the power of the bomb as a rocket weighing more than a ton, the likes of which had not been seen frequently since the horrific three week bombardment over the New Year of 2009, known as Operation Cast Lead.
For many in Gaza, last night’s attack was a traumatic reminder of the onslaught during Operation Cast Lead when three hundred F-16 bomb attacks took place during the first 2 minutes of the campaign. The operations terrorized the entire population of the Gaza Strip and killed over 1400 people, including over 400 children.
Israel’s attack late Friday night followed a rocket that landed in Askelon, Southern Israel. that caused no injuries, and is suspected to have been fired by a small militant faction in Gaza.
As well as reports of other bombings near the Gaza City port there were also rocket attacks on Deir el Belah and Rafah.
Nahal Oz demonstration Wed. 28th July (Photo: TILDE DE WANDEL)
29 July 2010 | ISM Gaza
Five International Solidarity Movement volunteers participated in a demonstration against the bufferzone near Nahal Oz border crossing, east of Gaza City on Wednesday (July 28th).
The march had a big turn out of over 200 people and was organised by the Popular Campaign for the Security in the Buffer Zone, an umbrella group which includes organisations representing farmers and local people living near the border. Members of the Palestinian Popular Struggle Front (PPSF), a grass-roots organisation heavily involved in the protests against the buffer-zone, waved prominent large white flags.
An Israeli army jeep and a large armoured Israeli vehicle were already in position as the demonstrators approached a ridge 150 metres from the fence, where they stood, waving flags and chanting well inside the ‘no go area’ or ‘buffer-zone’ unilaterally imposed by Israel, covering land 300m from the border fence along the entire frontier with Israel. Violent attacks by the Israeli military on anyone in the area have been a consistent occurrence – frequently live ammunition has been used against peaceful demonstrators and even farmers harvesting crops. According to the Palestine Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) the ‘buffer zone‘ contains over 30% of Gaza’s most useful arable land.
As the demonstration progressed three more jeeps and two tanks arrived. Five soldiers in firing positions were visible outside the vehicles.
Nahal Oz demonstration Wed. 28th July (Photo: TILDE DE WANDEL)
In the beginning of the demonstration the majority of participants marched to about 300 metres to the border where the speeches were made, with demonstrators that included a large group of women, carrying banners condemning the occupation and the siege.
Although in the previous demonstration in Nahal Oz the protesters there were heavily fired upon, this time the watching Israeli snipers did not fire. Some youths advanced to within 100m of the border fence, near to where 21 year old Ahmed Deeb was shot and killed by an explode-on-impact bullet or ‘dum dum’, at a Nahal Oz demonstration on the 28th April this year. That demonstration was non-violent as was Wednesday’s but the continuous use of live ammunition by the Israeli Occupation Forces has caused frequent deaths and numerous injuries for farmers and their families, scrap collectors and demonstrators.
Abu Walid Mahmoud Al-Zaq of the Popular Struggle Front and coordinator of the Popular Campaign for the Security in the Buffer Zone was pleased with the turn-out and helped re-group the crowd when the demonstration had finished, fortunately without injuries.
He explained the importance of continuing to demonstrate despite the risk of live fire: “We will support the farmers who have to work their own land in the buffer-zone in spite of the regular violent attacks on them and their families – we will refuse to let the access to our land be controlled by the brutal policies of the Israeli Occupation Forces.” He also said he invites anyone who can to join a buffer-zone demonstration.
Nahal Oz demonstration Wed. 28th July (Photo: TILDE DE WANDEL)
The Palestinian Agricultural Relief Committees (PARC) report that the fertile farmland located around the buffer zone was in recent times the source of half of the food needs of Gaza’s population. Purely due to Israel’s siege of Gaza’s borders and their continuous attacks, farming has now become a very unproductive industry. Of the 175,000 dunams of cultivable land, PARC reported that 60 to 75,000 dunams have been destroyed during Israeli invasions and operations.
The level of destruction from the last Israeli war on Gaza alone accounted for the destruction of 35 to 60 percent of the agricultural industry, according to the UN and World Health Organization. Gaza’s sole agricultural college, in Beit Hanoun, was also destroyed. Oxfam notes that the combination of the Israeli war on Gaza and the buffer zone renders around 46 percent of agricultural land useless or unreachable.
Between January and April this year there have been 50 people injured and 14 killed in attacks on the buffer zone. In the past twelve months there have been at least 220 Israeli attacks with 116 coming since the beginning of 2010 (PCHR, as of April 30th).
Additional information about a settler attack in Boere last night has been added to the end of this post, along with new photos, one of which shows a bite mark inflicted on a female demonstrator by a soldier.
Soldiers threaten a demonstrator during a violently repressed protest
The recent escalation of settler violence in Al-Khalil (Hebron) was matched by unwarranted military violence and the arbitrary arrest of peaceful protestors at the latest protest against the closure of Shuhada Street and illegal presence of Israeli settlers on Saturday 24 July 2010.
Cynical military violence
Israeli soldiers were brutal with an overwhelmingly peaceful group of demonstrators and made six arrests, apparently at random. Soldiers used great violence to arrest three French men, an Israeli activist, a Swedish man – and later that day a Palestinian. Protestors were kicked, punched, stamped on, dragged by the hair and two even reported being bitten by soldiers whilst they held on to fellow activists to prevent their arrest.
A peaceful tone for the protest was set by the local popular committee who had arranged for a visiting dance troupe from Syria to perform a traditional ‘dabka’ dance. Spirited chanting ensued and protestors linked arms to walk towards the market. However soldiers with M-16 rifles blocked their path and physically shoved them back.
A peaceful Swedish demonstrator was violently arrested by soldiers and detained for several hours
At one point a single protestor used a plastic flag pole to poke a soldier, after extreme and unnecessary force had already been employd by soldiers. Following this the army set upon the demonstrators, and started to beat any and all of those present. Arrests were made in an extremely vicious way, with young men being grabbed by their necks and put in headlocks. Several people were successfully de-arrested by fellow activists but the large military contingent made five arrests, handcuffing innocent people on the spot and dragging them away.
The protest calmed down somewhat when demonstrators sat on the floor to continue chanting peacefully. However the soldiers refused to allow even this. They drove people away from the closed off entrance to Shuhada Street and as they slowly backed off one soldier hurled a sound grenade into the retreating crowd – a rare occurrence in Hebron and a sign of the harsh manner in which the protest was repressed this week.
Arrests and legal intimidation
At least 25 people went to Kiryat Arba police station in Hebron, to demand the release of those arrested. They chanted and sang songs for three hours demanding they be freed. Later that evening the Swedish man – photos show the bruises on his body from being violently arrested – and the Israeli man were released without even being questioned, suggesting that police were well aware they had committed no crime.
However, the three French people, who had also done nothing wrong and are understood to have been observing the demonstration and not even participating, have been banned from Hebron, Ni’lin and Bil’in – three of the most important sites of nonviolent Palestinian resistance. This may have been because they admitted to being part of a group, called Generation Palestine.
The commander of the unit raises his arm to hit a peaceful protester
Last week a Swedish man, Marcus Regnander, was banned from the entire West Bank for six months after a similar arbitrary arrest and with again no evidence presented against him. His lawyer plans to appeal the case.
A Palestinian man arrested later that day at a checkpoint but was released Monday afternoon. His release may have been because police knew that their was a lot of video evidence of soldiers attacking him – rather than the other way round – so their claim that he attacked soldiers would easily have been exposed as a lie – however he still faces a court case.
Daily settler violence
In the past two weeks, Hebron – where human rights violations occur every day – has been even more troubled than usual.
On July 17, Mohammed, a shopkeeper, was attacked by twelve Israeli settlers near his shop by the Tomb of the Patriarchs. Without provocation, two of the settlers grabbed Mohammed and a third punched him in the face. When the ambulance arrived to take Mohammed to the hospital, the military refused to let it through, though he eventually saw a doctor who warned him he might require surgery on his left eye.
On July 18th an eleven year old Palestinian boy was run over by a settler on a motorbike. A witness, who said the man was driving at 80kph and continued after hitting the boy, said it was clearly no accident and similar incidents have occurred in the past.
Windows of a Palestinian property smashed by Israeli settlers
On July 20th there were problems at the shops near the Tomb of the Patriarchs. A group of settlers had parked their cars in front of the shops preventing people from getting access to them, even preventing one of the shops from opening, since a car had parked just in front of the entrance to the shop. Internationals were able to help resolve the situation peacefully and the cars were moved.
In Boere village activists met with local women who told them that during the last two weeks the settlers have been setting fire to crops near the family house, destroyed the water system in one of the plantations, cut a large number of tomato plants, smashed windows and slashed the tyres of two cars in the village. Locals also suspect that settlers might plan to steal more land in the village, since they also have cleared trees from an area on a hillside opposite the village, owned by a Palestinian family.
UPDATE 27 July 2010:
The bite mark on an activist's arm - inflicted by an Israeli soldier
ISM activists in Hebron report that last night in the village of Boere, about 100 settlers marched the streets proclaiming the area their territory. They are also said to have attacked members of CPT (Christian Peacemakers Team) who were videoing the settlers’ activities.
This photo shows a bite mark on the arm of a female demonstrator. She was one of two women who reported being bitten by a soldier when holding on to a fellow activist in order to de-arrest them.
Four-year-old Haitham Thaer Qasem, injured by an Israeli nail bomb - PHOTO: Tilde de Wandel
“She came in through and it wasn’t clear she was injured. Suddenly a lot of blood came from her nose and she vomited. All of the family saw this – her little brothers were very scared. She had just been playing in the front of the house.”
This is a mother describing to us her daughter, 9-year-old Sammah as she came in to her home at 4pm after the Israeli army reportedly shelled and fired four bombs into and around a residential area in Beit Hanoun, Northern Gaza. She is now in a semi-critical condition in hospital, suffering extensive blood loss and very low haemoglobin. She was hit by shrapnel and ‘flechettes’ from a nail bomb that landed 100m away, causing internal bleeding to the chest, severe head trauma and nails embedded in her body. Shells containing flechettes are illegal under international law if fired into densely populated civilian areas and Sammah ‘Eid al-Masri is one of four children injured in the attack yesterday, July 21st.
Two young men were killed: Mohammad Hatem al-Kafarna, 23, from severe shrapnel injuries in his back and chest and Qassem Mohammed Kamal al-Shanbari, 20, caused by injuries from nails embedded in his skull and shrapnel wounds to the back. It was unclear earlier whether they were resistance fighters or if they were civilians – the Israeli Occupation Force called them ‘militants’ – just as they called the four children, aged between 4 and 11, who were left hospitalised by their injuries ‘militants’. Their parents could be found weeping over their loved ones in Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City last night.
We first visited Haitham Tha’er Qassem, a four year old boy and a first and only child. He was sleeping on the hospital bed, occasionally gasping for breath through the strapping around his nose. He had suffered deep nasal trauma, and flechette darts from the nail bomb were still embedded in his tiny body, where they had pierced his back, right elbow and right leg. He was 200m from the impact of the bomb.
In his hospital ward his mother was standing to one side crying quietly and another relative at Haitham’s bedside explained what had happened.
“We had asked Haitham to get shopping for her from the market…then we heard the bombings and somebody came to our home and told our family that he was in the hospital and was injured in the bombing. We came quickly to the hospital.”
In a nearby ward we then visited 9-year-old Sammah ‘Eid al-Masri who was in a worse state. The doctor told us she was in a ‘semi-critical’ condition with severe chest, head and abdominal pain. Her blood-loss was a major concern, arriving at the hospital with 7.5 haemoglobin levels, 4-6 below the normal levels, the problem exacerbated by the fact that she, like three of her brothers, already suffered from a blood condition known as Thalassemia for which the drug Exjade is in extremely short supply due to the Israeli blockade. She was clearly in pain and confused, trying to remove the nasal tubes. Her mother showed us the bandages on her chest.
“She was in a very bad condition when she arrived – it’s difficult for children and very traumatic to insert a chest tube. Very painful. Blood was mainly coming from the chest. We will have to perform surgery and we will further explore her abdominal pain”, the doctor tells us.
This is not the first time the family was attacked, Sammah’s 4-year-old brother Ryad ‘Eid al-Masri was injured during Operation Cast Lead, the three week Israeli assault over the New Year of 2009 period, during which over 400 Palestinian children were killed.
“Our house was hit during the war, a neighbour sheltering inside was killed and our son suffered severe head injuries. He wasn’t able to access the care he needed and because of this his sight is now permanently damaged.”
As we left Sammah, she had begun to cry, moaning in serious discomfort and confusion. There were two more injured children in the hospital following the attack: Mohammed ‘Azzam al-Masri (aged 9) fractured his right hand as he fell while trying to escape; and Ibrahim Wissam al-Masri (aged 6) whose back was injured by shrapnel.
The Abu Said family house, scarred after a nail bomb attack - PHOTO: Tilde de Wandel
It’s not just the siege. Criminal Israeli violence continues unabated, resulting in Palestinians in Gaza – children like Sammah, Haitham, Azzam and Ibrahim – and their families experiencing horrific pain and suffering. Last week it was the Abu Said family, attacked in their home on the border East of Gaza city; they lost Nema, a 33-year-old mother of five as she went outside to look frantically for her youngest son. Three more family members were also injured, again by the thousands of ‘flechette’ darts unleashed by the nail bomb assault. Many of these darts will remain permanently embedded in their bodies.
Palestinians remain incredulous to the idea of justice. They will remain so as long as they’re allowed to be dismissed as footnotes by those supporting, or blindly ignoring, what has happened to them and is being done to them. But those who meet them like we did yesterday will never forget what they go through. And people of conscience around the world are beginning to open their eyes instead of turning their backs and acting against these ongoing atrocities.
Tom Hurndall shortly before he was shot and killed.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Correction appended
The International Solidarity Movement (ISM) condemns the early release from prison of the Israeli soldier that murdered photography student and ISM volunteer Tom Hurndall in Gaza in 2003. The Israeli press yesterday reported that Taysir Hayb will be released three years early from an already short eight-year sentence.
His murder was only a symptom of a much wider culture of impunity in the Israeli army. This early release serves to reinforce the notion that the Israeli army can continue to commit war crimes against Palestinians without fear of serious consequences.
Tom’s mother Jocelyn Hurndall told ISM London that: “this reduced sentence comes at a time when the world is becoming more sceptical about Israel’s investigations into its own actions. It’s a reminder of Israel’s disregard for international law and opinion.”
When Hayb was sentenced in 2005, human rights activist, Raphael Cohen, who was with Tom on the day of the shooting said, “On the very street where Tom was shot, two children had been shot just days before. This is why he and the rest of the group went to that spot, to protest against the shooting of children as they played outside their homes. There has never been any investigation into the shootings of those children.”
To this day, there has still been no investigation of these deaths or of the thousands of other Palestinian civilians killed by Israeli soldiers. Only last month in Jerusalem Ziad Joulani, 41, a Palestinian shopkeeper and father of three with no criminal record or history of political activism, was killed when Israeli police opened fire as he got out of his car. [1] His killing is not being investigated.
Tom’s family had to fight hard to achieve even the eight-year manslaughter conviction that they won in 2005, against a system of Israeli obfuscation and lies, and an indifferent British government. In a statement yesterday the Foreign Office merely said: “We note the court’s decision to release Taysir Hayb and recognise the grief this decision will cause to the Hurndall family,” describing the deliberate act of murder as “a tragedy”.
Tom’s father Anthony hit back in the Guardian today, condemning this as a “weak response” by the British government, and demanding to meet with ministers. He said: “I would like them to say that this is not just a tragedy but that the Israeli government is directly responsibile for Tom’s death and should acknowledge this and take steps to put matters right by changing policies to ensure that civilians are not shot or killed indiscriminately.”
Israel did not even bother to inform the Hurndall family in advance of the news reaching the Israeli press, and Tom’s sister Sophie only learnt the news when ISM London contacted her yesterday.
Hayb shot Tom in the forehead with a high velocity bullet using a rifle with a telescopic sight, while he attempted to rescue Palestinian children in Gaza from Israeli gunfire. According to an Observer report from the 2005 trial, Hayb was “an award-winning marksman”. [2] Tom never regained consciousness, dying nine months later in a London hospital at the age of 22.
Jewish nurse and peace activist Alice Coy, who saw Tom shot, said Hayb was only part of “a culture of impunity in which generations of Israelis are taught that Arabs hate them and are subhuman. They are then given guns and they know they can get away with killing Palestinians. The occupation and aggression of Zionist policy is harming ordinary Israelis as well as Palestinians.”
Amnesty International says that: “The shocking truth is that Israeli soldiers kill civilians in Gaza with near-total impunity, week in week out” [3]
B’Tselem, the Israeli human rights organisation, report that “From the beginning of the [second] intifada, on 29 September 2000, to the end of 2008 (not including Operation Cast Lead in Gaza, which began on 27 December), [Israeli] security forces killed more than 2,200 Palestinians who were not taking part in the hostilities at the time they were killed. However, a Military Police investigation was opened in only 287 cases of suspected illegal shooting by security forces. This number includes investigations into cases in which civilians were wounded. Only 33 of these investigations resulted in the filing of indictments” [4]
Israeli human rights group Yesh Din clarifies that of these, Haib is the only soldier to have been convicted for an offence causing death: “From the beginning of the second intifada until the end of 2009, Courts-Martial convicted soldiers of offenses connected with the deaths of only four civilians: three Palestinians and one British national. One soldier was convicted of manslaughter, and he was the only one convicted of an offense of causing death. Four other soldiers were convicted of offenses of negligence.” [5]
For more information:
Alice Coy, UK: +44 7828 540512
ISM Media Office, Ramallah: +972 59 760 6276 or +972 2 241 0604
ISM London: +44 7913 067 189
REVISION, 21st July: The initial version of this press release erroneously stated that Ziad Joulani had been shot “last week”. In fact he was killed on the 14th of June, as stated in the text of our reference. This online version has been revised to read “last month”. The final paragraph with the Yesh Din figures on convictions was also added.
