5th June 2014 | International Solidarity Movement, Khalil Team | Hebron, Occupied Palestine
For children in al-Khalil (Hebron), the journey to school can be filled with fear, fear of Israeli soldiers, of military weapons, detentions, and arrests. The violence is all too real in this city, and it is unfortunately not an uncommon experience for children, some as young as four-years-old.
International activists try to monitor the checkpoints the children are forced to pass through on their way to school, both to document the events and to stand with the children.
ISM activists monitor checkpoint 29 each school day morning and afternoon. Over the last month, this is what the ISM activists have witnessed:
May 7th: A group of four Israeli soldiers tried to enter in the boys school and detained two young children. However, the teachers of the school were able to convince the soldiers to release both boys. After the soldiers ended the detention, they ran up the street and threw one tear gas grenade and two stun grenades at other schoolchildren. In cases like this it is clear how important the job of the teachers is in this area, and how difficult it is to is educate under military occupation.
13th May: In the morning one 12-year-old boy was stopped and searched by Israeli forces at the checkpoint, he was forced to empty his school bag before the soldiers would release him. After school ended, a 7-year-old boy was detained for 10 minutes with the accusation that he threw stones, he was released without charges.
14th May: Israeli soldiers went through checkpoint 29 in al-Khalil (Hebron), appearing from an alleyway and threw two stun grenades at the children waiting to go to school. No stones were thrown before their weapons were used. Some of the children then threw stones towards the soldiers, who then fired one tear gas grenade. One of the Israeli soldiers repeatedly aimed his gun at both an adult in the area, and the children outside their school.
15th May: One young child threw one stone towards the checkpoint and four Israeli soldiers entered through checkpoint 29. Several children then threw approximately four stones towards the soldiers, one of the Israeli soldiers drew the Star of David (symbol of Judaism) and a crescent moon (possibly symbolizing Islam) on a car window, and then wrote, ‘I want peace’.
‘I want peace’ photo by ISM
The same soldier who wrote ‘I want peace’, then threw a stun grenade at the children as they gathered to go to school.
19th May: Nine Israeli soldiers entered through checkpoint 29, several of the children then began to throw stones towards the soldiers. The soldiers then threw three stun grenades towards the children and fired one tear gas grenade. The second tear gas grenade was fired directly into Khadeagah Elementary School. An ISMer present said: “Today the children are writing one of their final year exams, it’s a terrible way to start the day and many of the kids were really afraid of both the soldiers and their weapons. This sort of aggression in the morning is common in Hebron, the soldiers don’t seem to care that they’re terrifying and tear gassing children, some as young as four-years-old”.
21st May:Several children threw stones towards checkpoint 29 on their way to school. At approximately 07:40, 13 Israeli soldiers and border police officers entered through the checkpoint and fired four tear gas grenades and four stun grenades at the children.
When the exams finished in the late morning and the teachers and school children were on their way home, the harassment began again. The Israeli military detained seven teachers for 20 minutes. One of the teachers spoke to an ISMer present: “We are used to this kind of violence and disturbance, the harassment is continuous and often twice a day”.
Photo by ISM
25th May: At approximately 07:50, three Israeli soldiers ran towards a group of children standing in front of their school. Some of the children threw several stones towards the soldiers. The soldiers then threw one stun grenade and fired two tear gas grenades at the children. Whilst the children was throwing stones, the soldiers were standing behind a group of internationals, seemingly trying to use them as some form of ‘shield’. The incident lasted for approximately 20 minutes, which prevented the children from entering their schools, delaying the start of their end of year exams.
27th May: In the afternoon as the children were leaving school, one Palestinian youth was detained for 20 minutes and five teachers, from the local schools, were detained for 15 minutes. No explanation was given for the detentions.
1st June: Several children threw stones towards checkpoint 29. Israeli forces then fired one tear gas grenade, dangerously close to several children standing to the side of the road.
1st June 2014 | International Solidarity Movement, Khalil team | Hebron, Occupied Palestine
Photo by ISM
This morning in al-Khalil (Hebron) Israeli forces detained two young Palestinian boys, 10-year-old Fares Abu Senene and 7-year-old Haitham Asrawi for one hour.
ISM activists spoke to an eyewitness who explained that the boys has been held for at least 30 minutes. For one of the boys, his mother stood with him, the other was forced to wait for a further 10 minutes before his own mother arrived.
An ISM activist present said: “When we arrived it was clear the children were really young, far too young to be detained or arrested by heavily armed soldiers. We spoke to several people who saw what happened and they explained there had been an altercation with some settlers from the nearby illegal settlements. It seemed like settlers attacked the children, who tried to fight back, and were then held by the Israeli military. After an hour the children were let go. This incident is just another example of the injustice that Palestinians face from the occupation in al-Khalil.”
Arwa (top left) and Faryel Abu Haikal climb onto their land to halt the demolition of their property from the Israeli Antiquity Authority, hoping to enforce a police order previously issued (photo by Christian Peacemakers Team Palestine).
With only a sliver of their land left to protect, having their entire lot of land encircled by Israeli settlements, Faryel and Arwa Abu Haikal climbed over a pile of rubble and boulders and stopped the Israeli bulldozer from shearing further into their property, dumping their dignity into the back of a dump truck, and hauling away their rights. There they stood under the unrelenting sun, staring into the teeth of the approaching bucket excavator, protecting their land from the ever encroaching Israeli settlement enterprise, facing arrest and physical assault – a reality they have faced for decades. Their resilience and steadfastness held off the Israeli Antiquity Authority (I.A.A.) for at least a few hours.
The I.A.A. continues to deploy a variety of tactics to annex privately owned Palestinian land on the hill top of Hebron, including ignoring previous orders issued by the Israeli police to halt work. Under the directive of Emmanuel Eisenberg, the I.A.A. project coordinator, the excavator bucket began carving deeper into Faryel Abu Haikal’s land, breaking both Israeli and international law in the process.
“They don’t know where the land is,” said Eisenberg about the Abu Haikal’s resistance to the archeological dig. “We will keep working. We are like the wagon that goes by the barking dog: The wagon keeps going and the dog keeps barking.”
In many ways, it’s hard to disagree with Eisenberg on the trajectory of the illegal settlement expansion in the West Bank and the recent illegal activity in Hebron. More than 1,500 hundred shops or homesteads have either been squatted or blocked off, creating a Hebronite Diaspora of several tens of thousands of Palestinians. The Hebronite refugee population didn’t happen all at once, but rather has occurred and continues to occur in a system of apartheid which operates with immunity.
Since Rabbi Moshe Levinger first led his caravan to the Park Hotel in the heart of Hebron to establish the Kiryat Arba settlement in 1967, the Jewish settlers have slowly, inch by inch, piece by piece, constructed an elaborate security apparatus that only Israelis have the keys to. In Hebron, there are over 130 road blocks, dead end streets, check points, and military patrols that restrict Palestinian access to their city.
The Abu Haikal’s land and life is a microcosm of the principles of ethnic cleansing at work across Palestine today.
For the sake of expediency, this is just a short history of the aggression and assault that the Abu Haikal family has endured at the hands of the Jewish settlers and the Israeli security forces while trying to maintain a home to raise their family.
In 1984, Jewish settlers first arrived on Tel Rumeida, the historical hilltop neighborhood of Hebron, which, according to some religious texts, is where Abraham first laid claim to land. It is this historical interpretation that provides impetus for archeological digs to establish exclusive Jewish claims to the hilltop. The Tel Rumeida settlement stands today on concrete pylons built directly on a previous archeological dig. This marked the genesis of the heightened tensions that would continually boil over and spill onto the Abu Haikal’s land year after year.
The next year, the Abu Haikal family’s land was trespassed by settlers looking to establish religious significance on the land by praying on it, a tactical first step that often leads to the construction of a synagogue.
A few years later in 1991, the Israeli Army sent a formal letter to the family informing them that they were confiscating parts of their land (plot 54) for military purposes, which then was reconstructed into an army barracks. To this day, the Abu Haikal family has a military base in their backyard, a backyard that for generations has been cultivated by their family. Their field of family memories is now the staging grounds for night raids into Palestinian homes.
The following year, settlers brought a caravan to another corner of the Abu Haikal land (plot 53). Fortunately, they were able to halt the annexation of that plot – temporarily.
February 25, 1994, is a day that will live in infamy. The American-born, Jewish religious extremist Baruch Goldstein entered the Cave of the Patriarchs, killing 29 Palestinian Muslim worshipers and wounding another 125. The following day, the Israeli military responded by taking over the Mosque of the 40 Companions which had been on the land of the Abu Haikals for centuries. Their place of religious sanctuary was stripped out from underneath of them, even though it had little connection to the incident.
As the construction continued on the illegal settlement near their house and the Jewish extremist population of Hebron started to swell, the attacks on their land and family continued in frequency and heightened in intensity.
On July 2, 1998, Jewish settlers cut down three trees on their property and brought a bulldozer to uproot more, but the family was able to utilize the law and nonviolently halt the destruction of their property.
A year later, in July, the internet icon of settler violence in Hebron, AnatCohen along with her children and eight settlers, trespassed on their property (plot 54) using a footpath between the Abu Haikal houses to the settlement. The Abu Haikal family objected and the settlers, as they had so many times before, resorted to violence. Escalations involving 40 settlers erupted, and a settler with a wooden stick bludgeoned Arwa Abu Haikal, seriously injuring her. Despite the trespassing settlers and the initial aggressions, it was the Abu Haikal family that was issued fines, having to pay 1,500 shekels.
The settlement expansion continued under the guidance of a familiar face: Emmanuel Eisenberg. Eisenberg was responsible for the oversight of the archeological dig that led to the illegal settlement of Ramat Yishai in Tel Rumeida.
Despite the years of attacks and threats of land confiscation, on Jan 22, 2000, the Abu Haikals renewed the rental agreement with the Israeli Authorities and paid a year in advance, keeping the hope that justice would be realized. Signing the protection tenancy wasn’t about the land for them, it was a commitment to resist the illegal settlement expansion, knowing that years of harassment and violence awaited them.
Within three months, 70 settlers had occupied their land inside a structure. The Abu Haikals again called the police to evict the settlers from their land. The rule of law prevailed in that moment, but the leniency, which borders on absolute impunity, led to almost 100 settlers again attacking the Abu Haikal family on their land. Again, it was the Abu Haikals who had to pay 3,000 shekels in the aftermath.
When the Second Intifada broke out in September 2002, the pressure cooker which is Tel Rumeida, was quickly turned into a strategic Israeli military asset, and homes overlooking the city had their rooftops transformed into lookout towers and sniper positions. The Call to Prayer, the spiritual serenade from the mosques on the hill top, was replaced by the sounds of bullets cutting through the air and rocketing through their neighbors’ houses. For the next three years, curfews would further restrict the ability of the Abu Haikal family and others to even leave their house and provide for their family.
Shortly after the Second Intifada erupted, Wadea Abu Haikal (age 16) was attacked on the street in front of the house, and the stones hurled by the settlers broke his nose. The soldiers explained they could not protect the family, and prevented them from accessing their front path to the road in front of the settlement.
The Israeli authority then approached the Abu Haikals about putting a fence around their plots of land (53, 52) to help keep out the settlers. The key to the gate was never handed over the family.
One month later, the Israeli authorities refused to accept their rent, and plots 53 and 52 were declared a closed military zone. The fruit orchards would soon bear their last harvest.
The same year in September, despite being a closed military zone, Israeli settlers celebrated Sukkot on plot 52, building a wooden structure associated with the holiday on their land. A few weeks later, the booth was dismantled by the Israeli authorities. The settlers responded to Faryel Abu Haikal’s petition to remove the illegal booth by attacking her on the way home from school where she worked.
During the 2002-03 military campaign, it was normal for the military to show up during the month of Ramadan, a holy time for Muslims who fast during the day and then at sunset, break their fast in communion with their family. Routinely the military showed up and pulled the family out of the house to disrupt their religious practices. The Abu Haikals creatively resisted, preparing tea and taking nuts and seeds with them as the guards sat them on the ground. They refused give up their tradition, their religious rights.
October 22, 2003 was a day that changed Arwa Abu Haikal’s life. A Palestinian was shot. Knowing that soldiers would quickly mobilize to shut down roads and lock down access paths to her home and that her younger siblings would need to be attended to, she left her work at Bab Al Zaweyah, a 20-minute walk up hill to her house. As she walked down the road, a soldier stopped her and held a gun to her head, threatening her life if she continued her walk to her home. Frightened, but undeterred, she continued, forcing the soldier to make the decision between murder and humanity. Shortly after, the IDF brigade besieged the house, dragging the family out onto the street. Her parents were unable to preempt the lockdown and had to wait until 1:30 am before the streets were reopened. As the parents waited anxiously, not knowing if their children were safe, the children sat by themselves outside the home in the cold and the dark. The Israeli military proceeded to unload round after round from their machine guns into the walls, furniture, closets, and cherished belongings while the family sat helplessly outside. Some of the holes remain today.
Two days later, the soldiers returned and took the mother of the household, Faryel, into a separate room and questioned her for four hours as the rest of the family sat helplessly.
The following year, the settlement expansion continued and Jewish extremists took control of the elderly Al Bakri couple’s home nearby. They later build structures on the Al Bakri garden. The close proximity to the Abu Haikal’s house led an increase in frequency of attacks on their home, forcing them to put metal cages around their windows.
“Our windows have been broken several times over the years, until finally we were forced to put metal grates around them,” said Faryel Abu Haikal. The Abu Haikal had to replace the windows with their home money, a situation unique to the occupation: the oppressed have to pay for the aggression of the oppressor.
The settlers found other ways to cause damage to the family’s home in the hopes of driving them off the land.
Settlers systematically razed the olive trees and stole their harvest. When their grape vines had matured, those too were consumed by the indifference of extreme Jewish ideology. Fires to their dried up field continued over the next several years. By 2006, half of the trees on plot 52 had been cut down and destroyed by settlers, and what was left had been burnt by almost continuous arson.
Two years later in December of 2009, the military entered the Abu Haikal house, pointing their guns in the face of the males in the room. The women of the house stood between the guns and their men. The soldiers responded with extreme force and attacked the family, many of whom were badly beaten. The four who had resisted the assault were arrested and had to pay a 1,000-shekel fine a piece.
Over the next four years, settlers held women’s Torah groups on plot 52, right outside the family’s salon, singing, discussing the Jewish heritage of the land, and praying in the hopes of establishing a synagogue.
The repeated attempts by Jewish settlers to establish claims to the land continued, as they planted 200 vine plants and an irrigation system on plot 52, forcing the Abu Haikal family to seek legal remedy. Again, they had to take time off from work, renegotiate responsibilities away from the home, and convince the Israeli police to intervene. After six long weeks the army removed the vines.
In April of 2012, the settlers cut more trees on plot 52, again with the protection of soldiers. The Abu Haikals continued to advocate and speak up in the hopes that one day the international community would respond.
There was a small victory in the small Palestinian neighborhood in Tel Rumeida. In 2014, Israeli High Court granted possession and the return of Al Bakri family land . . . but ordered the family to pay the police the costs for 50 police officers to remove the settlers. The court would attempt to recover the cost of eviction from the Jewish settlers. That has yet to happen.
One month later, plot 53 was consumed by the archeological dig that was never about archeology, but rather the establishment of a biblical museum. On February 5th, 2014, the I.A.A. moved onto plot 53 with a bulldozer and uprooted all the cherry trees. It also blocked a well-used right-of-way and replaced it with a longer, narrow footpath around the edge of the property that descends a steep, precarious slope.
Despite their land being confiscated, a week and a half later the Abu Haikals paid their rent up to 2015 in order to confirm their continued legal ownership of the land. The money was accepted by the Israeli institution, but excavations continued.
Despite a police injunction to stop working, on March 26th, Emmanuel Eisenberg and David Ben Shlomo supervised the destruction of another section of the retaining wall, representing the border between plots 54 and 53. The Mayor of Hebron, Dr. Dawood Al Zatari, visited the area and stated that he was going to pursue legal remedy to the confiscation of land. His words have yet to lead to action.
Even after 20 years of extreme, systematic and planned abuse built by detailed policy after policy, the Abu Haikals continue to resist, even though so many times the expansion around their land has continued.
This week they were able to risk their lives in order reinforce a police order to stop working. The police orders should have stopped work, but as Eisenberg has said so many times, he doesn’t “give a shit,” and reminded everyone that at the end of the day, “We will keep working. We are like the wagon that goes by the barking dog: The wagon keeps going and the dog keeps barking.”
30th May 2014 | International Solidarity Movement, Khalil team | Hebron, Occupied Palestine
Thursday 29-May-2014. At approximately 11pm yesterday evening in al-Khalil (Hebron), ISM activists went to checkpoint 56 where they had been told there was an ongoing incident. Palestinian eyewitnesses gave the following account:
About an hour earlier, two Palestinians youths were detained by the Israeli army on the H2 [under full Israeli civil and security control] side of the checkpoint. They were both handcuffed and blindfolded. The army then proceeded to beat both youth violently, one of the youths suffered injuries that required medical treatment. A Palestinian ambulance was called but Palestinian medics were not allowed to attend the two youths. Instead, the youth who was seriously injured was treated by the Israeli military and then taken away under arrest.
At present, the whereabouts of the two youths, and their injuries, are unknown.
The two youths were named by one eyewitness as Mohummad Jamal, 22, and Hamud Jama, 25.
During the incident, approximately 20 Israeli soldiers were surrounding the detained youths, preventing the assembled Palestinians from photographing and videoing the incident. Israeli police were also in attendance. Later, a settler from a nearby illegal settlement present at the scene, attempted to assault one of the Palestinians who was filming the incident. He began shouting; he then got into his car and attempted to drive straight through the crowd of Palestinians, running over the foot of one of them. Neither the Israeli soldiers nor police present attempted to take any action against him.
29th May 2014 | Operation Dove | At-Tuwani, Occupied Palestine
Photo by Operation Dove
On May 27th, four Palestinian 12-14 years old girls from the South Hebron hills villages of Tuba and Maghayir Al Abeed were arrested by the Israeli police on the charge of theft of cherries in a field in which Israeli settlers from Ma’on settlement are growing several cherry trees.
This grove is situated close to the place in which the children usually wait for an Israeli military escort, in order to go home. The escort was established in 2004 by the Children’s Rights Committee of the Knesset because of the ongoing attacks against the Palestinian children (coming from the nearby villages of Tuba and Maghayir Al Abeed to the school of At Tuwani) from Havat Ma’on and Ma’on settlers.
At 11.00 am, while the children were walking accompanied by the Israeli military, a car with a few settlers inside stopped in the middle of the street, avoiding the possibility for the children to continue the path. Israeli settlers stated that some children had stolen cherries from the grove.
So, the Israeli soldiers forced the children to sit down on the road under a hot sun without any access to water, preventing them from going home.
The Palestinian children asked the Israeli soldiers to show some evidence supporting the accusation that the settlers madeagainst them, they wanted to see videos and photos supporting, but the Israeli army didn’t give them any information. Some minutes later, also the Ma’on security coordinator arrived where the children were stopped, accusing them of theft, even though he wasn’t present at the moment the supposed event occurred.
At 11:50 am the Israeli Police arrived. The police officer asked one settler if he recognized the children that he saw in the cherry trees fields. The settlers identified four young girls. The girls were then forced to go in the Israeli police car.
The other students were accompanied along the path by the Israeli army.
The four young girls were detained in the police car for one hour. Then the girls were taken to the Israeli Police station of Kiryat Arba and brought for interrogation, without their parents being present.
According to +972 magazine the lawyer who is representing the minors spoke with the police on the phone and she was told that two girls were released once their parents were contacted (one is 12 years old, the other seems to have speech disabilities). The two others were being held for questioning and released later. According to Haggai Matar, “it would be illegal for the police to question them without the presence of their parents”.
At 4:00 pm the Israeli police sent them to the Palestinian police in Hebron, that didn’t want to release them until their family identified them. So, at around 7:00 pm, the girls were released.
Operation Dove has maintained an international presence in At-Tuwani and the South Hebron Hills since 2004.
[Note: According to the Fourth Geneva Convention, the Hague Regulations, the International Court of Justice, and several United Nations resolutions, all Israeli settlements and outposts in the Occupied Palestinian Territories are illegal. Most settlement outposts, including Havat Ma’on (Hill 833), are considered illegal also under Israeli law.]