28th December 2017 | International Solidarity Movement, al-Khalil team | al-Khalil, Hebron, occupied Palestine
International Solidarity Movement visited the family home of Fawzi Al Junaidi who was released after his family paid a 10,000 shekel bail on Wednesday Fawzi returned back to his family home after a checkup at hospital. The iconic photo of a badly beaten Fawzi escorted by 30 Israeli Soldiers after his arrest went viral. Drawing attention to the excessive force often used by the Israeli army.
Picture Via [Wisam Hashlamoun/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images]
The Palestinian youth was so badly beaten one of his upper ribs moved 3cm out of place after repeatedly being struck with a rifle at least four times. Despite his obvious suffering he was left bound, sitting on the concrete floor for four hours and was only taken to a hospital 4 days after his arrest at the order of a judge. Fawzi also reported having freezing water poured over his legs then they stamped on his legs whilst he was in custody after his arrest. During the military court proceedings four soldiers initially claimed to have seen Fawzi throwing stones but three soldiers withdrew their claims later leaving one soldier who claimed he saw him throw one rock. Fawzi who claims to have been outside getting the family grocery shopping maintains that he is innocent but was held in custody on the testimony of one soldier.
Fawzi gave many interviews sitting on a couch with his grandmother that day surrounded by family. Unfortunately, the Military court process will continue to disrupt the lives of the Fawzi and the Al Junaidi family as they will face more court hearings in the near future. Fawzi al-Junaidi is suffering from a dislocated shoulder following his time in Israeli detention.
There are 6,000 Palestinians held in Israeli occupation prisons including 250 minors under the age of sixteen they have all been sentenced in a military court system where prosecutors are not required to prove the charges against them.
28th December 2017 | International Solidarity Movement, al-Khalil team | al-Khalil, Hebron, occupied Palestine
The South Hebron Hills is one of the battle zones against the ethnic cleansing of Palestine. This area stretches along the southern border of the West Bank. The villages of At-Tuwani, At-Tuba, Mufaqarah, and Sarura are located in the South Hebron Hills. These villages lie between a line of Israeli settlements along highway 317 and an Israeli military firing zone to the east. Effectively the local villagers are caught in-between the Israeli army and Zionist settlers.
We met with Fawaz, a local community leader from At-Tuwani, at the Sumud Peace Camp site. Here local villagers have been re-establishing the village with the help of international activists.
#We are Sumud – Illegal outpost of Havat Maon in the background.
“Just living life in this area is ‘big resistance’”, Fawaz told us, “but the villagers decided they had to take further action”.
Sarura is another village in the South Hebron hills. In November 1999 all the villagers of Sarura were evicted and the village was destroyed. Since then Israeli Peace groups have assisted local villagers in the project of rebuilding Sarura. Peace Now, Rabbis for Human Rights and other organisations assisted the villagers to take their case to the Israeli courts. Their success put pressure on the Israeli government.
After this success, meetings in the villages were organised to find effective ways of resisting the occupation without the use of violence and thereby giving the Israeli military an excuse to react with excessive force. Through these meetings the villages in the area organised new initiatives, actions and activities. One of these initiatives was to make stone throwing forbidden. The meetings have been a big success and they are still held today.
These villagers were amongst the first Palestinians that did weekly demonstrations against the wall. The military administration started to cut off the area from the urban centre of Yatta. In response the villagers of the area arranged weekly demonstrations and after 18 months of protest the wall that would have cut off the south was declared illegal.The villagers paid a high price in arrests but they succeeded in preventing the extension of the wall.
In spite of the victory of having the wall along highway 317 declared illegal, a month went by without it being dismantled. Again the villagers demonstrated and blocked off the road and again the court ordered the government to remove the wall. This was a great victory to all the men, women and children that were involved. They had forced the occupation to recognise them as a village with a master plan!
A Battle for Education
In 1998 a school was built in At-Tuwani. As could be expected, a demolition order was issued soon after. The villagers ignored the order and took the fight to court. There was an attempted demolition. To prevent the demolition women stayed in the school during the day and the men at night. More demolition orders came. The school in At-Tuwani is the only one in the area. So now, the children from the surrounding villages now have to come to At-Tuwani to receive their education.
The children who live in the villages surrounding At-Tuwani have often been subjected to settler attacks on their way to school. Due to the violence against the children the route has had to be changed. Ali Awad from the village of Tuba used to be able to walk to school in twenty minutes. At one stage, the journey he had to take to avoid the threat of attack took him two hours. To avoid settler attacks Israeli soldiers have been assigned to walk with the children by a committee for Human Rights in the Knesset. However there have been many incidents where the soldiers have shown up late or left early. The inconsistency of the military presence meant that the escort was not effective in preventing the settler violence. Therefore, organisations working in the area arranged in 2004 to have international activist supervise the military’s escort of the children.
The second day the internationals started walking the children to school, the settlers attacked the children and the activists that were walking with them. One of the internationals was stabbed in their lung from the back and the other had their leg broken.
Sarura
In 1997, armed settlers attacked Sarura and the village was abandoned.
Twenty years later on May 19th 2017 a project was launched and the Sumud Peace Camp began to rehabilitate the cave dwellings of Surura to begin to breathe life into the abandoned village again.
Activities and resistance initiatives were brought into action in order to encourage the local farmers to come back. The villagers needed Palestinian encouragement to overcome their fears or they would be afraid to return. The initiatives in Sarura led to the beginning of reconstruction in one section of Sarura. Among the tasks that have so far been accomplished in Sarura are the planting of trees, the building of a community centre, weekly workshops, a gathering place for the people of the village and the enlargement of the caves.
The villagers of Sarura face many problems from the Israeli soldiers and the settlers in the area. ”For two months they beat people, arrested people and destroyed things mainly at night. But we are bringing back life. Now we have a puppy and geese!” Fawaz says.
Among the activities that are planned in the Sumud Peace Camp in the near future is a New Years event. This was planned to celebrate the progress in Sarura. The celebration will include a daytime meeting with invited speakers, an evening concert and fireworks!
Fawaz tells us, ”This event is needed – it’s so important – 7 months holding this place in this condition has been difficult. Children have been arrested. The young people have become tired. We need to bring more and more people. This event should breathe new life into the sumud (stedfastness) against the occupation.”
“Non-violence is not an easy choice. They are pushing you every day. Just as a human being it is so hard.” Fawaz
19th December 2017 | International Solidarity Movement, al-Khalil team | al-Khalil, occupied Palestine
Most of us are plenty used to absent minded scrolling our Facebook feeds. After all you can find just about anything you want and not have to read anything in particular. However, you can also come across a post saying that two kids have been arrested the day before in Al-Khalil, the city you’re living in. It’s a big city, but not enough to prevent you from seeking out the school and getting a direct report. If you have just come to Palestine for the first time, you might not believe such an egregious story, so trying to verify it for yourself is a natural reaction. Today, we decided to try. The post on Facebook said that the two kids were arrested in front of the school down by the Ibrahimi Mosque, so we decided to start from Ibrahim school.
We reached the school around 11 AM, while many students were in the hall having their break. Soon after, the headmaster joined us in his office, where an assistant had told us to wait. It was easy to read on his face how difficult it is to have his job at a school in H2 – the Israeli occupied section of the city, where illegal settler homes and those of native Palestinians exist side by side. The headmaster didn’t waste time and after a polite welcome he asked us what we want to know. We didn’t waste time either.: “We know that a student from this school has been arrested yesterday morning. Could you tell us more?”
“First of all, to be provided this information you must have a permission from the Ministry of Education,” he clarified. It was clear he knew that letting the world hear the news of the mistreatment of his students was the right thing to do despite official protocol. “But,” he continued on, “the situation is terrible here and we have big problems.”
In a few minutes, he listed a series of problems. A few days before, a settler had thrown stones at some of the Palestinian students and followed them to the playground. Kids are scared by the checkpoints surrounding the school. One morning, a soldier suddenly blocked the turnstile and a boy was hit in his face. He arrived to school with a wound to his head and instructions not to tell anybody what had happened. The headmaster himself is checked every day.
“They check me every morning and I have worked here for years. They ask me to take off my belt and shoes. Once I asked a soldier why he does that, even though he knows perfectly well who I am. The soldier replied, ‘Just as your job is to be the headmaster, my job is to check you.’” The army disposes the closure of the school for Jewish festivities, preventing the schools’ activities. He also tells us that yesterday some soldiers attacked some students putting them in arrest. Attacks happened this morning too, but they didn’t affect kids from his school.
We thought we were done finding out what happened. The fact had been verified. But he kept going. “By the way, the kids in the video you have seen are not the ones I’m talking about. They’re not from my school. They are from another school I think the UNRWA school or Al-Khalil school.”
So, we hadn’t finished yet. The two kids, that we could see in the video held by two big guys, twice their size and holding weapons, were not the ones we had just heard the story about. So still we had another place to go to.
After a five-minute walk, we passed through the Salaymeh checkpoint. Another than the Qeitun checkpoint just mentioned by the headmaster. We’re out in the H1 area on Tareq Ibn Zeyad Street and after a few meters we reached Al-Khalil school. The office of the Principal was very crowded. We’re welcome, they say. So, we stared once more, “We know that a student from this school have been arrested yesterday morning. Could you tell us more?” We understand that our interlocutor will be an English teacher. He tells us about the surprise attack. While he speaks, I can picture the scene in my mind.
A bunch of young guys in their twenties, armed with a plethora of dangerous and expensive weapons, stationed behind a wall, waiting for some kids to pass in order to trap them. The scene seems to be very funny. The dumb antagonist clumsily trying ambush the smart little protagonist like a scene in a children’s book. It could make you smile – unless you think of what has just happened. Today is one of several episodes of harassment, a continuous form of violence and pressure over the new generations in Palestine. It tries to mould their spirits with the idea that they are inferior people whose rights and dignity won’t be guaranteed, creating a rage no kid should know.
The teachers mention all the videos they can show in order to prove all the abuse the kids and they themselves frequently undergo. Videos upon videos, images upon images. It’s not the first time I heard it. And each time the tension rises, smartphones and video cameras rise out of the crowd and everywhere you can see arms lifted, holding them like magic wands. In Palestine, like everywhere people are oppressed, filming is a way to prove that what you claim is true and that the self-indulgent alibis and counter-versions of the oppressor are lies. One of the teachers we met during the morning said that one day he’ll make a film with all the material collected through the years.
What they have just told in this office is not that different from the story we heard in the previous school. We know about some more kids arrested, but still the initial question remains unsolved: where are the kids of the video? They tell us that they might be from another school: UNWRA school or Khadija school.
So, we say goodbye and go out to keep on with our research.
We took right through a little alley. Behind a blue and rusty gate, we found Al-Khalil School. The Headmaster was very polite and welcoming (I start thinking it must be a quite common quality here in Palestine). He invites us to sit on the sofa, so we sit and start again. “We know that a student from this school has been arrested yesterday morning. Could you tell us more?”
We soon find ourselves in a classroom. The English lesson stops for a second, just the time to call two kids to come out with us. We’ve already been informed by the headmaster about the dynamics of the arrest. Some soldiers suddenly entered the school gate and arrested one kid. Then they detained him and they assaulted him. They only released him after three hours and the father had to sign some papers. The headmaster doesn’t really know what they were about. One of the kids is the one arrested, the other the one who managed to escape from the soldier. We joke a little bit with them. They smile. We wonder if he was scared or not during the detention. It doesn’t seem like it. They giggle like the game was fun. Actually, the headmaster revealed to me that he was actually really scared.
Before we leave the headmaster leads us behind the building. He wants to show us something. There is a little space of a few square meters with dust and stones. “I’d like to find the money to make a garden here”. That’s our goodbye. While we step out of the gate where the soldiers had entered to catch the kid, we take some pictures of the area. As soon as the students leaving the school notice us, they start gathering around us and posing. They keep on laughing and asking us to take pictures.
We walk toward the UNRWA school. We have just found out about another kid arrested but we still haven’t met anybody who could provide us any information about the video that Facebook generically showed that morning on our wall. Eventually, in front of the UNRWA school, we will find what we want. A person working nearby (who asks us not to mention his name or any possible hints to identify him) will tell us that yesterday two kids from that school have been arrested and detained from the soldiers. This time nothing had happened in front of the school but at the checkpoint. Nevertheless, like the other kids, the pattern was the same: soldiers accusing 10-12 year old kids to throw a stone and arresting them. No matter what really happened in this specific situation, this is neither the first nor the last time that something like this will occur.
So here we are. We left our apartment today looking for two kids and we found almost ten stories. But what was most impressive? We came across the chronicles of a population of young Palestinians who tried to go to school each morning and had to go through a war scenario. What for the most of the kids all around the world is a natural and simple step of the day, is a struggle here.
We discuss it while we pass through the checkpoint back to H2 and head to Prayer Road. We yet haven’t finished with visiting schools today. We are going to Mutanabi school for the school run. We will stand in front of the gate while the students go out to check no abuses or assaults by soldiers or settlers take place. During the last days, we were considering to stop monitoring here, as recently nothing bad has happened. Unfortunately, some days ago, some soldiers decided that the morning could not start peacefully. So, they blocked the road and forbid the headmaster and his assistant to enter it. Once more a kid (an unidentified and unnamed kid) was accused of stone-throwing. While the headmaster was talking with them, another two teachers reached the place. The soldier accused him of interfering with their work and put them under arrest. One of them has been detained in the police station for two hours. There, the police put a razor in his pocket and threatened him that they would say that he tried to attack them. That next time they will shoot him.
December 2017 | International Solidarity Movement, al-Khalil team | al-Khalil, Occupied Palestine
Witness accounts and video footage confirm that the Israeli army has been and is committing war crimes in dealing with the current wave of protests against the occupation, colonization, and ethnic cleansing in Palestine.
On Friday, December 8, 2017 around 4:30 PM, ISM activists clearly witnessed and filmed a unit of of around 40 Israeli soldiers and commanders in the H1 area of Hebron – which, according to the 1997 Hebron agreement, should be fully controlled by the Palestinian Authority – intentionally injuring the backs, shoulders, and heads of two randomly arrested teens. Much of this occurred after they had been handcuffed, blindfolded, and were held in custody.
Hebron-H1 – Checkpoint 56 – Hebron-H2
The incidents took place shortly after the Israeli forces invaded Bab al-Zawiya from the military Checkpoint 56 (Shuhada Street in H2) and stormed more than 300 meters up Adel Street, as well as two other main civilian thoroughfares.
The teens were captured near the Hasona Petrol station. If previous child arrests in that area are any indication, they were likely grabbed at random from the street without having been involved in any form of protest beforehand.
The video evidence below, a combination of 3 different camera positions, shows how cruelly the teens are treated by different soldiers, while and after they were handcuffed, blindfolded, and cooperating with the soldiers in walking to Israeli controlled H2.
The almost-raw video footage of all three cameras is included and viewable with the following hyper-links:
Human Rights Watch (HRW), an NGO that is widely acknowledged for its monitoring and determination of human rights abuses, compiled a readable publication based on the 685 page ‘ICRC Customary International Humanitarian Law’ study manual.
In the HRW publication, war crimes are defined as:
“Serious violations of international humanitarian law, including the mistreatment of persons in custody and deliberate attacks on civilians and civilian property, when committed with criminal intent amount to war crimes. Criminal intent requires purposeful or reckless action. Individuals may also be held criminally liable for attempting to commit a war crime, as well as assisting in, facilitating, aiding or abetting a war crime. Responsibility may also fall on persons ordering, planning, or instigating the commission of a war crime. Commanders and civilian leaders may be prosecuted for war crimes as a matter of command responsibility when they knew or should have known about the commission of war crimes and took insufficient measures to prevent them or punish those responsible.” [emphasis added]
Based on this definition, the video depicts a war crime committed by the Israeli army, for which it’s soldiers and commanders bear responsibility.
This isn’t the 1st documented war crime committed by the Israeli state or its armed forces against the Palestinian people. Other examples include:
Extensive destruction and appropriation of property, not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully;
Willfully depriving a prisoner of war or other protected person of the rights of fair and regular trial;
Unlawful deportation or transfer or unlawful confinement;
Enforced disappearance of persons;
Persecution against any identifiable group or collectivity on political, racial, national, ethnic, cultural, religious, gender;
The crime of apartheid;
The transfer, directly or indirectly, by the occupying power of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.
It is the obligation of all states that have signed the multiple international treaties violated here to stop these Israeli war crimes, and a duty of the people to put pressure on their governments to do so.
9 December 2017 | International Solidarity Movement, al-Khalil team | al-Khalil, Occupied Palestine
Clashes continued throughout the weekend in Hebron, after Palestinian civil society groups called for “three days of rage” in response to Donald Trump’s widely unrecognized declaration that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel. Across the West Bank and Gaza, Palestinians organized general strikes, as well as non-violent marches and demonstrations, all of which were met with military violence by Israel.
In Hebron, the violence from the Israeli army included the use of numerous rounds of tear gas, sound bombs, rubber coated steel bullets, and live ammunition against the press and civilians, including passing families and the elderly. Soldiers also entered shops and forced businesses to close, causing further disruption to daily civilian life. Some young Palestinians resisted the Israeli army’s invasion using stones, and also by throwing the Israeli army’s own tear gas canisters back towards the soldiers.
On Friday alone, between 15 and 20 Palestinian minors were arrested, including at least five that weren’t involved in the clashes, one of which was taken straight from his home. Of the five boys that ISM activists witnessed being arrested, four of them were brutally beaten by large groups of soldiers after they were subdued and handcuffed and posed no threat to the soldiers. As of 5:00 PM on Saturday, two of the boys remained hospitalized due to their injuries.
In declaring that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel, Donald Trump formalized the United States’ position as one in contravention of international law and the opinion of the international community. The international community has expressly stated – through UN Resolution 181 and others – that it doesn’t recognize any claim to sovereignty over Jerusalem by Israel, which is why most states maintain their embassies to Israel in Tel Aviv rather than Jerusalem.
Picture Via [Wisam Hashlamoun/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images]
