Category: Hebron - Page 25 - International Solidarity Movement

Remembering the Ibrahimi Mosque massacre

25th of February, 2017 | International Solidarity Movement, Occupied Palestine

Today, February 25th marks the 23^rd commemoration of the Ibrahim Mosque Massacre in Hebron. “On February 25 1994, a US-born Israeli military physician walked into the Ibrahimi mosque in Hebron armed with a Galil assault rifle. It was early morning during the holy month of Ramadan, and hundreds of Palestinians were crammed inside, bowed in prayer. Baruch Goldstein, who had emigrated to Israel in 1983, lived in the Kiryat Arba settlement on the outskirts of the city. As worshippers kneeled, Goldstein opened fire. He reloaded at least once, continuing his barrage for as long as possible before finally being overpowered and eventually beaten to death. By the time he was stopped, 29 worshippers were killed, and more than a hundred had been injured.

The Israeli government immediately released a statement condemning the act and stating that Goldstein acted alone and was psychologically disturbed. Twenty years later, Palestinians are carrying out memorial events and Hebron’s settlers are preparing celebratory pilgrimages to Goldstein’s shrine inside Kiryat Arba.”

29 were massacred in the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron, the Muslim holy site at the Cave of the Patriarchs. It wasn’t only the 29 people who were killed but also many other people from the locality- people living in the area estimated about 200 people wounded from the incident happened.

After 22 years of the Ibrahimi maosue massacre, the Palestinian people are still sufering calling to end the restrictions imposed on the people living in Hebron. Every year they protest to against the rules forced on them, asking for opening the Shuhadaa’ street that has been closed for seven years!

This 7th annual Open Shuhada Street protest comes after months of increasing violence, restrictions and collective punishment imposed by Israeli authorities on al-Khalil’s Palestinian residents. At the end of October Israeli forces began imposing a ‘closed military zone‘ on the short portion of Shuhada street where Palestinians were previously still allowed to walk, along with a large part of the adjacent Tel Rumeida neighbourhood. Palestinian residents and activist groups have been nonviolently resisting the closed military zone, which requires residents to register in order to be allowed into their homes and bars other Palestinian and human rights defenders from entry. The closed military zone, along with the widespread, deadly violence and closures deployed against Palestinians in al-Khalil, has also been broadly condemned by Palestinian and international human rights groups; on the February 25th anniversary of the Ibrahimi mosque massacre, Amnesty International released a public statement calling on Israeli authorities to “lift the discriminatory restrictions, end the collective punishment of Palestinians in the city and protect human rights defenders there.”

Sumud: Palestinian for endurance

22nd February 2017 | International Solidarity Movement, al-Khalil team | Hebron, occupied Palestine

As a second time ISMer I write a blog for friends and supporters back home (at salamfrombetty.tumblr.com if you would like to follow). I asked for questions from my readership and I got this from my friend Rachel:

How are you coping with living with this huge sense of injustice? How do the Palestinians manage it day in day out?

Weirdly I don’t find it hard coping with the injustice here. I don’t know why. The last time I came I was really scared beforehand that I would, but I don’t. I don’t really get angry much anywhere in my life, and I guess this cutting off is what might make a good nurse too.

I have no idea how Palestinians manage. Living under occupation comes at great psychological cost. Children in Tel Rumeida can’t sleep without the light on because they have been night raided so often by soldiers; they often wet the bed until their teens. Women are attacked by settlers and lose pregnancies. Families lose sons to prison and bullets. Everybody inside the ghetto which is H2 has to go through the daily humiliation of not having any control of how they will be treated at checkpoints, and of facing soldiers who attempted to humiliate them yesterday or last week.

Of course this is the old centre of Hebron that I am talking about. Most Hebronites from the city at large do not go there much. They live lives of occupation certainly, but not of this daily hardship. I taught a class of young and ambitious Hebronite students last week and they have studied in Jordan, Amman, Germany, travelled to China for business; they take driving lessons, they drink Italian coffee, and have dreams of running businesses, taking PhDs in physics, transforming the Hebron fire service. Great dreams. But they are still under occupation and they still know it. They are stunted in their hopes and opportunities and feel the injustice of Palestinian powerlessness. Many have not seen the sea only thirty miles away.

And then of course, many of the people I talk to in the old city have children who have ‘escaped’, who are engineers in Saudi, professors in Oxford, they have educations themselves and choose to stay. They are resisting by choice, not trapped by circumstance.

This is the front line: when the houses of Hebron are taken by settlers; when the villages in the Naqab (the Negev) are demolished and the Bedouin moved off; when the villagers of the fertile Jordan valley are put to work as labourers on their own land: then the Israeli occupying machinery will come and swallow up the next bit of Palestine and the next and the next…

My friend Talal thinks that it has taken all the years of occupation to bring Palestinians to this degree of strength and endurance: this sumud (steadfast perseverance). 69 years since the Naqba of 1948; 50 years since the occupation of 1967. That is a lot of time to develop endurance.

Khalil children: a candlelit vigil for the 1994 massacre

20th February 2017 | International Solidarity Movement, al Khalil team | Hebron, occupied Palestine

On February 19th children from al Khalil came together at dusk in the old city to light candles to commemorate the 29 Palestinian men who died in the massacre at the Ibrahimi mosque here in al Khalil in 1994. They sang and chanted their hopes for a free Palestine, the end of occupation, settlements, and an end to the ghetto conditions in which they live at the heart of al Khalil. At the same time, Israeli soldiers with machine guns stood over them on the rooftops watching and pacing, their shadows projecting giant armed figures onto the wall opposite.

The event was organised by Youth Against Settlements and was attended by internationals, press and filmmakers. It is part of the annual campaign to Open Shuhada Street and to end the ghetto conditions suffered by those who live within the checkpoints around the old city. A week of events is planned, in the streets, schools and houses of the city, with a demonstration planned for Friday 24th.

Photograph courtesy of Youth Against Settlements

Non-violent action in al-tuwani

17th of February, 2017 | International Solidarity Movement, al-Khalil team | South Hebron Hills, Occupied Palestine

Saturday 4th a group of villagers from Al Towani, South Hebron Hills, held a non-violent demonstration against settler violence and illegal settlement expansion, which affects their village. This non-violent demonstration was met with harassment from residents of the illegal out-post settlement of Havat Ma’on, and a large presence of Israeli army and Israeli police. Towards the end of the demonstration a large group of settlers, the Israeli police and army invaded the Palestinian village. They were met with non-violent resistance from residents of the village and eventually spread.

Colonial Israeli Settlers from nearby settlement, enter the Palestinian village.

At 10:00 a demonstration consisting of about 15 Palestinian villagers, supported by international and Israeli activists, left the village of Al Towani to go through the lands stolen by the illegal settlers out-posts Havat Ma’on. This is an area where local children experience violence and threats on a near daily from settlers while going about their daily lives. The demonstration was mostly women and children from the local village, protesting against the violence they experience and the continued expansion of the settlement.

“Banner made by protesters, reading: Women for Freedom of Movement”

Upon arriving in a piece of land that is currently threatened by the illegal extension of this out-posts demonstrators stopped to sing songs, sang, and plant some olive trees. At this point, a settler from the illegal out-posts came down, openly wearing a gun and started to harass people demonstrate, filming all and calls for the Israeli army and police.

Israeli Forces are ordering Palestinian protesters to move.

Shortly after a large group of Israeli forces arrived and the demonstration moved to another piece of land, again chanting, singing songs, and plant more olive trees. At this time came around 8 Israeli army vehicles with two Israeli police vehicles. The soldiers and police stood talking to the settlers before they came to the demonstration to declare the country a “closed military zone”. They used this excuse to disperse protesters while the non-military settlers to remain where they were. This order was non-violently resisted as did the military threaten a Palestinian man with arrest – strongly to take him away from the demonstration. At this time began to move, and the man was released.

While this was going on a group of about 20 settlers from the illegal out-posts invaded local Palestinian village Al Towani. They were met with strong nonviolent resistance from the community and some of the people at the demonstration who rushed back to confront this illegal intrusion into their country. The Israeli army and police came to protect the settlers – refuses to demand they leave. It was only through the strength of the local community, as the settlers finally left the Palestinian village.

Al Tuwani is a village in the South Hebron Hills, which has experienced many problems from extremist illegal settlements and out-posts built on their land. Children of the village and the nearest face violence and intimidation by settlers and the Israeli army while walking to school which makes shepherds while we are trying to get access to land. The village has for many years been using non-violent resistance to resist the occupation.

Israeli forces are solidifying their grip on Hebron

17th February 2017 | International Solidarity Movement, al-Khalil team | Hebron, occupied Palestine

On February the 3rd 2017, a new permanent stone checkpoint in front of the Ibrahimi mosque in occupied Hebron, was brought into use.

The checkpoint, which has been under construction since July 2016, was thus inaugurated just one month before the 23^rd anniversary of the Ibrahimi mosque massacre, where 29 praying Palestinian Muslims lost their lives in a terrorist attack by Jewish settler Baruch Goldstein. It was this attack which caused the mosque to fall under the tight control of Israeli military and surveillance in the first place.

Before the opening of the new checkpoint on 3^rd February Israeli forces had already installed checkpoints at all the main roads leading into the mosque. The presence of military and police at the entrance to the mosque therefore, has been a continuous fact since 1994. What is new however is the permanent nature of this new construction. For this new stone and steel construction is directly built into the mosque wall clearly signaling that Israel has no intentions of retreating from the scene.

The new checkpoint at the al-Ibrahimi mosque

And the expansion at the Ibrahimi mosque checkpoint is just one among many expansions recently. As noted in an earlier ISM report [https://palsolidarity.org/2016/12/%C2%ADnew-checkpoints-access-control-buildings-and-street-signs-in-the-historical-center-of-hebron/], the Israeli forces in Hebron have been remarkably active in replacing temporary checkpoints by more extended permanent ones, along with “installing military streetlights, security cameras on all streets, raising more gates, concrete walls, barbed-wire and other barriers, and putting new Hebrew-English street signs in the ethnically cleaned streets and in Palestinian neighborhoods, as if they are in fact Israeli neighborhoods with some remaining Palestinian residents.”

One might have thought that the new checkpoint at the mosque was simply a replacement for previous ones. But since its opening, Palestinians are in fact forced to pass through two checkpoints only few metres apart, with further delays for Palestinians seeking to practice their religion, which you can see in the photo below, taken at Friday prayers.

Palestinians are waiting to pass through the new checkpoint at al-Ibrahimi mosque

And while you might think that two security checks would suffice to determine whether an individual is a security threat or not, Israeli forces continued the practice of detaining men and confiscating IDs for the duration of Friday prayer.

But this did not hinder the male population from praying, so this Friday, a long line of men prayed outside in the sunshine, while military personnel chattered in the background.