Category: Hebron - Page 37 - International Solidarity Movement

Two Palestinians killed and several injured in Hebron

16th September 2016 | International Solidarity Movement, al-Khalil team | Hebron, occupied Palestine

After a peaceful Eid holiday, violence surged in occupied Hebron today. Earlier today Israeli forces shot and killed Moussa Mohammed Khaddour, 18 and injured his fiancé Raghad Abdullah Abdullah Khaddour. The couple allegedly tried to ram settlers from the illegal israeli settlement of Kiryat Arba, at the entrance of the settlement. Moussa Khaddour was killed at the scene, while Raghah Khaddour were severely injured and taken to a medical facility.

Elsewhere in Hebron, in the H2 neighborhood of Tel Rumeida, a young Palestinian man was shot dead by Israeli forces, the Palestinians identity is still unknown. The young Palestinian man allegedly tried to stab an Israeli soldier near the Gilbert checkpoint close to an illegal settlement in Tel Rumeida. The Israeli soldier suffered a minor wound in the face and was taken to a medical facility. Information about the incident is scarce, but testimonies from witnesses hearing the episode indicate that it might have been a extrajudicial execution. Locals explained ISM how they first heard 3 shots, and several moments after, heard 2 more.

After the killing of the Palestinian in Tel Rumeida, the whole neighborhood was declared a closed military zone, and the checkpoints leading in and out of the area were zealed off, preventing Palestinians from entering or leaving the area. The closure of the Tel Rumeida neighborhood created an assembly of Palestinians outside of the Shuhada street checkpoint, wanting to pass the checkpoint. The assembly subsequently led to a confrontation with Israeli forces. Palestinian youth threw glass bottles and stones and the checkpoint, approximately twenty Israeli soldiers and borderpolice responded by invading the H1 area. The Israeli forces threw a dozen stun grenades and fired tear gas into the Bab’a’zawie area just outside Shuhada street checkpoint. During the two hour long confrontation, three Palestinians were hurt with rubber coated steel bullets fired by the Israeli forces.

Hours after the confrontations the checkpoints were still closed, blocking Palestinians from entering or leaving Tel Rumeida.

224 Palestinians have been killed by Israelis since october 2015. Some of the killed Palestinians tried to attack Israeli forces, while others were alleged to do so. In many of the cases Israeli forces have carried out collective punishments on the slain Palestinians families, by demolishing their houses, and hitherto leaving them homeless, actions illegal under the Geneva convention. Several cases have also raised suspicion of extrajudicial killings, where attackers have been killed when they did not pose an immediate threat or could have been arrested through non-lethal methods.

First day in Al-Khalil

6th September 2016 | International Solidarity Movement, al-Khalil team | Hebron, occupied Palestine

Today was my first full day as an ISM’er in Al-Khalil (Hebron).

A regular part of our work is to monitor Israeli checkpoints beside schools in the mornings since the teachers ask for an international presence. Often there can be problems with violence between Israeli forces and Palestinian children. Another reason ISM is there, is to count the number of school children using the checkpoint, to see how many children are suffering from this daily stress, which sadly, is part of normal life under the occupation. The data we collect is passed on to NGOs who collects data on children in the whole of Palestine. It is necessary for children living in the H2 area to pass through this checkpoint to reach their school. The Palestinian children are often subjected to intimidation and harassment as they are searched in claustrophobic rooms within the highly militarized structures. This morning i was monitoring Qeitun checkpoint with two other ISM’ers.

Around 120 children, mostly boys, passed through the checkpoint in the first half an hour. There were clearly armed Israeli solders stationed in heavily armored towers overlooking the checkpoint, creating an intimidating atmosphere. There was an older Palestinian man encouraging the children to go through the checkpoint as a few of them were nervously waiting in front of them. In the midst of our counting of children we heard shouting from around the corner and saw a group of Palestinian children being chased by heavily armed Israeli border police, although we were in H1, out of Israeli jurisdiction. A few of the children thew stones towards the invading border police and before we knew what happened a soldier lobbed a stun grenade directly at the children. This grenade exploded a few metres in front of the children standing at an entrance to a junior school. I was down the street but the loud noise really reverberated through my body and sent my heart racing. It was the first time I had experienced this kind of weapon and moments after, I was still terrified. The grenade sent the children fleeing in all directions and one of them dropped his school bag. An Israeli soldier stole his bag and took it with him. As he walked past us an ISM activist asked him “why have you taken his school bag?’, the soldier muttered “to check it”. Of course this was a lie as they did not open it and I found it infuriating that heavily armed, grown men would steal the school bag of a child as some sort of immature intimidation technique.

Some minutes later few stones were thrown from the top of a building, neither us or the Israeli border police could see who was throwing them, but the border police responded with yet more stun grenades. One of the soldiers was incompetently rushing to throw so many that he missed one and it bounced off the building towards him- and it sent him scampering away. By this point there were very few children left in the street and they were hundreds of meters away from the checkpoint. But the altercation had clearly infuriated the border police and they began launching scores of tear gas canisters down the street at the remaining children. We were ushered inside a school by some teachers as we were very close to where the canisters landed. It was terrifying to hear the loud pop of the canisters launching and not knowing if they were about to land on top of you. They are heavy steel cylinders and a direct hit, especially on your head, would do some serious damage- never mind the gas that stops the children breathing and burns their eyes. In all we counted at least 6 stun grenades and 16 tear gas canisters used by the Israeli border police against the unarmed Palestinian school children. The teachers in the school told us that this was a regular occurrence and asked how they could teach students with this going on as it not only disrupts lessons and scares children in the school, but it also stops many children from attending in the first place.

It is clear to me that the soldier’s actions were not in self defense, as they had heavily defended battlements in which to remain in. Instead they choose to escalate the violence by attacking the children in order to assert their dominance and intimidate the children. My experiences of Al-Khalil thus far have proven that the occupation and militarization of large parts of the city are not for the purposes of ‘security’, as the Palestinians here are friendly and welcoming to all religions and everyone. Instead the soldiers aim to harass Palestinians and disrupt their way of life as much as they can, meaning that a normal childhood and opportunity to focus on their education is impossible.

By ISM-activist; “Hugh”

video: Border Police steals Palestinians schoolbag

Achieving education under occupation

31st August 2016 | International Solidarity Movement, al-Khalil team | Hebron, occupied Palestine

The 28th of August 2016, a new school year in occupied Palestine has started after a 3-month summer holiday. In the occupied West Bank city of al-Khalil (Hebron), Palestinian children living in the H2-area, under full Israeli military control, are posed with a maze of checkpoints they have to navigate through back and forth from school.

In the area near the Ibrahimi mosque, a cluster of schools is located past the newly-‘renovated’ Salaymeh and Queitun checkpoints. In the Tel Rumeida neighborhood, that was formerly a closed military zone for several months, in addition to the checkpoints there’s a staircase closed by the Israeli forces and the ever-present threat of attacks, carried out by settlers from the nearby illegal settlements. These three checkpoints share the new layout of highly militarized and fenced off checkpoints. Usually only one person at a time is allowed to access the ‘box’ where ID-checks, bag-searches, questioning and humiliation takes place. Any other person trying to pass the checkpoint in the meantime is forced to wait behind a locked turnstile, that Israeli forces arbitrarily decide to keep locked to make people wait for an unknown amount of time.

Children forced to persuade soldiers to open the checkpoint-gate at Shuhada checkpoint

Around the Salaymeh and Queitun checkpoints, students, teachers and residents of the area additionally face tear gas that Israeli forces shoot from their comfort-zones at the checkpoints, often straight towards the schools. This form of collective punishment affects not only all the schools, but the whole neighborhood, when tear gas clouds linger in the streets. On Monday afternoon, when kids made their way home from school through Salaymeh checkpoint, Israeli forces shot a total of 10 tear gas canisters towards a group of boys throwing pebbles at the highly militarized and barricaded checkpoint, leaving many students choking from the supposedly ‘less-lethal’ gas. Wednesday morning, at Queitun checkpoint, 4 tear gas canisters were fired by the Israeli forces, at least one of which was directed horizontally at the children – in direct contradiction to instructions to shoot the ‘less-lethal’ gas in an arch over the head of persons in order to avoid serious injury and death of persons. Shooting in a straight line at the children, Israeli forces deliberately risk to hit a child with these extremely fast and thus dangerous canisters, that already have caused serious injuries and death of Palestinians in occupied Palestine.

Children running away from tear gas shot by Israeli Forces at Salaymeh checkpoint

On Thursday, Israeli forces locked the Ibrahimi Mosque checkpoint, entirely denying students and teachers passing in any direction access to their schools, without prior notice.

This is only the first week of school for children in Palestine, but Israeli forces are already using their routine harassment, intimidation and possibly deadly violence against children resisting this illegal and vicious occupation by the simple fact that despite the increasing efforts of the Israeli forces to make them disappear, they strive to achieve a good education.

School-children tear-gassed on 2nd day of school

29th August 2016 | International Solidarity Movement, al-Khalil team | Hebron, occupied Palestine

On 29th August 2016 Israeli forces at Salaymeh checkpoint in occupied al-Khalil (Hebron), fired rounds of tear gas as school-children attempted to make their way home through the highly militarised checkpoint.

The Salaymeh checkpoint, for many school-children, is one of the unavoidable checkpoints on the daily way to school and back home. At the highly militarised structures, the children attending schools and kindergartens in the area, are subject to bag-searches, harassment, questioning and detention by the Israeli forces.

On Monday, the second day of school after the 3-month summer holidays, as children were starting to pour out of the schools around noon, Israeli forces threw a stun grenade towards a group of children. Instead, it landed right in front of a girl quietly making her way towards the checkpoint on her way home. Scared by the stun grenade flying towards her and the lound boom of the explosion she ran away in the opposite direction in tears. In the meantime, at the checkpoint, children were repeatedly yelled at ‘to wait’ as Israeli forces refused to open the gate for them to go through the checkpoint in order to reach the other side. Israeli forces were heard yelling at children several times, and ordered a few boys to show them their hands in order to ‘prove’ stone-throwing if they are having dirty hands.

Children running away from the tear gas shot by Israeli Forces

Just a little later, Israeli forces fired rounds of tear gas in the direction of the schools, thus collectivly punishing not only all the school-children, but the whole neighborhood. As the tear gas canisters spread their supposedly ‘less-lethal’ gas and covered the area with the poisonous gas, some children escaped the clouds crying with their eyes red from the gas and coughing when choking on the gas.

This kind of excessive force and collective punishment by the Israeli forces, is just one aspect of the Israeli military occupation these school-children are forced to endure on a daily basis.

As Israel steps up its demolition programme the EU logo gets lost in the rubble

27th August 2016 | International Solidarity Movement, al-Khalil team | Umm al-Kheir, south Hebron, occupied Palestine

The villagers of Umm Al Khair look out at the remains of their EU-funded community center that now lies as rubble. Villagers tell of it as a place where they watched football, did education trainings, community meetings and how it would soon become a kindergarten. The destruction has come as no surprise however, since this is the third set of demolitions in Umm al Khair since the start of the year, with over 15 structures being demolished in a town of just 150 people.

The rate of house demolitions in the West Bank is at the highest it has been in 10 years, with more demolitions in the first 4 months of 2016 than the whole of 2015. As illegal settlements continue to expand Palestinians, especially in the south Hebron hills, are more at risk than ever of losing their homes. Despite condemning the demolitions the EU has not taken any action concerning the 74 million dollars worth of EU projects destroyed by Israeli bulldozers. As the town looks for aid to rebuild its fallen buildings the question is if the EU will continue to turn a blind eye to Israel’s destruction of their projects including schools, playgrounds and housing that have all fallen under demolition orders.

Both Umm al Khair and Susiya are in the process of court hearings to get permits for their buildings, but this hasn’t stopped the demolitions during the court process. Their only hope is the decision of the court to give villages the right to exist and permits for their housing, but currently it seems unlikely this will happen. We can only hope that pressure from the international community and opposition from inside Palestine will lead to the villages survival.