23rd March 2016 | B’Tselem | South Hebron Hills, occupied Palestine
This morning, the Israeli Civil Administration demolished a home, shed and an animal enclosure in Khirbet Jenbah, in the Masafer Yatta area of the southern Hebron Hills. The authorities also confiscated solar panels donated by an international aid agency.
Residents view this move as a message from the state ahead of a High Court hearing tomorrow, 23 March 2016, at 11:30am, when Israel’s High Court of Justice will hold a hearing on a petition filed by the residents of Masafer Yatta against the Israeli Authorities’ intention to expel them from their homes due to the establishment of “Firing Zone 918.”
The hearing will be the first held in the case since the two-year mediation process between the parties failed. Immediately after the mediation attempts ended, Israel destroyed 22 homes in the communities of Khirbet Jenbah and Khirbet al-Halawah.
Please note B’Tselem is not part of the proceedings but we will be able to assist visitors with interpretation. Please contact me by SMS for further details.
Photo blog: Visit to Masafer Yatta, as the efforts to expel its residents escalate
22 March 2016 | International Solidarity Movement, al-Khalil team | Hebron, occupied Palestine
On 21st March 2016, Israeli forces at Salaymeh checkpoint in occupied al-Khalil (Hebron) stopped Palestinian schoolboys on their way home, preventing them from passing through the checkpoint.
Israeli forces stopping schoolboys on their way home, denying them passage
Around noon, as a cluster of schools near the Salaymeh checkpoint finished classes for the day and boys began flocking out onto the street Israeli forces blocked their way, effectively preventing them from reaching the checkpoint and continuing on their way home. Israeli forces did not give any reason for blocking the road leading from the schools. Though at the time a new checkpoint was being installed at the Salaymeh checkpoint site, people traveling in the opposite direction were allowed to pass without any hassle. After some time, Israeli forces finally let the boys pass and continue on their way home after a day of school. They were still present throughout the day during the time construction was taking place, and invaded a family home in order to use the rooftop as a military post to observe the area.
Israeli forces threatening to shoot tear gas at schoolboys denied passage on their way home
The ‘renovations’ come after 21-year-old Yasmin al-Zarou was gunned down and critically wounded on 14th February 2016 at Salaymeh checkpoint. Recent expansions of checkpoints, such as the transformation of Shuhada checkpoint at the end of December into an even more oppressive metallic monstrosity, have shown how these supposed improvements make passing through the checkpoints an even more arduous, humiliating, threatening and time-consuming experience. At Salaymeh the Israeli military is constructing a closed-off structure where once Palestinians passed by simply walking through a metal detector, creating a space where the Israeli border police continually stationed there can stop those attempting to cross and search and harass them out of sight of any onlookers. By expanding checkpoints in al-Khalil, Israeli forces also take over more private Palestinian land for structures whose main purpose seems to be the further intimidation and humiliation of Palestinians in an attempt to minimise their movement in these areas.
21st March 2016 | International Solidarity Movement, al-Khalil team | Hebron, occupied Palestine
On Sunday, 20th March 2016, Israeli forces raided the al-Faihaa girls school in occupied al-Khalil (Hebron), using the staff in the school as human shields.
In the morning, three heavily-armed soldiers in full combat gear entered the premises of the school when the girls were still going to their classes. Al-Faihaa girls school is located near Ibrahimi mosque, on a road that connects Shuhada Street, which Palestinians are completely banned from using, with the biggest illegal settlement on the outskirts of al-Khalil, Kiryat Arba. Only settlers are allowed to drive on that road, while Palestinians are banned from driving any kind of cars, including ambulances, there, and often face harassment and violence from settlers.
The soldiers entered the girls school and locked themselves in the directors room with the director, the caretaker and another female teacher, preventing them from leaving the room. They then proceeded to go through the video camera footage of the girls school, accusing them of allowing Abdullah …….., a Palestinian gunned down at the nearby Queitun checkpoint the day before, pass through the school premises. As the girls school has repeatedly been threatened by Israeli forces that their main gate will be permanently shut if people other than teachers and students use it, the gate is now always locked shut except for when students are passing through for school.
An activist and caretaker look on as a soldier proceeds to check security camera footage
Israeli forces kept the director, a teacher and the caretaker hostage in the director’s room, preventing them from leaving the room and anyone else from entering for about an hour. They then left the school while the other teachers were trying to make sure that the girls stayed in their class-rooms in order not to scare them any more due to the presence of the soldiers.
The right to education in al-Khalil is often trampled on by Israeli forces, that routinely raid schools, detain, search or even arrest students at checkpoints, or shoot tear gas at them.
21st March 2016 | International Solidarity Movement, al-Khalil team | Ni’lin, occupied Palestine
Jamal is younger than I am but he doesn’t look it. He is always there, as are all the storekeepers in the souk and he always greets us, as does nearly everybody (walking down the souk when it is open can be a slow business). We walk through the souk several times a day to monitor tension at the mosque and at the checkpoints beyond them.
Jamal
Jamal sells beautiful Palestinian embroideries, rugs and cushions, but nobody buys. I stay with him for an hour to do this interview, and unusually in that time he has one group of customers, tourists from France who have bought before, but they don’t buy today. He gets out all his rugs and explains how good they are. He asks nervously if they wouldn’t like to buy a small something today, but they don’t. I want to shake them but I don’t.
We settle down to a cup of ginger tea (no conversation conducted without tea or coffee) and he tells me that he has been coming here for forty-seven years, starting as a child after school and in the holidays. It is his father’s store. (I’m going to leave Jamal’s words in the good but slightly broken English that he speaks in his very soft voice.) He has been here through all the troubles in Hebron.
‘I did watch the first intifada and the second intifada and now the third intifada. I did stay all that time and when settlers began occupying lands after the war in 1967, they start building settlements outside the city, and after that they move to the heart of the city you could say the 80s, inside the city, four settlements.’
That’s the situation we have now and that is what makes Hebron unique: four settlements in the heart of the old city, in Palestinian houses, with about 600 settlers living behind barbed wire and checkpoints, with between 1500 and 2000 armed Israeli soldiers stationed to ‘protect’ them from their Palestinian neighbours.
‘Number four the one it’s behind my store and on top of my store; it’s what they call Abraham Avino settlement. They built it on the main vegetable and fruit market. They occupied all these old houses above us, they rebuild them which is not their properties, they just took them, their owners did not sell them, they fight in court and they won the case but [the settlers] didn’t leave them.’
What this doesn’t convey is how close and how hostile the settlers are. They live literally above the shop, above a wire netting filled with rocks and rubbish which they throw from their windows: ‘We done it, we fix it as a kind of protection and sometimes that metal net won’t do any good as while you are standing they pour on you liquid such as dirty water, urine, rotten eggs, and all that happens in front of the soldiers’ eyes. On both sides there are watching towers, sometimes we do complain, we shout to the soldiers.’ The soldiers however do nothing. The soldiers do not do anything to protect Palestinians (or internationals) when settlers attack them and this happens often. They say it is a matter for the (Israeli) police but the police are never there.
I ask him how things used to be before the 1994 Massacre in the mosque that led to the obscene division of Hebron city centre into the two halves we have today. ‘It used to be crowded, active, so busy because you see the main city to produce this stuff [embroideries and rugs] is Hebron. Palestinians from all over used to come every day, even from the Gaza Strip, to buy their goods from here and to pray in the mosque and to leave late in the afternoon, and even internationals from the embassies from Ramallah and Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, they used to come at the weekends to buy their stuff. We used to make a lot of money, we had a nice business and good life, no trouble, no problem, no nothing.’
I queried him: really, even though the settlements had begun to make their presence felt? ‘The settlements when they came in the eighties they were small and it wasn’t like any trouble between Palestinians or settlers. It used be that a lot of settlers even they came from Kiryat Arba to buy fruit and vegetables.’
Then I ask him about the Oslo Accords, that set of negotiations and agreements from the 1990s to the 2000s which led to the setting up of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank: that seemed to be a time of hope for many Palestinians, didn’t it? ‘People thought Oslo was good in a way. It might help and sort problems and solve it. We might have our own state. We were disappointed after that because they said at the beginning by the year 2000 all settlements in the heart of the city, they were going to leave them and to go and to live in Kiryat Arba, the main and the first and the biggest settlement outside the city.’
And why did it not happen? ‘Since that time the Israelis don’t want the peace process to go forward to let Palestinians have their own state, they don’t want it. Americans and British and a lot of countries, they said to them stop building settlements; they ignore everyone; they are not listening to anyone, they don’t want to give us a state.’
Jamal is very clear about the Israeli strategy: ‘Life is so hard, difficult, tough. We don’t feel safe and secure down here from the army and the settlers, we are frightened they will open fire on us and shoot us. Look what they have done round the mosque: they have shot so many people, they want the area empty, they want people to be frightened and to leave the area. By shooting these kids they made it so frightening even I don’t go there.’
I am sitting here writing this as my fellow activist Jenny comes in with breakfast and tells us that someone was shot and killed ten minutes ago at one of the checkpoints, not the one that we just came back from, one that none of the internationals was at. This says two things to me: this is exactly what Jamal is saying. Every day, small things and big things. Every day, pressure to leave. And secondly, if I was ever unconvinced, standing for two hours at a checkpoint counting and watching, that my time is well spent, I am not now. This would not have happened if international observers had been there. I am sure of this. How can we be everywhere all the time?
And Jamal reminds me of the other reason we are here: ‘The media is not on our side, it is on their side. When you go back home you are going to tell your husband, you are going to tell your kids, your neighbours, you are going to say what you have seen with your own eyes and they will know from you the harassment and the attacks and the bad things they do against us.’
There is already a funeral today. Now there will be another tomorrow, if the Israelis release the body. Muslims have to bury their dead the same or the next day. Three funerals last week. Funerals every week.
Jamal rejects violence for himself and his family. All that is left is sumud, steadfastness: ‘We are resistant, we are determined to stay, its hard for us to leave. It’s in our blood, it’s in our soul. To stay and to be patient. Here you have to live and to take this way of life because this is the way it goes, safe or not safe, peace or not peace, to me as a person I can’t do anything about it.’
17th March 2016 | International Solidarity Movement, al-Khalil team | Hebron, occupied Palestine
Occupied al-Khalil (Hebron) is a city of far too many checkpoints. Operated by heavily armed Israeli forces, they create obstacles that all Palestinians must cross in order to go about their daily lives in al-Khalil: to go to school or work, to visit friends or even just to go grocery-shopping. These checkpoints become a ‘normal’ feature of everyday life—as does being delayed, stopped, searched and questioned, even denied passage by Israeli forces when attempting to traverse these checkpoints. It is a normality that should not exist.
As many are forced to pass through these checkpoints regularly, some of the soldiers and border police begin to recognize faces, to get to know and target people. Some will close the metal turnstile just after opening it for someone to pass, making them get stuck; some will ask someone who already passed through the metal detector without setting it off to take off some of their clothing, to go back and forth again repeatedly, pointlessly through the metal detector. It often seems, to those passing through and watching as the soldiers harass those attempting to cross, that the Israeli forces are enjoying the power they have over the people forced to endure their humiliation. At times they act childishly, soldiers manning a checkpoint cracking up laughing as they manage to stop the turnstile halfway through, at just the right time to make people crash into it as they try to walk through. Sitting in their small walled-off guard posts with assault rifles slung over their shoulders, these Israeli soldiers are given total power to decide the fates of Palestinian civilians—children, adults, women, elderly people—an unjust, unreasonable power to determine what will happen to anyone passing through the checkpoints.
Many Palestinians try to avoid checkpoints at night, when it’s dark. As a foreigner in Palestine, I enjoy certain privileges in contrast to Palestinians, privileges that make passing checkpoints much easier for me. For example, a tourist or international will rarely be asked to remove metal items and walk back through the metal detector repeatedly until it no longer beeps, nor will they have their bags emptied and thoroughly checked, be arbitrarily detained, or invasively searched. I am sometimes permitted to cross checkpoints or enter areas most Palestinians are barred from. I am also far less likely to be physically assaulted, beaten or killed by Israeli forces. The life of a foreigner, it seems, is worth more to outsiders and media than that of a Palestinian; there might at least be a media outcry if soldiers did something to a light-skinned European. But a few days ago, passing a checkpoint in the vicinity of Ibrahimi Mosque at night, things changed…
As I attempted to pass I recognized the two soldiers at the checkpoint as the ones that tend to make passing a long-drawn-out process, harassing anyone trying to pass as much as possible. This did not surprise me when I was repeatedly ordered—In Hebrew, a language I, as well as many Palestinians, do not understand— to go back through the metal detector even though it did not beep. One of the soldiers came out of the small walled-off room they use to control the checkpoint to stand on the other side of the high gates, ordering me to take off my jacket, which I refused. After some discussion, they allowed me to pass to the other side, past the metal detector and turnstile to the far side of the soldiers’ control post, he then ordered me to hand over my bag to the soldiers.
It was a gloomy night, in an area with no real lights, deserted except for the soldiers. I was alone with the them, as the person I had been walking with was trapped on the far side of the checkpoint, behind the locked turnstiles, waiting to pass and unable to see what was happening.
After putting my bag on a cement roadblock, one of the soldiers started searching for something in his trouser pockets while the other kept a close eye on me, watching my every movement. As the soldier kept going through his pockets searching for something specific, I started wondering what he was looking for.
After many Palestinians were gunned down at checkpoints in recent months, not only in al-Khalil but throughout the West Bank, knives suddenly ‘appeared’ next to them. Many Palestinian women have told me of how they are scared that soldiers would plant a knife in their bag when ‘searching’ it at checkpoints. Standing in the dark at this checkpoint, these thoughts crossing my mind, I started worrying that this might happen to me as well. Would the soldiers put a knife in my bag? And would they arrest me when ‘finding’ the knife, or would they shoot me? Would anyone believe that a knife was planted in my bag? Would anyone believe me more than any Palestinian this has happened to? Having already lived in al-Khalil for a long time, repeatedly crossing checkpoints, knowing that these soldiers always try to harass and intimidate me, I started wondering how much they must dislike me. I started doubting my privileges—international media would likely believe the soldiers’ story in any case, as they have so many times before when Palestinians were killed. Would this be the last time I passed this checkpoint? There was no-one around witnessing what was happening – no-one but me and the soldiers. Fortunately, after harrowing moments that dragged on for what felt like about five minutes, the soldier took a flashlight from his pocket, starting to comment on whatever he saw in my bag.
For a few minutes, I had experienced that fear, that terror which soldiers operating with impunity would turn harassment at a checkpoint into something worse. For Palestinians living under the illegal Israeli military occupation, this fear is part of everyday life. This fear, that something might happen when passing a checkpoint – for Palestinians living under the illegal Israeli military occupation, is part of everyday life.
As international media and governments turn a blind eye to the daily, ongoing human rights violations by Israeli forces, Palestinians are denied the basic rights that European and US politicians tend to speak so highly of, criticizing every small infringement – except those against Palestinians. This ridiculous ‘double standard’ has continued for far too long; it is about time to stop turning a blind eye to the situation of the Palestinians under illegal Israeli military occupation. Global forces looked the other way and ignored repeated UN resolutions as Israeli forces trampled human rights for generations of illegal occupation. The international community has stood idly by for sixty-seven years too long already.
As humiliation and intimidation are routine parts of passing checkpoints and going about life under military occupation, people have learned to adapt, to come to expect and learn to arrange their lives around something that is not supposed to be part of anyone’s life. As humiliation and intimidation often is part of the experience passing checkpoints and living under military occupation in general, one learns to ‘accept’ or ‘arrange’ with something that is not supposed to be part of anyone’s life. This is not only about human rights and basic freedoms, about being able to pass a checkpoint without fear, but it is also about dignity – about being treated like a human being.
