Another interesting week in sunny Palestine

January 2019 | International Solidarity Movement, Al-Khalil team | Hebron, occupied Palestine

Al Khalil (Hebron), occupied West Bank, Palestine, late January 2019

It’s the first day of winter term for Palestinian schoolkids. Israeli settlers from the colonies in and around Al Khalil, the Israeli Border Police, and the Israeli Defense Force, are all known for systematically impeding the passage of children to and from school. The settlers verbally harass the schoolchildren as well. These kids are of all ages from kindergarten to twelvth grade: the kindergarteners often walk hand in hand with a parent or older sibling but a few five-year-olds make the trek to school alone or with a couple of friends.

My ISM teammate, D, and I keep an eye on the army checkpoint that controls Palestinians’ passage at Salaymey, on the southeastern end of the Old City. Most of the children filter easily through the turnstiles, and through the armored inspection building, although some of the older ones are subjected to identity checks, bag searches and an occasional, not very intrusive body search.

The road leading uphill from the checkpoint to the settlement of Qiryat Arba is dusty, steep and winding and often clogged with schoolchildren; settlers in vans and late-model cars take the road too fast and many of them barely bother braking, and lean on the horn instead. Some shout angrily at the kids as they take the slope. It strikes me as inevitable that a child will eventually be hit by one of these cars. Foolishly, I get into an altercation with a speeding settler in a van; he stops, reverses furiously, slides down his window and spits at me.

A fat settler gets out of his car next to where I and D are standing, not far from an SUV in which two observers from the UN group known as TIPH–Temporary International Presence in Hebron–are also observing the checkpoint. He taunts the two TIPH women, saying, “You will be gone soon.” (Sure enough, less than two weeks later, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu revokes TIPH’s observation rights, and TIPH is, indeed, gone.) The settler strolls up to D and myself, smiling and filming us with his cellphone. We know this man: he’s famously violent. He often harasses international observers. Also, he carries a handgun; we have been told he has shot Palestinians, and blocked medical first responders from helping the wounded. He has never been punished for these unprovoked attacks. Our local Palestinian friends refer to him as a murderer.

*

I have not been in Al Khalil long. I was trained, swiftly, in the philosophy and practice of non-violent observation, by ISM personnel in Ramallah, and trained further by my teammates at an ISM base, but I’m still not ready for what I experience here daily. I am an American, from a country where, for all its faults, some form of rule of law applies, even if it’s less available for the poor, the outsider, the disadavantaged. Of course the history of the US is a long tale of theft from, and murder of, Native-Americans but I, personally, am not used to living in a police state that enforces on a daily basis the systematic robbery of land from a native people, and sets up a system of apartheid and military rule to crush ensuing dissent.

“You’re going to stay safe,” my daughter told me, very firmly, before I left for the Occupied Territories, and I assured her I would. But I had not known then what I now live every waking hour of every day: the constant pressure of passing through military checkpoints, waiting while the Palestinians in front of us are held up for five, ten minutes at a time, apparently just to make them remember who’s boss here; arguing with heavily armed soldiers or border police officers who object to our walking down a street in their presence; being held up in the market by military patrols who surround us for twenty minutes, Tavor assault rifles at the ready, when we refuse to let them take our passports. At one point they physically push us out of a checkpoint where an ISM teammate is demanding to know why a Palestinian man is being held up, for no apparent reason, for close to a half hour.

One of the checkpoints smells of tear-gas. A kid threw a rock at what is, in effect, an armored mini-fort, and the troops inside responded by firing a gas canister.

*

Al Khalil has been divided by the Israelis into two sectors: one Palestinian, known as H1, and the other, H2, reserved for settlers. A walled military base flying the Israeli flag glowers from a hill over the town. Four colonies: Tel Rumeida, Beit Hadassah, Beit Romano, and Avraham Avinu; have been encrusted into the heart of the Old City. Palestinians have covered the streets beneath their walls with heavy wire because the settlers routinely toss bottles, trash, even tins full of urine out of their windows onto the people below.

Most Saturdays–the Jewish sabbath–a tour guide takes groups of settlers from the Al Khalil colonies through the H1 areas of the Old City, the parts the Israelis do not live in. The tours are guarded, front back and flanks, by at least twenty infantrymen; the soldiers act as if they’re on patrol, with squaddies on point or defending the rear, guns at the ready. Though the Palestinians generally ignore the tours, I can only imagine what it must feel like, for them, to have colonists gape at the city they have not yet stolen.

Before a 1929 massacre in which 69 Jewish residents died, a small Jewish community existed in Al Khalil, but the property they actually owned constituted a microscopic fraction of what the settlers have taken. The al-Ibrahimi mosque here contains the remains of Abraham, the founder of the Jewish, Christian and Muslim faiths. Apparently seeing their presence as religiously ordained, the settlers in Al Khalil are known for adopting a particularly hard-line and vindictive attitude toward the local people.

A Brooklyn-born settler, Baruch Goldstein, who massacred 29 Palestinian worshippers and wounded over 150 others in the Ibrahimi mosque in 1994, lies buried on a hillside in H2. Some of Al Khalil’s settlers, apparently, revere his grave as a shrine.

*

Al Khalil may not be dying, but the Israeli occupation and its system of apartheid is taking a toll on the Old City. A good third of the storefronts on the main drag, Al Shuhaba Street, are shuttered. Every local I meet has so many stories of being detained, harassed, impeded in the conduct of day-to-day life that no one even bothers to recount them anymore, they are just how one lives in this place. The younger people, of Intifada age, know they can be jailed at the first sign of protest, and kept in an Israeli prison without trial for years under a system known as “administrative detention,” at the whim of the occupying power. And yet the Palestinians I meet in Al Khalil do not seem cowed or broken. They nurture a healthy sense of humor and, most often, a philosophical take on the situation.

The same is true of the ISM team I am living with: D, Katie, Roberto, Penny, Ed. While constantly aware of the risk–ISM members have been killed in Palestine while observing what the Israeli forces are doing–they are diligent in respecting the tenets by which they live here. These include, as well as strict adherence to principles of non-violence, a blanket refusal to guide or advise the Palestinians in any aspect of their lives, including how to survive under or resist apartheid. We are in Palestine to observe; to make known to the occupying power that its actions cannot be swept under a rug; and hopefully, to restrict through this process some of the more serious abuses of power an occupying army inevitably will commit.

*

On a roadside leading from Checkpoint 56 to Qeitun, in the Old City, a female settler screams at a pair of international observers from EAPPI, the Ecumenical Accompaniment Program in Palestine and Israel, who shelter in a doorway from her torrent of invective. A few days later EAPPI’s observers, citing a targeted campaign of harassment, will be withdrawn from Al Khalil. The almost simultaneous eviction of TIPH leaves only one other church group, the CPT (Christian Peacemaker Teams), as well as the ISM’s group of international observers, to keep an eye on the occupation here. This week the CPT team has not been present in Al Khalil. Ed, too, is leaving. When I quit the city in a few days time, our team will have dwindled perilously close to a size that’s too small to do its job.

*

Ras Karkar, Palestine, late January, 2019

This country, for all its lengthy history of massacre, religious bigotry, and exile; of water theft also, of over-exploitation and deforestation; remains beautiful. The rough limestone hills that range up and down Palestine seem to flow like a cat’s spine, khaki earth and white rock studded with olive trees under a clear blue winter sky.

One of the heights to the north of Jerusalem, a pair of hilltops separated by a shallow saddle, known as Ras Karkar, has traditionally served as common ground for the three Palestinian villages surrounding it. Recently a neighboring Israeli settlement invaded the hilltop. Even in the context of the UN-mandated territory of Palestine, where roughly three-quarters of a million settlers now live on stolen land, in illegal colonies; where a long, brutally massive wall built of cement, guard towers and razor wire cuts up the rest of the country; this was an egregious act. Now, every Friday, Palestinians from the surrounding villages and activists from farther afield meet in a valley underneath and, at least symbolically, strive to take back Ras Karkar.

Up on the hilltop, Israeli soldiers dressed in black riot gear await the Palestinians. Their rifles stick out from the cover of thorn brush, of olive trees. A handful of settlers shelter behind the military.

In the valley, an imam prays through a loudspeaker to a group of fifty or so men. Then the men start up the hill, toward the waiting soldiers. The younger among them wield slings, just as David did against Goliath in the Valley of Elah, to the west of here. Their rocks fall short of the soldiers’ defensive line. The IDF responds by firing tear-gas canisters that emit acrid, choking clouds of white smoke which the Palestinians and a couple of international observers run from, or around, as best they can. Then the soldiers fire small hard plastic bullets that whiffle shrilly past our ears. We turn away and cover our necks–these rounds are not supposed to be lethal but they can blind or wound if we are hit in head or neck.

An army drone buzzes overhead. The younger men, known here as “shabab,” try to outflank the Israelis. More teargas is fired into the valley. If the confrontation grew more dire the soldiers could fire live .22 rounds at the legs of their attackers, a practice common enough that people warn of it by shouting the English words, “two-two!”, but it doesn’t look as if this level of intensity will be reached today.

Some of the older men sit in the shelter of rocky outcrops and watch. A youth caught in a cloud of teargas doubles up, retching, blinded, gasping for breath. Another, hit in the head by a plastic bullet, is taken away by a Red Crescent ambulance. Later a car drives into the valley with food and water. Falling back from Ras Karkar the Palestinians, and a couple of ISM observers, sit on the ground to eat and drink in the sun.

-Journal by Nick

Anat Cohen assaults ISM volunteers in Al-Khalil (again)

[three_fifth_last]February 08, 2019 | International Solidarity Movement, Al-Khalil team | Al-Khalil, occupied Palestine

ISM volunteers were detained by Hebron Police for over 8 hours after Anat Cohen assaulted them outside the Qurtuba school checkpoint on Thursday.

Picture of Anat Cohen when she assaulted ISM volunteers 2019-02

In direct response to the violence waged against Palestinians at the hands of illegal settlers (and the military that protects them), a neutral observer force had been present in Hebron (Al-Khalil) for the past 22-years, in part, to ensure that children walking to/from school would not be harmed, harassed, or murdered by settlers. This observer force was called TIPH.

Unfortunately, the Israeli government expelled TIPH from Hebron last week.

One of the more dangerous checkpoints for Palestinian children in Al-Khalil exists outside the Qurtuba school–which is juxtaposed immediately adjacent to the Beit Hadassah settlement. Another independent observer group, EAPPI, had been peacefully monitoring this checkpoint until last week–when their head offices announced that their team would also withdraw from Hebron following a targeted campaign of harassment by the right-wing fascist group Im Turtsu.

To fill this void, ISM volunteers have been monitoring the Qurtuba checkpoint in mornings and afternoons to provide an international presence to ensure the safety of Palestinian schoolchildren. As a result, ISM has become the target of harassment by these illegal settlers. On Thursday, this ordinary verbal abuse escalated to physical assault when Anat Cohen–a particularly violent settler with a history of attacking peaceful observers–assaulted ISM volunteers at the Qartuba checkpoint.

ISM captured the assault on video:

Minutes after Cohen assaulted the ISM volunteers, she called the police. When the local Hebron Police arrived, they detained the ISM volunteers and informed them that Cohen was pressing charges against the ISM volunteers for assault.

The ISM volunteers vehemently deny these accusations, and they have video evidence clearly showing that the only physical violence that occured was when Cohen assaulted the peaceful ISM volunteers, who were simply observing the checkpoint to ensure the safety of the schoolchildren.

Call for volunteers after TIPH & EAPPI exodus from Hebron

1st February 2019 | International Solidarity Movement, Al-Khalil team | Hebron, occupied Palestine

In the wake of TIPH being ejected from Al-Khalil (Hebron), it’s critical for ISM to sustain an international presence to protect the Palestinians.

TIPH shakes hands with Palestinian man welcoming him to Hebron

After an Israeli settler murdered 29 worshippers while they were praying at the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron in 1994, the UN Security Council published Resolution 904 called for the establishment of an international presence “to guarantee the safety and protection of the Palestinian civilians throughout the occupied territory”.

That international presence became TIPH, which operated–most recently–for 22 consecutive years since the Hebron Protocol of 1997.

But last week, PM Benjamin Netanyahu tweeted that he would not be extending TIPH–a move that has emboldened Israeli settlers and further endangered the security of Palestinians.

Two EAPPI members walk through Hebron with Palestinian man

Moreover, the day after Israel decided to remove TIPH, another international observer force on the ground in Hebron–EAPPI (Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel)–left Hebron after their personnel were targeted by a campaign of harassment from the right-wing fascist group Im Turtsu.

In the wake of this exodus of teams critical to thwarting violent attacks against Palestinians by Israeli settlers and soldiers, we ask the international community to come defend Palestinian human rights on the ground here in Hebron. If you’re interested in joining the ISM team in Hebron, please contact us about an upcoming ISM training session in Palestine.

After School in Hebron, A Journal – 6 boys detained by Israeli forces in 2 Days

5th December 2018 | International Solidarity Movement, Al-Khalil Team | Hebron, occupied Palestine   [Updated December 6]

For two days running, Israeli occupation soldiers and Border Police ambushed young children aged 10-14 years after school in Hebron.

Tuesday, 24thDec. 2 boys were detained at Salaymeh checkpoint after being ambushed by a group of soldiers sneaking around in gardens and through a garage before bursting out behind the boys who were standing in a driveway. The boys were not throwing any the stones but were just randomly grabbed by the soldiers as they ambushed them. ISMers were only meters away and security camera footage confirms that the boys were merely standing in the driveway at the time. Two of the boys were aged 11 and one 10. One can only imagine the terror young boys experience when suddenly kidnapped by soldiers of the occupying army!

 

A border policeman abducts a young boy
A border policeman abducts a young boy from the street after ambushing children near Hebron School. (Photo Christian Peacemaker Teams)

The Israeli Zionist forces are renowned for their cruelty even to minors: imprisoning children as young as 12 through their military courts and prisons system in which there are no rights for Palestinians. The youngest ever Palestinian child prisoner was released just days ago after a three-year prison sentence from 12 to 15 years of age.

The inhumanity of Israel is fully understood by Palestinians growing up under occupation. Collective punishment and psychological cruelty through torture and macabre tactics such as withholding bodies of Palestinians who have been killed or died during imprisonment are universally understood by Palestinians and well documented by international as well as local observers/researchers. …and there is no justice system to protect Palestinians.

Imagine what goes through the mind of a 10-year-old child suddenly grabbed by an armed solder from an occupying army and dragged from his neighbourhood! Fortunately, the boys were released after being detained for more than an hour inside the checkpoint.

Today also (December 5), 3 boys were abducted aged 14, 11 and 9. The boys attend two of the local schools and were kidnapped from the street around 300 metres from Qeitun checkpoint. They were standing in the street talking about 3 metres from an ISM activist when they were ambushed by Israeli Border Police.

The two younger boys were released later today, but the 14-year-old was taken away. According to the headmaster of the Hebron School, Khalil Abu Sunaineh, the older boy could face up to 6 months imprisonment. The military court does not need to give evidence to support any accusation on the grounds that it is “classified information”. There is a 98% conviction rate.

The headmaster showed us pictures on the wall of the school hallway, over 70 pictures taken over the last two years show child arrests, tear gas, concussion grenades both inside the school and on the street outside. They are the tip of the iceberg. He has been at the school for 14 years!

gallery of soldier invasions
A gallery of soldier invasions of the school, abductions, concussion grenades and tear gas in the school and on the street outside.

He also told us that the soldiers and border police sneak around in the middle of the night mapping the neighbourhood and planning their ambushes. We’d witnessed this ourselves during the day. It was creepy enough in the daytime seeing soldiers just walk around in people’s gardens, exploring every alleyway, entering apartment buildings at will and ascending to the rooftops. It must feel violating to live under these circumstances.

Israeli forces justify their actions because some Palestinian children throw stones at them. To the uninformed this may seem a valid argument on the surface. However, it’s important to remember that the Israelis are the occupiers and have absolutely no rights under international law to defend themselves from the people they occupy. They are the aggressors. They are not civil enforcement officers of the Palestinian community.

This argument also holds no water because usually in any specific situation the Israeli forces are the aggressors who initiate conflict.

Even if we accepted this erroneous argument, the children who were detained on these two days were not throwing stones. To detain, or arrest and imprison them, for what someone else has done at any time at all is unjust and a form of collective punishment.

What justification can there possibly be for concussion grenades, toxic tear gas (228 tear gas rounds and 51 concussion grenades were fired in the Salaymeh / Qeitun neighbourhoods in 15 school days between November 4 and November 27, 2018 (including 34 tear gas rounds in one day!))? [Statistics from Christian Peacemaker Teams] This is on top of the usual intimidation, child abduction and invasion of streets and schools by armed soldiers in residential neighbourhoods!

Examples of tear gas being used in the Saleymeh / Quetun neighbourhoods.

These are children! Such actions are totally unacceptable on minors.

Do such actions promote peace? Do they not actually sustain and deepen the inhumane occupation of the Palestinian people?

Do they not also inspire rejection of the immoral occupation, and provoke further resistance against such oppression?

Fortunately, Palestinians usually choose non-violent resistance rather than violence, leaving Israelis with the moral predicament of enforcing the immoral and illegal occupation and the international community with the shame of their inaction.

 

Addendum:

These are part of a much larger continual attack on Palestine’s future by targeting children and their education: The following links show the extent of these attacks in just one week of November and other articles by Palestinian and international commentators are given for reference:

   Opinion – redactional

   Reports (Nov 2018)

  Older reports on palsolidarity.org

 

 

Welcome to At-Tuwani

It was 7am when we woke up after a night under the stars, in the village of At-Tuwani, surrounded by arid hills and olive groves. It’s the kind of place you’d want to sightsee, or drink tea with the locals, admire the work of weaving and embroidery by the women of the village. But few people still come here. In the 80’s Israeli settlers took up residence on a hill opposite At-Tuwani, and the years that have followed have been a living hell for the inhabitants.

The night before, we were accompanied by Bilal and Mahmoud, two young people who grew up coping with the violence of settlers, and Israeli soldiers. From Mahmoud’s house we observed the hill of the settlers. He told us that he’s already been in prison, just like Bilal; his house attacked, his olive trees cut. A few days before we arrived, we learned that his brother was nearly killed by a settler. In this village no one ever really sleeps. Phones are on at all times, the inhabitants always ready to rush out of bed in order to defend their village. To defend the village is to defend their herds from mutilation, their houses from destruction, and their culture from erasure. Most importanly, they are defending their right to live on the land they have occupied for centuries.

 

The night of the sky was clear and we saw shooting stars succeed one another, but it was not stars we had our eyes on, but the hill, where torches blazed between the trees facing us. Mahmoud shined his light on the trees, and silhouettes appeared before us- they were settlers, of course. “They won’t come near as long as we watch them” he told us, “Although armed, they can be quite cowardly.”

Shaking our torches is a way of showing our presence to settlers, to let them know we are awake, and watching. Because of our presence, when Bilal returned home, he was able to go straight to bed. For reasons such as this, the presence of internationals is important for the inhabitants. Recently, an Italian organization that were active in the village for some time had just left because of a lack of resources. Bilal is obviously tired, and I could tell that he wanted us to stay for several more days.

As we waited on Mahmoud’s roof, wrapped in blankets, I asked Mahmoud how the settlers are able to play, what seems to be almost a game every night, without tiring. “They do not work,” he answers, “they can sleep during the day because they receive a salary from the Israeli state.” The daily life of the inhabitants of this village seems to be so unbearable, and I can not help but admire the likes of Mahmoud and Bilal- the strength they have to endure. Of course, he has been resisting since he was born, and probably will for the rest of his life.

As footsteps startled us, silhouettes appeared again, this time approaching the house. When my heart began to beat faster, I thought to myself this must be only an ounce of what they experience here.

However, it was soldiers, not settlers, that appeared. Oddly, we are relieved. The truth is that they aren’t as dangerous as the colonists. Their presence is supposedly for protection; for both the Palestinians and the settlers, despite reports that settlers and soldiers collude, even to kill inhabitants at times. “Why are you up there?” One of the soldiers had asked us. Mahmoud answered in Hebrew (which he learned in prison) that he had the right to be on his roof, that he’s watching over his olive field for the settlers. “We’re here, do not worry,” the a soldier replies. After leaving, Mahmoud explained that they came to find out how many of us there were in order to report to the settlers. “We can not trust them.”

After some time, it became clear that the settlers were going to hold off their assault that night, and Mahmoud was finally able to go to bed as well. The next morning we had to wake up early to accompany children to school. It’s the Israeli army’s duty to protect these children from similar attacks, but if they complied with that assignment, our presence would not be necessary.

This is Palestine.