Category: Journals - Page 51 - International Solidarity Movement

Settler Violence: Broken Glass on Shuhada Street

by Silvia

21 February 2012 | International Solidarity Movement, West Bank

Five years ago Abed Seder’s wife, Kefah, was shot five times in the chest by Israeli soldiers as she went onto her roof to check her water tank. She was 23 years old and left three sons motherless. He tells me his sons are afraid to go on the roof, which overlooks the illegal Zionist settlement of Beit Hadassah. To an international community, Abed’s struggle is one of trauma and loss, but he tells it with shockingly familiar regularity.

Israeli military is seen often in Palestinian neighborhoods in Al Khalil

Abed´s home is sandwiched inbetween Beit Hadassah and Beit HaShisha settlements, from which he receives regular torrents of abuse and violence. Rubbish and broken glass bearing Hebrew writing litters the path to his front door, bypassing the nets which attempt to catch the used nappies and toilet roles. His windows have been boarded up from the outside by Israeli soldiers in an attempt to prevent settlers from throwing molotov cocktails into Abed´s home. Abed shows me the view from his caged bedroom window, which looks directly onto a neatly planted playground, complete with basket ball court where the children of immigrant Zionists can enjoy the sunshine. As one of them raises their middle finger, Abed tells me that they regularly throw water and beer bottles so they try to keep the window closed.

Perhaps the saddest victim of this has been Abed´s 6 year old son Wadia, who was left blind after Abed´s neighbours threw chloric acid from their rooftops two years ago. He was just four years old. Wadia has since been seeking treatment in a hospital in Jordan while Abed and his wife can only afford to visit him once every three months.

Shards of glass reflect the hatred of extremist, illegal settlers

In 1967 Israel occupied Hebron along with the rest of the West Bank. The settlement of Kiyat Arba was established on the outskirts of Hebron in 1968, later allowing for communities of settlers to illegally occupy properties such as the Hadassah Hospital and other Palestinian neighbourhoods such as Tel Rumeida. Hebron is currently home to over one hundred thousand Palestinians, who are suffering at the hands of some 500-800 settlers protected by a constant Israeli military presence.

Since the Second Intifada, settler violence has escalated in the city of Hebron with illegal settlers routinely attacking and violating the rights of their Palestinian neighbours. B’tselem has recorded incidents of physical assaults, including beatings, stone throwing and hurling of refuse, sand, water, chlorine and empty bottles. Settlers have destroyed shops and doors, committed thefts and chopped down fruit trees. Settlers have also been involved in gunfire, attempts to run people over, poisoning of a water well, breaking into homes, spilling of hot liquid on the face of a Palestinian, and the killing of a young Palestinian girl.

“Price Tagging” has become a coined phrase for the violent, illegal, Zionist settlers “struggle” as they continue to illegally steal land throughout the West Bank. On 24 July 2008, after Israeli security forces removed a bus that had been placed in the Adey Ad outpost, the head of the settlers’ struggle headquarters in Yitzhar was quoted in Ha’aretz as saying,

“The police have to understand that there will be a very high price tag on any event of this kind.”

He described the harm to Palestinians as “a display of good citizenship that is intended to help the police enforce the planning and building laws in the area on Palestinians, too.” Collective punishment is illegal under international law and is a violation of the Geneva Convention.

B’Tselem has investigated many incidents of settler violence and stated to have found that “Israeli forces intervened late, usually when Palestinians begin throwing stones at their attackers. The late response cannot be justified, as these incidents are part of a pattern and can be predicted. They conclude that “the security forces must prepare in advance in a way that will enable them to prevent harm to Palestinians.” B´Tselem stated that the authorities have systematically failed to enforce law and order against violent settlers attacking Palestinians.

Abed Seder stands before his home in Al Khalil

Human rights worker Hisham Shabarati explains the relationship between the soldiers and the settlers as a kind of role play, where by “settlers are able to make the actions the military can’t.” He describes settlers as a political instrument able to carry out random and brutal attacks under the protection of Israeli soldiers.

“They have the same agenda; to make life unbearable for the Palestinians.”

Abed Seder’s home in the Old City of Hebron is four hundred years old. His brother and four children live above him and his great-grandfather lived here before them. For Abed, the act of resisting occupation stretches for as far as he can continue to live in the home which he legally owns. Its traditional arched doorways and original winding stairways make his home a desirable target for many settlers looking to move into an area which former Prime Minister David Ben Gurion described as “more Jewish even than Jerusalem.”

As long as Israel protects the rights of illegal settlers in Hebron over the rights of the Palestinian people, Abed and his family will suffer.

Silvia is a volunteer with International Solidarity Movement (name has been changed).

The massacre of 1929 and the War of Narratives

by Aaron

21 February 2012 | International Solidarity Movement, West Bank

If you ask an Israeli settler in or around Al-Khalil (Hebron) what calls them to live on contested land, most will speak to a religious connection to the city and the Cave of the Machpelach (“patriarchs”), where Jews, Muslims, and Christians come to revere the biblical figures believed to be buried there. A series of signs posted nearby along Shuhada Street, the once-main road and market district now closed to Palestinians, tell a story of Hebronite Jewish habitation dating from biblical times, brought to a sharp and bloody end with a 1929 pogrom, which resulted in the deaths of 67 Jewish residents and the displacement of the survivors. Citing this narrative, many of today’s settlers justify their occupation of the old city as a rebirth and continuation of this community, a story echoed in publications distributed by the Gutnick Center (a Jewish cultural center) and soldier-escorted weekly tours through the Palestinian market. The problem with this narrative is that no one, not even the survivors’ descendants, agrees on it.

Competing narratives of the 1929 Pogram – Click here for more images

On Monday, February 20th, the Jerusalem Post published an article presenting the conflict between the survivors’ descendants as a microcosm for Jewish public opinion, some of whom support the settlements and a growing number who oppose Hebron’s especially active settler community, one which Yair Keidan calls “a loaded bomb that can blow up peace altogether.” Both sides have signed petitions to the Israeli government, asking variously to maintain, evacuate, and/or halt settlement activity, and both groups claim a right to the legacy of their parent community.

“You can’t bring back the dead,” said Ya’acov Castel, a survivor from 1929, “but there are people living here now who are carrying out the dream of the Jews who lived here for hundreds of years.” Yona Rochlin, whose family went back many generations in pre-1929 Hebron, argues the opposite—pointing out that the majority of settlers are US immigrants, who have settled in a foreign city unfamiliar with the customs, language, or neighborly habits of the people they claim as spiritual forebearers. Unlike the predominantly Sephardi and Mizrahi (Spanish/North African and Middle Eastern respectively) Jewish minority that coexisted with a Muslim majority for five centuries, she says that today’s settlers “came to the city to take revenge for the 1929 massacre and their main idea was to drive out the Arabs and turn Hebron into a Jewish city.”

Hebronite settlers have many claims to fame, including the first West Bank settlement Kiryat Arba (founded 1968, pop. 7200) and the only settlements within the bounds of a Palestinian city—Avraham Avinu, Beit Hadassah, and Beit Romano, which lie at the heart of the Old City and fall under Israeli military control. They are also known to be among the most violent and hardliner, with many claiming allegiance to the Kahanist, Gush Emunim, and other extremist Jewish political and religious sects. Particularly infamous Kahanists include Baruch Marzel, founder of the Jewish National Front, and Baruch Goldstein, who in 1994 massacred 29 and injured over 150 Muslims at prayer in the Mosque al-Ibrahimi. Today Goldstein, who was killed during the attack, is venerated as a hero and martyr—and his tomb in Kiryat Arba continues to draw extremist pilgrims, even though his shrine was removed in 1999.

Rochlin, a politically active parent and child of conservative Jewish parents, in 1996 coauthored an open letter to the Israeli government, “Message from the original Jewish community of Hebron: Evacuate settlers,” which stated, “[Hebronite settlers] are alien to the culture and way of life of the Hebron Jews, who in the course of generations created a heritage of peace between peoples and understanding between faiths.” She sees evidence of this tradition in the fact that Muslim neighbors intervened to save her family and over 400 more when the Jewish community was attacked in 1929. Who exactly did the killing, and from where, is uncertain—but there is surprisingly little disagreement over the 19+ Palestinian families that sheltered and defended Jews. Although some Palestinian community members invited their neighbors to stay or return, by 1936 the British Mandate had relocated the remaining Jews to Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and elsewhere.

Curiously, although the Israeli Jews’ narratives tell radically different stories, many area Palestinians also know a great deal about the pogrom and mourn the loss of friends and neighbors. For Muhammad, head of the Abu Aisha family who live in the famed ‘caged house’ on Tel Rumeida, where their home is surrounded by settlement homes, it is a matter of family pride that his father is named among the Palestinians to save Jewish residents. Nonetheless, the Abu Aisha family struggles with daily harassment at the hands of settlers, who occupy land all around the home. Hajj Yussef, one of the few surviving Palestinians who responded in 1929, talks about “our Palestinian Jews,” who dressed and spoke like non-Jewish neighbors. To Yussef, like the children of his refugee neighbors, the obstacle to peace in Hebron lies not in difference but attitude and actions: “I have no problem living with the Jews, like we lived many years ago. But today’s settlers are not Palestinian Jews, they came here from abroad. And I have a problem if the Jews live in my country as occupiers and settlers.”

Open Shuhada Street, the international campaign to end Israeli Apartheid in Al-Khalil/Hebron will continue February 20th through 25th, with actions and cultural events in Khalil and around the world. Each day, we will cover a different aspect of the Occupation’s effects on Shuhada Street and the city generally.

Continue to follow www.palsolidarity.org throughout the week for more stories and analysis.

Aaron is a volunteer with International Solidarity Movement (name has been changed).

Women Studies Center of Nablus: Women’s rights are Palestinian rights

by Jonas Weber

18 February 2012 | International Solidarity Movement, West Bank

“We rented this house since a year back,” says Randa Bashir as she looked around in the brightly lit meeting room at the Women Studies Centre in Nablus. Like most Palestinian houses it is designed to keep cool during the warmer time of the year rather than keeping warm during the winter and we keep our jackets on throughout the meeting.

Bashir, with a background as social worker and speech therapist, is the director of the Nablus branch of the Women Studies Centre. She has been active in the Palestinian womens movement since the 70’s and in 1977 she was sentenced to eight years in prison for her activism.

The Womens Studies Centre was founded by the organization Union of Women Action in 1978 with a branch in Jerusalem that to this day is the headquarter of the Centre with 10 employees. Except for the branches in Jerusalem and Nablus there is also a centre in Al Khalil (Hebron) with 2 employees. The activity is growing as Bashir stated:

Soon we will have a women’s library here. Many say that the national struggle most come first and that women’s struggle comes second. Here believe that the relation is more dialectic, that the struggles most be fought together. We have been an avante-garde for women’s rights in Palestine since the 70’s, many of our programs have eventually been implemented in broader society. At the same time we haven’t recieved any financial support from governments or institutions, except for the Swedish organization Woman to Woman.

“We are trying to build a female leadership within the Palestinian resistance movement.” said Randa Bashir as she went on to explain the four main programmes of the Women’s Studies Centre.

Through the programmes of the centre runs a thread of self organization and grass roots thinking. The people receiving help from
the centre often go on to help other people, and all programs are focused on empowering the ones in the most need of empowerment.

Through volontary work the centre funds the marginalized and poor students to empower children and adolescents on how
to protect themselves against sexual assault.

“We believe that young people play an important part in the process of achieving democracy. In Egypt and Tunisia the young took to the streets,” she said

Living under occupation means that the women of Palestine are subject o a combined opression, both as women and as Palestinians. To deal with this the centre offer trauma support for women who have been detained or who have lost loved ones to the Israeli occupation. The women who partake in these programs then go on to lead their own therapy groups.

The centre has also produced a series of books for children where classical gender roles are challenged. It can be something as simple as a coloring book with motives where girls are playing basketball or a scene where a father is cooking while his wife is reading a book. In a western society this might not seem very radical, but in a society were girls and boys go to separate schools the impact is obvious.

“Going to a mixed school made me a stronger woman,” said Bashir. “I learned not to be afraid of the boys and that they weren’t worth any more than me. In the Middle East we still have a lot of separation and discrimination between the sexes.”

When we asked about how it works to do this kind of radical work in such a conservative society Bashir lowered her voice and leaned forward.

“People are getting much more conservative since the first Intifada. They are afraid for the sake of their children and turn to religion
for answers. “

Before the first Intifada it was much more rare to see women wearing the hijab in Palestine then it is today, Randa explained. Even though the womens movement keeps gaining ground for their issues the movement has been taken in a religious context. Bashir went onto explain the cultural context of the hijab versus a religious one, promoting the ideal that women in the end, should always make their own choices without pressure.

Meanwhile many victories are being won by the Palestinian women’s movement. Over the years the taboo on speaking up about sexual assault has been lifted, and today it’s becoming more common to bring cases of rape and sexual violence to court. But there are no statistics as to how common these crimes are, and women face legal difficulty in seeking equality to men. For many years it has been less punishable to take the life of a cheating wife than a cheating man.

Randa Bashir proudly shows us the coloring books the centre has produced over the years. She seems incapable of ceasing to smile while she talks about her work. To keep up a never ending optimism through over 60 years of occupation is something that seems common for the people of Palestine. Laughter and smiles are never far away, even if repression is tightening or the tear gas canisters are hailing from the sky. Laughter kills the fear and in Randa Bashir I see a fearless and relentless human rights activist.

Jonas Wber is a volunteer with International Solidarity Movement (name has been changed).

Solidarity with Khader Adnan in the No Go Zone

by Nathan Stuckey

14 February 2012 | International Solidarity Movement, West Bank

Two months ago, few of us knew the name Khader Adnan. Today, he is an inspiration to all of us. Two months ago he was kidnapped from his home by Israel. He was charged with no crime. He was abused by his captors and interrogators from the moment he was arrested. None of this is unusual in Palestine, every day people are kidnapped from their homes, abused, and held without charge. Torture is a routine matter for prisoners of the occupation. None of the abuse that Israel inflicted on Khader Adnan was new, it has happened to thousands, really hundreds of thousands of Palestinians under the occupation.

It was all so routine that no one would bother to report on it, that is a specialty of the occupation, to make crimes so routine that they are not news. Khader Adnan, a thirty three year old Palestinian baker, stood up, he said no. He is willing to give his life for dignity; a life without dignity is not life. Khader Adnan has been on hunger strike for 59 days, he lies near death in an Israeli hospital chained to his bed. He has still not been charged with any crime.

Khader Adnan is not striking only for himself, as he said, “I hereby assert that I am confronting the occupiers not for my own sake as an individual, but for the sake of thousands of prisoners who are being deprived of their simplest human rights while the world and international community look on.”

He could die at any time.

Protests have been held to support him around the world. Hundreds of Palestinians have joined hunger strikes in solidarity with him. Today, in Beit Hanoun, we marched in solidarity with him. We gathered by the half destroyed Beit Hanoun Agricultural College, we passed out posters of Khader Adnan, we raised the Palestinian flag, and we set off into the buffer zone. Above us were three Israel Apaches, a drone, and an observation balloon, in front of us was a giant concrete wall with towers full of soldiers, and a jeep and a tank on a hill.

This did not deter us. Israel has a history of shooting missiles into demonstrations and shooting live ammunition into unarmed demonstrations is a regular occurrence, especially in Gaza. We marched down the road into the no go zone.

The no go zone is a place of death. Israel has forced out everyone who used to live there, it has destroyed their houses, bulldozed their orchards, and now it claims the right to shoot anyone who enters it. The land is scarred by the blades of bulldozers, by the tracks of tanks. We marched across it, toward Erez, toward the wall that surrounds Gaza, toward the wall that reminds us all that Gaza is a giant prison. We walked until we were about 50 meters from the wall.

Khader Adnan’s wife called us, she thanked us for our support, and described her husband’s suffering, “He is chained to a bed, he is in constant pain, he looks like a ghost. Still he does not give up.”

Sabur Zaaneen from the Beit Hanoun Local Initiative spoke, “Israel does not respect human rights, the crimes of the occupation are unending, but so will be our resistance to the occupation, the popular resistance will continue until the end of the occupation.” We chanted our support for Khader, for a man willing to die to live in honor, for a man willing to give his life for his people’s right to live in honor, for a man willing to give his life in his struggle against the occupation.

After the demonstration Sabur received a call from the Palestinian police at the Erez crossing. The Israeli army had called them threatening to fire on the demonstration unless we left the area. They threatened to fire on an unarmed demonstration in support of a man who has been on hunger strike for 59 days, a man who could die at any moment, a man who has not even been charged with any crime. Just as 800,000 Palestinians were forced from their land in 1948 today Israel threatens unarmed demonstrators on their land with death unless they leave their land.

Just as Khader Adnan is steadfast in his hunger strike, we will be steadfast in our resistance to the occupation, like him, we struggle for a life of dignity, a dignity denied by the occupation. Khader Adnan is our hero; his steadfastness is an inspiration to all of us.

Thank you Khader Adnan.

Nathan Stuckey is a volunteer with International Solidarity Movement.

Turtles in Aqraba

by Jonas Weber

10 February 2012 | International Solidarity Movement, West Bank

“Hurry up you turtles!” Wael yelled in the distance. He had suddenly turned this walk into some kind of contest. We skipped across the rocky landscape of Palestine, dirty and with the sun in our eyes.

We were planting trees in the small village of Aqraba, putting up pictures of our missed friends Rachel Corrie and Vittario Arrigoni. Men and women, young and old were helping out with the planting, and we were treated to tea sweet as syrup. Aqaba has lost 144,000 dunums of land to the ten illegal settlements surrounding the village. A road is being built between the settlements of Itamar and Gittit, effectively grabbing even more of the 17,000 dunums still in the villages possession.

After the planting some villagers insisted on showing us something on the other side of the mountain adjacent to the hillside on which we were planting the trees. We went down the slope between the blooming red, yellow, and purple flowers. We crossed the road leading from Itamar to Gittit and started climbing around the hill on the other side. From a rock right next to the trail a turtle watched us wobble past a hyenas nest with our arms stretched out to our sides, so as not to lose our balance.

On the other side of the hill, was a cave used by sheepherders as a place to sleep for hundreds of years. A few steps further down the road I got to see my first blooming almond tree of the year. Beyond that, the lemon groves stretched across the floor of the valley.

We were given lemons and oranges by the farmers and their children. I used the few Arabic phrases I knew to express my gratitude. Then we started the journey back to the olive trees. We picked up speed, not even stopping to admire the stunning view of the rolling green hills of the West Bank. Wael picked up the pace, treading with experienced feet over the rocky ground.

As a worn-out tourist and skeptic, who has long given up the search for the genuine and untouched, I find myself in this setting, my hands sticky with the sour juice of fresh lemons. The sheep grazing the mountainside stare at me just like the turtle, the street vendors of the old city of Nablus, and the children of Balata. As a Westerner I stand out here, without ever feeling like an outsider. The stare of the turtle, the sheep, the vendors, the children are all full of anticipation and curiosity, as is mine when I round the steep mountainside to catch up with Wael.

“Hurry up you turtles!” he yells in the distance.

But I find no reason to hurry. Palestine has greeted me well.

Jonas Weber is a volunteer with International Solidarity Movement (name has been changed).