Hebron – Ma’an – Seventeen Palestinians were injured when Israeli soldiers opened fire on Palestinian demonstrators in Israeli-occupied Hebron on Friday.
Confrontations between Israeli troops and stone-throwing Palestinian youths took place on Tareq-Ibin Ziad Street, which is in a section of Hebron under the full control of the Israeli military. Medical sources said that the soldiers used live ammunition.
Medics at Muhammad Ali Hospital in Hebron said that eight children were among the 17 treated for bullet and shrapnel wounds. Most of the injuries were on the demonstrators’ lower bodies, except for two people who were wounded above the waist. Three people were shot with rubber-coated metal bullets.
Massive demonstrations have taken place in Hebron after prayer every Friday since the beginning of the Israeli assault on the Gaza Strip. In mid-January one demonstrator was killed by Israeli fire.
The demonstrations have also seen the largest number of Hamas supporters openly showing their presence in the West Bank, which is ruled by the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority (PA). The PA however has no authority in the Israeli-controlled H2 section of Hebron, which is where the demonstrations have been.
Adam Shapiro, the symbol of a courageous, pure peace advocate, has long been under fire for his unconditional and categorical criticism of Israeli occupying state.Photo from Palestine Think Tank
Born in 1972, the perseverant and steadfast anti-Zionist campaigner and co-founder of International Solidarity Movement vigorously makes efforts to broadcast the voice of subjugated and downtrodden nation of Palestine.
Following his meeting with Yasser Arafat in his Mukataa (government center) in Ramallah while it was besieged during the March 2002 Israeli military operation in the West Bank and Gaza, Adam Shapiro attained an international popularity and was put under the spotlight of Zionist media thereafter.
Despite enduring a stack of insults and invectives from the side of Zionist campaign in the past years, Adam Shapiro neither has relinquished nor alleviated his stance so far; rather intensified his anti-Zionist statements in the particular situations such as the horrendous 22 days of Israeli incursion into Gaza.
This interview has been done in the midst of Israeli genocide in Gaza as it’s apparent in some points of the conversation; nevertheless, it contains some informative and revealing information which are prone to be read and reflected thoughtfully.
Would you please elucidate about the salient and prominent activities which you usually carry out in the International Solidarity Movement? What are your agenda, modus operandi and plans to help the survivors of recent offensive in Gaza?
The International Solidarity Movement (ISM) started off in 2001 as an effort to join international solidarity to the Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation and oppression. This was through the joining of foreign activists with Palestinian activists in civilian-based non-violent active resistance in the west bank and Gaza. this kind of popular resistance has always been part of the Palestinian movement, and we felt that adding the international component would force the world to recognize that the conflict was not about Jew vs. Arab or Jew vs. Muslim, but rather a situation of oppression and discrimination based on ethnicity and religion in a sense similar to the anti-apartheid movement in south Africa.
Nowadays, the ISM role continues in this way, but is also more and more involved with being an eyewitness and reporting on the atrocities of what is happening to the Palestinian people. ISM volunteers spend longer periods of time in the territories and get to know the situation in depth.
Currently ISM has 5 volunteers in the Gaza Strip, who are responding during this assault on the people of Gaza – they are escorting ambulances and medical personnel who are responding to emergency calls; they are documenting what is happening and reporting out to the world, even as the Zionist government bars foreign journalists; they are assisting in the distribution of food and water as they can and to areas that are under major threat; and they are documenting evidence of war crimes, such as the use of white phosphorous artillery shells.
According to what you said, one effective and impressive choice that could help the progressive flow of Palestinians’ extrication and release from the harsh situation is to promote the notion of imposing sanctions, embargo on Israel. How is it possible to boycott and isolate the terrorist regime in the international stage?
There is a call from Palestinian civil society to boycott Israel, and it is for this reason that we are compelled to adhere to this call. That said, sanctions will most likely be symbolic at best, given the penetration of businesses in Israel and the difficulty to render such an impact. Symbolically, however the boycott, sanctions and divestment (BDS) campaign is very useful, particularly in the west, where it enables us to alter the debate away from spurious charges of anti-Semitism towards pointing out specifically why such measures are necessary. Additionally, the academic and cultural boycott can have tangible results, forcing Israeli academics, artists and intellectuals to confront the reality of their own position and force them to take a stand. There are very credible and valuable efforts in this regard, including a recent determination by a UK-based teachers union. However, in a sense, we need to remember that far more dramatic action is required, given that this situation for the Palestinians has been going on for 60 years, and the scale of the devastation and oppression of the entire Palestinian people is at such a level that symbolic actions – while good – do not meet the urgency of the situation.
Nevertheless, US and its European allies flagrantly veto any anti-Israeli resolution which comes on the top of UNSC agenda and don’t allow the international community to express its unequivocal and clear condemnation of Israeli massacre freely. What’s the reason, in your view, and how can that be opposed?
The reason has to do with domestic factors for the US more than anything else. I think for the European nations it is connected to the lingering guilt over the holocaust, a situation that is exploited by Israel and some of the Jewish organizations in those countries to maintain a code of silence when it comes to clearly calling out Israel for what has been a 60-year effort of crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing. For the US, there really is no organized constituency willing to vote or donate to politicians campaigns based on this issue. Those who would are small in number and largely ineffective. the pro-Israel lobby in the US is not only among the organized Jewish community, but includes Christian Zionists, the military-industrial complex in the US, the information technology industry, the biotech industry, the medical community and others, all of which have significant relationships with Israel from a business perspective. This all has repercussions in the US political system and set the parameters of the debate in the US around us support for Israel.
That said, I also think the Palestinian leadership has missed opportunities over the years, but most importantly it accepted the framework of peace as a means of addressing the conflict, which helped set up a false sense of parity between the two parties. Instead of maintaining a position of national liberation, or creating a movement based on equal rights or ending oppression/discrimination, the choice for 2 states in the framework of peacemaking has helped allow the us and others to ‘blame both sides’.
All of these inconsistencies aside, neither the American double standards about the Israel’s nuclear case are bearable. They are folding their arms and sitting back relaxed while everybody, even ex-President Carter has confessed that Israel deposits 200 nuclear warheads!
Indeed, on this point in particular the hypocrisy reaches the level of absurd. Add to the points you raise in the question to the fact that Israel has been at war more than any other state in the region and almost always as the initiator and aggressor; not only in the formal wars, but also in the cross-border skirmishes, as occurred with Egypt and Lebanon in the past. If any regime in the region was volatile and prone to use military force it is Israel. A s such, there should be great world concern about its weapons of mass destruction, also since we have seen that Israel is willing to use dubious weapons and disproportionate force such as we witnessed in Lebanon in 2006 (cluster bombs) and Gaza today (white phosphorous artillery).
Accordingly, it seems that the mainstream media are pusillanimously afraid of the Israeli tyrannical lobby which rules the global corporate media. They censor any kind of news reflecting demonstrations, condemnations and anti-Israeli remarks by the world’s statesmen. How can they justify this unilateral and hostile approach in conveying the information?
I think many of the same factors that influence how the US and European governments act also influence the media’s role. But there is also an element of having a media strategy that requires examination. Israel and its allies around the world have a clear, organized and effective media strategy to promote the messaging and images that they want. Sure, there is media bias, but it would be false to think that that bias is the beginning and the end. After all, I know many journalists who cover the conflict and who seek to promote different perspectives in their newspapers and broadcasts. On the Palestinian side, there really is not an effective media strategy, and certainly not one that is organized. Some of these very practical details can make a very big difference in the coverage of the issue. While I don’t think this can fully overcome the bias that does exist, it can start making changes in the overall system.
I also think with the advent of new media, including Al-Jazeera and Press TV in particular, mainstream western media outlets are being challenged and being forced to change. Even the BBC’s own Arabic service has forced a certain change in BBC’s English service, which while subtle, nonetheless has important consequences.
Finally, I think it is also somewhat easy to overcount the media, in that worldwide, the Palestinian position of justice and ending occupation and oppression is the majority opinion, despite the media coverage. It is not world opinion that necessarily needs to change; it is the actions of governments.
So what actions are needed to administer justice about Israel? How could the world’s countries prevent it from committing further, predictable atrocities and seeking adventurous war-games in the region?
There needs to be unequivocal action in the international community to force Israel to end is aggression in Gaza. This should entail full suspension of diplomatic relations (as we have seen in Venezuela and Bolivia); full arms embargo on Israel; and the establishment of a criminal court under the ICC (mandated by the Security Council) to bring forward war crimes charges. while these maybe long-shots, we have to remember that the Palestinian people, unlike virtually any other people in the world, are wholly dependent on the international community to act to help, both because it is the international community that is responsible for the original partitioning and displacement of the Palestinians and because Palestinians do not have a state, an army or any means of self-defense. The UN General Assembly can also act and take dramatic action, and it should – and this would be a way to overcome a us veto.
And what about an international investigation on the illegal employment of unconventional weapons, mass killing of women and children, beleaguering the densely-populated strip for a long time and killing journalists, media correspondents and representatives of international communities?
There needs to be a tribunal established to try these crimes committed in Gaza. But this is truly not sufficient. The crimes of 60 years need to be addressed. Because of the impunity Israel has enjoyed since 1948, the lesson it learned is that there are no consequences for its actions and no limits. The Palestinians have borne the brunt of that ‘freedom to act’ for 60 years. It is not enough to say what Israel is doing in Gaza today is too much. What was done in Deir Yassin, in Tantoura, in Lid, in the Jenin refugee camp, in Israeli prisons, and hundreds of other places and over the course of years, has been beyond the limit of international law and human rights. Of course, I would welcome justice for the crimes committed in Gaza, but this should just be the beginning.
On day US Mideast envoy arrives in Israel, Peace Now movement publishes report on settlement expansion activity last year. Yesha Council pleased with ‘documentation of Zionist enterprise’
Efrat Weiss | Ynet
Jewish settlements and outposts in the West Bank expanded more rapidly in 2008 than the previous year, Peace now reported on Wednesday. The timing of the report is no coincidence, and it was released on the day US Envoy to the Middle East George Mitchell was scheduled to arrive in Israel.
Mitchell has spoken out against the illegal construction of settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories in the past.
According to the report, there were 285,800 settlers living in the West Bank as of 2008, with 1,518 new structures built in the territories last year, including 261 outposts.
Sixty-one percent of the new structures were built west of the route of the separation fence and 39% were built east of it. A quarter of the new structures east of the fence were built in outposts.
At least 1,257 new structures were built in existing settlements, including 748 permanent buildings and 509 caravans compared to 800 structures in 2007 – a 60% rise. In addition the ground was prepared for the construction of 63 new structures.
Peace Now also presented a list of settlements with large construction project in the last six months: Alfei Menashe (16 new structures), Efrat (15 new structures), Beit Arye (27 new structures), Beitar Illit (18 new structures), Keidar (13 new structures), Giv’at Ze’ev (10 new structures), Modi’in Illit (35 new structures), Ma’ale Adumim (13 new structures), Ma’ale Shomron (19 new structures).
Settlements in which at least 10 new caravans were built in the last half-year are Har Bracha, Ofra, Kiryat Arba and Shilo.
Outposts
The report continued to say that not a single real outpost was evacuated in 2008, and at least 261 new structures were built, including 227 caravans and 34 permanent structures, compared to 98 structures in 2007 (including 82 caravans and 16 permanent structures).
In addition the ground was prepared for the construction of nine new permanent structures.In three of every four outposts construction or development work took place in 2008.
Besides these outposts there is a large number of additional points controlled by the settlers but without their permanent presence.
At the outpost of Migron for example the settlers added 5 new structures and began building an extension for another permanent structure.
The Peace Now report said, “It seems that the government announcement to the High Court of Justice that it agreed with the settlers to evacuate Migron and relocate it to the settlement of Adam must have encouraged the settlers to begin construction at Migron, because if the relocation does take place it will take years.”
‘Settlers took advantage of Gaza war’
During the war in Gaza the settlers took advantage of the fact that all public attention was on the south to expand construction in the outposts and settlements, the report said.
The organization said at this point it is difficult to assess the amount of construction done during the weeks of the war but it can be stated with certainty that a number of new roads were opened, with the goal of extending control in the areas near the settlements.
Roads opened include one connecting the settlement of Eli with the settlement of Shilo, a road extending control surrounding the outpost of Haro’e and an expanded road ascending from Eli cemetery towards Hayovel outpost.
The report continued to say that in 2008 tenders were issued to build 539 new housing units in the settlements, compared to only 65 housing units in 2007, an eight-fold increase in the number of tenders.
Construction permits were also granted for the beginning of work on large projects west of the fence: Nine-hundred-and-fifty housing units in Ma’ale Adumim, 800 housing units in Giv’at Ze’ev, 100 housing units in Ariel and more.
In addition a considerable momentum began in planning and construction in east Jerusalem.
Peace Now said Defense Minister Ehud Barak approved dozens of construction plans in settlements in 2008, some east of the fence.
Among the substantial plans approved was the establishment of the settlement of Sansana -in southern Mount Hebron, establishment of the settlement of Maskiyot, the expansion of the settlement in Hebron, and more.
According to the report all the outposts Barak declared were evacuated were not fully evacuated. The evacuation of the disputed house in Hebron is the exception.
Peace Now Secretary-General Yariv Oppenheimer said, “The Labor-Kadima government is a big disappointment in anything to do with freezing construction in settlements.
The settlers don’t have to wait for Bibi (Netanyahu), since the present government has allowed construction not just in settlement blocks, but also in isolated settlements and outposts.”
‘Most important Zionist enterprise of our time’
Yesha Council said in response, “Once again we thank Peace Now for allocating the money they get from the European Union towards documenting the most important Zionist enterprise of our generation – settling in Judea and Samaria.”
The Council added that “some of the data are not exactly accurate. The number of settlers today according to official data stands at over 300,000 Israelis.
“Regarding the allegations of ‘taking advantage’ of the war to pave roads, all of Israel knows who took advantage of the war to demonstrate against IDF soldiers and who sent their sons to the front line to give their soul in defense of the State.”
Meanwhile, the Yesha Council plans to welcome American Envoy George Mitchell.
On Wednesday, settlers will put on a special presentation titled “A Palestinian state will blow up in our face”, in an attempt to illustrate the “dangers establishing a Palestinian state in Judea and Samara would pose on central Israel, following the lessons learned from the disengagement, the rockets on Beersheba, Gedera and the war in the south”.
The three-dimensional presentation will be accompanied by audio and visual effects and will travel on a large truck from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem during Mitchell’s meetings with the heads of the State.
“Where can I bring him a father from? Where can I bring him a mother from? You tell me!”
These are the desperate words of Subhi Samouni to Al Jazeera’s Gaza correspondent. Subhi lost 17 members of his immediate family, including the parents of his 7-year old grandson. Shockingly, even as I write this article, corpses of the Samouni family are still being retrieved from under the rubble – 15 days after the Israeli Occupation Forces shelled the two houses. The Israeli Occupation Forces locked 120 members of the family in one house for 12 hours before they shelled it..
Subhi’s words echo the harsh reality of all Palestinians in Gaza: alone, abandoned, hunted down, brutalized, and, like Subhi’s grandson, orphaned. 22 days of savage butchery took the lives of 1312 Palestinians, over 85 per cent of them civilians, including 434 children, 104 women, 16 medics, 4 journalists, 5 foreigners, and 105 old people..
What can one say to comfort a man who has the harrowing task of having to bury his entire family, including his wife, his sons, his daughters and his grandchildren? Tell us and we will relay your words to Uncle Subhi because his loss has made our words of condolences meaningless to our ears.
Think also of words you want to say to 70-year old Rasheed Mohammed, whose 44-year old son Samir was executed with a single bullet to the heart in front of his wife and children. The IOF refused to let an ambulance pick up his corpse for 11 days so his family had to wait for the assault to stop before they could bury him. 70-year old Rasheed had the excruciatingly painful experience of looking at, touching, kissing, and then burying the decomposed body of his son. Tell this family how to make sense of their harsh reality – say something to make the children sleep, to ease the anguish in the father’s heart, to help the wife understand why her husband had to be taken from her.
You might prefer to talk to 14-year old Amira Qirm, whose house in Gaza City was shelled with artillery and phosphorous bombs – bombs which burnt to death 3 members of her immediate family: her father, her 12-year-old brother, Ala’a, and her 11-year old sister, Ismat. Alone, injured and terrified, Amira crawled 500m on her knees to a house close by – it was empty because the family had fled when the Israeli attack began. She stayed there for 4 days, surviving only on water, and listening to the sounds of the Israeli killing machine all around her, too afraid to cry out in pain in case the soldiers heard her. When the owner of the house returned to get clothes for his family, he found Amira, weak and close to death. She is now being treated for her injuries in the overcrowded and under- resourced Al-Shifa hospital.
You can try to comfort 10 year-old Mohammed Samouni who was found lying next to the bodies of his mother and siblings, 5 days after they were killed. He would tell you what he has been telling everyone – that his brother woke suddenly after being asleep for a long time. His brother told him that he was hungry, asked for a tomato to eat and then died. Are there any other 10-year olds in the world who are asked to carry this experience around with them for the rest of their lives? Of course not – this ‘privilege’ is reserved just for Palestinian children because they were born on the land that Israel wants for itself. But it is these traumatized children who will deny Israel what it wants because their very survival is a challenge to that apartheid state. It is these same children who will surely inherit Palestine: it is their birthright and no assault can change that fact – not today, not ever..
And through it all we were subjected to Tzipi Livni, Israel’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, adamant in her defence of the world’s most ‘moral’ army. “We don’t target civilians” she lied. “We don’t want the Palestinians to leave Gaza. We just want them to move within Gaza itself!” Israel’s PM Ehud Olmert too had something to say to Palestinians in Gaza: “We are not your enemy. Hamas is your enemy.”
Amira, Mohammed, Rasheed, Subhi and the more than 40,000 families whose houses have been demolished know differently. Those people who rushed to the cemetery after it was bombed and found the body parts of their dead relatives exposed to the elements know differently. They know that they were deliberately targeted because they are Palestinian. All the rest is propaganda to appease the conscience of those with Palestinian blood on their hands – those who are both inside and outside Israel.
For 22 long days and dark nights, Gazans were left alone to face the 4th strongest army in the world – an army that has 250 nuclear heads, thousands of trigger-happy soldiers armed with Merkava tanks, F16s, Apache helicopters, naval gunships and phosphorous bombs. 22 sleepless nights, 1528 hours of constant shelling and shooting, every single minute expecting to be the next victim.
During these 22 days, while morgues overflowed and hospitals struggled to treat the injured, Arab regimes issued tons of statements, condemned and denounced and held one meaningless press conference after another. They even held two summits, the first one convened 19 full days after the assault on Gaza began and the second one the day after Israel had declared a unilateral ceasefire!
The official Arab position vis-à-vis the Palestinians since 1948, with the exception of the progressive Nationalist era (1954-1970) has been a lethal cocktail of cowardice and hypocrisy. Their latest collective failure to break the 2-year old Israeli siege of the Gaza Strip and their lack of action to support Palestinians under brutal military assault must be questioned.
Arabs must demand answers from the spineless Arab League because there was no brotherly solidarity shown to Gazans during the Israeli assault. There was no Pan Arabism evident in their platitudes. Some, shockingly, even found it an appropriate time to blame Palestinians for the situation they found themselves in, instead of demanding that Israel stop its merciless assault.
In Gaza today, we wonder how the expressions of support for us in the streets of Arab capitals can be translated into action in the absence of democracy. We wonder whether Arab citizens of despotic regimes can non-violently change the system. We torment ourselves with trying to discern the means that are currently available for democratic political change. With the ongoing massacre in Gaza, and the construction of an Apartheid system in Palestine (1948, 1967), we know that to survive, we must have the support and solidarity of our Arab brothers and sisters. We saw the Arab people rise to that challenge and stand by us for 22 days but we did not see their leaders behind them.
Archbishop Desmund Tutu of South Africa said, “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.” The UN, EU, Arab League and the international community by and large have remained silent in the face of atrocities committed by Apartheid Israel. They are therefore on the side of Israel. Hundreds of dead corpses of children and women have failed to convince them to act. This is what every Palestinian knows today – whether on the streets of the Gaza Strip, the West Bank or refugee camps in the Diaspora
We are, therefore, left with one option; an option that does not wait for the UNSC, Arab Summits, or Organization of Islamic Conference to convene: the option of people’s power. This remains the only power capable of counteracting the massive power imbalance in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The horror of the racist Apartheid regime in South Africa was challenged with a sustained campaign of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) initiated in 1958 and given new urgency in 1960 after the Sharpeville Massacre. This campaign led ultimately to the collapse of white rule in 1994 and the establishment of a multi-racial, democratic state.
Similarly, the Palestinian call for BDS has been gathering momentum since 2005. Gaza 2009, like Sharpeville 1960, cannot be ignored: it demands a response from all who believe in a common humanity. Now is the time to boycott the apartheid Israeli state, to divest and to impose sanctions against it. This is the only way to ensure the creation of a secular, democratic state for all in historic Palestine.
This is the only answer to Uncle Subhi’s puzzling questions: it is the only way to give his grandson a future, a life of dignity and equality, a life with both peace and justice, because like all children, he deserves nothing less.
Two more videos shot by the International Solidarity Movement taken by The Guardian as proof of use of banned weapons by Israeli forces in Gaza.
Robert Booth | The Guardian
Ayman al Najar, 13, tells how he lost his sister, grandfather and cousin in a bomb attack
The Guardian has obtained vivid footage of the effect of white phosphorus allegedly used by Israel during a bomb attack on Gaza last week.
The film was made by Fida Qishta, a camerawoman working for the International Solidarity Movement, a non-governmental organization operating in Gaza. It was shot on Wednesday 14 January in Khoza’a, east of Khan Younis in the south of the Gaza Strip.
It shows clumps of the burning chemical on the ground as locals try to put it out by covering it with dust, mud and grass. The chemical, which locals describe as phosphorus, fails to go out and continues to burn through the debris piled upon it. As they kick it about, it subdivides into smaller lumps and continues to burn.
The use of white phosphorus as a weapon – as opposed to its use as an obscurant and infrared blocking smoke screen – is banned by the United Nation’s third convention on conventional weapons, which covers the use of incendiary devices. Though Israel is not a signatory to the convention, its military manuals reflect the restrictions on its use in that convention.
A second film reveals the impact of the white phosphorus on the human body. A 15-year-old boy is shown in a Gaza hospital receiving treatment for burns to his back and right arm which a doctor explains were caused by the chemical, which appears to have eaten into his flesh in several places.
Palestinians try to put out burning chemical banned as a weapon under United Nations convention
Lying on his hospital bed, the boy tells how he was sitting with his family in their four-story house when an Israeli bomb hit, killing his sister with shrapnel.
His testimony follows an earlier film by Qishta which contains graphic descriptions of attacks by Israeli forces in the same area.
Amnesty International said today that Israel has committed a war crime by using phosphorous over Gaza’s densely populated residential neighborhoods. The human rights organization also said they had fresh evidence of its use.
“Yesterday, we saw streets and alleyways littered with evidence of the use of white phosphorus, including still burning wedges and the remnants of the shells and canisters fired by the Israeli army,” said Christopher Cobb-Smith, a weapons expert who is in Gaza as part of a four-person Amnesty International fact-finding team. “White phosphorus is a weapon intended to provide a smokescreen for troop movements on the battlefield. It is highly incendiary, air burst and its spread effect is such that it that should never be used on civilian areas.”
