To view original article, published by Maan News Agency on the 3rd November, click here
Hebron – Israeli settlers set fire to a Palestinian house in the West Bank city of Hebron on Wednesday, continuing two weeks of violence.
On Tuesday, hundreds of Israeli settlers attacked Palestinians in the West Bank city of Hebron on Monday night and Tuesday, throwing stones and beating residents with clubs while Israeli soldiers and police looked on.
Palestinians and their property were attacked in the Ar-Ras, Wadi Al-Hussain and Al-Ja’bari neighborhoods. Settlers also released dogs to attack the Palestinians. Israeli soldiers also fired tear gas and sonic bombs towards Palestinian houses.
Dozens of Palestinian citizens were injured. Witnesses reported that the settler mob numbered in the hundreds.
Settlers groups have descended upon Hebron over the last two weeks since Israel’s High Court of Justice ordered 13 settler families to leave the Palestinian-owned Ar-Rajabi house, which the Israelis have occupied since 2007. Rumors spread on Monday that the Israeli military was preparing to implement the order.
“It is not about Ar-Rajabi building. Settlers want to occupy Al-Ja’bari and As-Salayma neighborhoods as well as Wadi Al-Hussain, Ar-Ras and the Christian neighborhoods in order to connect Kiryat Arba’ and Kiryat Kharsina settlements with other outposts,” said Munawwar Ja’bary, an elderly woman from Ja’bari neighborhood.
She added, “Men, women and children have been attacked and injured. Our houses have been damaged. We have been prevented from leaving our homes. Our cemeteries and mosques have been desecrated in order to force us to leave, yet we will steadfast whatever they do.”
Several houses and shops were also attacked, especially water reservoirs on tops of the houses. Settlers also attempted to force shops’ doors open using crowbars and hammers. Two houses were partially torched. The windows of four cars were shattered and fire was set to two others.
The violence continued all of Monday night. On Tuesday morning settlers resumed their attacks, pelting Palestinians with with stones from the roof of the Ar-Rajabi building.
Witnesses said Israeli police and soldiers stationed in the city did nothing to prevent the attacks, and in some cases facilitated them.
To view original article, published by The Electronic Intifada on the 26th November, click here
Abu Kamel and his wife, Um Kamel, eat breakfast with international volunteers at the al-Kurd’s family home. (Photo by Pam Rasmussen)
The saying that a man’s home is his castle goes back to the 1500s. Whether it is a mansion or a mud hut, a home to which you can retreat and be safe is a basic human need. But since 2001, Abu Kamel (Mohammed al-Kurd), his wife and five children were forced to fight every day for the right to stay in the East Jerusalem home his family had lived in for decades. And although the Jewish settlers who tried to push them out — literally — didn’t put a gun to his head and pull the trigger, they might as well have.
Two weeks after the al-Kurds were finally evicted from their home on 9 November, Abu Kamel suffered a fatal heart attack. Now, Um Kamel (his wife, Fawzieh) who I grew to admire and respect while I camped on their patio as a volunteer with the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) must wage the fight alone.
In October, my friend Jean and I traveled to Palestine from the United States to volunteer with the ISM during the fall olive harvest. When a foot injury ended my usefulness at olive-picking, we left Nablus for East Jerusalem, where the ISM had been keeping watch on the al-Kurds patio since the summer hoping to prevent the eviction that eventually came.
The al-Kurds’ house is part of a project that the Jordanian government built with the UN agency for Palestine refugees, UNRWA, to house 28 families who were forced to flee their original homes in 1948, after the Nakba, the forced expulsion of Palestinians from their homeland. Abu Kamel’s family was forced to flee West Jerusalem during the ethnic cleansing, and settled in the house in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood. All of the parties involved agreed then that ownership of the houses would be transferred to the families within three years.
There they lived in peace until shortly after the June War in 1967, when two groups of Jewish settlers claimed ownership of the land, despite the earlier, documented agreement between Jordan and UNRWA. The struggle that followed took both parties into the courts, then escalated dramatically in 2001. When Abu Kamel suffered a heart attack and his family left the house to take him to medical treatment elsewhere, one of the settler families took advantage of his ill health. They moved in and occupied an extension to the home that the al-Kurds had renovated for one of their sons. When they returned, the al-Kurds faced the agonizing choice of abandoning their longtime home or living side-by-side with the representatives of a group that was trying to force them out. Despite Abu Kamel’s fragile health, they chose to stay and fight.
Early this year, the situation began heating up. Despite the fact that the Israeli Supreme Court had ruled that the settlers claim on the land is fraudulent, an investment company acquired the right to raze all of the Palestinian homes in the community and replace them with 200 settler housing units and a commercial center. 15 July 2008 was set as the eviction date, and while the al-Kurds who became the standard bearers for the entire neighborhood appealed once more to the court, the ISM moved in to help. In response, the settlers’ organization hired their own protection, an armed guard.
We lived in two tents set up on the patio, and one of us was present 24 hours a day, sleeping in shifts throughout the night. Um Kamel brought us tea at 7am, and she and Abu Kamel joined us for a traditional breakfast at 9am. A midday meal followed at 3pm. Although language was a bit of a barrier at first, we soon warmed up to each other and the routine. Abu Kamel was a quiet, solid presence, and Fawzieh was a model of cheerfulness and perseverance in the face of adversity. In addition to preparing our meals, she regularly played host to visiting delegations from international and Israeli peace organizations telling her family’s story over and over, marshaling support for their cause as well as for the Palestinian community overall.
I will remember our time with the al-Kurds as a highlight of my stay in Palestine, an oasis of warm hospitality in a hostile surrounding. One week later, just after we reluctantly returned to our home in the United States, I got the news: at 3:30 in the morning on Sunday, 9 November, the Israeli army swooped in and forced the al-Kurds out, while detaining the ISM volunteers who had taken our place. That was the beginning of the end for Abu Kamel. Suffering from dangerously high blood pressure, the 61-year-old Mohammed was admitted to the hospital on 22 November. Just hours later, he died.
Abu Kamel lives on through Fawzieh, however. She has kept up the fight with the help of the ISM and other volunteers by camping in a tent close by her rightful home. Despite further attempts by the Israeli army to discourage her, this time through fines and destruction of her canvas shelter, she and her fellow protesters are persevering. This is nonviolent resistance at its best, and its up to us to show that it can work.
Pam Rasmussen works in the healthcare field and lives in Maryland. Visit www.thou-shalt-not-steal.org, sign the petition and send a message to the Israeli government.
To view original article, published by Ynet on the 26th November, click here
Research conducted by human rights organization Yesh Din finds only 6 percent of investigations against soldiers accused of harming Palestinian civilians resulted in indictments in last seven years; military courts fail to hand severe sentences for offenses
Only six percent of investigations against IDF soldiers suspected of abusing Palestinians in the last seven years led to indictments, a report published by the Yesh Din human rights organization revealed on Wednesday.
According to the group, thousands of Palestinian civilians who were not involved in operations against the IDF were killed from the beginning of the second intifada and until 2007. However, only very few cases resulted in the filing of charges against the soldiers implicated with those deaths.
Until today military courts convicted only five soldiers for the deaths of four civilians: Three Palestinians and one British citizen.
The report is based on data provided by the army, according to which of the 1,264 investigations launched by the military police since 2000, only 78 led to indictments against one soldier or more.
‘IDF abandons Palestinian population’
Yesh Din further claimed that the IDF was far from judging severely those soldiers convicted of abusing Palestinian civilians. For instance, all soldiers found guilty of plundering, an offense which carries a maximum sentence of 10 years, were handed prison sentences ranging between 40 days to six months.
Lior Yavne, research director at Yesh Din and the author of the report, said: “A soldier who chooses to beat up a handcuffed Palestinian, or who unnecessarily shoots an unarmed civilian, knows that the chances of him facing trial or even investigated are slim.
“The report illustrates how the IDF leaves the population of the occupied territories exposed to its soldiers’ arbitrariness.”
To view original article, published by Haaretz on the 26th November, click here
Libya has recently sent a ship carrying 3,000 tons of humanitarian aid to Gaza, Palestinian media outlets reported Wednesday, in an attempt to break the blockade Israel has imposed on the coastal territory.
The Palestine News Network reported on Tuesday that supplies that were official aid from Libya, a state with which Israel has no diplomatic relations.
The network quoted Libyan officials as saying that, “The Palestinians are starving from this attack.
“There is also political isolation and the media is ignoring the situation. This mission was not created to show our messages of solidarity, but to provide concrete assistance.”
The International Middle East Media Center, a Palestinian news organization, quoted a Gaza official as calling on other Arab states to flout the blockade.
According to the organization, Jamal al-Khudary, the head of the Palestinian Popular Anti-Siege Committee protest, also said: “This ship is a practical measure against the siege… it is not for media consumption.”
If the boat reaches Gaza, it will be the fourth to have done so since Israel imposed the blockade on the Hamas-ruled territory in response to cross-border rocket fire.
The boats that have sailed to Gaza until now have been manned by political activists. The reported Libyan voyage would constitute the first such one by a sovereign state.
To view original article, published by Haaretz on the 22nd November, click here
Gaza faces a humanitarian “catastrophe” if Israel continues to prevent aid reaching the territory by blocking crossing points, the head of the main UN aid agency for the Palestinians said on Friday.
Karen AbuZayd, commissioner-general of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), said the human toll of this month’s sealing of Gaza’s goods crossings was the gravest since the early days of a Palestinian uprising eight years ago.
“It’s been closed for so much longer than ever before… and we have nothing in our warehouses… It will be a catastrophe if this persists, a disaster,” said AbuZayd, whose agency is the largest aid body providing services to Palestinian refugees.
Israel closed the crossings after Palestinian militants responded with daily rocket salvoes to an Israeli army incursion on Nov. 4 into the Hamas-run territory, where a five-month-old, Egyptian-brokered ceasefire had largely been holding.
At present, UNRWA provides rations for 820,000 people classed as refugees and the United Nations’ World Food Program aids a further 200,000 people, AbuZayd told Reuters in Amman.
“They often bring us to the brink but they never have let us really be frightened about whether we are going to have food tomorrow or not,” AbuZayd said.
Israel had restricted goods into Gaza despite the truce, which calls on militants to halt rocket attacks in return for Israel easing its embargo on the territory.
“This time throughout this whole truce since June none of us have been able to bring in anything extra that would create a reserve so we had nothing to call upon,” she said.
She said people were sweeping warehouses because there is now nothing in them.
Israel also held up deliveries of European Union-funded fuel for the power plant, which generates about a third of the electricity consumed by Gazans. The rest comes from Israel, which was continuing supply, and Egypt.
UNRWA’s food basket, which comprised nearly 60 percent of daily needs, including milk powder and sugar, had run out, AbuZayd said. Most of the flour in mills would be consumed by end of the month.
Ailments associated with insufficient food were surfacing among the impoverished coastal strip’s 1.5 million population, including growing malnutrition.
“There is a chronic anemia problem. There are signs that’s increasing. What we are beginning to notice is what we call stunting of children … which means they are not eating well enough to be bigger than their parents,” AbuZayd added.
The humanitarian plight of Gazans was by far the worst among the more than 4.6 million Palestinian refugees across the region.
“They are not just under occupation, they are under siege,” AbuZayd said.
