Category: Nablus

A new assassination in Nablus

On Wednesday 9th October, around 5:40pm, Israeli special forces entered Nablus by car and carried out a deliberate assassination of four Palestinians who were inside a a black Skoda vehicle, in broad daylight, on Faisal Street, near a popular market. The Israeli special forces’ car was painted in Palestinian colours to pass undercover. They fired directly at the Palestinians’ car which was driving in the center of the city, and in which were five young men, one of which survived and is currently in critical condition.

The attack caused a state of horror and fear amongst the resident of the area and passersby, with people rushing to flee the scene.

A Palestinian woman is crying and being held by a Palestinian man. Around them, a crowd of women and girls are making their way to the funeral march.
One of the martyr’s loved ones in a state of distress at the funeral. @Diana Khwaelid

After shooting at the car from a distance, the Israeli special forces then got out of their car to shoot again at point blank to ensure the Palestinian’s deaths, after which they withdrew from the area. Immediately after, Palestinian medical teams and ambulances rushed to the scene as residents began to gather in front of the assassination site. Due to the intensity of the shooting, onlookers found pieces of flesh and of one of the young men’s brain. All victims were taken to the Rafidia government hospital in Nablus, where they passed away from their injuries.

Shortly thereafter, the Israeli military stormed the city and in particular took over the place where the operation had taken place. Finding that the bodies had been moved to the hospital, they left the scene again.

The funeral ceremony for the martyrs began on Thursday at 10:30 am. It started in front of the Rafidia hospital and proceeded to the martyrs roundabout in the city, where a funeral prayer was held. They then headed to the martyrs’ hometowns of Balata camp and Askar, where they grew up. Hundreds of Palestinians participated in the funeral, chanting for the liberation of Palestine.

A crowd of young Palestinian men hold their hand up high in an act of protest during the funeral march. One man is on another's shoulders. The scene takes place in a city street.
During the funeral march, Palestinians protest against the occupation (1) @Diana Khwaelid
A crowd of young Palestinian men in the act of chanting or clapping while at the funeral march. One man is on another's shoulders and chanting. In the background, there is a large Fatah flag, as well as a stretcher with the corpse of one of the victims.
During the funeral march, Palestinians protest against the occupation (2) @Diana Khwaelid

Amongst the four Palestinians killed was Issam Al-Salaj, commander of the Balata camp battalion, who the citizens of the camp honoured as a martyr that had evaded the Israeli army for years.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: ISM Response to Pres Biden 11 Sept 24 Statement on the Murder of Aysenur Eygi

Israeli Army Push Back Press at Demonstration in Beita,
Israeli soldier harassing the press. July 19, Beita.

Media enquiries: ismtraining [at] riseup.net

On 11 September 2024, President Biden claimed to be “outraged” and “deeply saddened” by Israel’s murder of our comrade Aysenur Eygi, but his actions tell a very different story. While he described the shooting as “unacceptable,” he is refusing the family’s demand for an independent, transparent investigation and continuing to trust the murderers to investigate themselves. Aysenur’s family and the ISM have been clear that we have no confidence in any Israeli investigation, given the Israeli army’s longstanding practice of using investigations as exculpatory coverups. We continue to demand a transparent and independent investigation.

For the United States government to accept the results of Israel’s internal military investigations is a complete dereliction of the US government’s responsibility to its own citizens, but it is nothing new. In 2003, the US did nothing to hold the Israeli killers of Rachel Corrie responsible for that murder. In recent years, the US has done nothing when Palestinian Americans, like Shireen Abu Akleh, have been murdered by Israel. President Biden is pursuing business as usual and allowing Israel to continue to kill both US Citizens and Palestinians with total impunity.

President Biden’s disrespect for Aysenur’s family and community extends even further. Although Aysenur’s family is mourning the death of a US citizen, his administration has yet to pick up the phone and call the family to offer condolences. He asserts that he will remain in contact with Israeli and Palestinian authorities but is unwilling to communicate with the ordinary people who were closest to Aysenur.

In his statement, President Biden asserts that he treats “violent extremist Israeli settlers” and “Palestinian terrorists” equally and implies that the violence in the West Bank is equally the fault of both groups. Both assertions are false. President Biden’s administration arms the violent Israeli extremists, as ISM volunteers can testify to based on our extensive experience doing protective presence work in the West Bank face to face with Israeli settlers armed with US weapons. These are the same weapons that make the US complicit in Israel’s genocide in Gaza. As long as the US continues to send weapons to Israel to kill Palestinians, in Gaza as well as in the West Bank, the US is sustaining the violent extremism of the Israeli settlers and the Israeli government. Meanwhile, President Biden’s false equivalence between Israelis and Palestinians in the West Bank elides the fact that the current violence has its roots in over a hundred years of settler colonial terrorism, ethnic cleansing, and now genocide, all perpetrated by Israel. Contrary to what President Biden asserts, it is Zionist colonization that is the obstacle to peace.

Ultimately, it is hypocritical for President Biden to attempt to change the focus to Israeli settlers alone, given that the Israeli army killed Aysenur with weapons likely provided by the Biden administration, which is fully aware that they are used to attack people protesting or witnessing demonstrations against illegal settlements. As one American ISM volunteer who wishes to remain anonymous says, “When I was detained by the Israeli army for my nonviolent work with ISM, everything I saw in the army van was stamped with ‘made in the USA’ or ‘property of the USA.'” As Amado Sison, another American citizen shot by Israel in August during the weekly demonstrations in Beita noted, “The money I pay in my taxes as a teacher probably funded the bullet they have run through me.” President Biden and his administration are complicit in Aysenur’s death and his statement today attempts to elide what the whole world knows: Israel’s violence is funded, sustained, supported, and endorsed by the US. Honoring Aysenur’s memory requires a complete change of policy, starting with an independent, transparent investigation and extending to an arms embargo.

Remembrance in Nablus

In an age of disinformation, spectacle, and erasure, remembrance is revolutionary. Palestine has a rich 20,000 year history. Amid an ongoing catastrophe in the Holy Land that rivals the nakba in 1948, people in Nablus are keepers of memory. 

One such project is the The Cultural Center of the Palestinian Narrative which raises awareness about Palestinian history, including mapping what Palestine was like pre-1948, and archiving witness testimony of ethnic cleansing. 

Interactive Palestinian history archive from The Cultural Center of the Palestinian Narrative

Tanweer, another cultural center in Nablus, in addition to current efforts to introduce art, joy, and more freedom into the public sphere, has chosen to uncover the ancient names of the springs in the Old City of Nablus and surrounding areas. After rediscovering the names, they create and install signs to connect the present with the past and remind people what has been and what will be. In Arabic, the word for spring also means way or path. Names of words and places, like names of people, are often repositories of ancient wisdom. 

Spring sign in Nablus (photo credit: ISM)

Fitra is an Arabic word meaning “original disposition” or “innate nature”. It is common belief in Palestine and throughout the Arab and Muslim world that every person is born innocent with innate goodness, and only through social conditioning are people led to oppression and injustice. And so the inner work that must be done isn’t achieving something far removed from one’s self, but rediscovering, reconnecting with, and remembering one’s original nature. 

Some of the people honored by Palestinians at the Tanweer Center include ISM activists killed while doing solidarity work (photo credit ISM)

Just as Jewish people throughout the United States, Europe, and the Middle East remember the horrors of their past and honor those who maintained their humanity amid the inhumanity around them, Palestinians remember the horrors of their past (and present), honor those who maintain their humanity amid the inhumanity around them, try to make a way where there is no way, and hope that the people of the world will not watch from afar their extermination, but instead, choose to remember their essential, original, buried under the rubble humanity.

Israeli crimes around the clock in the West Bank

 

22 October 2023 | International Solidarity Movement | Zawata

by Diana Khwaelid

Zawata town-Nablus.

On the evening of Sunday, 22-10-2023, the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) stormed the town of Zawata, northwest of the city of Nablus. The residents of the town initially spotted Israeli special forces near the town’s cemetery.

The Israeli occupation forces carried out a campaign of arrests against Palestinian youths in the village. Young palestinians of the town came out to confront the occupation forces.  Jihad Mazen Sobhi Saleh (29 years old) and  Muhammad Qasim Abu Zar (17 years old), were martyred after being exposed to direct fire by the IOF. The two young men were transferred to the nearest hospital. One of them was admitted to the operating room but did not survive. The two martyrs were killed in cold blood.

Ahmad Zawatiah, an eyewitness to the Israeli occupation’s crime against the Palestinian youths, said that the Israeli soldiers stormed the town and started shooting directly at the youths without there being an armed clash between Israeli soldiers and Palestinians.

The raid also resulted in the arrest of two Palestinian youths, Dia Abu Amsha and Amir Abu Amsha, both from the town of Zawata.

Hundreds of Palestinians in the town participated in the funeral of the bodies of the two martyrs, who were given one last farewell by their families and friends.

 

The crowd chanted phrases expressing Palestinian patriotism, in a state of anger and sadness, at the continuation of Israeli crimes in the West Bank, Jerusalem and Gaza.

As Gaza suffers from the criminal bombing campaign of the IOF, Palestinians in the West Bank are facing continuous Israeli colonial crimes, with IOF raids and settler pogroms intensifying in frequency and severity. Since the start of the war on Gaza, more than 90 Palestinians have been martyred, and more than 1,200 have been arrested in the West Bank.

6 Palestinians killed by settlers with the protection of the Occupying forces in Qusra village

By Diana Khwaelid

Qasra village – 12/10/2023
On the evening of Wednesday 11-10-2023, a group of extremist settlers stormed the village of Qusra,
north of Nablus, and attacked Palestinian citizens. The settlers were working with the protection of the Israeli occupation army.
Palestinian youth from the village came out to try and defend from the attacks of the settlers and the Israeli army. Settlers immediately began shooting in the direction of the young Palestinians, which led to the injury of 8 Palestinians, two of whom died immediately afterwards. Two others of the injured died soon after in hospital.
The four Palestinians who died as a result of confronting settlers and defending the lands and residents of the village, are martyrs Moaz Odeh, Hassan Abu Sorour, Musab Abu Rida, and Abu
Sorour.
The settlers also attacked the funeral procession of the martyrs on their way from Salfit hospital to Qusra, near the Alsawya junction in Salfit and near Qiblan again. Here, the Israeli occupation forces also fired gas canisters and live bullets directly at the Palestinians on their way to mourn the four martyrs from the village. This led to the killing of Secretary of the Fatah movement in the village martyr Ibrahim al-Wadi and his son Ahmed al-Wadi, 25 years old.


The village of Qusra reached 6 martyrs in less than 13 hours.
The martyr Ibrahim al-Wadi and his son Ahmed, are among the most prominent Palestinian activists in
the village, and they have always been in the front lines of resisting the occupation and the settlers. They had been arrested in the past by the Occupation forces because of their political activity against the occupation.
Hundreds of Palestinian citizens participated in the funeral of the six martyrs of the village of Qasra.
Mass popular anger is palpable in the village and in all of Palestine at the continued occupation of committing its crimes against the Palestinian people, whether in the West Bank or Gaza.