Category: Nablus - Page 21 - International Solidarity Movement

Israeli settlers and soldiers invade Balata refugee camp

20th September 2013 | International Solidarity Movement, Nablus team | Occupied Palestine

On the 17^th of September, under heavy Israeli army protection, Israeli settlers from nearby illegal settlements entered Nablus with the aim of praying at Joseph’s tomb in Balata refugee camp.

Just after midnight, the Israeli army closed the district that surrounds the monument, blocking all the streets leading to the tomb and preventing anyone from passing nearby, either by foot or by car.

Around 1am, between eight and 10 buses full with hundreds of settlers invaded the area.

Clashes began in the area, particularly in the junction just in front of the entry to Balata refugee camp.

Youths threw stones for more then two hours against the army vehicles, that were moving up on the hill and back, seemingly in order to keep them busy and far from the large groups of Zionist settlers. Military trucks also tried several times to run over the Palestinian youths while they were throwing stones.

The Israeli army fired many stun grenades, and the road blockades were kept in place until the settlers left the area.

Clashes around Balata occur almost weekly, any time that the settlers decide to invade the area for praying. The settlers claim this monument belongs to the Biblical patriarch Joseph, while most of the Palestinians believe that the religious guide Sheikh Yusef Dweikat was buried there, according to Islamic tradition. Though Joseph is a sacred figure as well in Muslim, Christian and Samaritan religion, Muslims are not allowed to pray there.

Labeling their own actions as “security measures”, the army can easily shoot down a whole neighborhood and guarantee the Israeli settlers the freedom to move and pray wherever they wish, even in a site which is deeply inside Area A, which is supposed under Palestinian civil and security control. On the other side, most of the Palestinian living in the West Bank are not allowed to pray in their holy places, starting from this Joseph´s tomb to the biggest example of Al-Aqsa Mosque, in Jerusalem.

These evidently different treatments intensify the inequality in rights between Palestinians and illegal Israeli settlers and make the life under occupation more and more unbearable.

Israel army cuts electricity to Kufr Qaddum, six villagers dependant on oxygen machines evacuated to hospital

14th September 2013 | International Solidarity Movement, Nablus Team | Kufr Qaddum, Occupied Palestine

Kufr Qaddum was without the electricity since 11pm on Thursday night. Six villagers who are dependant on oxygen machines have been evacuated to the nearby hospital in Nablus. The following morning, at the Friday village demonstration, a young man was hit in the head by a gas canister and was taken to the hospital as well.

Boys and men of Kufr Qadum set out to the weekly Friday demonstration. (Photo by ISM)

The deliberate power cut was an added rage to the weekly Friday demonstration in Kufr Qaddum. A resident explained that the village electricity comes form the illegal Qedumim settlement and that “somebody decided to press the button and cut the supply to the whole village.”

Since 2011, villagers from Kufr Qaddum demonstrate each Friday against the Israeli military. The village of Kufr Qaddum has had much land stolen by the nearby illegal settlement of Qedumim and in 2003 the main road connecting Kufr Qaddum to city of Nablus was closed to Palestinians. “Protests would not stop until the main Kufr Qaddum road, currently usurped by the illegal Qedumim settlers, is returned to us,” the resident added.

The military bulldozer was already at work attempting to clear the rocks demonstrators had placed on the road to prevent the army vehicles from entering the village. As the demonstrators attempted to repel the bulldozer, a group of soldiers tried to keep the protestors away from the bulldozer with continuous barrage of tear gas, frequently fired directly at the protestors, a practice which is against the army’s own regulations, as it turns the “less-lethal” crowd dispersal means into a small rocket.

Early on in the demonstration, a young man was hit in the head by a tar gas canister and was taken to the hospital where he was treated and later released. The army withdrew at around 3pm.

The arrest of Burin activist Ghassan Najjar

10th September 2014 | International Solidarity Movement, Nablus team | Burin, Occupied Palestine

The prominent activist from the West Bank village of Burin, and member of Solidarity Movement for Free Palestine, Ghassan Najjar, was taken by the Israeli army from his home in the early hours of the morning on the 27th August. He was transferred to the notorious interrogation facility, Petah Tikva.

The before he was arrested, Ghassan, alongside a group of a villagers from Burin, tried to prevent Israeli soldiers from entering the girls’ classroom of the local school.

Staff from the Israeli Human Rights organisation BT’selem, who was filming the attempted school incursion, was also detained, but released shortly after.

Ghassan was arrested for allegedly throwing stones and hitting a soldier.

On 31th August he appeared briefly before a secret court and a Military Judge agreed to his detention for a further seven days. The second court hearing, which took place on 7th September, was also brief because the soldier witness did not turn up and Ghassan’s detention was extended for eight more days.

Ghassan’s friends and family showed ISM, during a recent visit to Burin, a video of the army attack on the school and saw no evidence that Ghassan did anything other than peacefully protest with the others against the school raid.

When asked if the video would be useful for Ghassan’s defense, a friend of Ghassan said, “It would be in a democratic country, but all the Israelis care about is their security.”

Another of Ghassan’s friends told ISM he had received many threats at different checkpoints, preceding his recent arrest. “Once a soldier told Ghassan that they did not want to arrest him directly at the checkpoint, because they wanted to come to his house, destroy everything and make his mother suffer.”

When the occupying army came to arrest Ghassan, the unit captain instructed the soldiers to “destroy everything,” a soldier turned to Ghassan’s mother and stated, “we will wreck your house.”

They did as promised. Everything that could be broken was broken and slashed. They even broke pots with houseplants, and cut bottoms from the armchairs. The vandalism lasted from 2am to 4.30am.

Ghassan was taken away, handcuffed and blindfolded. Only after the soldiers left, did his mother allow herself to cry.

“Our resistance is peaceful. Ghassan never did anything violent, but we worry because we know Israeli military justice. To give you an example, to this day both Ghassan’s lawyer and the International Committee of Red Cross have been denied access to him,” A friend of the family stated.

For a number of years, the Palestinian West Bank village of Burin, located seven kilometers south of Nablus, has been under constant attack by both the Israeli occupying army, and the zionist settlers from some of the most extreme illegal settlement colonies, such as Yitzhar and Bracha, covering the hilltops around it.

A villager told ISM that the army invades the village almost nightly. Soldiers enter houses and the whole families with children and older people are forced to stay outside in the middle of the night, for long periods of time.

Frequently the army erects checkpoints at the entrance and in the center of the village, near to the boys’ school and the Mosque.

“Things are going to get even worse,” Another villager stated, “The olive harvest is around the corner and that is when settler attacks intensify. Olive harvest used to be a festival, a time of joy, and now it is a nightmare.”

Since the start of the Israeli occupation in 1967, much of Burin’s land and water has been taken away and handed over to the Zionist settlers or to the occupying Israeli army, for military bases.

“About 25 to 30 dunums (one dunum is 1000m²) of land belong to our village and we have free access only to seven dunums and even that is limited to some parts of the year,” said a local man.

Yesh Din, an Israeli human rights organization, reports that in 2013, Burin lost more olive trees due to settler vandalism than any other West Bank village. In the first months of the last year alone, 7714 Palestinian owned trees were damaged.

Army incursions into Madama

9th September 2014 | International Solidarity Movement, Nablus team | Madama, Occupied Palestine

We arrived in Madama yesterday, 8th September; in the early afternoon after we were told that during the night Israeli army invaded this village, and the nearby villages of Burin and Asira Al Qibliya.

Our contact told us that the main road leading to Nablus was blocked during the night and that a car coming from Asira was prevented from reaching the hospital. Furthermore, a checkpoint was erected at the main entrance of the village; cars and pedestrians were searched until it was removed around 11am.

When we reached Madama, we saw a group of seven soldiers standing on the road beside the Mosque, blocking it with two military jeeps and one personnel carrier. More soldiers were inside the vehicles while those outside positioned themselves facing in different directions and keeping an eye on the surrounding streets, shops and houses.

The school had just finished and groups of children were filling the street and hanging around looking at the unwanted ‘guests’.

We decided to stay and see what was going on and take some pictures. We did this for about 10 minutes, before we attracted soldiers’ attention. Several of them came towards us asking what we were doing in the village, demanding that we hand over our camera. We argued that we had a right to take pictures and that they did not have a right to take our camera, but they insisted that we could not take pictures of individual soldiers and in particular, the close-ups of their faces.

We used this opportunity to pose a question, “If what you are doing is right, why do you hide your faces?”

They refused to answer and instead, they gave us an ultimatum that we delete the pictures or they would take us to the police station to be arrested. They also promised us trouble by the immigration authorities when leaving the country. Eventually we decided to delete some of our photos.

Later we met a group of villagers and spoke about the situation in Madama.

“Every night we have problems with the Israeli army and every family here has been at the receiving end. Only during the attack on Gaza they left us alone, probably because they had less soldiers available here,” one of them said.

He continued to state that the army regularly enters houses in the middle of the night to search them. They do it after throwing the residents out and making them wait for hours, before they can return. In one such raid the soldiers stole 180,000 shekels from a house, claiming they did it because the money was going to Hamas. In fact that was the lifesavings of the man who worked for 20 years and received a payout after finishing his job.

The soldiers usually block Madama by closing the entrance at the main road connecting it to Burin and Asira Al Qibliya, and also closing the settler road located up the hill at the top of the village, connecting illegal settlements of Qedumim and Ytzhar with the main road leading to Nablus and the South.

“When you try to pass through, the soldiers often shout at you, ‘Go away!’ But who should go away? This is my village, my land!’” Said another Madama resident.

When we asked for the reasons why soldiers target the village, he replied, “They usually say that someone had thrown stones at them previously and I don’t really know if that is true. This morning after removing the checkpoint around 11 o’clock, they came inside the village and started taking pictures of the old houses. This makes no sense to us, we have no idea why they are doing this, and we are very worried.”

Israeli soldiers come very often to the village when the school finishes to provoke the children. “Soon this is going to be even a bigger problem. In November maintenance work starts in the boys’ school, and for about three months, boys will attend the girls’ school between 2pm and 7pm, which is very near the settlers’ road. The army is always present, we are really worried for our boys…”

One injured in Kufr Qaddum protest

7th September 2014 | International Solidarity Movement, Nablus team | Kufr Qaddum, Occupied Palestine

Since 2011, villagers from Kufr Qaddum demonstrate each Friday against the Israeli military. The village of Kufr Qaddum has had much land stolen by the nearby illegal settlement of Qedumim and in 2003 the main road connecting Kufr Qaddum to city of Nablus was closed to Palestinians. It is this road that villagers attempt to march down every Friday, regularly facing extreme violence from Israeli soldiers and border police offices.

During the protest on Friday, 5^th September, a Palestinian youth was shot in the leg and rushed to a hospital in a Red Crescent ambulance.

Dozens of protesters and solidarity activists suffered from excessive tear gas inhalation, which soldiers fired in large quantities. Later on in the protest, multiple tear gas canisters were repeatedly fired from a military vehicle.

Many of the tear gas canisters were fired directly at demonstrators, both highly dangerous and in contravention to Israeli military procedure, which is shooting them up into an arch to lower the impacted velocity.

Throughout the protest villagers burned car tires, the thick black smoke enveloping the illegal Qedumim settlement as well as Israeli army vehicles positioned at the closed road, which included a bulldozer and a ‘skunk’ (chemical) water vehicle.

At the start of the protest, dozens of soldiers took to the hill above the village, splitting into smaller groups, some moving through the olive grovess towards the edge of the village and then retreating back under the stones thrown by the village youth. This lasted till after 15:00 when the occupying soldiers left the hill.

The villagers continued to protest at the top of the blocked road and this is when the army bulldozer, followed by the skunk water vehicle, moved in towards the village to clear the lines of rocks blocking the road and douse protesters in the foul smelling liquid. The villagers responded by throwing paint and more stones at the advancing vehicles.