6th December 2014 | International Solidarity Movement, Ramallah team | Nabi Saleh, Occupied Palestine
Yesterday, Israeli soldiers invaded Nabi Saleh during the Palestinian village’s weekly Friday demonstration and shot one young Palestinian in the leg with .22 caliber live ammunition. The soldiers also fired tear gas canisters at demonstrators, along with more rounds of the .22 live caliber bullets.
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“At one point, after the boy had been shot, a soldier fired three tear gas canisters straight at internationals and Palestinians who were just standing there, trying to see what was going on up the road,” recalled one ISM activist present at the scene. “He [the soldier] was quite close to us, and could easily see that no one was throwing any stones. The canisters landed no more than a few meters away.”
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The young Palestinian who was shot is between seventeen and eighteen years old; he was rushed away from the scene and taken to a hospital for treatment. Nabi Saleh has been suffering from a spate of violence recently at the hands of Israeli forces, who shot three Palestinians including 38-year-old Nariman Tamimi at a demonstration two weeks ago and 14-year-old Ahmed Barghouti last Friday.
The Kufr Qaddum weekly demonstrations have been met with similar violence. Last week a Palestinian youth and an Italian ISM volunteer were both shot with .22 live ammunition in the chest. During yesterday’s protest a Palestinian journalist was shot in the leg with a .22 live bullet.
22nd November 2014 | International Solidarity Movement, Ramallah team | Nabi Saleh, Occupied Palestine
Israeli forces shot and injured three Palestinians participating in a weekly Friday demonstration in the village of Nabi Saleh. Soldiers fired .22 caliber bullets, a form of live ammunition which has maimed and killed multiple Palestinians, even as Israel continues to claim it as a “less lethal” way of assaulting demonstrators.
Yesterday at noon between forty and fifty Palestinians, Israelis, international activists and journalists marched down from the center of Nabi Saleh towards a water spring stolen by a nearby illegal settlement. The Israeli forces awaited them down the road with two military jeeps and a police jeep. Some youth threw stones towards the military vehicles. Soldiers and police fired tear gas canisters and rubber-coated steel bullets at demonstrators as the group walked down the road.
After a brief period of calm, a police jeep equipped with a tear gas dispenser drove up and down the road, firing tear gas at protesters. A few suffered from excessive tear gas inhalation, including a boy under the age
of ten.
In addition to continuing to fire rubber coated steel bullets and tear gas, soldiers also began to shoot .22 live ammunition. Two seventeen-year-old boys were shot while throwing stones, one in the thigh
and one in both the hand and foot. One Israeli soldier fired at a child under the age of twelve as the boy was running away up the hill beside the road.
Nariman Tamimi, a thirty-eight-year-old woman from the village, was shot in the thigh at close range with a .22 bullet. Israeli soldiers shot her in front of her children and family, driving away and leaving her in the
road. She was taken away for medical treatment, where she underwent surgery, and currently remains in hospital.
14th November 2014 | International Solidarity Movement | Ramallah, Occupied Palestine
Friday morning around 50 Palestinian and international activists used makeshift bridges to cross the Apartheid wall between Qalandiya and Northern Jerusalem. This non-violent direct action was in response to the restrictions Israel had placed on Palestinian worshippers wishing to access Al-Aqsa Mosque in the past months.
Activists scaled the wall one by one at around 10 am yesterday morning. Only a few hundred meters from an Israeli settlement, the activists then set about cutting through a barbed-wire fence that had been placed close to the Apartheid wall.
Once all the activists breached the wall, the group cheered and proudly waved Palestinian flags. The action finished peacefully around 11am with no arrests. This non-violent direct action was part of a campaign entitled #On2Jerusalem and it was organized by local Palestinian popular resistance committees to show solidarity with the people of Jerusalem.
Another action that was part of the #On2Jerusalem campaign occurred after where Palestinian and international activists attempted to march toward Jerusalem through Hizme checkpoint. The activists blocked Israeli traffic, waved Palestinian flags and sang pro-Palestine chants. Many of those present wore T-shirts with pictures of Al-Aqsa mosque with the text, “I am Palestinian under 50.” This text referred to the restrictions placed on Palestinian male worshippers under 50 in regards to entering the Al-Aqsa compound. Right away, the activists were met by heavy Israeli military and police presence and were therefore prevented from crossing through Hizme.
The Israeli forces shouted and pushed activists as well as journalists on several occasions and soon after Israeli forces shot a barrage of stun grenades towards the activists and press forcing them to disperse. After violently pushing two international activists carrying a large Palestinian flag, Israeli forces ended up confiscating the flag from them. One of these international activists stated, “We found ourselves holding the Palestinian flag near a group of soldiers. One soldier in front of us tore up a small Palestinian flag in front of us. Afterwards he tried to take the big flag from us. When we wouldn’t let him more soldiers helped him, we were suddenly surrounded by soldiers grabbing and pushing us, and forcing the flag out of our hands.”
Later that day and as part of the#On2Jerusalem actions, activists joined locals at Qalandiya checkpoint where clashes had been taking place for most of the morning. Israeli forces used excessive force shooting dozens of tear gas canisters and grenades in addition to stun grenades at demonstrators. Despite the Israeli army’s aggression, the non-violent demonstrators which were a few hundred in number loudly shouted pro-Palestine chants and waved flags. At one point a demonstrator was able to climb a military lookout post to hang a Palestinian flag on the top.
12th November 2014 | International Solidarity Movement, Ramallah Team | Mughayir, Occupied Palestine
Photo by ISM
At 18:00 yesterday, the Israeli army closed the main entrance to Mughayir village until midnight. At midnight the army infiltrated the village and patrolled its empty streets for the next four hours.
Sometime between 2:30-3:30 am, villagers noticed that the mosque was on fire. Failing to put out the fire, the fire brigade was called, but by the time they had arrived from Ramallah, the fire had already spread along the ground floor of the mosque and the toilets.
Photo by ISMPhoto by ISM
While local media reported Zionist settlers as the culprits, witnesses in the village did not see who was responsible. Mughayir mayor, Faraj Na’asan stated, “Of course we know who did it. They’ve done it before in 2012. Everybody was in their houses because the soldiers were patrolling the streets. It was either the soldiers, or settlers under their protection.”
The Mughyir mosque is the second mosque to be burned by settlers this month. Meanwhile the Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem is infiltrated by Israeli forces almost daily. The limiting of 50 Muslim worshipers a day, and the allowing of settler tours has sparked an upheaval in East Jerusalem and across the West Bank.
Photo by ISMPhoto by ISM
“It’s not the first time and it won’t be the last time that the settlers attack a holy sight and especially after the attacks on al-Aqsa mosque in these past few days,” stated Sais Mughayir. “We are facing a hard time locally and internationally. So we have to be united to enhance the existence of people in their land.”
9th November 2014 | International Solidarity Movement, Ramallah Team | Beit Hanina, Occupied Palestine
Yesterday, to mark the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall today, a direct action took place in Beit Hanina, a neighbourhood in Jerusalem.
ISM and international volunteers supported the Palestinian-led action, which involved demolishing a section of the Apartheid wall using a sledge hammer and a pick-axe.
In an International Court of Justice decision in 2004, the Apartheid wall was declared illegal and in direct contravention of international law.
