Twenty demonstrators injured in Nabbi Saleh

Popular Struggle Coordination Committee

8 January 2010

For immediate release:

As part of a recent surge in popular protest in the West Bank, about 300 demonstrators occupied and blocked the main road in near the Halamish settlement for over two hours. The demonstrators, twenty of which were injured by rubber-coated bullets, protested recent land grabs.

About 300 people took to the street today in the West Bank village of Nabbi Saleh, north-west of Ramallah, in protest of recent land grab by the adjacent Jewish-only settlement of Halamish. The protesters occupied and blocked the main street leading to the settlement, and amidst clouds of tear gas and whizzing rubber-coated bullets, managed to hold it for over two hours. A group of demonstrators also managed to reach the area that was recently taken over by settlers.

Settlers who came down from Halamish threw stones and shot live rounds of demonstrators. Soldiers who were present took no actions to stop them. Following the demonstration the army invaded Nabbi Salleh, where clashes ensued.

Twenty of Nabbi Saleh’s residents were struck by rubber-coated bullets, and dozens suffered from tear gas inhalation.

Bassem Tamimi, one organizers of the demonstration said that “For three weeks we have been prevented from reaching our land for because of the settlers who occupied it. In any reasonable place, we would be allowed to just drive them out by force, but they have the army on their side even though the law is on our side. Under the occupation we are not even allowed to merely protest”.

Demonstrations were also held today in N’ilin, Bil’in – where a journalist and a demonstrator were lightly injured, and in alMaasara where the army invaded the village.

Abdallah Abu Rahmah: No army, no prison and no wall can stop us

Free Abdallah Abu Rahmah

January 6, 2010

To all our friends,

I mark the beginning of the new decade imprisoned in a military detention camp. Nevertheless, from within the occupation′s holding cell I meet the New Year with determination and hope.

I know that Israel’s military campaign to imprison the leadership of the Palestinian popular struggle shows that our non-violent struggle is effective. The occupation is threatened by our growing movement and is therefore trying to shut us down. What Israel′s leaders do not understand is that popular struggle cannot be stopped by our imprisonment.

Whether we are confined in the open-air prison that Gaza has been transformed into, in military prisons in the West Bank, or in our own villages surrounded by the Apartheid Wall, arrests and persecution do not weaken us. They only strengthen our commitment to turning 2010 into a year of liberation through unarmed grassroots resistance to the occupation.

The price I and many others pay in freedom does not deter us. I wish that my two young daughters and baby son would not have to pay this price together with me. But for my son and daughters, for their future, we must continue our struggle for freedom.

This year, the Popular Struggle Coordination Committee will expand on the achievements of 2009, a year in which you amplified our popular demonstrations in Palestine with international boycott campaigns and international legal actions under universal jurisdiction.

In my village, Bil’in, Israeli tycoon, Lev Leviev and Africa-Israel, the corporation he controls, are implicated in illegal construction of settlements on our stolen land, as well as the lands of many other Palestinian villages and cities. Adalah-NY is leading an international campaign to show Leviev that war crimes have their price.

Our village has sued two Canadian companies for their role in the construction and marketing of new settlement units on village land cut off by Israel’s Apartheid Wall. The legal proceedings in this precedent-setting case began in the Canadian courts last summer and are ongoing.

Bil’in has become the graveyard of Israeli real estate empires. One after another, these companies are approaching bankruptcy as the costs of building on stolen Palestinian land are driven higher than the profits.

Unlike Israel, we have no nuclear weapons or army, but we do not need them. The justness of our cause earns us your support. No army, no prison and no wall can stop us.

Yours,

Abdallah Abu Rahmah
From the Ofer Military Detention Camp

This letter from Bil′in′s Abdallah Abu Rahmah was conveyed from his prison cell by his lawyers. Please circulate widely.

Settler tunnel causes another road collapse in Silwan, East Jerusalem

3 January 2010

For immediate release:

At around 4pm, on Saturday 2 January 2010 part of a main road in the Palestinian neighbourhood of Silwan collapsed. The section of road runs above tunneling work carried out by the Elad settler organisation. Despite the road collapsing in the mid-afternoon, it was not until 8pm that Israeli police arrived at the scene, after an Israeli bus serving the settler population drove into the hole in the road.

Silwan is a Palestinian village on the hills south of the Old City of Jerusalem, captured in 1967 by the Israeli army. It is one of several neighbourhoods in East Jerusalem where the Israeli state and settler organisations are forcing Palestinians from their homes. Almost 90 houses in the area are currently threatened with demolition, potentially displacing 1,000 – 1,500 residents and no construction permits have been issued for Palestinians in the area since 1967. Excavation works represent another threat to Palestinian residents; literally undermining their homes.


Tunneling by the Elad settler organisation, which also runs the ‘City of David’ tourist site in Silwan, has been frequently criticised for undermining the Palestinian neighbourhood. Elad director David Be’eri was filmed admitting that his excavations are carried out under people’s houses. He described the excavation method in which “we built from the top down” and “everything’s standing in the air” [due to the removal of fill]. “Then [the engineer] says: ‘you have to shut the whole thing’ [because of danger of collapse]. I tell him: ‘are you crazy?’”

Land located under people’s houses is considered their property under Israeli law, and digging in densely populated areas without the permission of property owners is therefore illegal. Despite this, ‘archaeological’ digging continues throughout the Old City and its surroundings with the complicity of Israeli authorities, police and courts. Also in the tape mentioned above, made about a year ago, the founding head of Elad, David Be’eri, says: “At a certain point we came to court. The judge approached me and said, ‘you’re digging under their houses.’ I said ‘I’m digging under their houses? King David dug under their houses. I’m just cleaning.’ He said to me, ‘Clean as much as possible.’ Since then, we’re just cleaning; we’re not digging.”

Less than six months ago a large part of the same road gave way meters from the most recent collapse. Local people say they are concerned that their homes may also collapse in the future. Subsidence caused by the tunneling is visible on buildings and roads around the excavation area. A Palestinian kindergarten opened in 1990 is located directly next to the opening of the tunnel. In recent months several large cracks have appeared in the building. Classes were affected by today’s road collapse. Several children protested the undermining of their school and the whole area.

This afternoon, work was underway to repair the collapsed area. Reconstruction is expected to take between one and two days, further disrupting the neighbourhood. Meanwhile, residents of Silwan remain concerned that future collapses will be more dangerous.

Elad Director admits undermining Palestinian homes:

See also: Organizer admits City of David endangers Arab homes

Trapped in the land of Oz

Ofra Edelman | Haaretz

3 January 2010

A complaint to the court ombudsman against Jerusalem District Court Judge Yitzhak Milanov reveals cooperation of questionable legality between the police and Oz, the Interior Ministry unit that deals with illegal foreigners, in the treatment of foreigners who took part in recent demonstrations in East Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarra neighborhood.

According to the complaint – which was submitted to the ombudsman, former Supreme Court justice Eliezer Goldberg, on December 17 – the police misused their authority by handing the left-wing foreign activists they arrested over to Oz, even though the foreigners were present in Israel legally and therefore do not fall under Oz’s jurisdiction. The police’s motive, the complaint alleged, was to avoid judicial review of the arrests.

About three weeks ago, it said, 23 demonstrators were arrested, including three foreign citizens: Bruno Marcotte of Canada, Johanne Richtmueller of Germany and Ryan Olander of the United States. On December 12, they were brought before Judge Milanov for a remand hearing. The police asked the court to order the foreigners held for four hours to give the force time to hand them over to Oz.

The hearing began at 10 P.M. According to attorneys Iftach Cohen and Omer Shatz, who represented the three foreigners, the police did everything in their power to ensure that their case was heard last, hoping that Oz agents would arrive in the meantime and take charge of the foreigners – thereby avoiding judicial review of the arrest, which by law must take place within 24 hours of its occurrence.

The three ended up being detained for 30 hours. Their lawyers repeatedly requested that Milanov hear their cases before some of the others, fearing that Oz would take charge of the detainees before the judge had reviewed the arrest. However, they said, the judge denied this request and even refused to allow it to be entered into the court records. Attorney Lea Tsemel, who was present at the time, confirmed this claim.

At about 1 A.M., after the Oz vehicle had arrived at the court house, a police representative informed the lawyers that he was withdrawing his request for the foreigners’ remand. But just then, the three foreigners were brought into the court by mistake, and the judge reviewed their arrest anyway.

The judge noted in the protocol that the police did not oppose releasing the three foreigners, but had asked to have them handed over to Oz. He also noted that they were present in the country legally.

‘No authority to arrest’

According to attorneys Cohen, Shatz and Tsemel, Milanov then informed the two Oz representatives in the court that since the foreigners were here legally, Oz had no authority to arrest them. When one Oz representative told the judge that they would nevertheless detain the foreigners after the hearing, Milanov warned him not to repeat that remark.

Milanov released the three without any restrictions and wrote in his decision: “To the degree that the Oz unit is authorized to investigate them, it will surely operate within the bounds of its authority.” The judge then entered his adjacent chamber, with the door to the courtroom left ajar.

That, the complaint said, is when the Oz officers took the foreigners away by force. The court guards actively cooperated, it charged, and the police declined to interfere.

Milanov, too, declined to intervene, and did not even respond to the lawyers’ cries, the complaint continued. “The complaint is not being lodged due to Judge Milanov’s behavior during the hearing, but to his failure when it was over,” the attorneys wrote.

‘Kidnapped from court’

After being seized by the Oz officers, the three were held for a few hours at the court – “with the cooperation of the court guards and under the eyes of the district court judge,” the complaint said.

The attorneys therefore requested that the ombudsman examine “Judge Milanov’s serious failure in disregarding and turning his back on the three foreigners who were kidnapped from his court.”

Cohen argued that Oz had no authority to detain the three after the session, particularly since the judge wrote expressly in the stenographic record that they were present in the country legally. But the commander of the Oz unit, Yehuda Ben Ezra, disagreed.

“I don’t know if the judge examined the documents,” he said, adding, “The visa says ‘tourist,’ not ‘demonstrator’.”

When informed that the judge explicitly told the Oz representatives in court that further detention would be illegal, Ben Ezra responded, “With all due respect to the judge, and I have genuine respect for judges, they don’t decide whom I arrest or don’t arrest.”

Ben Ezra said he is “allowed to make arrests in two cases: if I suspect that someone is here illegally, or if he violated administrative rules and the police informed me of this.” But the three foreigners do not fit into either of these categories.

A week later, on December 18, Ryan Olander was arrested again at another demonstration in Sheikh Jarrah. This time, according to Cohen, members of the Oz unit managed to take him from the court before a judge had reviewed his arrest, after police requested that Oz “act to remove this tourist from Israel permanently.”

Cohen said that Olander’s visa was canceled only after he was taken to Givon Prison – meaning the Interior Ministry essentially legalized his illegal arrest retroactively.

The Jerusalem District Police responded that “The foreigners who were arrested were suspected of disorderly behavior and illegal assembly. At the same time that they were brought to the court, the police made contact with an Interior Ministry representative, informed him of the three’s arrest and asked him to continue dealing with the case against the three. The police intend to press charges against all the suspects.”

Police rejected the claim that “the three foreigners were not brought for an extension of their remand at the beginning of the session on purpose” and said that “according to the law, police are permitted to arrest a tourist with a valid visa who is suspected of a criminal offense and transfer him to Interior Ministry representatives for deportation or trial. In this case, members of the Oz unit are the representatives who work with the police.”

Both Oz and the police completely rejected the attorneys’ claim that such cooperation between them occurs only in the case of left-wing activists.

Two young men from Bil’in arrested in order to testify against Popular Committee member still held by Israeli military

3 January 2010

For immediate release:

Hamouda Imad Yassin (16) and Ibrahim Khalil Yassin (16), two young men from Bil’in, who were arrested on 29 December 2009 during a night raid on the West Bank village, are still being held by the Israeli military.

The boys were arrested at 2am on Tuesday, 29 December 2009, when the Israeli army, composed of a number of military jeeps and approximately 50 soldiers on foot, invaded the village and raided their houses. They are still being held by the military, while their relatives are being kept in the dark as of when they will be released and the legal reasons for their detention.

The only explanation given by the Israeli authorities was that they detained Hamouda and Khalil in order to ensure their presence as witnesses at a hearing with Mohammad Khatib, member of the Bil’in Popular Committee Against the Wall and Settlements, that was scheduled to take place later that day, 29 December 2009 at the Ofer military prison. He is charged with stone throwing, incitement and providing service to an unpermitted group. In a previous court hearing, the judge found the evidence presented to support the stone throwing charge to be falsified as it emerged that photographs shown of Mohammad Khatib allegedly throwing stones were taken on a day when he was abroad.

Mohammad Khatib commented on their arrest and continued detention:
“The fact that the Israeli military not only feels the need to present falsified evidence, but also resorts to invading the village in order to arrest children to testify against members of the Popular Committee shows their determination to crush the popular struggle through fabricated military trials. Luckily the military and occupation authorities have no understanding of the meaning of popular struggle. They would have to put all residents of the village in jail to stop the popular resistance and even then we would come out eventually, stronger and continue to struggle for our land and our freedom.”

His hearing, however, has been postponed due to a strike of Palestinian lawyers protesting the closure of the Beituniya checkpoint, the only route providing access for relatives and lawyers of Palestinian prisoners held at Ofer. Instead of releasing the two boys upon realizing the hearing has been cancelled, the Israeli military chose to keep them in detention, for an unknown period of time.

Their detention is just a part of an ongoing campaign through which the Israeli military seeks to ensure the end of Palestinian grassroots struggle against the Occupation and the Apartheid Wall. In Bil’in alone, 33 residents have been arrested since the beginning of a series of night raids conducted by the army. Almost a half still remain in detention, including Abdallah Abu Rahmah, arrested on 10 December 2009 and charged with incitement, stone throwing and arms possession, an accusation which has been brought against him merely for collecting and displaying spent tear-gas canisters, used against the Bil’in demonstrators by the Israeli army.