Category: Press Releases

Israeli army attacks children’s demonstration in Ni’lin

On November 20th at 1pm a demonstration for the children of Ni’lin against the construction of the illegal annexation wall gathered in the centre of the village. The demonstration was organised to mark the Universal Children’s Day

The children of Ni’lin had made signs saying “no to the wall” and “we will never forget what you did to Yousef and Ahmed”. The last, referring to 10 year old Ahmed Mousa, who was shot and killed by Israeli soldiers at close range with live ammunition earlier this year close to the construction site of the annexation wall outside of Ni’lin. Yousef Amaira, 17, was killed as the Israeli army shot him twice in the head with rubber-coated steel bullets as they attacked Ahmed’s funeral.

The demonstration was joined by international and Israeli solidarity activists. As the demonstration non-violently moved towards the construction site of the wall, Israeli soldiers started shooting teargas straight into the crowd of protesters. They were soon shooting rubber-coated steel bullets directly at the children.

At 5pm the soldiers stopped shooting and the demonstration ended.

The village of Ni’lin has had several demonstrations a week since the construction of the wall on their lands started in April 2008. The Israeli army has responded with brutal force and as well as two deaths, over 600 have been injured and more than 50 people have been arrested.

Universal Children’s Day imarks the promotion of welfare for the world’s children. In a town where many children have already been injured, arrested, interrogated and killed by the Israeli army for their participation in the non-violent resistance, it is important to recognize the protections that ought to be afforded to them as children. Those who have not suffered injuries themselves are not untouched; they must bear witness to the brutal effects of the occupation on those they love, their families.

According to the Declaration on the Rights of Children, adopted on November 20, 1959, every child, without any exception whatsoever, shall be entitled to these rights, without distinction or discrimination on account of race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status, whether of himself or of his family. A broken promise on protecting of children by a signing member of the Convention on the Rights of the Children, Israel, must be challenged.

Abu Kamel of the al-Kurd family has died two weeks after Israel forcibly evicted him from his home of 52 years

Abu Kamel of the Al-Kurd family, evicted by Israel from their home in Occupied East Jerusalem on the 9th November, has died after suffering from a severe heart-attack.

This comes two weeks after he was taken immediately to hospital following the night-time invasion and forcible eviction from his home of 52 years by Israeli forces.

The funeral will be held at 11am, 23rd November in Sheikh Jarrah, Occupied East Jerusalem.

Suffering from dangerously high blood pressure, in the aftermath of his family’s eviction from the emblematic house in Sheikh Jarrah and consequently being left homeless, 61 year-old Abu Kamel suffered from a deterioration with his long-term health problems and was re-admitted to hospital at around 10pm, Saturday 22nd November. It was soon announced that he had suffered from a heart-attack and died.

Fawzia al-Kurd has now lost her husband and her family home within two weeks due to the Israeli state’s campaign expand Jewish settlements in the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood. Despite high-profile formal complaints from the US State department, numerous foreign consulates, and European politicians, who openly questioned the legality of the settlers claims, Israel violently pursued its plans to evict the refugees from 1948.

The price of Israel’s political campaign against the refugees now includes the life of a 61 year-old man. As aide to Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, Haten Abdelkader stated on the 9th November, ” They want to expel Palestinians from Sheikh Jarrah. It is an escalation before the municipal elections,”. He also noted that as the expulsion went ahead even though the decision is being appealed that this “demonstrates the problem is no longer legal, but political.” (AFP)

It should also be noted that after having been made refugees from West Jerusalem in 1948, the al-Kurd family were subsequently made refugees a second and third time as Israel evicted them from their home on the 9th November before proceeding to destroy the tent that was established on the 19th November.

The health of Abu Kamel was central to the Israeli campaign to occupy the al-Kurd house. In 2001, as the family was abroad in Jordan visiting Abu Kamel while he was receiving treatment, settlers broke into part of the family home that they have continued to occupy ever since.

The Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in East Jerusalem was built by the UN and Jordanian government in 1956 to house Palestinian refugees from the 1948 war. The al-Kurd family began living in the neighbourhood after having been made refugees from Jaffa and West Jerusalem. However, with the the start of the Israeli occupation of East Jerusalem, following the 1967 war, settlers began claiming ownership of the land the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood was build on.

Stating that they had purchased the land from a previous Ottoman owner in the 1800s, settlers claimed ownership of the land. In 1972 settlers successfully registered this claim with the Israeli Land Registrar. While the al-Kurds family continued legal proceedings challenging the settlers claim, the settlers started filing suits against the Palestinian family.

In 2006, the court ruled the settlers claim void, recognizing it was based on fraudulent documents. Subsequently, the Al-Kurd family lawyer petitioned the Israeli Land Registrar to revoke the settlers registration of the land and state the correct owner of the land. Although it did revoke the settlers claim, the Israeli land Registrar refused to indicate the rightful owner of the land.

In 2001 settlers began occupying an extension of the al-Kurd home. Despite the fact that their claim to the land was revoked, settlers were given the keys of the al-Kurds family home extension by the local Israeli municipality. This was possible after the municipality had confiscated the keys of the extension that the al-Kurd family built on their property to house the natural expansion of the family.

When this extension was declared illegal by Israeli authorities, the Israeli municipality handed the keys over to Israeli settlers. The al-Kurd family went to court and an eviction order was issued against the settlers. When the al-Kurd family were evicted on the 9th November 2008, the settlers were allowed to remain in the property, despite their own eviction order.

In July 2008 the Israeli Supreme Court ordered the eviction of the al-Kurd family, for their refusal to pay rent to the settlers for use of the land. Although the settlers claim to the land had been revoked two years earlier, the court instead based their decision on an agreement made between a previous lawyer and the settlers. It should be noted that the al-Kurd family -and the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood as a whole- rejected this agreement and fired their legal representative at the time.

Israel’s Wall puts Emad Burnat of Bil’in and his children in hospital.

At 5:20 pm on Saturday 22nd November, Bi’lin Popular Committee Against the Wall and Settlements member, Emad Burnat, was admitted to hospital in very serious condition after his tractor flipped over against Israel’s Apartheid Wall. The wall – which in Bil’in is composed of metal fence and barbwire – cuts through the village’s farmland.

The video documenter of the Bi’lin’s anti-wall struggle was returning with his children from plowing his fields when he was forced to detour down a steep hill in order to return to the village because the wall separates his home from his land. Loosing control of the tractor on the sharp decline, it overturned directly into the metal mesh and razor wire.

While his children were taken to hospital in Ramallah, the army medic who treated Burnat decided to send him to the Tel Aviv hospital out of fear that he wouldn’t make to Ramallah alive. None-the-less, it still took the ambulance an hour to arrive at the checkpoint and Burnat had to be transferred from a Red Crescent to an Israeli ambulance before being taken to Tel Aviv.

“While this is a tragic accident, the blame can be laid directly at the feet of Israel’s occupation and land confiscation by the wall, which forces a dangerous burden and risk on Palestinian farmers,” says popular committee chairperson and cousin of Emad, Eyad Burnat.

“Israel’s checkpoint system only adds to this hardship by preventing the speedy medical attention to Palestinians when necessary,” he added.

At present Burnat’s spleen has been removed and doctors have yet to stitch up his wounds because his liver is still bleeding. Doctors are exercising cautious optimism, reporting that he arrived at the hospital in time and was a healthy man. Burnat’s children were treated for mild injuries.

UK Guardian: Palestinian notables denounce UK-Leviev embassy deal

UK Guardian, letters section
Nov. 22, 2008

It is with great dismay that we learned of the British government’s plans to rent space for its new Tel Aviv embassy location from Lev Leviev’s company Africa-Israel. Africa-Israel builds Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank. Additionally, Leviev’s company Leader is building the settlement of Zufim. Israeli settlements are illegal under international law.

We welcome the recent decision by the British government to take action against Israeli settlements by cracking down on settlement exports. However, renting space for the embassy from a settlement-builder would send a contradictory message, signalling clear and active complicity with illegal settlement construction. It is this kind of international complicity that allows Israel to continue to violate international law with impunity, thereby eroding the credibility of international law at the global level and in relation to occupied Palestinian territory. The UK Foreign Office says no lease has been signed but provides no assurance that such a deal will not take place. We therefore call on the British government to publicly guarantee that it will not do business with settlement-builders such as Lev Leviev and his company Africa-Israel.

Hanan Ashrawi Palestinian legislative council, Dr. Mustafa Barghouti PLC, Atallah Hannah Archbishop of Sebastia, Khaleda Jarrar PLC, Hussam Khader PLC, Ikrimah Sabri Sheikh of al-Aqsa Mosque, Bethlehem

Human Rights Observers start hunger strike in Israel

Massiyahu Prison, Lida, Israel (20 November, 2008) – Three Human Rights Observers (HRO) with the International Solidarity Movement began a hunger strike today in protest over the illegal confiscation of Paestinian fishing boats by Israel. The three HROs, Darlene Wallach of the U.S., Vittorio Arrigoni of Italy, and Andrew Muncie of Scotland, were forcibly abducted by the Israeli Navy on Tuesday, while accompanying unarmed Palestinian fishermen off the coast of the Gaza Strip.

According to Wallach, “We were fishing about 7 miles off the shores of Gaza. The Israeli soldiers came on board the three boats via four Zodiacs. The frogmen came up and over each boat. They used a taser on Vik while he was still on the boat, then tried to push him backwards onto a sharp piece of wood. He jumped into the sea to avoid being hurt more than he already was and was in the water for quite a while. Then they came for me and forced me into the Zodiac at the point of a gun. They kidnapped me and Andrew and Vik and all of the Palestinian fishermen.”

Israel abducted and later released 15 Palestinian fishermen during the incident, and confiscated their fishing boats. The HROs are refusing to be deported, and refusing to eat, until the boats are returned– undamaged–to their rightful owners in Gaza.

“We R on hunger strike and want 2 go before judge in court. No deportation til boats are returned 2 fishermen,” was the text message sent out from jail by the HROs this afternoon.

At court today, HRO Andrew Muncie asked the judge under what law they had been arrested. According to the judge, their detention was authorized by the Oslo Accords “because it is forbidden by military law for you to fish 7 and a half miles off the coast. It is a no-fishing zone.”

However, the Oslo accords grant Palestinians the right to fish 20 miles off their own coast. When Andrew’s attorney handed a copy of that portion of the Oslo accords to the judge, she had no comment.

On August 23, 2008, Wallach, Muncie and Arrigoni were among 44 participants in the Free Gaza Movement who were aboard the first boats in forty-one years to enter Gaza by sea, breaking the Israeli blockade. They remained in Gaza to participate in human rights activities with the International Solidarity Movement. They have been living and working in Gaza since the summer, providing accompaniment to Palestinian farmers and fishermen, and documenting Israeli human rights abuses in the Gaza Strip.

The three will stop eating tomorrow morning until the confiscated fishing boats are “returned in the condition they were in when the frogmen boarded the boats, with any damage they made repaired.”