An Israeli has opened fire at a group of Palestinians in the West Bank, killing three people, in a shooting that coincided with Israel’s Gaza withdrawal.
Category: Press Releases
Picture of a settlement
Kadim settlement, one the settlement being removed from the Jenin area in order to concentrate Israeli control in Jerusalem and Sulfit area.
by Devon
August 15
This picture is just after sunrise on the morning of the disengagement. The illegal Kadim settlement is a quarter of a mile away from the tiny West Bank hamlet of Kherbet Rannam, population 35 people; thats 6 families. The whole village descends from one man who fled Haifa in 1948. He lost around 2,000 dunams of land there and bought 210 dunams in Kherbet Rannam.
ISM was called there because on the night of Aug. 13 around a 100 settlers tried to enter the village, but were stopped by the army. Nevertheless, the children couldn’t sleep because they were so frightened. We arrived the next day and were greeted by the villagers. All was quiet except for the occasional round of of military gunfire in the late afternoon. Nobody was hurt.
On August 15, when I was coming home, I first stopped at the Palestinian Authority department of public works in Jenin. We saw bullet holes in the wall above the main desk. We were told that the Israeli soldiers patrol Jenin all the time and the shootings happen all the time. The man also said that he had to dive to the ground in order to dodge the bullets.
On the way back to Bil’in, my taxi was stopped at Ball’a, outside of Jenin. All eight of us were ordered to get out in front of the two armored vehicles (tanks without guns). All the men were then ordered to lift up our shirts to check for bombs. They looked at our passports and questioned us intensely. One woman next to me accidently said Palestine and the soldier replied, “this is Israel, f##k Palestine.”
So you can see, this is a military fully committed to human rights and “disengagement.”
Women in Black plan massive vigil in Bil’in
Hundreds of women in the region to participate in the International Women in Black Conference in Jerusalem will travel today to the village of Bil’in to participate with village women in a vigil against construction of Israel’s illegal annexation wall that will cut 60 percent of Bil’in’s farmland from its people so that nearby settlers can take over the land.
An expected 450 women from the Women in Black conference are expected to go to village for the vigil, where they will be joined by about 100 Bil’in women and another 100 Palestinian women from around the area. Chances are that this demonstration will have a vastly different result from the typical actions there, where nonviolent demonstrators are often met with brutality at the hands of Israeli soldiers as they attempt to access their own land.
The group will first be given a tour of the area, and take a look at the props used in Bil’in’s Friday actions, and then walk in silence toward the wall.
Rachel Corrie: Answers needed
The family of English peace activist Tom Hurndall is experiencing the cold comfort of justice at last. Hurndall, 22, was shot in the head by an Israeli sniper in Rafah about two years ago while moving Palestinian children out of the line of fire. He remained in a coma for nine months before he died.
Read the rest in Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
In Gaza, we don’t yet see the peace that’s supposed to be in the plan
by Khaled Nasrallah
If you asked me about the withdraw from Gaza, I would tell you that sure, it’s a step ahead. That is, if it really is something that is a start toward real peace. Is it? Real peace is something we’ve not yet seen. We are tired of the images on television depicting this current unreal peace, which is not connected to the daily life of people here.
We also are tired of peace plans which are created only with the benefit of one party in mind, instead of both parties.
We still need a real peace plan. We need a real withdrawal that will give us the authority to control our lives independently. This “disengagement” isn’t it. Israel will continue to control our borders though third parties, control our airspace and access to the sea. we’ll still need to get Israeli permission even to dig water wells.
So you if you look at Israel’s evacuation in this way, you can see that it’s an incomplete solution that will keep the seeds of instability in place for another five to eight years.
So, the question is, who benefits most from this sort of plan, and why are international powers supporting a plan that has such a short life.
We must also remember the crisis happening on the other side of Palestine, in the West Bank. While we do not know what the future holds, we worry that under this plan Palestinians will lose the West Bank and Jerusalem, and whether this incomplete withdrawal from Gaza will mean many more years of continued occupation.
Khaled Nasrallah lived in the house in Rafah, located in southern Gaza near the Egyptian border, where ISM activist Rachel Corrie was killed by a soldier driving a bulldozer to destroy the Nasrallah family’s home on March 16, 2003.