Category: Press Releases - Page 56 - International Solidarity Movement

Palestinian hunger strikers insist on gaining their freedom even if the cost is their lives

5 December 2012 | Addameer

Ayman Sharawnah, 158 days on hunger strike

Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association expresses its deep concern for the health and lives of five Palestinian political prisoners that are on hunger strike to protest their unjust detention in Israeli Occupation’s prisons. The five current hunger strikers are: Ayman Sharawna (158 days), Samer Al-Issawi (127 days), Oday Keilani (46 days), Jafar Azzidine (8) and Tarek Qa’adan (8 days).

On 3 December Addameer lawyer Fares Zayyad visited Ramleh prison clinic and met with two of the hunger striking prisoners, Ayman Sharawneh and Samer Al-Issawi. He also attempted to meet with Oday Keilani but was denied by the prison administration. Oday Keilani has been held under administrative detention since 3 April 2011 and on hunger strike for 46 days to protest the recent renewal of his administrative detention.

Samer Issawi (who was previously released in the prisoners exchange deal) has been on a partial hunger strike for 127 days. Despite the rapid deterioration in his health Samer insists that he will not end his hunger strike unless he gains his freedom or dies.

On a number of recent occasions Samer was transferred to Assaf Harofeh Medical Center after severe decreases in his pulse, which at one point dropped to 48 beats per minute, but was transferred back to Ramleh prison clinic once his condition slightly improved. He was only admitted to the intensive care unit when his heart fell to 36 beats per minute. Initially Samer refused treatment but was threatened with a glucose injection by force, a very dangerous and life threatening procedure, and therefore was forced to comply and accept medical treatment. He was transferred back to Ramleh prison clinic on 29 November 2012.

Addameer lawyer Fares Zayyad confirms that despite Samer’s strength and resistance, he is suffering from many ailments and at times faints unexpectedly. Like the other prisoners, Samer is not being treated as an ill patient by the Ramleh prison clinic. On Saturday 1 December 2012 during an examination with the prison clinic doctor, Samer tried to stand and lost consciousness. Instead of assisting him, the doctor left him lying on the floor and exited the room.

Ayman Sharawneh (36 years old) has been on hunger strike for 158 days. He was previously released in the prisoners exchange deal and re-arrested on 31 January 2012. Israeli intelligence officer’s conducts daily sessions with Ayman in an attempt to pressure him to end his hunger strike. However Ayman refuses to end his strike without written confirmation that he will be released.

Addameer holds the Israeli occupation totally responsible for the health and lives of all of the hunger strikers, and considers the protection of their lives a national and moral duty of all Palestinians.

Addameer calls on the Palestinian leadership represented by the PLO and Islamic factions to call for the freedom of the prisoners and support their cause, and calls for Egypt, the sponsor of the October 2011 prison exchange deal, to intervene and pressure the IOF to release the hunger strikers immediately and without conditions.

ACT NOW!

Write to the Israeli government, military and legal authorities and demand the release of the hunger strikers:

Brigadier General Danny Efroni
Military Judge Advocate General
6 David Elazar Street
Harkiya, Tel Aviv
Israel
Fax: +972 3 608 0366; +972 3 569 4526
Email: arbel@mail.idf.il; avimn@idf.gov.il

Maj. Gen. Nitzan Alon
OC Central Command Nehemia Base, Central Command
Neveh Yaacov, Jerusalam
Fax: +972 2 530 5741
Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Defense Ehud Barak
Ministry of Defense
37 Kaplan Street, Hakirya
Tel Aviv 61909, Israel
Fax: +972 3 691 6940 / 696 2757

Col. Eli Bar On
Legal Advisor of Judea and Samaria PO Box 5
Beth El 90631
Fax: +972 2 9977326

Write to your own elected representatives urging them to pressure Israel to release the hunger strikers.

500 Israeli soldiers ransack homes in Burqa

06 December 2012 | International Solidarity Movement, Burqa, Occupied Palestine

Around 500 Israeli soldiers invaded the village of Burqa, north-west of Nablus, in the middle of the night, ransacking homes and causing damages amounting to thousands of euros.

Soldiers arrived in over 30 military jeeps at around 1:00 am and broke into 36 houses where whole families were asleep. People in Burqa recounted their horror at finding armed soldiers with dogs surrounding their beds, and at being forced to leave their homes and stand in the rain as the Israeli military carried out its operation. One old woman who complained that the conditions were detrimental to her weak state of health was simply told to ‘shut up’ by the soldiers. Another man described how he had to wait for hours in the rain with his one-year old daughter dressed only in her pyjamas.

When the families were allowed back into their homes they found everything turned upside down. Furniture, electronic appliances, water pipes, tiles and windows had been spitefully broken. As villagers took us from home to home we witnessed the same scene of disaster repeating itself in each place. Clothes and mattresses were all over the place, drawers were broken, fridges and washing machines had been slammed on the floor. A newly married couple showed us their brand-new furniture that had been smashed when the soldiers threw the wardrobe onto the bed. In another house buckets of paint had been tipped over, spilling all over the floor and a man took us to his animal shelter where one of his lambs had been killed by the Israeli soldiers. Most families were not given reasons why this raid was taking place, while one man whose house was ransacked was told by the soldiers they were searching for weapons. However, in his opinion this was simply revenge by the Israeli state following the UN vote which granted Palestine an observer status within the general assembly.

The villagers said that the soldiers came from the nearby Israeli settlement, Homesh and returned there after the operation ended at around 7:00am. The illegal Homesh settlement was said to have been dismantled by the Israeli authorities. Nonetheless, it is presently inhabited by around 20 settlers living in caravans. The land surrounding the settlement is off-limits to the villagers of Burqa, including farmers who have land there. Furthermore, a few days before, settlers had come into the village and started shooting in the air. This is the latest in a series of attacks meant to scare the people of Burqa.

One Voice in Gaza: normalization at its best!

5 December 2012 | The One Democratic State Group, Besieged Gaza, Occupied Palestine

It has come to our knowledge that One Voice, “an international grassroots movement that amplifies the voice of mainstream Israelis and Palestinians, empowering them to propel their elected representatives toward the two-state solution” has started recruiting youth from The Gaza Strip. This is supposed to be part of its work “to forge consensus for conflict resolution and build a human infrastructure capable of mobilizing the people toward a negotiated, comprehensive and permanent agreement between Israel and Palestine that ends the occupation, ensures security and peace for both sides…” The movement recognizes that violence by either side will never be a means to end the conflict. (emphasis added). In its new Gaza initiative, One Voice “planned an intensive 36-hour training program in leadership skills and teamwork.”

The Palestinian Students Campaign for the Academic boycott of Israel, like Palestinian Youth Against Normalization, considers One Voice a normalizing organization since it ignores the reality which is Israel’s oppression and systematic discrimination against the Palestinian people in its three components: 1948, 1967, and the Diaspora. OV, amongst other organizations, targets Palestinian youth to engage them in dialogue with Israelis without recognizing the inalienable rights of Palestinians, or aiming to end Israel’s occupation, colonization, and apartheid.

We reiterate our commitment to the statement issued by Palestinian youth against normalization which was endorsed by almost all Palestinian youth and student organizations.

We consider One Voice to be an organization that aims to normalize apartheid and the ethnic cleansing of Palestine that took place in 1948. One Voice Movement’s vision is based on a “two-state solution”, without any commitment to international parameters — which assumes equal responsibility of “both sides” for the “conflict”, and suspiciously fails to call for Israel’s full compliance with its obligations under international law through ending its illegal military occupation, its denial of Palestinian refugee rights (particularly the right of return), and its system of racial discrimination against its own Palestinian citizens.

Some of the events organized by One Voice, like the One Million Voices, are sponsored by Israeli institutions (mostly from the private sector) and endorsed by mainstream Israeli political figures from parties including the Likud, Labour and Shas. These Israeli “partners” are unquestionably complicit in maintaining Israel’s occupation and other forms of oppression.

One Voice seems to ignore the fact that the reason why Palestinians and Israelis cannot get together is because the former are colonized and the latter are settler colonists. It also ignores the fact that Israel is an apartheid state, as former American president Jimmy Carter and anti-Apartheid activist and Nobel Laureate Desmund Tutu called it; a state that discriminates not only against the Palestinians of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, but also against the 1.2 million Palestinians living in it as third class citizens.

We, Palestinian youth of Gaza, ask if One Voice trainers and leaders in Tel Aviv are willing to admit that the creation of the state of Israel was responsible for the continuing ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people since 1948? That it illegally occupies the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, and racially discriminates against the 1948 Palestinians in what the United Nations Special Rapporteur John Dugard described as, “the only remaining case after South Africa of a Western-affiliated regime that denies self-determination and human rights to a developing people and that has done so for so long”. A state responsible for ongoing house demolitions, illegal settlement expansions and the building of a monstrous Apartheid Wall — not to mention the collective punishment of 1.5 million Palestinians of Gaza, who are subjugated to a brutal, medieval siege entering its fifth year?

The One Voice website never alludes to the children and teenagers killed by Israel in the last two genocidal wars against the Palestinians of Gaza. Or is that considered a form of “dialogue” between “two equal parties” engaged in a “conflict?” Will there be a reference to the violence of the colonizer; the fourth largest army in the world with more than 450 nuclear heads? Will it state the fact that two thirds of the Palestinians of Gaza are refugees who were ethnically cleansed from the towns and villages where Israeli One Voice trainers and leaders live now?

Instead, One Voice is working on “building a mass grassroots movement that will amplify the voice of the moderates on both sides“, wanting to “show that there are partners for negotiations and peace on both sides” Where are the “two sides” of this “conflict?” Palestinian resistance is considered a “form of violence…(which) brings more violence and suffering to people on both sides! ” This is an issue of injustice around continuous dispossession and subjugation of one people by another people. Do we understand from One Voice that there was a “conflict” between the native Blacks of South Africa and the White supremacists of the apartheid regime?

The One Voice programme is one more arrogant attempt to equate the colonizer and colonized; oppressor and oppressed; victim and executioner. This is camouflaged by changing its name in Arabic to “Palestinian Voice!” We ask: will One Voice ever condemn Israel’s policy of apartheid and ethnic cleansing? Will it openly support the Palestinian right to self-determination?

We, therefore, consider One Voice projects in Gaza a continuation of a campaign of normalization that aims at whitewashing Israel’s tarnished image and does nothing but falsely creates the facade that there are actually two equal sides to “the conflict.” No wonder that tens of cultural and other civil society organizations in Palestine and the Arab World called One Voice “peace activities” as “camouflaging of Apartheid.”

We call on all Palestinian youth not to take part in this public relations charade that conceals a misleading political program that falls significantly short of international law tenets and the Palestinian national program. We expect the Palestinian participants to withdraw their support for this movement that only serves to blind the Palestinian public and sidetrack it from struggling, with the solidarity of its international supporters, for its UN-sanctioned rights, for justice, equality and freedom.

Signed by:

The Palestinian Students’ Campaign for the Academic Boycott of Israel (PSCABI)

Progressive Student Union Bloc

Fateh Youth Organization

Islamic Bloc

Palestinian Student Labor Front

Union of the Palestinian Students struggle committees

Islamic League of Palestinian Students

The Palestinian Popular struggle Front Union

Union of the Palestinian Students struggle committees

Israeli army demolishes mosque in al Mufaqarah, South Hebron Hills

4 December 2012 | Operation Dove

At-Tuwani – On Tuesday 4 December at 6.30 am, two bulldozers together with a Border Police vehicle, four District Coordination Office (DCO) vehicles and five Israeli army vehicles arrived to the Palestinian village of al Mufaqarah, and demolished the mosque.

The mosque was already demolished by the Israeli army one year ago, on November 24, 2011. The inhabitants of the village had just finished to rebuild the mosque last October.

The village of al Mufaqarah belongs to Area C, under the military and administrative control of Israel. Every construction must be approved by the Israeli administration. Israel denies Palestinians the right to build on 70% of Area C, which comes out to about 44% of the West Bank, while within the remaining 30% a series of restrictions are applied which eliminate the possibility to obtain a permit.

While Palestinian villages of Area C are suffering an ongoing policy of demolitions, in the nearby outpost of Avigayil, illegal under the Israeli law itself, settlers are working on new buildings. These illegal constructions are tolerated by the army and police, despite repeated reports from international and Israeli activists.

According to the Fourth Geneva Convention, the Hague Regulations, the International Court of Justice, and several United Nations resolutions, all Israeli settlements and outposts in the Occupied Palestinian Territories are illegal. Most settlement outposts, including Havat Ma’on (Hill 833) and Avigayil, are considered illegal also under Israeli law.

Operation Dove has maintained an international presence in At-Tuwani in South Hebron Hills since 2004.

Demonstration in solidarity with Gaza fishermen on Wednesday, 5 December 2012 at Gaza port

4 December 2012 | Palestinian Centre for Human Rights

A demonstration in solidarity with Gaza Fishermen is planned for Wednesday, 5 December 2012, to be held at Gaza Port at 10am.

In the period between Wednesday, 28 November, and Saturday, 1 December, at least 29 fishermen have been arrested, at least 9 fishing boats have been impounded (including a larger trawling vessel), and one boat has been destroyed. The fishermen’s reports are generally the same: they are fishing within the new 6 mile limit (or even within the former 3 mile limit) when Israeli gunboats approach and start firing at them, often aiming at the motor. They order fishermen to strip down to their undergarments, jump into the water, and swim towards the gunboat, where they are handcuffed and blindfolded, and sometimes beaten. Some are taken to Ashdod or Erez and interrogated. Most are released the same day, although Amar Bakr is still being held at Ashdod. Most of the confiscated boats have belonged to the Bakr family, while the Hessi family has also been attacked.

An announcement was issued by the Hamas government stating that the maritime boundaries had been extended from three to six nautical miles under the terms of the recent ceasefire. International standards set the limit at 12 miles, while the Oslo Accords granted Gaza fishermen 20 miles in 1995. However, this limit was reduced to three miles in January 2009 after the attacks of Operation Cast Lead.

In late January 2009, when fishermen returned to the sea after Operation Cast Lead, they were viciously attacked. Boats were completely destroyed, and many fishermen were shot, with serious injuries. Some were even shot in the back as they attempted to return to the shore. Now, nearly four years later, immediately following a ceasefire, Gaza fishermen are once again under attack. The Israeli violations of the ceasefire agreement should not go unnoticed. Violations have occurred nearly every day since the agreement was brokered, with Israeli forces attacking fishermen at sea and farmers at work in the buffer zones. The question is now: who is holding Israel accountable?

More information can be found at the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR). www.pchrgaza.org.