28th November 2014 | International Solidarity Movement, Khalil team | Hebron, Occupied Palestine
Israeli forces violently detained and arrested twenty-year-old Palestinian activist Imad Altrash at approximately two o’clock yesterday in al-Khalil (Hebron).
Photo by Human Rights Defenders Palestine (http://tinyurl.com/psgc7yd).
Soldiers accused him of insulting and yelling at them at Shuhada checkpoint. No soldiers claimed that Imad threatened them or behaved violently.
Photo by Human Rights Defenders Palestine (http://tinyurl.com/psgc7yd).
On the way to the checkpoint, ISM activists ran through cold and rain as sheets of water poured down the street. Imad stood exposed, standing just behind a cement barricade on the side of the road leading up the checkpoint. One of the first things he said was, “I’ve been standing here for two hours.”
Shuhada checkpoint has been closed for the past seven days as part of a policy of collective punishment directed at the Palestinians in surrounding neighbourhoods after the checkpoint was burnt during clashes last Friday. The checkpoint connects Bab a-Zawiya, a neighbourhood in H1 (supposedly under full Palestinian authority) to Tel Rumeida, an H2 residential area under full Israeli military and civil control. Israeli soldiers have been for the past several days denying passage through the checkpoint to Palestinians including children, elderly people and teachers from nearby schools who should have special permission to pass.
Video footage from Human Rights Defenders Palestine shows soldiers violently dragging Imad up the stairs of the checkpoint and holding him in a headlock as they push him around.
After about two hours of detention at the checkpoint, Israeli police took Imad to a nearby police station where he was held for approximately an hour before being released to the Palestinian DCO [District Coordination Office].
24th November 2014 | International Solidarity Movement, Nablus Team | Hajja, Occupied Palestine
On Monday November 17th, the Israeli occupation army invaded the village of Hajja, in the Qalqilya district and issued five home demolition orders. The village of Hajja includes land that is officially considered Area C, as well as Area B, but the village is treated entirely as if it is part of Area C. Area C makes up 60% of the entire occupied West Bank, and is under full Israeli military and civilian control. Palestinians living here face many restrictions, including building limitations.
Hajja is located near the main road to Tulkaram, a road frequently traveled on by Israeli forces. Villagers say that they see occupation soldiers nearly every day.
The five home demolition orders were distributed as the families did not have “official permission” to build or renovate their existing houses. In Area C, Palestinians are required to obtain permission from the Israeli military before doing any construction; however, such permits are nearly impossible to get in reality. Due to this, many Palestinians who need more space or a new home simply build without permission and take the risk of future home demolition.
According to one of the family’s who received a stop work order on the new house they are building for their family of nine, the Israeli occupation forces enter the village with Israeli civilian authorities approximately every 18 months. Each time they come, they check to make sure no one is building without permission; when they find people who are not following the impossible permit system (and they nearly always do), they issue stop work orders or home demolition orders. Although the family that received the stop work order is building a new home and thus will not face homelessness if it is destroyed, the other four homes facing demolition will cause the families there to become homeless.
People will continue building, even knowing that they face possible demolition, because it is necessary to meet the needs of their expanding families. Permits are almost impossible, so what other option do they have? In the meantime, the families await the destruction of their homes.
House demolition in Qalqilya in 2011 (photo by ISM).
23rd November 2014 | International Solidarity Movement, Khalil | Hebron, Occupied Palestine
Yesterday evening Israeli forces beat and detained young Palestinians on Tel Rumeida hill in al-Khalil (Hebron).
Photo by Youth Against Settlements (https://www.facebook.com/media.yas)
A twenty-two-year-old man was taken from the scene by an ambulance. Four others between the ages of eighteen and twenty-four were handcuffed and detained in a military compound, where they were held for about half an hour and questioned by police.
When ISM activists arrived, Israeli soldiers were already swarming the scene, surrounding the injured man and taking the four detained Palestinians into the closed compound. At least thirty heavily armed soldiers stood guarding the compound and occupying the street.
Photo by Youth Against Settlements (https://www.facebook.com/media.yas)
Soldiers’ stories were contradictory, some said the youths had thrown a Molotov cocktail, others claimed they had been throwing stones. Though they purported to have evidence, the Israeli forces could produce none.
The father of one of the young men the soldiers had detained attempted to see his son, but was denied by the soldiers. A Palestinian contact at the scene explained that the man’s other son, the brother of the man arrested, had been shot in the head at age eighteen by Israeli soldiers and suffered brain damage as a result. The father hurled vitriol at the soldiers standing around the compound, cursing them and the Israeli occupation vividly in Arabic. “You shot my other son, now you want to kill him [the son who was detained]!”
The youth’s mother arrived later, accompanied by her son, the same brother who had been shot in the same neighborhood three years earlier. They were both also denied entry into the military compound where the four Palestinians were held.
Observers from ISM and a local Palestinian organization watched from a nearby roof, as the Palestinians stood handcuffed among soldiers and police. Though no more violence occurred in the compound, later in the night a few Palestinian youths ran out from a nearby side street and one threw a Molotov cocktail toward the parked military vehicles, causing no injuries or damage. Over eighteen Israeli soldiers ran up the road in a fruitless attempt to pursue the boys.
Further up the street, soldiers attempted to set up a roadblock using Palestinian cars. They ordered the drivers to park across the road, taking their keys and placing them on top of the vehicles. Israeli forces made no attempt, however, to enforce their order; the Palestinian drivers took an opportunity to drive away once the soldiers moved back down the road.
An ISM activist present stated, “I’ve never seen soldiers do something like this before, and it was clear the men in the cars were very confused and frightened. The soldiers then moved down another road, and detained a young man and stopped several cars. They were very hostile; pointing their guns aggressively at everyone, there seemed to be little point to their behaviour beyond intimidation and harassment.”
It was only one incident in a night of strange occurrences, among weeks of tension, violence and frustration for the people of Tel Rumeida. Palestinians at the scene spoke of incidents on other nights, in other places, at other times, as occupation soldiers indiscriminately harassed the local population. All five of the young Palestinians were from the neighbourhood, and the four arrested were driven away as their neighbours and families looked on. The complete lack of evidence did, however, apparently sway the police; a local Palestinian source reported that all the Palestinians who had been detained were released at a nearby checkpoint.
22nd November 2014 | Operation Dove | Susiya, Occupied Palestine
On November 20th, the Israeli forces seized a tractor, its truck, four water tanks and three tanks’ bases from the Palestinian village of Susiya.
Photo by Operation Dove
In the early morning DCO [District Coordination Office] officers approached the Palestinian village to take pictures of the ongoing works to install four new water tanks. In the early afternoon DCO officers returned with Israeli army, police, two trucks, one of which was equipped with a mechanical arm.
The tractor and its truck, that carried water cisterns and their bases, were seized with the accusation of being used for illegal works, since Palestinians didn’t have permissions to install new water tanks. Tanks and bases were seized without any previous issued demolition order under the pretext that they were not yet installed on the ground.
Photo by Operation Dove
Water tanks were geared of filters to provide drinkable water and were donated to the Palestinian village because of the lack of drinkable water that effects all the South Hebron Hills area.
The Palestinian village of Susiya is located in Area C, under Israeli military and civil administration, and it is surrounded by the Israeli settlement of Suseya, the outpost of Suseya’s Ancient Synagogue and the military base of Suseya North. Around the settlement and the military base there are 26 wells and water cisterns that Palestinians are forbidden to use even if they are on Palestinian private proprieties. Even more, the CO doesn’t allow Palestinian residents of Susiya to connect to Israeli Makorot Company’s water pipes that run right through the Palestinian village and bring water from the settlement of Suseya to the outpost of the Ancient Synagogue.
Palestinian residents of Susiya pay 35 NIS per cubic meter of tanked water, six times more than the nearby settlement, which is served by the network, and Palestinian residents spend up to 1/3 of their income on water. Water consumption of Palestinians in Susiya is 28 liters/capita/day, significantly less than the 70 l/c/d consumed by an average Palestinian and well below the World Health Organization standard of 100 l/c/d. (source OCHA OPT)
The Palestinian inhabitants of Susiya are struggling through non-violent popular resistance in order to gain the right to access their own lands and to live a dignified life.
Operation Dove has maintained an international presence in At Tuwani and the South Hebron Hills since 2004.
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.
