8 December 2023 | International Solidarity Movement | Masafer Yatta, Occupied West Bank
In the morning of December 8th, around50 soldiers/settlers, most of whom wore masks, invaded the Palestinian village of Khallet Al-Dabaa, in Masafer Yatta, and violently attacked 5 people. The aggressors abducted Salah, a Palestinian man, father of 4 young children. They also ransacked and seriously damaged some houses and the elementary school of the village, destroying doors, windows and furniture. The soldiers/settlers stole 6000 shekels ($1600), and various property such as power drills, jackets, flashlights, binoculars. They also tore bags of food, stepped on bread and vegetables.
The soldiers/settlers then blocked the road to a nearby village and prevented an ambulance from reaching a diabetic 84-year-old Palestinian who needed urgent medical attention.
The 84-year-old Palestinian man passed out during the confrontation, while the head of the village council, Muhammad Rabai, who had called the ambulance, was arrested by the Israeli soldiers/settlers.
It was unclear whether the aggressors, who arrived in civilian vehicles, were settlers, Israeli army soldiers, or a group composed of both.
Palestinians in Masafer Yatta have been reporting that it is currently almost impossible to distinguish between army and groups of settlers, as the latter roam the area heavily armed, wearing Israeli army uniforms and balaklavas, and accompanied by soldiers.
During the attack, eyewitnesses recognized a particularly violent settler, going by the name of Eitan Yardeni, who resides in the illegal Israeli outpost of Havat Ma’on.
Colonial attacks and ethnic cleansing in Masafer Yatta
In the 1980s, Israeli authorities designated a part of Masafer Yatta as ’Firing Zone 918’, a closed military zone. This zone includes the land where Khallet Al-Dabaa is located. Since this declaration, residents have been at risk of forced eviction, house demolitions, and forcible transfer. One of the houses that was damaged during the December 8th attack has been demolished and rebuilt 5 times in the past.
According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), around 1,150 Palestinians lived in the firing zone in 2022, including 569 children.
In the past weeks, residents of Masafer Yatta have reported violent and continuous raids by armed settlers and Israeli soldiers, who assault and abduct Palestinians, destroy critical infrastrcutre in the villages such as power grids and water tanks, and steal property and livestock.
Palestinians have also been left homeless following demolitions by army bulldozers in several villages including Deirat, Umm Lasafa and Umm Qissa.
In October, Palestinians from the village of Khirbet Zanuta were forcibly displaced after armed settlers threatened them that they had 24 hours to leave their homes, before the settlers would come back and “kill everyone”.
A house in Khallet Al-Dabaa in a picture from August 2023 (top) and immediately after the attack (down). Settlers destroyed a wall that was decorated with two murales: “Where Will I Sleep” and “Free Palestine from the River to the Sea”
8 December 2023 | International Solidarity Movement | Occupied East Jerusalem
Marking the first night of Hanukkah, on December 7, around 150 ultra-nationalist, Kahane terrorist linked extremist settlers demanding “full Jewish control” of Al Aqsa Mosque shouted racist abuse and waved banners of violent incitement against Al Aqsa Mosque. The violent-extremist group was granted authorization to march through the Muslim Quarter, but was stopped before it could start when Israeli police confronted the mob for violating the terms of its protest permit and inciting violence. Signs calling for the bulldozer-demolition of Al Aqsa, one of the holiest structures in Islam, were reportedly confiscated.
Clashes between Israeli police and far-right activists at a march through Jerusalem’s Old City on Thursday night. Credit: Olivier Fitoussi.
Permission was granted on the eve of the event, against every indication that march organizers would not be following the tepid ‘restrictions’ placed on the march including an attendance cap and disallowance of the route reaching the holy site. Extremist, settler-colonial citizen forces are granted the right to murder and showered with arms by their government with which to do so. But under pressure through public outcry against the provocative event, occupation police dispersed the demonstration.
Far right march organizers had circulated a declaration through social media linking the events in Gaza with continued zionist incitement to wrest control of Al Aqsa from the Islamic Endowment waqf. Extremist settlers, instead, want to place it under the control of the same occupying force which is committing daily atrocities against occupied and besieged Palestinians, atrocities which have shocked the world.
The Haram Al-Sharif and the Al Aqsa Mosque, was the first place Muslims prayed toward and remains a sacred site of great importance in Islam. It has long been a flashpoint for far right extremist settler and occupation forces’ violence and antagonization of Palestinians through continuous incursions; its majesty the backdrop of the repeated and arbitrary denial of access to Muslims.
Across a timeline littered with incursions into the area, May saw hundreds of settlers marking “Flag Day” by rampaging through occupied East Jerusalem where soldier and settler alike hurled racial insults and assaulted Palestinians in the area. And in early October, far-right extremists repeatedly stormed the Al Aqsa Mosque compound coinciding with the Jewish Sukkot seven day pilgrimage festival. Incited by Jewish ultra-nationalist groups, extremist settlers continued an antagonistic campaign of repeated trampling of the courtyard at the holy site even as faithful Palestinians were being violently denied entry, an arbitrary age-restriction which is ongoing.
Al Aqsa Compound stormed by extremist settlers on October 5, 2023. photo credit: The New Arab.
Al-Aqsa’s administrative workers, including Sheikh Ekrima Sabri, one of Al Aqsa’s main Imams, have endured repeated targeting. Sheikh Sabri has faced terrorist death threats by settler vigilantes, a raid of his home to announce an arbitrary travel ban against him, and an outrageous eviction and notice of impending demolition of his home just days ago. This home demolition is especially egregious because it involves the collective punishment of 100 Palestinians who also live in separate homes inside the threatened structure.
People of all faiths, including Palestinian Muslims, have an inalienable right, echoed in OCHA’s International Standardsarticle 18 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, of freedom from religious-based discrimination. Palestinians regularly attempt to reach Al Aqsa Mosque for Friday prayers, but are blocked by Israeli barricades, police, and military who attack the worshippers while they are praying week after week. Human rights defenders holding a non-violent presence to document the restriction, assault, and harassment of Palestinian Muslims at their holy site, have had their phones and passports confiscated and have been forced from the site by occupation soldiers. Despite these provocations, and the recent jailing and forced deportation of a Belgian human rights defender while documenting an illegal home demolition, international human rights defenders continue to document and intervene in human rights violations.
The violent, extremist settler march was an incitement to further violence and marginalization of indigenous Palestinians and the obscene violation of a holy site meant to be a welcoming sanctuary to those whispering prayers within its walls. The organization, Jewish Voice for Peace, blueprints the odds between the Jewish faith and this supremacist Zionist ideology; “Zionist interpretations of history taught us that Jewish people are alone, that to remedy the harms of antisemitism we must think of ourselves as always under attack and that we cannot trust others. It teaches us fear, and that the best response to fear is a bigger gun, a taller wall, a more humiliating checkpoint.” Their statements and demonstrations are part of a growing worldwide Jewish resistance to occupation, apartheid and the systematic dehumanization which maintains them. “Rather than accept the inevitability of occupation and dispossession, we choose a different path. We learn from the anti-Zionist Jews who came before us, and know that as long as Zionism has existed, so has Jewish dissent to it.”
Many Palestinian families remember the stories of their great grandparents who recall how Palestinian Arab and Jewish neighbors babysat for each other and were not only at peace, but close friends, prior to the imposition of settler-colonialism. Palestine, “the land of barakah” (the land of blessings, peace, salvation, liberation, and spiritual presence) and site of the stories that have shaped so many Jewish, Christian, and Muslim lives is experiencing a tragedy of unimaginable proportions. The Al Aqsa Mosque, the soul of Jerusalem, is at the epicenter of the fate of this land and its people, with reverberations around the world; a crossroads between liberatory survival and genocidal desolation, of human rights and the restriction thereof, justice and justice denied.
7 December 2023 | International Solidarity Movement | Masafer Yatta, Occupied West Bank
In just over one week, several Palestinian family homes were relegated to fields of rubble after occupation army bulldozers invaded several villages including al Deirat, Umm Lasafa and Umm Qissa. The demolitions left Palestinian children and their families homeless as the targeted destruction and expulsion of Masafer Yatta communities continues to accelerate.
The ruins of a demolished family home in Masafer Yatta. Photo Credit: BNN
On December 6, Occupation forces took the opportunity to demolish a sheep barn in Umm Qissa overnight during their destructive incursion in furtherance of the attacks on the shepherding and farming infrastructure of Palestinian communities in the South Hebron Hills. Coupled with the violent raids, antagonism and invasion of Palestinian homes by extremist ideological settlers, the pattern of harassment towards the achievement of a land ethnically cleansed of indigenous Palestinians grinds forth.
Taking advantage of the gap in coverage with the world’s eyes on the genocide in Gaza, and the isolated nature of the villages of Masafer Yatta, the occupation army has enabled and participated in the increasing momentum of settler terrorist attacks along with the destruction of residences to force Palestinian expulsion.
On December 3, settler extremists invaded Esfay, Maghayir Al-Abid and At-Tuba, leaving behind them the destroyed water network of a wide swathe of villagers of the South Hebron Hills communities. With surgical exacting, occupation forces are removing all elements of a people’s ability to exist; from the slashing of water cisterns to the destruction of water flow pipes, a community without water cannot survive. In image after image filtering out of the embattled villages, homes are seen crashing down under the gears of army-driven bulldozers while armed IOF stand guarding the destruction from intervention.
Credit: OCHA data on demolition and displacement in the West Bank. 12/03
On OCHA’s data on demolition and displacement in the West Bank website rolling figures which “reflect the demolition of Palestinian-owned structures and the resulting displacement of people from their homes across the West Bank since 2009” are updated every 48 hours. The numbers continue to grow and the project of colonial expansion continues to saturate the occupied West Bank.
On December 3, Israeli Occupation forces converged on the Sawaneh neighborhood in occupied East Jerusalem evicting its residents and pinning intention-of-demolition orders to all families in the building albeit their target was solely the home of one of Al-Aqsa Mosque’s main Imams, Sheikh Ekrima Sabri. The order affects 18 homes, ultimately impacting over 100 Palestinian residents of the building.
(Photo credit: Anadolu Agency 3/12/23)
Noted in Hebrew, the demolition orders state, “In order to minimize damage, you must immediately remove possessions from said premises. If you do not, the state will not be responsible for damages.” The titled headline announces, “We hereby affirm you of our intent to demolish the house according to court order.”
Sheikh Sabri is no stranger to incitement against his person and property as he has been the subject of the arbitrary harassment, arrest, and imprisonment which has become the signature of the occupier whose very existence depends on silencing liberatory voices representative of justice and dignity for the Palestinian people, including when the 85 year old Imam’s home was stormed by occupation forces who imposed a 6 month travel ban for the stated reason that he had been deemed a “security threat.”
With several families residing in the building being the recipients of this same demolition order which will displace them as a consequence of the targeting of Sheikh Sabri, it is again evidenced that the Israeli government, Israeli authorities and the Israeli occupation forces are in violation of International Humanitarian Law, specifically Article 33 on collective punishment. The article states, in no uncertain terms, that “Reprisals against protected persons and their property are prohibited.” Thus, the purveyors of prolific violations of human rights of an entire people continue to be rewarded for their troubles with impunity, copious funding and arms provisions to wage further war crimes, genocide and countless other daily transgressions. For now and the immediate future while whatever veneer of an appeals process accessible to Palestinians saddled with notices of home demolitions is acted out, their already daily lot has been made heavier with this additional form of torment.
Reports from across the occupied West Bank flash across the eyes of the world like a disturbing stop-motion reality; settler incursions, beatings, murders, abductions, theft, vandalism and death threats. One of the most heinous tributaries of such threats floated Sheikh Sabri’s name across it just one month ago.
The extremist settler Telegram channel “Nazi-Hunters,” known for incitement to murder Palestinians across the occupied territories as well as inside of Israel has named Sheikh Sabri as a target, joining him with the journalists, student activists, Al-Aqsa administrative workers and others being targeted for terror attacks and death ostensibly for ‘Nazism,’ which has become code among violent ideological zionists projected onto Palestinians and allies resisting oppression and occupation.
Screenshot of “Nazi Hunters” Telegram channel. Photo credit: Middle East Eye
The channel displays images of Palestinians with crosshairs placed over their faces, encouraging the choir to circulate the calls for murder, “share a lot maybe it will reach the Nazis themselves and they will kill themselves out of fear.”
As noted by UNRWA’s Demolition Watch site, home demolitions are a leading cause of Palestinian’s continued displacement and their toll on families cannot be overstated, “The impact of home demolitions on children can be particularly devastating. Many children affected by demolitions show signs of post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and anxiety.” The effect leaves emotional wreckage long after the rubble from the felled house has been cleared.
Every Friday for the past two months now, there are pitched battles between Palestinians and Israeli soldiers in the Old City of Jerusalem.
But what makes these battles unique is that on one side are the Israeli soldiers and police, with their assault rifles, barricades, tear gas, water cannons, “skunk” machines and assorted weapons, and on the other side are Palestinians, unarmed, without even stones to throw at their Goliath. The only weapons these Palestinians carry with them are their prayer rugs.
Palestinians – men, women, youth, and elders – walk miles attempting to reach Al Aqsa Mosque, trying every gate. Each path is blocked by Israeli guns and barricades.
People prevented from entering Al Aqsa pray as close to the Mosque as possible
Palestinians hear the call to prayer, put down their prayer mats, and pray as close to the holy site as possible. Israeli soldiers and police then attack the worshippers.
The next week these same acts are repeated.
Israeli authorities have now issued demolition orders for the housing complex where the Imam of Al Aqsa, 84 year old Sheikh Ikrima Sabri, lives, in apparent collective punishment and retaliation for encouraging Muslims to pray at Al Aqsa, or as close as they can get.
Imam of Al Aqsa, Sheikh Ikrima Sabri, and home demolition papers. photo credit: isramudallal on Instagram
For those who have criticised Palestinians for a lack of commitment to nonviolence, or otherwise hypothesized the end of nonviolent resistance among Palestinians, one need only follow the voice of the muezzin in the Old City of Jerusalem to see the creative, steadfast, courageous, living embodiments of peace and grace under pressure—the noble worshippers of Al Quds—who, week after week, face down an army with a prayer.
