Category: Reports - Page 193 - International Solidarity Movement

Violence in Ni’lin

14th June 2014 | International Solidarity Movement, Ramallah team | Ni’lin, Occupied Palestine

A Red Crescent paramedic, present at the Ni’lin demonstration last week, spoke to ISM about the protest last Friday, 6th June. He explained that the demonstration began as the protesters marched towards the apartheid wall, with Israeli soldiers firing tear gas canisters and rubber-coated steel bullets.

After just 15 minutes, a 41-year-old Palestinian protester was shot in the leg with a 0.22 live ammunition bullet. The soldiers had been hiding in the olive trees next to the apartheid wall and were unseen by the demonstrators. When a Red Crescent volunteer tried to give the wounded protester medical treatment, after placing a bandage on the bleeding wound, he was attacked by the Israeli soldiers. The soldiers kicked the volunteer and used their guns to beat his face, after the demonstration he was taken to the hospital to receive treatment.

The 41-year-old who was shot by the Israeli military was then arrested and held for two hours, before being ‘handed back’ to the Red Crescent ambulance at the Ni’lin checkpoint. He had received some medical treatment from the Israeli paramedics, but this wasn’t immediate, and he also had wounds, including a cut on his head that required one stitch, where the Israeli forces had beaten him while he was arrested.

The protester is now slowly recovering, the 0.22 bullet fractured his tibia [a bone in his lower leg], and it will be another month before he is healed.

The demonstration yesterday was fortunately less violent, there were no injuries or arrests. However, before the protest could begin, the military moved a long way out from the apartheid wall, pushing the demonstrators deep into their own olive trees. The military fired many tear gas grenades and canisters and some of the protesters suffered from tear gas inhalation, requiring support from Red Crescent paramedics. At least twice during the demonstration, Israeli forces fired tear gas canisters directly at protesters, both highly dangerous and in contravention to Israeli military procedure, which is shooting them up into an arch to lower the impacted velocity.

Ni’lin began demonstrating in 2008, against the apartheid wall’s construction. The protests continued after the wall was completed, and since 2008, five villagers from Ni’lin have been murdered by Israeli forces.

Israeli military trains close to the Palestinian villages of Jinba and Al Mirkez (Masafer Yatta)

13th June 2014 | Operation Dove | Jinba and Al Mirkez, Occupied Palestine

From the 8th June until three hours ago, the Israeli military has been training in Palestinian-owned fields, close to the Palestinian villages of Jinba and Al Mirkez, in Masafer Yatta.

Hundreds of soldiers have occupied the land in front of the nearby Israeli military base with tents and military equipment, and were scattered in groups around the villages to carry out the exercises.

During the training, the Palestinian population suffered heavy restrictions on their freedom of movement, the fields were damaged by military activities, and shepherds were chased away with their flocks.

Some of these farmers reported that they were beaten by the soldiers.

During the night, the exercises continued with the use of explosives, and soldiers have even entered the villages themselves, frightening the people further.

The villages of Jinba and Al Mirkez are within the Firing Zone 918 and, pending the decision of the Israeli High Court of Justice, are still under the threat of expulsion by the Israeli army.

Assaults and home invasions in Qeitun

11th June 2014 | International Solidarity Movement, Khalil team | Hebron, Occupied Palestine

This evening, at approximately 19:00, Israeli soldiers broke into several Palestinian family’s homes in the Qeitun region of al-Khalil, following clashes with local youth, which began an hour earlier.

The soldiers’ broke into the first home, only speaking in Hebrew, they then beat the father of the family, who is currently suffering from an illness. The soldiers claimed he warned the stone throwing youth of the Israeli soldiers’ invasion into Qeitun.

Afterwards, yet another house was raided following Israeli military confrontations with stone throwing Palestinian youth.The soldiers searched through the house without permission, this time beating the home owner’s brother, before leaving yet another family in distress.

Houses in Qeitun are regularly subjected to night raids, and harassment from the Israeli military.

Israeli soldiers entering a home in Qeitun (photo by ISM).

Israeli police raids the village of Iqrit

9th June 2014 | International Solidarity Movement, Khalil team | Iqrit, Occupied Palestine

Yesterday morning on the 8th June, Israeli police forces raided the village of Iqrit (located on the northern tip of Israel, within eyesight of Lebanon). The police uprooted trees, destroyed and confiscated all the personal belongings of Palestinian activists present in the village. Furthermore they beat and violently arrested 3 Palestinian men who were present in the village at the time. The 3 arrested are: Walla Sbait, Nidal Khoury and Jeries Khiatt. They were taken to the police station in Nahariyya, where they were kept in detention over night.

Confiscated belongings loaded into an Israeli truck. (Photo by witness) — Confiscated belongings loaded into an Israeli truck. (Photo by Iqrit activists)

Today at 8:30 AM the three detainees were brought before the Kiryat Gat Magistrates’ Court, following a police request for an extension of their detention. The police have charged the detainees with trespassing the land owned by the ILA, obstructing the work of public officials, assaulting a public employee and endangering public order.

The court ruled that Nidal Khoury is kept in detention until Wednesday 11th of June. Walaa Sbeit and Jeries Khiatt was sentenced house arrest until Sunday 15th of June and they are not allowed to go back to Iqrit for 60 days.

In 1948, the village was home to 600 Christian Palestinians. (Photo of archive picture by Jonathan Cook/Al Jazeera)

As the season of Advent approached in November 1948, the Israeli military forced residents of Iqrit and the neighboring village of Kufr Bir’im —all citizens of the newly created state of Israel— to leave their homes near the northern border with Lebanon because of military operations in the area. The Israeli forces made a promise to the inhabitants, that they could return to their homes after 15 days. The people of Iqrit are still waiting. In July 1951, the Israeli High Court ruled that the people of Iqrit and Kufr Bir’im had the right to return to their homes. The military refused to comply, and on Christmas Eve 1951 blew up all houses in both villages.

Shortly thereafter, all village lands were confiscated by the state and has been rented out to the nearby Kibbutz for their cows to graze until this day. Since then, decades of demonstrations and legal appeals for the villagers’ right to return have seen a string of favorable decisions by courts and commissions that have resulted only in more broken promises and unenforced rulings.In the 1970s, the government had granted use of the cemetery —allowing only the dead to return to Iqrit after they lived and died in exile at Kufr Yasif, Rameh, Haifa or other places. The original villagers and their descendants —now around 1,500 people scattered across northern Israel— are allowed only to hold services in the church and bury their dead in the cemetery. Every first Saturday of the month there has been a mass held at the village church and every year a summer camp has been organised on the hillside. In August 2012 the third generation reclaimed their village.

Around 20 descendants from Iqrit took the initiative to begin resurrecting the village despite the village’s legal limbo. The activists make sure that the village is constantly inhabited, sleeping in tents, under the stars or in rooms attached to the church. The group consists of university students, factory and restaurant workers, and teachers.

Their attempts to construct or plant anything in the village have been met with immediate demolition by the Israeli authorities. But over time, they’ve been able to add a few amenities, including solar panels on the church roof, determined to bring back life to Iqrit.

Iqrit’s 80 homes are long gone, but the activists goal is to rebuild Iqrit for the villagers-in-exile, refusing only to return to their home in coffins, but alive. The activists have returned to the area and are discussing on how to proceed with their campaign, determined not to be intimidated by Israeli forces and their harassment

The Roman tree

7th June 2014 | International Solidarity Movement, Khalil team | Hebron, Occupied Palestine

At approximately 1:00 pm on June 4th, a burning olive tree was located in the vicinity of Tel Rumeida, al-Khalil (Hebron). The Palestinian firefighters extinguished the fire with no assistance from the occupying Israeli military.

As an occupying state, Israel is legally responsible for providing adequate services and aid for those living in the occupied territories, however this responsibility is often neglected.

The burnt tree is one of many in the area to be considered part of the “Roman Trees”, said to be thousands of years old.

Near where the fire started, a plastic fuel canister with the word “diesel” written in Hebrew was found.

When the Palestinian farmer who owns the land contacted the Israeli police, they claimed that video footage did not show a vandal starting the fire. When the farmer asked if the Israeli police would consider opening an investigation, he was simply told no.

This is only the latest in an ongoing plot to destroy olive trees and crops in Tel Rumeida in order to construct a military road through the area.