Category: Reports

Three cousins die in Gaza tunnel collapse

30 September 2011 | International Solidarity Movement, Gaza

Shortly after 5:00 pm on Sunday, September 25, three Palestinians died when sewage leaking from an Egyptian pipeline caused a tunnel connecting the Egyptian and Palestinian sides of the Rafah border, in which they were working, to collapse.

It was the second time that the pipeline, which pumps sewage east into the Sinai, had sprung a leak in the area.

The three, all cousins, lived in the south of the Gaza Strip. Feras Ahmed Al-Shaer, 18 years old, lived in Khan Younis with his parents, one brother, and seven sisters. He was completing his last year of high school. Fady Mostafa Al-Shaer, also 18, lived in Rafah with his parents, four brothers, and two sisters. He had decided to work in the tunnels to help support his family, which lived in two rooms. Anwer Eid Al-Shaer, age 22, lived in Rafah and needed money to finish his final year of studies at Al-Quds Open University.

After the collapse, other tunnels workers were able to escape to the Palestinian side. The bodies of the three Al-Shaer cousins, who had been closest to the Egyptian side, lay in rubble and sewage for two days until Egyptian rescue workers were able to excavate them at 5:00 am Tuesday.

Mohammed Abu Al-Shaer, the cousins’ uncle, spoke of the helpfulness of Egyptian authorities and said that the Al-Shaer family had brought oil to fuel the rescue workers’ lights.

“We hope that this siege will end soon, so others won’t be forced to take similar risks in the tunnels. We want to live like people everywhere else,” he said.

Extremist settler attacks shepherd and brutally abuses flock

28 September 2011  | International Solidarity Movement, West Bank

On the 17th of September Israeli colonists attacked a shepherd near Sha’ab el-Butom, resulting in several sheep injured and the arrest of the young shepherd.

Sha’ab el-Butom is a small Bedouin village in South Hebron Hills not even mentioned in most maps, a village that faces daily harassment from the surrounding illegal settlements and outposts composed by the most ideological settlers in the West Bank. On Saturday September 17th of September, Nahel Ahmed Mousa Aburem, a 23 year old shepherd, went as usual down the road with his sheep when one settler accompanied by a soldier from the illegal Abigail settlement approached him, shouting for him to come towards them.

“Why are you here?” they asked, and Ahmed simply answered “This is my land.”

“No! It’s a closed military area!”

Aburem then tried to explain to them that he had permission from the military and the police to stay there and go around with his sheep. It was not a good answer for the settler. With ideology based on extreme interpretation of Judaic law, his reaction was to start beating Ahmad’s sheep with stones and sticks.

3 sheep lost their eyes, one died, another one was pregnant but lost her kid, and four others tried desperately to escape. The soldier was just 10 metres away, and Ahmed asked him help to stop the settler but he didn’t react so he tried to reach the sheep and the settler threw stones at him too and tried to grab his head while Ahmed tried defend himself pushed the settler away.

This was enough to make an Israeli army jeep arrive and bring Aburem to a military base near Susiya and then to the police station in Kiryat Arba where they told him that he wanted to shoot the settler. He had to spend 2 nights in the police station in Kiryat Arba, 2 nights in the detention centre in Jerusalem, referred to as The Russian Compound, 2 other nights in Ramla prison, and then finally one day in Ofer for the supposed court hearing where they actually just gave him conditions and a bill of 5000 shekels needed to be paid for his release. His family paid, while he must meet the condition of signing his name every Tuesday in the Kiryat Arba police station.

Aburem said that he is supposed to have a court hearing by the end of October, but speculated that precarious and manipulative court procedures would play with time and be at the whim of the court.

“In any case” he said “we want to make actions in cooperation with Israeli and International activists in order to resist and keep going back to our land.”

Israeli military conceals information about possible nerve agent used by illegal, violent settlers

26 September 2011 | International Solidarity Movement, West Bank

On Sunday, September 25th, Riyadh Abu Armile was assaulted by settlers and the army in Hebron,causing for an open investigation by human rights groups as evidence suggests that settlers may have used an unidentified nerve agent during the assault.

On the night of the attack hundreds of settlers from around  Al Khalil (Hebron) arrived in the H2 area, in the centre of the city for the funeral of Asher Palmer and his son from Kiryat Arba who died in a car crash on Friday. Despite the fact that an investigation into the deaths is yet to reach a conclusion about the cause of the crash, soldiers on the scene echoed the proclamations of Israeli media sources, which labeled the incident as a “terrorist attack” because of speculation that the crash was caused by Palestinians throwing stones. A dangerously volatile situation was then created by the decision to hold the funeral in a Palestinian area of Hebron rather than the Kiryat Arba settlement where the deceased lived.

Armile was walking near the Ibrahimi Mosque with his uncle and 7 year old son at about 8pm on Sunday, when  he was met by around 30 settlers who began throwing rocks at the family. More settlers joined the violent assault, and within a few minutes he estimated there were as many as 200 settlers surrounding him. After the family attempted to take refuge in a nearby house, settlers broke the windows and continued the attack.

Armile told us that the attackers used some kind of chemical weapon that emitted a gas, causing symptoms very similar to those of a nerve agent.

Armile said, “‘I couldn’t see and went into convulsions, saliva was coming out of my mouth and afterwards I couldn’t move my muscles for one hour.”

When soldiers arrived at the scene they beat Armile as he tried to protect himself from the settlers. After the attack they detained him for over an hour and refused access for the ambulance that came to treat him. At 9:30PM he had to be carried to the ambulance, which took him immediately to the hospital in Hebron.

The Israeli army confiscated the gas canister used by the settlers and refused to give the doctors information about the chemical agent used. He had to stay overnight in a hospital and required 13 injections. Doctors were unsure how to treat him due to the unknown nature of the chemical and warned him that he may suffer long-term health problems. During the attack his son sustained head injuries from rocks thrown by the settlers, and Armile’s uncle’s hand was also broken.

Red Cross and other human rights organizations are currently investigating the incident as they suspect that the chemical may be some form of nerve gas, which is illegal under international law. The attack comes just weeks after leaked documents from the Israeli military revealed plans to train and arm settlers against Palestinians.

The real cost of Al Rumeida roadblock

25 September 2011 | International Solidarity Movement, West Bank

For the last three days Ahmed Sau and Khalil have been loading bushell loads of  white building material on  carts pulled by a horse and a donkey as they trek up the steep hill going to Jabel Al Rahmeh.  At the other end is a truck  filled almost to the top.  Several men await Ahmed and unload the wooden cart and the trek begins anew.

As the horses struggle up the last part of the hill, Ahmed and some children help to push the heavy load to its destination. It is in these ways that the Israeli occupation affects the common people. Slowly, it attempts to strangle the economy.  A simple truck ride down the hill is turned into a laborious undertaking by several men, children and beasts of burden.

“It has been this way for at least 10 years,” commented an observer.

When asked why they were doing it this way, Ahmed who spoke no English, motioned to the yellow steel metal preventing the truck to go through.  Hurrying as evening was fast approaching, he got back on the cart and rode down the hill again.

Haiya of Qalandia Refugee Camp

24 September 2011 | International Solidarity Movement, West Bank

Haiya and her family are originally from a village called Ber Maael know called Mudaeen near what is now Tel Aviv.

Haiya’s brother was a close friend of Ali Khaleefa, one of the young men who was killed when the Israeli army raided the Qalandia Refugee camp on the second of August. He told us he was with Ali just hours before the soldiers raided the camp and killed him.

Haiya speaks.

We were at the funeral and people were so shocked and angry, the army came in the middle of the night right at the start of Ramadan to arrest two boys about 13 years old. And they killed 2 people even though no one there had any weapons apart from the soldiers. The Palestinians from Qalandia cannot forget something like this.

The Israelis are afraid of the Palestinian people, they are afraid because they know that this land does not belong to them, and they are afraid they will lose it. So they shoot at us to make us scared, but it doesn’t work.

Palestine doesn’t have anyone to fight for her, just the people who live in Palestine. We believe that we need a country, but before, the people here did not have any hopes for a state. Every time we are promised our own country, nothing happens. So now the people are trying to do something for themselves.

Obama said in his speech we wants safety for the Israelis first, second, third and last. He says this as though Israel is the victim! But it is Israel who is slowly killing all our people and taking our land.

I think many of the people of Israel want peace, but the leaders certainly do not.

If the UN does not give us a state then, we must fight with the protests and the stones. I think what is happening now could lead to a third Intifada and Israel thinks this too and they are very scared.

I think the settlers are the worst people in the world, they burn our mosques and they burn our olive trees. You know the soldiers they have orders to shoot bullets and drop bombs. But the mustawtaneen [settlers] do what they do because they hate us. Just today in Hebron they killed a child with a car.

The army will never stop the settlers, they say ‘go home’ but it does nothing because they know that the army will not hurt them.

Of course we would love to go back to our land; we hope to go back. Our grandfather is 83 years old, whenever we pass near the place our home used to be, he cries.