A 14-year old boy was abducted by Israeli undercover forces from Bir Ayyub this morning. Ahmed Siyam was taken by an undercover unit from outside his uncle’s shop in Bir Ayyub and transferred to Salah al-Din police station. Police claimed that the boy “constitutes a danger to society.”
Siyam was targeted for arrest by Israeli forces only yesterday, after attending the weekly prayer in the Al-Bustan protest tent. A relative of Siyam told Silwanic that it is likely he was targeted as part of a campaign against the Siyam family, after his father made statements to the press recently regarding the murder of local resident Milad Ayyash several weeks previously.
Two Protesters Injured with Live Ammunition and one arrested in Deir Qaddis
Demonstrators disrupted construction of a new neighborhood in the adjacent settlement of Nili. Israeli soldiers responded with baton charges, tear-gas, rubber-coated steel bullets and live ammunition. One organizer was arrested and several olive trees were burned down.
Two Palestinian youths in their twenties were hit by live ammunition today, during a demonstration against the settlement expansion in the West Bank village of Ni’lin and Dier Qaddis. A 24 year-old protester, was shot twice – in the pelvis and in the shoulder, and the second, a 22 year-old, was shot in the back of his thigh and will require an operation. Mohammed Amirah, a member of the Ni’lin popular committee, was arrested after seriously beaten, apparently for incitement.
The demonstration was organized by the Ni’lin, Budrus and Deir Qaddis popular committees.
Residents of Ni’lin, Deir Qaddis and Budrus, accompanied by Israeli and international supporters.
As the protesters advanced towards the bulldozers, Israeli soldiers and Border Police officers first fired a few rounds of live fire in the air and very quickly moved on to shoot tear-gas and rubber-coated bullets directly at the protesters. Despite the attack, demonstrators managed to reach the bulldozers and disrupt construction for half an hour. Then the soldiers started beating the demonstrators and arrested Mohammed Amireh.
As the protesters retreated, soldiers followed them to the edge of the village, where clashes ensued and where the two were shot. In addition to the two protesters hit shot with live ammunition, six more were shot with rubber coated steel bullets.
On Saturday June 11, six or seven armed settlers accompanied by the Israeli military entered the Palestinian village of Qusra and harassed villagers. Before they escaped they threw stones at a village truck smashing the side glass and cracking the windscreen.
At approximately 5.00pm, the Imam of the mosque in Qusra started calling to the population of the village that there were armed settlers (from a new illegal outpost near the village) approaching the village, from one of the surrounding mountains. In a show of strength and solidarity, around 100 villagers went to the mountain with the purpose of defending their land. The army accompanied the settlers and threw several sound bombs to disperse the Palestinians. One of the bombs fell inbetween 19 year old Ismail Aburedi’s legs. It rendered him unconscious and later, deaf and unable to walk. The Israeli army refused to let Ismail be taken to the hospital but it is reported that his friends placed him in the back of a car and raced him to Rafidia Hospital in Nablus where he was kept until 2 am the next day. When interviewed by ISM, Ismail Aburedi said: “We will remain in this land, we have been here for hundreds of years and we will be here forever. These settlers are new, we will stay and I will defend my land. There is no where else for us to go.”
Israeli settlers threw stones, damaging this Palestinian truck.
Israeli settlers threw stones, damaging this Palestinian truck.
The army also tried to arrest 21 year old Burham Hassan, but the villagers dearrested him and managed to “get him back.” Before escaping, the settlers smashed the front and the windscreen of a truck owned by Hosni Aburedi.
Qusra is a village with approximately 5000 people located in the northern of the West Bank, about 30 minutes away from Nablus. The village has already lost around 300 dunams of their land to the surrounding illegal settlements in the area.
On Saturday June 11 three International Solidarity Movement activists were stopped by the Israeli army when trying to enter the village of Beit Ommar in the southern West Bank. The activists were going to participate in a non-violent demonstration against the illegal settlements in the area.
As the activists tried to enter the village Israeli soldiers stopped them and claimed that the area had been declared a closed military zone. When questioned about not being able to show the official paper needed to prove this, one soldier pointed at a sign which stated that the area is under Palestinian Authority and that no Israelis were allowed to enter the area. The soldier used this as justification for not allowing the internationals to enter. He went on to complain that Israelis were not able to enter the village, despite it being, as he put it, a part of “Israel”.
The activists then attempted to leave the village when the soldiers apparently changed their mind and dragged them from the bus they had boarded. No explanation was given when the activists asked why they were being detained. One of the soldiers had a more aggressive approach than the others, and was interested in discussing politics with the activists. He called them “leftist shits”, and told them “I could kill you”, before spitting at them and cursing them in Hebrew. He also told the activists that Palestinians were terrorists and that Beit Ommar was a dangerous village.
The soldiers lied and told the activists that they would be free to go if they showed them their passports, however they took this back after one of the activists showed her passport. One activist managed to escape detention and left the area, however the other two were asked to step into a military jeep when it arrived. When refusing to do this, since no reason had been given, the soldiers dragged the two activists into the jeep with force, despite them telling the soldiers that they need a female police officer to arrest them. They were taken to the commander of the force who amongst other things accused the activists of being terrorists and Syrian spies, spying on the Israeli military. After being taken to the police station in Kiryat Arba, an illegal settlement in the outskirts of Hebron, the activists were released after a few minutes without charge.
The demonstration in Beit Ommar went ahead as planned and protesters managed to successfully reach and work on the land belonging to the farmers of Beit Ommar.
At 3pm yesterday 2 army jeeps carrying 8 soldiers came to the home of the Oudeh family. They demanded that the family take down their tent house and their two animal shelters. The army did not present the family with a demolition order or any other documents requiring the family to leave their land.
The Oudeh family live near Al Hadidya, in the northern Jordan Valley. Al Hadidya is in the shadow of Roi’i settlement, and adjacent to an army training area. While the family is originally from Hebron, they have lived near Al Hadidya since before the Israeli occupation of the West Bank in 1967.
Talib Oudeh, the father of the household, refused to demolish his own home. He and his son Tariq were handcuffed, blindfolded and taken outside. Two of the women from the family were also detained. The soldiers spent over an hour taking down the family’s tent and animal shelters.
Once the soldiers had destroyed the family’s home, which is their only source of shelter from the sun, Talib was taken to the military camp near Hamra checkpoint and was detained for a further 2 hours while Tariq was taken to Tayaseya checkpoint . Both remained blindfolded and handcuffed for the duration of their detention, and neither received food or water.
Tariq was released from the checkpoint to make his own way home, while Talib was driven back to his destroyed home in an army jeep. Waiting at the site where his home used to be were a police car and a military jeep. Talib was questioned and told he had a problem with the Israeli intelligence, something he knew nothing about. The police informed him that he has until Sunday to move out of the area or they will return with the civil administration to remove him, his wife and children by force.
The family has has resurrected their tent despite the threat of eviction, and is waiting to see if the military will return on Sunday. Yesterday’s incident is yet another example of the Israel military’s zealous will to ethnically cleanse the Jordan Valley.
