Israeli settlers suspected of starting a fire on Palestinian land near Hebron.
On Thursday May 19 a part of the field of Abd al Kareim al Jabari in Western Hebron, where International Solidarity Movement activists have been present for the past ten days, was set on fire.
Settler children started to throw stones at the ISM activists as soon as they arrived at the farm on Thursday. At 3:40 PM, when the activists were helping the farmer on the land, smoke appeared from another part of the field which is just below a kindergarten in the illegal settlement of Givat Ha’avot. After approximately ten minutes the fire brigade of Kiryat Arba came and started to extinguish the fire, while children from the settlement sang songs and chanted “Death to the Arabs”.
The Israeli military, boarder police and police arrived and straight away requested proof of identity from the ISM activists, a B’tselem activist and one of the daughters of the family. Abd al Kareim al Jabari was told that a man from the illegal settlement claimed that he had seen the ISM activists setting fire to the field! This accuse was apparently confirmed by a settler guard from Kiryat Arba. After checking the identity of the activists and keeping their passports and ID cards for half-an-hour, the military and police drove away.
Israeli settler children overlook area of burned Palestinian land.
As ISM has reported earlier, the Jabari land is very exposed to settler violence as it lies between the illegal settlements of Kiryat Arba and Givat Ha’avot in Western Hebron.
The right to return is a core goal of the Palestinian liberation struggle. Since 1947-1948, when over 750,000 Palestinians were forcibly expelled from their homes – and more than 700,000 were ethnically cleansed from their country altogether – they and their descendants have organized to demand the rectification of this historic injustice. The refugees of the Six-Day War in 1967 (after which Israeli forces drove 300,000 Palestinians out of the occupied Gaza Strip and West Bank ), the 1967-1994 Israeli administration of the occupied territories (during which Israel stripped 140,000 Palestinians of their residency rights), and the ongoing colonization of Palestine and displacement of its indigenous inhabitants, have added their voices to the growing global movement for return.
In recent years, the right to return has also emerged as a key demand of international solidarity activists supporting Palestinian aspirations for freedom. On July 9, 2005, for example, the Palestinian Civil Society Call for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) – the founding document of a Palestinian-led global movement for justice in Palestine – stated that “non-violent punitive measures should be maintained until Israel meets its obligation to recognize the Palestinian people’s inalienable right to self-determination and fully complies with the precepts of international law by … respecting, protecting and promoting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties.”
Today the seven million Palestinian refugees are the world’s largest group of refugees, comprising one-third of the total refugee population. Their right to return to their homes, and to receive compensation for the damages inflicted on them, are enshrined in international law. Resolution 194, which the United Nations General Assembly adopted on 11 December 1948 and Israel agreed to implement as a condition of its subsequent admission to the United Nations,
resolves that the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss of or damage to property which, under principles of international law or in equity, should be made good by the Governments or authorities responsible.
Additionally, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the General Assembly on December 10, 1948, states that “everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.” And Resolution 3236, which the General Assembly adopted on November 22, 1974, “reaffirms … the inalienable right of the Palestinians to return to the homes and property from which they have been displaced and uprooted, and calls for their return.”
Despite its clear obligations under international law, Israel continues to resist demands by Palestinian refugees that they are allowed to return to their homes. Most recently, on Sunday, May 15, the 63rd commemoration of the Nakba, or “catastrophe,” of the 1947-1948 ethnic cleansing of Palestine, Israeli troops responded to demonstrations by unarmed refugees marching towards their homes with lethal force.
Israeli forces killed at least 15 demonstrators on three borders (with occupied Gaza, Lebanon, and between Syria and the occupied Golan Heights), wounded hundreds more with live gunfire, artillery shells, and tear gas, and unleashed a wave of arrests and repression in the occupied West Bank. This massive violence could only have been planned as a show of brute force, intended, along with Benjamin Netanyahu’s repeated assertions that “it’s not going to happen,” to dissuade Palestinian refugees from asserting their historic rights and the global consensus for the right of return.
Yet the most enduring story from May 15 may be that of Hassan Hijazi. A 28-year old Palestinian refugee living in Syria, he braved the gunfire that killed four others along the border with the occupied Golan Heights, then hitchhiked, and finally took a bus, to his family’s home in Jaffa. Before turning himself in to Tel Aviv police, he told Israeli reporters, “I wasn’t afraid and I’m not afraid. On the bus to Jaffa, I sat next to Israeli soldiers. I realized that they were more afraid than I was.”
Millions more are resolved to follow Hijazi’s path. On Sunday, June 5, the 44th commemoration of the Naksa, or setback, Israel’s 1967 expulsion of 300,000 Palestinians following the Six-Day War, Palestinian refugees will return en masse to the borders. Announcing the mobilization on May 18, the Third Intifada Youth Coalition said, “The last few days proved that the liberation of Palestine is possible and very achievable even with an unarmed massive march if the nation decides it is ready to pay all at once for the liberation of Palestine.”
The Preparatory Commission for the Right to Return, a nonpartisan coordinating body, has requested that supporters of the Palestinian liberation struggle also take action on June 5, by staging rallies, marches, and protests throughout the world demanding Palestinian refugees’ right to return. Appropriate venues could include Israeli embassies, consulates, and missions, BDS campaign targets, and foreign governments and international organizations that enable Israeli crimes.
”The May 15 marches were not an isolated incident, but were rather a declaration of the foundation of a new stage of struggle in the history of the Palestinian cause, entitled: ‘The refugees’ right to return to their homes,’” a statement by the Commission says.
For the first time ever, the Palestinians have switched from commemorating their displacement with statements, festivals, and speeches, to actual attempts to return to their homes.
The scene of refugees marching from all directions towards their homeland of Palestine sent a powerful message to the entire world that the refugees are determined to return to their homes however long it may take; and that 63 years were not enough to kill their dream of return; and that the new generations born in forced exile who have never seen their homeland are no less attached than their grandparents and fathers who witnessed the Nakba.
What happened on May 15 was only a microcosm of the larger march soon to come, a march that will be made by Palestinian refugees and those who support them. They will pass the barbed wire and return to their occupied villages and cities.
The crowds will head out from everywhere there are Palestinian refugees toward the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and occupied Palestine’s borders with Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon, in peaceful marches raising the Palestinian flag and the names of their villages and towns, the keys to their homes, and certification papers.
The Arab Spring’s “winds of change” are blowing through the refugee camps, no less than the Arab capitals, toward Palestine. And they show no signs of stopping.
Around 80 Palestinians and international activists held a peaceful demonstration today in the village of Iraq Burin to protest the theft of village land for settlement construction. The demonstration began at about 16.00 when protesters marched through the village and over the hills towards the illegal settlement of Bracha. The peaceful demonstrators carried Palestinian flags and banners calling for an end to the occupation and for justice for Rachel Corrie whose trial continues tomorrow. They were immedietely met with a barrage of tear gas from the Israeli forces. The demonstrators had been at the top of the hill for only fifteen minutes, peacefully chanting slogans about freedom for Palestine and an end to the occupation and illegal settlements, when troops began firing tear gas at them. The protesters were forced to retreat quickly down the rocky hill as the soldiers shot at them; they narrowly missed the protesters and caused some to suffer adverse effects of strong teargas inhalation. One man was taken away by paramedics as he suffered from asphyxiation. The army continued to fire on protesters as they made their way down the treacherous hillside. However undeterred by the army’s brutality and disproportionate response to the peaceful protest, the villagers plan to continue their demonstrations on a weekly basis.
Iraq Burin is a small village 8 km southwest of Nablus. The illegal settlement of Bracha is located about one mile southeast of the village, and is situated on around 100 dunams (25 acres) of village land, as well as more land from surrounding villages. As with other settlements, it is not just the actual land of the settlement that is a problem, but also the land near it There is a swathe of “off-limits” land around the village that farmers are often prevented from using due to its close proximity to the settlement, leaving them with less land to graze sheep on or harvest from.
The villagers of Iraq Burin held weekly demonstrations last year to protest against the expansion of Bracha, and their continuing inability to access the village’s agricultural land. This began as a reaction to a sharp increase in provocative (and often violent) attacks initiated by residents of the settlement. These attacks were frequently aided and abetted by the Israeli military, who in turn invaded the village, firing rounds of tear gas, rubber-coated steel bullets and live ammunition at Palestinian civilians. However the village took the decision to stop the weekly protests when Mohammed Qaddous (16) and Asaud Qadous (19) were shot dead by the Israeli military during a demonstration.
On Thursday May 19, the Israeli army invaded Madama with many jeeps, and imposed a curfew lasting from 21:30 to 4:00am. During this time a man called Hani Muhammad Nassar was arrested and tortured inside a jeep for 3 hours.
Whilst being interviewed Hani said: “The army came when I was visiting my aunt at her house. When they entered the house and found me they asked about the reason of being at the house. I answered that I was visiting my aunt, but they did not believe me, so they held all of the family outside with Abu Firas’s family, the neighbor of his aunt, for 2 hours, through which they asked me about my ID which I did not have at the moment, so they asked me to call my family to bring it to me which I did.” After two hours Hani was taken alone to an unknown place where he was blind-folded and had his hands tied behind his back, he was interrogated here for half an hour. He adds: “They insulted me with obscene words and kept beating me on my neck with their palms and kicking me all over my body. A soldier raised me suddenly and let my head strike the ceiling of the jeep. At the end they kicked me out the jeep shouting with obscene words.”
In addition, five houses were broken into and checked during the curfew and the army shot bullets in the air to intimidate the villagers.
Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) has released a video of Palestinian testimonies about the recent settler invasion in the village of Tuba. On 16 May, shortly before midnight, Israeli settlers invaded Tuba, damaged property, and stole and injured several sheep belonging to the Ali Awwad family.
Members of the Ali Awwad family reported that they counted seven masked settlers, who entered the village throwing rocks with slingshots. Besides stealing seven sheep, the settlers beat the sheep and injured several, including one which lost an eye. Two of the sheep were so badly injured that the family had to slaughter them the next morning. In addition, the settlers overturned three large water tanks, damaged fences and a goat pen, punctured a storage tent and three sacks of yogurt, and destroyed the ventilation pipe of an outhouse.
Although the family called the Israeli police the night of the attack, the police did not come to Tuba until two days later. Tuba residents saw Israeli soldiers near the village immediately following the settler invasion. But when the Palestinians tried to speak with the soldiers, the soldiers were not able to communicate in Arabic and left the village.
Christian Peacemaker Teams and Operation Dove have maintained an international presence in At-Tuwani and the South Hebron Hills since 2004.
