On Friday, May 6, the Israeli military declared the area of Amniyr, a Palestinian village south of Yatta, a closed military zone and chased away the families who own the land, after demolishing structures and trees on the land the day before. The demolitions at 5 a.m. on Thursday, May 5, when the military destroyed six shacks and uprooted 150 olive trees in Amniyr.
On Friday, the Palestinians of Amniyr had returned to the land and hung six tarps to create makeshift tents. The Israeli army issued a “closed military zone” order on the area at 9:00 a.m. At 2:00 p.m. seven military jeeps arrived, including police and border police. The commanders showed the order and gave the people one minute to leave.
Using sound bombs and tear gas, the soldiers and police forced off the land all the Palestinians present—about thirty adults, many of them elderly, and ten children—as well as accompanying internationals. One woman, Fatmi Mahmoud Jaboor, passed out due to the bombs and required medical attention. The Palestinian Red Cross evacuated her to the hospital, and she was dismissed in the evening.
Household belongings scattered after demolition
Soldiers threaten Palestinians with sound bomb
At 7 p.m. four military jeeps returned to Amniyr and destroyed the tarps and what had been left standing in the area.
This is the third time in ten weeks that the military has destroyed trees, tents, dwellings and other structures on the land of Amniyr, effectively demolishing the entire village and affecting six families. Although Amniyr is Palestinian-owned private property, Israel has declared it “state land” and prohibits the people of Amniyr from building any structures or using the land. A local Palestinian leader has told CPT that he believes Israel is trying to confiscate the land of Amniyr because of its proximity to the Israeli settlement of Susiya.
Operation Dove and Christian Peacemaker Teams have maintained an international presence in At-Tuwani and South Hebron Hills since 2004. Follow breaking news from the South Hebron hills on Twitter at cptpalestine.
30 April 2011 | International Solidarity Movement, Gaza
“I dreamt of my wife last night, she said the day would have a surprise in store for me”. Nasser Abu Said (37) is pleased: an NGO has confirmed a 2000 dollar contribution to the construction of his new house. He often smiles, but his face is predominantly characterized with the traces of worries from his daily struggle for survival. I think how good it is to see him laugh, it reminds me of the happy family picture I saw of him with his wife and five children. That must have been shortly before last year’s atrocity which has caused for physical and psychological displacement of his family. On July 13th 2010, on a warm summer evening that the Abu Said family was enjoying outside, the Israeli Occupation Forces attacked them. “Five tank shells and a flechette shell”, Nasser told me, again, two days ago, with blank expression. The flechettes riddled the body of his wife, and while ambulances were prevented from entering the area, she died. Her five children, aged 3 to 12, watched her succumb and saw how her body grew lifeless.
In the evening of April 28th, Nasser was still cherishing his dream of his wife, whilelaying in the bedroom, when all of a sudden, the Israeli Occupation Forces attacked the house at 8:10 pm. Within five minutes, four shells were fired from a tank, stationed by an Israeli base by the border, 3 kilometers from the family house. The first one went straight through the bedroom wall, were Nasser was resting. The second and third shells passed through the corridor where three of his children were playing and the forth shell hit the bedroom a second time.
“It was dark, the electricity cut as soon as the attack began. I was afraid to move, even afraid to turn on the flashlight on my mobile. I was afraid that they would shell again if they would see any movement. But then I heard the cries of my children, calling out to me to get them out from under the rubble. I went into the corridor and saw Ala’ under the stones, but could only see Maisa’s hand sticking out from under the rubble”, says Nasser. “It was terrible. I didn’t know where my other children were and feared they had been killed.”
After approximately 40 minutes of utter fear, it turned out that Jaber (3),Baha (7) and Sadi (9) were outside with their grandparents and were physically ok.
“Ala’ saw how I was panicking and just answered that he was fine when I got him from under the rubble. It was only when the ambulances arrived that he told me of his injuries”, says Nasser.
Both Maisa and Ala’ had been injured by shrapnel and were taken to Al Aqsa Martyrs hospital in Deir al-Baleh, together with Nassers’s brother, Mohammed Abu Said (43) and his wife Sana’. Mohammed has a crack in his skull, a swollen eye and his face is scratched, while Sana’ has shrapnel in her foot.
Five year old Maisa, is sitting barefoot in her pink track suit at the end of the hospital bed. She looks pale, but then I realize that she is covered in dust of the stones that fell on her when the shells crashed through the walls of her house. She puts on a courageous smile and shows me the shrapnel wound in her hand. She’s staying in the hospital overnight as she has trouble breathing. Next to her lies her eldest brother Ala’, who is suffering; his eyes flicker around nervously. His face cramps when the doctor pushes his belly softly. He tries to turn his face, but realizes there’s another wound in his neck and panics with tears in his eyes. His family members stand by in shock: “They are children! It’s outrageous!”
The Abu Said family house is situated in Johr Al-Dik’s farming land, exactly 340 meters from the border with Israel. Currently, 14 people live in the house: Nasser and his five children live on the second floor, with his parents, while his brother lives on the ground floor with his wife, two children and his sister. Other families have evacuated the area in the past decade, because of the danger, but the Abu Said family lacks resources to relocate to a safer area. Incursions with bulldozers and tanks take place every month, while gunfire is heard on an almost daily basis. These bullets pose a direct danger: in the past year, the house has been shot at on different occasions, the children have been trapped by gunfire while playing and their grandparents have been shot at while doing nothing more threatening than drinking coffee and tea by the house.
After his wife was killed, Nasser pitched a tent, a couple of hundred meters away from the house, hoping for it to be a safer haven for his traumatized children. During last month’s escalation, he moved back into the house, because how much protection can a tent offer against missiles and bombs? Once things grew calmer, he and his children spent their nights in the tents again. But they moved out again after the children had caught two big black scorpions by their beds.
Nasser has been lobbying different organizations to build him a new house, because he isafraid of a new Israeli assault. Some of his requests have been negatively answered, but most have disappeared in the NGO’s indigestible pile of bureaucracy. “Maybe they will help me now, now my house is destroyed. It’s just a shame that my wife had to be killed again; all of her belongings are destroyed in this attack. It’s very painful to lose the things she cherished.”
On Monday 25th the first brick was laid for a new school in the Jordan Valley.
Volunteers from the Jordan Valley Solidarity working with Ras Al Auja community members have been making mud bricks for the building during the last two weeks.
On Monday morning, during the much appreciated visit of Luisa Morgantini, the Italian Parliamentarian from the Communist Party, the Jericho Governor and a delegation of more than 50 Italian people, we officially inaugurated the building of the school which has been named “Vittorio Arrigoni” in memoriam of the Italian activist from ISM (International Solidarity Movement), murdered a few days ago in Gaza.
This school in Ras Al Auja will serve to educate more than 200 children who suffer from a lack of this service around. As Ras Al Auja is located in the Area C, building needs Israeli permission, but these permits either take a lot of years or are never given.
After an emotive moment full of hugs among the volunteers, all of them joined the work, adding one or more bricks to the walls of the school while singing the lyrics of traditional Bella Ciao or the Socialist International enforcing the rhythm and the spirit of this struggle for freedom.
Building a school in Area C, the school of “Vittorio”, means a step further in resistance.
28 April 2011 | Popular Committee Against the Wall and Settlements
Israeli army enters Bil'in
Today around noon Jamal Atef Al Khateeb (age 15) was shot with rubber bullets in his stomach and mouth, and Nashmi Mohamad Abu Rahma (age 16) was shot with a rubber bullet in his leg. They were transferred to a Ramallah hospital for treatment.
This happened as the Israeli military broke through the village while students were going home from school. The Israeli soldiers started to shoot rubber bullets and tear gas towards the students, causing the two children to be shot.
The soldiers prevented Rani Burnat, a local cameraman, from taking pictures of their actions by threatening to break his camera if he did so.
Village land between highway 55 and Izbat Al Tabib
The village of Izbat Al Tabib outside Qalqilya is currently being threatened by the creation of a wall, which will annex 1000 square meters of their agricultural land. The village is situated right next to highway 55, and under the pretext of preventing stones being thrown onto the highway, the Israeli Civil Administration plans to build two walls, between which will be a buffer zone of Palestinian land. This will separate Izbat Al Tabib from the highway annexing vital agricultural land.
The army is planning to begin constructing the wall on 1st May. Villagers received the notice on 3rd April and were given two weeks to file a complaint. Their complaint was rejected on 23rd and they plan to take it to the Supreme Court on 28th. The army has also recently began entering the village and making arrests.
The village, which contains 45 houses and is home to 247 inhabitants, was built in the 1920’s and is located in area C. The village is not recognized by Israel and 32 out of 45 houses, and a school, have been served with demolition orders. Due to its location, Izbat Al Tabib is extremely isolated: it is the fifth poorest village in the West Bank and villagers have already lost 45% of their land to the illegal annexation wall. Farmers are forced to apply for permits to access areas of their land which are located near to the highway, however these are rarely given and when they are it is only to one farmer at a time.
In 1997 Israel attempted to make the east of the village into an industrial zone, however the village resisted this with demonstrations and after six months plans were dropped.
