Category: Reports - Page 394 - International Solidarity Movement

Gaza under attack: death and destruction in Rafah

10 April 2011 | International Solidarity Movement, Gaza

On the afternoon of Thursday April 7th, Israeli forces escalated their attacks on the Gaza Strip. The murderous offensive has killed 18 people so far, the majority of them being civilians. Among the massacred are a mother, her daughter, two children, two elderly men and four members of Al Qassam Brigades. More than sixty people have been injured, some are still fighting for their lives. Since Thursday afternoon the Gaza Strip is besieged by drones, Apache helicopters, F16 and E15 fighter planes, gunboats in the south and tanks by the border.

At approximately 16:00 on Thursday, Israeli forces targeted areas surrounding the previously destroyed Gaza International Airport in the far southeast of Rafah city, in the south of the Gaza Strip. Israeli forces positioned along the border fired approximately 10 artillery shells, while Apache helicopters opened machine gun fire. A number of the artillery shells landed near three Palestinian civilians who were sitting near the airport. Two of them, Mohammed Eyada Eid el-Mahmoum (25) and Khaled Ismail Hamdan el-Dabari (17) were killed immediately and the third civilian, Saleh Jarmi Ateya al-Tarabin (38) died of his wounds in the hospital on the evening of the same day.

Israeli forces continued to fire as a number of Palestinian civilians attempted to rescue the wounded; Musaab Mohammed Ubeid Sawwaf, 20, was killed and another 14 civilians, including five children and a paramedic from the Palestinian Red Crescent Society, were wounded.

Salama El-Dabari is seated in a tent, mourning the loss of his nephew, the 17 year old Khaled Ismail Hamdan el-Dabari, while he explains to ISM volunteers what has happened.

“Khaled was following the ambulances on his motorbike, to assist the medics in evacuating the injured people. As soon as the ambulances arrived, an Apache helicopter shelled the site again. Khaled got stuck under his motorcycle, which caught fire during the shelling. The ambulances of the Palestinian Red Crescent Society were not able to evacuate him immediately. They recovered his body the next morning, covered in burns, with open head wounds, a hole in the abdomen, bullets in the legs and without hands. His father, my brother, was looking for him, but we didn’t want him to see his son in such a condition, so we sent him home before evacuating Khaled’s body.”

Salama switches to the inequality of the conflict and says the following: “Look at us, the Palestinians; we are a peaceful people who are trying to shake off the occupation to live in freedom. But we don’t have any meaningful military power: we have no drones nor F16’s, we don’t have any of Israel’s modern weaponry. There is no comparison possible. We are desperate. Nobody seems to care about the Palestinians and our struggle for justice.”

21 year old Abdel Hadi Jumma el-Sufi is one of the injured and is currently hospitalized in Shifa hospital in Gaza City. He stares at the ceiling of his hospital room while recalling the murderous event.

“One of the men was hit in the beginning of the attack, so me and my friends approached to evacuate him. We found out that the man was already dead. Tanks kept on shelling and killed another man. We managed to get the two dead bodies and one severely wounded man out of there, into the ambulance, but could not reach the fourth man as shelling prevented us. I thought he was still alive, but in the morning the ambulance recovered another dead body from the scene.” Abdel himself sustained shrapnel wounds to his legs, lungs and the back of his head and is currently awaiting surgery.

20 year old Mahdi Joma’a Abu Athra is worst of: the doctor at Europa hospital in Khan Younes describes him as a dead body kept alive by machinery. His maternal uncles are sitting around the hospital bed and are explaining that Mahdi got married a couple of months ago: his wife is pregnant. It seems unlikely that Mahdi will ever lay eyes on his firstborn.

One of the uncles bursts out: “How come the West is so interested in defending the Lybian’s human rights and is doing nothing for the Palestinians? You, who come here in solidarity with us, should send a clear message to your countries: it is not us that is attacking Israel, it is Israel that is attacking us! They are the terrorists and the criminals! Our rockets and missiles are fireworks compared to Israel’s weaponry! They have the most high-tech accurate equipment: they can target very precisely. When they kill civilians, it’s because they intend to kill civilians!”

More demolitions in the Jordan Valley

07 April 2011 | Jordan Valley Solidarity

On April 7th at 6 am the village of Al Aqaba woke up to find the Israeli Army destroying thier road and two homes. Two Caterpillar bulldozers were with the military jeeps. They demolished two concrete houses leaving two families homeless, one with 11 children, and the other with 7 children. Their animal shelters had also been destroyed.

They also destroyed about 2.5km of tarmac road that wound around the hills of the village, and the electricity columns which serve energy to the inhabitants. One of the roads is ironically named Peace Street and is a vital link with the Jordan Valley.The bulldozers also created mounds with the rubble along the road to make it impossible for any vehicle to drive along it.

95% of Al Aqaba, which is in area C, received demolition orders from the Occupation Authority in 2006. Since then they have been mounting a legal challenge, but it is apparent that the occupation army does not wish to wait for their own Israeli `law`.

700 people were forced out of their land in 2006, but the entire village was granted a freeze on their demolition orders until the end of 2011 to give the opportunity to resolve the situation peacefully. Background information about the village is available on their own website.

In the afternoon of 7th April the army also demolished three large animal shelters and a kitchen in the farming community of Al Samra in the northern Jordan Valley. Jordan Valley Solidarity arrived just after the demolitions to find the families devastated, and the grandparents visibly upset.They received demolition orders for the third time on Tuesday 29th March, and were given just three days to destroy their own buildings, making it virtually impossible for them to make an appeal through the courts. When the army did not demolish their buildings straight away they became hopeful that they would be able to get a freeze on the demolition order, but their hopes were destroyed today.

The grandmother was crying at the sight of the destruction, and that the sheep and goats were now out in the afternoon sun without any shade. The animals were all crowding under the tractors and water tanks to try to find their own shade. As well as the animal shelters, the army also destroyed the small kitchen of a family with a young baby, aged just 20 days old.

Women and elderly taken in the latest Awarta raids

07 April 2011 | International Solidarity Movement

At approximately 10.00pm last night the army once again entered the village of Awarta, throwing sound-bombs into the streets and declaring it a closed military zone, putting the residents under house arrest. This time the army arrested over 200 people, amongst them women and the elderly. The arrested were marched two kilometres out of the village before being tightly packed into buses and taken to Huwwara military base. Some of the villagers were in their pyjamas and without shoes when they were taken to the base and questioned, before having their fingerprints, DNA and photographs taken. Villagers were held until 4.00 in the morning; during this time those who were ill with conditions such as asthma were denied their medication. The oldest villager taken was 80 year old Nabil Awad who was arrested with his 70 year old wife. The soldiers entered his house by breaking the door, they hit his wife and his son and daughter who asked them not to take Nabil who is sick with heart failure. Nabil’s house had been searched in the previous weeks by the army who had destroyed many of his possessions and poured oil into his sugar supply.

Huda Quwariq in her home after the army raided it.

The Qawariq family whose son and nephew where killed in 2010 by the Israeli army have been especially targeted and last night had their house searched for the 9th time before the father was again taken away to the military base. Although he was later released with the other villagers, he received a phone call from the army later in the morning demanding that he return to the base. Two sons of the Qawariq family are still being held in prison since being arrested early on in the raids. Whilst searching the house, the army again destroyed the families’ belongings, making a hole in the bathroom wall, pulling clothes and blankets out of the cupboards and pulling apart the washing machine. The army also once again brought dogs into the house who contaminated the familes’ food making it inedible.

Today the village enters its 28th day of army incursions following the killing of the Fogal family in the nearby illegal settlement of Itamar. Since the 12th March, villagers have been at the mercy of the Israeli army who have subjected them to military curfews which have left them lacking food, water and gas and have prevented ambulances and press from entering the village. ISM activists have been present in the village during some of these curfew, including the first one lasting five days, and have witnessed the army brutality first-hand. The army has arrested hundreds of villagers in the past 28 days, with 41 still imprisoned in Israel. None of the arrested have yet been charged with any crime. They have conducted numerous house searches in which they have destroyed and stolen property, and evicted families from their homes and occupied them for military purposes. Villagers have been beaten and hospitalised in acts of army brutality from which now even women and the aged are not spared. Huda Qawariq, the mother of one of the young boys killed last year, today described her and her families’ fear at the soldier attacks, telling us: ‘Soldiers have dogs and guns; all we have is God’.

Samouni family responds to Goldstone backtrack on Israeli war crimes

6 April 2011 | Ken O’Keefe

During Operation Cast Lead Israel committed massive war crimes for all the world to see. Among these crimes the use of White Phosphorus in densely populated areas, use of Depleted Uranium, bombing civilian targets of all sorts without military necessity, destroying civilian infrastructure with no military justification and the infamous massacre of the Samouni family… among many other crimes.

In the aftermath of Cast Lead, Justice Richard Goldstone, a Zionist Jew, was commissioned by the United Nations to write a report on the alleged war crimes. Although the report did not go nearly far enough in exposing the brutality of all the crimes committed, crimes committed by the fourth largest military in the world against a essentially defenceless and captive population, it did allege that Israel (and Hamas) was almost undoubtedly guilty of war crimes and possibly, crimes against humanity.

Four days of settler violence in Burin and the Nablus area

03 April 2011 | International Solidarity Movement

On Friday afternoon at around 4.30 pm, three young men from the village of Burin, south of Nablus, were attacked by two settlers while picking “akoob” (a plant used in cooking) in the mountains. The men were around 200 meters away from the illegal settlement of Bracha when two settlers attacked them by throwing stones. Ten minutes later, 35 more masked settlers, two of them carrying M16 rifles, came down to attack the three men. When the villagers of Burin came to protect the men by throwing stones, settlers started firing live ammunition at them, forcing them to hide behind rocks.

One settler shouted at the villagers, in Arabic: “We should burn you, you are rubbish!”

At approximately 5.30 pm, one hour after the settlers had arrived, the Israeli army came and forced the villagers to leave their land, while the settlers were allowed to stay.

Again, yesterday at around 10.30 am, five villagers were attacked by settlers while they were constructing a house. 18 settlers, of whom two were carrying guns, attacked the workers by throwing stones at them and their tractors and prevented them from doing their work. The workers called the Red Cross and asked them to call the Israeli army to come and stop the settlers. Around 30 minutes later the army came, but the settlers had already left. When the villagers told the soldiers what have happened, the soldiers called them liars, telling them that the settlers would never attack on a Saturday since it is the holy day for Jewish people.
Then at around 4 pm, the settlers came back and attacked the workers again, throwing stones at them and their families. Again by the time the military had come, the settlers were already gone, and instead of helping the villagers, the soldiers prevented the workers from driving their tractors to get water and soil some 100 meters up the road, threatening to shoot them.

Today at 9.30 am around 30 settlers, of whom three were carrying guns, attacked the five workers once again with stones. 30 minutes later, the Israeli army arrived with four military jeeps, but as in the previous incidents, the settlers had left just before the army came. The two houses under construction belong to the two brothers Zeid and Ghassan Amran. Their family have been under constant attack since they started to build the first house last year. Ghassan Amran lives with his family in one of the houses, he is scared that something will happen to his children, three boys aged three, seven and eight years old.

The village of Burin is surrounded by the illegal Israeli settlements of Bracha in the north, and Yitzar in the south. The settlers make regular visits to the village and in previous incidents have destroyed olive trees, stolen and shot animals, set crops and houses and cars on fire, destroyed homes, shot at people with live ammunition and fired rockets at the village.

In other similar incidents in the Nablus area, according to Ma’an News Agency, Imad Husni Salahat, 47, was severely beaten by settlers in Kawkab Salah near the illegal settlement of Ma’ale Efrayim yesterday. The same day, settlers from the illegal settlement of Yitzar destroyed water pipes south of the village of Madama.

Also, on the night between Wednesday and Thursday, in the village of Aqraba, south east of Nablus, 400 olive trees that had been planted three months earlier, were uprooted and stolen by settlers from the illegal settlement of Itamar. The week before 300 olive trees were uprooted and three wells were destroyed in a settler attack on the village land.