Category: Reports

Several people injured at the International women’s day demonstration at Qalandiya checkpoint

05 March 2011 | International Solidarity Movement

At the 5th of March several protesters at Qalandiya checkpoint were injured. Among the injured were a 23 year old Swedish ISM activist hit by a tear gas grenade. The grenade burned her skin and left a bleeding wound on her arm, burned her hair, and left her temporarily deaf in her right ear. A Palestinian woman suffered from asphyxia from the tear gas and was taken to a hospital in an ambulance. She went home later in the evening.

The demonstration was held in celebration of the coming International Women’s Day on the 8th of March. It began in Ramallah and protestors marched toward the Qalandiya checkpoint. Shortly after arriving to the checkpoint the Israeli military rolled a sound grenade into to the crowd and people moved backwards; the soldiers responded by thowing tear gas grenades.

When the demonstration gathered again in front of the checkpoint gate, Israeli soldiers threw more sound and tear gas grenades into the crowd. Several people suffered from the tear gas, with difficulty breathing and seeing.

The Israeli military regularly attacks Palestinian demonstrations with great violence. On the 1st of Janurary this year, a Palestinian woman died of asphyixiation from the excessive use of tear gas at the weekly protest against the wall in the village of Bil’in. She became the 21st person to be killed by the Israeli army during peaceful protests against the wall in the West Bank.

Bombing is southern Gaza: 18-month child injured

3 March 2011 | International Solidarity Movement, Gaza

On February 26, Jamal Abo Hiatham Sharikhi (33 years) had his home destroyed by bombing from the Israeli military, and his 18-month old daughter was injured on her head by broken glass. He described the experience in this way: “It was 2 o’clock in the afternoon. I was sleeping near the window, and my 18-month old daughter was sleeping next to me. I woke up terrified by an explosion very close: the window was shattered and my daughter was bleeding from the top of her head. When I cleaned her, I realized that there was a piece of glass embedded in the skin. Then I took her to the hospital.” Medics removed the glass and instructed him on how to care for the wound.

The windows of his house were completely destroyed: it’s now impossible to close the door to the terrace and his home is full of glass over the floors, carpets, mattresses, and blankets. When the children came into the house they continued to be hurt by the glass. For this reason the family has temporarily moved to live with relatives. The explosion occurred a few tens of meters from the home of Hitiam, in a former military compound hit so many times that now it is now empty and abandoned, but the blast was enough to destroy all the windows of the building where Hitiam and his daughter were sleeping, from the second floor where he lives to the ground floor where his mother Shafiah, 57-years-old, lives.

“I was sleeping and was also hit by the glass,” she said, “I was luckily protected by a blanket. Then I saw a large black cloud rising from the explosion. My son looks strong, but I know he is destroyed by what has happened to his daughter. ”

This is not the first time Israeli violence has hit this family. Hitiam’s first wife was killed in 2007 while coming from Beit Lahya, trying to join her husband because the situation in the north was becoming dangerous. Her two children were traveling with her mother when a car that was hit by an Israeli bomb exploded near them. The mother and the driver were killed. When they brought the corpse of the mother to the hospital, she was still holding fast to her daughter of 15 days, and doctors struggled to separate her from the mother.

The girl injured Feb. 26 comes from the second marriage of Hitiam, which occurred after the death of his first wife.

Also on February 26 at about the same time Israeli bombs reached the Burej refugee camp, fortunately without causing any injuries.

Scrap collector injured in the North

26 February 2011 | International Solidarity Movement, Gaza

As his family was hungry but running out of cooking gas, Khaled Mohammed Al-Hsunmi (37) went out to collect wood. Cooking gas in Gaza is scarce and expensive (the siege does not allow much gas to enter), so Khaled regularly goes on a hunt for wood. Burning wood is plenty near the border, so he headed in this direction. The 26 of February he was at approximately 450 meters from the fence when an Israeli sniper hit him with a dum-dum bullet. The bullet, which explodes on impact and is illegal under the Geneva Convention, scattered the bones of his right lower leg.

“I have a family of nine. My eldest son is 10 years old and my eldest daughter is 18. I used to be a farmworker, but in the past two months nobody has called me,” sighs Khaled.

He had a surgery with external fixing to solidify his bones. Probably Khaled will need another surgery after a year to transmit parts of his hip bone to the scattered leg bones.

It is not the first time that his family has been put under live fire. His 18-year old nephew, Bilal Shaban Al-Hsunmi, is one of the two people visiting him in the hospital today. Bilal was himself injured on December 11th, 2010, while working as a scrap collector 350 meters from the border. Bilal still walks around with the metal fixing on his leg. He was hit by a dum-dum bullet too and is also waiting for a transplantation surgery to fix his scattered leg bones.

Bilal explains how his two elder brothers were also shot at by the occupation forces while working, which has put the entire family without an income, because the three of them were the only ones with work.

Khalil’s second visitor’s leg is also wrapped in external metal fixing. It is Mohamed Smail Al-Khamadaw (34), Khaled’s neighbor. On November 19th he was also hit by a bullet while collecting rubble 350 meters from the border. “The only thing that kept my leg together was the skin: the bones were shattered to pieces”, says Mohamed. “Nobody else in my family has a job. May God help us find a way to survive.” When he was asked whether he has a message for the outside world, he replied without hope: “I have no message. Any message is useless: Israel will continue doing whatever it wants to do. Anything I’d say won’t make any difference.”

Today’s attack exemplifies yet again Israel’s escalating assault on workers in the border area: since the beginning of November, approximately 40 people have been injured in the buffer zone: the no-go zone as declared by Israeli military that runs along the Gazan side of the border in a swathe 300 to 500 meters wide. However, according to the United Nations, this “high risk” zone stretches up to 1500-2000 meters. The total area amounts to 35% of Gaza’s arable land. Almost nobody enters the no-go zone, so most of the cases of injured or killed people in the last period have been in the high risk area, though it is not clearly defined nor explicitly declared by the occupation forces.

West Bank Palestinians anticipate settler’s ‘Day of Rage’

Violence of settlers against Palestinians throughout the West Bank is a known issue and is often excessive, vandalizing, injuring, and sometimes lethal. One month ago, in a span of two days — the 27th and 28th of January — two young men were killed in settler attacks. One, 20-year old Oday Maher Hamza Qadous was shot dead by settlers while working on his fields in the village of Iraq Burin. The other, Yousef Fakhri Ikhlayl, a 17-year-old youth from Beit Ommar, was shot in the head by settlers and left brain-dead in Hebron hospital after around 100 settlers from Bat Ayn settlement descended upon the Palestinian villages of Saffa and nearby Beit Ommar.

This week, after the radical settler outpost ‘Havat Gilad’ was evicted on Monday, factions of the settler movement are calling for a ‘Day of Rage’ against Palestinian villages and people on Thursday.

The policy of ‘price-tagging’ is not a new tactic used by radical settlers. The phrase means revenging any act against them from the Israeli government by punishing Palestinians.

According to Ma’an news, Rabbi Meir Goldmintz, who teaches at a seminary on the outpost, pointed at nearby Palestinian villages and said:
“The government must understand that it doesn’t pay to destroy our homes and we are going to make them regret what happened here. We are going to pay them a visit on Thursday to do what the [Israeli] government should be doing to them and not to us.”

For the onlooker it is difficult to discriminate if the many settler attacks of the last few days have been ‘just the usual’ violence towards Palestinians, as these kind of attacks are a daily routine in many parts of the West Bank.
In the Nablus area there have been reports of cars being vandalized and molotov cocktails thrown against houses.

This week, following the Open al-Shuhada Street Demonstration, Hebron also witnessed an increase in settler harassment. On Sunday, shop-keepers near the Tel Rumeida settlement were attacked in their shop by a settler, while soldiers looked on and did not intervene. The following day settlers in the same area held a ‘prayer’ demonstration, blocking Palestinian access to the road, on behalf of the settler who they claim was attacked by the shopkeepers the previous day.

Whether or not the attacks in the last two days are connected to the ‘price-tagging’ policy of settlers against the eviction of a small illegal outpost, there should be concern for what a ‘Day of Rage’ will mean, when violence against Palestinians is already an every day issue.

We are calling on the International Community to take a stand for the rights of Palestinians to security of their lives, homes, land and work. Furthermore we are calling for for an immediate action to pressure Israel to stand full responsibility, as within International Law an occupying Power is responsible for the well being of the occupied population. This means ending the one sided protection of illegal and violent settlers in the Palestinian territories, and prosecuting at last those settlers who commit these criminal acts.

Hebron witnesses increase in settler harassment following al-Shuhada street demonstration

02 March 2011 | International Solidarity Movement

Sunday a shop in Tel Rumeida was attacked by a middle-aged settler who smashed the shop’s window with a stick. Of the two shopkeepers inside, one was disabled in a wheelchair. The other went out and was then attacked by the settler. Soldiers from the nearby checkpoint did not aid or intervene on behalf of the shopkeeper. When ISM arrived at the site, nearly 20 soldiers were pushing away the palestinians near the shop, while allowing settlers to pass. A Palestinian teenager was arrested and brought in for questioning. He was released the same night.  

On monday about 50 settlers bearing arms held a demonstration. They gathered at the same shop to pray, claiming that it was a settler who had been attacked there the day before by a Palestinian. No Palestinians were on the streets, and they warned ISMers to hide on the roof for fear of settler violence. When the procession left the street, three settlers remained under the protection of soldiers to antagonize Palestinians as they came down from there houses. At that point a soldier blocked road access for TIPH (Temporary International Presence in Hebron) and other international organizations. A settler pushed an international, and a soldier removed that international from the scene. Half an hour later the procession returned to the site for another prayer, once again blocking Palestinian access to the street. Finally, according to locals, two Palestinian men were arrested and a third was detained for two hours after making a complaint.