Despite pounding rain and aggressive repression tactics employed by the army, the village of Nabi Saleh marched Friday in solidarity with the people of Egypt. The demonstration was also in honor of 14 year Nabi Saleh resident Islam Tamimi, who was arrested in a night raid in the village almost three weeks ago and remains in jail.
Nabi Saleh in Tear Gas and Rain Picture Credit: Joseph Dana
Even before the demonstration was slated to begin, the army had taken positions inside the small village of Nabi Saleh, located just west of Ramllah. Soldiers briefly detained three Israeli supporters around 10:30 in the morning inside the village. The activists were taken to the village entrance and told to leave and not return. They were able to enter from a different point and join the demonstration later in the day.
Dozens of Palestinian, international and Israeli activists marched holding posters of 14 year Islam Tamimi, who has been in an Israeli military jail for almost three weeks. The demonstration was also in solidarity with the people of Egypt. Across the West Bank, popular committees held demonstrations in solidarity with Egypt.
The demonstration was attacked with tear gas, the same American made gas used against protesters Egypt and Tunisa, before reaching the main junction of the village. Soldiers then took over the square of the village and forced protesters into the olive grooves surrounding Nabi Saleh. Despite the pounding rain, soldiers maintained positions inside the village until five in the evening.
Two international activists were detained for roughly three hours during the demonstration and no injuries other than tear gas inhalation were reported. The village has been suffering serious repression by the Israeli army over the past month. Weekly night raids, the systemic arrest of children and threaten popular committee leaders has become a mainstay of life in Nabi Saleh. Despite this, the people still resist the Israeli occupation and march in solidarity with the people of Egypt and Tunsia who are fighting for the spirit of freedom.
3 February 2011 | International Solidarity Movement
Ahmed Youssef Al Ahnan was but a child of 17 when he was arrested six years ago in his aunt’s house by the beach of Khan Younis. “I still don’t know why they took my boy. How is it possible that they can arrest a child just like that?”, asked his mother ragingly, clinging firmly onto her son’s picture. To this day, Ahmed is still imprisoned in Israel, while none of his relatives have been allowed to visit him during the six years he has spent in detention. “It even took four years before he was allowed to make his first phone call!”, his mother continued. “In the past years, he has been able to call more, but still I can’t see him.” When asked how her son is holding up in prison, she answers with an ambiguous sense of pride and sadness: “He’s a good boy, he doesn’t want me to worry over him and always says that he is doing fine, but he doesn’t sound like he is.”
Next to her sits five year old Fara Omar Shehda Al Bardawi, playfully hiding behind her father’s picture that she is holding up. He was arrested five years ago, just a month before she was born, orphaning her before birth. “He called us once, but after we haven’t heard of him anymore”, said the young girl. The image of this vivacious little girl is discontinuous with the drama that enfolds from her words. Fara has not only lost her father: her mother remarried and had to leave her with her father’s family. “All I want is my father to be back”, she utters finally with a halfhearted smile.
At the protest, about 100 people, the majority of them women, gathered outside the office of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Gaza City, every one holding pictures of a family member who is detained in an Israeli prison. According to Addameer, a Palestinian human rights NGO, there are currently 5395 Palestinians imprisoned in Israeli jails, no less than 209 of them are children.
It is not coincidental that this weekly sit-in is held at ICRC’s headquarters; every Palestinian wishing to visit a family member imprisoned in Israel must receive an entry permit, which is submitted via the ICRC to the Israeli side. The visiting population is restricted by outrageous visiting criteria: 16 to 45 year old boys and men, for example, are automatically excluded. Hundreds of others are barred on so called “security grounds”, which results in hundreds of prisoners not receiving visits for extended periods that may reach a number of years.
Since June 2007, Israel has banned all Gazans from visiting their relatives incarcerated in Israel. The 684 Gazans that are currently imprisoned in Israel have therefore not received a single visitor for more than three-and-a-half years now. Addalah Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel states that the Gaza detainees, many of whom are held indefinitely without trial, have since been in virtual isolation, as they are generally not allowed to communicate through phone or over the internet, and are only occasionally allowed to send out a letter to their families.
The 55 year old Aysha Abu Yazen comes all the way from Rafah, in the south of the Strip, to Gaza City to attend the prisoners’ sit-in: “Eight years ago, Israelis raided our house, demolished it and took my 18 year old son, Ahmad Jimah Abu Yazen. He allegedly has another nine years of imprisonment ahead of him and so far, for eight years, we have not received a single phone call from him.”
Two six year old twin girls, Ala'a and Wala'a, each holding a picture of their brother, Abed Foul, who has been in prison since two years, without a single visit
Every demonstrator has a devastating story to tell that bears witness to the isolation and alienation of Palestinians in Israeli prisons. The family members of the imprisoned Ibrahim Majdoub for example say that Ibrahim was only allowed to call once throughout the year 2010.
And so these children, men and women come here every week – most of them for many years – to protest against and draw attention to Israel’s illegal conditions of imprisonment which are isolating their relatives and breaking up their families.
The ICRC is mandated, under the Geneva Conventions, to verify whether prisoners’ rights, under international law, are respected. Nonetheless, Gazans prisoners’ rights to receive visits are blatantly violated and people feel the ICRC is not putting the appropriate pressure on the Israeli authorities to respect the rights of the detainees.
Palestinian prisoners are defrauded of family visits, and also have restricted access to basic necessities in prison – such as clothing and money – as visits are often the prisoners’ sole means of contact for these items. Al Mezan Center for Human Rights notes that lawyers are prohibited by the Israeli Prison Service from transferring money to a prisoner. The IPS insists that only relatives may transfer money, which is obviously impossible as this would require a Gazan to be present in Israel.
Jameela Ahmed Salman holds up a poster of her bearded husband, Mahmoud Salman, who has been in prison for 17 years. “They took him when I was pregnant with my youngest son. For six years we haven’t been allowed to visit him. He’s sick and suffers from heart problems, he’s in and out of Ramla hospital, but I’m still not allowed to visit him and take care of him. I’m worried about him, I wish someone could help me and go to prison to check up on him and give him some money”, says Jameela softly. “My youngest was 11 when he saw his father last – in prison, that was – by now he has difficulties remembering his father’s face. What did my children ever do wrong to lose their father like this? The holidays during Eid al-Fitr [Islamic Festival of Fast-Breaking] and Eid al-Addha [Islamic Festival of Sacrifice] are bleak without him, we miss out on all of the joy. My eldest son and daughter got married recently and both were sad at the day of their marriage because they couldn’t share it with their father.”
Women holding their dear ones
Israel’s Supreme Court ruled on December 9th 2009 that Israel has no obligation to allow “foreigners” entry into the country and that visits to prisoners are not a basic humanitarian need. The legal center Adalah states that this is not only a misapplication of international law, but also a sign of Israel’s continued and systematic persecution of Palestinians. As an occupying power, Israel cannot refer to Gazans as “foreigners”, but has to consider them as “protected persons” to whom Israel owes a particular duty of care. Article 27 of the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 stipulates that protection of the occupied population includes protection of family rights.
Furthermore, article 76 of the Fourth Geneva Convention explicitly states that prisoners taken from occupied territories should be detained within the occupied territory. Most of the Palestinian prisoners and all of the Gazan detainees are however held within Israel, which is thus illegal under international humanitarian law and constitutes a war crime.
NGO Addameer notes that the decision to ban Gazan family visits, coincided with the capture of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit in Gaza. It appears to be a form of collective punishment, which is not related to the official reasons of imprisonment, but aims to coerce Palestinian factions to respond to Israel’s demands, turning Palestinian prisoners into pawns of political gain.
Fahmi Kanaan is one of the 26 people who have been exiled to Gaza after the 5 week long siege on the Church of Nativity in Bethlehem in May 2002. “Before that, in 1987, I spent five months in an Israeli prison, so I know how the hardships of Israeli imprisonment. Forced to live in exile and being cut off from my own family for more than eight-and-a-half years now, I know something about social isolation as well. I come here in solidarity with these families and to call upon the international world and the United Nations to
interfere in Israel’s illegal conduct and to stop their violations of international law! How can it be that the whole world calls for Gilad Shalit, the only Israeli prisoner in Palestine, to be released while it keeps silent about thousands of Palestinians that are detained in Israeli prisons!?”
5 February 2011 | International Solidarity Movement
A 14-year old boy was arrested at a checkpoint in Hebron on Friday morning. His family have contacted the Israeli authorities, but have received no answer as to his whereabouts. The following day, his cousin was detained at the same checkpoint, apparently for calling someone German. The Palestinian youth claimed he was just joking around with his friend; he was released an hour-or-so after his family promised to discipline him.
Hebron is unique in that the town has the presence of Jewish settlers within the city itself, with five illegal settlements in the city centre. Since the Goldstein massacre in 1994 – when Baruch Goldstein fired on Palestinians while they prayed in the mosque, killing 29 men and boys, and injuring a further 200 – al-Shuhada street (which is located in the heart of the city) has been closed to Palestinians. This has severed the city in two, paralyzing trade and destroying the commercial centre. More than 500 shops and businesses have been forced to close under military order. The continued repression enforced by the occupation has led to the mass abandonment of more than an additional thousand shops, businesses, and homes in the city centre.
06 February 2011 | International Solidarity Movement
Forty-five year old Abdallah Rabea Odwan works as a rock collector around Beit Lahiya. On the morning of 6th February, he and many others were working outside Abu Samra, around 700 meters from the border, when they were fired upon by Israeli soldiers. Abdallah was hit once below the knee and taken to the Kamal Udwan Hospital. Thankfully, no bones were broken, and doctors say he will recover over the next few weeks.
Meanwhile, 19 year old Bilal Abdallah Al Daour and 22 year old Ibrahim El Nabaheen were fired upon whilst working in the Shuja’iyya neighborhood to the east of Gaza city. Hundreds of people were out collecting rocks in the area, about 500 meters from the Israeli border. At around 8:30am the first shots rang out, but no one was injured. The soldiers stopped shooting and, assuming it was safe, people returned to work. An hour later, the soldiers started shooting again; Bilal was shot in the knee and Ibrahim was shot in the pelvis. The other workers rushed them to a nearby car, but the car was out of gas due to the shortages caused by the closing of the tunnels under the Egyptian border. Bilal was finally taken to Shifa Hospital in Gaza city; when we found him, he did not know where Ibrahim had been taken.
These are not the first rock collectors shot by the IDF, as countless others have been shot over the last two years in the ever expanding buffer zone. Originally 50 meters under the Oslo agreements, it was expanded to 150 meters in 2000, and then to 300 meters in January 2010. However, the buffer zone isn’t really 300 meters: Adballah was shot 700 meters from the border; others have been shot at up to 2 km from the border – it is as big as the Israeli military wants to make it on any given day. The Gazan economy has been choked by the three year Israeli siege. Unemployment is widespread, and so poverty – combined with the impossibility of importing cement to rebuild the thousands of homes destroyed and damaged during Operation Cast Lead – forces people to collect rocks. These new injuries are yet another result of Israel’s inhumane policy of shooting anyone it thinks is too close to the border, even if they are forced there, risking their lives to feed their families.
Earlier today, Yousef Fakhri Ikhlayl, a 17-year-old youth from Beit Ommar who has worked very closely with PSP over the years, was shot in the head by settlers and he is currently brain-dead in Hebron hospital. Yousef attended nearly every unarmed Saturday demonstration, was frequently around the PSP house, and anticipated in both the Freedom Flotilla Summer Camp, and the photography class organized by the Center for Freedom and Justice. Our thoughts are with his family and friends. Please consider holding solidarity actions or events in your communities to demand his killers be brought to justice, and for Yousef to be the last victim of an ongoing brutal occupation.
Friday, January 28th 2011, 9am: Around 100 settlers from Bat Ayn settlement descended upon the Palestinian villages of Saffa and nearby Beit Ommar in the southern West Bank, shooting 17-year-old Yousef Fakhri Ikhlayl in his head, leaving him critically injured. Doctors have announced that Yousef is
currently brain-dead in a Hebron hospital.
Settlers also shot 16-year-old Bilal Mohammad Abed Al-Qador with live ammunition in his arm.
The large group of armed settlers began shooting towards Palestinian homes in Saffa at around 9am, leaving Bilal injured. At the same time, a second group of settlers attacked an area of Beit Ommar called Jodor. Yousef was shot in the head in this area while he was standing in grapes vines he had planted on his family´s land.
Dozens of Palestinians from Beit Ommar and the nearby village of Surif began coming to the area to defend their communities. Seven jeeps of Israeli Forces also arrived in the area and escorted the settlers back to Bat Ayn.
This is the second settler attack with live ammunition on Palestinians in as many days. On January 27th, Uday Maher Qadous was shot and killed in Iraq Burin, in the Nablus district, by armed settlers as he was working his land.
Yousef Fahkri Ikhlayl is from the village of Beit Ommar and has worked on initiatives with the Palestine Solidarity Project, an ant-occupation organization in Beit Ommar. In the summer of 2010, Yousef attended the Center for Freedom and Justice´s Freedom Flotilla Summer Camp where he engaged in educational projects, community service, and unarmed demonstrations against the Israeli occupation. In the fall of 2010 Yousef was a participant in a youth photography class also sponsored by the center.
“Yousef was a kid who hoped for a better future for Palestine. His life was ended prematurely by right-wing extremists. People around the world should be outraged by his shooting, and should work to bring his attackers to justice. ”
-Bekah Wolf, American citizen who worked with Yousef in the Center for
Freedom and Justice
Settlers from Bat Ayn routinely attack and harass Palestinians in the Beit Ommar area. In January 27th, 2011 settlers in the area destroyed several hundred olive trees belonging to Palestinian farmers.
