Category: Reports

Gaza Freedom March: On the March at Last

Ellen Davidson and Judith Mahoney Pasternak | The Indypendent

31 December 2009

The protest at Tahrir Square. Photo by Ellen Davidson

At 9:50 this morning, hundreds of Egyptian Museum-bound tourists milled around Tahrir Square in downtown Cairo. Camouflaged among them were several hundred Gaza Freedom marchers, their “Free Gaza” t-shirts and “My heart is with Palestine” buttons hidden under jackets, their backpacks holding a day’s worth of water and snack foods.

At a few minutes before 10, says marcher Brad Taylor of New York City, the marchers converged and began to march down Meret Basha Street, waving banners and “Free Gaza” signs in Arabic and English and blocking traffic on half this heavily traveled multi-lane main artery. The Gaza Freedom March was on the march at last, if not in Gaza.

In Gaza, hundreds of Gazans marched with international activists against the Israeli blockade of the territory, according to Haaretz newspaper. Gaza residents have been unable to rebuild since Israel’s devastating bombing and invasion last year because the Israeli blockade has prevented construction materials from being brought into the area. Some 300 Israeli activists protested on the Israeli side of the Erez crossing.

The members of the GFM delegation in Cairo had come from around the world to join the march in Gaza, but were unable to get into the territory because the Egyptian government refused to allow them through the Rafah border crossing, which Egypt controls. Israel has completely shut down any movement through the Erez crossing at the other end of the territory.

In Cairo, the marchers got about 100 yards before they were completely blocked by a solid line of Cairo police in riot gear. The police surrounded the marchers from all sides, says Taylor, and began to push them very violently, dragging demonstrators off the street and throwing them onto the sidewalk, some pulled by the hair. After ten or 15 minutes of very intense pushing and shoving, the entire group had been moved onto sidewalk. By 11:00, all the marchers were penned in. The police were letting people in–indeed, they were sometimes forcing onlookers into the penned-in crowd.

Some GFM participants, however, were unable to join the march, as they were held on the sidewalk in front of the Lotus Hotel, where many GFM organizers are staying. Beginning around 9 am, police barricaded activists on the sidewalk. They allowed non-GFM participants to leave the area, but anyone who looked like they might be part of the GFM delegation was prevented from going outside the police line.

Some 15-20 people stayed out on the sidewalk in front of the hotel, holding banners and signs and chanting “Israel, Open the Border” in Arabic. At about 3 pm, police closed in on them and forced them inside the building, where they were no longer visible to passersby.

As of 3:45 pm, 200-300 protesters were still inside the police circle at Tahrir Square. They had set up a makeshift toilet, said Antony Lowenstein, who had been inside since the morning, and were settling for the long haul and strategizing their next moves. “The energy of all the people was just amazing,” he said.

Israeli Occupation Forces arrest two village youth during night raid in Bil’in early Tuesday morning

29 December 2009

Israeli soldiers invaded Bil'in last night
Israeli soldiers arresting a village youth during last night's night raid

Israeli Occupation Forces arrested two village youth from the small West Bank village of Bil’in early Tuesday morning during a night raid operation there around 2:30 am.

Lookouts with the Bil’in Committee for Popular Resistance Against the Wall and Settlements spotted Israeli soldiers near the Southwest gates of the town as well as in the Western groves of olive trees around 1am Tuesday morning and quickly mobilized the rest of the night patrol team.

“We do not have enough people to try and stop them tonight, David,” Haitham Al-Katib, the Media Coordinator for Friends of Freedom and Justice Bil’in, told me. “Tonight you are not an activist, ok? Tonight you are a photographer. We will show the world the truth about what is happening here.”

Hamoda Iymad Yassen and Khalil Abraham Yassen, 16, were arrested at their homes around 2:30am Tuesday morning.

More than 30 Bil’in residents have been arrested since June during a night-raid campaign conducted by apartheid state security forces in an apparent attempt to disrupt the nonviolent resistance activities of the Bil’in Committee for Popular Resistance Against the Wall and Settlements.

The Bil’in Popular Committee organizes weekly demonstrations at the Apartheid Wall near their village to protest the annexation of more than 60 percent of their land to Israel.

More photographs available at: From Pork to Palestine Blog

Palestinian bus destroyed by settlers throwing stones, five injured

28 December 2009

Settlers launched an attack on a Palestinian bus near Zatara checkpoint today, injuring five and damaging the vehicle beyond repair.

Hale Yusef Abu Jabar left the northern West Bank city of Jenin at 3pm this afternoon, his fully-packed service-taxi carrying seven passengers bound for Ramallah. As they approached Zatara checkpoint south of Nablus, the settlement of Yitzhar to their west, waiting settlers descended from the adjacent hill and hurled stones at the vehicle.

Abu Jabar swerved the car, attempting to dodge the rocks as they punctured the windows and hit his terrified passengers, causing the car to topple. The attack occurred in clear sight of soldiers manning Zatara checkpoint, who continued to watch from their vantage point as settlers fled the scene, returning to the settlement.

Red Crescent medics arrived shortly thereafter, transporting victims to Al-Ittihad Hospital in Nablus. The 5 injured were Abu Jabar, Rifad Jamal Diad Sayid, Abdullah Mustafa Arafi, Iyed Haris Mustafa Sare and Salaam Machmoud. For Abu Jabar, the injuries to his body is secondary to the financial damage, his service-taxi written off by the attack.

Settler violence has sharply increased this month, with reports of settlers launching many strikes on Palestinians, their vehicles and property in the area. On the front line of the violence is notorious Yitzhar settlement, ill-famed for its ideological residents and their repeated targeting of neighbouring Palestinian villages.

Brutality of settlers’ ‘price tag’ campaign erupts from notorious Yitzhar settlement

24 December 2009

Settler violence has erupted this week around Nablus, as outrage over the death of an Israeli settler triggers extremists’ “price-tag” campaign, its senseless violence directed once again at the hands of Yitzhar settlers on altogether unrelated, and repeated, Palestinian targets.

Ghalib Najar’s house sits on the southern tip of the beautiful, but long-suffering village of Burin. The family built their home in 1965, long before the arrival of settlers, their network of Apartheid roads or the Oslo zoning plans. Even when, in the early 1980s, the red-roofed houses of the (now infamous) settlements Yitzhar and Bracha began to dot the hillsides enveloping Burin, the Najar family still never expected what was to come.

In the years since, the family has come under repeated attack from their militant neighbours, their only crime to own land in the shadow of the mountain where Yitzhar settlement has now swollen and grown to 500 residents, living on thousands of dunums of what was formerly Burin and the neighbouring villages’ land.

Christmas Eve saw yet another attack on Najar’s family, including 8 children and 13 people in total. At 7pm 50 settlers, at least five armed with rifles, left their mountain stronghold and descended to Burin village. Surrounding the house, they began to shout and throw rocks at the windows, puncturing glass and terrifying the family. The noise alerted the village’s shabab (young men) to what was afoot, who then converged on the area in hopes of defending the village. The Israeli military arrived at 7:30, causing the settlers to disperse. At least one shot was fired by a settler as they escaped through the family’s olive groves, unimpeded by the army, towards the Yitzhar-bound, settler-only road lying some 50 metres from Najar’s home.

Four Israeli soldiers quickly entered Najar’s land, occupying the roof of the family’s home. Five military vehicles and an additional 10 soldiers remained positioned on the settler road, emergency sirens and lights blaring, but no attempt made to apprehend the assailants. Israeli soldiers atop the roof, denying any incursion had just taken place, attempted to prevent ISM activists from photographing the situation and threatened to apprehend the activists even as they interviewed Ghalib Najar and his family inside their home. The harassment came on the heels of lengthy questioning at nearby Huwara checkpoint, where soldiers had attempt to prevent activists from entering Burin, claiming that non-Arab people were not authorised to enter Palestinian villages. The military remained in the area for several hours, finally leaving the area around 10pm.

Yitzhar settlement is notorious for its fanatically ideological residents, the violence they inflict on neighbouring Palestinian communities, and the extremist doctrines they espouse. Saturdays, the Jewish religious holiday of Shabbat, typically sees Yitzhar settlers roused to fever pitch zeal, wrecking havoc upon Palestinian villages unfortunate enough to live in its shadow. Settlers have frequently launched attacks with rocks, knives, guns and arson on Palestinian families and property in the area. In one of the most extreme act of terrorism students of the Yitzhar Od Yosef Hai yeshiva fired homemade rockets on Burin in 2008.

Not content with committing their own acts of brutality, Yitzhar rabbis are key players in incitement of targeted violence across the West Bank. Rabbi Elitzur from the same Yitzhar yeshiva published a book this November titled “The Handbook for the Killing of Gentiles”, condoning even the murder of non-Jewish babies, lest they grow to “be dangerous like their parents”. Rabbi Elitzur is vocal in his encouragement of “operations of reciprocal responsibility” such as the arson attack made on Yasuf mosque three weeks ago.

Despite West Banks settlements’ status as illegal under international law, Yitzhar was included in the Israeli governments’ recent “national priority map” as one of the settlements earmarked for financial support. Yitzhar also receives significant funding from American donations, tax-deductible under U.S. government tax breaks for ‘charitable’ institutions.

Israeli military constructs new roadblock in West Bank village, crippling farmers’ economy

28 December 2009

The Israeli army erected a giant earth mound across a crucial agricultural road in the northern West Bank village of Madama this week. The road block severely limits hundreds of farmers’ access to their lands, making transport by vehicle all but impossible. The intentional crippling of the village’s chief economy comes as settler violence continues unabated in the region.

Four Israeli military jeeps and one Caterpillar bulldozer entered the village on Wednesday night to construct the road block. The targeted dirt road cuts directly underneath the speedy settler road leading west from Yitzhar settlement, where a tunnel was constructed to allow the road’s continuation to farmers’ land. The bulldozer quickly moved massive mounds of earth across the road underneath the bridge, entirely blocking it and removing the possibility of access to cars and tractors by village farmers.

ISM activists visited Madama to witness families clambering over the earth mound on foot and herding, with great difficulty, donkeys and flocks of sheep and goats across the blockage. The prevention of tractor access is critical now especially, as Palestine enters its wet season and land must be ploughed to become fertile for the new year. Approximately 500 of Madama’s farmers hold land on the other side of the road block, whose economic livelihood is severely threatened by this senseless impediment.

The road overhead, linking Israeli settlers effortlessly with their homes and work outside the settlements, cuts deeply through Madama’s land, as it has done since it was built 10 years ago. Two homes, belonging to Yasser Taher’s family, are now isolated on the other side of the highway, marking them as prime targets for settler and military harassment, leaving children traumatised and inevitably forcing the majority of the family to move to a safer home within Madama.

Madama resident Abed Al-Aziz Zeiyada became the latest victim in an endless series of settler incursions as he drove his taxi home on Friday night. Settlers of Yitzhar settlement, waiting on the side of the road, hurled rocks at his car and destroyed the windscreen. When Zeiyada reached Huwara, now without a windscreen in his car, he was stopped by Israeli forces at a flying checkpoint. Showing them the unmistakeable damage, Zeiyada was refused assistance by Israeli soldiers. He returned to Madama and paid a 700 shekel bill for the window to be fixed the next day.

Residents of Madama always have one eye fixed on the settlements that loom over the village; Bracha to the north, and Yitzhar to the south. Yitzhar alone is built on 1000 dunums of Madama’s land, including all of its water wells. Villagers are forced to spend vast amounts of their income on water, a 90-litre tank costing a crippling 125 shekels. Settler incursions also occur frequently, wrecked upon homes on the edge of the village, if not from the settlers then from the military, whose base next to Bracha send jeeps careening through the streets of Madama and neighbouring villages by night.

Israeli settlements, illegal under international law, and their network of Apartheid roads, in addition to Israeli government and military suffocating policy and presence in occupied Palestine culminate in a devastating effect on the everyday lives of Palestinians, such as residents of Madama village, whose voices all too often go unheard.