Category: Reports - Page 51 - International Solidarity Movement

Palestinians demonstrate for Israel to return the dead bodies of their sons, husbands and fathers

27^th July | International Solidarity Movement, Ramallah Team | Deir Abu Mash’al

Palestinians demonstrate for Israel to return the dead bodies of their sons, husbands and fathers

Some 300 Palestinans from the West Bank (including occupied East-Jerusalem) gathered today in Deir Abu Mash’al to protest Israels practice of withholding the bodies of dead Palestinans from their families. The practice of doing so is a war crime that creates immense suffering for families already dealing with the trauma of having lost a loved one. Deir Abu Mash’al is a village of roughly 5000 inhabitants, 25km from Ramallah.

Palestinians—women and men, children and elderly—gathered on a main road of the village to demand the return of their lost family members, whose bodies are still being kept by Israel. Many of the men died during their imprisonment, others were shot and killed during protests or other incidents. Some families have been waiting for decades, for their husbands and sons to receive a dignified burial in their homeland.

Amongst the protestors were also the families of Baraa Saleh, Adel Ankoush and Osama Atta from Deir Abu Mash’al. The three young men were shot after having stabbed an Israeli border police in occupied East-Jerusalem on June 17, 2017. Immediately after the incident, Israeli soldiers and border police blocked all roads in to and out of Deir Abu Mash’al, raided the villagers’ houses, searched their cars and revoked the villagers’ permits to access Israel for work and family visits; these repercussions are internationally regarded as collective punishment. Such measures are considered a war crime, in direct violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention. Namely article 33: “No protected person may be punished for an offence he or she has not personally committed.” Moreover, it constitutes a breach of customary international humanitarian law. The roads to the village have been opened successively, but today the villagers are still traumatized and suffer from ongoing repercussions (for example punishments regarding their work permits or their house demolition).

Additionally, the families of the three men killed on June 16, 2017 received punitive home demolition orders. These families were made homeless. It’s not only the three families, but the whole village and all Palestinian families who haven’t received the bodies of their lost sons, brothers, cousins and husbands yet; thus, still suffering from collective punishment. Indeed, Israel’s practice of holding the bodies of the slain Palestinians is considered collective punishment, therefore a violation of international humanitarian law and international human rights law by the Committee against Torture, the United Nations Secretary-General and the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.

Two days before the protest in Deir Abu Ma’shal, a young Palestinian, Mohammad Tareq Dar Yousef (17) from neighbouring village of Kobar was shot and killed, after having stabbed three settlers in the illegal settlement Adam in the West Bank. One of the settlers died of his injuries. The village of Kobar has allready been raided, the roads in and out have been blocked and the family of Mohammad are facing homelessness as their home is now about to be demolished (reported by IMEMC). It is expected that the body of Mohammad will also be witheld by Israel.

Between 2008 and 2015 Israel held back 253 corpses, since 2015 Israel has held back another 26 corpses.
In 2011, 91 corpses were returned to Palestine, 11 of those remain in Ramallah as their identity remains unknown. From 2013 to 2014 Israel returned 21 Palestinians who lost their lives in the Second Intifada. One body was kept for 35 years before it was given to the family.

For further readings go to:

The National Campaign for the Retrieval of Palestinian & Arab War Victims’ Bodies and the Disclosure of the Fate of Those Missing: http://www.jlac.ps/details.php?id=miur55a761yzlz6mesg9

UN Committee against Torture, Concluding Observations on the fifth periodic report of Israel, UN Doc CAT/C/ISR/CO/5, 03 June 2016, para. 43.

UN General Assembly, Israeli practices affecting the human rights of the Palestinian people in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, UN Doc A/71/364, 30 August 2016, para. 25.

UN OHCHR, Press briefing note on Burundi, Israel / Occupied Palestinian Territory, Cuba and High Commissioner speeches, 15 December 2015, available at: http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=16883 HYPERLINK “http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=16883&LangID=E”& HYPERLINK “http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=16883&LangID=E”LangID=E.

Israeli and international protesters demonstrated at Gaza fence in solidarity with The Great Return March

20th July 2018 | Close to the Gaza fence

Israeli and international protesters demonstrated at Gaza fence in solidarity with The Great Return March

On the 20th of July, Friday afternoon, a group of anti-zionist Israeli and international solidarity activists approached the Gaza siege fence at the same time that Gazans gathered by the fence on the other side during the weekly ‘Great Return March’, calling for the right to return to their land and for an end to the decade-long siege.

The activists carried a large banner saying ‘Liberate the Gaza ghetto’ along with flying the Palestinian flag. Additionally, the protesters held posters depicting the faces of Gazan protesters, journalists and medics who have lost their lives to Israeli soldiers since March 30th this year.

Protesters on both sides of the fence were visible to each other and interacted.

The activists read short biographies of the slain Gazans to Israeli soldiers who were trying to get them to leave the area. Finally, the solidarity activists were forcibly removed from the site and briefly detained by police before they were released.

A sister action was held in New York City the same day

Israeli forces cut water supply to village in Jordan Valley

From Jordan Valley Solidarity Saturday 17th July

On Thursday 13^th July Israeli forces came to the village of Bardala in the northern Jordan Valley, Palestine, and confiscated water pipes that supply water to the village, cutting off the water supply for all of the farmers in the village. The villagers are currently trying to reconnect the water supply that is so crucial to their livelihoods. The village relies on agriculture as its main source of income, and is currently preparing for the harvest of guava and corn as well as other fruit and vegetables, and so the recent Israeli attack on the water supply comes at a critical time for farmers.

This is not the first time that Israel has deliberately targeted the water supply in Bardala. On Thursday 5^th July Israeli forces came to the village of Bardala and confiscated water pipes that supply water to the village, cutting off the water supply for around 20% of farmers there. Two months ago, Israeli forces entered the village to cut Bardala’s water supply and confiscate the water pipes, also arresting two farmers. Read the report from that incident here. Water is a critical way in which the Israeli occupation is deliberately squeezing the livelihoods of Palestinians from the Jordan Valley. Much of the village of Bardala is in Area C, where the Israeli occupation controls building permits and almost all areas of local administration. 87% of the Jordan Valley is designated as Area C, and Palestinians living in Area C are not given permits for building any structure, including water tanks. This means that farmers from land in Area C cannot legally set up their own irrigation systems, even though there is plenty of water in the Jordan Valley. The Israeli government deliberately restricts the water supply to Palestinians in Area C, using most of the water to supply illegal Israeli settlements on Palestinian land. Save the Children estimates that the 9,000 Israeli settlers in the Jordan Valley consume almost 7 times as much water per day on average than the 60,000 Palestinians living there. Due to building restrictions in Area C, Palestinian farmers living in the Jordan Valley have no choice but to resort to connecting their water pipes to the Israeli-controlled water supply, which is deemed ‘illegal’ by the Israeli occupation. Read more about Israel’s ‘water apartheid’ policies in the Jordan Valley here.

Get involved with Jordan Valley Solidarity: http://jordanvalleysolidarity.org/

Israel begins demolition of Khan Al Ahmar and uses violence against peaceful protesters

International Solidarity Movement, Khan Al Ahmar, Palestine Friday 6^th June

Peaceful protest against the demolition of Khan al Ahmar

This week, Israeli forces began preparing for the demolition of the Bedouin village Al-Khan Al-Ahmar, in between Jerusalem and Jericho in the West Bank of Palestine. They met village residents and protesters with extreme violence on Wednesday and Thursday in an attempt to clear the area and proceed with the destruction of the entire village. Palestinian and international solidarity activists have been staying in the village school, which serves over 150 children from the surrounding area, for several weeks in order to prevent the demolition. Israeli forces arrived on Wednesday with construction vehicles to start preparing a temporary road to the village from the main road to allow bulldozers to come through. Residents and activists stood in the path of the construction vehicles peacefully protest the demolition, and Israeli forces responded with extreme violence, arresting 13 people and injuring 35, 4 of whom went to hospital. A human rights activist from Israeli organisation B’tselem was amongst those detained. Israeli forces dragged one woman to the ground, removing her hijab and attacked other women. Watch a video of Israeli forces’ violence here.

A group of Palestinian, Israeli and international activists chai themselves together in front of bulldozer to protest destruction of Khan al Ahmar

Canadian activist arrested in peaceful protest of Khan Al Ahmar demolition

On Thursday morning, Israeli forces arrived to Khan Al Ahmar at around 7.30, to continue with the preparations for demolition. A group of eleven Palestinian, Israeli and international activists chained themselves together in front of the bulldozer, and one activist succeeded in chaining himself to the bulldozer. Israeli riot police forcefully removed three of the activists with wire cutters and violently arrested them. The activists who were arrested were from the UK, Canada and the US. They have since been released. At this point a large group of local residents, Palestinians and international activists were gathered to protest the Israeli destruction of the village. Over the next few hours they were forced back by Israeli forces, and placed in the school as the bulldozer proceeded to flatten the ground in front of the villager’s dwellings so that the demolition can take place in the next few days. Israeli forces filmed activists throughout the morning, and also prevented local journalists and human rights observers from entering the village from the main road, giving out traffic fines to those arriving.

Boys from Khan Al Ahmar look on as Israeli forces move protesters back and begin preparing for demolition of the village.

Israeli forces preparing for demolition of Khan Al Ahmar

As this statement from the village of Khan Al Ahmar reiterates, the demolition of the village marks part of the ongoing Nakba, or forcible removal of Palestinians from their homes. The community was displaced from their homes in the Naqab desert in 1950 by Zionist militias, and settled in their current homes in the hills between Jerusalem and Jericho. The area is inhabited by similar small communities of Jahalin bedouins who were also ethnically cleansed from the Naqab during the Nakba. Israel has been attempting to remove these small communities for several years as part of its plan to link two nearby illegal settlements, Kfar Adumim and Maale Adumim with Jerusalem, effectively annexing a huge area of the West Bank from Jerusalem to the Dead Sea, and cutting off occupied East Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank. The residents of Al Khan al Ahmar have been protesting the demolition of their village for years, filing appeals in the Israeli High Court of Justice. Human rights groups in Palestine have pointed out that the destruction of Khan Al Ahmar constitutes the forcible removal of a population, which is a war crime according to international law. The court denied the latest appeal in May this year, and ordered that Israeli government had found a solution for the residents in their transfer to Al-Jabil, near Abu Dis. The residents have refused this transfer, pointing out that the proposed site is cramped and next to the municipality garbage dump. Despite the protestations of residents and human rights groups in Palestine, Israel has been proceeding with the E1 plan since 2015, destroying 35 structures in Khan Al Ahmar and 57 in the wider E1 area. However, the Israeli High Court ruling in May this year gave the Israeli government the green light to demolish the entire village.

Girl from Khan Al Ahmar waves Palestinian flag at Israeli forces preparing for the destruction of her home and the entire village.

The international community has spoken out against the destruction of Khan Al Ahmar, with some British MPs visiting the village in previous weeks, and holding an emergency session in Parliament on Wednesday. The EU expressed concern about the demolition yesterday, reiterating that Israeli settlements in the West Bank are illegal according to international law. PLO Executive Committee member Hanan Ashrawi pointed out, however, that “words of warning to Israel are not enough. If there is no serious intervention from the international community towards the Israeli government and its belligerent military occupation, other villages will be next, and more Palestinian men, women and children will be displaced for another 70 years to come.” There has been no condemnation of Israel’s attempts to destroy Khan Al Ahmar from the US government.

‘We are here and we will never leave.’ The residents of Khan Al Ahmar say they will not leave their homes.

Late on Thursday night the Israeli High Court put a temporary suspension on the demolition, but activists on the ground today in Khan Al Ahmar have reported that Israeli forces are continuing in their preparations.

Read this official statement from the village of Khan Al Ahmar here. The village is calling for further action from the international community to put pressure on Israel to stop the illegal demolition.

Salama remembers Razan

In response to a call for solidarity from Gazan women, a Jewish activist group dubbed “Return” gathered to hold a memorial for Razan AlNajar, at the location of her village of origin, Salameh.

While thousands of women marched towards the border in the Saja’iya area in Gaza, the activists held a ceremony honoring Razan and the protesters shot dead by Israeli snipers. The activist called for the implementation of the right of return and hung photos of the slain protesters placing flowers and candles on a structure that proceeded the Zionist state.

The steering committee of the Great march of return published a call for people to commemorate the fallen protesters. Return has been organizing commemorations inside historical Palestine in locations including the Gaza border fence and the Israeli parliment. Other such memorials are taking place around the world.

The protestors changed Hertzel streets on the road between Salamah and Jaffa to Al-Awda street and Ben-Zvi street to Razan Al-Najar street.

“Razan did not see Salama, but she and all the refugees who are not present here physically are always present here with us, as a void an absence, something that is missing here until their inevitable return. ” stated one of the activists.