Category: Reports - Page 62 - International Solidarity Movement

Israeli armed forces and settlers harassing farmers in As Sawiya

31st October 2017 | International Solidarity Movement, Nablus team | Nablus, Occupied Palestine

On Sunday the 29th of October 2017 – near the Palestinian village As Sawiya – Palestinians and Internationals harvesting olives were met by the Israeli army. Three ISM’ers joined two Palestinian women harvesting in their family land. The family has been facing major problems in the area because of an illegal Israeli outpost close to the village, which is a part of the illegal settlement Eli.

The group of Palestinans and Internationals walked for half an hour to reach the olive trees since the road next to the olive trees is for settlers and the Israeli army only. After picking for around an hour a group of five boarder police officers, three soldiers from the Israeli army accompanied by settlers from the nearby outpost stormed up to the group demanding to see their ID’s. “They were very threatening and did not give any reason for taking our passports. We were just five women picking olives,“ an ISM’er says.

The Israeli border police demanded that the Internationals would leave the land immediately, showed the passports to the settlers and scanned them. “The settler stood on the olives and smiled at us, he even asked us if we were afraid of him,“ another ISM’er says. The Palestinians had been prevented from pruning the trees earlier this year which made the olive picking more difficult since it is an important part of the olive groves.

After a while the army agreed that the Palestinians were allowed to harvest their olives until three o clock the same day and that internationals were not allowed in the area the following day. The armed forces stayed close to the group harvesting for the rest of the day, and kept watching them and sometimes circled trees.

The day before a group of Palestinians and Internationals had also been prevented from picking olives in the area that is owned by the Palestinians.

Israeli army arrest son during night raid in Fasayel family house

21^st October 2017 | International Solidarity Movement | Nablus Team | Jordan Valley Solidarity | Occupied Palestine

The night between Wednesday and Thursday the house of Abu Jamil got raided by the Israeli military. At one AM four military jeeps arrived to upper Fasayel and about 20 Israeli armed soldiers entered Abu Jamils house, forcing the family of 9 outside and started searching the three rooms. The soldiers showed no documents of a search warrant.

After one and a half hour the military had destroyed food in the kitchen, stolen two kilos of farming chemicals (value of 200 NIS) and stolen the six mobile phones (value of 4000 NIS) that the family had. They then kidnapped the 22-year old son Jamil who is still in Salem military base awaiting a court hearing. Together with another young man from the village, the 25-year old Ishteyan, he is accused of having broken into the illegal settlement of Tomar stealing farming chemicals.

Recently another young man have been arrested and accused for the same break in. He was released after several days since he was falsely accused. The family of Abu Jamil does not have enough money to afford a lawyer for their son. Jordan Valley Solidarity and International Solidarity Movement will work for supporting the court process.

In total, 95% of the land in the Jordan Valley is off-limits to Palestinians: 50% is controlled by Israel’s illegal settlements, and the other 45% is military bases, ‘closed military zones’ and ‘nature reserves’ (areas controlled by the occupation, that Palestinians are refused access to). This matrix of oppression suffocates Palestinian life in the Valley and stifles traditional forms of subsistence farming and grazing undertaken by the Bedouin throughout history.

Israeli Forces closed media production companies in Bethlehem, Ramallah, Hebron and Nablus last Wednesday night.

18th October 2017 | International Solidarity Movement, Nablus team | Nablus, Occupied Palestine

The army raided the Pal Media and Trans Media headquarters in Ramallah and seized their equipment and video material. Also other companies and branches of the two companies in Nablus, Bethlehem and Hebron were raided the same night. Soldiers closed the entrances of the Pal Media and the Trans Media offices with iron plates and left a poster which warns journalists and other workers not to work for both companies in the next six months.

This means a shut down of the work from thesr two major Palestinian media companies and also saboutages the other media and news sources within Palestine. Pal Media and Trans Media work together with news agency’s like the BBC, RT and Al Jazeera from outside Palestine to share information about the occupation. It’s not the first time that the Israeli army targeted media companies to silence the Palestinian cause and also to interrupt Palestinians in their daily life of consuming television and radio shows.

During the raids in the occupied city’s, three of them declared Area A zones under full Palestinian control according to the Oslo agreement, the youth gathered around the army and tried to prevent the Israeli forces from maintaining the illegal closures of the media outlets and from accessing their cities. In the following clashes several Palestinians were shot with rubber coated steel bullets in all cities or injured by stun grenades and two journalists in the city of Hebron were arrested by the Israeli forces. With these new acts of violence against the freedom of speech from Palestinian journalists and media companies and the several night raids all over the West Bank, Israel shows yet another ugly face of it’s occupation politics to silence and interrupt Palestinians on a daily basis.

Israeli forces shoot three people and detain one in occupied Hebron

29th September 2017 | International Solidarity Movement, al-Khalil team | Hebron, occupied Palestine

On Friday afternoon, the 29th of September, protests erupted in Al-Khalil near Bab al-Zawiya at approximately 2:00 PM. The military countered the protests with sound bombs and advanced into H1, shooting rubber-coated steel bullets, out of which at least three hit protesters, in the neck, in the stomach and respectively in the arm. During their first incursion into H1, the soldiers detained a young Palestinian.

During the rest of the afternoon, there were multiple confrontations between the Israeli Army and the protesters in intensely circulated areas of H1, lasting until approximately 7 PM.

Kafr Qaddum Commemorates the Beginning of the Second Intifada

29th September 2017 | International Solidarity Movement, Nablus team | Kafr Qaddum, occupied Palestine

Palestinian and international activists marched in Kafr Qaddum today to recognize two important events. September 28th marked 17 years to the day since the outbreak of the Second Intifada in 2000, during which an estimated 3,000 Palestinians lost their lives, and the construction of the Apartheid Wall began. The march in Kafr Qaddum also celebrated the recent admission of the State of Palestine into INTERPOL, a step viewed by many as part of a larger push for statehood.

Israeli military forces entered Kafr Qaddum from the settlement of Kadumim. Foto: Dunia

The march was met with two Israeli Armed Personnel Carriers, from which soldiers fired rubber coated steel bullets into the crowd, which included roughly two dozen children. No activists were injured in the clashes.

Additionally, according to Palestinian community leaders, settlers have been stealing olives from trees in Kafr Qaddum – the livelihood of the farmers – for the past two days. The settlers have continued to harass the Palestinians with impunity despite protests to the Israeli Army by the District Coordination Office (DCO).

The smoke from the tires the protesters are burning meet the soldiers.

Since 2011, the villagers of Kafr Qaddum have had weekly marches toward the main road, which has been closed since 2003. The road is closed off due to the establishment of the illegal settlement of Kadumim, and has severe effects on the daily commute for the villagers of Kafr Qaddum.