Category: Reports

by ISM Nablus

This morning a group of university students and other residents of Beit Furik joined in a non-violent demonstration against the early closure of the checkpoint separating them from Nablus city center. About 50 Palestinian and international protestors marched across a settler road toward the checkpoint holding placards, demanding an end to the Palestinian people’s misery and asking to speak to the highest commanding officer at the site.

A couple of students tried to explain to the soldiers that it is impossible for them to seriously pursue their studies when they are constantly having to fit their schedule around the random regulations of the checkpoint. Beit Furik checkpoint currently closes at 6:30 in the evening, and the protestors’ primary demand was therefore that the checkpoint should be kept open until later in the evening, providing time for students and workers to return home from Nablus.

The soldiers would not listen to the demands and kept ordering the demonstration to back away from the checkpoint. The protestors then hung their placards from the tin roof of the pen where men and women are usually made to wait for their turn to have their IDs and persons inspected before being allowed to go about their day. These messages were ripped down, torn and crumpled up by the annoyed soldiers as the demonstration dispersed.

The village of Beit Furik is strangled by checkpoints, settler-only roads and settlements. In order for the villagers to cross into Salem village, the neighboring town, they have to cross through a checkpoint. When this checkpoint is closed, and the local roads blocked, the residents of Beit Furik are forced to travel in a wide arch in the opposite direction to their destination. Travelling through nine villages on a rocky dirt-track that is nearly impossible to navigate by car in the winter months, it might take up to five hours for villagers to reach Nablus. There is also a high risk of being stopped by soldiers and arrested or turned back.

These restrictions of movement are devastating for Beit Furik’s social, economical and political situation. Yet the residents of Beit Furik are defiant and view today’s demonstration as the first of many similar acts of protest. They welcome all expressions of support and solidarity for their struggle for freedom of movement.

by ISM Nablus

In between the Israeli military checkpoints of Beit Iba and Shave Shomeron settlement, is the Palestinian village of Deir Sharaf. The village has 3,500 residents and is dismembered by a settler-only road, an Occupation settlement and two checkpoints. This village has been fighting a four year battle to dispose of its garbage, after Occupation forces began preventing the village from dumping their garbage on their own land.

Since 2002, the village of Deir Sharaf has had problems from Occupation forces concerning the issue of garbage disposal. Prior to 2002, the village disposed of their trash locally, though soon after the outbreak of the Palestinian Intifada, Occupation forces decided that this disposal program could not continue. Currently, the village is forced to drive the trash almost 40km to a dump in Jaba’, due west of Tubas, and south of Jenin.

The small village is having a great deal of difficulty with this restriction. In order to purchase diesel fuel for the daily commute to Jaba’, the village council has to pay more than 200 NIS a day. During their northern trek, the truck must pass through two permanent military checkpoints, and on most days, a number of temporary ‘flying’ checkpoints. Because of the settler-only roads, and the checkpoints, the journey sometimes is too long to be completed in one day, while on the best of days, it takes no less than 5 hours. Sometimes, the garbage truck driver is made to return to the village with his truck still full because Occupation soldiers based at checkpoints along the way decide to not allow the passage of the haul.

The garbage truck used in Deir Sharaf is collectively owned by their village and the village of Beit Iba. Each village is meant to use the truck on alternating days but because often times one load takes more than one day to deliver, the villages are both unable to effectively dispose of their waste. Beit Iba is located on the opposite side of a permanent checkpoint from Deir Sharaf so the collective arrangement is subject to the closures of the military. In addition, every 10-14 days the soldiers staffing Beit Iba checkpoint rotate. When this occurs, the new soldiers always stop the truck from passing, and detain the driver. This means that every two weeks, the President of the Deir Sharaf Council must travel to the checkpoint and renegotiate the passage of the truck with the current crew of soldiers.

The truck has also been seized by Occupation forces four times in four years, when after being unable to make the journey to Jaba’, the truck attempted to dump in the village. During these incidents, the driver was detained and once again, the President of the Council had to go to the detention center to explain the situation and negotiate the release of the driver and the truck. Last time the truck was seized, it was held for 15 days, and upon its release, the Council President was made to sign a paper promising that if the village was seen attempting to dump the garbage in their village again, their truck would be seized and the village fined 20,000 NIS.

The situation with Deir Sharaf highlights the everyday interactions between the Palestinian people and the Occupation. Here, even the seemingly simple task of garbage disposal is subject to the whims of checkpoint soldiers and closures. The Palestinian people of this West Bank village are denied the right to use their land as they like. For some reason, in the village of Deir Sharaf, the Occupation feels the need to regulate the disposal of garbage, while it simultaneously destroys the land in the same village by razing olive groves for an eight meter high concrete wall encircling the settlement. This interaction shows that for the Occupation, their concern is not ‘security’ as they claim, but rather oppression and harassment.

by ISM Nablus

This morning between 2 and 4 o’clock Israeli military forces entered Balata Refugee Camp, south-east of Nablus city center. Soldiers traveling in two armoured bulldozers and four military jeeps proceeded to partially destroy of ten shops in the marketplace on the main street of the camp. The bulldozers pulled down whole shop awnings, crushed tiles and cement curbs lining the street, ripped a street sign from the ground, down a wall, cut an electric cable running overhead and destroyed an large arrangement of grape-vines outside a family home.

A local butcher expressed his frustration at the wanton destruction, “They do this because they know that we are all too poor to afford to rebuild our shops. The occupation is strangling our economy”. Pointing at the wrenched-up tiles of the shop porch and the ripped bits of metal sticking out above our heads in place of the bright red and white shop-front that usually greets customers, he continued: “It will take $1,000 just to repair the awning and another $500 for the porch. And I know that many other shop owners have worse damage. But there is no point in repairing any of it because we know that as soon as we fix it, they will come. They will come the next day!”

Despite this, the marketplace was this morning full of men clambering up ladders to tear down the old wrecked shop-fronts and take measurements for new ones. A team of electricians were busy replacing the cut cable and the rubble from the wreckage was neatly piled up at the sides of the street. “What did the shops ever do to them?” one of the workers exclaimed. “They are terrorists? No, this is the terror of the Israeli army.”

This sort of incursion is a regular occurrence in the refugee camps around Nablus, especially Balata. Occupation soldiers invade the camps nightly, though the use of armoured bulldozers is less common. On a ‘normal’ night, soldiers enter the camp around 2am and shoot at residents, occasionally arresting young men or invading and occupying homes. Last night’s incursion and destruction is yet another attack by the Israeli military on the impoverished residents of Palestine’s refugee camps.