Category: Reports

Road Block Removed in Izbat Tabib

by Michael

Today in Izbat Tabib, in the Qalqiliya region, over 250 Palestinian, Israeli and international activists successfully removed a land mound road block in order to open a crossing for commercial and pedestrian traffic. Despite the military and border police’s excessive use of tear gas and sound grenades, activists were successful in holding a non violent demonstration, and worked in solidarity to remove the concrete blocks, boulders and gravel with their hands.

Izbat Tabib is a small village of 300 inhabitants near Qalqiliya. It was established in 1920 and in 1948 it received an influx of refugees from Tubsur, which stood where Raánana is now. The residents of the village are all recognized as refugees (by UNRWA) but the village is not recognized as a refugee camp by Israel. The Israeli government has issued demolition orders for most of the buildings in the village which has motivated the community to organize.

Around 11am, residents of Izbat Tabib along with supporters met for a rally which was disturbed, when two Israeli border police armored jeeps drove through the area provoking the crowd. Following the rally, the attendees marched through the village towards the road block, and though several tear gas rounds were fired into the village, after a brief pause the marchers proceeded peacefully.

The marches reached the earth mound road block and quickly began dismantling the site. Some used hoes to chop rocks and move dirt, while others used small rocks to dig and shovel. While some were digging, others attached straps to the hefty concrete barriers and joined together in large groups to pull the barriers down. Though it took several hours to clear the large concrete blocks, they were successfully dragged away through the strength of many. The demonstrators worked together for hours to remove the rocks, shovel the dirt and drag the concrete blocks until the road block was opened large enough to allow for car traffic. When they were finished, several cars triumphantly drove through the road block.

During the action, approximately 30 Israeli soldiers and police stood watch and occasionally harassed the crowd. In order to prevent military violence a large team of internationals formed a human wall between the soldiers and the road block. This helped to prevent the soldiers from firing into the crowd in order to disperse the demonstrators.

After the road block had been removed, the soldiers began to move quickly towards the workers and opened fire with sound bombs and live ammunition. The soldiers attempted to frighten the demonstrators by aiming some machine guns at the demonstrators while other shot into the air. Despite their efforts, the demonstrators remained steadfast and slowly returned back to the village having accomplished their goal. During the military assault, one international activist was injured when shrapnel from a sound grenade struck him. Despite the Israeli military’s attempts to prevent activists from reaching the action through the use of ‘flying’ checkpoints, Palestinian supporters were able to reach the action and work in solidarity.

Approximately 90 minutes after the demonstrators had left the road block, the Israeli military used bulldozers to reestablish the obstruction and closed the entire crossing. When news of this reached the village, international supporters returned to the crossing and forced the military to allow pedestrian traffic through the crossing through negotiation, observation and accompaniment.

Israeli Army raid on Kindergarten in Jericho

12th July: The ISRAA is a small, community based organisation working with the poorest children and their families in the town of Jericho in the West Bank, providing funding for underprivileged students. They run two kindergartens, one for children age 0-3 and one for those age 3-6, catering for around 150 children in the same building. On the 2nd July 2006, this building was raided by the Israeli army, who left with four computers and a scanner.

The raid came at 2am. The director of the centre, Sheikh Zayed, told us approximately 30 army jeeps carrying 200 soldiers arrived at the building. Some local youths tried to stop them approaching the kindergarten, throwing stones at the jeeps. The soldiers responded by firing both rubber bullets and live ammunition. Five Palestininians were injured; one, who was shot in the stomach, is still in hospital over a week later.

When the army reached the kindergarten, they set up lights so the local residents could see what they were doing. Then they blew the front door off the hinges. Fortunately, at the time, the children who usually live there were all away with their families. The soldiers were in the building for around two hours. When they left, they took with them four computers and a scanner, most of the files in the building and around 70 videos and cassettes, documenting things like graduation ceremonies and children’s parties.

As we walked through the building we could see the damage that was done. Six doors had been smashed open, with two more being blasted right off their hinges. Filing cabinets were bent where they had been forced open with crowbars. The photocopier had been burned. A noticeboard that used to display photographs of the children was ripped bare. We are shown a photograph of one of the children holding rubber bullets and a tear gas canister found after the raid.

The ISRAA serves around 1500 families in the Jericho area. They used to recieve funding from the government, but are now reliant on private donations. Sheikh Zayed is keen to make the point that the organisation is in no way affiliated to any of Palestine’s political groups. When asked why it might have been a target for the Israeli army, the only reason he could give us was to weaken the Palestinian community in the area.

Without the computers and the information in the files taken by the soldiers, the work of the organisation has been paralysed. They are desperately trying to find a way of funding more computers, but in this time of sanctions against the Palestinian government such money will be hard to come by.

Israeli Stranglehold on Palestinian Farms in the Jordan Valley

by Elliot Bruce

11th July: Near the villages of Az-Zubeidat and Marj Na’ja is the farm of Abu Rhader, 49 years old. ISM activists met with the farmer, as well as his neighbor, Abu Jamal, 48 years old. Abu Jamal is one of many teachers and civil employees to be left unpaid for five months following the US-led economic sanctions pressuring the new Palestinian government.

Basem Ahmed Abu Rhader was born in Tobas, and his lifetime has seen twenty-nine Israeli settlements built in the Jordan Valley, while life for farmers is put under ever greater pressure. He is one of the last significant landowners, his peers having been gradually “persuaded” to surrender their land, while settlements grow verdant orchards on all sides. While these colonies grow, Abu Rhader is prohibited from making the simplest renovations, let alone new buildings. His farm is located 400m inside the 1967 borders of the “green line.”

As well as annexing land, the Israeli authorities use other means to pressurize his operation. He is an able businessman, and he knows that he cannot grow more than he can sell in the West Bank or in Israel. However, the long journeys inflicted by checkpoints and terminal closures mean that his produce may simply rot before it can be sold. He has no access to processing plants that could make the produce more long-lived or marketable. If the produce reaches Israel, he may yet be charged 200 NIS for the pleasure of being told it is unsuitable to sell, which is an insult to any farmer.

This means that many of his green houses stand empty and fruits rot on the plant, because it would cost too much to produce at full capacity. Abu Rhader grows numerous types of vegetable and some citrus fruits. Soon he will begin harvesting his corn. How much will be able to reach markets remains uncertain.

In the historically fertile land of the Jordan Valley, this predicament is not only one for the landowners, but for whole communities. Abu Rhader has been losing approximately $1,000,000 per annum for four consecutive years. Thus, where he once regularly employed fifty to sixty workers, now he retains between seven and ten only. He cannot offer homes to workers or their families, and those that come must be able to afford to come by road. As with so much of Palestinian life, the occupation is straining agricultural society to its limits.

As well as economically strangling the farms, the Israeli military is also guilty of general harassment and intimidation, which they conduct with impunity. He gave this example: an Israeli bulldozer may appear one day and destroy a tract of land, destroying $1,000 worth of crops. He has the option of suing for compensation, but legal representation would likely exceed $10,000.

From the roof of his farm building we surveyed the tracts of empty land. Abu Rhader’s son is studying Human Rights Law in Sydney, Australia. He will perhaps be well-equipped to write his dissertation on some of its failures.

The Jordan Valley: Background Information

The Jordan Valley region starts north of the Dead Sea going north all the way to the city of Bisan and is surrounded by the east by the Jordan River and on the west by the mountain ranges of the West Bank.

The Jordan Valley is home to over 50,000 Palestinians and accounts for approximately 30% of the West Bank territory (Dearden, Nick; Israeli Crime in the Palestinian Jordan Valley)

“The only logical and obvious source of water for the residents of the Jordan Valley is the Jordan River, but it has become virtually impossible for the residents to reach this source of water due to the electric fence that blocks most of the river from Palestinian residents (Green, Lena; Apartheid and Agrexco in the Jordan Valley; The Electronic Intifada).”

In order to finalize the annexation of the Valley, Israel has invested $24 million for “development” in 2004 and 2005, with a further $19 million slated for 2006 to 2008. Of the 2,400 km2 of land in the Valley, 455.7 km2 is considered “closed military areas,” 1655.5 km2 will be controlled by settlements, and 243 km2 has been confiscated along the border with Jordan, This leaves only 45 km2 for Palestinians (Juma, Jamal; The Eastern Wall, Closing the Circle of Our Ghettoization).

Plans for the eastern section of the Wall to run through the Jordan Valley will isolate over 20 villages while additional barriers will encircle Jericho into an isolated prison. Thirty kilometers of the 45 km stretch from Salem to Taysir are currently under construction. The Ministry of Defense states that this section will be completed by the end of this year.

The eastern wall will lead to a complete encirclement of Palestinian land – and the effective creation of three Bantustan areas

Orit Arzieli, head of the Jordan Valley “communities board”, said Israel may be limiting the expansion of the Palestinian communities in the area: “This is true, they should not be here. There is a constant trickling of Arabs from Nablus who want to populate the valley,” she told AFP. “The Jordan Valley must stay under Israeli control.”

For more background see Israel closes off Jordan Valley: The Allon Plan of 1967 is Nearly Complete, from semitism.net
TobasFarm

Palestinian Activists Wed in the Shadow of the Wall!


photo by AP

Today in Bil’in over 150 Palestinians, Israelis and internationals gathered in Bil’in to celebrate a wedding ceremony as part of a protest against Israel’s Apartheid Wall at the construction site in the village of Bil’in. Twenty-six Palestinians and international activists were injured, including the bride, when Israeli border police broke up the celebration.

The bride, Iman, and groom, Mansour Mansour, organized with the popular committee of Bil’in to hold the wedding ceremony in Bil’in as a symbol that life and love must go on in the face of occupation. They planned to hold the wedding among the olive trees, but the army stopped them from reaching the site because they were not allowed past the gate in the Wall.

Dressed in a suit and a white wedding dress, the couple followed by their procession made its way down the road to the gate where soldiers waited Drums were played, people clapped and women ululated as men danced around the couple, draped in a Palestinian flag.

The soldiers erupted with excessive violence after a few rocks were thrown at the Border Police jeeps. They threw many sound bombs into the crowd and brutally beat protestors in reach. The bride was hit in the face, across the right jaw with a baton and afterward dragged back in a choke hold, her dress stained with dirt. A crowd of people surrounded them, sitting down and shielding the couple with their bodies.

Yosi, an Israeli activist, was severely beaten and immobile. He was forced to wait an hour to be evacuated by the ambulance because Border Police blocked the way with their jeeps, not allowing the ambulance to pass.

They invaded the village with three jeeps and chased after retreating protestors firing many rounds of rubber bullets, sound grenades and tear gas directly them and children and villagers who were not participating.

The first round of injuries were from sound bombs:
Fernanado (35, Euskalaria)—bruising to his right thigh
Koldo (32, Euskalaria)—ruptured skin and bruising to his right hip
Rojay Mohammed (press)—beaten after being injured by a sound bomb; afterward the soldiers broke his camera.

Several injuries were sustained from the batons resulting in welts, bruises
and bumps—some several inches long leaving a few with difficulty walking:
Martin (24, Sweden)—bruising on his legs
Ashraf (22, Tulkarem)—bruising to his legs
Sean (20, Ireland)—multiple bruises to his arms and legs
Shees (23, US)—knees and legs beaten
Waji (50, Bil’in)—right arm and hand beaten
Elad (31, Tel Aviv)—knees and hands beaten and bruised
Woody (27, US)—right arm and left leg beaten
Allen (25, Scotland)—severe bruising to his right arm
Mohammed (35, Biddo)—severe bruising to his legs and knees
Amna (US)—legs and arms beaten
Falah Abu Rahma (30, Bil’in)
Megan (23, US)—hit with baton
Yosi (19, Tel Aviv)—knocked unconscious for a brief time
Othman Mansour (45, Bil’in)—needed to be carried to the village.

In addition the soldiers used rubber bullets which hit a few people:
Yasin Farras (14, Bil’in)—in his leg
Ashraf (22, Tulkarem)—in his back
Unnamed woman (36, Europe)—to the back of her head.

This lasted over an hour—the village was invaded and the people staying strong at the gate and inside, not using violence or force. The group of comrades joined back together and assisted the ambulance in reaching the injured only after the local committee announced that the demonstration was over asked us to leave.

Several were taken to the hospital, and those left behind treated their wounds with ice and water.

Small Incursion in Beit Ummar


by Jonas and Signifier

Yesterday June 12, at approximately 3:00pm in the West Bank village of Beit Ummar, Isreal Occupation Forces shot tear gas cannisters at two human rights workers (HRW) that were sitting and eating plums in a backyard. As the activists attempted to cover the fume-spewing cannisters, three Palestinain children, the apparent targets of the noxious projectiles, ran by and another cannister landed at the feet of the HRWs.

Six other HRWs were 5minutes away meeting and gathering information with the family of Yusef Abu-Maria, who has been incarcerated by the Israel Occupation Forces for 15 days. These HRWs were called and informed of the situation back at the house. The HRWs proceeded to run back to their home.

The tear-making, breath-shortening projectiles were the sign of a mini-incursion into Beit Ummar by the IOF. This has become a routine occurence since villagers started protesting the wall that is being built around the nearest settlement that will destroy and annex villagers’ land. When the six HRWs arrived back at the house, the fumes were still radiating from the home and family members were cleaning the floors and mattresses to expel the undulating fumes.

Meanwhile, approximately twenty armed Israeli soldiers entered the village in armored hummers. The soldiers began to canvas the streets and some homes. Two or three Israeli police cars also arrived. The kids and teens began throwing rocks and approximately seven HRWs were present and filming. The soldiers responded to the rocks with disproportionate force, firing rubber bullets and sound bombs at the children in the street, lasting for over an hour.

Additionally, the car window of Mahmoud, a Palestinian taxi driver, was smashed by an IOF Hummer, with the front end of the car badly damaged. Mahmoud was transferred by the soldiers to the DCO. Four HRWs and Mahmoud’s brother drove to the DCO to seek information.

After about 90 minutes of waiting oustide, Mahmoud was released.