Category: Reports

Days in the life around the Tel Rumeida settlers in Hebron

By Linus

These last few days around the illegal settlement of Tel Rumeida have been filled with constant interruptions and harassment in the lives of the Palestinians as annexation walls are constructed, soldiers continue putting up roadblocks and establishing checkpoints, and settlers continue to make life unbearable for Palestinians in this section of Hebron.

The Tel Rumeida settlement is home to around 30-50 settlers in Hebron. It’s home to one of the most violent and extremist factions of the settler movement. The area is also inhabited by more than a hundred Palestinian families, whose daily lives are a constant tale of harassment and abuse. The paved roads are frequently off limit to Palestinians who often are forbidden from walking in the street by the soldiers.

A long walk
Palestinian are forbidden from driving on many nearby roads. Those living in or around Tel Rumeida who are not Israeli must park their cars outside the checkpoints and carry any furniture, food or other supplies up and down the steep roads.

Three checkpoints are situated along the paved road of the small neighborhood. When entering Tel Rumeida, Palestinians must present the soldiers with ID and often becomes targets for casual delays and humiliation.

No ambulances (for Palestinians) allowed
Only ambulances for settlers are allowed inside Tel Rumeida. Yesterday, an elderly Palestinian had to walk with the help of two neighbors down the hill in order to reach her doctor.

New Wall blocks woman from leaving her home
Further intrusions in the lives of the Palestinians were made yesterday when a wall along the paved road of Tel Rumeida Street was constructed. Settlement leaders and the military said it was to prevent drivers from being shot at.

A Palestinian community leader in Tel Rumeida said that no gunfire has occurred along the entire street and that there has not been a single report of settler injuries.

As the wall was being built, an elderly woman living nearby found it had obstructed her from being able to get to and from her home. After the Palestinian community leader in Tel Rumeida had discussed the problem with a soldier, it was decided that the builders should leave an entrance to the house. That decision was revoked five minutes later, but recalled again when women and children blocked the entrance. Right now there is an entrance with a width of 1.5 meters and all in all around 45-50 concrete barriers with a width of 1 meter and with a height of more than 2 meters were raised.

Settler kids, stones and fire
A small field with trees and grape vines was set on fire today. It was located in the yard of a Palestinian family. The son of a neighbor to this family identified the perpetrator as being one of the settler kids. The family managed to put out the fire with a garden hose and the fire brigade arrived when there was almost no fire left. Even if the fire would have been bigger, the fire brigade wouldn’t have been able to help to their full potential, since they are not allowed to come fully equipped to this area. A woman from Christian Peacemaker Team reported that this was the third fire in ten days.

A group of settler kids, one of them identified as the same kid who set the field on fire, started to throw stones a couple of hours later at some Palestinians working on the roof of a house being renovated. The reason for renovating the house is that the house was damaged by some settlers earlier this year. ISM and TIPH (Temporary International Presence in Hebron) arrived to the scene and had to take cover as the settler kids continued to throw rocks and glass bottles and also started to spray water at the house from their balcony. The police were called, but never arrived. When the stone throwing ended, a group of foreign activists and citizens approached the police with photos and were asked to make a CD of them for officers to have a look at.

And finally…
And as I write this, the checkpoint at the base of the hill is being strengthened with more soldiers and the military controlled area around it is being expanded.

Incursion into the village of Bil’in

Nina, Phil

About 4 am, Abdullah woke us up and said there were soldiers in the village. Both of us went up on to the roof to listen to the phone conversation he was having people in one of the houses. It was down the road that is close to the construction and had been invaded. The soldiers told the people that shabob were throwing stones from the roof and, if they caught them throwing stones again, or even caught them near the wall, they would come back and burn the house down.

About ten minutes later, someone else called and said the soldiers were now at the supermarket, which is quite a ways into the village. We got in the car, drove down to the supermarket, and got out to talk to the soldiers.

However, when they saw us, they began to walk away very quickly, back toward the wall construction. We walked behind them, following them past the house that had been invaded, and they then disappeared down the road.

The villagers are more comfortable having internationals in Bil’in, because there appear to be fewer invasions into the village while we are here.

We Shall Overcome

by Mansour
August 25, 2005

Today was another great picture of peace drawn by the Palestinian, international and Israeli peace activists as we protested against the wall being built on Palestinian land. I thought that, because some of us didn’t know the language of the others, we wouldn’t be able to participate in everything together. But I was wrong. Today, in our peaceful demo against the Apartheid wall in Imatin (Qalqilya district), all of the nationalities were chanting together, united in one voice for the Israeli Occupation Forces to hear.

It was a great moment when our eyes as Palestinian, international and Israeli peace activist met. Then a small smile appeared on our faces while we chanted the peace and freedom cries. A few minutes later, our demo changed into a festival that showed the international community that peace will come from the people who are under the Israeli soldier’s scopes. Many of us prayed at the site as an Imam to offer prayer of hope. This is the real peace that will come from people who have suffered for more than 57 years of Israeli military occupation.

Then our happiness was completed when we saw our friends from the Bil’in village who came to share in the demonstration against the wall. What a nice moment when the Bil’inians, who are also struggling to protect their confiscated land by the Apartheid wall, joined Imatin’s people. All the internationals and Israeli peace activists stood together, refusing to bow to the Israeli government’s brutality.

Now I’m sure that if we seek a real peace, our language will be united. We don’t need to speak Hebrew or English or Arabic. Our beliefs, humanity , smiles, friendship, and solidarity are the only language that we need to speak.

As a Palestinian farmer, I consider defending Palestinian rights as the first step in the process of defending human dignity. We are very proud that we carry the flag of Palestine. We are not defending our rights only, but we are drawing the map for next generation to continue the struggle for justice. We are not the only people who do that; we have internationals, we have Israeli activists, and we have our strong spirit and insistence on freeing our occupied land.

I really was very happy today, but was also very sad for a lot of our international friends who have already left for their countries without living this moment. I’m hoping they can feel our happiness from this peaceful demonstration as they felt out sadness in so many hard times,

After this great day, I really felt that I wanted to write how I felt and to ask our friends to come and share such a nice moment, a moment where you stand side by side with people who proved to the whole world that they want to live together, away from the misleading Israeli propaganda. Both Israeli peace activists and Palestinians showed the world today that they want a life of peace and not of violence, and they want the government of Israel to see we are united in our search for justice.

Nine hours to get home

by Ash
August 20, 2005

UPDATE: Last night, five Palestinians were killed by the Israeil Occupation Forces in Tulkarem

On the way home yesterday, I was stopped 6 times at Israeli checkpoints traveling from Ramallah to Tulkarem. These were not pop-up checkpoints this time — a little different this week — but concrete at both ends with a cover for soldiers’ equipment.

Israeli checkpoints are symbolic of the daily humiliation we face. Not only do Israeli soldiers keep us waiting for long hours; the entire procedure is an attempt to make us lose our humanity, to degrade us so that we feel worthless and sub-human. Sometimes Israeli soldiers ask people to take off their clothes, sometimes people are forced under gunpoint to eat during the fast in Ramadan.

When I arrived at Jabra, just four km outside Tulkarem, a soldier told our bus driver that we were not authorized to go to Tulkarem through this checkpoint, so we had to turn around and try the only way left. We made our way to Innab roadblock, which consists of a metal bar that cuts off Tulkarem city from the nearby villages. A huge razor barrier, about 15 ft high, is built on the right side of the road equipped with an Israeli watch tower. We got out of the bus and passed the new metal bar which had been put in only a few days earlier.

More than 60 Palestinians were standing in two lines on both sides waiting for one Israeli soldier to come and check their IDs. The soldier checked IDs and luggage on either side of him while four other soldiers stood watching!!

People were frustrated and angry as they were made to wait for a long time and, of course, it is not in the soldiers’ mandate to speed up. One woman walked toward the soldier checking IDs and said “You stole our land, our water, our air. Why are you restricting our movement? What more do you want?” The soldier shouted, “Shut up!” then ordered everybody to move 20 feet back and headed away to drink water! He looked at us and smiled. Then after 10 minutes he walked lazily forward and said “Yallah! (Let’s go! in Arabic) One by one!”

After the soldier looked at my ID and checked my bag, I took a service (shared taxi) to Innab, then walked around the metal bar and took another service to Tulkarem.

On the way to my village of Saida, 16km to the south of Tulkarem, an armed military vehicle, parked on the side of the main street just 6 km outside of the city, was stopping dozens of vehicles from moving. While we were waiting, two Israeli soldiers stopped a bus on the other side of the street. All passengers got out and the two soldiers asked everyone to pull up their clothes while one soldier on the top of the armed vehicle was aiming his M-16 at them.

After 30 minutes, our moment of being humiliated came. Two soldiers walked toward our taxi. One got close to the window and asked the driver where he was going. The driver answered, “We are going to Saida village”. The soldier opened the door in the middle and asked one young Palestinian to step out; then he came to the front seat where I was sitting and punched me on the shoulder and said, “Get out!”. We were standing just five feet in front of the two soldiers. The same soldier again asked us to pull our clothes up and turn around. Then he took my ID and asked, “Where are you going?”. “Saida,” I answered. “Where do you live?”. “Saida,” I replied again. Then the soldier said, “Yalla”!

Two days ago when I was in Bil’in village, I went with an Israeli friend to Tel Aviv for the first time since I was 12 years old! My friend told me that it’s easy to get to Tel Aviv, but I was very concerned since I am a Palestinian, and it is illegal to travel there. It’s like another world for us. We took a taxi at around 9:30 pm to the nearby village, Dier Qaddis to the west of Bil’in and walked for three minutes to reach a settler road. I was breathless, and scared that I might be caught by Israeli border police.

We continued walking on that settler road until we reached Modo’een Elite settlement, which is built on Bil’in’s land. I was standing at the entrance that has a lighted stone arc, looking at the beautiful and fancy buildings they have – green trees and a fountain – wondering if the people who live there know that their government is stealing more land from the Palestinian farmers and families of Bili’n to build their houses!

After 20 minutes, a settler pulled over to give us a ride to a stop station, where we picked up a bus straight to Tel Aviv.

If Israeli checkpoints are for ‘security’, why don’t they set up checkpoints in Jerusalem and Tel-Aviv? Why were there no soldiers to check my ID that night? Why did no one stop me from going inside Israel? Were the Israeli soldiers off duty in Tel Aviv?

All this makes me think that maybe it is the “Israeli democracy” that is trying to break our spirit and take our freedom under the big lie of security and peace.

Suffer the Little Children

by Nils and Lo
August, 2005

HEBRON — Since the Oslo agreement, the city of Hebron has been divided into areas ruled by the Palestinian Authority and areas ruled by Israel. Today, there are about 500 Israeli Jews living inside Hebron, with a Palestinian population of close to 200,000. Two to three thousand Israeli soldiers serve as ‘protection’ for these illegal Israeli settlements. This ‘protection’ is, in fact, a system of oppression of the Palestinians, imposing major difficulties on their daily lives.

The old town of Hebron, for example, is home to just a few settler families and is therefore surrounded by checkpoints. Many Palestinian shops are closed, and there are nets hanging over their streets, because of all the garbage, bottles and rocks that the settlers on the rooftops keep throwing at the Palestinians below.

Lots of streets and entire neighborhoods are closed off with iron gates put up by the military. Most Palestinians were forced to move out of the old town during the long and systematic curfews following the outbreak of the second Intifada.

Abrahams’ mosque has been divided into a Jewish and Palestinian part since Baruch Goldstein massacred 29 Palestinian worshipers in the mosque in 1994.

ISM has now set up a presence in the Tal Ramada district. Between 30 and 50 settlers live in this area, along with many hundreds of Palestinians, surrounded by roadblocks and checkpoints, which has forced almost all Palestinian shops and stores to close. The Palestinians in Tal Ramada face daily harassment from both the settlers and some of the soldiers.

Palestinian children are afraid to go out in the streets to play. It is not unusual to see the settlers, even kids, attack them, and the soldiers will do nothing to protect them. The police, who claim to
serve as protection for the Palestinians, are always very delayed and are perceived by most as useless protection.

Many Palestinians now fear that more settlers and soldiers will come as a result of the disengagement in Gaza. Already, two families from Gaza have moved in. There is also a fear that an even more aggressive Zionism will emerge among both settlers and soldiers after the disengagement.

International presence in Hebron might help to de-escalate the situation and is already needed in order for many Palestinian children to be able to go to their school and to play in the streets.