Category: Reports

Second child from Balata refugee camp died

On Monday Balata residents endured their second child martyr’s funeral in five days. Fourteen year old Noor Faris Njem was shot in the head late last Wednesday evening when the Israeli army came to Balata Refugee Camp and, without warning, opened fire on unarmed civilians. Noor (meaning light) was peering round a wall to see if the jeep was still there when a soldier shot him in the top of his head. After the best efforts of medics, he died on Sunday afternoon, the second child to die from injuries inflicted by the Israeli army that night. In retaliation for Noor’s shooting, two sixteen year old fighters lay in wait to fire at the army when they entered the camp. Khalid Mohammed Msyme was shot dead and the other boy is critically injured.

Balata is a refugee camp in the heart of the West Bank, tens of kilometers from Israeli towns. There was no reason for the Israeli soldiers to come to Balata that night. There was no Israeli military operation, no claim of any risk to any Israel civilians, settlers or soldiers. There was no reason for the Israeli soldiers to shoot Noor, an unarmed child. There was no reason for them to subsequently drive further into Palestinian streets late at night, where they knew they would find youths angered and hurt by the shooting of one of their friends. There was no reason for them to drive round the camp firing until they drew out two more boys, only leaving when they had shot them too. Two more children have died needlessly, added to the hundreds who have already died here.

Noor’s death was announced over the mosque at 7am by a man who could barely speak for the emotion. Although we had expected this news for several days, the death of a child is always disturbing. I am sorry to say we have lost count of how many funerals we have attended here. It doesn’t get easier. On the contrary, I feel the weight of this more now. At first I was relieved to find that I could bear the emotion of the occasion. With time, and deepening bonds to the community, I feel closer to tears with each martyr. Not tears of grief, these people are not my own family, tears of frustration at the futile waste of life here. With these latest two deathsI also feel a loss of hope for peace here. For the last four months Palestine is supposed to have enjoyed a ceasefire. It doesn’t feel like peace in Balata. In that time there have been countless incursions, dozens of injuries of Palestinians by Israeli soldiers, scores of arrests, an invasion, curfew, assassinations of two residents of Balata and now the shooting of three children, causing the death of two.

On Thursday morning Al Aqsa Martyrs and the other Palestinian resistance brigades in Balata announced an end to their part of the ceasefire. That means they will now retaliate for the Israeli occupations force’s attacks on them. I hope that the world’s media reports this honestly, explaining that the Israeli forces had never kept to their part of the ceasefire.

Demonstration against a checkpoint near the village of Nazlat Issa

At noon on July 7 2005 around 80 Palestinians from the village of Nazlat Issa in the West Bank, accompanied by international activists, carried out a demonstration against a checkpoint near their village.

Nazlat Issa is divided by the Annexation Wall, which separates a few houses from the rest of the village. The residents of these houses have to pass through a checkpoint in order to get to work, to school, or to visit friends and relatives living in the neighboring Palestinian city of Baqa Gharbiya inside Israel. The checkpoint is always manned by soldiers or border police.

We marched to a house in the village which has been occupied by the Israeli army, with soldiers stationed on the roof. On the way we saw the site where four of the houses had been demolished to make way for the construction of the Wall. We then walked towards the checkpoint in the village.

There was a group of Israeli soldiers with four jeeps waiting for us at the checkpoint. We approached to within about 50m of the checkpoint, chanting, singing, and dancing.

The soldiers declared the village a closed military zone. Most of the soldiers did not appear to have tear gas or other crowd control methods.

After about an hour the internationals and most of the Palestinians walked back to the village but some young men stayed behind and threw stones toward the soldiers. The soldiers came into the village and arrested two Palestinian boys, aged 15 and 18.

The internationals spoke to villagers and got the names and ID numbers of the arrested boys and passed this information on to Hamoked, an Israeli human rights organization which will follow the case and pass any information they get on to the family. The internationals went with the families of the arrested boys to talk to the soldiers at the checkpoint to try to get the boys released.

The younger boy was released about one hour after his arrest but the other boy was taken to an Isralei jail inside a nearby illegal Israeli settlement. As we were preparing to leave the checkpoint the soldiers called our taxi driver over and asked him if he works with us (with the ISM).

For pictures from the action see:
freckle.blogs.com/photos/nazlat_issa/

-Caroline

Israeli army enforced collective punishment

By: Nijmie IWPS

Date of incident: July 1, 2005
Place: Hares
Witness/es: Villagers

On the evening of Friday July 1, the Israeli army entered the village of Hares with two jeeps. The jeeps stationed themselves at the entrance to the village, and the soldiers proceeded to prevent any Palestinian resident, whether on foot or by car, from entering or exiting the village for approximately 1.5 hours. No explanation was given to the Palestinian residents for the cause of this collective punishment. The jeeps exited the village at approximately 8:30 p.m.

Israeli army takes seven boys and young men from Marda village.

By: Nijmie, IWPS

Date of incident: July 4, 2005
Place: Marda, Salfit district
Witness/es: Marda residents, IWPS

On the afternoon of Monday July 4, the Israeli army entered the village of Marda with approximately eight jeeps. They proceed to round up youths they accused of throwing rocks at soldiers who were guarding the building of work on the Wall. The Israeli army has been a continuous presence in the village of Marda since preparation for the fence around Ariel settlement, situated above the village of Marda, began in early June. Eight youths were gathered and detained at the Western entrance of the village for approximately one hour.
One of the youths was injured, reported Palestinian residents, and another one is ill with kidney problems. IWPS members and Palestinian Red Crescent workers asked to know where the youths were being taken and also attempted to alert the soldiers to the chronic illness of one of the boys. We were given no assurance, however, that the boy’s medical needs would be attended to. The boys and young men are of the following ages:13, 16, 17, 18, 21, 22, and one is of unknown age. The boys were first taken to Ariel police station and then to Qedumim, where they are as of this writing.

Date report written on: Tuesday July 5, 2005

ICAHD: “Where shall I go now?”

A wave of house demolitions in East Jerusalem
Lucia and Angela of The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (www.icahd.org)

Again yesterday, houses were demolished in East Jerusalem. In the early morning the bulldozers moved into the neighborhood of Isawiyya, where they demolished a gas station. Then, they moved towards the neighborhood of Tel al Ful in Beit Hanina, were volunteers and staff from ICAHD where present at the site of the houses of Bassam Ramlawi and Nur al Din Damiri. At 9 a.m., dozens of police jeeps and ambulances appeared on top of the hill, and started to move down toward the houses. Two Israeli activists, Amnon and Shai, chained themselves to the fence on both sides of the dirt road leading to the houses, trying to block the passage of the many vehicles. However, when they saw the massive presence of border police and particularly the yamam (Special Forces) coming their direction, they knew it was hopeless and decided to unchain themselves. They feared they would be beaten up by the yamam, who have a reputation of being particularly violent. Even before they had the chance to totally remove the chains from the fence, members of the police cut open the locks which fastened the chains together.

Police then spread out to secure the area, and female border police tried to remove Amal Ramlawi from the doorway of her home. When she resisted, more Information Center filming and photographing the demolitions, where told to move away by the army. One of them refused, and after a short argument and pushing, was eventually removed and dragged up the hill, where he was asked to stand at a distance from the house. Amal was also finally removed from the house. Next, two orange Daewoo bulldozers appeared on the hilltop and started descending towards the houses. At 9:30, they began their work, demolishing the house of Bassam Ramlawi.

Meanwhile, at the house of Nur al Din Damiri, the family had been up since 2 a.m., removing their belongings from their modest two room house. The foreign workers, who were contracted to remove furniture from the houses, found themselves without work. At 9:54, the second bulldozer moved towards the house, and began to demolish it. Nur and his wife Ataf where standing at a safe distance from the house, watching the destruction of their home. It took the bulldozer exactly 7 minutes to demolish the house and dig up the foundation, thereby making 6 people homeless for the second time in two years. Nur worked for the Jerusalem police for 28 years, which didn’t prevent the exact same police from making him homeless twice. Out of desperation, Nur shouted at the police and soldiers in perfect Hebrew, asking them where he and his family would now go; a very valid question considering that all resources, both financial and personal, have run out.

At 10:25, the bulldozers had completed their work, and began climbing up the hill, leaving 4 adults and 13 children homeless. From there, they moved on to the Wadi al Dam area in Beit Hanina, where they demolished another two uninhabited structures.

Today three houses were demolished by the Ministry for the Interior. A house in A-Tur belonged to the Abu Sneineh family; amongst those now without a roof over their heads are three handicapped children. Bravo, Ministry for the Interior. The other two demolitions were in Ashkariya, Beit Hanina. The names and details are still unknown to us, but the Ministry for the Interior is no doubt proud of its fine work and wouldn’t want such a small detail to prevent us from celebrating. Let the Ministry for the Interior triumph!

We are at the beginning of a huge wave of new demolitions, judging from the examples of today and yesterday (9 buildings in two days); not to mention that in Silwan the municipality still has cancelled neither the project nor the demolition orders. ICAHD is extremely concerned that as the “Disengagement” from Gaza approaches closer, so
will the number of house demolitions rise. We are worried that the media may be becoming less and less sensitive to the issue of house demolitions apart from two Palestinian photographers, no press arrived today or yesterday, despite the notice going out to everyone. The even more worrying issue is that many diplomats, politicians and journalists seem to believe the official Israeli line that houses built “illegally” should be demolished and there is therefore no issue here.

The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions would remind everyone that the silence on the part of those who are aware of the situation, probably due to the fact that so much else is happening (that day’s new crisis) is what allows the Municipality, the IDF and the Ministry for the Interior to continue these immoral and dangerous policies which so harm the chances for peace.