3nd March 2018 | International Solidarity Movement, al Khalil team | Occupied Palestine
Israeli soldiers invaded Bab-al-Zawiye today as young people protested the illegal occupation of Palestine. The soldiers used cameras with zoom lenses to photograph the protesters for well over an hour. Israel controls the population register of all Palestinians with a restrictive system of IDs. Protestors that are identified can be arrested from their homes at any time.
Later soldiers pursued youth through the narrow alleyways and streets of the downtown neighborhood exploding stun grenades and firing tear gas. Families with young children live in apartments in the neighborhood where clouds of tear gas frequently fill the streets. A large amount of tear gas was fired right outside an open vegetable shop, affecting their business and causing shop owners harm.
Two young people working in a shop were randomly apprehended by the soldiers when they failed to capture any of the youth protesting. Hassan abu Gezele, aged 16, and Baja abu Haluwe, aged 15, were forced into an army jeep with excessive force and driven away.
The arrests of these two boys speak volumes to the careless criminalization of youth in occupied Palestine by Israeli forces. Unfortunately, their cases are not rare and teenage boys are used to such criminal treatment on the streets of al Khalil/Hebron.
International Solidarity Movement Al Khalil/Hebron Team 16/02/2018
Today a demonstration was organized by Human Rights Defenders and Hebron Defense Committee under the umbrella name Dismantle the Ghetto. Around 300 Palestinians prayed inside and outside the mosque and shortly after prayers they marched from the mosque to Bab Al Baladia which was once a Palestinian gold market before the settlers and occupation forces shut it down and forced Palestinians out. Israeli forces immediately came through the gates of the illegal settlement at Bab Al Baladia and proceeded to throw many stun grenades and fired tear gas down the street at those who were demonstrating peacefully for their basic human rights.
Video of the march to Bab Al Baladia:
Palestinian vehicles were stopped at gunpoint by the Israeli army and car keys were taken as drivers were forbidden from continuing down Shalala street. Palestinians on foot were made to stop in the middle of the road at gunpoint lifting the top parts of their clothing, their ID’s were also checked before being allowed to walk past.
A Palestinian pedestrian made to lift Tshirt by the Israeli army
Clashes then followed immediately after at Bab Azawiyeh. Israeli forces entered H1 area from checkpoint 56 under Palestinian control pointing their guns at Palestinians on foot and at vehicles before firing even more tear gas. Clashes went on between Palestinian youth and armed Israeli forces for around three hours, Israeli snipers were positioned on adjacent rooftops.
Video of clashes in Bab Azawiyeh:
The heart and economic center of Al Khalil/Hebron, Al shuhada street was once a major part of the Palestinian market which was closed in 1994 after a settler called Baruch Goldstein from a nearby illegal settlement opened fire inside the Ibrahimi Mosque killing 29 Palestinians and injuring over 100. Israeli occupation forces imposed draconian rules and apartheid orders on the Palestinian population as collective punishment instead of punishing the settlers. As a result of this, many shops were forced to close and these unjustified orders still exist today. This is why Al Khalil, Hebron is known as the ghost town. Palestinians are forbidden from walking down or driving down their own street and those Palestinians who refuse to leave cannot even open their front doors onto Shuhada street, as the Israeli army welded their doors shut. There are many areas with such severe measures in Hebron which prevent Palestinians from access and freedom of movement. Twenty checkpoints are in the heart of the city which Palestinians have to pass through daily, whilst Israeli settlers face no measures or restrictions whatsoever.
The commemoration of the Ibrahimi massacre falls on the 25th of February every year Al Khalil, Hebron. We expect to see many actions and demonstrations organized against this immoral ongoing occupation, unjust military orders and the expansion of illegal settlements.
December 2017 | International Solidarity Movement, al-Khalil team | al-Khalil, Occupied Palestine
Witness accounts and video footage confirm that the Israeli army has been and is committing war crimes in dealing with the current wave of protests against the occupation, colonization, and ethnic cleansing in Palestine.
On Friday, December 8, 2017 around 4:30 PM, ISM activists clearly witnessed and filmed a unit of of around 40 Israeli soldiers and commanders in the H1 area of Hebron – which, according to the 1997 Hebron agreement, should be fully controlled by the Palestinian Authority – intentionally injuring the backs, shoulders, and heads of two randomly arrested teens. Much of this occurred after they had been handcuffed, blindfolded, and were held in custody.
Hebron-H1 – Checkpoint 56 – Hebron-H2
The incidents took place shortly after the Israeli forces invaded Bab al-Zawiya from the military Checkpoint 56 (Shuhada Street in H2) and stormed more than 300 meters up Adel Street, as well as two other main civilian thoroughfares.
The teens were captured near the Hasona Petrol station. If previous child arrests in that area are any indication, they were likely grabbed at random from the street without having been involved in any form of protest beforehand.
The video evidence below, a combination of 3 different camera positions, shows how cruelly the teens are treated by different soldiers, while and after they were handcuffed, blindfolded, and cooperating with the soldiers in walking to Israeli controlled H2.
The almost-raw video footage of all three cameras is included and viewable with the following hyper-links:
Human Rights Watch (HRW), an NGO that is widely acknowledged for its monitoring and determination of human rights abuses, compiled a readable publication based on the 685 page ‘ICRC Customary International Humanitarian Law’ study manual.
In the HRW publication, war crimes are defined as:
“Serious violations of international humanitarian law, including the mistreatment of persons in custody and deliberate attacks on civilians and civilian property, when committed with criminal intent amount to war crimes. Criminal intent requires purposeful or reckless action. Individuals may also be held criminally liable for attempting to commit a war crime, as well as assisting in, facilitating, aiding or abetting a war crime. Responsibility may also fall on persons ordering, planning, or instigating the commission of a war crime. Commanders and civilian leaders may be prosecuted for war crimes as a matter of command responsibility when they knew or should have known about the commission of war crimes and took insufficient measures to prevent them or punish those responsible.” [emphasis added]
Based on this definition, the video depicts a war crime committed by the Israeli army, for which it’s soldiers and commanders bear responsibility.
This isn’t the 1st documented war crime committed by the Israeli state or its armed forces against the Palestinian people. Other examples include:
Extensive destruction and appropriation of property, not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully;
Willfully depriving a prisoner of war or other protected person of the rights of fair and regular trial;
Unlawful deportation or transfer or unlawful confinement;
Enforced disappearance of persons;
Persecution against any identifiable group or collectivity on political, racial, national, ethnic, cultural, religious, gender;
The crime of apartheid;
The transfer, directly or indirectly, by the occupying power of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.
It is the obligation of all states that have signed the multiple international treaties violated here to stop these Israeli war crimes, and a duty of the people to put pressure on their governments to do so.
9 December 2017 | International Solidarity Movement, al-Khalil team | al-Khalil, Occupied Palestine
Clashes continued throughout the weekend in Hebron, after Palestinian civil society groups called for “three days of rage” in response to Donald Trump’s widely unrecognized declaration that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel. Across the West Bank and Gaza, Palestinians organized general strikes, as well as non-violent marches and demonstrations, all of which were met with military violence by Israel.
In Hebron, the violence from the Israeli army included the use of numerous rounds of tear gas, sound bombs, rubber coated steel bullets, and live ammunition against the press and civilians, including passing families and the elderly. Soldiers also entered shops and forced businesses to close, causing further disruption to daily civilian life. Some young Palestinians resisted the Israeli army’s invasion using stones, and also by throwing the Israeli army’s own tear gas canisters back towards the soldiers.
On Friday alone, between 15 and 20 Palestinian minors were arrested, including at least five that weren’t involved in the clashes, one of which was taken straight from his home. Of the five boys that ISM activists witnessed being arrested, four of them were brutally beaten by large groups of soldiers after they were subdued and handcuffed and posed no threat to the soldiers. As of 5:00 PM on Saturday, two of the boys remained hospitalized due to their injuries.
In declaring that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel, Donald Trump formalized the United States’ position as one in contravention of international law and the opinion of the international community. The international community has expressly stated – through UN Resolution 181 and others – that it doesn’t recognize any claim to sovereignty over Jerusalem by Israel, which is why most states maintain their embassies to Israel in Tel Aviv rather than Jerusalem.
15th November 2017 | International Solidarity Movement, Nablus team | Huwarra, Occupied Palestine
Israeli settlers of Yitzhar, set fires in two places in Palestinian olive fields around their illegal outposts, and attacked a group of farmers a day later, under the eyes of around 30 border police, present at the site.
On Sunday 5 November, at about 10 o’clock in the morning, ISM activists saw smoke coming from olive fields on both hillsides underneath an outpost of Yitzhar, the illegal settlement south of Nablus, built on the Hill between the Palestinian villages Huwarra and Burin.
It wasn’t the first time this has happened. Since the expropriation of the farmland of Huwarra, Burin and Madama, and the illegal creation and steady expansion of the Israeli settlement Yitzhar, violent settlers do anything they can to harm the Palestinian farmers and families without any risk of being punished for these crimes.
Attacked in 2016. No sign of life a year later.
A farmer from Burin, whose olive field was set on fire, explained to us that the settler group chased him and his two companions and that they managed to escape.
The Palestinian Fire-brigade of Burin waited for permission from the Israeli authority to extinguish the fire, which they apparently did not get.
Israel is authoritative for the security in Area-C, and should instead of blocking the Palestinian Fire brigade, fight any fire in Area-C themselves, which it has not done in the 25 year since this authority was agreed on in the Oslo accords.
Instead of this, we saw border police, settler security and the settlers side-by-side in the illegal Hilltop outpost, looking at the burning fields.
The next day, 6 November 2017 already at 8:30 AM, a group of nine settlers tried to attack farmers and workers who had official permission of the Israeli security authority, to harvest and cultivate the fields of the Owda family, which was partly burned down the previous day.
The large group of border police refused us entrance to the the area, which apparently was declared a closed military zone. The commander showed us the declaration on a paper, which didn’t show many details.
Instead of assisting the farmers, we could only be remotely present and filmed the situation from a distance. We again witnessed a close cooperation between the settlers, the settler-security and the border police. The threat of an instant attack was constantly felt that day.
Around 14:30, a group of around 20 settlers attacked the farmers, and most border-police did little to avoid it and arrested none of the settlers. Instead it commanded the farmers to stop their work and quickly leave their land.
Settlement outpost are illegal, even by Israeli law, although that law may change one day.
In February 2017, the Israeli Knesset passed a new law to legalize all 4000 illegal outposts. But, the High Court had concerns and postponed the implementation in August 2017.
However, if that law ever comes to reality, it would accept these 4000 outposts as new settlements ready to expand, and would give legality to the expropriation of more private Palestinian land, in a clear violation of the Oslo Agreements of 1993.
