Three Palestinian trawling vessels confiscated by Israeli naval forces were returned on Thursday 27th November.
ISM Gaza Strip made this video as the boats were finally returned.
Almost immediately following the announcement that three Human Rights Groups had filed an appeal against Ehud Barak and the commander of the Israeli navy the boats were returned to Palestinian waters. The vessels were stolen from Gazan waters on 18th November while fishing in Palestinian territorial water.
Filed by Al-Mazan, the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) and the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), the appeal to the Israeli Supreme Court was on behalf of the vessels’ owners. The appeal, sent to the Israeli Supreme Court, asked why the boats have not been released and why the fishermen have not been compensated for their loss of income and their loss of use of the boats for the past week.
Rather than answer these questions in court, raising serious contradictions to the Israeli claim that Gaza is no longer occupied, Israel’s navy informed the lawyers that the boats would probably be returned immediately. Less than 24 hours later the boats were returned, though initial reports suggest that they had sustained serious damage and that expensive equipment has been stolen.
At around 10am, 29th November, Palestinians living between the occupied Rajabi house and the settlement Kiryat Arba in Hebron were attacked by a group of up to 300 settlers and were again attacked at 2:30 pm. The settlers were throwing stones at Palestinians and their houses.
The settler rampage continued for two hours. According to some eyewitnesses, settlers were also shooting handguns into the air to intimidate people living in the area.
The Rajabi house (which the settlers call “The Peace House”) is over-looking other Palestinian houses that neighbour the Kiryat Arba settlement. Since the occupation of the house in March 2007, settler attacks against Palestinian residents have greatly increased.
According to eyewitnesses 10 Palestinian men and women, between the ages of 10 and 70 were injured, five of whom were taken to the hospital to be treated for their injuries. The attack, as well as the army’s response, have been caught on cameras distributed by B’tselem to the residents in the area. One clearly shows the settlers gathering to throw stones from the Rajabi house down on the neighbouring Palestinian houses.
According to a resident from the area, the Israeli Army and police forces were present during the whole time of the settler attack. One of the army’s first responses was to tell the Palestinians residents to go into their houses, rather than put an end to the settlers’ attacks. When some Palestinians did not obey this order the soldiers attacked the residents and detained two young men from the Ziade family, inflicting wounds on their wrists and arms.
One of the residents in the area states that even though he was hit in the head with a stone from the settlers, the police and army made him stay in his house for 40 minutes before allowing him to go to the hospital. Another resident, Soad Abu-Sayfan, a 24 year-old woman, was grabbed by an Israeli border police agent by the hair and violently thrown to the ground when she left her home after locking her small children inside for fear of their safety.
Though the attacks on Saturday can be seen as an escalation of settler attacks surrounding the pending evacuation of the occupied Rajibi house, the residents of the area assured solidarity activists that the attacks have become a way of life, even before the occupation two years ago.
The Abu-Sayfan family, who live directly below the fence of the Kiryat Arba settlement have settlers trespassing through their land on a daily basis, intimidating their children and throwing stones at their home. 40 year-old Hisham Abu-Sayfan, who was injured with a rock to his hand today, has said; “in my entire life in this home I have never known a comfortable life”. He constantly worries about the safety of his five small children and the children of his brothers and sisters. The residents of the neighbourhood have extremely limited movement, a shortage of water due to the fact that their tank is shared with nearby settlers and they have little to no protection from local Israeli police.
The Palestinians injured during the attacks today were told that they can file their claims tomorrow at the nearby police station, though several expressed doubt that their complaints would bring any action from the authorities. Hisham Abu-Sayfan has filed five reports in the past and has yet to receive any response.
Hundreds of Jayyous residents were prevented from protesting at the Wall on Friday 28th November when Israeli military forces invaded the village.
More than 200 Palestinian, Israeli and international activists were prevented from leaving the village to demonstrate against the new path of the Apartheid Wall, when Israeli army and police forces invaded the village, blocking roads and implementing a “Closed Military Zone”. Approximately 40 Israeli army forces blocked the road from the village to the Wall, menacingly brandishing rifles and batons.
The villagers, who will lose almost 6000 dounums of land from the new route of the wall, were undiminished in their determination to protest against the Wall, chanting “LA! LA! Li’l Jidar!” (NO! NO! To the Wall!). The protest then turned into an impromptu street party, with villagers dancing defiantly in the streets.
In response to a single stone thrown from the back of the crowd, soldiers then began to fire tear gas, sound bombs and rubber-coated steel bullets indiscriminately into the crowd. At least two Palestinians were injured by the rubber-coated steel bullets, with many more suffering from gas inhalation.
Village youths responded to this attack with rocks, which led to a full-scale invasion of the village. Five jeeps roamed the streets, hindered by makeshift road-blocks installed by the villagers for such incursions. For two hours, soldiers terrorised villagers with sound bombs, tear gas, rubber-coated bullets, and high-pitched sound devices, imposing a de-facto curfew. The young Palestinians were not, however, subdued, and the Israeli military eventually left the village amidst taunts and defiance.
Residents report that Israeli soldiers returned to Jayyous in the night, arresting one – Eyad Dubah – and destroying martyr billboards that decorate the centre of the village.
Villagers believe the implementation of the “closed military zone” for a 24 hours period was designed to prevent international and Israeli participation in the demonstration, as Israeli military roadblocks were installed on all roads into the village, allowing only local residents to pass. As one Palestinian commented, “They do not want you to see the truth with your cameras”. These measures appear to be a direct response to the success of the demonstration last week, in which villagers destroyed part of the Wall.
To view original article, published by The Electronic Intifada on the 26th November, click here
Abu Kamel and his wife, Um Kamel, eat breakfast with international volunteers at the al-Kurd’s family home. (Photo by Pam Rasmussen)
The saying that a man’s home is his castle goes back to the 1500s. Whether it is a mansion or a mud hut, a home to which you can retreat and be safe is a basic human need. But since 2001, Abu Kamel (Mohammed al-Kurd), his wife and five children were forced to fight every day for the right to stay in the East Jerusalem home his family had lived in for decades. And although the Jewish settlers who tried to push them out — literally — didn’t put a gun to his head and pull the trigger, they might as well have.
Two weeks after the al-Kurds were finally evicted from their home on 9 November, Abu Kamel suffered a fatal heart attack. Now, Um Kamel (his wife, Fawzieh) who I grew to admire and respect while I camped on their patio as a volunteer with the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) must wage the fight alone.
In October, my friend Jean and I traveled to Palestine from the United States to volunteer with the ISM during the fall olive harvest. When a foot injury ended my usefulness at olive-picking, we left Nablus for East Jerusalem, where the ISM had been keeping watch on the al-Kurds patio since the summer hoping to prevent the eviction that eventually came.
The al-Kurds’ house is part of a project that the Jordanian government built with the UN agency for Palestine refugees, UNRWA, to house 28 families who were forced to flee their original homes in 1948, after the Nakba, the forced expulsion of Palestinians from their homeland. Abu Kamel’s family was forced to flee West Jerusalem during the ethnic cleansing, and settled in the house in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood. All of the parties involved agreed then that ownership of the houses would be transferred to the families within three years.
There they lived in peace until shortly after the June War in 1967, when two groups of Jewish settlers claimed ownership of the land, despite the earlier, documented agreement between Jordan and UNRWA. The struggle that followed took both parties into the courts, then escalated dramatically in 2001. When Abu Kamel suffered a heart attack and his family left the house to take him to medical treatment elsewhere, one of the settler families took advantage of his ill health. They moved in and occupied an extension to the home that the al-Kurds had renovated for one of their sons. When they returned, the al-Kurds faced the agonizing choice of abandoning their longtime home or living side-by-side with the representatives of a group that was trying to force them out. Despite Abu Kamel’s fragile health, they chose to stay and fight.
Early this year, the situation began heating up. Despite the fact that the Israeli Supreme Court had ruled that the settlers claim on the land is fraudulent, an investment company acquired the right to raze all of the Palestinian homes in the community and replace them with 200 settler housing units and a commercial center. 15 July 2008 was set as the eviction date, and while the al-Kurds who became the standard bearers for the entire neighborhood appealed once more to the court, the ISM moved in to help. In response, the settlers’ organization hired their own protection, an armed guard.
We lived in two tents set up on the patio, and one of us was present 24 hours a day, sleeping in shifts throughout the night. Um Kamel brought us tea at 7am, and she and Abu Kamel joined us for a traditional breakfast at 9am. A midday meal followed at 3pm. Although language was a bit of a barrier at first, we soon warmed up to each other and the routine. Abu Kamel was a quiet, solid presence, and Fawzieh was a model of cheerfulness and perseverance in the face of adversity. In addition to preparing our meals, she regularly played host to visiting delegations from international and Israeli peace organizations telling her family’s story over and over, marshaling support for their cause as well as for the Palestinian community overall.
I will remember our time with the al-Kurds as a highlight of my stay in Palestine, an oasis of warm hospitality in a hostile surrounding. One week later, just after we reluctantly returned to our home in the United States, I got the news: at 3:30 in the morning on Sunday, 9 November, the Israeli army swooped in and forced the al-Kurds out, while detaining the ISM volunteers who had taken our place. That was the beginning of the end for Abu Kamel. Suffering from dangerously high blood pressure, the 61-year-old Mohammed was admitted to the hospital on 22 November. Just hours later, he died.
Abu Kamel lives on through Fawzieh, however. She has kept up the fight with the help of the ISM and other volunteers by camping in a tent close by her rightful home. Despite further attempts by the Israeli army to discourage her, this time through fines and destruction of her canvas shelter, she and her fellow protesters are persevering. This is nonviolent resistance at its best, and its up to us to show that it can work.
Pam Rasmussen works in the healthcare field and lives in Maryland. Visit www.thou-shalt-not-steal.org, sign the petition and send a message to the Israeli government.
Thursday 27th November, 2008 – Gaza City, Gaza Strip, Palestine
Three Palestinian trawling vessels confiscated by Israeli naval forces were returned today almost immediately following yesterdays announcement that three Human Rights Groups had filed an appeal against Ehud Barak and the commander of the Israeli navy. The vessels were stolen from Gazan waters on 18th November while fishing in Palestinian territorial water.
Filed yesterday by Al-Mazan, the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) and the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), the appeal to the Israeli Supreme Court was on behalf of the vessels’ owners. The appeal, sent to the Israeli Supreme Court, asked why the boats have not been released and why the fishermen have not been compensated for their loss of income and their loss of use of the boats for the past week.
Rather than answer these questions in court, raising serious contradictions to the Israeli claim that Gaza is no longer occupied, Israel’s navy informed the lawyers that the boats would probably be returned immediately. Less than 24 hours later the boats were returned, though initial reports suggest that they had sustained serious damage and that expensive equipment has been stolen.
“While the return of 1/4 of Gaza’s trawling fleet after they were stolen by the Israeli navy is a relief to Gaza’s fishermen, the fact that it only took the threat of court action in their own legal system for the boats return demonstrates how baseless Israel’s claim of not occupying Gaza is” said Fida Qishta, local human rights activist from Rafah and ISM co-ordinator in the Gaza Strip.
Held in Ashdod, the fishing boats were transferred into Palestinian waters six nautical miles offshore at approximately 16:00 Gaza time and reached the port of Gaza City shortly before 18:00.
There are only 12 boats of this size in the Gaza Strip, so the confiscation represented one quarter of such boats available to the Gazan population.The boats were abducted 7 1/2 miles from the port of Deir al-Balah, well within ‘Zone L’, which, under the Oslo agreement, gives them the right to be fishing within their own 20 nautical mile limit.
The boats’ captains reported damage to their vessels’ – indeed one trawler had to be towed in by a second due to engine damage. Equipment such as GPS devices were also missing. The fishermens’ loss of earnings over the last ten days is still being estimated.
The three human rights observers from the International Solidarity Movement who were accompanying the fishermen at the time of the Israeli assault were held at Maasiyahu detention centre in Ramle, despite never being charged. All have now been illegally deported by the Israeli authorities. Vittorio Arrigoni was deported to Italy on Sunday 23rd November, Andrew Muncie to the UK on Tuesday 25th and Darlene Wallach to the US early on Thursday 27th November.
