On the 6th September 2007, 1:00pm, a court will convene at the Israeli Peace Courts to bring to trial a mature Israeli Settler who attacked two international human rights workers on the 27th July 2007.
The incident took place on a piece of Palestinian land located between the illegal settlements of Kiriat Arba and Givat Havot. On the 27th July 2007, a number of human rights activists had convened to accompany a Palestinian man and his family in accessing his land directly between Kiriat Arba and Givat Havot. The piece of land, although legally Palestinian is coveted by the settlers who have gone so far as to erect a tent upon the land and claim it to be a Synagogue.
As the two activists walked towards the land, a mature settler, believed to be a resident of Givat Havot, brandished a large spiked stick and proceeded to attack a German man and a British lady as they were walking towards the land. Both were left shaken and with severe cuts and bruises. Video footage clearly demonstrates that this was an unprovoked attack and that the activists had not undertaken anything to encourage the aggression.
Footage of the incident and greater detail relating to the incident can be found at the following link:
https://www.palsolidarity.org/main/2007/07/28/tel-rumeida-violent-settler-attacks-human-rights-workers/
This case is one of few out of the numerous attacks that take place against Palestinian and International activists who seek to defend the rights of Palestinians and are attacked in the process of doing so. The majority of attacks do not make it as far as the courts due to insubstantive evidence or difficulties encoutered with police investigations. We hope that we can achieve justice in the face of continued violence and oppression by Settlers who wish to denigrate the Palestinians and prevent Activists from acting in solidarity with them. We need to show that we will not walk away even when faced with harm and we hope that justice will prevail.
We hope that as many people as possible can attend the hearing and offer their support.
For additional information please contact Rose 054 224 9179
Sharif Omar Khaled had a little bit of satisfaction last week. His guava trees bore fruit for the first time. They had ripened relatively early, he said, because of the hot weather.
Sharif Khaled, who is known to everyone as Abu Azzam, looks like a moshavnik from days gone by. True, he doesn’t have a mustache, but he has a little paunch, an old tractor with a wagon and he can talk about his trees without end: olive trees, citrus trees, avocado, apricot trees,
almonds, guavas. His greatest pride is his loquat orchard: 14 dunams last year yielded 47 tons of fruit. A most impressive record.
In the past two months, Abu Azzam has seen his 3,600 trees only from a distance, from the top of the hill where his village, Jayyous, lies. When I visited this Palestinian village (not far from Qalqilyah) some four years ago, I felt as if I were in a moshav – tractors with drivers in
mud-covered rubber boots filled its streets.
This feeling has dissipated. The number of Jayyous residents who engage in agriculture has decreased for a simple reason: the separation fence. In his area it was completed three years ago and it cuts off the residents of Jayyous from their lands. To reach their farm land, they require a permit from the Civil Administration, and these are given out less and less often. Only 90 of the 4,000 residents of Jayyous are today permitted to work their lands. For three years, Abu Azzam was one of the lucky ones who received a permit. On June 23, he was informed that the permit would no longer be renewed, “because of opposition on the part of security
elements.”
Abu Azzam is not the only person whose permit was not renewed. In the past few months, people in Jayyous say, 29 farmers have had their permits canceled, all of them ostensibly for security reasons. In Abu Azzam’s case, this refusal seems surprising, in the best-case scenario, and evil in the worst case.
Abu Azzam goes abroad three or four times a year. He has been to Sweden, Britain, India and Spain. Now he can chat a little in Italian after studying for three months in Pisa. But he cannot go to his loquat trees.
The word “coexistence” has all but disappeared from the lexicon of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But not with Abu Azzam. He struck up ties with Israelis who participated in the protests against building the fence in the Jayyous area four years ago, and since then he has taken pains to nurture those ties constantly. Every year hundreds of Israelis come to
help him and other farmers from Jayyous with their harvesting in fields that have remained on the Israeli side of the fence. “They don’t want money and even bring along their own food,” Abu Azzam says with admiration. “They simply want to help us.”
Abu Azzam particularly remembers one of the Israeli acts of assistance: In December 2004, Israeli bulldozers pulled up several hundred olive trees in a private plot belonging to one of the residents of Jayyous. “The Israelis came to replant the trees,” he says. “They walked several kilometers on foot because the army did not permit them to bring their vehicles to the
fields. Even the elderly among them went on foot. How old is Uri Avneri? He also walked. We were altogether some 50 Palestinians, 200 Israelis and 100 policemen and soldiers. Several hundred villagers from Jayyous watched us from behind the fence. They were extremely moved. It was a very good feeling to see the Israelis planting the trees with us.”
But let us not get confused. Abu Azzam is a thorn in Israel’s side, albeit a small thorn. He travels a great deal abroad and on most of his trips speaks out against the “apartheid fence.” He was part of the Palestinian delegation to the International Court of Justice in The Hague, as a
“farmer from the area,” and he says things that are unequivocal and scathing. He appears in international forums abroad, and sometimes his confrontations with Israeli representatives end in unpleasant tones. This year in February, for example, he participated in a discussion at
Cambridge University. “The Palestinian delegate in Briatin did not arrive, and I was the sole Palestinian in a forum with about 10 Israelis,” he says. “They asked me whether suicide bombers can be part of a peace process. I was impolite and asked them whether attacks by an Apache helicopter on schools could be part of a peace process. There was an unpleasant argument.” Did these scathing remarks lead to the cancellation of Abu Azzam’s permit? It is possible.
A Civil Administration spokesman responded that Abu Azzam had a hearing before a committee that considered his request to renew his permit. The request was considered “bearing in mind the security needs of the State of Israel, and it was decided to turn it down.” Abu Azzam says that the committee members asked him where he had gone the last time he visited abroad. “I said that I was in Sweden in May, and then they asked me ‘where
were you in February?’ I had the feeling they were talking about the conference in Cambridge.”
Perhaps there is another reason. One of Abu Azzam’s friends once warned him that eventually they would cancel his permit to work his fields. “Your problem is that you have too many contacts with the Israeli left,” his friend told him.
Either way, Abu Azzam is convinced that the Israeli authorities are not in favor of ties between Israelis and Palestinians. He views the lack of ties as one of the reasons that the number of Israelis who participate in the activities he has organized has not grown. “It is as if the Israelis are not interested in knowing what is happening on the other side,” he says.
Is Abu Azzam indeed a security menace? Anything is possible, but on the face of it, at least, it appears that this possibility would be strange. He is 65 years old, a former Communist, and the distance between him and Hamas is very great. He has been arrested only once, 20 years ago, for refusing to evacuate part of his lands in favor of the nearby settlement of Tzofin. One of his sons was detained for nine months under administrative detention, but that was more than three years ago. Another of his sons always gets permits to go to Haifa port to fetch goods for the company he runs in Ramallah. This son, too, by the way, did not get a permit from the Civil Administration to go to the family’s fields. He can travel to Haifa but not to his father’s guavas and loquats.
Sources in the Civil Administration say that attempts were made on their part to persuade the Shin Bet security service to give Abu Azzam a permit, but the Shin Bet was adamant in its refusal.
Abu Azzam has a simple explanation for this persistent refusal: “They want us to forget about our lands, for us to emigrate from here.”
MEDIA ADVISORY: Victory for the residents of Bil’in village
4th September 2007:
Following popular non-violent resistance through joint struggle between Palestinian, Israeli and international activists, a court decision has been made in favor of the petition by Bilin village to change the current route of the Apartheid Wall.
The court decision dictates that the military are obliged to plan and implement a new route for the wall. It has been ordered that the new path will allow for all Palestinian agricultural land to be on the Palestinian side. Furthermore, the court has ordered that the state should not take into consideration the area earmarked for Stage B of the planned expansion of Matityahu East.
During the proceedings, it was of note that the court made a rarely heard reference to military considerations and security. The court stated that in respect of security considerations, the current route of the wall runs in a topographically inferior path thus indicating that the original route had been planned with the prime consideration being the planned expansion of the settlement rather than of security.
The Supreme Court decision comes after years of continued struggle and resistance to the illegal confiscation of village lands. It is seen as a victory for the path of non-violent resistance and joint initiative from both the Palestinian and Israeli participants.
Although today’s decision is seen a victory in the struggle against oppressive consequences of the Israeli Occupation and a victory for the villagers of Bilin, it is important to recognize that the route of the wall still deviates from internationally recognized armistice lines and is still in violation of international law, resolutions and advisories made within the International Court of Justice and within the UN Security Council.
For more information please go to the Israeli Supreme Court Website, www.court.gov.il
(unfortunately the decision is only in Hebrew)
Alternatively please contact:
Neta Golan: 059 8 184169
Attorney Michael Sfard: 0544 713930 alternatively 03 607 345
Mohammed Khatib : 0 594 135 3636
Jonathan Pollock: 054 632 7736
A temporary checkpoint was erected in Tel Rumeida, Hebron, complete with a landmine placed on the road. Human Rights Workers noticed a young boy being detained. HRW’s approached the boy to enquire over what was going on. It was established that he was 14 years old and therefore too young to have an ID card. When asked, the soldiers said he had been trying to steal the landmine.
The boy was kept for a total of an hour and a quarter after which he was finally released. No charges were brought against the child, soldiers merely claimed they kept him for so loing as they were “waiting for orders”.
It is unknown whether the land mine was still live or not, however it casues great concern to the residents of Tel Rumeida as well as Human Rights Workers that such offensive weaponry is present in such a residential area.
12 Palestinians and 3 Human Rights Workers (HRWs) went to visit land which is overlooked by an illegal Israeli settler colony and which has taken the old Palestinian name of Susya.
Access to this land by its owners has been restricted since 1984 when the Palestinian residents of Susya were forcibly evicted by the Israelis to form a colony. The visit was the first time the owner had been able to access the land for 7 years. The problem here is that the Settlers interfere violently with the Palestinians when they visit their land even though they carry their legal papers which show their title to it in both Hebrew and Arabic. Apart from a few olive trees the land has reverted to scrub due to neglect. There is a well on the land which the settlers are using to water their sheep. Both the theft of the water and the grazing is depriving the Palestinian owners of income and livlihood. An elderly Palestinian woman dressed in the typical clothes of the region gathers za’atar from her ancestral lands which will be a precious memento of the day for her. Normally she can’t freely gather the herbs from her own land.
45 minutes after the arrival of the Palestinian and International group, 6 youths arrive from the colony across the road. One carries a large gun slung over his shoulder. They taunt the group verbally, occasionally one hitchs the gun strap at his shoulder. Soon an Israeli settler shepherd appears with all his sheep which he runs down the hill close by us after watering them from the Palestinians’ well. He joins in the stand off and ostentatiously pulls up his tee shirt to reveal a hand gun pushed into the waist band of his trousers. This is a clear warning and indication of his preparedness to use it while out grazing his sheep on what he knows is Palestinian land.
Then 6 to 8 Israeli soldiers come in 2 army jeeps. Then a border police jeep arrives with 3 police and a final police jeep arrives with 3 more personnel. After prolonged talking on radios the soldiers ask the landowner and another for their IDs. The landowner explains his ownership of the land and shows his papers to the police. There are tense discussions. The landowner says to the police and soldiers, “We want peace, we want to come and cultivate our land, graze our animals and tend to the olive trees and harvest without molestation from the settlers.” The police advise him that he must get a permit before ever being able to visit his own land, or else?
The police and soldiers talk to the settlers now numbering 9 and they move off back to the settlement. The Palestinians leave second and followed by the convoy of army and police jeeps that has come to deal with the group of Palestinians and HRWs. The landowner explained during the walk back that he really needs to get to the land to harvest olives next month and Internationals are needed to make this less risky for him and his family who come to pick.
