Palestinian Resident of Hebron Detained for Sitting on the Street

by ISM Hebron

On Saturday the 7th of October at 2pm about ten Israeli settlers, aged 15 to 20, harassed Palestinians on the hill above Beit Hadassah settlement in Tel Rumeida, Hebron. Palestinians were afraid to go home and international human right workers observing were attacked by settlers who tried to push the video camera out of the hands of one activist. An Israeli human right worker who came for the weekend translated their conversation. Settlers were talking about the inconvenience of human rights workers having a video camera, and their faces on tape, if they wanted to beat them up. The settlers were standing on the hill, harassing Palestinians, for about forty minutes and then left only to come back on Shuhada street twenty minutes later, causing problems for human rights workers sitting on the side of the street. The settlers were screaming that human rights workers are Nazis generally and behaved very aggressively. A settler family passed by and the son, aged five, tried to spit at the internationals which was cheerfully encouraged by his mother.

At 3.45pm a Palestinian resident named Issa Amro and three international human right workers were sitting together on Shuhada street. An Israeli police Jeep pulled up and an officer named Nabeeh Hosin demanded that Issa show him his ID. Issa complied and Nabeeh asked Issa where he lived and what he was doing sitting on Shuhada Street with the human rights workers. Issa replied he lived in the area but Nabeeh ordered him to leave. At this point, Issa got a telephone call and began speaking on the phone. Nabeeh ordered him to hang up the phone and pay attention to him and when Issa did not immediately comply, he ordered him into the back of the police Jeep. Nabeeh and his colleague got out of the jeep and grabbed Issa, violently pushing him into the back of the jeep. Seeing Issa being arrested for no good reason was totally unacceptable to the human rights workers who informed the two police officers that if they were taking Issa with them, they would also be taking them. They did not want him to be alone at the police station at the mercy of the Israeli police.

The three of them were taken to the Kiryat Arba police station where they were interrogated and suspected of “interfering with police work”. They were otherwise treated acceptably. This probably had something to do with an Israeli lawyer calling the police on their behalf and a representative from the Danish embassy arriving on the behalf of the two internationals from Denmark and Sweden. Issa was detained for four hours. The international human rights workers were detained for five and a half hours. Issa was also forced to sign a paper to ensure he’d come to an eventual trial. If he refused to sign the paper, he would have been brought to prison at once without any trial the interrogator at Kiryat Arba police station said. He confirmed during interrogations with the human rights workers that Palestinians are not allowed to sit on the street but merely permitted to walk to their homes as they are considered to be a security threat.

The Times: “Rabbi leads defence of Palestinian olive groves”

The Times of London, October 9th. by Ian Mackinnon

Editorial note: A reporter from The Times of London joined Palestinian farmers accompanied by ISM, IWPS and Rabbis for Human Rights volunteers for picking as recorded in this report on our site. His report, focusing on the Rabbis, was published in the Times and on their website, and is pasted below.

* * *

The olives are stunted, the trees in poor condition. At the top of a ladder, stripping fruit from high branches, the Palestinian farmer Omar Karni is in his element, working his way up a dusty olive grove that has been in his family for generations.

For the first time in four years, the family has been able to harvest the crop. Last time Mr Karni tried, radical Jewish settlers set fire to the tinder-dry land and beat him as he fled.

“I’m so happy to be here,” he said, stretching to reach a branch in the relentless sun. “This is my land and if I can’t come here to farm it I feel incomplete. I must do this to keep the land in my family.”

Mr Karni, 58, a Muslim, can go about his business without threat largely because of a rabbi who has co-ordinated with the Israeli Army and police to be on the spot to provide protection. Rabbi Arik Ascherman peers through binoculars towards the Har Berakha settlement near Nablus, in the West Bank, for signs of trouble. Heavily armed Israeli police patrol through the trees and an army Humvee squats across the dirt track to deter unwanted visitors.

Rabbi Ascherman, co-director of Rabbis for Human Rights, will spend the six-week olive season rising at dawn with other volunteers to put his life on the line to protect Palestinian farmers from armed Jewish settlers. Without the Jewish cleric, the farmers would be fired upon or beaten, their harvest stolen and ancient trees — some dating from Roman times — felled with chainsaws.

“This whole issue of trying to prevent the olive harvest is the ongoing struggle to get Palestinians off the land,” the rabbi said. “But if we Jews are to survive in this land we must restore hope by being here to break down the stereotypes the Palestinians have of Israelis. This is the best single thing I can do to protect my two children.”

The rabbi and his fellow volunteers — some Israeli, some foreign — will help to harvest and to police groves in 30 West Bank villages that sit cheek-by-jowl with Jewish settlements and have become flashpoints.

Last year attacks rose sharply at harvest-time, with feelings running high over Israel’s pullout from the Gaza Strip. Thousands of olive trees were cut down, others damaged, crops stolen, and several Palestinian farmers suffered serious injury at the hands of settler mobs.

Gamilah Biso, an Arabic-speaking Jewish volunteer who was brought up in Damascus, realises that her presence and that of her colleagues is vital to ensure that the olives can be harvested from the West Bank’s ten million trees to produce the 36,000 tonnes of olive oil. That accounts for one fifth of Palestinian agriculture. “If we weren’t here the farmer and his family just wouldn’t be able to come,” Ms Biso said, deftly stripping the green olives from the branches. “It would be too easy for the settlers to shoot them.”

Victory in a two-year court case brought by the rabbis and the Association for Civil Rights in Israel may help to ease tensions. It has guaranteed the farmers access to their land and obliged thearmy to protect that right. The Army recently drove away settlers who had come to steal the olives from Mr Karni’s land — yet subsequently barred the family from their 12-acre grove because they had arrived before the agreed schedule. Mr Karni’s early appearance was driven by the desperation of current Palestinian circumstances. The harvest now offers a vital economic lifeline.

“We came to raise money for the Ramadan celebrations,” he said. “No one has any stable work these days. So the harvest has become very, very important to survive. We await the harvest like we await the rain.”

Israel Arrests Bil’in Journalist

UPDATE, October 11th, 4.25pm: Emad’s attorney Gaby Laski informs us that at the appeal hearing held today, the Israeli military decided to launch an indictment against Emad. The judge will make a ruling tomorrow at 4pm.

UPDATE, October 10th: At a hearing today at Ofer military court the judge ordered Emad to be released, but the Israeli military appealed this decision and said he should be held for a further 72 hours. The judge gave the army 24 hours to mount an appeal, which will be held tomorrow.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Emad Mohammad Bornat of the village of Bil’in, video photographer for Reuters and documentary film maker, was arrested on Friday October 6th, 2006 by a Israeli Border Police unit that entered the village, firing rubber bullets and sound grenades. Emad is being held in Israeli military custody and will be brought in front of a judge at Ofer military base tomorrow Tuesday the 10th of October.

Emad, who was filming at the time, was arrested by an Israeli Border policeman. When Emad arrived at the police station in Givat Zeev, he was wounded. The Border Police soldiers claimed a radio “fell” on him in the jeep, on the way to the station. He was taken to the Hadassah – Har Hatzofim hospital and was then taken back to the police station in Givat Zeev. After he was interrogated, the police refused to view the tapes that Emad filmed. Emad is accused of “assault on an officer” and of stone throwing and was sent to the Etzion prison. Israeli Border Police have in the past been rebuked by military judges on false testimonies towards arrested Palestinian demonstrators and their Israeli supporters.

Emad has tirelessly documented the struggle of his village against the wall and settlements, and is known by many other professionals with whom he works and cooperates, giving them video material for their films and reports. He is a man of peace and a dedicated and responsible video-photo-journalist. His video footage has been broadcast throughout the world, showing the demonstrations against the wall Israel is constructing on his village’s land. It shows the routine, and often brutal, violence of the Israeli military in general and the Border Police in particular on the demonstrations, especially as used against Palestinians.

For more information:

Attorney Gaby Laski: 054 449 18988
Mohammed Khatib: 054 557 3285
Shai Polack: 054 533 3364

Haaretz: Israeli army “aims to keep out ‘escorts’ of Palestinian farmers during harvest”

Ha’aretz, October 9th. by Amira Hass

The Israel Defense Forces [sic] are demanding that Palestinian farmers not allow Israeli and foreign sympathizers to escort them during the olive harvest to places where military protection is needed against abusive settlers, Palestinian sources in the Nablus region told Haaretz.

An Israeli security source confirmed the report, saying that IDF officers have been influenced by statements of settlers, who say they are enraged during the harvest by the presence of Israeli leftists who act as provocateurs. A 2005 memo to soldiers from the Civil Administration regarding the olive-picking season states: “Involvement of various entities, Israeli and foreign, is expected, as an ‘aid’ to the Palestinians in the harvest and as a motive for creating provocations.”

On the other hand, the 2006 Olive Harvest Order issued by the Samaria Regional Brigade stated, under “Key lessons from the previous year”: “Working axis vis-a-vis leftist organizations: During the harvest season the left appeared largely as a coordinating force and for the most part offered no provocations. The best and most effective axis for maintaining communication is between the implementers [i.e., the olive-pickers – A.H.] and the organizations.”

The contradictory policy was evident as the harvest season began last week in the Nablus region. In the village of Burin, for example, Israeli [activist] escorts were prohibited, but they were permitted later in the week. In the village of Klil the army allowed women from an international solidarity group to be present during the picking. Last Tuesday, however, soldiers barred farmers from entering their property, necessitating the intercession by phone of activists from Rabbis for Human Rights.

Rabbi Arik W. Ascherman of RHR has for years organized groups of Israeli peace activists to escort farmers in some 30 West Bank villages, as protection against settler attacks.

The IDF Spokesman stated that the GOC Central Command had recently signed several orders requiring advance coordination to enter limited areas during the harvest period, but that most West Bank harvest areas are freely accessible to farmers and Israeli civilians. Regarding the incident last Tuesday, the IDF said that the Klil farmers left the area of their own volition after soldiers asked to check their ID because they had not coordinated their arrival in advance.

March of Grapes Brutally Attacked-6 Arrested, Many Injured

by PSP, October 8

October 8, 2006-Today, Palestinian, international and Israeli activists joined together to demonstrate against land theft, road closures and economic isolation by bringing two tons of the surplus Palestinian grape harvest to an occupation checkpoint along Route 60. In a display of civil disobedience akin to the North American Boston Tea Party, the demonstrators hoped to dump the surplus harvest onto the road, but were viciously attacked before they were able to reach the checkpoint.

Al-Khadr is a center for vineyards, as is the Bethlehem area in general. Every year its fertile lands yield 11,000 tons of grapes. Not long ago, these grapes were marketed to the entire West Bank, as well as Jordan, Gaza and Israel. Nowadays, with some roads blocked and others closed, and with new decrees restricting the delivery of grapes, the local produce has no market. The prices have dropped so low that the farmers can no longer earn their living. Many are forced to just leave the fruit to rot on the vines. Soon the Apartheid Wall will reach the site of the demonstration, and the Ghettoization of the area will be complete. Where grapes are the prime source of income and unemployment rates soar, this maneuver will effectively strangulate the already fragile local economy.

The wall in the Al-Khadr region will annex 20,000 dunums of Palestinian agricultural land, while the expansion of Betar Illit, Neve Daniel and Elazar colonial settlements will similarly steal additional lands. The Wall in the Al-Khadr and Bethlehem area will also imprison 19,000 Palestinians in between the concrete barrier and the 1967 West Bank border line, known as the “green line.”

For these reasons, local Palestinians, Israeli activists with Anarchists Against the Wall and Tay’ush, as well as international activists with the Palestine Solidarity Project (PSP), joined for a morning of civil disobedience with the intention of dumping a portion of the ample, though unmarketable, grape harvest onto Route 60 in protest. Approximately fifty demonstrators marched on Route 60, blocking northbound traffic, en route to Al-Khadr checkpoint, but were preemptively attacked by Israeli Occupation Force (IOF) police and soldiers. At the scene were numerous armored police jeeps, police transport vans and armored military jeeps. Also on hand was at least one agent with Shabak (Shin Bet), the occupation’s covert intelligence agency, seen filming the IOF’s brutality with a handheld video camera.

Despite the presence of Reuters cameramen and other international media, around thirty IOF soldiers and police quickly attacked the non-violent demonstrators who carried cardboard crates of grapes. With their hands unable to be used as shields, many were beaten causing the grapes to prematurely spill onto the road. As the demonstrators attempted to continue their march, IOF police and soldiers choked, kicked and punched the demonstrators. Some police used military-style ‘pain compliance’ maneuvers, such as applying immense pressure to wrists and other sensitive joints, as well as wrenching back fingers and hands. Activists were thrown, and dragged by their ears, noses, necks and hair, while other police and soldiers forced demonstrators to the ground by leaning their weighted knees onto demonstrators’ heads and necks. Many activists were roughly thrown to the ground and dragged across the asphalt road, ripping their clothes. While attempting to stand up, many were pushed and kicked by the booted IOF police and soldiers.

During the assault, six people were arrested: two Palestinian males, one international female, and two Israeli males. The two Palestinian males, Mohammad Salah, 25, and Ahmed Salah, 30 were detained for carrying boxes of grapes, and while Ahmed was released at the end of the demonstration, Mohammad was not so lucky. Following the demonstration, Mohammad was taken by IOF soldiers to a wooded area near Betar Illit colonial settlement. When the soldiers reached this isolated area, they kicked and beat Mohammad in the head and shoulders. He is currently under care at a Bethlehem-area hospital. The international, an American woman, and the two Israeli men are currently still being held in Israeli custody at Gush Etzion police compound, housed within the colonial settlement of the same name.

Despite the unprovoked and extreme violence from the IOF, the demonstration was a great success. The primarily settler-used roadway of Route 60 was colored green and purple with the crushed remains of grapes and cardboard cartons. Passing settlers were able to witness the violence that their presence “necessitates,” and many reacted by honking their horns, photographing the demonstration, and one man was even seen proudly waving a peace sign. Though the grapes never reached the mouths of consumers, they were purchased from the farmers and given a political purpose on the road-a stretch of route 60 bordering Al-Khadr checkpoint, as well as a currently under-construction terminal checkpoint, and a small length of the Apartheid Wall already built and waiting to be connected to the Bethlehem portion.

For more information on the Palestine Solidarity Project (PSP), please visit:
www.palestinesolidarityproject.wordpress.com