Yent: “Settlers Torch Cars, Beat Residents”

From Ynet
By Ali Waked


Car torched in Tel Rumeida. ‘This is not a life,’ residents say (Photo: ISM)

Residents of Hebron neighborhood claim settlers set fire to three Palestinian vehicles, beat several residents; ‘this was not a one-time incident,’ says Rajab Abeido, whose car was burned

Palestinian residents from the Hebron neighborhood of Tel Rumeida claimed that settlers, who flocked to the city Saturday night ahead of the evacuation of a Hebron house by the IDF, set fire to three of their cars. Earlier, the Palestinians said, the settlers also beat several of the neighborhood’s residents.

According to the residents, the incident was not a one-time harassment, but rather a phenomenon they have been suffering from for a long time now.

Rajab Abeido, the owner of one of the torched cars, told Ynet that he returned to his home at around 9 p.m. Saturday evening after spending the evening with his son. The son, Abeido said, broke his hand while being chased by settlers.

“The settlers rioted in the neighborhood all day. In one of the incidents, a group chased my 8-year-old son Hassan and wanted to hit him. While escaping, he stumbled upon a stone and broke his hand. We spent the entire evening at the hospital and prepared the report which I planned to submit to the police today,” he said.

Soldiers ‘settle in’

But according to Abeido, the day’s troubles had only begun. A short while after entering his home and sitting down for dinner, one of his neighbors knocked on the door and told him that “settlers are setting fire to three vehicles in the neighborhood, including my car.”

“We immediately went outside and tried to put out the fire using everything we could get our hands on, but the damage was already done – my car was completely burned, and to tell you the truth, it wasn’t insured.”

Abeido’s neighbor told Ynet, “a group of settlers, standing not far from soldiers securing the site, poured flammable material on cars and set them on fire.”

According to Abeido, the incident was not the first in which settlers harassed him.

“Every few days they come into our home and beat me and my family up. But the bigger problem for me is the soldiers – they come in every few weeks, send the entire family to a room and ‘settle’ in the home. When I ask them ‘what do you want?’ they say ‘we have work to do; (military) duties’,” he charged.

“Each time I try to explain to them that ‘this isn’t (Ariel) Sharon’s home, nor is it (Prime Minister Ehud) Olmert’s. Carry out your military duties wherever you want, but not in my home, not near my wife and children; this is not a life’,” he concluded.

Harrasing students in Jenin

by Ash

Early in the morning, I left home with my friends going toward my university (the Arab American University). It’s about 40 minutes from my village. On the way, each one of us told our own story about the other day at Israeli checkpoints.

Last week (other students and I) were heading back home from classes when we were stopped at a checkpoint on a conjunction outside Jenin. While we were waiting in a long line of cars, we ran out of gas, and the driver had no choice but to ask some students to go back to Jenin and bring some gasoline.

The cars were moving very slowly, so we spent almost an hour waiting, then the cars completely stopped moving. Three Israeli soldiers on the other street of the conjunction stopped checking IDs, and instead, the soldiers waved for cars to go back. In our direction, one hummer jeep sat by the side the street with four soldiers in it, also preventing cars from moving.

A few drivers got out and walked towards the soldiers to negotiate and ask why we weren’t allowed to move anymore. One hour later, our driver managed to start the bus again and drove back to Jenin to try anther road.

For the past month, at least in Jenin area, the number of checkpoints had amazingly increased. These checkpoints are not just between two villages to prevent farmers to go to their land or workers to go to their jobs, but are also in front of universities to stop students from getting their education.

Yesterday around 2pm, two military jeeps set up a checkpoint near the gate of my university, preventing all vehicles from moving in both directions. We didn’t have any choice but to walk on foot for 35 minutes to the village of Zababdeh. When I reached the checkpoint, the soldiers were not in fact checking IDs or our bags, which is the usual tactic. So we wondered, “What is this checkpoint for?”

In the last week, many students missed their exams and classes, because they were held for hours at checkpoints or prevented from passing. Last Saturday, I had two exams to do, so I decided to stay with friends in the village of Zababdeh for the weekend (Thursday and Friday) in order to avoid the Israeli checkpoints and not miss any exams.

The Israeli army not only harasses students at checkpoints, but also inside their dormitories. Around 1am, Wednesday night, the Israeli army occupied two student dormitories for more than 8 hours. One of the dorm’s gate was broken using a hammer jeep; apparently no students were there for the weekend.

The Israeli soldiers checked the rooms, while all students from the other dorm were taken outside for questioning. A friend of mine was beaten on the face by one of the Israeli soldiers just because of the area he comes from.

While students were held outside and after checking, a volley of shots heard inside the building destroyed some furniture and left holes in the walls. Before the army let the students back to their dorm, the Israeli soldiers fired randomly at the building, then took off.

Punishing the Innocent is a Crime

International Herald Tribune Editorial: Jimmy Carter

Hamas and the Palestinians

Innocent Palestinian people are being treated like animals, with the presumption that they are guilty of some crime. Because they voted for candidates who are members of Hamas, the United States government has become the driving force behind an apparently effective scheme of depriving the general public of income, access to the outside world and the necessities of life.

Overwhelmingly, these are school teachers, nurses, social workers, police officers, farm families, shopkeepers, and their employees and families who are just hoping for a better life. Public opinion polls conducted after the January parliamentary election show that 80 percent of Palestinians still want a peace agreement with Israel based on the international road map premises. Although Fatah party members refused to join Hamas in a coalition government, nearly 70 percent of Palestinians continue to support Fatah’s leader, Mahmoud Abbas, as their president.

It is almost a miracle that the Palestinians have been able to orchestrate three elections during the past 10 years, all of which have been honest, fair, strongly contested, without violence and with the results accepted by winners and losers. Among the 62 elections that have been monitored by us at the Carter Center, these are among the best in portraying the will of the people.

One clear reason for the surprising Hamas victory for legislative seats was that the voters were in despair about prospects for peace. With American acquiescence, the Israelis had avoided any substantive peace talks for more than five years, regardless of who had been chosen to represent the Palestinian side as interlocutor.

The day after his party lost the election, Abbas told me that his own struggling government could not sustain itself financially with their daily lives and economy so severely disrupted, and access from Palestine to Israel and the outside world almost totally restricted. They were already $900 million in debt and had no way to meet the payroll for the following month. The additional restraints imposed on the new government are a planned and deliberate catastrophe for the citizens of the occupied territories, in hopes that Hamas will yield to the economic pressure.

With all their faults, Hamas leaders have continued to honor a temporary cease-fire, or hudna, during the past 18 months, and their spokesman told me that this “can be extended for two, 10 or even 50 years if the Israelis will reciprocate.” Although Hamas leaders have refused to recognize the state of Israel while their territory is being occupied, Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh has expressed approval for peace talks between Abbas and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel. He added that if these negotiations result in an agreement that can be accepted by Palestinians, then the Hamas position regarding Israel would be changed.

Regardless of these intricate and long-term political interrelationships, it is unconscionable for Israel, the United States and others under their influence to continue punishing the innocent and already persecuted people of Palestine. The Israelis are withholding approximately $55 million a month in taxes and customs duties that, without dispute, belong to the Palestinians. Although some Arab nations have allocated funds for humanitarian purposes to alleviate human suffering, the U.S. government is threatening the financial existence of any Jordanian or other bank that dares to transfer this assistance into Palestine.

There is no way to predict what will happen in Palestine, but it would be a tragedy for the international community to abandon the hope that a peaceful coexistence of two states in the Holy Land is possible. Like Egypt and all other Arab nations before the Camp David Accords of 1978, and the Palestine Liberation Organization before the Oslo peace agreement of 1993, Hamas has so far refused to recognize the sovereign state of Israel as legitimate, with a right to live in peace. This is a matter of great concern to all of us, and the international community needs to probe for an acceptable way out of this quagmire. There is no doubt that Israelis and Palestinians both want a durable two-state solution, but depriving the people of Palestine of their basic human rights just to punish their elected leaders is not a path to peace.

(Former President Jimmy Carter is founder of the Carter Center, a nonprofit organization working for peace and health worldwide. )

How else could I buy food and clothes?

By Tom

At Al Quds Open University Campus in Tubas we met Raed and Firas, aged 22 and 21 yrs old. They both work in the fields and packing houses of the Jordan Valley settlements to be able to survive and pay for their education. On the days that they work, they get up at 3.00am, to be bussed through the mountains and checkpoints to the Jordan Velley settlements with about 500 settlement workers from the town. They are able to do this as they have a permit to enter the Jordan Valley supplied by the Israeli settler they are working for. They work from 6.00am – 2.00pm, and for this they receive less than 5 pounds ($9.00) per day.

Raed works in Beit Ariva Settlement near Jericho. Even with a Jordan Valley permit he never knows if he will be allowed through the checkpoint at Humra or not. He is frequently searched and two weeks ago was just turned back for no reason. He picks and packs tomatoes, grapes, chilli peppers and other fruit and vegetables for Carmel Agrexco – the largest Israeli exporter to the UK. All the workers there are Palestinian or Thai – they are told not to talk to each other and have no common language that enables them to do so. The settlers are always armed, and they see them only when they are giving them work instructions.

Faed and Firas were happy for us to film them and report the information they gave us. I checked this with them carefully for fear that they could loose their jobs or face other repercussions. Faed’s response was “What else can they do to us?”

Firas is on the Student Council at the Al Quds Open University in Tubas, which was set up in 2001 to enable students to attend university without having to pass through numerous checkpoints. Students work from home, or come to the campus when they are able to. We met with the student council and they told us that 7 students from the University have been killed by the Israeli Army and 35 arrested – one of which was a girl.

Of 1,500 students, 230 come from the Jordan Valley. They are often stopped of delayed at the checkpoints on their way to the University, and this becomes far worse at exam time.

In 2001, the Army came into the University and caused a lot of damage inside the building, and they often block the gate to the University and stop the students from getting in. This last happened 5 days before our visit.

This Univsity is desperately short of money and has no library. They are looking for another acedemic institution to sponsor a subscription to an online library, as this is the only way many of the students could get access to the books they need.

http://brightonpalestine.org/blog/?p=22

Settlers Assult Humans Rights Workers in Hebron – Soldiers Refuse to Intervene

Graffiti of the Kach party slogan sprayed on a Palestinian home in Hebron. Kach is a Jewish terrorist organisation banned in Israel and the US. Photo from Jan. 2005

May 6, 2006: At 2:30 PM, six settlers in their 30s, with white kippas (One settler had the Kach symbol, a fist inside of a Star of David, on his kippa.) approached Mary, a 75 year old international HRW (Human Rights Worker) sitting at the top of the Tel Rumeida hill 70 meters from the Tel Rumeida settlement. An Israeli male HRW, age 21, went over immediately and sat next to Mary. They surrounded the HRWs and asked questions aggressively, such as “Where are you from?” “What are you doing here?” “What, you like Arabs?” They were also cursing them.

The oldest settler, approximately 40 years old, got close to their faces and whispered “I like to kill Arabs. I like to kill Arabs.” Then another settler punched the male HRW, who was still sitting down, in the face. At that point, the soldier located 6 meters away approached but did and said nothing.

The oldest settler grabbed Mary’s purse off of her that was strapped to her body, threw it on the ground and kicked it 10 meters away. The Israeli HRW got up and picked up the purse. He began to return, then a settler came and kicked his right leg very hard from the side.

At this point the soldier told the settlers to leave the HRWs alone. The settlers spat on both HRWs repeatedly. The settlers cursed the HRWs in Hebrew. The soldier hugged the settler and said “I understand.”

10 minutes later the HRW called the police and told them of the attack. The police said “come to the police station and file a complaint.” He told them that he had no way to get to the police station as it is inside the settlement. Then they said that a patrol car was on its way and he could speak to them when it arrives. HRWs waited there for 1 and 1/2 hours but no police car came to the area at all. Then he called the police station again to ask why they had not come. The police answered that a patrol car came and saw that everything was ok and left.