Israel to boycott inquest into death of British peace activist shot in Gaza

From The Guardian
Monday April 10, 2006

Israel will boycott an inquest opening today in London which will investigate the death of a British peace activist shot dead in broad daylight by an Israeli soldier.

Tom Hurndall, 22, died after being shot in Rafah, Gaza, while trying to lead Palestinian children to safety after the soldier opened fire from a nearby observation tower in April 2003.

His mother, Jocelyn, told the Guardian she is angry Israel is not cooperating as she still has many questions about how her son came to be shot: “We are hoping the coroner will address the culture of impunity in which the soldier was functioning and the enormous lack of cooperation we have experienced from the Israelis.”

Mrs Hurndall said that only when the family went to Israel and for seven weeks pressured the authorities and raised the case in the media did any sort of investigation begin.

Her solicitor, Imran Khan, said Israel’s boycott of the inquest is disrespectful: “It shows their disdain for the whole process.”

Mr Hurndall was one of three British civilians killed, allegedly deliberately, within seven months by Israeli forces. In all three cases Israel claimed the Britons were killed after their troops came under fire. In two cases the claims were not accepted at inquests.

Ian Hook was killed in November 2002 and in December last year an inquest jury ruled that he had been unlawfully killed and the victim of a “deliberate killing”. The UN said that Hook, 50, who led a house reconstruction programme in Jenin camp, was sitting in his office when he was hit by several bullets.

Last week an inquest jury found that cameraman James Miller was unlawfully killed by an Israeli soldier who shot him dead in May 2003, just weeks after Tom Hurndall was shot, and just a mile away.

Like last week, the inquest will be held at St Pancras coroners court, north London, before Andrew Reid.

Mrs Hurndall said: “It was deliberate. Tom was targeted, intentionally. I think the soldier was shooting to kill.”

Unlike the other two Britons, an Israeli soldier has been jailed for eight year for Mr Hurndall’s manslaughter. Sergeant Taysir Hayb admitted he was lying when he said the peace activist was carrying a gun, but said he was under orders to open fire even on unarmed people.

He told the military court that after shooting Mr Hurndall he had reported it to his commander: “I told him that I did what I’m supposed to: anyone who enters a firing zone must be taken out. [The commander] always says this.”

Mrs Hurndall’s fears were stoked when the soldier said at his court case: “The [Israeli army] fires freely in Rafah.”

Mr Hurndall was in Israel with a peace activist group, the International Solidarity Movement, and was wearing a bright orange top given to volunteers when he was shot. He was in a coma for nine months before he died.

His mother said the lack of reaction from the top of the British government bothered her: “I’m shocked that Tony Blair has never publicly denounced the shooting of Tom. I think we have to question our relationship with Israel if they are not going to show themselves to be transparent and cooperative about the killing of British citizens and Palestinians.”

B’Tselem, the Israeli human rights organisation, said that since 2000 1,737 Palestinians had been killed while not participating in fighting. The army has investigated only 131 cases of wounding and killing, which has led to 12 trials.

Israel says the fact it convicted a soldier for Mr Hurndall’s death shows it is serious about the rule of law applying to soldiers.

A spokesman from Israel’s London embassy said: “We regret the tragic death of Tom Hurndall. A due legal process has been completed in Israel and a soldier convicted of the killing and jailed. A full account has been presented to the family and the British government. The legal procedure in Israel has been completed.”

British peace activist was ‘intentionally killed’

From Guardian Unlimited
Monday April 10, 2006

A jury has ruled that a British activist shot while acting as a human shield in the Gaza Strip was “intentionally killed”. Tom Hurndall, from north London, was wearing an orange jacket to mark him out as a peace activist.

The 22-year-old had apparently been trying to move young Palestinian children from the line of fire when he was hit in the head. He was left in a coma and died nine months later.

Speaking after the hearing, the Hurndall family representative, Michael Mansfield QC, said they were delighted with the verdict. However, he stressed there was still work to be done.

“Make no mistake about it, the Israeli defence force have today been found culpable by this jury of murder,” he said.

The family accused the Israeli authorities of a “cover-up”, calling on the British government to take action under the Geneva convention.

They said it should investigate, and if necessary extradite the five Israeli officers they believe made up the a chain of command which led to Mr Hurndall being shot.

If this did not happen the family would consider pursuing justice through the courts. Earlier, Mr Hurndall’s mother had criticised the government for not speaking out about her son’s death.

“We are astonished to this day that Tony Blair has never publicly condemned the shooting of Tom,” Joyce Hurndall said. “It is necessary for the Israelis to hear condemnation from him.”

She said the foreign secretary, Jack Straw, had never seemed to “expect an apology” from the Israelis over the shooting.

Initially, the Israeli army denied a soldier from an army watchtower had shot Mr Hurndall, but witnesses at the demonstration in the Palestinian town of Rafah said he had been hit by a rifle bullet while trying to shield the children.

Following a hard-fought campaign by the peace activist’s family, ex-sergeant Taysir Hayb was convicted at an Israeli military court of manslaughter and sentenced to eight years in prison last year.

He was the first soldier to be convicted over the death of a foreign national during recent Israeli-Palestinian violence.

The inquest heard how Mr Hurndall, who had been taking photographs in Iraq before going to the Gaza Strip with the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) activist group, had contemplated what it would be like to be hit by a bullet.

Ms Hurndall said she had received an email from Tom on April 11, just hours before the shooting. He reported being “shot at, gassed and chased” by soldiers during the five days he was in Rafah and described the danger that both he and the Palestinians were facing.

She also described what she thought had been her son’s last words. Around half an hour before he was shot, he had been talking to a Palestinian man, who had been telling him how difficult life was for residents in Rafah, she told the hearing.

“Tom put his hand on his shoulder and said: ‘We want to make a difference’,” she said. “Really, those were his last words.”

Mr Hurndall’s father, Anthony, told the hearing that his son and other activists from the ISM had gone out to try and block tanks that had been shooting into houses at random.

He said Tom had seen a group of ten to 15 children playing on a mound of sand, and noticed that bullets were hitting the ground between them. The children fled, but several were overcome with fear and could not move.

“Tom went to take one girl out of the line of fire, which he did successfully, but when he went back, as he knelt down [to collect another], he was shot.”

Mr Hurndall said the Israelis had initially admitted someone had been shot, but claimed it had been a gunman who had opened fire first.

After photographs of Tom having been shot in the head emerged, the Israeli military later admitted that Hayb – a sentry who had won prizes for marksmanship – had shot him using telescopic sights.

“They just lied continuously,” Mr Hurndall’s father said. “It was a case of them shooting civilians and then making up a story. And they were not used to being challenged.”

There had been a “general policy” for soldiers to be able to shoot civilians in that area without fear of reprisals, he added.

Although Hayb had been sentenced, the issue of the “culture” within the Israeli army had not been addressed, he said. “This goes much higher up the chain.”

The ten-strong jury at the inquest into the death of Mr Hurndall, a Manchester Metropolitan University student, also expressed its “dismay with the lack of cooperation from the Israeli authorities”.

Mr Hurndall was shot a mile away from where the award-winning cameraman James Miller had died three weeks beforehand. Last week, a jury ruled the Israeli defence force had deliberately killed the 34-year-old during the incident in May 2003.

The coroner, Dr Andrew Reid, said he would be writing to the attorney general to see whether there was any further legal action that could be taken in relation to the deaths.

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006

The Earth is Closing in on Us

By Leila eL Haddad
The shells keep falling. They’ve gotten inside my head, so that its not just my house shaking but but my brain throbbing. It’s like someone is banging a gong next to my ear every few minutes; sometimes 5 times a minute, like last night. And just when I savor a few moments of silence, it starts again as if to say “you’re not going to get away that easily.”

We went to sleep to the rattling of our windows and invasive pounding and after-echo of the shells. We sleep as they fall. We pray fajir, and they fall again. We wake, and they are still falling. When they are closer, when they fall in Shija’iya east of Gaza City, they make my stomach drop. And I want to hide, but I don’t know where.

The Earth is Closing in on Us.

That’s the thing about occupation-it invades even your most private of spaces. And while the shells were falling inside my head, they also killed little Hadil Ghabin today.

A shell landed on her home in Beit Lahiya, shattering her helpless body and injuring 5 members of her family, including Hadil’s pregnant mother, Safia, and her 19-year-old sister.

My headeaches seem inconsequential when I think of little Hadil. Sometimes people here say they prefer death to this existence; you’ll frequently here at funerals: “Irta7at”…she’s more comfortable now anyhow-what was there to live for here?”

The Earth is squeezing us
I wish we were its wheat
so we could die and live again.

That has become our sad reality. Death provides relief.

Sometimes it feels like we are all in some collective torture room; who is playing God with us this night, I wonder? When I look up into the sky, and hear the shells, or see the faceless helicopter gunships cruising intently through the moonlit sky, I wonder, do they see me?

And when the shells start falling again, I can’t help but imagine some beside-himself with boredom 18-year-old on the border, lighting a cig or SMSing his girlfriend back in Tel Aviv “just a few more rounds to go hon.….give it another whirl, Ron, its been 2 minutes already.”

Sometimes, when I’m on edge, I might just yell out and wave my arms at them.

Do they hear me?

We decided to escape this evening to my father’s farm in central Gaza, where we roasted potatoes and warmed tea on a small mangal, as we listened to thikr about the Prophet on the occasion of his mawlid from a nearby mosque, under the ominous roars of fighter jets, patrolling the otherwise lonely skies above.

“Where are you heading off to?” asked Osama, the shopkeeper downstairs. “Off to the farm. We’re suffocating,” I replied, Yousuf tugging at my arm… “mama…Yallah! Yallah!”

“Wallah Laila, we’re not just suffocating…we’re asphyxiating. I feel I can’t breathe anymore. And my head is pounding and pounding. All I hear is BOOM boom now.”

The Earth is Closing in on Us.

And little Hadil is dead.

The shells have been falling non stop

By Leila al Haddad from Gaza City

The shells have been falling non stop
we are being silenced and consigned to the realm of the irrelevant,
the over and done with
they are nailing the coffin on Gaza.
Gaza is like a neglected prison in zoo
where the zookeepers turn off the faucets
cast it aside.
occasionally, when the animals get really hungry,
they poke and prod at them
and throw them a bone.

al-Aqsa Martyr Brigades Issues Press Release

1. Press Release from al-Aqsa Martyr Brigades
2. Israel Denies Work Permits to Protesting Villages
3. Beit Sira Demonstrates Despite Threats from Israeli Civil Administration
4. Hebron Anticipates Escalating Violence over Passover
5. Just another Gaza Friday
6. ‘Bite’ Activist Arrested
7. Farmers in Nablus Prevented from Working their Land by Both Settlers and Military
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1. Press Release from al-Aqsa Martyr Brigades
April 9, 2006

For a PDF of the Arabic Version see: https://www.palsolidarity.org/main/2006/04/09/a-press-release-from-al-aqsa-martyer-troops/

Translation:
From the Koran: “Allah forbids you not, with regard to those who fight you not for (your) Faith nor drive you out of your homes, from dealing kindly and justly with them: for Allah loveth those who are just.”

To the great Palestinian people in whose blood is written the symbol of steadfastness and resistance. You who have broken the conspiracies with the stone of your steadfastness. You who have been a thorn in the side of the occupation and a dagger in the chest of the spies and collaborators. While the Israeli attacks continue against our people as does the criminal planning in the region and the politics of facts on the ground by building the separation apartheid wall, confiscating more and more land to expand the settlements, and separating the Palestinian people into 3 cantons. Our people in Bil’in, Beit Sira, Abud, and other Palestinian communities face this oppression by continuing a peaceful popular Intifada against the occupation. The occupier uses violence and every kind of weapon to stop these demonstrations. Here our friends from all over the world standing in solidarity with our people. To stop the crimes of the oppressor they participate in the popular demonstrations. They send our message to their people and tell them what is happening to the Palestinian people.

We in the al- Aqsa Martyr Brigades issue these points:

1- We give our support to the international solidarity and the peace activists, and we are taking care that they are not affected in anyway or by anyone.
2- We call the Danish people to continue their solidarity with our people and call on their government to apologize to the Muslims.
3- We call all the countries around the world to stand by their responsibilities by taking effective steps to force Israel to implement international law and by preventing Israel’s criminal planning in the region.

The general leadership of the al-Aqsa Brigades in Palestine.

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2. Israel Denies Work Permits to Protesting Villages
April 9th, 2006

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

The Israeli Civil Administration has threatened to deny workers in West Bank villages permits to work in Israel if their demonstrations against the occupation continue. Workers in Bil’in, Beit Sira, Beit Likya, and Harbata have received threats, but the villages have continued their demonstrations regardless.

Last week a member of the Civil Administration calling himself “Samir”, phoned Mahmud Samara Abu Ala, a 60 year-old merchant from Bil’in, and told him “not to bother” trying to renew his work permit. Mahmud asked if the Civil Administration was systematically denying permits to people in the village and Samir replied that they would continue to deny permits as long as the demonstrations continue.

Before the Friday, April 8th demonstration in Beit Sira, a member of the Civil Administration called the head of the village council, Ali Hassan Mahmud Abu Safeya, in to tell him that the Administration would stop giving permission to villagers to work in Israel. Thirty families are at least partially supported by locals who work in Israel.

This threat of systematic denial is consistent with the army’s practice of collective punishment. Israel, as an occupying power, is subject to the Geneva Convention, which states that collective punishments are a war crime. Article 33 of the Fourth Convention states that “collective penalties and likewise all measures of intimidation or of terrorism are prohibited.” By threatening the villages with the denial of work permits, Israel is attempting to intimidate the villages into stopping the demonstrations.

According to Israel’s Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Moshe Ya’alon, the overriding goal of such permit denials is to phase out Palestinian workers from Israel. “The goal is to stop Palestinians from working in Israel by 2008” he said on March 10th 2006.

As Palestinians are increasingly being denied work permits, Israel is continuing to make it harder for a Palestinian state to be economically viable. The apartheid wall is annexing Palestinian land from farmers, making it impossible for some to access their land. Recently, Israeli banks have cut ties with Palestinian banks in a further attempt to harm the Palestinian economy.

Each month since the elections, Israel refuses to give back $50 million of Palestinian tax funds they withhold. International governments have also been cutting off funds to the Hamas led Palestinian government in what Prime Minster Ismail Haniyeh is calling “blackmail”.

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3. Beit Sira Demonstrates Despite Threats from Israeli Civil Administration
April 9th, 2006

At 1:30 this past Friday, the Popular Committee Against the Wall and Settlements in the Palestinian village of Beit Sira, just west of Ramallah held a demonstration against the apartheid barrier being constructed on the village’s land. This was all despite recent threats from the Israeli civil administration to withdraw permits to work in Israel from villagers if demonstrations continue.

The march of about 100, was held by villagers and accompanied by Israeli and international supporters. It marched through the village and down a road adjacent to the nearby illegal Jewish settlement of Makkabim, singing and chanting. All along the road we could see olive trees that had been cut down to stumps and replanted there by the military. They had previously been uprooted from another part of the village land where they plan to build the annexation barrier.

At the head of the demonstration, Palestinian and Israeli activists symbolically chained themselves together as an illustration of the imprisonment of the villagers due to the wall and settlement. About 15 minutes after they had set off they met a solid line of Israeli Border Police in Riot Gear blocking the road and preventing the demonstration from proceeding. The Palestinians reacted to this in a completely non-violent fashion. They sat down in the road and held some speeches and some interviews with the press. Some of the border Police tried to provoke the youth of the demonstration by moving around the small peaceful crowd armed, as usual, with fully-automatic machine guns.

Their provocation failed to provoke the response that meant they would have been allowed under Israeli military rule to open fire with rubber-coated bullets. Instead, when the interviews and speeches were over, the villagers calmly ended the demonstration, walking hand-in-hand to bring the demonstration to a close without being attacked by the Israeli soldiers, as has happened in past demonstrations.

For photos see:
https://www.palsolidarity.org/main/2006/04/09/beit-sira-demonstrates-despite-threats-from-israeli-civil-administration/

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4. Hebron Anticipates Escalating Violence over Passover
April 8th, 2006

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Fears that settler violence against Palestinian residents will increase over the Jewish holidays came to a head as Israeli settlers took over a Palestinian house on Thursday. The army has refused to remove them until the squatting has been challenged in the High Court and IDF soldiers have been stationed near the house to protect the settlers.

Palestinians in Hebron are anxious that settler violence may increase over Passover as settler youths are off school and many people will be visiting the Hebron settlements. There is a trend of increasing attacks on Palestinians over holiday periods.

The house is close to the Avraham Avinu settlement near the Hebron wholesale market. In January 2006 the IDF issued eviction notices to settlers who had been squatting there since 2001. The eviction prompted rioting (see www.telrumeidaproject.org/riots.html) by settlers throughout Tel Rumeida and Hebron’s old city where masked settlers stoned Palestinians, threw paint bombs and looted Palestinian homes in full view of the IDF. Eventually a deal was reached that the shops would be evacuated but that settlers could return after the Hebron municipality’s lease ran out. However, on April 4th the Israeli attorney general ruled that the IDF deal was illegal and the settlers would not be able to reoccupy the market. Local Palestinians fear that this move, combined with Passover, will lead to further violence by settlers.

Today in Tel Rumeida, on the first Shabbat of the Passover school holidays, two Palestinian were assaulted by settlers on Schohada Street. One man was punched by a group of settlers and a man had stones thrown at him while returning to his house.

International volunteers from ISM and the Tel Rumeida Project plan to maintain a presence in the area over Passover.

For more information contact Tom on 0542363265 or ISM Media office on 022971824

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5. Just another Gaza Friday
April 9, 2006
By Laila El-Hadda (http://a-mother-from-gaza.blogspot.com/)

I’ve always loved Fridays in Gaza. In the mornings, save for the lone garbage collector futilely sweeping the abandoned streets and Municipality park, littered with plastic cups, watermelon seeds, and strangled straws from the night before, the hustle and bustle of the city comes to a standstill.

It is a serene if lethargic time, an escape from the sea of chaos, uncertainty and violence that grips our lives each waking day and night. For a few hours, things seem ordinary in a place where ordinary is an illusion. And it doesn’t seem like anything can disrupt those moments, as if some force is saying to the madness that envelopes us: “come back another hour!”

Slowly, the streets come to life again as evening takes hold. This is Yousuf’s favorite time. He likes to go out to the balcony, as we did yesterday, and “people watch”-just take in the incongruent and cacophonous sites and sounds of another Friday in Gaza.

In the park in front of us, children boisterously played football, women licked ice cream cones and chatted, and wedding motorcades ( “zaffit sayyarat”), which, no matter what the season or situation, you can always except to hear on Thursday and Friday evenings like clockwork-made their way to beachside hotels and lounges. They tirelessly honked their horns in sync with live wedding dabke music, blaring out from portable speakers or played by live for-hire bands seated in the back of rented pick-up trucks decorated with carnations.

Boys and relatives clamored for a standing space in the back of the trucks, dancing and clapping feverishly along with the music. Young children chase them down the street to join in the fun. If the wind is just right, the sky becomes a showcase of homemade kites, dancing and flirting with each other, challenging the physical bounds imposed upon this battered area’s residents, reaching to places they can only dream about, allowing them to navigate freedom, no matter how purposeless, for just a little bit.

In the distance, the ubiquitous double-thuds of artillery fire could be heard exploding a few kilometers away, increasing in number and intensity, it seemed, as the evening progressed, only to be drowned out ever-so-slightly by the cacophonous symphony of Friday blitheness, as if to say-“not today! Today, you will not steal our moment.”

The evening passes, the clock strikes midnight, and suddenly, the carriage tranforms into a pumpkin again. The magic dissipates. And 6 people are dead.

Just another Gaza Friday.

posted by Lailaumyousuf @ Saturday, April 08, 2006

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6. ‘Bite’ Activist Arrested
April 9, 2006

Adnan Ahmad Nimer, a 19 year-old activist from Beit Sira, was taken from his home last night at 2am by the Israeli military. Thirty soldiers surrounded the house, his father opened the door and the troops gathered the family into one room. They singled Adnan out, took him outside, handcuffed and blindfolded him and took him away.

Adnan has been active in the nonviolent demonstrations that occur weekly in Beit Sira to protest against the apartheid wall and the continuing annexation of Palestinian land. In the March 24th demonstration, in self defense Adnan bit a soldier’s finger as the soldier beat him to the ground. In response to the bite, soldiers attacked Adnan with clubs, breaking two front teeth.

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7. Farmers in Nablus Prevented from Working their Land by Both Settlers and Military
April 10th, 2006

Farmers in Salem, near Nablus, were joined on Friday the 7th of April by Israeli and international human rights workers to protect against further settler violence. Earlier in the week a 68 year-old villager was beaten by settlers and required hospitalization. Rabbis for Human Rights, members of the Kibbutzim movement, and internationals accompanied the farmers in an effort to enable the farmers to plow their land, tend to their olive trees and graze their sheep free from harm.

Fifty farmers and human rights workers took to the hills mid morning and were met almost immediately by a settler security truck. Two settlers blocked a Palestinian tractor from accessing a nearby field by parking their van on the track. The settlers were refusing to move when about five army vehicles and an Israeli police car arrived (further blocking the road and supporting the settlers). A second tractor arrived and was similarly blocked. When some villagers tried to circumvent the army and settler van in their tractor one of the settlers stood in front of it. Despite the repeated efforts of villagers and their supporters we were unable to get tractor access to the field in order to plow. The two settlers generally harrased the farmers driving through flocks of grazing sheep and continuously arguing. After a few hours (approx 1:30pm) we heard word of house occupations in Nablus and left. Some of the Israeli demonstrators were planning to stay as long as possible to observe army and settlers and help with farm work.