Villagers of Bil’in will hold a demonstration against the wall which annexes village land into the Modi’in Elite settlement.
In Beit Sira villagers will hold a demonstration against the annexation barrier that will mean the loss of land to the Makabim settlement.
Both Bil’in and Beit Sira demonstrations will start after midday prayers, heading off from the villages mosques.
This Friday Salem villagers will be joined by Israeli and international human rights activists, to try to complete the plowing near Scully’s Farm in an attempt to avoid the recent heavy settler violence that the villagers have been the victims of.
Last Shabbat(Sabbath) Salem villager Saber Shtaya was taken to hospital after being brutally attacked by settlers.
For more information call:
Beit Sira -Mansur 0545420464
Bil’in – Abdullah 0547-258-210
Salem –Arik Ascherman (Rabbis for Human Rights) 050-5607034
ISM media office at 02-2971824
Wednesday was a quiet day in which I caught up with sleep lost to jetlag and fixed my email setup. On Thursday there was a demo in Beit Sira that we went to. It was Land Day, which commemorates a 1976 uprising of Palestinian citizens of Israel. The idea was to plant trees in the land of the village. This was unsuccessful because of the fully tooled up riot squad of Israeli soldiers that blocked our path. The most mild of pushing on their huge plexi-glass shields led to a full-on battering session.
Friday, of course, was the regular Bil’in demonstration. It was great to be back! Spirits were high and there was a good attendance. The Israeli anarchists were there in force as always. Also there were a lot of folk from Gush Shalom this week. The village committee’s plan was to use a large metal frame as a ramp to be able to get over the gate in the fence. A good attempt was made at this, but the soldiers were particularly nasty this week and lashed out almost immediately to stop this bridge building attempt. Can’t let the Palestinians into their own land now can we? The usual beatings and usage of “less lethal” weaponry on unarmed demonstrators ensued.
That night, myself along with two others from ISM stayed overnight in the Bil’in outpost, which was fun. It was a nice camping trip – it’s good to be outdoors in the fresh air! We sat around the fire with guys from the village, learned some Arabic and drank loads of sweet tea. About 7 in the morning we were woken up by the sound of an off-road vehicle pulling away. M. had seen them and said that it was soldiers who peeked in the door of the outpost to watch us sleeping. Furthermore they had apparently done the same thing three times that night!
Raining outside, though weather was warm yesterday. Training for new ISM folk tomorrow.
Must sleep. Bed soon.
***
The ISM training was yesterday and today. We had about eight new recruits, so it was a pretty good weekend session. At the end of today, we were planning how to spread ourselves around the regions that ISM covers and there was a really good vibe. We have some good activists here now and I am feeling more confident. The majority of us here now are British, I think. Mansour jokes that it is a British occupation of ISM (like there used to be a Swedish occupation).
This morning we went to a legal training session organised by the Public Committee Against Torture in Israeli (PCATI). It was a very useful and interesting session, and folk from ISM (including the new trainees), IWPS, the Tel Rumeida Project and CPT were there amongst others. Two Israeli lawyers gave us briefings on how Israeli military law applies to Palestinians in the occupied territories (the first session) and the rights of us as internationals in the occupied territories (the second session). The two lawyers are brilliant, committed people and they do loads of work for Palestinians and international activists like us supporting them. The main point that came across was that although Israel claims to uphold a fair, equal rule of law that governs the Palestinians in the occupied territories, in reality the military is the law and what they say goes. The Palestinians are subject to a whole slew of military orders, which are only written in Hebrew and are hard for the public to access. It’s a really nightmarish system. And it is an apartheid system too, because the Jewish settlers who live in the occupied territories are not subject to these military orders, rather they are governed by regular Israeli law which is far more lenient and accountable. Just one example of this – Israelis (and internationals) arrested in the occupied territories have to be brought before a judge for the initial hearing within 24 hours, but Palestinians will not see a judge for eight days. Furthermore, since this judge is a uniformed military officer, this hearing is simply a formality in which one part of the military asks another part of the military to extend the arrest. There are lots of examples of things like this, but the whole thing amounts to a system of apartheid, whose main aim is to ultimately to make the Palestinians leave their homes.
I might go to Hebron at some point this week to help the Tel Rumeida Project, as the folk there are very tired by the sound of it.
The family of a British cameraman shot dead by an Israeli soldier claimed yesterday that both the Foreign Office and the Israeli authorities had obstructed their search for justice. James Miller, 34, was killed by a single shot while making a documentary in the Gaza strip about Palestinian children.
At an inquest opening yesterday in London, TV producer Daniel Edge told how he was with Mr Miller on May 2 2003, and described his desperate attempts to save the cameraman. The four-strong TV crew were on their final day of filming. Clutching a white flag with a torch shone on to it, they had approached the Israeli soldiers, calling out: “Hello, we’re British journalists.” Shots were fired, and Mr Miller fell, fatally wounded. Mr Edge told the inquest how he had begged the soldiers for help for his friend.
The jury of five women and five men heard that Mr Miller, reporter Saira Shah, and interpreter Abdul Rahman Abdullah were fired upon as they approached the soldiers on foot to ask to leave the dangerous area where they had been filming. They had spent 16 days in the Gaza Strip on a documentary for US network HBO about Palestinian children in the Rafah refugee camp. It had been the first visit to Palestine for Mr Miller, who came from Braunton in Devon.
On the night, the crew left their equipment in a nearby Palestinian house as the trio walked, in flak jackets and helmets, towards members of the Israeli Defence Force in their armoured personnel carrier, or APC. Mr Edge, from Badby, Northamptonshire, was standing yards away, on the house veranda. Mr Miller was shining a torch on to a white flag held by Mr Abdullah when the IDF opened fire. On the second shot, Mr Miller was hit in the front of his neck; fragments of bullet were later found embedded in his blue flak jacket.
In an emotional state giving evidence at St Pancras coroner’s court, Mr Edge said: “I heard Abdul shouting, it seemed he was crying in pain – I thought he had been shot in the arms or legs. I heard Saira shouting ‘He’s injured, he’s injured, please don’t shoot’. And then I heard Abdul shouting ‘He’s injured’. It was at that point I realised James had been shot, possibly badly injured, because he was silent.”
Following the death, the Miller family were determined any local postmortem should be attended by an independent expert, such as a Home Office pathologist. In written evidence one of Mr Miller’s sisters alleged the British ambassador, Sherrard Cowper-Coles, told her it would be a waste of money to have a British pathologist – even though the family wanted to ascertain the nature of the wound, and gather other forensic evidence. According to a contemporaneous note of the phone conversation made by Anne Waddington, a barrister, he was dismissive: “I asked what was his reluctance … He said it would be a waste of taxpayers’ money.”
Mrs Waddington, whose father-in-law is the former Tory home secretary David Waddington, told the inquest another British official, Piers Cazalet, also asked the family to drop the demand : “He told me it would be obstructive and cause a delay [if I protested].” She went on: “There was extreme pressure on us, and on Sophy [Mr Miller’s widow], within hours of her husband being killed, to agree to a postmortem without any independent observer.” Mrs Miller told the jury Israel had tried to “grind down” the family with delays and broken promises “in the hope that we wouldn’t go on”.
In court Mrs Miller named the soldier she believed killed her husband as a first lieutenant who fired from the APC 100 metres away from Mr Miller.
A Palestinian man has drowned in the West Bank after getting entangled in the separation barrier’s barbed wire during flash floods, medical officials and witnesses say.
According to witnesses, heavy rains followed by flash foods washed away two brothers, Eyad and Raad Taher, in the West Bank village of Bil’in early on Sunday morning.
The two men, from the village of Bait Annan in the West Bank, were passing through Bil’in on their way to Ram Allah via an Israeli-built road connecting the two areas, when they were washed away by the flood waters, witnesses said.
They got out of their vehicle, but were swept by the strong current in the direction of the barrier.
Raad Taher was rescued by villagers, but his brother Eyad, 26, was found unconscious, caught in the razor-wire of the barrier that separates Bil’in from nearby Jewish settlements.
Poor roads
Palestinians blamed the Israelis for poor road planning. The road runs through a valley between two mountains.
Palestinians say the road is aimed at serving the expansion of the nearby settlement of Beitar Illit without taking into consideration the possibility of flooding.
The earthworks of the barrier, whose route was ruled illegal by the International Court of Justice in July 2004, acted as a dam, flooding the poorly built road between the villages of Bil’in and Safa, west of Ram Allah, villagers said.
“We asked the army to allow us to drain the water, but they refused, saying they were worried the fence would collapse”
Mohammad Khatib, a member of the Popular Committee Against the Separation Fence in Bil’in, said: “Placing the road here in such a low area with no drains caused the water to pile up so high that it covered 15m of our olive trees.”
Villagers also blamed the Israeli army, who they say prevented their search party from using their equipment to try to drain the flooded area.
Residents say they were not allowed to dig a ditch next to the fence in order to drain water.
Khatib, said: “We asked the army to allow us to drain the water, and even the Israeli rescue services agreed but the army refused, saying they were worried the fence would collapse.”
Eido Minkovsky, an Israeli army spokesperson, said: “All the claims that we didn’t allow the forces to act are incorrect.”
Fence at fault
Khatib said: “Because of the planned route of the fence, which is being built according to the expansion plans of nearby Jewish settlements, this man was killed.
“There was a humanitarian situation and lives at stake, and they refused to let us through. So how will it be when the fence is completed? We hold the occupation completely responsible for this.”
Bil’in is a small Palestinian farming village 4km east of the 1949 Armistice Line.
The planned route of the West Bank barrier comes within four metres of the last house in Bil’in and is set to take more than half of the village’s land to make room for settlement expansion.
A report published by human rights group B’tselem recently stated that the wall’s route through the village was not chosen based on correct security claims, but rather was politically motivated and designed to incorporate illegal expansion of nearby settlements.
At 2.10 pm, Eyad Tahar was found dead, drowned in a flood near the annexation barrier. His body was found trapped on the annexation barrier’s razor wire. A valley between Bil’in and Safa (west of Ramallah) has been flooded near the construction of the illegal barrier there, which prevented the water from draining creating a pool which according to villagers reaches over the level of the olive trees.
Eyad and Raad Taha from Beit Annan were on there way to work in Rammallah when they were washed away by the flood water. Eyad’s brother Raad was found unconscious shortly after and is currently in hospital in Biddu. Israeli military prevented the Palestinian rescue party from using a bulldozer to drain the water.
Dr. Khaled Ayash, from the Carmel hospital in Biddu, who examined the body said that the cause of Eyad’s death was drowning.
Pictures are available on the ISM website:
www.palsolidarity.org
