25th March 2016 | International Solidarity Movement, al-Khalil team | Ni’lin, occupied West Bank
On Friday 25th March, Palestinians, Israeli activists and foreign activists alike took part in the weekly demonstration to oppose the apartheid wall that surrounds the town of Ni’lin and has taken much of the villages land. The demonstration which started peacefully was cut short by large amounts of tear gas being fired upon the demonstrators, along with sponge bullets and rubber coated metal bullets; the standard excessive force that is always used by the Israeli army.
Peaceful demonstrators marching forward
The demonstration began after noon prayer, with the crowd walking along the local roads, chanting songs of defiance. Within minutes the first rounds of tear gas were fired by the Israeli army who had made their way deep into the Palestinian territory. The first shots were fired high into the sky, landing in front and around the demonstrators, this caused slight pandemonium and the demonstrators were forced to fall back. As the protestors were running, seeking clear air to breath amidst the heavy plumes of tear gas, the army began firing their frequently used and at times deadly high velocity tear gas canisters. These canisters were not fired in the arching fashion in which they should be, instead being fired directly at disbursing activists from all sides. The canister being used are the same type as the ones responsible for the serious wounding of fellow ISM activist Tristan Anderson in Ni’lin who suffered cognitive disfunction and physical injuries after he was shot by the Israeli forces from close range.
The Israeli forces and peaceful protestersAn activist and a medic amidst heavy clouds of tear gas
As demonstrators continued to pull back the Israeli forces continued to fire directly at the crowds rather than upwards, choosing to ignore the correct protocol for use of this deadly weapon. From this point on, some of the local Palestinian youths began to throw stones which prompted Israeli army to begin using sponge and rubber coated steel bullets.
A red crescent medic shows the lethal tear gas canisters that are being used
As the activists were driven back, the only remaining resistance was the stone throwing children. While soldiers on the front line fired upon them a different section of the army began systematically firing high velocity tear gas canisters into the surrounding homes of the area.
Two ISM activists at the demonstration were driven into one of the nearby homes amidst the aggression and counted seven tear gas canisters land inside the families property. The Red Crescent ambulance service was also required to evacuate and treat another two Palestinian families due to heavy tear gas inhalation inside their families residencies.
The move by the Israeli army to fire on the houses of the local towns people is a strategy to create decent amidst activists and the locals, hoping that they will end the demonstrations via a certain style of collective punishment.
One Palestinian was treated for injuries sustained from being shot with a rubber coated steel bullet while seven people, including women and children were treated for severe tear gas inhalation whilst inside their family homes.
24th March 2016 | International Solidarity Movement, al-Khalil team | Hebron, occupied West Bank
On the 24th March, Israeli settlers from the illegal settlements in occupied al-Khalil (Hebron) celebrated the holiday of ‘Purim’. The settlers marched through the Old City of al-Khalil, starting off from the spot where just a few hours before, Israeli forces gunned down two Palestinian youth and then executed one of them in cold blood.
In the morning, Israeli forces shot and severely injured two Palestinian youth in the Tel Rumeida neighbourhood and then left them lying on the ground seriously injured while Israeli medics were attending to a slightly injured Israeli soldier. Palestinian ambulances, that are not allowed to drive on this road that is only for settlers use, were prevented by Israeli forces from reaching the injured Palestinian youth. In a video published by B’Tselem, a soldier can clearly be seen shooting one of the youth in the head at point-blank range even though he is lying on the ground and is not posing a threat to anyone.
Only a few hours after this extrajudical execution, settlers started their joyous march, dressed up in costumes, with music blasting from a bus, dancing in the same spot where the two Palestinians were murdered in cold blood.
Illegal settlers celebrating in the exact spot where two Palestinians were murdered in cold-blood Photo credit: Youth Against Settlements
The procession of settlers then proceeded down Shuhada Street, where the main illegal Israeli settlements in the heart of the city are located, before turning towards the Ibrahimi mosque. Shuhada Street, except for a tiny strip, has been completely closed for Palestinians, who are not allowed to even walk there – unlike the illegal settlers who can walk and drive. When the march reached the vicinity of Ibrahimi mosque, Israeli forces started closing off the area to all Palestinians, physically pushing back children behind barriers and preventing Palestinians from accessing the area, even if they were residents, in order to create a space free of Palestinians for the celebrations of the settlers to take place.
Settler children. One drinking wine, one holstering a machine gun and another aiming a pistol at onlookersIsraeli settlers celebrating while Palestinians are denied walking down the streetPalestinians and Internationals are not allowed to pass
One of the settlers, of which many were dressed up in costumes, was seen in a shirt flashing a raised fist on a yellow background, which is the symbol of the ‘Kach’, a party of extremist Israeli fundamentalist settlers, deemed a terrorist group even by the Israeli government. The party was founded by Meir Kahane, who publicly called for the expulsion of Palestinians and to end culture relations between Jewish and Palestinian students. On Tuesday, two days before, during celebrations for the same holiday, the loudspeakers of the Ibrahimi mosque were mis-used to broadcast hate-speech calling for the expulsion of Palestinians from al-Khalil.
Israeli settlers with a Kahane-shirt (settler in the middle)
One of the settler children dancing on top of a bus was playing with a pistol. Even though the police realized this, they merely took the weapon from him – but then gave it back shortly adfter. If a Palestinian of any age had been seen with anything resembling a weapon, the person would likely be shot immediately.
The settlers’ celebrations kept going uninterrupted with Israeli forces ensuring that Palestinians would not cross the way of the settlers, forcing them to stay back, and even closing Ibrahimi mosque checkpoint to ensure no one would even come close.
Palestinian civilians stopped by Israeli forces after they opened the street for Palestinians again while settlers freely pass the checkpointhttps://youtu.be/tvXD1LM5P8k
Israeli forces also used the roof of a Palestinian family home in the vicinity of the mosque as a look-out point. This is just another small example of the impunity and supremacy settlers enjoy with the active support of the Israeli forces, while Palestinians are systematically humiliated, oppressed and killed in cold blood under the Israeli military occupation.
24th March 2016 | International Solidarity Movement, al-Khalil team | Hebron, occupied West Bank
On the morning of the 24th of March, around 8:30 am, two Palestinian youths, Ramzi Aziz al-Qasrawi, 21 years old, and Abed al-Fattah Yusri al-Sharif, 21 years old, were shot to death by Israeli forces after an alleged stabbing attempt in the Palestinian neighbourhood of Tel Rumeida. Tel Rumeida is also home to a large number of often violent, illegal Israeli settlers. Since the 1st November 2015, the area itself has been deemed a ‘closed military zone’ by the Israeli army which makes documenting what happens inside the area extremely difficult for anyone other than the Israeli military.
The two slain Palestinian men (photo credit maanimages)
Around 8:30 am, six gunshots were heard reverberating from the walls of the nearby buildings. Shortly after hearing the shots it was confirmed that two Palestinian youth had been shot by the occupying Israeli army near the illegal settlement of Tel Rumeida. The Palestinian Red Crescent ambulance was prevented from reaching the two men to offer medical assistance while the slightly injured soldier was seen to by Israeli medics immediately, while the Palestinian youths were left lying on the ground struggling for their lives. The denial of medical aid to Palestinians is a systematic breach of the concept of triage, that requires medics to treat the most urgent cases first.
Israeli forces treat the wounded soldier
Palestinians and international human rights activists were prevented from getting close to the scene while illegal Israeli settlers including the notoriously renowned ambulance driver Ofer, were allowed to walk freely around the two victims, heavily armed and filming from their mobile devices.
The notorious settler Ofer, who runs his own youtube channel depicting the shootings of Palestinians and who also drives an Israeli ambulance, who is not a medic and has never been seen administering first aid to any of the Palestinian victims, instead filming, laughing with soldiers and directing soldiers as to what they should be doing (even though he is in no way part of the military) was one of the first on the scene today.
Ofer in the blue shirt seen filming after the point blank execution of one of the Palestinians
An eyewitness to the shootings reported that as one of the Palestinian men lay dying on the ground, he moved and this prompted the response of one of the illegal settlers on the scene to instruct a soldier to shoot him – a request the soldier followed by shooting him in the head at point blank range. As can be seen in this video, the Palestinian man is disarmed and not posing a threat to anyone – thus making his cold-blooded murder an extrajudicial execution.
*** WARNING, the following video contains extremely graphic material. A soldier is seen executing one of the Palestinian men at 1:52 *** Video-credit: Imad Abu Shamsiya
Given the impunity that the Israeli army receives from their government regarding the killing of Palestinians, it is doubtful that charges or even an investigation will be forthcoming.
The actions taken by the Israeli army in nearly all cases of reported stabbing attempts bring into question the excessive use of force that is frequently used on Palestinians, the use of force that is not only deemed acceptable by the Israeli government and military but encouraged. With the military training that soldiers are given, one would think that the soldier would be capable of disabling the attacker rather than shooting to kill.
The knife that was found, bearing no blood
With in the last two weeks, five additional Palestinian men from the city of Hebron have also been killed by the occupying forces.
On the 14th of March, Qasem Farid Jaber (31 years old) and Ameer Fuad al-Junaidi (22 years old) were killed by Israeli Forces after allegedly opening fire towards the soldiers in the area near the illegal settlement Kiryat Arba. No evidence of this has been found and no soldiers were injured. Approximately half an hour after the slaughtering of the two young men, 18-year-old Yousif Walid Tarayra was shot to death by Israeli forces after allegedly driving forcefully toward the soldiers in his car and hitting three of them. No soldiers were reported injured.
On the 18th of March, 21-year old Mahmoud Ahmad Abu Fanunah from Hebron was killed at the Gush Etzion junction 17 kilometers from Hebron. He stepped out of his car near the junction and was shot immediately in what soldiers described as “foiling” the alleged attack. No knife was found at the scene of the murder.
On the 19th of March, 18-year-old Abdullah Muhammad al-Ajloini was shot and left to bleed to death at Queitun Checkpoint in Hebron. Witnesses said that the soldiers “showered” al-Ajlouni with bullets, adding that Israeli forces had closed all entrances to the Ibrahimi mosque in the old city of Hebron following the attack.
With condemnation coming from the global allies of Israel against Palestinians committing knife attacks, why does the international community care not to investigate the circumstances as to why in nearly all cases the Palestinian is critically wounded and predominantly left to die without medical treatment being offered? It appears that medical treatment is yet another human right denied to the Palestinians living life under occupation.
23rd March 2016 | International Solidarity Movement, al-Khalil team | Hebron, occupied West Bank
I’ve wanted to find out more about Laila since I met her on my first day here. She is the only woman storekeeper in the souk and she has a bed and breakfast here. One evening I saw her standing up to soldiers who did not want to let her pass to go home. I have seen nobody else with that firmness and confidence. Everything about her is unusual here (or indeed anywhere). When I do talk with her for this interview, I realise just how unusual.
Laila
Laila’s store sells the same beautiful traditional Palestinian products as many others in the souk but hers are the produce of a rural womens’ cooperative run by her sister Nawal. Laila serves tea and we settle down to talk. Next to me are boxes of beads, silver and stone that I rummage in idly as I sit with her.
Laila doesn’t come from a Hebron family: she was brought up in one of the hill villages and she is lyrical about her childhood there, in what must have been a tough upbringing. In winters they lived in the village, in a cave with the animals, and in summer in a tent near the summer crops: by the time she was a child her family were living on a tiny vestige of the land they had owned before 1948 and the Nakba. ‘If you think about our lives you never believe how we survive. We survive for little things. I remember when we are young our food is from the garden. We can have vegetables from the garden, we can cook, we can catch birds. It’s a simple life. We have a fire to cook, we have water from the wells or a spring. Its very hard for people but for us we like it, we enjoy it much, much better [than in the city].’
Then after 1967 with the coming of illegal settlements came the fear, and the fear was justified: over the years, either settlers or soldiers have burned down the majority of the village’s olive trees. They lost even more land in the last decade when the separation wall sliced away further areas ‘to make the road straight’ and they could no longer get to their own olive trees to crop. ‘In the beginning they let a few people, not many, enter in so they can pick olives but after they burned the trees. Now the land is empty and they took it and they use it for agriculture and they have a lot of cows in that [settler] village.’ Recently too, settlers who had been evacuated from Gaza in 2005 were resettled in new houses built near their village (so much for the munificence of the Israeli government in returning Gazan land to Palestinians). ‘It makes you very nervous and sad; you can see how they take your land. They have everything; at the same time you cannot buy even 200 metres of land to build a house for your child.’
Now Laila lives in the heart of a complex and dangerous city but it is not how she wants to live: ‘Now its more complicated the life, you have to buy everything; you have to buy the water, you have to buy the food, everything is modern and it costs more than we can pay. I miss the life before, I want my children to have the same life I had.’
The need to make a living drove Laila and her husband for three years to Jordan but she hated it so much they had to come back. Then she worked for many years for a women’s cooperative in Jerusalem until the Israeli government built the separation wall and she was unable to cross to work. That is when her new life in Hebron began: her sister Nawal asked her to take on the shop in the souk from her women’s rural cooperative, and despite Laila’s pleas that she did not speak English, Nawal left her for longer and longer periods until she was in full charge.
‘ISM, they have a girl, I never forget her, she came to the shop every day. She want to learn Arabic, I want to learn English. We start to write for each other and by her she encourage me to talk a little bit and I started to listen to people when they talk. I still learn day by day.’ Now her English is good if idiosyncratic and her entrepreneurial skills are considerable: she never pressures customers (unlike many who are desperate in these difficult times) and people like and return to her to buy.
She has recently branched out into operating a bed and breakfast in the souk (if you are ever in Hebron: https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/2148561?s=LVjE97o5). Again she had the help of ISM. When their Tel Rumeida apartment became a closed military zone some time ago, Laila put them up. ‘Then I have a friend who help me put it on airbnb. People who stay with me teach me how to use it. And after [that] I started to make lunch for people, for groups. Friend by friend they know about me and they like it and they tell other people.’This degree of independence and initiative is surprising in the very masculine environment of the souk. But then Laila volunteers something that I really wasn’t expecting: she says, ‘I like to do some thing women they cannot do it, just for man. I like to put myself in [a] place I can be strong in.’ Why is that, I ask?
‘I don’t know, she says. ‘Because maybe when I grew up with my father, always he taught me how to be strong: when you have problems, talk about them. He was really clear with me. Really, he loves me more than the boys. And all the people in the village they never say I am a girl. I am look like boy, not girl. And I continue with this. I respect the men but I never feel shy to be in places where the men have to be. Allah he cannot give them things more than he give me. He give the same. I am nine months, they are nine months. I am female is just from Allah, but I feel I can do what they do. I like it.’
Then we talk about life now in Hebron and that is when she nearly makes me cry, and when she tells me that ‘we have not to cry, we have to be patient’. Her two sons have been arrested several times. One threw stones at soldiers when he was fifteen and went to prison. The other attempted to work in Israel without a permit and was imprisoned three times, for 45 days, for three months and then for six months. Both are still unemployed but she would never want them to go abroad to work.‘When my son was arrested I feel as mothers feel and from that time I start to fight: if I see they stopped any boys or children, I have to ask: ‘why you search them? be nice with them, do it in a nice way’. Some are aggressive with me. They are very scary for us and we don’t know what they can do to us but I never care if they want to kill me: if Allah he want to take my soul, its not by their hand. It should be your time is finish. Allah he decide. This is how the mothers of children [who] got killed by the soldiers they believe their time is finish: I cannot say ‘it is haram* he has died’ because it is the will of Allah. This is how we continue. Allah gives the patience. You never believe your children will die, when you start to think you will become crazy. You never believe you can continue.’‘We have to continue by good food, by water, by air, we have to continue: its enough for us.’
23rd March 2016 | International Solidarity Movement, al-Khalil team | Hebron, occupied West Bank
The Israeli government has announced that as of Wednesday the 23rd of March, until Sunday the 27th of March, all roads leading into or out of the occupied Palestinian territories, be it either the West Bank or Gaza will be completely closed for Palestinians.
The Erez crossing, given the Israeli governments forced closure of the Rafah crossing with the outside world, is the sole remaining pedestrian crossing connecting the Gaza Strip with Israel and the occupied West Bank. It will be closed from Wednesday to Sunday morning, again leaving the population of the occupied Gaza Strip, often referred to as the ‘biggest open air prison’, as the Israeli government effectively controls all the land borders, the sea and even airspace, is thus again locked inside the walled-off territory without any possibilities to leave.
Erez crossing
Checkpoints connecting the occupied West Bank with Israeli-controlled territories, manned by Israeli forces – a common obstacle for Palestinians that get delayed, harassed, intimidated, questioned and detained, or even denied to pass here – will be entirely closed for Palestinians. Whereas Palestinians holding the green ‘West Bank-ID’ are only allowed to cross these checkpoints with special permits issued by the Israeli forces, that are almost impossible to attain; Palestinians living within Israel and the illegally annexed East Jerusalem will thus be prevented from using these checkpoints. This leaves any Palestinian from these areas working or attending university studies in the occupied West Bank without any possibility to reach their places of work or education, infringing on their basic human rights of education and movement – yet another restriction on day to day life that Palestinians are subjugated to under the illegal Israeli military occupation. Additionally, flying checkpoints are expected to pop up and checkpoints within the occupied West Bank and at the entrances of Palestinian cities also.
Passage through these checkpoints, it has been announced, will be limited to Christians holding permits for the holidays, ‘special humanitarian cases’ (definition of this term depending on Israeli government), foreigners and Israeli citizens. This clearly illustrates that this closure is intended on only affecting the Palestinian population (with very few exceptions like humanitarian cases and permit-holders). Israeli settlers, living in illegal settlements throughout the occupied West Bank in contrast will be allowed to freely pass into and out of the occupied West Bank.
Thus the enforced closure is only partly – based purely on the ethnicity, allowing illegal settlers and Israeli citizens free passage while barring Palestinians. This clearly qualifies as an apartheid measure taken by the Israeli government to impose yet more restrictions on Palestinians in order to facilitate the free movement of settlers. The United Nations Apartheid Convention defines apartheid as ‘inhuman acts committed for the purpose of establishing and maintaining domination by one racial group of persons over any other racial group of persons and systematically oppressing them’.
Palestinians, during this enforced closure, are yet again discriminated against based solely on the fact of being Palestinians, and their basic human rights as well as international law – supposed values guarded by the whole international community – are trampled on by Israeli forces.
