Bil’in Prisoner Solidarity Demonstration Report

based on a report by IMEMC

Israeli soldiers fired tear gas and rubber coated bullets at a non-violent protest against the Separation Wall in Bil’in village, near the West Bank city of Ramallah on Friday.

The protest started midday Friday after dozens of residents, peace activists and representatives of Physicians without Borders, marched towards a construction site of the Separation Wall while wearing mock handcuffs in a creative protest that symbolized the captivity of the Bil’in residents who have been arrested in recent military invasions of the village.

Abdullah Abu Rahme, coordinator of the Popular Committee Against the Wall and Settlements, told the IMEMC that this protest was carried out to express the rejection of residents and international peace activists to the recent attacks and invasions carried out by the army against the village, and to protest against the construction of the Separation Wall.

The Popular Committee in Bil’in reported that the main aim of the demonstration this week was to protest the Israeli invasions of the village. It also aimed to draw attention to the arrests which aim to scare the residents and the activists from taking action against the Wall.

Abu Rahme also said that soldiers carried lists which included names of dozens of residents from the village. Soldiers claim that those residents are wanted by Israeli security for their activities in the protests against the Wall.

The protestors carried banners which read “we are all wanted, from 1 – 2600”, the number of 2600 symbolizes the number of residents living in Bil’in.

The protestors also carried banners in Arabic, Hebrew and English, reading: “Date 20-2-2005, penalty; uprooting thee trees, arrest and injuring the residents, night invasions, curfew and siege”. The date refers to the date when Israel started bulldozing the residents’ orchards in order to construct the Separation Wall.

One Israeli peace activist was detained by the soldiers on Friday; two Israeli protestors and one Palestinian were injured after the army fired rubber-coated bullets. Dozens of residents and activists suffered the effects of inhaling tear-gas fired by the army.

Abu Rahme reported that soldiers and under-cover units of the Israeli army have recently been invading the village on an almost daily basis, and breaking into dozens of homes in an attempt to intimidate the residents.

Dozens of residents were arrested in the village since it started conducting its peaceful protests against the Wall. Last Wednesday, Israeli soldiers invaded the village after midnight and forced dozens of families out of their homes after breaking into them.

“Today’s protest was also in support of the detainees who were arrested in the village during the military raids”, Abu Rahme said.

Earlier on Friday, Israeli soldiers barred reporters and students of Bier Zeit University from entering the village to participate in the protest.

The residents aided several journalists in crossing into the village after the army closed all of its entrances; the journalists were escorted through the orchards and hills.

Also, protestors carried the names of the eleven residents who were arrested last week in the village, and demanded that the army release them.

Soldiers closed the three entrances of the village and installed military roadblocks early in the morning,. The three entrances link the village with Kharbatah Bani Hareth village, Saffa village, and the village if Kafer Ni’ma.

Israeli Soldiers, Police and Settlers Block Olive Harvest In Yanoun, Nablus Region

by two ISM activists in Nablus

Our experience of the harvest started in Yanoun village, Nablus region at 7am on the 26th of October. We accompanied two old Palestinian women in a field just down the hill from the Itamar settlement.

Half an hour after we started, a settler came and tried to get rid of us. He was very aggressive and called the army as well as a settler friend.

When the soldiers came they told us to go away too. During the discussion, a second settler came and shouted at us. He also tried to steal a bag of the Palestinian’s olives.

At this point, a lot more people arrived: more soldiers, policemen, border police, some kind of civil co-ordinators and two more settlers armed with an M16 rifle and a camera.

The heated discussions went back and forth – no one was quite sure who was allowed to be in which places. The Israeli group Rabbis For Human Rights arrived and joined in the debate. A small group of Palestinians quietly returned to picking olives while the soldiers and police were distracted.

Permission from the DCO did not arrive and we decided with the two Palestinian women to try again the next day.

The next day, we returned to the same field to make sure that the Palestinians there were not picking alone. Again, we found the police, the army and the Border Police. In the same place, a settler was also stealing olives, picking them for himself. The police stopped him and said to us that we could not be here today and that they would arrest anyone that tried to harvest for the whole day. They left together with the settler, perhaps to drink coffee together in the settlement.

We continued the harvest in other Yanoun fields.

Four More Arrests in Bil’in; Further Arrests Resisted by Villagers

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Israeli soldiers invaded Bil’in last night for the fourth time in six days. A group of about 20 Border Police arrived in jeeps and arrested four non-violent Palestinian activists who they accused of damaging the fence, including an expectant father, two brothers and a 16 year old boy. Afterwards, a group of regular military came in mostly on foot. The soldiers said they had pictures of further Palestinians who they wanted to arrest, but a group of at least 30 villagers came out on the streets singing and chanting, in reaction to which the soldiers left. For the second night in three days, non-violent resistance was successfully used to oppose an Israeli military invasion of Bil’in.

The names of the new arrestees are:

Basem Ahmed Issa Yaseen, 28 (an expectant father, with two children)
Khalid Shokat alKatib, 20
Baasil Shokat alKatib, 21 (brothers)
Mohammend Abdel Fateh Burnat, 16

These four arrests are in addition to the previous arrests of eleven Palestinian non-violent activists, including a sixteen year old child and three brothers from one family. Only one of them, who had been arrested by the soldiers in order to pressure his brother to turn himself in, has been released so far.

On the 21st of October, in an act of non violent resistance villagers from Bil’in began to implement the decision of the International Court of Justice that Israel’s illegal wall should be dismantled and removed metal posts meant to serve as foundation for the wall on Bil’in land. The Israeli military reacted to this act with arrests and distribution of a text in Arabic warning people not to take part in direct action against the wall. In the Arabic text the army claimed that “every Friday for the last six months, the IDF has allowed the people of the village to conduct non-violent protests against the construction of the wall on their lands”, despite regularly firing on non-violent demonstrators with tear gas and rubber bullets. The text concluded with the threat that “the acts of the people violating the law will disturb your daily lives”.

For the last ten months, Bil’in has launched an ongoing non-violent campaign against the annexation barrier supported by hundreds of Israeli and International activists, and met by violence from the Israeli army. Israel designed the current route of the barrier to annex 60% of Bil’in’s agricultural land, and expand the settlement of Modi’in Elite. Plans for Modi’in Elite’s expansion have yet to be approved by the Israeli government.
For more Information:
Abdullah AbuRahme, Coordinator of the Popular Committee against the Wall and Settlements: 0547258210
ISM media office 02-2971824

“Demolish all the illegally built homes in the West Bank” – Israeli Chief of Staff General Dan Halutz

PRESS RELEASE
by the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD)

ICAHD notices with concern the statement by Chief of Staff, Gen. Dan Halutz, as reported in Ma’ariv (October 26, 2005), in which he is quoted as saying that in response to the recent suicide attack in Hadera Market he would implement various responses. Amongst responses he proposes is “to demolish all the illegally built homes in the West Bank, as those houses are used as shelter by terrorists.”

In the West Bank there are thousands of illegally built homes, as a result of the deliberate policies of the Israeli government’s “Civil Administration” (the Army), which prevents Palestinians from receiving building permits, and even demolishes in Area B.

Chief of Staff Dan Halutz is well known as a man without conscience, an extremist hardliner, whom we remember as having given an order to use a one-ton bomb on a house in a densely populated area, to kill a militant leader. His remarks after the operation even shocked judges in Israel’s Supreme Court: that he “sleeps well at night” even though 14 civilians were killed during that notorious operation, including many innocent women and children.

Even though we understand that the Chief of Staff will be unable to demolish literally “thousands of homes,” we are certain that he will make sure to demolish many homes in revenge for attacks, whether now or in future.

We call on the international community to demand that the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs stop these diabolical projects and that Israel be forced to abide by international law which forbids an occupying power to demolish the homes of innocent civilians.

For further details:

Meir Margalit, Co-ordinator: 0544-345 503

First Hand Account of Palestinian and International Arrests in Hebron

by Johan

At approximately 13.15 I and another international were at Shuhada Street in Tel Rumeida, Hebron. I saw a soldier holding a 15-year old girl on her shoulders, so I walked over and filmed with my video camera while I asked the soldier what was going on. The soldier said “she won’t leave”. After a minute a group of three settlers aged 15-20 aggressively approached the girl. I tried to position myself between the Palestinian girl and the settlers. The settlers tried to grab my video camera and kicked and punched me – they were also trying to hit the girl. One of the settlers kicked the girl’s legs right before my eyes (there is a photo of this settler if he needs to be identified). The soldier did not to protect the girl from this assault.

After a minute or two we managed to get the girl away from the situation and walked with her up to Shuhada Street. An older Palestinian man and an older Palestinian woman accompanied us and were speaking to the girl. We stayed at the scene to try to find out what had happened before the girl was being held by the soldiers, but no one spoke English so we didn’t find out much. A Palestinian boy aged approximately 13 who spoke some English came along and tried to help us. During all this the girl was continuously asking us to call the police. We did not call the police at that point.

Approximately five minutes later a police car came from the Beit Hadassa settlement and drove up to us. They walked up to the girl and started talking to her. I tried to stay close and film it all, but they kept moving her away from me. A mob of approximately 20 settlers (kids and adults, men and women) arrived, and tried to block my way. They grew more and more aggressive and punched the video camera out of my hand. They destroyed it by stamping on it and kicking it away. When I was making phone calls about the incident the settlers tried to grab my telephone. I was also kicked on the foot by a settler man approximately 50 years of age (this man can also be identified).

Two to three minutes later the Palestinian girl was stuffed into the police jeep and was driven away.

Me and two other internationals (one more had joined us) tried to walk away towards the checkpoint but were physically stopped by a big settler guy who was filming us. He said we couldn’t pass, and since we were not sure if this person was a policeman or a soldier I asked a soldier about this – he told us the man was a settler. The mob was getting even more aggressive and I called out to two soldiers to help us to get out of there. They said we should follow them towards Beit Hadassa, and after a while we got away from the crowd. During this whole time, the settlers where constantly intimidating and threatening us, trying to get at us physically.

We walked with the soldiers through Beit Hadassa, and were told to wait there. We were not informed that we had been detained or arrested. The settler guy with the video camera was there filming the three of us. The soldiers told us to tell the other internationals in Hebron to get off Shuhada Street since they could not guarantee their safety. The message was passed on. The time was 13:26 at this point.

After a while, when being questioned, one soldier told me that I was accused of attacking a soldier, which I had not done. I asked him if I was being detained, and he said something like “I don’t know what that means”. So I and the two other internationals decided to start walking away from the scene. When we did so one soldier followed us and said that he would continue to do so until the police arrived. We continued walking but after a while where were stopped by some other soldiers and held a military jeep in wait for the police. At this point the time was approximately 13:45.

The police arrived and asked for our passports. After waiting for a while they let me know that I was accused of attacking a soldier. The other two internationals were free to go. They decided to go to the police station to file a complaint regarding the settler violence we all had experienced. The commanding police officer at the scene was “Zev Zafrani”.

I was transported in a military jeep to Kiriat Arba Police Station (the car left at 14:11), where I was told to sit and wait. The Palestinian girl sat in a chair a few meters away from me, in company of three soldiers. At one point a policeman was showing her what looked like an album of photographs, seemingly in order to identify someone. At another point a policeman (the same that later interrogated me) was asking her questions without a legal representative, despite the fact that the girl was only 15 years old. The policeman was being aggressive and raised his voice, which the three soldiers sitting next to her seem to think was ok, judging from their content and merry facial expressions.

There was one soldier who was watching the girl so she could not get away. This was the same soldier who had been holding the girl on her shoulders at the military post at the beginning of all this. He told me that the girl had attacked him with a knife. The girl was visibly trembling as she sat down waiting.

The girl disappeared from the scene on one or two occasions, presumably to be questioned, but came back to the waiting area. During this time her father was waiting at the gate to the police station, but was not let in. I pointed out this fact to various police officers, and asked them to let him in since the girl was obviously scared, but they did not take much notice.

After a while the two other internationals arrived at the police station, and were told to wait along with me.

At approximately 16:15 I was taken in for questioning and the police officer told me I was a suspected of having attacked a soldier and interfered in his work. The soldier who I had supposedly attacked was at the desk next to me. When he overheard the accusations against me I looked at him and he laughed, not in an antagonistic way, but due to the absurd accusation. Later he told me that he did not say that I had pushed him, maybe just touched him, so it seemed as if the policeman was trying to intimidate me by making it sound worse than it actually was. I was told that what I said in this questioning could be used as proof against me in a trial. I stated very clearly at a few times that I had not in any way attacked the soldier. He was lecturing me saying I should not come to his country and interfere with his business, if he came to another country he would let the military and police do their job. I thought, but did not say, that this was his country as little as mine.

At some point he said that I might be deported or arrested, he didn’t know yet, and so on.

Apart from denying that I had used any violence I did not answer any of his questions. He was asking about what I was doing in Hebron, was I here with an organisation etc. He was asking me to give a detailed account of what had happened, but I did not and told him I thought he was being abusive towards me (he was raising his voice a lot and generally tried to intimidate me), and that he was just trying to get me to say something that was not true. At the end of the interrogation he asked me if I wanted to make a complaint against the settlers, but as I was a suspect and this was still a hearing, I turned down the offer, and told him I would prefer to do the complaint at a later date. I was told to wait outside. The time was 16:30, and the police still had my passport. I asked the soldier I was accused of attacking why he was there, and he told me that he had to wait because he was going to take the girl some where in a while. He didn’t say where or why (I don’t think he knew).

I waited until 16:45, when I had been held for 3 hours without being arrested, and asked the policeman if I could have my passport so I could leave, but he wouldn’t give it to me. I pointed out the fact that they were illegally detaining me on several occasions to the policeman who interrogated me and to another one called Aviv. I said I wanted to make a complaint that I was being illegally detained but they said I could do this when the interrogation was over.

At approximately 18:10 I was given my passport back and he said I was released, and that they would escort me and the two other internationals out of the police station. However this did not happen. Instead the policeman threatened with deportation once again and told us to wait while they cleared something up. He said something like “just like in the movies… they release you and then they take you back in”.

On two or three occasions after the interrogation I spoke over the phone with an Israeli lawyer, for advice, and at this point I got the policeman to speak to her on the phone, which I think had some effect. After speaking to the policeman she was saying to me that there was no reason whatsoever to deport me and that I should refuse to get on a plane if it came to that. She also said that I should have made a complaint about the settler violence, which I had declined to do while I was put on the defensive. I told the interrogator that I would be happy to file a complaint about the abuse of the settlers whenever they wanted, but then he said that I had my chance, that I should come back tomorrow.

Finally, at approximately 18:30, me and the two other internationals where taken to the gate and let out of the police station. We asked the policeman what was going to happen to the girl, and he said she would be arrested and held overnight.