Abdallah’s account of his Shabak interrogation

A group of Israeli soldiers came into my compound at three o’clock in the morning, surrounded my house, and then started kicking the gate that leads into my yard. My family woke up but we did not answer the door at this point.

The soldiers proceeded through the gate into my yard and began knocking on the door to my house. At this moment I called my friend Mohammad Khateeb to tell him what was happening because a journalist named Shai Barock was sleeping at his house. After that I heard the soldiers say, “Abedallah, Abedallah,” and I answered them by asking, “What do you want?” The commander answered, “We want you to come downstairs to the front door.” I did this, and on my way downstairs to see them I went to the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) apartment on the first floor of my home and told them that the army had surrounded the house. They woke up and followed me to the front door.

I went outside to find many soldiers all over my yard. The commander said, “Are you Abedallah Abu Rahma?” I said, “Yes.” He responded, “You should come to see Commander Rizek tomorrow at noon at the Ofer military base.” I said, “I was in jail one week ago. What does he want from me now? Why didn’t he ask me to come see him then? And why are you coming at this hour to speak with me? Why didn’t you come during the day?” The commander answered, “These decisions are up to me. You must come tomorrow, and if you do not, you may face legal repercussions.”

I did what the commander asked of me. At noon the following day, I went to Ofer jail accompanied by Allison, a member of ISM. After we arrived we called Yael Barda, an Israeli legal advocate, as well as many Israeli activists who gave us much advice.

I waited in the front of the Shabak station beginning at noon, and after a few minutes the legal advocate arrived. She asked me what had happened the night before and looked at the piece of paper given to me by the commander ordering me to come the following day to see Commander Rizek. Yael joked about the fact that the paper was so informal, and then she began shouting at the soldiers, saying that she wanted to go inside to ask Commander Rizek what he wanted from a person sleeping in his house in the middle of the night, why he had to disturb me.

Yael also added that the soldiers came in an illegal way and that now they were making me wait out in the sun without seeing Commander Rizek. This continued until 2 pm. After that a soldier called my name and said he wanted me to go inside to the commander. He refused to allow the advocate to come with me and told her that that is forbidden.

I went inside the gate to have one soldier search me and take everything from me that was in my pockets. Afterwards, one said, “What is all the noise that you made outside? You were provoking the people outside against us. Who is this whore you brought with you?” I said to him, “She is not a whore, she is my advocate.” He replied, “Why is she with you?” I answered, “Because you are saying that Israel is a state that operates by law and I did not do anything illegal. My advocate counseled me to abide by the law.” He responded, “Who told you this? Israel does not operate by laws, and especially here in the Shabak there are no laws. You know this.”

The soldier said to me, “Where are you going?” I said, “To Commander Rizek.” He then said to another soldier, the one who searched me, who was standing with him, “Tell Rizek that I want to meet him.”

Rizek then came and talked to this soldier and then they both approached me. Rizek said, “Ask him where his ID is.” I said, “You took it from me when I arrived.” Rizek then began to make trouble. “It is not here,” he said. The soldier then asked me, “Are you sure that you handed it to us?” He repeated the question several times. I said, “This is not up to me. I handed my ID to you, and they said to me, “Follow us.”

I then entered Commander Rizek’s office, where Rizek sat behind his desk and another soldier sat across the room from him. He said, “You are making a lot of trouble. Where were you last week?” I said, “In Ofer jail.” He responded by asking, “Why?” I answered, “I was taken from a nonviolent demonstration against the wall.” He replied, “What happened after that?” I answered, “I was released because I did not break the law.” He said, “You are saying you were at a demonstration and you did not make any mistakes?” I answered, “The judge who decided my case said I did not break the law or make any mistakes.” He replied, “What’s your job? Where do you work and what is your salary?”

I answered, “I am a teacher in Birzeit. My salary is..” He answered, “In the West Bank this is enough to allow you to live a good life.” I answered, “Yes, thank God that I have some left to save and I am not in need of anything.”

He then said, “You have organized many demonstrations. This is illegal and you do not gain anything from the demonstrations. Has the route of the wall been changed? You are losing and you will face ramifications for your actions.”

I replied by saying, “What we are organizing is nonviolent demonstrations and this is not illegal according to the Israeli government. Furthermore, what we are doing does not create danger for anyone. It is legal. We carry banners with slogans against the wall and chant against the wall, all of which we are allowed to do. What do you expect from a people whose land is being taken from them? Your army is saying that the land behind the wall is still ours, but in fact soon they will build a fence and gates and not allow anyone to go to this land. Even if what you are saying is true, special permits will be given only to the landowners, our fathers and grandfathers who are unable to work the land. Because of this the land will go unused and the settlers will steal our olive trees and the army will seize the remaining land in order to enlarge the settlements. What can we do? We are simply expressing our resistance to this in these nonviolent demonstrations.”

He replied, “Do you know what happened in Biddu?” I said, “They were organizing nonviolent demonstrations.” He said, “No.” I said, “They moved the wall back.” He said, “No.” I asked, “What do you want?” He said, “Five people were killed there.” I said, “I heard there were five martyrs there.” He said, “Killed not martyrs. Dead. Do you want this to happen in Bil’in as well?”

I said, “Near the beginning of the wall construction an army commander came and advised us not to make any violent resistance because that would never lead to any gains. And yes we took his advice. What we are organizing is nonviolent demonstrations that do not create any danger for anyone.”

He said, “You are saying you did not create violence for the soldier who lost his eye and the many other soldiers who have been injured by stone throwing?”

I said, “In our demonstrations we always ask the soldiers not to shoot tear gas and rubber-coated metal bullets at us, and also, we also declare the demonstrations nonviolent. We tell the villagers not to throw stones. What happens is that the soldiers are violent toward the villagers by coming into the village among the houses with their weapons, so some of the villagers reply by throwing stones. This is apart from the demonstrations. On the other hand I am not a military commander. I am a human just like all the other villagers. I express my opinion. I believe in nonviolent resistance and I know that the wall will be destroyed by nonviolent demonstrations.”

He said, “The information we have says that you are urging the people to participate in the demonstrations.”

I said, “What I am doing is legal. I have not broken any laws. As I said to you I am a human and not a commander so I can not order people to participate in demonstrations. All the villagers believe in what they are doing and need not be ordered.”

He said, “But you crossed a boundary in order to be here today. We know everything that you do.”

I said, “Yes, you know every small and large thing. Because of this you must know that the name of Bil’in is ‘the village of peace’ and that the villagers did not take part in any demonstrations before the construction of the wall began. The wall is choking us. What is happening is like a person squeezing a balloon until it bursts. There is nothing left for us in our village. I am sure you know that I am 34 years old and there exists no information to prove that anything I have done has been dangerous to Israel. What I am doing is legal and peaceful.”

He said, “What happened in Biddu was that those carrying the loudspeakers are now sleeping in their homes and those who were killed are the losers. I advise you to take care of yourself, your home, and your family. As you said, you live a good life. Continue doing this and do not endanger yourself. We have a lot of information about you.”

He then said I could leave and returned my ID.

Visiting Ramzi

By Philippe Eli Fabrikant

Today three of us went to visit Ramzi Yasin in Muqassed Hospital in the Intensive Care Unit. Ramzi was shot in his head by a rubber bullet on the Friday demo in Bil’in. It eventually caused an internal brain bleeding. He was operated and moved from Ramallah to the Jerusalem hospital. The hospital is very well equipped, but Ramzi’s family cannot visit him, so he is alone. He is under strong sedetion, unconsciouss and, due to the medications, cannot breath by himself. The doctor we talked to said his situation is still unclear. We left him a note, wishing him to get better fast signed by his Israeli friends from the Bil’in demo. It was really horrible to see what a rubber bullet can do. Let’s hope he will get better as soon as possible and will get back to his family.

Second child from Balata refugee camp died

On Monday Balata residents endured their second child martyr’s funeral in five days. Fourteen year old Noor Faris Njem was shot in the head late last Wednesday evening when the Israeli army came to Balata Refugee Camp and, without warning, opened fire on unarmed civilians. Noor (meaning light) was peering round a wall to see if the jeep was still there when a soldier shot him in the top of his head. After the best efforts of medics, he died on Sunday afternoon, the second child to die from injuries inflicted by the Israeli army that night. In retaliation for Noor’s shooting, two sixteen year old fighters lay in wait to fire at the army when they entered the camp. Khalid Mohammed Msyme was shot dead and the other boy is critically injured.

Balata is a refugee camp in the heart of the West Bank, tens of kilometers from Israeli towns. There was no reason for the Israeli soldiers to come to Balata that night. There was no Israeli military operation, no claim of any risk to any Israel civilians, settlers or soldiers. There was no reason for the Israeli soldiers to shoot Noor, an unarmed child. There was no reason for them to subsequently drive further into Palestinian streets late at night, where they knew they would find youths angered and hurt by the shooting of one of their friends. There was no reason for them to drive round the camp firing until they drew out two more boys, only leaving when they had shot them too. Two more children have died needlessly, added to the hundreds who have already died here.

Noor’s death was announced over the mosque at 7am by a man who could barely speak for the emotion. Although we had expected this news for several days, the death of a child is always disturbing. I am sorry to say we have lost count of how many funerals we have attended here. It doesn’t get easier. On the contrary, I feel the weight of this more now. At first I was relieved to find that I could bear the emotion of the occasion. With time, and deepening bonds to the community, I feel closer to tears with each martyr. Not tears of grief, these people are not my own family, tears of frustration at the futile waste of life here. With these latest two deathsI also feel a loss of hope for peace here. For the last four months Palestine is supposed to have enjoyed a ceasefire. It doesn’t feel like peace in Balata. In that time there have been countless incursions, dozens of injuries of Palestinians by Israeli soldiers, scores of arrests, an invasion, curfew, assassinations of two residents of Balata and now the shooting of three children, causing the death of two.

On Thursday morning Al Aqsa Martyrs and the other Palestinian resistance brigades in Balata announced an end to their part of the ceasefire. That means they will now retaliate for the Israeli occupations force’s attacks on them. I hope that the world’s media reports this honestly, explaining that the Israeli forces had never kept to their part of the ceasefire.

Help us stop Israel’s wall peacefully

International Herald Tribune
www.iht.com/articles/2005/07/11/opinion/edkhatib.php

BILIN, West Bank: While the international media has been focusing on Israel’s planned withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, in my village of Bilin, near the West Bank city of Ramallah, we are living an equally important but overlooked story. Though Israeli forces plan to withdraw from Gaza, they are simultaneously expanding their West Bank settlements. On our village’s land, Israel is building one new settlement and expanding five others. These settlements will form a city called Modiin Illit, with tens of thousands of settlers, many times the number to be evacuated from Gaza. These settlements consume most of our area’s water. Throughout the West Bank, settlement and wall construction, arrests, killing and occupation continue.

One year ago, the International Court of Justice handed down an advisory ruling that Israel’s construction of a wall on Palestinian land violated international law. Today, Palestinians in villages like ours are struggling to implement the court’s decision and stop construction using nonviolence, but the world has done little to support us.

Bilin is being strangled by Israel’s wall. Though our village sits two and a half miles east of the Green Line, Israel is taking roughly 60 percent of our 1,000 acres of land in order to annex the six settlements and build the wall around them. This land is also money to us – we work it. Bilin’s 1,600 residents depend on farming and harvesting our olives for our livelihood. The wall will turn Bilin into an open-air prison, like Gaza.

After Israeli courts refused our appeals to prevent wall construction, we, along with Israelis and people from around the world, began peacefully protesting the confiscation of our land. We chose to resist non-violently because we are peace-loving people who are victims of occupation. We have opened our homes to the Israelis who have joined us. They have become our partners in struggle. Together we send a strong message – that we can coexist in peace and security. We welcome anyone who comes to us as a guest and who works for peace and justice for both peoples, but we will resist anyone who comes as an occupier.

We have held more than 50 peaceful demonstrations since February. We learned from the experience and advice of villages like Budrus and Biddu, which resisted the wall nonviolently. Palestinians from other areas now call people from Bilin “Palestinian Gandhis.”

Our demonstrations aim to stop the bulldozers destroying our land, and to send a message about the wall’s impact. We’ve chained ourselves to olive trees that were being bulldozed for the wall to show that taking trees’ lives takes the village’s life. We’ve distributed letters asking the soldiers to think before they shoot at us, explaining that we are not against the Israeli people, but against the building of the wall on our land. We refuse to be strangled by the wall in silence. In a famous Palestinian short story, “Men in the Sun,” Palestinian workers suffocate inside a tanker truck. Upon discovering them, the driver screams, “Why didn’t you bang on the sides of the tank?” We are banging – we are screaming.

In the face of our peaceful resistance, Israeli soldiers attack our peaceful protests with teargas, clubs, rubber-coated steel bullets and live ammunition, and have injured over 100 villagers. They invade the village at night, entering homes, pulling families out and arresting people. At a peaceful protest on June 17, soldiers arrested the brothers Abdullah and Rateb Abu Rahme, two village leaders. Soldiers testified that Rateb was throwing stones. An Israeli military judge recently ordered Rateb’s release because videotapes showed the soldiers’ claims were false.

The Palestinian people have implemented a cease-fire and have sent a message of peace through our newly elected leadership. But a year after the international court’s decision, wall building on Palestinian land continues. Behind the smoke screen of the Gaza withdrawal, the real story is Israel’s attempt to take control of the West Bank by building the illegal wall and settlements that threaten to destroy dozens of villages like Bilin and any hope for peace.

Bilin is banging, Bilin is screaming. Please stand with us so that we can achieve our freedom by peaceful means.

(Mohammed Khatib is a leading member of Bilin’s Popular Committee Against the Wall and the secretary of its village council.)

The disengagement as smoke screen

By Jonathan Pollak
Originally published in Ha’aretz

Exactly one year ago the International Court of Justice in the Hague ruled that the fence that Israel is building in the territories is illegal. However, one hardly needs to mention that the construction has been affected only cosmetically. During the past two years we – Israelis, Palestinians and international activists – have been conducting a joint, popular and nonviolent struggle against what appears to us as one of the most significant moves, with destructive implications in the long term, in the history of the occupation in the territories.

From the very first moment Israel has found no means too repugnant, and has reacted aggressively to quash this struggle by simple people who are losing their lands and their livelihoods. Of course it has been the Palestinians among us who have paid the highest price – nine of them have been killed, many have been wounded and many more have been sent to jail cells or prisons. It seems that the fact that we have chosen a civil struggle and that firearms have played no part in our protest has not influenced the Israel Defense Forces and the government. Both have declared time after time that all of our demonstrations are illegal, and have acted accordingly. The fact that it was indeed their activity that was defined as illegal by one of the highest legal authorities in the world has not influenced their behavior in the territories one whit.

After four straight months of struggle in the village of Bil’in, I find myself once again fleeing from a thick cloud of stinging smoke, as now and then a rubber bullet whizzes past my ears. The familiar pattern is repeating itself. The Israeli policy is determined unilaterally, by the army and the government, and is destroying lives. Every attempt at protest and nonviolent resistance is suppressed with a heavy hand. Beyond the moral wickedness of this behavior, by making debate and civil resistance impossible, Israel is contributing directly to the escalation of the hostility.

Recently there has been a new and strong spirit coming from the direction of the soldiers. This is a spirit of conciliation, we have been told, the spirit of the disengagement. Thus, under cover of the disengagement and with steady American support, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is presiding over the occupation of the West Bank. It appears that Sharon knows that in order to win the West Bank, he must sacrifice Gush Katif on the altar of the disengagement. He also knows that with the withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, the international pressure for progress in the peace process will recede and the Jewish settlement project in the West Bank – his life’s project – can be renewed.

Under cover of the disengagement plan the fence continues to creep far beyond the recognized borders of the State of Israel and to butcher the West Bank into cantons. Many housing units are being built at this very moment beyond the Green Line [pre-Six-Day War border]. Most of this building is going on between the fence and the Green Line as part of the attempt to make the 1967 borders disappear and to annex more territory. Apartheid roads, some of them for Jews only and some of them for Palestinians only, continue to be built. The legal system, with its occupiers’ laws, is continuing to give lip service to ordaining cosmetic changes in places where a deep-rooted change is
needed.

And now, after the court has canceled most of the interim orders that delayed the construction of the separation fence, Sharon has hastened to accelerate its construction (“Defense heads to present PM with timetable for fence completion today,” Haaretz, July 6).

A year ago I believed that the ruling by the International Court of Justice in the Hague was a huge success – a major step on the long road to ending the occupation and the regime of Israeli racism. I still think so, but to my regret, until such time as the international community as a whole and the United States in particular apply real pressure to end the occupation and support the popular struggle, as they did when it suited their interests in Lebanon, the meaning of this step will remain symbolic. Anyone who has been blinded by the dazzle of security arguments for the fence and the false peace promises of the disengagement will discover too late that there is neither security nor peace in them.

These are critical days and the remaining time is short. Only the Israelis have the power to cut through the cries of “anti-Semitism” that are heard every time elements in the world dare to criticize
Israel and its policy in the territories. The power and the moral obligation.

The writer is an activist in Anarchists Against the Fence