On the afternoon of Saturday, July 2, approximately eight Palestinian children were playing at the entrance of Hares village. They ranged in ages from 1 year to 12 years old. An Israeli army jeep passed by and, according to villager accounts, stopped at the entrance to the village. Several soldiers approached the children and began to push and harass them. It is unclear to Palestinian residents why the soldiers decided to target these children. The Israeli soldiers left after 15 minutes.
Scores of Israeli army vehicles invaded Nablus today. Surely there can be no claims of a ceasefire on the Israeli side now.
Israeli armed vehicles entered Nablus just before 1pm, speeding around and firing randomly. Newly arrived international visitors, unused to the thunderous echoes from town’s rocky hillsides thought they were under full scale military attack. Apache helicopters whirred overheard, their conspicuous presence preparing residents for an assassination. F-16 fighter jets screeched across the sky (Fighter? The Palestinians have no anti-aircraft weapons, let alone an air force).
International visitors stood dazed in the surreal atmosphere of giant war film set. But we soon felt real fear too. This town has been bombed from the air before. As we stood and tried to track the movement of the Jeeps and Hummers through residential areas, phone calls came in from friends in other places. The army was shooting in El Ein refugee camp. Jeeps had arrived at the Balata refugee camp. Homes were occupied on the hillsides. By the time we arrived to join the medics the army had left, like a cartoon chase.
Our usually unshakeable Palestinian friends from the medical volunteers became nervous, speculating on the reason for the huge military presence. Aircraft, helicopters, a drone and tens of ground vehicles are not for nothing, they reasoned. Perhaps they have already filled the city with plain-clothes Special Forces to arrest or kill people, or perhaps this is just the first phase of a huge military attack on the town like the invasions of 2002.
Some news stations reported that two plain clothes Israelis, Special Forces, had entered the city and were lost presumed taken by Palestinian fighters. Allegedly, the Israeli army had given the Palestinians two hours to hand them over before a full military attack on the town. The usually boastful resistance fighters denied involvement or knowledge. The story seemed implausible. We spoke to a captain in the Palestinian Authority forces who also disbelieved it. “If two Israelis were in here, the Israeli army would contact us to ask the fighters to hand them over.” No such contact was made. As is so often the case, the first casualty is truth.
When we reach Balata refugee camp, ten jeeps and hummers are on the main street outside, with more on the other sides of the camp. No one heard the Israeli occupation army actually announce a curfew but it makes little difference. Roads are closed to all Palestinian vehicles, shops forced to close too, and most residents have locked themselves inside their homes. Children wander around the camp with spent tear gas cans and “rubber” bullets (metal cylinders coated in rubber) as souvenirs. Medics and journalists try to cross the army line into the camp but the soldiers aim their M16s to stop them and don’t explain why.
Doubtless the Israeli media machine will ignore today’s events and more neutral agencies play down the significance as there is no graphic footage of blood and destruction. Don’t think the Israeli forces exercised restraint today. For no disclosed reason, in response to no reported Palestinian action, hundreds of troops enter a town in the centre of the West Bank and subject civilians, already suffering from years of attacks, to a day of fear and anxiety. Medical volunteers were harassed and hampered in their work. Ambulances were
not allowed into the camp. People had to carry acutely ill residents to the gate and pass them over to paramedics under the scrutiny of army jeeps and hummers. Even when medics and international peace
activists accompany a sick amputee to his home along a street outside the camp, soldiers tail and harass them all the way.
Unprovoked, the Israeli army hurls gas grenades into the camp. Palestinian teenagers laugh as inexperienced international peace activists scatter and abandon phones, bags, and expensive cameras. Dutiful kids return the items and offer onions (that help relieve the effects of gas) and water while the visitors compose themselves. Small children lean out of windows to shout greetings to the foreign visitors, far more interesting and unusual than another army attack. A whole generation has grown up to think that being shot at is more normal than seeing a pale skinned stranger. Later two foreigners, one an international journalist, are cornered in a shop front by a gas grenade thrown at them. Trapped in a cloud thicker and stronger than the tear gas fired from canisters, one foreigner suffers mild facial burns.
The drone and a helicopter are still overhead but the ground vehicles began to withdraw at 5:30pm with no clear objective attained from the operation. What happened here today? No arrests or assassinations reported and nothing seized.
As frequently as we report these abuses, we hear from people outside that things seem better here now, as though the only troubles are petty squabbles between two equal opponents. When will the media report this conflict fairly? When will the world see that Israel is the aggressor here?
Tonight few people in Nablus and Balata will sleep well and instead fear the start of a new campaign against them. It is the responsibility of the International Community to curb Israeli aggression.
Stephen Farrell Middle East Correspondent of The Times, says that it seems unlikely the Israeli Government or military will learn any lessons from today’s guilty verdicts in the killing of British peace activist Tom Hurndall.
“Mr Hurndall’s father Anthony stood outside the court after the verdicts and said that this soldier [Wahid Taysir] had been a scapegoat laid on the sacrificial altar of the Israeli system, and that the fault lay much further up the chain of command.
“But judging by the comments from both political and military spokesmen afterwards, it doesn’t seem as though they accept that there is a fault in the system in the way that Mr Hurndall alleged.
“In fact, a government spokesman said that the fact that someone had been prosecuted showed that the Israeli system worked. And the military prosecutor said that this wasn’t a case of an Israeli soldier following the rules of engagement, as critics of the Israelis believe: it was a case of a soldier breaking the rules of engagement and lying about it afterwards, and when he was found out, being prosecuted.
“The Hurndall family has called for further changes to the system and for the military and government to take a close look at themselves and at the way their soldiers treat unarmed civilians.
“We will have to wait until August to see whether this soldier is sentenced to more than 20 months, which we believe is the most any Israeli soldier has ever been sentenced to in similar circumstances. The maximum term available is 20 years, and the prosecution has said that they are going to ask for a very severe sentence.
“I think he will get more than 20 months. Wahid Taysir claims that he has been a scapegoat because he is a Bedouin Arab, rather than a Jew, and because the victim was British. He says that if he had not been a Bedouin this prosecution would probably never have been brought.”
For Tom Hurndall’s parents, the real criminal is not the Israeli soldier convicted yesterday of shooting their son in the head as he shepherded young children to safety from gunfire in the Gaza Strip.
The 22-year-old photography student and pro-Palestinian activist from Tufnell Park, north London, remained in a persistent vegetative state for nine months until he died in London in January 2004.
But long before that, the Hurndalls had concluded from a bitter struggle to discover the truth about the shooting of their son that responsibility for his death runs much higher in a military that the family says encourages the shooting of civilians.
Regardless of the outcome of today’s verdict on the killing of Tom Hurndall, the International Solidarity Movement, London maintains that justice cannot been served while the culture of impunity in the Israeli army remains intact. Tom was one of hundreds of civilians killed in Rafah alone in the past four years. He was shot whilst trying to get children out of the line of Israeli army gunfire. As he bent down to pick up a young boy, he was shot in the head.
Human rights activist, Raphael Cohen (39), who was with Tom on the day of the shooting said, “On the very street where Tom was shot, two children had been shot just days before. This is why he and the rest of the group went to that spot, to protest against the shooting of children as they played outside their homes. There has never been any investigation into the shootings of those children.”
Last month, two Palestinian teenagers were shot dead by Israeli soldiers in the village of Biet Liqya near Ramallah. Adi Asi, 15 years old and Jamal Asi, 14 years old, were killed as the soldiers who were guarding the Apartheid Wall surrounding the village shot at the group of children. They were killed with live bullets to the chest and abdomen. Witnesses said they were playing football.
Recent Human Rights watch Report
As Human Rights Watch state in their recent report, “Promoting Impunity, The Israeli Military’s Failure to Investigate Wrongdoing”, “Pressure for a proper investigation rises every time a high-profile killing takes place, but Israeli authorities have taken no serious steps to improve the accountability of the armed forces, create an independent investigation system, or reform the military justice system.”
According to the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem, between the beginning of the intifada and the end of November 2004, 3,040 Palestinians were killed by Israeli security forces, including 606 children. According to Human Rights Watch, “The number of official investigations into alleged wrongful use of lethal force equals just two percent of the total number killed and only 15 percent of the number of children killed, despite the fact that many deaths occurred in non-combat circumstances and the extreme unlikelihood that many of the children killed were legitimate targets.”
The investigation into Tom’s killing was the result of a long hard process by his family and supporters to pressurise the Israeli government into providing answers. Without the family’s unrelenting efforts and personal investigations, this trial would not have happened.
No Human Rights for Palestinians
Israel has no national human rights institution, nor any independent commissioner for complaints about human rights violations committed by the army. Meanwhile, the government of Israel continues to deny entry to human rights activists, witnesses and journalists and deports those who take part in non-violent demonstrations against the seizure of Palestinian land and destruction of homes.
We, at ISM London, are calling to the people of Britain to do what our government refuses to do, to demand justice for the Palestinians. Britain continues to supply military equipment to Israel to be used in its campaign against the civilian Palestinian population. We urge people to put pressure on the government and people of Israel via economic boycott, to end the killings, withdraw the settlements, end the occupation and allow the people of Palestine and Israel to have a peaceful and prosperous future. This will be impossible while the occupation continues. Without justice there can be no peace.
Visit the ISM London website at http://www.ism-london.co.uk
