The Caves of Last Resort

The Stories of Quawawis and Massafer Yatta

On Tuesday, June 8, the Israeli civil administration told the villagers of Quawawis to remove the roofless structures built in front of the caves where they are living. If they don’t tear the structures down themselves, the civil administration will bulldoze them into the ground. Last week, Israeli authorities bulldozed structures in the Massafer Yatta area, a place similar to Qawawis.

It is quite possible that a campaign to remove these people from their land has been put into place so that outposts, which are considered illegal by Israeli Authorities, are flourishing in this area, in direct defiance of the 2001 Road Map.

The story below illustrates the destruction wrought by Israeli Occupation Forces as they continue to force families out of their homes, after which their homes are demolished:

Illegal demolition of 4 Houses in Massafer Yatta area, the poorest zone in the West Bank South of Hebron

Written by Operation Dove
22 May 2005

At 9.30am on the 22nd of May in the small village of Halt-El Thabit, three IOF jeeps and two bulldozers destroyed the only remaining house in the village. No demolition order had been delivered to the family, who were ordered to leave in five minutes. The 11-member family tried to take as many of their belongings as they could, then stood helplessly as they witnessed the Israeli military demolish their house.

It had been built in 1998 next to the cave where they had previously lived. Now, the occupation forces have given them no choice but to return to the cave.

The military took about 15 minutes to tear down the house, then left, and proceeded to the nearby village of Sarourah, where they destroyed three more Palestinian homes.

Several illegal Israeli settlements have also sprung up in the area, populated by extremist settlers who have frequently attacked the local Palestinians. When international volunteers have accompanied shepherds to their pastures or Palestinian children from the small village of Tuba to their school in Al Tuwani, these same extremist settlers have often attacked and wounded them as well.

All access roads to the Massafer Yatta area have been closed since the beginning of the current Intifada. In order to enter or leave the area, Palestinian residents must sneak onto the settler-only roads, risking reprisals from the military.

The Israeli Ministry of Defense has already drawn up a plan, called Firezone 918, to forcibly displace about 1300 Palestinians and create a military zone for maneuvers. These plans are already being carried out despite the presence of the villages, because Israel insists that the area was given to them in the Oslo agreements.

According to OCHA (Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs),the Massafer Yatta area is the poorest in the West Bank. People have no choice but to live in caves, because they can’t get authorization to build from the Israeli administration, which has total control of the area. Living in these caves has become the choice of last resort for many of the families who refuse to leave their land.

Israeli army attacks disabled demonstrators

Bil’in Village
Ramallah District

The Israeli army’s conduct reached an unprecedented low when Israeli soldiers attacked a demonstration of Palestinians who had been disabled by past Israeli army attacks. The procession included ten people in wheelchairs, several people on crutches, and a number of blind people. As soon as they came into view, the disabled demonstrators were attacked by the Israeli army with tear gas. A few fainted, and when other demonstrators tried to help them they were arrested. In total, four Palestinians, including Mohammed Al Khatib and other leaders of the Popular Committee Against the Wall, and one disabled demonstrator were detained. Three Israelis, including journalist Shai Pollakk, were arrested. After attacking the demonstration, the army proceeded to invade the village and provoke an hour-long confrontation that resulted in many more Palestinian injuries.

Continuing their non-violent resistance of the last four months, this Friday the people of Bil’in will again demonstrate against the construction of the wall on their land. They will be joined by international and Israeli supporters. It is hoped that the presence of international and Israeli activists will reduce the level of violence used by the army. If there was any doubt about the army’s violent tactics, the matter was clarified in court recently by a border police officer and a soldier who testified that in joint demonstrations (where both Palestinian and Israeli civilians are present) the military aims to remove the Israeli civilians from the line of fire so that they can shoot rubber-coated steel bullets at Palestinians.

The past week has seen an escalation of the Israeli army’s tactics of abuse, intimidation, and violence against the village of Bil’in. On Sunday June 5th, a member of Bil’in’s Popular Committee was stopped at a checkpoint, held for several hours and then beaten by a group of soldiers. On the night of Tuesday June 7 the army invaded the village at night and entered the homes of other Committee members. Their only crime is their insistence on their right to resist the crimes committed against them by the army.

Those who think that such tactics will break the spirit of the people of Bil’in should come and see for themselves on Friday.

  • What: A demonstration against the Israeli Annexation Wall and settlement expansion

    • When: 1 PM, Friday June 10

  • Where: Bil’in, Ramallah district, Palestine

The Ceasefire Continues

by ISM Nablus

On Tuesday 7th June, Electronic Intifada reported the extra-judicial killing of Muraweh Khaled Ekmayel in Jenin by Israeli forces, under the headline “Israel Resumes Assassinations of Palestinians”. Al Jazeera news reported six deaths on the same day. The violence has continued, with the attempted assassination of four Hamas members in Gaza on 8th June.

Residents of Nablus would be surprised to hear that this killing marks the departure from Israel’s commitment at Sharm to end the assassinations. Three residents have been shot dead by Israeli forces in the area of Balata camp since the “ceasefire” heralded by the Sharm talks.

On 16th April Israeli forces shot and killed Brahim Al Smere on Al Quds Street just outside Balata Refugee Camp near Nablus. When the army handed Brahim’s body over to Palestinian medics, he had been shot multiple times in the limbs and body. Witnesses to his killing are sure that Israeli special forces came in to assassinate Brahim and made no attempt to arrest him. At the time the witnesses told us that he seemed to be lured in to the road and compelled to identify himself by someone he was speaking with on the phone. He was shot, but not fatally, first from one direction and then from a second location by a gunman in a car. Nobody made any attempt to arrest him or to take him away alive.

We spoke with the driver who saw Brahim on the morning he was killed.

“I picked him up and he asked me to drive slowly into Al Quds Street. When I asked why, he said he was meeting a friend he knew by telephone. I said “Forget him. You don’t know him. You’re wanted now. Meeting someone like that is a risk for you.” but Brahim said “No, he’s a good guy, he talked nicely to me on the phone.” Then he asked me to wait for him to meet this person so I could take them back, but I said no. It’s a sensitive street. I have to think about my family and so on. So I took him to the place he asked to go to.

The man called him again. I heard Brahim describe what he was wearing and the man said it would be good if he wore a hat too. I told him then “It’s an Israeli. Leave.” but Brahim didn’t believe me.

I left. On my way to Nablus I heard they shot him.”

The arrests and killings continue. Israel cannot claim to be maintaining a ceasefire. And yet the outside world has not acknowledged that the Sharm talks have not brought a resolution to the conflict in the region instead It is pretending that the killings are not happening and that talks are progressing.

The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights issues a report detailing Israel’s contraventions of international law each week. Despite the ceasefire the violations reported every week continue to include killings, tens of arrests and injuries, incursions into Palestinian towns and villages, raids and demolitions of homes, curfews and closures amounting to siege, settler attacks and denial of the legitimate right to non-violent protest.

Each one of those figures represents a violation of an individual’s right to liberty or life or a community’s right to access education and health services, employment or the land which they farmed to support themselves for generations.

The violent military occupation is not over. It is not time to stop campaigning for human rights and Justice in Palestine.

I Wish You Knew

by Hannah

I’ve been meaning to write for days. I’ve been meaning to sit down, have a free moment, compose my thoughts, figure out how to translate my experiences into something understandable to a world where injustice is not quite as daily, quite as random, quite as violent. I wish I could just say “There was curfew in Marda today” and that you all would understand. That you would know without my telling you that that meant Israeli army jeeps were driving through the village at 5:30 am (and for many, many, many hours after that), that they were throwing sound bombs and tear gas, and shooting rubber-coated bullets randomly, that there was a complete atmosphere of fear. I wish you would know that when three international observers arrived, we were kept out of the village by army, detained by border police, and threatened with arrest. That we were told we could only enter if we were press, but then when the press arrived they weren’t allowed in either.

I wish you would know that a boy’s id was taken from his home and he was told to come to the next village to pick it up, but that his father wouldn’t send him because he was afraid his son would be killed. Or that a young man was arrested and his family couldn’t locate him all day (they now know he’s in Qedumim settlement / detention center). Or that each time soldiers were asked for justification of their actions, they would say, “it’s closed because we say so. This is our territory.” I wish more than anything that you could know everything that is behind this statement, every way in which it manifests itself, every way in which the world completely ignores what is happening here.

I wish I could trust that the media would tell you that a group of disabled palestinians (in wheelchairs and on crutches, many blind people, etc.) were shot at with tear gas by the army at a demonstration today in Bil’in before they got anywhere near their destination (which was on their land).

I can’t even remember what is usual and not anymore. I am not surprised by things. I am only angry. And resentful. And even hateful sometimes. I don’t know how to change this. I don’t know how to get away. I don’t think anyone should be able to get away, not when others can’t. And yet how can I think clearly? Saturday was a wonderful demonstration in Marda, although even as I say that I think about the hundred or so soldiers who lunged towards the crowd – but they only beat a couple people, only arrested a couple Israelis, and only temporarily. Only Sunday we tried to accompany farmers to their land and were shot at by a private security company that guards wall work. Monday we tried again to accompany farmers to their land, and this time were met by hundreds of soldiers who began firing tear gas before they could even tell who was there. 200 rounds of tear gas. Before they could even see us. It’s better, of course, in the grand moral scheme of the world, that no distinction be made between Palestinian farmers and International peace workers. But it’s scary. It’s confusing. And of course, the result should be that we are all treated as human, not that we are all treated as expendable.

There’s a newly involved Israeli who has come to a couple demos recently. The other day we were standing in Marda looking up to the top of the hill with the bulldozers, and she said, “this is just crazy. They’re just taking someone else’s land.” As a taxi driver noted a few days ago, “if I don’t like my neighbours and want to build a fence to separate us, I’d build it on my yard, not my neighbour’s.” Even more simply, after I explained to a new IWPS volunteer yesterday a few of the happenings of the past couple days, she said, “now that’s not nice.” And still, I can’t even bring myself to think any of this. Because I am not surprised anymore. Only angry.

I was in west Jerusalem for about an hour today, walking down the street looking at the half-naked teenagers with their orange ribbons in solidarity with the settlers of gush katif, and I just thought, “you have no idea.” If Palestinians could see this, I thought, I’m not sure they would be quite as patient as they are. Although they probably already know. They’re probably already so used to this, more used to this than I am, that nothing fazes them at all. Some have a patience that I can’t always quite fathom (“this too shall pass”), and others just use avoidance (“if I stay in my home and don’t let my kids out then everything will be tolerable”).

I am going to sleep in Marda now, going to be a presence in case the army returns.

I will send this only so you have a little bit of news from here. Realize not all the pain in the world is here. This is only my little corner. And I do only what I can. We all do. And it’s never enough. Never ever enough.

With sadness and anger,
Hannah

Stink bombs and the Scream: Bil’in

Palestinians from Bil’in taped their hands together to express their intention to hold a non-violent demonstration. As they marched out of the village soldiers laid barbed wire along the path. A van with a load speaker on it then appeared behind the barb wire and let out a loud high pitch that caused the crowd to disperse. Palestinian youth threw stones at the van and soldiers entered the village throwing tear gas and shooting rubber coated metal bullets. Some of the Palestinians wearing pink plastic gloves threw plastic balloons filled with water and chicken feces.