6th February 2016 | International Solidarity Movement, Al-Khalil Team | Hebron, occupied Palestine
Since the 1st of November 2015 the Tel Rumeida area and Shuhada Street in occupied Al-Khalil (Hebron) have been declared a ‘closed military zone’. The first declaration of the closure was for one month, but since then the order has been extended several times.
The newest order from the 1st of February declares the area as closed till the 1st of March with the chance of extension.
Shuhada Checkpoint (Checkpoint 56)
The closure effects the residents of the area every single day. Every family living in the area has been given a number and was forced to register with the Israeli forces. When entering the area, through checkpoints, the residents have to show ID, give their number and often also answer questions and get bag and body searched. Friends and family of the residents are unable to visit them inside the area; even doctors or craftsmen are completely barred from entering the area.
Furthermore, the closed military zone has let to the eviction of two human rights organisations based in Tel Rumeida. These are now banned from living in their houses and working from their offices and since they are banned from the whole area are not able to observe and document the rampant Israeli human rights violations. The closed military zone is clearly intended to force out Palestinian residents in order to allow for an expansion of the illegal Israeli settlements, and to evict human rights defenders to silence the truth of the Israeli forces’ harassment, attacks and human rights violations.
3rd February 2016 | International Solidarity Movement, al-Khalil team | Hebron, occupied Palestine
On February 3rd 2016, Israeli occupation forces violently opened the door of houses in the vicinity of the Ibrahimi mosque by cutting the door locks with a disk grinder, and then entered these houses.
The houses are located in al-Sahla Street near the Ibrahimi mosque, settlers illegally invaded and occupied them two weeks ago, but were then evicted by the police and army the next morning.
After the Israeli army removed the door-locks of the two houses, Israeli construction workers took the external an internal dimensions of both Palestinian properties as if they are already owned by Israeli settlers. The settlers were protected during their illegal activities by big groups of soldiers.
Palestinian residents who walked trough the checkpoint in front of these houses were body-checked and harassed by the soldiers. The video below illustrates how inhumane and degrading these body-searches and ID-checks are, with soldiers ordering Palestinians to take off clothing regardless of weather and treating them without even a slight bit of dignity.
4th Feburary 2016 | International Solidarity Movement, Gaza Team | Gaza, occupied Palestine
Yesterday there were several events in Gaza supporting the Palestinian political prisoner Mohamed AlQeeq, who is actually in the 72nd day of hunger strike and has lost his sight and hearing.
Palestinians protesting for the release of political prisoners
Moataz Dalul, spokesman for the prisoners, stressed that “Mohamed AlQeeq is not fighting just for him but for all the prisoners and the freedom of Palestine” and “we want the Palestinians inside the green line to support him and stand with him until his freedom”. He also demanded the human rights organizations inside and outside Palestine to “just say the truth… we don’t need your support, we just want you to tell the truth”.
After Tahsin AlAstal, official of the journalists union, claimed “we speak a lot with international associations and organizations for human rights, but we are quite certain that this is useless, as they don’t do anything. Everyday Mohamed is dying and the Red Cross and the high commissioner of the UN are silent. People in Palestine is understanding that all those NGO and associations don’t move a finger for them, so we question them, what’s their reason to be here?” “We don’t need the people to say that they are worried for Mohamed or to denounce with empty words, we just need real moves and our prisoners to be saved”.
Palestinians protesting for the release of political prisoners
PCHR and other human rights associations, on their side, denounced Mohamed situation “administrative detention is a crime, as it is force feeding, and Israel is using both of them with Mohamed and other palestinians in front of the eyes of all the world, but they choose to look to the other side. Mohamed united all the spectrum of the Palestinian people under the motto: freedom or martyrdom”.
Three months ago, in the wake of two extrajudicial executions committed by Israeli forces in Tel Rumeida, Israeli military authorities forced Palestinians living in the neighborhood to register and receive numbers in order to be allowed to reach their homes. Everyone else, including family members, media and Palestinian and international human rights defenders are barred from the area even as Zionist settlers from the adjacent illegal settlements continue to travel unrestricted.
We are calling on everyone to participate in the Twitterstorm on February 1st, 3 pm Palestine time to demand an end to the closed military zone; three months is far too long under an illegal, unjust program of collective punishment!
Starting at 3:00 pm Palestinian time (8:00 am EST, 2:00pm for most of Europe) on February 1st, tweet with the hashtag #EndHebronMilitaryZone using our sample tweets. Please spread the word (whether or not you have a personal twitter account), and call on friends, family, and anyone you know who believes in Palestinian rights to participate. You can share this Facebook post, and also follow @ISMPalestine for any further updates leading up to the Twitterstorm. Remember to NOT use the hashtag before the date and time of the Twitterstorm.
The document contains sample tweets to use along with some accounts to target, and this folder contains visuals that you can use in your tweets We encourage you to address some of your tweets to your representatives, politicians, ambassadors/embassies to Israel and UN members; though we may continue to update the list on the google doc also feel free to tag accounts not including if you think they are relevant. Also link to the Action Alert – the call by Palestinian and international organizations to open Tel Rumeida and respect Palestinian human rights, out thunderclap campaign page, and our Call for Action listing more concrete steps people can take.
Please participate and bring awareness to the situation in Tel Rumeida, to help build public pressure on Israeli authorities to end the closed military zone. As Palestinian resident of Tel Rumeida Abed Salaymeh explains,“soldiers and settlers are making life for the Palestinians intolerable to force them to leave their houses voluntarily. This is a crime under international law. They are targeting activists to silence the truth and stop the truth from reaching the whole world.” We are reaching out to you to ask that you please help spread the truth of what is happening to the world.
30th January 2016 | International Solidarity Movement, al-Khalil team | Hebron, occupied Palestine
More than four month ago, 24th September 2015, at the very start of the current escalation of violence, human rights group Amnesty International demanded a proper investigation in the execution of Hadeel al-Hashlamon at Shuhada checkpoint in occupied al-Khalil (Hebron) on 22nd September 2015. Amnesty consideres it proven, that the 18 year old female student posed no threat to the soldiers who executed her and then let her bleed to death without medical help for more than half an hour.
More executions followed and they all seem to have the same pattern: Soldiers at the checkpoints gun down Palestinian men and women who just wanted to pass the checkpoints and gave them no medical care until they were dead. They put a knife next to the body and made a photograph of the body and the knife, for the ‘stabbing attack story’ in the official Israeli news.
While the international press blindly copied the official Israeli version of the events saying “Israel has the right to defend themselves against terrorists.” The Israeli government furthermore tries to criminalize any human rights organisation that actually did proper report on the incidents.
From then on, the Israeli Army killed Palestinian civilians every day. The number counts 167 killed Palestinians suspected of knife attacks, car attacks or trowing stones. Most of them in Hebron in the southern part of the West Bank
In the last week of October 2015, there were almost daily executions by the Israeli army in the city of Hebron:
On 22 October, Israeli forces in the Tel Rumeida neighbourhood killed Islam Ebeido (23), from the same neighborhood, while passing by Gilbert checkpoint .
On 24 October, at approximately 14:50, Israeli forces killed Sa’d al-Atrash (20), from the south of Hebron, in the vicinity of the Ibrahimi Mosque. They shot him from a range of less than 2 meters. Israeli forces claimed that al-Atrash attempted to stab an Israeli soldier. It should be noted that the area were al-Atrash was killed can’t be entered without passing through a metal detector in a checkpoint.
On 25 October, Israeli Border Police stationed at the entrance of the Ibrahimi Mosque, south of Hebron’s Old City, killed Dania Jehad Ersheid (17), from al-Hawooz area. They opened fire at her when she stopped to have her school bag searched.
On 27 October, at approximately 22:30, Israeli special troops, temporarily replacing the soldiers at the Gilbert Checkpoint in Tel Rumeida neighbourhood of Hebron killed Homam Adnan Sa’id, 23, claiming ‘he had a knife’, but eyewitnesses report seeing soldiers throwing a knife next to his dead body.
On 28 October, Islam Rafiq Obeid, 23, was shot by Israeli troops in Tel Rumeida in Hebron. Witnesses say that soldiers arrived at around 14:30, cleared the spot, then waited for the first to come, which was Islam, and killed him with over 11 bullets. Soldiers also detained Palestinian medics and stopped them from providing Obeid medical help. According to witnesses, he was left to bleed to death by Israeli forces that surrounded the area and closed it.
On 29 October, soldiers at Qurtuba checkpoint, in Shuhada Street, killed Farouq Seder (19), from Izone neighbourhood east of Hebron, by opening fire at him from behind. Israeli forces claimed that he attempted to stab a soldier. However, photos posted by Israeli soldiers on social media clearly show that there was no knife in the crime scene.
On 29 October, Soldiers at the ibrahim Mosque Checkpoint killed Mahdi Muhammad al-Muhtaseb, 23. An eyewitness told Ma’an News that he saw an Israeli soldier shoot at the Palestinian, hitting him in the shoulder. “Then the Israeli soldier approached him and shot him in the head and dropped a knife near his body,” the eyewitness added.
Militairy bulldozer enters Tel Rumeida for building the new armybase, while residents get registration numbers
Since these assassinations, which in the Israeli press were dubbed ‘terror attacks’ perpetrated by Palestinians, families in Shuhada Street and the Tel Rumeida neighbourhood in Hebron were punished with severe restrictions. They had to register with the army, who build a new military camp in the old Jewish cemetery in Tel Rumeida, fortified the checkpoints and closed down all paths on the hill, forcing everyone to walk through the checkpoint, where other Palestinians had been killed.
Then the Israeli army declared the Tel Rumeida neighbourhood and Shuhada street a ‘closed military zone’, evicted all human right observers and closed the offices of ISM and YAS, two human rights defenders groups. Only registered residents have since then been able to enter the region but are subjected to daily harassment and threats. Illegal Israeli settlers can move freely in the area.
It’s collective punishment which is an abuse of international law. This closed military zone has now lasted for more than 3 months.
To the world, Israel is pretending to defend itself, but the assassinated men were not attacking the soldiers at all. There’s clear evidence that most of the killings were random executions.
Many residents and internationals saw the special troops arriving and checking the environment before waiting for the first Palestinian to come and kill him. They put knives next to the body to pretend they neutralized terrorists, made pictures of it, stole the dead bodies, cleaned the blood from the street and left the scene.
Families are afraid to complain or give testimony because they will surely be punished for it by the occupation forces. They know they can be killed for no reason, or have their children traumatized, injured or even killed, if they stay where they live in their neighborhood. Some families already temporarily left.
This is ethnic cleansing, a war crime, and brutal abuse of Human Rights and International Law.
Sit-in tent against the closed military zone in Tel Rumeida and Shuhada Street.
That’s why the international politicians are slowly demanding a proper investigation into all those killings. Swedish foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom was brave enough to start demanding this, and is publicly supported by other foreign ministers.
The Israeli reaction is furious and devastating. As long as we’re waiting for more brave politicians to join this justified demand, it is necessary to support Margot Wallstrom, because she will be attacked inside and outside of Sweden.
A good start is to send a supportive message to the Swedish embassy in your country <http://www.swedenabroad.com/en-GB/Embassies/>, using the underneath text or writing your own. You may also consider writing a message to your own national and local politicians asking them to support Palestine and Walström and demand investigations of the assassinations. To the attention of Mrs. Margot Wallström, Minister for Foreign Affairs of the Kingdom of Sweden
Dear Mrs. Wallström,
I have taken notice of your stance on the necessity to investigate Israel’s extrajudicial killings of Palestinians. I have also noted the shameful reactions of Israeli leaders and others. It’s the ferocity and disgrace of these reactions that urge me to speak out in support of your remarks and integrity.
I support your position that Israel should be held accountable for what are in fact proven extrajudicial killings. Amnesty International and other organisations have provided plenty of evidence, as in the case of Hadeel al-Hashlamoun, the young Palestinian woman who was executed point blank by the Israeli army. Much of this evidence is available online, ranging from reports to video’s and testimonies. They make clear that these killings are no exception, but part and parcel of the structural Israeli mistreatment of Palestinians.
Its not that we don’t know about the Israeli atrocities. The problem is that we refuse to act on them. As a result the Palestinians pay the price and Israel goes unpunished – giving the country carte blanche to proceed, which is exactly what we are witnessing. This is why I applaud your principled stance. If no one acts, the remains of the Palestinian society will be destroyed before our eyes.
[If the FM of your country doesn’t support the demand:] I regret that the Foreign Minister of my own country has not acted, and has not expressed his support for Sweden. Please be informed that I will urge him to correct these failures.
