International Solidarity Movement - Page 19 - Nonviolence. Justice. Freedom.

Non-Stop Killings and Incursions in the West Bank

27 January 2024 | International Solidarity Movement | West Bank

By Diana Khwaelid

The Israeli Occupation forces killed four Palestinians in the West Bank in 4 days, during incursions in several cities from January 12 to 15.

Since October 7, 2023, the West Bank has witnessed large-scale Israeli incursions, involving storming cities, villages and camps, and carrying out assassinations and arrests of Palestinian youths. Tulkarem in particular has witnessed many more such operations than ever before.

Tulkarem

On January 12, the IOF stormed the village of Zita, northeast of the city of Tulkarem, at about 20:30, opening fire on Palestinian youths and killing a young student, Khaled Zubaidi. He was 19-year-old and from the village of Zita, a student of Telecommunications Engineering at Palestine Technical University Kadoori. Two others were injured.

Tulkarem and Nur Shams refugee camps have witnessed continuous incursions in the past months too.

Funeral of Khaled Zubaidi, 19, in Tulkarem. Credit: ISM

Nablus

The same week, the Israeli army stormed the city of Nablus, and opened fire indiscriminately on Palestinians in the street. An elderly man was wounded after he was shot in the abdomen, a 15-year-old Palestinian child suffered a head injury and was taken to the hospital, and a young Palestinian man, Abboud al-Shami, was arrested.

Al-Khalil

On the evening of Monday, January 15, the IOF stormed the town of Dora, south of Al-Khalil. There, they opened fire, killing a young man and a young girl, Mohammed Abu Saba, 22 and Ahed Mohammed, 23. Both were residents of Dora, and were killed merely because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Occupation forces injured nine others, four of whom seriously, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health.

Tulkarem, Nablus

On the evening of Monday, January 15, Israeli forces opened fire on a Palestinian from the village of Beit Furik, in Nablus. The shooting happened near the Annab checkpoint connecting Tulkarm and Nablus, in the northern West Bank.

At that time, when Israeli occupation forces closed the road, barring citizens from entering and leaving both Tulkarm and Nablus, an Israeli soldier stopped a car carrying Fares Khalifa of the Nur Shams camp, an officer in the Palestinian Preventive Security Service and a liberated prisoner who spent 8 years in Israeli occupation prisons.

Khalifa refused to get out of the car, violating the soldier’s orders. After examining his Palestinian ID, the Israeli soldier forcibly removed Khalifa from the car, handcuffed him, and shot him, according to eyewitnesses who were in the area. Khalifa died instantly.

At the time of Fares Khalifa’s shooting, his family in the Nur Shams camp was still grieving the death of their other son, Farsan. A former prisoner of the occupation forces, he was released and deported to Gaza, where he was killed in the war a few weeks ago.

Continued Israeli incursions that are increasing in intensity, in conjunction with the continuation of the genocidal attack by occupation forces on Gaza, have left many Palestinians in a constant state of sadness, fear and tension, as they continue to confront a considerably more dangerous time than the country has witnessed in many years.

Fares Khalifa, 37, killed near Tulkarem. Credit: WAFA.

Planting olive trees as an act of resistance

21 January 2024 | International Solidarity Movement | Umm Safa

Maher Sabah, a village leader, holding an olive tree during the day of work in Umm Safa. Credit: ISM.

On January 20, ISM volunteers joined with Israeli activists to work alongside villagers of Umm Safa, a village 30km north of Ramallah, planting olive trees and vines on part of the 200 dunums (50 acres) of the village’s communal land. Replacing some of the many olive trees destroyed by settlers is both an economic necessity and an act of resistance, clearly saying this is our land and we intend to stay on it.

As the day progressed and we came in view of the illegal settlement, Israeli occupation forces (IOF) turned up to disrupt this challenge to the Zionist settler colonial project. Immediately, they started pushing people around, shouting and pointing their weapons, demanding everyone leave the area, declaring it a “Closed Military Zone”. They seized gardening tools, uprooted some of the newly planted trees and seized mobile phones when they could.

After another jeep full of soldiers arrived, it became apparent they were going to escalate their violence. As we moved back, volleys of tear gas were fired at us whilst a military drone hovered overhead collecting intelligence (fortunately it did not eject a cloud of tear gas as we have experienced at previous confrontations). To avoid more serious violence from the IOF (like use of live ammunition) and/or arrests, the village leaders decided to stop the work and return to the village.

Umm Safa is one of the many Palestinian communities at the sharp end of ethnic cleansing. It is subject to regular violent attacks by armed illegal settlers – backed up by the IOF- from the nearby settlement of Ateret and its outposts.

The villagers’ land is being stolen from them in front of their eyes. Only one week ago, 14 dunums (around 3.5 acres) of land cultivated with olive trees was seized and cleared by settlers with IOF in tow, with the apparent intention of establishing a new outpost. Further pressure has been put on the community since 7^th October, with the Israeli army blocking the village’s only access road to the main road network with a locked gate and impassable earth mounds.

Despite the premature end to the day, the community had made a clear statement of resistance. Most of the olive trees had come through the confrontation unscathed, the tools and phones seized were left behind by the IOF, but, most importantly , the community’s determination and right to stay on their land had been unambiguously asserted.

Existence is resistance.

A video of the disruption caused by Israeli army can be found here.

When Shepherding Your Flock Becomes a Crime

16 January 2024 | International Solidarity Movement | Masafer Yatta

Muhammed being led away by IOF soldiers. Credit: ISM.

For the villagers of Khallet Al Dabaa, in Masafer Yatta, shepherding is a traditional way of life. One which they have followed on their traditional lands in the West Bank’s South Hebron Hills since Ottoman times. For the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) however, it is apparently an existential threat and one which needs to be dealt with severely.

Yesterday afternoon (Monday 15^th January), Khallet resident Muhammed Debabse was with his flock on a hillside on village lands. It appears that, in response to illegal settlers from a nearby hilltop outpost taking exception to this, the IOF soldiers arrived soon after. They summarily detained Muhammed and took him away. His whereabouts were not known until the lawyer engaged by the family was able to establish that he had been taken to Kharyat Al Arba police station near Al Khalil (Hebron).

Anxious hours passed for his family until, at around 8pm, they received notification from the lawyer that Muhammed would be released but only on payment of a 1,000 NIS (£250) fine, a significant sum of money for the family. The fine being paid, Muhammed eventually returned home late in the evening, ten hours or so after being detained.

So what was his “crime”? The official letter (written in Hebrew only) which the police gave him on release did not specify any offence and only made reference to a “financial penalty”. In the eyes of the occupation however, any expression of ownership of the land by the Palestinians is an act of resistance and that’s the “crime” which Muhammed, along with his fellow villagers are guilty of.

Since the genocidal attack on Gaza began, the Israeli government has used it as an excuse to increase crimes in the West Bank and forcible expulsion of Palestinian from their ancestral land. Masafer Yatta has been no exception.

Urgent Call from Palestinian Prisoner Families

The International Solidarity Movement (ISM) has been approached by the “Movement to Save the Prisoners” with an urgent request to highlight the current crisis faced by Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails. Under the directive of the Kahanist illegal settler Itamar Ben Gvir, the Israeli Minister of Internal Security, Israeli prisons and detention centers holding Palestinian prisoners have been transformed into torture centers. In the last few months, seven Palestinian prisoners have been murdered by their jailers through torture and neglect.

Family members of the prisoners explain: “These crimes are continuing in light of Arab and international silence that gave the green light for the Israeli occupation to commit crime after crime against our prisoners. Moreover, these crimes occur with no punishments due to the absence of international accountability to those who ordered and committed them.”

Families of prisoners demonstrating in Ramallah. Credit: ISM.

Palestinian prisoners held by Israel have experienced brutal beatings, strip searches, threats of sexual assaults, denial of freedom to worship, pray and recite the Qur’an, deprivation of medical care, overcrowding, the reduction of already poor nutrition meals, starvation, the cutting of water and electricity, denial of warm clothes, and the deprivation of visits from family members, legal representatives, and humanitarian groups. Gaza prisoners face all these in addition to continuous torture where other prisoners hear their heart breaking screaming day and night. Some prisoners are missing and it is unknown if they are even still alive.

Family members of prisoners carry a banner that says. “The Movement to Save the Prisoners: Our prisoners are in danger. Let us be a light in their darkness!”

“While the world focuses on 136 Israelis held in Gaza they ignore 7,000 Palestinians held and abused by Israel. This discrimination is a grave injustice.” The ISM is passing the call of the families to you: “For all the free people, be the light of the prisoners’ darkness and their loud voice in all forums, they are addressing your consciences from the borders and edges of death.”

Suffer the Children

*Palestinian children in Wadi Tiran in Masafer Yatta, threatened with murder by extremist settlers if they don’t leave their village*

I am still perpetually on the verge of crying or crying most of the time. Throughout my travels in Palestine, I have learned from the wisdom of children. Children everywhere know when they are very young that their tears are not something to repress, but rather their crying out helps bring about what they are needing.

Where my Arabic and their English are inadequate to be able to communicate, playing together is a way to speak a deeper language of companionship and encounter. Our smiles and laughter together is a defiant blossoming of life surrounded by the threat of life’s extinction.

Last week a young child kissed my hand and put it to their head. I didn’t know the most appropriate way to respond.

But forty miles away, a new acronym has had to be created for children just like her, WCNSF, wounded child, no surviving family. Everything I do, even if I stay up through the night to keep watch so a family can sleep more soundly, still feels so inadequate in the midst of such catastrophe.

More than 10,000 children have been killed in Gaza in these last 100 days. Surrounding Gaza there is a fence, and armed guards ready to shoot anybody who comes near it, keeping them from coming to me and me from going to them. UNICEF warns “All children under five in the Gaza Strip—335,000—are at high risk of severe malnutrition and preventable death as the risk of famine conditions continues to increase. UNICEF estimates that in the coming weeks, at least 10,000 children under five years will suffer the most life-threatening form of malnutrition, known as severe wasting, and will need therapeutic foods.”

In Florida, where I am from, when a hurricane hit and I knew of children suffering from dehydration, I could empty every pharmacy in my vicinity of pedialyte and drive it to them in a matter of hours. But there is an army, supported and financed by my government and tax dollars, keeping me from doing the same for these children.

I learned a new Arabic phrase since I’ve been here and have used it often. People in Palestine are so heartbreakingly welcoming. There is rarely a “hello (marhaba)” in Arabic, just “welcome and welcome again” (ahlan wa sahlan). The implied longer meaning, that ahlan wa sahlan is a shortened version of, communicates: “You left your own people, but you are among family, and you are safe here.” But when a Palestinian asks me where I am from, I always tell the truth. “I am from America (Ana min Amrika).” I have seen people shake with the deepest hurt and speak about what the United States of America has done to their family. And saying “I am sorry (assif)” in Arabic is much too little. To me, it implies that I am expecting Palestinians’ understanding, forgiveness, or ablution. I am not. So I have learned to say “I seek forgiveness from God (astaghfirullah)” as the second part of responding about where I am from.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was put in a concentration camp during the holocaust and later hanged by the Nazis, warned, “Silence in the face of evil is evil itself: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.”

Amid such horrors and one’s inability to stop them, I think I understand how to be imprisoned, to be beaten, to be killed even, would be a balm for one’s soul, knowing that others weren’t suffering alone, and when people were thrown into a furnace, there was another in the fire.

I have 109 prayer beads on my wrist. This about matches the amount of children killed each day in Gaza. What I have done and am doing has not been enough for 10,000 children. And 10,000 more. I don’t know what will be enough. But I will seek it.