06 December 2012 | International Solidarity Movement, Burqa, Occupied Palestine
Around 500 Israeli soldiers invaded the village of Burqa, north-west of Nablus, in the middle of the night, ransacking homes and causing damages amounting to thousands of euros.
Soldiers arrived in over 30 military jeeps at around 1:00 am and broke into 36 houses where whole families were asleep. People in Burqa recounted their horror at finding armed soldiers with dogs surrounding their beds, and at being forced to leave their homes and stand in the rain as the Israeli military carried out its operation. One old woman who complained that the conditions were detrimental to her weak state of health was simply told to ‘shut up’ by the soldiers. Another man described how he had to wait for hours in the rain with his one-year old daughter dressed only in her pyjamas.
When the families were allowed back into their homes they found everything turned upside down. Furniture, electronic appliances, water pipes, tiles and windows had been spitefully broken. As villagers took us from home to home we witnessed the same scene of disaster repeating itself in each place. Clothes and mattresses were all over the place, drawers were broken, fridges and washing machines had been slammed on the floor. A newly married couple showed us their brand-new furniture that had been smashed when the soldiers threw the wardrobe onto the bed. In another house buckets of paint had been tipped over, spilling all over the floor and a man took us to his animal shelter where one of his lambs had been killed by the Israeli soldiers. Most families were not given reasons why this raid was taking place, while one man whose house was ransacked was told by the soldiers they were searching for weapons. However, in his opinion this was simply revenge by the Israeli state following the UN vote which granted Palestine an observer status within the general assembly.
The villagers said that the soldiers came from the nearby Israeli settlement, Homesh and returned there after the operation ended at around 7:00am. The illegal Homesh settlement was said to have been dismantled by the Israeli authorities. Nonetheless, it is presently inhabited by around 20 settlers living in caravans. The land surrounding the settlement is off-limits to the villagers of Burqa, including farmers who have land there. Furthermore, a few days before, settlers had come into the village and started shooting in the air. This is the latest in a series of attacks meant to scare the people of Burqa.
It has come to our knowledge that One Voice, “an international grassroots movement that amplifies the voice of mainstream Israelis and Palestinians, empowering them to propel their elected representatives toward the two-state solution” has started recruiting youth from The Gaza Strip. This is supposed to be part of its work “to forge consensus for conflict resolution and build a human infrastructure capable of mobilizing the people toward a negotiated, comprehensive and permanent agreement between Israel and Palestine that ends the occupation, ensures security and peace for both sides…” The movement recognizes that violence by either side will never be a means to end the conflict. (emphasis added). In its new Gaza initiative, One Voice “planned an intensive 36-hour training program in leadership skills and teamwork.”
The Palestinian Students Campaign for the Academic boycott of Israel, like Palestinian Youth Against Normalization, considers One Voice a normalizing organization since it ignores the reality which is Israel’s oppression and systematic discrimination against the Palestinian people in its three components: 1948, 1967, and the Diaspora. OV, amongst other organizations, targets Palestinian youth to engage them in dialogue with Israelis without recognizing the inalienable rights of Palestinians, or aiming to end Israel’s occupation, colonization, and apartheid.
We reiterate our commitment to the statement issued by Palestinian youth against normalization which was endorsed by almost all Palestinian youth and student organizations.
We consider One Voice to be an organization that aims to normalize apartheid and the ethnic cleansing of Palestine that took place in 1948. One Voice Movement’s vision is based on a “two-state solution”, without any commitment to international parameters — which assumes equal responsibility of “both sides” for the “conflict”, and suspiciously fails to call for Israel’s full compliance with its obligations under international law through ending its illegal military occupation, its denial of Palestinian refugee rights (particularly the right of return), and its system of racial discrimination against its own Palestinian citizens.
Some of the events organized by One Voice, like the One Million Voices, are sponsored by Israeli institutions (mostly from the private sector) and endorsed by mainstream Israeli political figures from parties including the Likud, Labour and Shas. These Israeli “partners” are unquestionably complicit in maintaining Israel’s occupation and other forms of oppression.
One Voice seems to ignore the fact that the reason why Palestinians and Israelis cannot get together is because the former are colonized and the latter are settler colonists. It also ignores the fact that Israel is an apartheid state, as former American president Jimmy Carter and anti-Apartheid activist and Nobel Laureate Desmund Tutu called it; a state that discriminates not only against the Palestinians of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, but also against the 1.2 million Palestinians living in it as third class citizens.
We, Palestinian youth of Gaza, ask if One Voice trainers and leaders in Tel Aviv are willing to admit that the creation of the state of Israel was responsible for the continuing ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people since 1948? That it illegally occupies the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, and racially discriminates against the 1948 Palestinians in what the United Nations Special Rapporteur John Dugard described as, “the only remaining case after South Africa of a Western-affiliated regime that denies self-determination and human rights to a developing people and that has done so for so long”. A state responsible for ongoing house demolitions, illegal settlement expansions and the building of a monstrous Apartheid Wall — not to mention the collective punishment of 1.5 million Palestinians of Gaza, who are subjugated to a brutal, medieval siege entering its fifth year?
The One Voice website never alludes to the children and teenagers killed by Israel in the last two genocidal wars against the Palestinians of Gaza. Or is that considered a form of “dialogue” between “two equal parties” engaged in a “conflict?” Will there be a reference to the violence of the colonizer; the fourth largest army in the world with more than 450 nuclear heads? Will it state the fact that two thirds of the Palestinians of Gaza are refugees who were ethnically cleansed from the towns and villages where Israeli One Voice trainers and leaders live now?
Instead, One Voice is working on “building a mass grassroots movement that will amplify the voice of the moderates on both sides“, wanting to “show that there are partners for negotiations and peace on both sides” Where are the “two sides” of this “conflict?” Palestinian resistance is considered a “form of violence…(which) brings more violence and suffering to people on both sides! ” This is an issue of injustice around continuous dispossession and subjugation of one people by another people. Do we understand from One Voice that there was a “conflict” between the native Blacks of South Africa and the White supremacists of the apartheid regime?
The One Voice programme is one more arrogant attempt to equate the colonizer and colonized; oppressor and oppressed; victim and executioner. This is camouflaged by changing its name in Arabic to “Palestinian Voice!” We ask: will One Voice ever condemn Israel’s policy of apartheid and ethnic cleansing? Will it openly support the Palestinian right to self-determination?
We, therefore, consider One Voice projects in Gaza a continuation of a campaign of normalization that aims at whitewashing Israel’s tarnished image and does nothing but falsely creates the facade that there are actually two equal sides to “the conflict.” No wonder that tens of cultural and other civil society organizations in Palestine and the Arab World called One Voice “peace activities” as “camouflaging of Apartheid.”
We call on all Palestinian youth not to take part in this public relations charade that conceals a misleading political program that falls significantly short of international law tenets and the Palestinian national program. We expect the Palestinian participants to withdraw their support for this movement that only serves to blind the Palestinian public and sidetrack it from struggling, with the solidarity of its international supporters, for its UN-sanctioned rights, for justice, equality and freedom.
Signed by:
The Palestinian Students’ Campaign for the Academic Boycott of Israel (PSCABI)
Progressive Student Union Bloc
Fateh Youth Organization
Islamic Bloc
Palestinian Student Labor Front
Union of the Palestinian Students struggle committees
Islamic League of Palestinian Students
The Palestinian Popular struggle Front Union
Union of the Palestinian Students struggle committees
About ISM: The International Solidarity Movement (ISM) is a Palestinian-led movement committed to resisting the Israeli occupation in Palestine by using nonviolent, direct-action methods and principles. Founded by a small group of primarily Palestinian and Israeli activists in August 2001, ISM aims to support and strengthen the Palestinian popular resistance by providing the Palestinian people with two resources, international solidarity and an international voice.
For detailed information on ISM please visit palsolidarity.org.
Interning / volunteering with ISM: You will be based in the West Bank, experienced and interested activists may be placed in Gaza. Apart from gaining reporting and photography experience, you will also be networking with existing media outlets and develop skills during media meetings on reporting the occupation of Palestine. ISM is seeking a minimum 3 month commitment, and will provide accommodation during your stay.
ISM is a non-hierarchical solidarity movement. Consequently, you will not be treated as a classical intern but rather as a fellow voluntary member of the activist group.
Fields of work:
Learn to humanize the voice of the struggle by reporting on events ranging from anti-occupation demonstrations to house raising demolitions.
Establish contacts with local Palestinian and international media
Help refining the ISM media strategy by developing and incorporating own ideas on information spreading techniques
Application documents: Please send in any relevant information about yourself and experience or background you may have in reporting and journalism. Express why you are applying for this voluntary internship and what you hope to gain from it. Send an example of your written work and an optional photo sample of your work.
Applications are accepted year round and should be sent to: palreports@gmail.com
The voice is the movement. Let it be heard.
We wish you the best of luck and hope to see you reporting in Palestine.
5 December 2012 | International Solidarity Movement, West Bank
The pain and anguish on the woman’s face was penetrating. Earlier this morning two Israeli military jeeps, one civil administration vehicle, and a bulldozer had arrived at her home with orders to level the structure. This is in spite of ongoing legal proceedings seeking to preserve the home. The modest twenty square meter home was erected by the owners of the land in November of 2011. Just three days after the building was complete, the Israeli Civil Administration arrived and informed the owners that the structure was not permissible due to their failure to acquire appropriate building permits. But as these civil servants knew full well, for Palestinians acquiring building permits is no simple matter.
A Bedouin woman whose home has been demolished
The family lives in a small Bedouin village part of Aqraba, located in what is known as Area C of the Jordan Valley, a category designating territories within the West Bank which are formally under full Israeli civil and military control (as determined in the Oslo Accords). According to the Mayor, Israel is engaged in a systematic process of clearing the area of its inhabitants so that its fertile land can be appropriated for agriculture uses by nearby settlements.
This project of enclosure has caused persistent problems for the Palestinian Bedouin community living in the West Bank. Through a combination of complex bureaucratic hurdles and systematic discrimination, Israel routinely denies these communities the right to develop structures on their own property. When they take matters into their own hands (as they must to survive), Israel responds with more blunt forms of dispossession, today’s demolition being a case in point.
With the destruction of the home, the family was in desperate need of shelter. Members of the community, including civic leaders from the town of Aqraba, lent a hand in erecting a tent that would serve as their new home. A torrential downpour soon descended upon us, forcing everyone to seek temporary cover. Perhaps this was an ominous sign of the coming seasonal change and the challenges the family will inevitably face. Inside the tent, following the arrival of the Red Crescent Disaster Response division on the scene, an account of what transpired in the course of the demolition began to be recorded. Questions were primarily directed at the male owner of the home and the village mayor who was present to lend support for the family. Shortly after the rain relented, the folks inside the tent went outside and began assembling a second tent.
The building destroyed by the Israeli military was home to a family of five, and these simple tents will now serve as their only refuge from the elements. In the course of the demolition, the bulldozer also destroyed their toilet facilities and the electrical wires running to the nearby building that housed the kitchen, though those who gathered to assist the family were at least able to repair the damaged electrical wires. In addition, they also leveled a tent structure used to shield barley that serves as food for their livestock.
I sat quietly inside the tent with the woman and she poured me a second cup of tea. I watched her as she stared at the pile of rubble that was once her home, before turning her eyes to perform a visual survey of her belongings now huddled inside the tent. David and Andrea soon joined us, grabbing a seat on the single-sized bed pushed against the backside of the tent. Through Andrea’s knowledge of Arabic, we managed to engage in some simple conversation with the woman. During this brief exchange the woman revealed her pain and fears, and as she spoke tears began rolling down her cheeks. She indicated that her health and well-being were worrisome, and that being exposed to the elements like this would undoubtedly mean a turn for the worse. In a searing display of vulnerability, she said that with the destruction of her home she had nothing left to live for and now simply awaits her death. While this testimony proved tear-jerking and heart-wrenching, it was accompanied by a humbling display of compassion. Our new friend exuded a warmth and generosity that conveyed an underlying resilient spirit, bringing to life the maxim that ‘existence is resistance’. She extended sincere gratitude for our presence, calming the tensions I felt about being an onlooker to another’s misery. She patiently fielded our questions and provided poignant accounts of what this experience meant to her. At the conclusion of our exchange she said that we were like sons to her, and may god bless us.
Our powerful encounter with this 58-year-old woman occurred by mere chance, but reveals something profound about the concept of grass-roots democracy. So often we look to people of stature for insights and detail, erringly overlooking the wisdom embedded in the experiential knowledge of those most marginalized and often neglected. As an international, I often struggle to determine what it is I need to communicate to people upon returning home. Without a doubt the injustices I have witnessed deserve special attention, but perhaps just as important are the simple acts of humanity I have encountered. For within this one woman’s warmth and resilience are the seeds necessary for cultivating a better world.
The remains of the home which has been demolishedFamily belongingsPutting up a tent where the family will live
Photos by David Langstaff.
Jeff Berryhill and David Langstaff are volunteers with the International solidarity movement.
At-Tuwani – On Tuesday 4 December at 6.30 am, two bulldozers together with a Border Police vehicle, four District Coordination Office (DCO) vehicles and five Israeli army vehicles arrived to the Palestinian village of al Mufaqarah, and demolished the mosque.
The mosque was already demolished by the Israeli army one year ago, on November 24, 2011. The inhabitants of the village had just finished to rebuild the mosque last October.
The village of al Mufaqarah belongs to Area C, under the military and administrative control of Israel. Every construction must be approved by the Israeli administration. Israel denies Palestinians the right to build on 70% of Area C, which comes out to about 44% of the West Bank, while within the remaining 30% a series of restrictions are applied which eliminate the possibility to obtain a permit.
While Palestinian villages of Area C are suffering an ongoing policy of demolitions, in the nearby outpost of Avigayil, illegal under the Israeli law itself, settlers are working on new buildings. These illegal constructions are tolerated by the army and police, despite repeated reports from international and Israeli activists.
According to the Fourth Geneva Convention, the Hague Regulations, the International Court of Justice, and several United Nations resolutions, all Israeli settlements and outposts in the Occupied Palestinian Territories are illegal. Most settlement outposts, including Havat Ma’on (Hill 833) and Avigayil, are considered illegal also under Israeli law.
Operation Dove has maintained an international presence in At-Tuwani in South Hebron Hills since 2004.
When the families were allowed back into their homes they found everything turned upside down. Furniture, electronic appliances, water pipes, tiles and windows had been spitefully broken. As villagers took us from home to home we witnessed the same scene of disaster repeating itself in each place. Clothes and mattresses were all over the place, drawers were broken, fridges and washing machines had been slammed on the floor. A newly married couple showed us their brand-new furniture that had been smashed when the soldiers threw the wardrobe onto the bed. In another house buckets of paint had been tipped over, spilling all over the floor and a man took us to his animal shelter where one of his lambs had been killed by the Israeli soldiers. Most families were not given reasons why this raid was taking place, while one man whose house was ransacked was told by the soldiers they were searching for weapons. However, in his opinion this was simply revenge by the Israeli state following the UN vote which granted Palestine an observer status 
within the general assembly.
