August 15 | International Solidarity Movement | Occupied Palestine
In Pictures: Palestinians murdered under Israeli occupation in 2019.
Israel permits settler invasion of Al-Aqsa on Muslim holiday
August 11 | International Solidarity Movement | Old City, East Jerusalem, occupied Palestine
Hundreds of settlers invaded the Al-Aqsa compound in Jerusalem’s Old City this morning after Israeli soldiers used tear gas, sound grenades and rubber-coated steel bullets to clear out Muslim worshippers.
61 Palestinians were injured and 15 hospitalised when soldiers and police let loose on tens of thousands of Muslims celebrating the first day of Eid al-Adha.
Just minutes after the morning prayer, the peaceful scene descended into chaos as men and women were beaten by riot police and children ran screaming from tear gas and sound grenades.
A Palestinian from East Jerusalem who witnessed the violence told ISM that he saw an elderly man hit by soldiers, and three other men beaten and covered in blood before being arrested.
The Red Crescent reported that one man suffered a broken jaw while others were treated for rubber-coated steel bullet wounds and burns from exploding sound grenades. ISmers also saw two men arrested inside the Lion’s gate.
After many Palestinians fled from the compound, 1,700 settlers in total were given permission to enter – the second time this year during a Muslim holiday. They were escorted by heavily armed soldiers in smaller groups of 100-200. The ultra-nationalists claimed to be seeking entry to commemorate Tisha B’Av, a Jewish holiday, which coincided this year with Eid al-Adha.
However Palestinians believe that the invasion was entirely politically motivated. “It’s a political issue and nothing to do with religion,” the East Jerusalem resident told ISM. “They want to show who has the power, who are the ones in charge. Don’t forget, it’s election time and these fanatics are very important to win over for the Israeli government.”
Hundreds of settlers were waiting by the Dung Gate entrance of the compound near the Western Wall from around 8am, chanting over the bangs of sound grenades exploding inside.
The number of settlers permitted to enter was 17% more than on Tisha B’Av last year when the Jewish holiday did not coincide with Eid al-Adha.
They continued their provocations for the rest of the day, trying repeatedly to enter the Al-Aqsa compound through different gates. As late at 8.30pm, ISMers saw the fanatics holding a ceremony by the Lion’s Gate entrance to Al-Aqsa. A local told ISM that this display has never happened before. “There’s no limits, no limits to what they are doing today,” he said.
The extremist groups had released a call out earlier this week to raid the compound on Sunday.
In an attempt to prevent the settler invasion the Muslim Waqf – the authority that controls the compound – had delayed the prayer by an hour and encouraged worshippers to stay in Al-Aqsa afterwards to deter the Israeli government giving them the green light.
But after thousands of Palestinians fled the compound the numbers inside were low enough to be deemed ‘safe’ for settlers to enter.
Muslims were also prevented from re-entering the site for around two hours after.
A Palestinian woman sat crying at the Lion’s Gate after being refused entry and a man was briefly detained and searched. Another woman who was also denied entry and aggressively pushed back by soldiers when she tried to pass said: “I am a Muslim. I am outside. There are Israelis inside. Inside my Al-Aqsa.”
Worshippers were eventually allowed back in to the compound after being forced to wait for hours while settlers roamed free inside.
For the past 10 years, Israel has been making steps to control the holy site, allowing more and more ultra-nationalist Jews to enter.
A movement in Israel’s far right is behind this push for more access to the compound. They are also seeking permission which would allow Jews to pray at the site which is currently forbidden.
Israeli settlers attack Palestinians and harass internationals, IOF arrest observers
August 11 | International Solidarity Movement | Hebron, occupied Palestine
Yesterday in Tel Rumeida, the afternoon before Eid, settlers attacked an elderly Palestinian couple as they walked home. International activists in the area attempted to document the abuse. The soldiers were not protecting the Palestinians. They were allowing the actions of the violent settlers.
The soldiers instructed the activists to step away and stop filming. As the five international activists walked away, a settler pushed his young son into a 20-year-old British man, who was immediately pushed from behind to the ground and handcuffed by Israeli soldiers. When asked about his treatment, he stated that he had been placed in a chokehold whilst being dragged up the street, with his cable-tie being too tight for IOF soldiers to remove easily, causing his hands to swell and leaving red marks on his wrists that lasted for the rest of the day. Settlers were encouraging the aggression. They snatched the phones of two of the activists, when they asked for them back, the two 25-year-old British women were detained by border police and taken to Kiryat Arba police station. A fourth American activist had her phone stolen by Israeli settlers and thrown over a wall, and was also arrested at the scene. These four international activists were detained for four hours.
As you can see in the video, a Palestinian man was also handcuffed and taken away, despite not engaging illegally or provocatively.
A fifth international activist was stalked by a settler who verbally abused her along with Badee, founder of Human Rights Defenders. She called them terrorists whilst again, the army did nothing to help the situation. The soldiers ignored violations of Palestinians’ and activists’ fundamental human rights, made to stand in the sweltering heat being verbally and physically abused as some sort of collective punishment for simply trying to walk to their homes in the occupied Hebron. Soldiers threatened to arrest Badee if he didn’t stand at a particular point on the pavement that they arbitrarily had designated him.
The house that you see at the end of the video was vandalised. Hebrew signs were left overnight threatening Abu Awani. He visited the police station to make a complaint this morning but was turned away. Tensions remain high in Tel Rumeida with Palestinians’ freedom of movement restricted and right to life threatened.
The HRDA have released a statement regarding the threat:
“The activist Badee Dwaik said that Imad Abu Shamsya noticed the presence of slogans on cartons on the roof of Imad’s house on Friday morning threatening him with death and a group of Palestinian and foreign activists went to Imad Abu Shamsia’s house to declare their solidarity with him and to denounce the policy of threats against Imad and many activists Human Rights Defenders as a group of settlers returned at 3 am on the roof of Abu Shamsiya and we went to the occupation police station to file a complaint about the issue at 1:30 am, but the Israeli police asked to leave the place and remove it after 4 pm. This is the termination period.
The Defenders’ Association held the Israeli occupation authorities fully responsible for the incident, since the activist Imad lives in the area under full Israeli security responsibility. The Defenders’ Association appealed to international and local institutions to provide protection for the activist Imad Abu Shamsieh and all activists of the Human Rights Coalition. It discourages activists from stopping by their duty to protect their people and expose the crimes of the occupation by documenting the camera.
It should be recalled that Imad Abu Shamsiah documented the assassination of martyr Abdel Fattah al-Sharif in March 2016 by the criminal soldier Alor Azzaro in Hebron.”
Settlers attack Palestinians across the West Bank after Israeli soldier death
August 9 | International Solidarity Movement | West Bank, occupied Palestine
Israeli settlers launched a series of violent attacks against Palestinians across the West Bank last night, smashing car windows and assaulting an elderly man.
Attacks took place simultaneously in multiple locations between 22:00 and 24:00 on the night of August 8, near the illegal settlements of Ofra, Efrat, Howara and Kiryat Arba, suggesting the attacks were coordinated.
An elderly Palestinian man, who was attacked by settlers throwing rocks at Howara checkpoint near Nablus, said he “would have been killed” if he had stopped driving. He was treated for wounds on his shoulder and neck.
Settlers smashed the windows of Palestinians’ cars near the illegal settlement of Kiryat Arba, the same place where just last month soldiers dragged a Palestinian family, including a 1-year-old baby, out of their car and beat them. ISMers saw Israeli soldiers protecting settlers in Kiryat Arba last night as they vandalized Palestinian property.
The attacks continued today with settlers burning feed and hay bales in a village in the South Hebron Hills. Activist group Good Shepherd Collective said: “Israeli settlers burnt the animal feed and hay bales of Khaled A’mour in Adirate village in the South Hebron Hills, spray painting “Revenge” in Hebrew to make it a clear sign who was responsible. These price-tag acts of violence are routine, particularly during the election cycles where right-wing political parties are vying for the extremist support often stoke the flames.”
The latest round of violence follows the death of a settler soldier, Dvir Sorek, outside Kibbutz Migdal Oz near Bethlehem. Israeli media immediately blamed Palestinians for the killing, despite police confirming that they currently have no information on the perpetrators or motives. Shin Bet and the Israeli military have begun conducting raids across the West Bank, and establishing new checkpoints.
Earlier yesterday, hundreds of occupation forces raided the village of Beit Fajar and the Al Jalazone refugee camp as part of the massive manhunt to find those responsible for the settler’s death.
The Israeli far-right has called for settlement expansion in retaliation. Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein, from Primer Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party, declared that Israel’s “response” to the killing must be to “apply sovereignty on [annex] the settlements, starting with Gush Etzion.” Gush Etzion, a cluster of 18 settlements illegal by international law, is the region where Dvir Sorek’s body was found.
The international media’s widespread reporting of the death of the settler soldier and Israeli government’s swift and harsh reaction comes in stark contrast to their silence on the deaths of Palestinian civilians. This year Israeli Occupation Forces killed 87 Palestinians (19 children), none of which made international headlines. Less than 4 weeks ago, 7 year old Tariq Zebania was killed by an Israeli settler vehicle while riding his bicycle near his village, west of Hebron. Local media reported that there was no police investigation, and no arrests were made.
Water Series: ‘There’s no law in the world that says you can cut water from humans’
August 3 | International Solidarity Movement | South Hebron Hills, occupied Palestine
This is the second of a series of reports documenting the control and devastation of water sources by Israel as a tool of oppression.
Israel is escalating its war on water in the South Hebron Hills, demolishing wells, ripping out kilometres of pipeline and even confiscating trucks carrying emergency water tanks to parched villages.
In the sweltering month of July, five demolitions targeting water infrastructure were carried out, leaving Palestinian farming villages without access to water.
The latest took place on Wednesday July 31, when the Israeli Civil Administration – the body that governs Area C in the West Bank – cut pipes supplying water to houses and farmland in the area of al-Jaway near At-Tuwani.
Tariq Hathaleen, a local activist from the South Hebron Hills, says that the number of demolitions on water sources has “more than doubled,” this year compared to previous years.
He told ISM: “Now in the summer it sounds like the Civil Administration has a plan to restrict Palestinian access to water in the South Hebron Hills, in Area C in general, and that’s actually to put more pressure on those people to move them away from those villages.
“Because the Civil Administration don’t have a direct excuse to expel those people from their land but the plan is to put more pressure to make them leave by cutting their water sources.”
On July 4, bulldozers destroyed three water wells outside the town of Dkeika, a day after they came to the same area and uprooted over 500 olive trees.
The destruction of the wells and trees have affected around 1,200 people, 60 per cent of them registered as refugees. according to the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
Four water cisterns were also destroyed on July 24 in a park between the villages of Umm al-Kheir and Umm Daraj
“I know the reality of these people,” Tariq, who was at the demolition, adds. “I call them the enemies of life and they prove this by cutting trees, by cutting water pipes, by cutting the lives of people.”
The Good Shepherd Collective, a group that advocates human rights predominantly in the South Hebron Hills, puts the escalation of demolitions down to the actions of far-right settler NGO Regavim.
Regavim, which receives Israeli tax-payers money and has charitable status, spies on Palestinian communities, looking out for structures built without a permit and reporting them to the ICA. They then speed up demolition cases in the courts through petitions.
Their devastating impact can be seen by the steep rise in demolitions in the South Hebron Hills; 65 structures have been bulldozed or confiscated so far this year, compared to 23 structures in the same period last year, according to OCHA.
“For anyone who still has qualms about the placement of blame on the state or Civil Administration for the act of demolitions, the message of these continued demolitions in natural areas should serve as a clarifying message,” the Good Shepherd Collective said.
“The state, the settlers and the organizations like Regavim that push forward the destruction of these areas, structures and resources for Palestinians are not motivated by the preservation of humanitarian rights, environmental laws, or the protection of the natural environment.”
The series of attacks on water sources in July comes after Israel ripped out a huge pipe network earlier this year that had supplied 12 Palestinian towns in the South Hebron Hills with running water.
The pipes were built in secret and took four months to install. But just six months later, Israel destroyed them, cutting the 20km lifeline.
The 12 villages have had to return to the old method of accessing water – by transporting tanks on tractors along poor roads which wears down the tyres and wastes precious work days.
Transporting water in this way adds to the economic burden of the area’s small villages, costing 30 shekkles for one cubic metre. In contrast Israelis pay just 8 shekkles per cubic metre.
And even the trucks are not safe from Israel’s war on water; on July 15, 18 water tanks were confiscated by Israeli soldiers. In the same raid, several thousand dollars of water pipeline and drilling equipment to install the pipes were also taken.
“The feeling is hard to accept, the fact that those people, those humans out of blood and flesh agree on themselves to cut other peoples’ lives by cutting the water,” Tariq tells ISM.
“It’s far from doing something legal. There’s no law in the world that says you can cut water from humans and forbid him from having water access. Its insane.”
The South Hebron Hills is in Area C of the West Bank which means it is under full Israeli control. Palestinians in this region are denied building permits even to install water pipelines or wells, and are not allowed to hook up to the water network that Israel has laid across Palestinian land to supply illegal settlements.
As a result, villages in the area are subject to unrelenting attacks on not only their water sources but farmland and homes.