23 December 2011 | International Solidarity Movement, West Bank
The demand in Kufr Qaddoum for their main road to be reopened continues. Today’s demonstration exceeded the number of participants in the past few protests. Approximately 200 people joined together against this illegal street closure. Many of the supporters came from different parts of Palestine and the international community, from Bilin residents to an activist all the way from Norway.
Hundreds stand in solidarity against military Occupation - Click here for more images
Kufr Qaddoum is finally starting to receive the exposure it needs in order to get its story out to the public and the world.
Unfortunately, this did not stop the Israeli Occupation Soldiers from their pattern of increased violence during demonstrations. The majority of the tear gas canisters used today were aimed either directly into crowds or at specific individuals. It is illegal to use tear gas as a fatal weapon rather than for dispersion. There were many close instances of potential serious injuries due to these canisters being shot as physical contact weapons. To make the possibility of serious injuries greater, the soldiers positioned themselves on the roof of a house, which gave them a clearer view of their human targets. There was no regard for the people that live in this house as the soldiers occupied the top of it.
Besides shooting tear gas canisters directly at protesters, the soldiers spent a lot of time taking pictures of the participants. Pictures taken by soldiers have been used many times to imprison participates of these unarmed protests. The Israeli Occupation Forces have many methods to diminish any resistance such as imprisonment and fatal injuries. These are the risks that protesters accept with the hope that one day their people will be free.
Amal is a volunteer with International Solidarity Movement (name has been changed).
Two weeks after the killing of Mustafa Tamimi during a demonstration in the village, an Israeli sniper shot a protester with live 0.22″ caliber ammunition, banned for crowd control purposes.
Protester evacuated after being shot with live ammo in Nabi Saleh today. Picture credit: Oren Ziv/ActiveStills
Earlier today, an Israeli military sniper opened fire at demonstrators in the village of Nabi Saleh, injuring one in the thigh. The wounded protester was evacuated by a Red Crescent ambulance to the Salfit hospital. The incident takes place only two weeks after the fatal shooting of Mustafa Tamimi at the very same spot. Additionally, a Palestinian journalist was injured in his leg by a tear-gas projectile shot directly at him, and two Israeli protesters were arrested.
The protester was hit by 0.22″ caliber munitions, which military regulations forbid using in the dispersal of demonstrations. Late in 2001, Judge Advocate General, Menachem Finkelstein, reclassified 0.22” munitions as live ammunition, and specifically forbade its use as a crowd control means. The reclassification was decided upon following numerous deaths of Palestinian demonstrators, mostly children.
Despite this fact, the Israeli military resumed using the 0.22” munitions to disperse demonstrations in the West Bank in the wake of Operation Cast Lead. Since then at least two Palestinian demonstrators have been killed by 0.22” fire:
Az a-Din al-Jamal, age 14, was killed on 13 February 2009, in Hebron,
Aqel Sror, age 35, was killed on 5 June 2009, in Ni’lin.
Following the death of Aqel Srour, JAG Brig. Gen. Avichai Mandelblit reasserted that 0.22” munitions “are not classified by the IDF as means for dispersing demonstrations or public disturbances. The rules for use of these means in Judea and Samaria are stringent, and comparable to the rules for opening fire with ‘live’ ammunition.”
Contrary to the army’s official position, permissive use of 0.22” munitions against demonstrators continues in non life-threatening situations.
Background
Late in 2009, settlers began gradually taking over Ein al-Qaws (the Bow Spring), which rests on lands belonging to Bashir Tamimi, the head of the Nabi Saleh village council. The settlers, abetted by the army, erected a shed over the spring, renamed it Maayan Meir, after a late settler, and began driving away Palestinians who came to use the spring by force – at times throwing stones or even pointing guns at them, threatening to shoot.
While residents of Nabi Saleh have already endured decades of continuous land grab and expulsion to allow for the ever continuing expansion of the Halamish settlement, the takeover of the spring served as the last straw that lead to the beginning of the village’s grassroots protest campaign of weekly demonstrations in demand for the return of their lands.
Protest in the tiny village enjoys the regular support of Palestinians from surrounding areas, as well as that of Israeli and international activists. Demonstrations in Nabi Saleh are also unique in the level of women participation in them, and the role they hold in all their aspects, including organizing. Such participation, which often also includes the participation of children reflects the village’s commitment to a truly popular grassroots mobilization, encompassing all segments of the community.
The response of the Israeli military to the protests has been especially brutal and includes regularly laying complete siege on village every Friday, accompanied by the declaration of the entire village, including the built up area, as a closed military zone. Prior and during the demonstrations themselves, the army often completely occupies the village, in effect enforcing an undeclared curfew. Military nighttime raids and arrest operations are also a common tactic in the army’s strategy of intimidation, often targeting minors.
In order to prevent the villagers and their supporters from exercising their fundamental right to demonstrate and march to their lands, soldiers regularly use disproportional force against the unarmed protesters. The means utilized by the army to hinder demonstrations include, but are not limited to, the use of tear-gas projectiles, banned high-velocity tear-gas projectiles, rubber-coated bullets and, at times, even live ammunition.
The use of such practices have already caused countless injuries, several of them serious, including those of children – the most serious of which is that of 14 year-old Ehab Barghouthi, who was shot in the head with a rubber-coated bullet from short range on March 5th, 2010 and laid comatose in the hospital for three weeks.
Tear-gas, as well as a foul liquid called “The Skunk”, which is shot from a water cannon, is often used inside the built up area of the village, or even directly pointed into houses, in a way that allows no refuge for the uninvolved residents of the village, including children and the elderly. The interior of at least one house caught fire and was severely damaged after soldiers shot a tear-gas projectile through its windows.
Since December 2009, when protest in the village was sparked, hundreds of demonstration-related injuries caused by disproportionate military violence have been recorded in Nabi Saleh.
Between January 2010 and June 2011, the Israeli Army has carried 76 arrests of people detained for 24 hours or more on suspicions related to protest in the village of Nabi Saleh, including those of women and of children as young as 11 years old. Of the 76, 18 were minors. Dozens more were detained for shorter periods.
Farming on land that has become almost impossible to farm is now daily reality for 62 year old Naeem El Laham, also known as Abu Mohammed. Together with his wife, 6 sons, 5 daughters and grandchildren he lives on his farm west of Khan Yunis.
“Our farming land stretches out over 2 dunums. My sons help me with the work on the land, just like I helped out my father on the land when I was younger,” says Abu Mohammed.
On his land he has small palm trees, beehives, 6 sheep, some olive trees, and a few vegetable plants. At first glance this looks like any small farm. It is only when you take a closer look at the plants and hear the story of Abu Mohammed, that you realize this farm is under serious threat.
“Until eight years ago we were able to buy water from a source nearby. However, that became too expensive.” Like many other farmers in the Gaza Strip the family is struggling for an affordable water supply, they dug their own water well in 2003.
“About four years after digging the well I noticed an increasing salinity in the water coming from our well” says Mohammed. “The plants deteriorated, as did the harvests. We used to plant vegetables on the land for our own consumption but since they only received salty water, these crops have stopped growing. Since 2003 we were growing lemon trees. When the salinity in the well water rose, the trees turned yellow and produced only small lemons with a salty taste.”
In 2010 Abu Mohammed decided to cut the lemon trees as they were no longer productive. He planted several dozen palm trees instead, as they are apparently more adaptable to the high salinity in the water. “It will take a several years for the trees to have a considerable size and even then, the dates that they produce will not be as profitable as the lemons we used to grow,” sighs Mohammed.
Until two years ago the family drank the water coming from the well, which made them ill. Mohammed explains how “most of our family members had kidney problems and the younger children were taken to hospital many times for kidney stones and vomiting. The doctor in the hospital convinced us to stop drinking water from the well and to buy treated water. This has put another big burden on our already stretched family budget.” Abu Mohammed describes how during Operation Cast Lead white phosphorus landed approximately 1.5 kilometers away from his farm. The smoke and fumes reached his farm and he noticed that his olive trees have stopped growing since.
Abu Mohammed and his family have tried everything they can to continue working the farm, but it seems to become more and more impossible. “We need help to replant our lands”, says Abu Mohammed as he speaks of his wish to continue the family tradition of farming.
Approximately 70,000 people work in the agricultural sector in the Gaza Strip, 25,000 of whom are seasonal workers. The coastal aquifer is their main source of irrigation water for the land. Due to a lack of other resources this aquifer is being over abstracted which leads to seawater and saline water intrusion. Sewage leaking into the ground water has also increased the already high nitrate levels. Advocacy group EWASH has stated; “In the past, agricultural production has ensured household food security for the Gazan population as well as contributed to economic security. Currently, agriculture in the Gaza Strip is barely viable.”
Photo: Rosa Schiano, International Solidarity Movement – Click here for more images
Every Tuesday there is a demonstration against the occupation and the Israeli imposed no go zone that surrounds Gaza, stealing much of Gaza’s best farmland. Today, it was unseasonably warm, it felt almost like summer. We started our march from in front of the destroyed buildings Beit Hanoun Agricultural College. Music played over a megaphone as we marched down the road into the no go zone. As we got closer to the no go zone the music stopped, it got quiet. Usually, when the music starts the chanting begins, but not today. Everyone seemed to be lost in thought, perhaps pondering the green that has recently appeared in the no go zone. The bulldozers haven’t come for many weeks to kill all life in the no go zones. Perhaps they were remembering the olive trees, and orange groves that used to be here. Perhaps they were thinking of the families that used to live in the destroyed houses that we were walking by. Perhaps they were thinking of the houses that no longer exist, the houses that have been completely erased by the Israeli bulldozers.
We entered the no go zone and went to the flag that we left here several weeks ago. It flies in the breeze, a reminder that this land is Palestinian, that while the people of Gaza might have been driven from their homes they have not yet been erased by the Israeli military like the orchards that used to grow in the no go zone. We took the flag down. We marched further into the no go zone, to land which no one had been to since May of 2000. We made our way across the no go zone, land scarred dozens of times by the blades of Israeli bulldozers, to a small hill. We climbed the hill and we planted the flag. The ground was hard, it has not rained lately, but we found a soft spot and drove the flagpole into the earth. We piled rocks around its base to strengthen it. We looked out over 1948, the land which many residents of Beit Hanoun had been driven from 63 years ago.
We began to walk back to Beit Hanoun. Through the no go zone, on land no one had been to in many years. As always, when you go new places in Gaza you see new destruction which you had no inkling of before you stumbled upon, but it was always there, another untold story in the crimes of the occupation. We paused by some rubble that I had seen many times on our marches into the no go zone, I never knew what it had been. It was a well. It had of course been destroyed by an Israeli bulldozer, all of the trees which it used to water ground under the treads of the same bulldozer. The well is dry now. Perhaps someday it will be repaired and orchards will once again thrive on this land. Someday, after the occupation finally disappears into the pages of history. Until then, it stands alongside the hundreds of Palestinian villages destroyed in the Nakba, alongside the thousands of homes destroyed by Israel, as a mute reminder of the crimes of Israel.
21 December 2011 | International Solidarity Movement, West Bank
Soldiers from the Israeli military entered the Ibrahimi Mosque located in the Old City of Hebron on December 21 in the afternoon. Male and female soldiers entered the mosque and the men’s place for prayer in what appeared to be a tour of some kind. It is a custom within Islam to take off shoes and for women to cover their hair when entering a mosque. Despite this custom, soldiers did not take off their shoes and female soldiers in the group did not cover their hair.
Furthermore, two of the soldiers where heavily armed in order to “protect” the group of soldiers. International volunteers from the ISM who happened to be in the mosque at this time asked soldiers why they entered the mosque. The soldiers responded that they “wanted to visit the mosque.”
ISM volunteers further questioned the soldiers’ choice to enter the mosque with shoes and weapons, and why the female soldiers did not consider the custom to cover their hair, but were refused an answer.
The refusal of the soldiers to consider religious customs while walking into a religious sanctuary should be put in the context of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank which is illegal under international law.
Recently, soldiers stationed in the occupied area of Hebron known as H2 have raided several homes, entered Palestinian property and either participated or done little to stop escalating violence and harassment committed by Israeli settlers living in the area.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okoiSEvG-98?rel=0 After settlers occupied the parts of the Old City in the city centre of Hebron in the middle of the 1970s, Israel has imposed several apartheid laws including a heavy military presence, watchtowers, checkpoints, street barriers, road closures, house evictions and forced displacements which aims at restricting and controlling Palestinians only.
While soldiers and settlers move around freely inside the occupied area, Palestinians who want to enter the mosque, face many difficulties as a consequence of these restrictions and apartheid measures.
ISM consider today’s event and the obvious neglect of religious and cultural customs a severe violation of Palestinian human dignity and integrity.
Caroline Nordhammer is a volunteer with International Solidarity Movement (name has been changed)
Farming on land that has become almost impossible to farm is now daily reality for 62 year old Naeem El Laham, also known as Abu Mohammed. Together with his wife, 6 sons, 5 daughters and grandchildren he lives on his farm west of Khan Yunis.
leads to seawater and saline water intrusion. Sewage leaking into the ground water has also increased the already high nitrate levels. Advocacy group EWASH has stated; “In the past, agricultural production has ensured household food security for the Gazan population as well as contributed to economic security. Currently, agriculture in the Gaza Strip is barely viable.”
