Settlers Steal Water as Harassment and Violence Continues towards Palestinians and Activists

24 September 2024 | International Solidarity Movement | Anizan

In the West Bank village of Anizan, South Hebron Hills, aggressions escalated yesterday as settlers harassed residents and stole water from their local well. A volunteer, who was present on the scene, reported the settlers had begun their provocations the day before, draining water and taunting the villagers. Early yesterday morning, the activists positioned themselves by the well to prevent further waste. A lone settler appeared but quickly left after seeing the volunteer.

By afternoon, two settlers returned, including a familiar figure known for frequent harassment in the area. According to the activist, the settlers claimed the well—and the land—belonged to Israel, dismissing the notion that the area was part of Palestine. For over 15 minutes, the settlers shook the well’s cover as the activist sat on it. The situation became more dangerous, and the activist was eventually shoved off the well. The settlers then used the well water to splash about and wash their vehicles. This Palestinian well serves the dire needs of the families of Anizan so stealing the water just added to the cruelty.

One of the settlers then accused the activist of causing injury and threatened to contact the authorities. Later in the evening, the settlers returned, this time harassing the villagers directly.

Today, the settlers returned to Anizan once more. This time one of the settlers came on horseback, making it possible for them to drive the Palestinians’ herds away from where they needed to be. The settlers also stole more water and splashed it on the horse.

Notably, this harassment took place across the road from Zanuta, where residents were recently served with a dire ultimatum of displacement, in an area where everyone else has been pushed out. The incident highlights the ongoing struggle over water resources and land rights in the region, as well as the daily challenges faced by Palestinian communities under occupation.

Video showing the various kinds of settler harassment in Anizan, September 23-24

Zanuta Residents Slammed with Displacement Ultimatum 3 Weeks after Returning to their Lands

20 September 2024 | International Solidarity Movement | Zanuta

The recently returned residents of the village of Zanuta (in the southernmost area of the occupied West Bank) have been slammed once again with more colonial practices from the Israeli forces.

Three weeks after returning to their land and homes, which had been destroyed by settlers, after having suffered daily settlers attacks and army harassment, and being barred from rebuilding the destroyed homes or even putting up a fence for their livestock, the citizens received an ultimatum from the Israeli Civil Administration. The order gave the villagers 30 days to accept what it calls an “offer” to relocate somewhere else; otherwise Israeli forces will demolish the already destroyed homes.

This is an illusion of offering a “solution”, and a coverup to show the international community the Israeli regime has “good intentions” by offering solutions which the Palestinians actually cannot accept. In reality, the alternative place “offered” is located in Area C contiguous to Area B of the West Bank, therefore continuing the implementation of the ghettoization of Palestinians into densely populated areas in Area A and B. Furthermore, the place is surrounded by outposts with extremely violent settlers, placing the Palestinians at certain risk of increased settler violence. Finally, the land designated as an alternative has been deemed State Land (“ownership” of the Israeli State), but is in fact Palestinian private land which the colonial State does not recognise as such. 

It is critical to this story to remember that the Zanuta residents were forcibly displaced from their land last November due to settler violence and returned last month, after an Israeli court ruled that they could do so under the “protection” of the Israeli army.

Photos showing the destruction of Zanuta homes and properties by Israeli colonists.

Press Release: ISM Response to US State Dept Criticism of Israeli Investigation into Killing of Ayşenur Eygi

Ayşenur’s fellow activists honor her life and add to her memorial in the very spot she was martyred in Beita

September 18, 2024

Media inquiries: palreports [at] gmail.com

Ten days after US citizen Ayşenur Eygi, a human rights activist with the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), was shot and killed by an Israeli soldier while witnessing a protest in the West Bank, the US State Department finally suggested that trusting Israel to investigate itself may not produce accurate results. This conclusion may not have required ten full days of deliberation had the US government heeded what Palestinian, Israeli and international human rights groups have been proclaiming loudly and clearly for years: the Israeli military cannot be trusted to investigate itself.

This year alone, reports from NPR and the Associated Press have shown that Israeli military investigations are inadequate; NPR detailed how questions of misconduct are met with confidential “operational inquiries” wherein no evidence is collected and soldiers can coordinate their testimony, while the AP detailed case-by-case the lack of transparency, inconclusiveness and rare admissions of guilt in Israel’s investigations of military misconduct. Relating how ISM activist Rachel Corrie’s death at the hands of an Israeli bulldozer still hasn’t been subject to a thorough, credible and transparent investigation, Rachel’s parents Cindy and Craig Corrie summed it up best: “Israel does not do investigations; they do cover-ups.”

Without regard to these serious liabilities, the US State Department continues to allow Israel to manage the investigation, promising other action “if those results aren’t satisfactory.” Meanwhile, Eygi’s family has been calling for an independent investigation since the day Eygi was murdered, along with the ISM and the parents of US citizen Rachel Corrie, who was also killed by the Israeli military. In the two days since the State Department’s criticisms of Israel’s investigation, there has been no change in the status quo and the US continues to send weapons to Israel to be used in Gaza and in the West Bank against Palestinians.

It is crucial to understand Ayşenur’s murder in the context of Israel’s oppressive colonial regime. In the West Bank this year, in a dramatic escalation, the Israeli military has wrought mass destruction and displaced many refugees in the camps, destroyed infrastructure with the goal of displacing all the residents of the camps, killed 17 Palestinians on the same hill where Ayşenur was shot dead, and murdered 13-year-old Bana Laboum in her own home on the same day. Meanwhile, Israeli settlers have perpetrated coordinated assaults on villagers and their property with the allowance and even assistance of the military.

By counting on the Israeli military to continue an investigation that they cannot be trusted to carry out impartially and truthfully, the US remains complicit in Israel’s ongoing crimes against humanity.

Israeli plan to displace residents of Palestinian camps

Palestine – Northern West Bank

18-Sep-2024

By Diana Kwaelid

For the past two weeks, the Israeli army has been conducting the largest military operation in the northern West Bank, causing the displacement of dozens of families from the Jenin Camp, Nur Shams Camp, and Tulkarem camp. This comes following Israeli calls to evacuate the camps, raising concerns about the repetition of the Gaza scenario in the West Bank.

“Gaza scenario”

Israeli Foreign Minister Yisrael Katz said on August 28 that the threat in the West Bank must be dealt with in the same way as the Gaza Strip, coinciding with the start of the West Bank operation.

Katz explained in a tweet on his X page that the Israeli army is launching an intensive military operation in the Jenin and Tulkarm refugee camps for Palestinian refugees against what he called “the Iranian Islamic terrorist infrastructures that have been established there”.

He added that Iran is working to establish what he described as, “a terrorist front against Israel from the West Bank, based on the Gaza and Lebanon model, by financing and arming saboteurs and smuggling advanced weapons through Jordan.”

Katz also called for a temporary evacuation of the population there, and for any other necessary steps to be taken, justifying this by saying that: “This is a war on everything and we must win it.”

Inside the Tulkarem refugee camp

Israel’s grand plan

Since the launch of the large-scale military operation in the northern West Bank, which began on August 28, Israel has aimed at eliminating all Palestinian militants in the camps in the north of the West Bank, to facilitate the access of Israeli settlers to these areas and settle in them, as in the case of Masafer Yatta, the Jordan Valley area in Tubas, the villages of Nablus, Ramallah, and Hebron.

The Palestinian camps in the West Bank, specifically in the North west Bank, are a hotbed of terrorism for Israel.

Al-Balawneh neighborhood in Tulkarem camp

Breaking the popular incubator in the camps

Has Israel succeeded in breaking the popular incubator in the Palestinian camps?

During its military operation two weeks ago, the Israeli occupation forces destroyed the northern West Bank camps and turned them from a vital camp to a place where it is no longer possible to live; the northern West Bank camps have turned into a block of rubble and the infrastructure has been destroyed.

Fortunately, the Palestinians in the camps are aware that Israel’s first goal in destroying the camps, including houses, infrastructure, and shops, is to break the popular incubator and turn the Palestinian civilians living in the camp against the Palestinian fighters who have chosen the path of resistance and defend the camps in every way.

Palestinians from inside Jenin, Nur Shams, and Tulkarem camps who lost their homes and private property had the same opinion.

They said: “The occupation will not make us turn against the resistance, and if they demolish my house, I will build another house better than it.”

The footprints of an Israeli soldier during the storming of one of the Palestinian houses in the camp

Palestinian camps showcase Palestinian steadfastness

For the Palestinian community, the Palestinian camps are the representation of steadfastness and challenge, because they are Palestinians who have been displaced from Palestinian cities that have been occupied since 1948 to the West Bank, they paid the price for their stay in Palestine, and the occupation continues to pursue them until now in destroying their place of residence in refugee camps.

For the Palestinian refugees in the West Bank camps, Israel has failed in all its attempts and will never succeed in displacing them from the camps. However, there are dozens of families who have emigrated from the camps because of fear for their families and because there are special cases of illness.

These are the remnants of the occupation – a military bag with food inside for Israeli soldiers in one of the Houses of the Tulkarm camp
Map of the Al Hammam neighborhood used by the occupation soldiers during the military operation in the camp

The Deliberate Policy of Forcibly Displacing Palestinians from the Camps

West Bank
13-Sep-2024
By Diana Khwael

Since the beginning of the military operation on August 28th, which the Israeli occupation called “Operation Summer Camps”, targeting three cities in the northern West Bank—Tulkarem, Jenin, and Tubas—the Israeli occupation forces withdrew a week after the operation in the Tulkarem camp and 10 days after the invasion in the Jenin area, specifically in the Jenin refugee camp.

In the city of Tulkarem, particularly in the Tulkarem refugee camp, a large battalion of Israeli occupation forces participated, especially using military bulldozers and jeeps, with the aim of destroying the camp’s infrastructure. This is not the first time the Israeli occupation has targeted the camp’s infrastructure.

Palestinians Fear History Repeating

Before the withdrawal of Israeli occupation forces from the Palestinian camps, they left behind unprecedented devastation, not seen since 2002. A resident of the Tulkarem camp noted there hadn’t been such destruction since 1967. Hundreds of Palestinian homes were destroyed or burned, and hundreds of shops were demolished by Israeli bulldozers, along with streets and vital infrastructure. Electricity, internet, and water lines were cut off from the first day of the invasion of the northern West Bank camps.

Dozens of Palestinian homes lacked basic supplies, including bread, milk for children, and water.


Continuing Military Operations in the Camps

On Tuesday the 10th, Israeli occupation forces stormed the city of Tulkarem after Israeli special forces raided the Dabbas commercial complex around 2:00 PM. A state of panic gripped the residents, especially in the camps, as military reinforcements entered the city and shops were closed. Tulkarem turned into a ghost town once again.


No Safe Life

Residents of Tulkarem and Nur Shams camps have not yet recovered from the recent incursion. The occupation took only three days to storm the city and its camps and in broad daylight. Life in Tulkarem, especially in the camps, has become unsafe and unstable as dozens of Palestinian families began fleeing, fearing another invasion.

The affected Palestinians from the Tulkarem and Nur Shams camps described their neighborhoods as completely destroyed, similar to Gaza. Many homes were destroyed beyond repair or will take a long time to rebuild.

Others said, “We no longer feel safe; we are afraid for our children.” This indicates that Israel is using tactics to displace Palestinians from the northern West Bank camps, especially those in Tulkarem.

On the evening of Thursday the 12th, Israeli occupying forces bombed a car, assassinating three Palestinian resistance fighters inside. The fighters, from the Nur Shams refugee camp, were found charred beyond recognition. The death toll in Tulkarem during the recent military operation, which lasted more than 72 hours, rose to five martyrs. Three were from Nur Shams camp, including a young man in his twenties and a twenty-year-old girl who was targeted by an Israeli sniper while at home in the Tulkarem camp.

According to the Palestinian Health Organization, the total number of martyrs in the West Bank since October 7 has reached 702, with 5,700 injured. According to the Prisoners and Liberators Affairs Commission, more than 10,400 Palestinians are currently detained in Israeli prisons.