International Solidarity Movement - Page 680 - Nonviolence. Justice. Freedom.

3 Arrested Protesting Expansion of Settlement in Jiftlik, the Jordan Valley

31 October 2010 | International Solidarity Movement

Sunday, settlers clashed with Bedouin villagers of Jiftlik in the Jordan Valley, as settlers tried to expand their settlement of Massu´a.

Their expansion will isolate Jiftlik and result in the whole Bedouin community losing access to their pastures, making it impossible for the Bedouins to live in their village and thereby forcing them to move.

In the past week settlers have been setting up a fence to cut away more land from a family in the village, acting with violence at any encounter with that family. Locals asked for the presence of internationals to document the violations going on, and prevent the settlers from completing the fence.

A group of 12 internationals spent the night in the village to be present in the morning when the settlers were expected to continue the fence.

At ten o´clock, thirteen settlers arrived with heavy machinery and tools for erecting the fence. A struggle between the settlers, villagers, and internationals occurred, focused around the heavy tool for pounding fence poles into the ground. Internationals and Palestinian women tried to pull the tool away, while the settlers pulled back and acted violently by pushing and shoving the Palestinian women, and grabbing the internationals. An international girl was thrown to the ground several times, and another was hit. The settlers tried to hit and take the cameras that were used to document the incident.

Israeli police, IOF, and border police arrived after 20 minutes, separated the settlers from the Palestinians and internationals, and after talking with the settlers agreed to defend them as they continued building their fence. The soldiers surrounded the settlers to prevent the Palestinians and internationals from disturbing them and thus helped the settlers to steal Palestinian land and expand the settlement.

Internationals demanded that these soldiers protecting the settlers provide documents proving the Israeli acceptance of the expansion. No documents were shown, probably because the expansion was illegal not only according to international law but also according to Israeli law.

As internationals continued to document, the soldiers started picking out people to ask for their passports. They arrested one Palestinian from the village, one international from Spain and one from Norway, and harassed others by taking their passports for long intervals and threatening to deport them. The 23 year old Norwegian woman was arrested by three border police officers, hand cuffed and foot cuffed, and taken with the Palestinian and Spanish international to the Police station in the settlement of Ariel.

All arrested were released after a short time and no charges were made.

The residents of the community expect the settlers to return to complete the fence, and behave violently towards the villagers. They therefore invite international activists to be present at their village. Currently there are some internationals in the area but more are needed.

Background

It was particularly important to stop the fence construction this day, as a court case is going on concerning the legality of the fence. Lawyers and judges were expected to come and inspect the premises the same day. The probable result of such an inspection was a “freeze” of the current situation. It was important for the settlers to freeze the situation with a fence and for the village to freeze it without.

1201 — Soldiers assist settlers in land confiscation

The village of Jiftlik have had problems with the settlers from Massu´a settlement for several years. The settlement has stolen huge quantities of land over the years for the purpose of growing flowers. An area of the village which is inhabited by 200 people and several hundred goats and sheep only a couple of meters from the settlement’s greenhouses. Five years ago the area where the greenhouse is situated was part of the village. Now the settlers claim even more of the land from the Bedouin village to grow their flowers. To cleanse the Palestinians out of the area, the settlers tried to and succeeded to build part of the fence, thanks to the the Israeli soldiers and police protecting them.

The Jordan Valley is a forgotten part of the West Bank. The valley is neglected by the Palestine Authority, and overlooked by the international community. According to the Oslo accords, most of the valley is defined as area C, which means that Israel has total military and civil control. The inhabitants Jordan Valley are some of the poorest and most marginalized in the West Bank. They have limited or no access to civil services such as health care. All travel to and from the Jordan Valley is controlled by checkpoints installed by the Israeli Occupation Force (IOF). These checkpoints are difficult for Palestinians to pass, unpredictable and isolate the valley from the rest of the West Bank. The main road (road 90) through the valley, is only open for Israeli cars and Palestinians with permits, which is hard to get. The Jordan Valley is very fertile but requires lots of water. The settlements are easy to spot as they are the greener areas. The settlers have stolen local water resources, which leaves local Palestinians with few water resources, and the village that was attacked by the settlers have to buy their water from the settlers. Palestinians have limited ability to farm their own land because of the high prices of water.

IDF general: Naalin shooting an operational accident

03 November 2010 | Ynet News

Commander of IDF colleges Major-General Gershon Hacohen testifies as character witness for former battalion commander Omri Borberg convicted of attempted threats in 2008 shooting incident involving bound Palestinian protester

The defense team of Lieutenant-Colonel Omri Borberg and Staff-Sergeant (res.) Leonardo Corea, who were involved in the shooting of a bound Palestinian protester two years ago, tried to convince judges to mitigate their sentence on Wednesday.

The prosecution is pushing for Borberg’s demotion, a former commander of Battalion 71 in the Armored Corps, which will in effect end his military career.

Three months ago the special military court on the Kirya base convicted Borberg of attempted threats and his soldier Staff Sgt. Corea, of illegal use of a weapon. Both of them were also convicted of inappropriate behavior.

Two high ranking IDF officers reported to the special military court in order to testify as the ex-battalion commander’s character witnesses on Wednesday. Major-General Gershon Hacohen, commander of IDF colleges and former commander of the 36th Division testified in favor of Borberg.

“He’s the finest of men, a man whose judgment can be trusted,” he said. “The incident he was involved in is not a moral failure but an operational accident. The fact that his tenure as battalion commander has been suspended is punishment enough.”

Ground Forces Command Major-General Sami Turjeman is also slated to testify in favor of Borberg whom he knows well.

Facing 3 years in prison

What started as a routine protest of a few dozen Palestinians and left-wing activists in the West Bank village of Naalin on July 7, 2008 turned into one of the IDF’s most significant command and legal matters in recent years. Staff Sgt. Corea fired rubber bullets from close range at anti-fence protester Ashraf Ibrahim Abu Rahma as he was blindfolded and bound and hit close to his shoe.

The maximum punishment Corea and Borberg face is three years in prison.

The judges ruled that Abu Rahma did not pose a threat and that the Borberg’s actions were unlawful. It was further stated that the incident had caused significant damage to the reputation of the IDF, its commanders and soldiers.

Patrolling Al-Khalil during a tense Jewish holiday

1 November 2010 | International Solidarity Movement

Soldiers in the old city don't like to be followed — Old City, Al-Khalil

Saturday in Al-Khalil much of the city was under alert for another Jewish holiday; the old city was overwhelmed with thousands of settlers and Jewish tourists. The atmosphere was tense and internationals were restricted from entering the area surrounding the Ibrahim Mosque until 4 p.m. Access to the mosque was completely denied to Muslims for the entire day as settlers had the whole mosque to themselves.

Due to the massive presence of settlers in the city, the weekly Shuhada Street demonstration was canceled. During the day a Palestinian activist working for B’tsellem was arrested while monitoring settlers and released only late that night.

On Sunday, ISM volunteers patrolled the city all day, following soldiers stopping Palestinians at random to check their ids, and monitoring children on their way to school. Wadi Al-Hussein is a Palestinian neighborhood close to Qiryat Arba, the settlement with a population of 5000 people.

On one of the settler-only roads, an old man approached us and told us about the situation of his 11-year-old grandson, Karam. One day while Karam was walking to school, settlers threw stones at him so he ran home scared. Shortly thereafter, soldiers arrived at Karam’s house to arrest him and bring him to prison in Ramallah. He was held for a week and released only on a bail of 2,000 shekels and house-arrest. He’s spent the last five months confined to his uncle’s home. Once a week the teacher brings the whole class to have a lesson with him. His family goes to visit him regularly but his mood is very low.

Since there are few internationals monitoring that particular area regularly, the ISM is going to step up its presence there. We spoke to the headmaster of the school who told us that sometimes during the night, settlers break into the school to destroy property and shoot live ammunition. Teachers are often stopped by soldiers on their way to school, and have been strip-searched, or forced to drop their trousers, take off their shirts, and stand for an hour in front of the school while kids pass by. Israeli Soldiers often interrupt lessons by coming into the school, and in one case broke a teacher’s hand.

Civil resistance to bring down the Walls

1 November 2010 | Ayed Morrar, Huffington Post

Budrus, a documentary film now debuting across the US, tells the story of a successful protest campaign by unarmed Palestinian civilians against Israel’s military occupation in my small West Bank village. Our struggle’s success and the consequent expansion of civil resistance to other West Bank communities may provide hope to viewers desperate for positive news from the Middle East, but today an Israeli crackdown on unarmed Palestinian protesters is threatening this growing movement. For our movement to thrive and serve as a true alternative to violence, we need Americans’ to demand that Israel, a close US ally, end this repression.

Budrus depicts our ten month campaign of protest marches in 2003-2004, which included participation by men, women and children, and by representatives from all Palestinian political factions, along with Israeli and international activists, to resist the construction of Israel’s Separation Barrier on our lands. Young women, led by my 15-year-old daughter Iltezam, ran past armed Israeli soldiers and jumped In front of the bulldozers that were uprooting our ancient olive trees. The soldiers regularly met us with clubs, rubber-coated bullets, curfews, arrests and even live ammunition. But we won in the end. The Israeli military rerouted the barrier in Budrus, allowing us access to almost all of our land.

The film ends with Palestinian and Israeli activists heading to the neighboring village of Ni’ilin where the struggle to save Palestinian land continues today. But following Budrus’s success and faced by a growing numbers of civilians protesting the confiscation of their lands, Israel has responded with military might, attempting to quell this new movement. Twenty Palestinians have since been killed during unarmed demonstrations against the construction of the Separation Barrier.

In Ni’ilin, in the dark of night, Israeli soldiers have staged hundreds of military raids and arrests of civilians from the village; hundreds more were injured — forty by live ammunition, and five, including a ten year old, were shot dead. Today, a horrid 25 foot concrete wall stands in Ni’ilin, behind which lie 620 acres of village lands taken for the expansion of illegal Israeli settlements.

Through a five-year protest campaign, another nearby village, Bil’in, has become an international symbol of nonviolent resistance to Israeli occupation, with world leaders from Jimmy Carter to Desmond Tutu visiting to show support. On October 11th, Abdallah Abu Rahmah, one of Bil’in’s most prominent protest organizers, was sentenced by an Israeli military court to twelve months in jail. His crime — leading demonstrations in his village that were very similar to those I led in Budrus.

During Abdallah’s trial, Israel’s military prosecution repeatedly demanded that an ‘example’ be made of him to deter others who might organize civil resistance. The EU, Britain, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have all condemned Abdallah’s incarceration, yet he remains in prison.

Palestinians’ wishes are simple — we want what is ours, our land, with true sovereignty. We want freedom, equality and civil rights — what Martin Luther King, Jr. called in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail “our constitutional and God-given rights.”

But Israel is sending a clear message — even unarmed resistance by ordinary civilians demanding basic rights will be crushed. It is little known that the second intifada began not with guns and suicide bombings against civilians, but rather with protest marches to Israeli military checkpoints inside the occupied West Bank, and with civil disobedience in the tradition of the US civil rights movement. Israel responded by firing over 1.3 million live bullets in one month into crowds of protesters. When ordinary people could no longer afford to risk protesting, small groups turned, in anger and despair, to armed resistance.

Budrus’s struggle showed that civil resistance can bring down walls, both literal and those of the heart, and set an example for a bright future for Israelis and Palestinians in this biblical land. Today Palestinian and Israeli protesters are together confronting Israel’s military occupation in other villages. But this hopeful possibility is now threatened again by Israeli bullets and arrests.

For this future to materialize, those who are outraged by the violence deployed against protesters must demand an end to the injustice. If Americans want to see the example of Budrus continue to spread, individuals, civil society groups and the US government must act to pressure Israel to end its brutal crackdown on civilian protesters.

Weekly Demonstrations: Friday, 29 October 2010

29 October, 2010 | International Solidarity Movement

22 people injured, 5 still in hospital, at increasingly violent An Nabi Saleh Demonstration
by Henni

Many shebab, two journalists and a girl were injured on Friday at the weekly demonstration in An Nabi Saleh. Villagers had employed a new strategy in response to the increasing violence of soldiers and border police.

Demonstrators split up and approached the road from the two opposite hills divided by the valley. The side with most of the shebab was blocked with massive amounts of teargas and attacked by border police. From the other side, most of the internationals, women, and children entered the road and continued the demonstration.

Police shouted and attacked some Palestinians with pepper spray directly in their faces. Soldiers attempted to arrest an international, saying “we want to talk with you.” With the support of other internationals and Palestinians he was de-arrested.

Border police declared the road “a closed military zone” without showing any paper or map as proof. Demonstrators asked to look at the paper, but the commander “was not able to find it”. Soldiers gave people 10 minutes to leave, threatening that everyone would be arrested otherwise. The demonstrators remained and argued with the soldiers, but the only response was a round of sound bombs shot directly at them.

Border police isolated the internationals and most of the children and women of the village from the shebab, occupying three houses in the village center and clashing with the shebab for several hours.

They shot two Palestinian journalists, leaving one injured on the arm and the other on the leg. Border police and soldiers continued their attack on the shebab until after sunset, pushing the clash to the olive fields surrounding the village, using rubber bullets and tear gas.

young demonstrator hit with rubber bullet — 10-year-old girl hit with rubber bullet at an Nabi Saleh

At this same time, the internationals and women were attacked with heavy amounts of tear gas. About sunset, one 10-year-old girl was injured by a rubber bullet. In total, 22 people were injured, and 5 are still in the hospital.

These weekly demonstrations have been taking place since January, 2010. One man in the village said “We want to build a strategy for all Palestine to find a way to resist against the occupation.” The village has a strong story of resistance: During the first Intifada almost half of its inhabitants were in jail. Women always participate in the Demonstration and act independently.

Ni’lin demonstrators cut away part of electric fence
by Stella

Climbing the wall to raise the Palestinian flag

Friday, demonstrators in Ni’lin succeed in cutting away part of the electric fence that annexes land onto the nearby illegal settlement Modi’in Ilit. Around one hundred Palestinian, Israeli and international activists gathered under the olive trees just outside the village and, after the noonday prayer, marched through the village’s land towards the Apartheid Wall.

In protest against the illegal settlements that have already stolen most of their land and that prevent them from farming what little is left, some youth from the village threw stones symbolically against the Apartheid Wall. A few minutes after the demonstration reached the wall, the army responded with tear gas. As the wind was often blowing toward the wall, the soldiers frequently got a taste of the tear gas themselves.

Some protesters then managed to cut a part of the electric fence. At that point, soldiers came out from the gate to check what was happening, and the protesters retreated. Quite surprisingly the soldiers didn’t follow the protesters as they usually do, but went back to hide behind the concrete slabs of the wall and continue to shoot tear gas.

The demonstration finished around 3 p.m. with no injures or arrests.