Construction of Israeli-only road threatens homes of Umm al Kher-al Faqir residents

“My family bought this land in 1948 after being expelled from our old home. It was just us, the birds, and the trees here at that time. But in 1967 the Israelis started to attack us, and ten years later they built a military outpost. Five years after that the settlers started buiding their homes on our land. Today they even tried to tear down our camp,” says Salim, a 60 year-old man from Umm al Kher-al Faqir.

A military road around the Karmel settlement, built on stolen land, is under construction, and was planned to go through the village demolishing some houses. The demolition order of the Bedouin camp outside Hebron was due at four o’clock on Sunday, 26 April 2009, but did not take place.

When the bulldozer started work on the land early in the morning, people from the camp attempted to prevent the demolition by sitting down in front of the bulldozer. After about three hours of applying pressure, the families of the village managed to re-route the construction of the road, so now it appears that less tents will be affected by the construction of the settler road.

Umm al Kher-al Faqir is a Bedouin camp in the South Hebron hills with 12 families and about 150 inhabitants. The people of the camp became refugees in 1948, after the beginning of the Israeli occupation. In 1981, Carmel settlement was established in the area. At that time, 40 dunams of land owned by the Palestinian residents were confiscated and given to the settlement, and residents of the camp consequently lost their farming plots. In early 2008, the Carmel settlement was expanded to include a new neighborhood occupying 50 more dunams of land from Umm al-Kheir. Since the establishment of the new neighborhood, settlers have regularly attacked the residents of Umm al-Kheir, with the intention of driving them out of their land.

Israeli forces raid Tel Rumeida homes

25 April 2009

On the evenings of the 23rd & 24th April, Israeli soldiers entered the homes of Palestinian residents in the Tel Rumeida area of Hebron. During these illegal raids the houses were searched and the families harassed before the soldiers left with no evidence of law infringement of any kind.

On Thursday 23rd at 9pm soldiers began their operation; it lasted 3 hours with five Palestinian houses being searched. The following day, Friday 24th, this move was replicated, with a further five houses searched. A number of these families were forced into a single room and sometimes made to wait outside their houses during the raids, oblivious to what was happening inside.

These raids are not the first of their kind in Tel Rumeida. Every month the soldiers enter numerous houses in the neighborhood, under the pretense of searching for incriminating weapons. Information has been received from former soldiers that this method of action is used simply for army training, violating not only the Geneva convention, but also Israeli law itself.

The Palestinian families in this area have long suffered from regular harassment from the Israeli army, not to mention constant settler violence. With checkpoints situated all over the neighborhood, detention for hours on end is an everyday occurrence for the Palestinians living here. To make matters worse, the army offers them no protection from the aggressive, and sometimes wild, behavior of the settlers.

Heed voices calling for justice for Palestinians

Huwaida Arraf | The Seattle Times

24 April 2009

We Palestinians are often asked where the Palestinian Gandhi is and urged to adopt nonviolent methods in our struggle for freedom from Israeli military rule. On April 18, an Israeli soldier killed my good friend Bassem Abu Rahme at a nonviolent demonstration against Israeli confiscation of Palestinian land. Bassem was one of many Palestinian Gandhis.

One month prior, at another demonstration against land confiscation, Israeli soldiers fired a tear-gas canister at the head of nonviolent American peace activist Tristan Anderson from California. Tristan underwent surgery to remove part of his frontal lobe and is still lying unconscious in an Israeli hospital. In 2003, the Israeli military plowed down American peace activist Rachel Corrie with a Caterpillar bulldozer as she tried to protect a civilian home from demolition in Gaza. Shortly thereafter, an Israeli sniper shot British peace activist Tom Hurndall as he rescued Palestinian children from Israeli gunfire. He lay in a coma for nine months before he died.

Despite the killing of these unarmed civilians and documented evidence of systematic human-rights abuses, the U.S. continues to supply Israel with approximately $3 billion in military aid annually, allowing Israel to continue abusing Palestinians and preventing any meaningful resolution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

The Israeli government orders the confiscation of Palestinian land for one of two main purposes: to build or expand illegal colonies or to construct the Wall that the International Court of Justice ruled illegal in 2004. In the case of Bassem’s village of Bil’in, even the Israeli Supreme Court ordered the Israeli government to change the route of the Wall, though Israel has yet to comply. Consequently, Palestinian farmers cannot reach their crops and they are devastated economically. Israel’s policy is intended to force Palestinians to give up and leave in order to survive.

When village residents gather weekly to protest, they use various creative methods of nonviolent resistance, including carrying mirrors up to the soldiers to show them “the face of occupation” or dressing as various politicians and wearing blindfolds to symbolize the world’s blind eye to their struggle. The Israeli military meets them and their Israeli and international supporters with tear gas, grenades, and bullets.

Eyewitness accounts and a YouTube video of Bassem’s killing attest to the fact that Bassem was not engaged in any kind of violent action when a soldier decided to fire a high-velocity tear gas canister — designed to be shot in the air or from a great distance — directly at his chest, fatally wounding him. In fact, just before he was shot, Bassem is heard calling to soldiers to stop shooting as a woman had been injured. Far too often, Israel tries to silence dissent by using disproportionate and sometimes lethal force against demonstrators.

In February, I led a delegation of American lawyers to the Gaza Strip to investigate Israel’s conduct in its 22-day military offensive during which more than 1,400 Palestinians were killed and more than 5,300 injured, most of them civilians — a rate of more than 60 killed per day. We found disturbing evidence of willful killing of civilians, wanton damage to civilian property and deliberate blocking of humanitarian aid. These are violations of international law that may constitute war crimes. During the offensive, Israel attempted to avert international outrage by refusing to let foreign journalists enter Gaza.

The United Nations has appointed a team of experts, led by a renowned human-rights advocate — Richard Goldstone, a Jewish, South African judge — to investigate the conduct of both Israel and Hamas. Hamas has agreed to cooperate, but Israel has indicated an intention to block the investigation. Israel tries to silence the human-rights community by preventing access to the occupied territory and refusing to cooperate with U.N.-mandated inquiries.

Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman claimed recently, “Believe me, America accepts all our decisions.” I do not believe, however, that the United States condones the killing of my friend Bassem. But if President Obama is serious about true peace in the Middle East, he must demonstrate that Lieberman is wrong, break the American silence, and heed the voices of those calling for justice.

Huwaida Arraf, J.D., specializes in international human rights and humanitarian law. In 2001 she co-founded the International Solidarity Movement.

Israeli forces fire at Gazan farmers

ISM Gaza | Farming Under Fire

17 April 2009

On Friday 17th of April a group of Palestinian activists of the Beit Hanoun Local Initiative, international activists of ISM Gaza Strip and FGM and journalists went to accompany Palestinian farmers to harvest their crops in Beit Hanoun, close to the Green Line.

As soon as they begun to work, Israeli troops start to shoot from nearby military bases and vehicles. As the shooting was becoming more intense and close to the group of Palestinians and internationals, a Palestinian activist called the Palestinian office that coordinates with the Israeli occupation administration. He was told from the coordination, that the Israeli troops couldn’t see the group and that the Palestinians and internationals should move to a place where they could be seen better by the Israeli soldiers.

When some of the Palestinians and international activists (wearing fluorescent or Red Crescent vests) move to a place where they could be clearly seen, the Israeli soldiers observed them for a couple of minutes and then started to shoot again only a few meters from them.

Shooting at civilians is a severe violation of International Humanitarian Law which unfortunately is committed almost daily by the Israeli occupation forces, but the way the Israeli occupation administration this time set this trap maybe have no precedent.

Israeli soldiers arrest journalist, close village of Um al Kheir

Christian Peacemaker Team

24 April 2009

[Note: According to the Geneva Conventions, the International Court of Justice in the Hague, and numerous United Nations resolutions, all Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories are illegal. Most settlement outposts are considered illegal under Israeli law.]

On 23 April Israeli soldiers arrested a Palestinian journalist in the village of Um al Kheir and declared the village a closed military zone after settlers from the nearby settlement of Karmel resumed construction of a road on Palestinian land. The proposed road passes within a few meters of Palestinian homes, animal enclosures and gardens. Due to a pending legal action in Israeli court filed by Um al Kheir villagers, settlers had previously suspended construction but resumed the work Thursday afternoon.

When he observed internationals filming the road construction, the Karmel settlement security guard called the Israeli military. Soldiers arrived
quickly, and when internationals asked for an explanation, they were told to wait for police. Police arrived shortly and stated that the bulldozer
was being used for “military work.” At 12:00pm, an officer arrived in a second military jeep and declared the area a closed military zone for 24 hours. Soldiers forced the journalists and internationals to leave, and arrested a journalist who did not leave immediately.

Villagers from Um al Kheir reported on Friday that work on the road had been suspended, but stated that they feared it would resume in a few days time. A legal complaint filed by the village states that the proposed road is an expansion of the settlement of Karmel and is therefore illegal. Um al Kheir residents have witnessed substantial expansion of Karmel settlement in recent months. The contested road is planned to surround
the existing settlement, effectively expanding its borders.

The Palestinian villagers of Um al Kheir bought the land on which the village now lies fifty years ago, when the state of Israel was created. At that time they were forced to flee their homes in the area south of Arad.

The village of Um al Kheir has also experienced recent settler violence and harassment. On 10 April four male settlers attacked three women from the village as the women grazed sheep near the village. One of the women, who is eight months pregnant, required hospitalization for a serious injury to her arm. The women have filed a legal complaint against the four settlers.

The residents of Um al Kheir remain committed to nonviolent resistance to settler harassment and settlement expansion.