International Solidarity Movement - Page 987 - Nonviolence. Justice. Freedom.

Israeli forces attack Ni’lin

3rd February 2009 | Ni’lin

On the 3rd of February the Israeli Occupation Forces attacked Ni’lin, shooting teargas and entering the outskirts of the village. The incursion disrupted life as people were going to the medical clinic, working or attending their land and as the army withdrew they shot live ammunition at the people who went to protest their presence.

At noon the army came through the olive field approaching the village of Ni’lin. Soldiers started firing teargas at the medical clinic where people were going about their daily business. People were forced to run to the clinic or turn back during the attack. Construction workers building the new school near the clinic were targeted making the situation dangerous as they were on scaffolding or on the roof if the gas affected them. The military action prompted people in the village who heard the attack to organize a protest to their presence and gathered at the medical clinic. The army shot more gas, then occupied the medical centre, chasing and shooting the demonstrators as they escaped down the hill through the cemetery. From the medical clinic the army continued to shoot teargas into the village before they withdrew.

A woman had been in the olive field with her goats and became trapped behind the army during the attack on the village. Three women, including an international activist, went to make sure she would be able to return to the village safely. After finding the woman they started walking back. The group was stopped by the army with soldiers were waving with sound bomb,s threatening to use them if the women continued the path back to the village.

The army entered the village again on the outskirts, shooting teargas and throwing sound bombs in the streets closest to the olive field. At around 5pm the army moved back and demonstrators succeeded in reaching the construction site of the illegal Apartheid Wall before the army dispersed them with teargas and fired live ammunition in the air. The demonstrators were moving back to the town and were on a large hill in the olive field where they were joined by two Israeli activists. The army continued shooting teargas as they pursued the demonstrators and then started shooting live ammunition as it was becoming dark. Demonstrators and international activists lay flat on the ground in fear of being hit before they managed to make it back to the village at 5.45pm.

The village of Ni’lin has been resisting the construction of the illegal Apartheid Wall since May 2008. The Wall will annex much farmland and make Ni’lin accessible only by road through a tunnel. Ni’lin has suffered greatly from the construction and the occupation as four youths were killed during demonstrations. The continual use of live ammunition against demonstrators shows Israel’s contempt for non-violent resistance to the occupation.

Israeli kidnaps five young men from the village of Bil’in near Ramallah

Ghassan Bannoura | IMEMC News

Five young men from the village of Bil’in located near the central West Bank city of Ramallah were kidnapped on Wednesday by the Israeli military.

Troops stormed the village then raided several houses and searched them.

During the search troops took five men away, including: the brothers, Ali and Haitham Hamdan Abu Rahma, and Hosam Mohamed Hamad, Qasim Hassan Hamad, Fahad Jalal Al-Khatib, and they took the detainees to unknown place.

Since nearly four years, Bil’in village is the scene of weekly nonviolent protest against the Israeli illegal wall being built in the West Bank

From beneath the rubble

Eva Bartlett | In Gaza

4 February 2009

“This is at the beginning, when they started digging survivors and bodies out of the rubble,” Abu Qusay said. Just a few weeks after being buried alive by the bombing which attacked the building he was in, only a mere scar at his left eyebrow hints at the ordeal.

Abu Qusay is in his thirties, is the father of 6 kids between the ages of 4-15, and has worked as a policeman and security guard for 14 years now. When the late President Yasser Arafat was alive, Abu Qusay was a bodyguard for wife Suha Arafat.

In recent times, since the election of Hamas, he has continued in his role as security guard, these days accompanying VIPs as well as being the Manager of security for international guests.

It is in this capacity that I met Abu Qusay and Hamsa, the latter killed during the war on Gaza.

In one of Gaza’s coastal hotel cafes, seascape in the background and F-16 flying overhead, Abu Qusay related his story: he is a survivor of the first attacks, during which an estimated 60 Israeli warplanes simultaneously targeted around 100 police stations, police training academies, civil and governmental offices, and other security-related posts throughout the Gaza Strip.

We had a meeting at the Montada, the Presidential compound. There were about 15 of us and we’d entered the 3 rd floor meeting room shortly after 11 am. I was sitting 2 seats from the manager at the head of the table, with a friend in between us and the other attendees spread around the table.

The manager was speaking when the first strikes hit.

[2:35, an F-16 flies low overhead, growls loudly. Abu Qusay stiffens, stops speaking suddenly, then resumes after a pause.]

The explosion itself was strange, unlike other bomb blasts. I felt an immense air pressure which pushed me to the ground. Then I heard the explosion of the buildings nearby. It was such a foreign sensation, I didn’t know what was going on.

I tried to open my eyes and found that I couldn’t. The air was thick with dust which blinded me. I felt something running down my face. I tried many times to open my eyes but the dust stung them so much that it was impossible for a while. Finally, I was able to keep them open but I still couldn’t see anything. Just a small hole of light. It seemed like I was facing a wall with a tiny break in it.

I felt someone’s foot at my head and told the person to get their shoe away from my face. I was still disoriented, still had no idea what had happened.I tried to push the shoe away but found that my arms were pinned behind me, as if handcuffed. There was still liquid streaming down my face and I realized it was blood.

I began to hear the screaming and moaning of people around me. Then I heard a woman’s voice, which I recognized as one of my colleagues. Then Hamsa’s voice, telling us to be patient.

I felt the crushing weight moving off of me and then realized I was being pulled out from what had been burying me: concrete blocks and the rubble of our building. I realize that the 3rd floor room where we had been meeting was now on the ground floor. Three floors brought down to ground level.

I woke up at Shifa hospital, realized I’d passed out at the bomb site. Around me, all around me, all I could see were bodies. Corpses and wounded were scattered on the floor of the emergency room. There were so many, too many for the beds. People with legs and arms amputated. People with hideous open wounds.

It was surreal: I had been in a meeting, then was buried under rubble, then was surrounded by so much death. I couldn’t grasp it, couldn’t understand what had happened.

I forgot myself, I lost myself. I forgot my pain when I saw a child who had been at a school near the Montada. His head was pierced with wounds. I got up, was walking around looking at everyone. I was absorbed by it. Doctors and others were telling me to sit down, stay put. Where are you going, you’re injured? they asked.

Living in Gaza, we expect anything from Israel. Any attacks. We’ve lived through so many invasions and bombings. But I couldn’t believe this, couldn’t believe the scale of what they had done. And I didn’t even know about the other areas of Gaza at the time.

I used to drive ambulances. I’d learned how because I believe its important to broaden my skills, and I’m always trying to do so. But in all my days of driving ambulances, I’d never seen injuries and dead as horrific as what I saw that day. So many amputations, decapitations even.

And I keep remembering that child, the one from the school nearby. Were there fighters in the school when Israel bombed nearby? What had that child done? What had any of us working for the government done? Could this ever happen to policemen in America, Canada, England…? How can these criminals who would bomb in areas where there are civilians, children coming from school, who kill animals and uproot trees not be recognized as terrorists? They’ve committed massacres on us.

Palestinians help a wounded man after Israeli air force attacked Gaza City December 27, 2008

Abu Qusay is obviously one of the luckier, having survived the bombing with limbs intact. Like so many Palestinians in Gaza, though, he lost a number of friends in the attacks. I try to imagine how it would be to lose more than one friend, say 10, or more than one family member, say 7, or like the Samouni family, 48. It’s impossible to imagine.

Urgent call to all social movements

Open Gaza Borders!

We reiterate the need for a call from Palestinian community based organisations and the over 130 grassroots NGOs in the Palestinian NGO Network for an immediate opening of all border crossings currently controlled by Israel and Egypt.

Gaza is in the grip of a man-made humanitarian crisis. Thousands of tons of food, medical and emergency shelter aid including blankets and mattresses, donated by countries including the United States and aid organisations, is being denied entry through crossings by both the Israeli and Egyptian governments.

The United Nations has stated that 900,000 Gazans are now dependent on food aid following Israel‘s 22-day assault on the tiny coastal territory. Only 100 aid trucks are being allowed into Gaza each day – 30 less than were being brought in last year and substantially less than before Israel’s operation ‘Cast Lead’: an attack that has left over 1,300 Palestinians dead, the vast majority of them civilians massacred in their streets and homes. With over 5,000 injured and 100,000 homeless, admittance of aid is crucial at this time.

This is a fraction of the estimated 500-600 trucks deemed necessary to sustain the population of Gaza according to the United Nations. According to UNRWA, food trucks are delivering enough food to feed just 30,000 people per day.

Hundreds of medical patients, the injured from this war and Israel’s previous invasions, are being prohibited from leaving Gaza for indispensable medical treatment. Over 268 people have died of preventable and treatable conditions after being denied access to treatment since the beginning of the ongoing siege two years ago.

Israel and Egypt have designated February 5th as the final day for all foreign nationals to leave Gaza through the southern Rafah border. Egypt has said it will close the Rafah border indefinitely. Despite a statement from the Egyptian Ministry of Health that humanitarian cases will be allowed through, many patients have already been turned back, before the closing of the border. Hundreds of patients and some of those wounded from ‘Cast Lead,’ are still waiting for permission to exit Gaza through Rafah for medical treatment.

The Gazan community is concerned that Israel will be stepping up its’ economic, political, cultural and militarised stranglehold on Gaza in the upcoming weeks.

Post Israeli elections, Gazans fear the Israeli government will conduct extra judicial killings and continue their deadly strikes on Palestinian governmental figures, targeting of social and economic infrastructure and indiscriminate killings of civilians in the process. Actions that have proven to not only end lives but successfully cripple Palestinian development including reconstruction of homes destroyed by Israeli bombings and bulldozing during and before Operation ‘Cast Lead’.

Thousands of internally displaced people face an uncertain future residing in flimsy canvas tents reminiscent of the mass dispossession through the ethnic cleansing of 1948 when the state of Israel was first established on Palestinian land.

A de-facto land grab and re-colonisation of Gaza is underway, with the demolition of hundreds of homes and destruction of farms in the Israeli defined ‘buffer zone’ areas of Rafah, Eastern (Shijaye) and Northern (Beit Hanoun) areas of Gaza. Killings, shelling and shootings of farmers and residents in border areas are continuing.

The ‘buffer zone’ has been expanded to cut into Palestinian lands by one kilometre. Israeli occupation forces have shot at residents that have attempted to retrieve their belongings from the bombed and bulldozed remnants of their homes along the border of Beit Hanoun. The army also continues to fire at farmers planting their fields in village areas such as al Faraheen near Khan Younis.

The Palestinian Ministry of Agriculture says Israeli occupation forces have destroyed 60% of Gaza’s agricultural land during this winter’s war.

Effective international direct action and an escalation of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanction campaign is necessary to resist the intensification of the collective punishment, imprisonment and ongoing war on the people of Palestine.

The situation is worsening: the stranglehold on the people of Gaza is tightening, humanitarian relief is being deliberately choked, trauma is deepening, people are being humiliated on a daily basis and development is not just blocked but in the process of being actively reversed.

We call on social movements, particularly No Borders networks, and people of conscience to target Israeli and Egyptian embassies, institutions, and corporations. Particularly in the coming days of intensified border closure, we must work to pressure both governments to abide by international law and open Gaza for the free movement of aid, goods and people.

End the collective punishment of the Gazan people, open the borders.

Israeli forces abduct youth in Nablus area

4th February 2009

A 17 year old youth, Noaf Yasir Issa, from Salim village near Nablus was arrested Wednesday (4th February) night by Israeli occupation forces and transported to Huwarra military base where he is currently being detained. To date, his family has not been told of any charges against him. Noaf has never been previously arrested.

A neighbor told the boy’s mother that Noaf had walking on the roadway behind the family’s house and had then been seen imprisoned within a military jeep. Shortly thereafter, the Israeli military approached Noaf’s family residence and demanded to know his whereabouts, despite already having him in custody.

According to the family, about 12 soldiers entered the house and ransacked all of the rooms, opening drawers and closets and scattering their contents on the floor. Minor damage was also done to some furniture. The soldiers also confiscated a toy plastic knife from a children’s game set.

The invasion of the Issa home took place around midnight. All of the remaining nine children and their mother were confined to one room of the house while the soldiers were present. After approximately one and a half hours, the soldiers and their five or six jeeps left the premises.

Israeli military incursions into Salim happen on an almost nightly basis. During the last few weeks there have been a number of arrests of young men of the village. These assaults appear to be intended to intimidate and humiliate the local residents as well as to coerce information from the arrested parties.