July 25 2019 | International Solidarity Movement | Abu Dis, Occupied Palestine
On the morning of the 25th of July Huzaifa Bader, 27, was rushed to Ramleh Prison Hospital in the occupied West Bank after he had been on hunger strike for 25 days. With his health deteriorating and with no sign of progress in his legal battle, his family don’t know how much longer he can cope. It may be a matter of hours.
Huzaifa Bader, 27
Huzaifa began his hunger strike at the start of July having spent just over 13 months in administrative detention. Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) have held him without charge, extended his detention arbitrarily and held him in solitary confinement.
Huzaifa, who became a father while in prison is still waiting to see his daughter, Majdal, who is now 6 months old. His family told us that with every extension of his detention he has become more and more desperate to hold her for the first time.
Bader’s six-month old daughter who has never met her father
The situation has only been made all the more unbearable for Huzaifa because of his medical condition. A childhood accident left him with burns on almost 90% of his body and he has required specialist medical treatment ever since. During the period of his detention, Israel has not only denied him any kind of justice (or even anything resembling due process) but has gone as far as to deny him the medical treatment he needs. His brother, Musaab, told ISM, ‘we wish to see him back with his family to enjoy a normal life and to come back and receive the medical treatment he needs’.
With the situation becoming more desperate for him and his family, Huzaifa took the decision to go on hunger strike at the beginning of the month and now 25 days in he is fighting for his life. His father appealed to all the human rights organisations to take notice of the appalling case of his son, saying ‘Huzaifa is strong and will keep fighting for his rights’.
The whole town of Abu Dis has been showing its support for his hunger strike and the 40 or so other prisoners from Abu Dis held by the Israeli Occupation. A protest tent was set up by his wife and his parents and has been visited by the people of Abu Dis every single night that the huger strike has gone on. Even his six month old daughter, who now faces the prospect of never meeting her father, has attended.
Demonstrators sit in the solidarity tent erected in Abu Dis
After hearing his news, his family, supporters and the people of Abu Dis have taken to the streets again while Huzaifa is fighting for justice, and his life. His family told this morning that IOF still have not let his lawyer see him.
5th of March 2016 | International Solidarity Movement, Ramallah team | East Jerusalem, occupied Palestine
In the early hours of Tuesday, 5th April, around 3am, an armed group of Israeli soldiers stormed the campus of Al Quds university in the area of Abu Dis, part of East Jerusalem. The soldiers terrorised security guards on duty and forcefully entered four rooms belonging to student political parties and confiscated equipment while completely destroying the rest of the rooms.
Destroyed items from the Tuesday morning raid gathered outside the rooms
During the early hours of the morning the only people present at the university campus were the campus security, they were rounded up and locked together in a room, they were given no reason from the soldiers as to why they were being locked in a room nor as to why the soldiers were entering the campus grounds. The soldiers proceeded to forcefully enter four rooms belonging to various political parties run by students of the university, cutting the locks and smashing their way in, completely destroying the doors. This is the fourth time in 2016 alone that soldiers have entered the campus, destroying and confiscating material while giving no reason for their actions.
One of the computers amongst other items destroyed in the raid
The rooms entered belong to varying student bodies who’s students work within the university and the local community. Among the varied groups they advocate student rights, create activities within the campus and surrounding neighbourhoods, hold discussions on the state of the middle east, volunteer within the community, offer services for students, hold workshops and meetings about young prisoners and host an array of solidarity activities for the Palestinian community.
Students cleaning up debris from Tuesday’s raid
During the raid the army took personal computers, laptops and cameras belonging to the Islamic party. Around one hundred and seventy flags were confiscated from the union party room and all of their stationary equipment for creative activities. Whatever was not taken was destroyed during the raid by the occupying forces.
Damaged items from the raid
The activities room for the ladies Islamic movement which works mainly with disadvantaged youths and students had the majority of their belongings destroyed, posters ripped from walls and electronic equipment confiscated.
The activities room for the ladies Islamic movement
The area of Abu Dis were the university is located was around thirty thousand hectares prior to 2002 and is now around four thousand hectares with 75% of the area now falling under area C and 25% under area B. This malicious land grab by the Israeli government has left students facing huge difficulties with their education. Many students within the faculty of medicine can’t reach Jerusalem where the main hospital for training is located and have been forced to go elsewhere for their practical while the media faculty faces new difficulties also. Since the beginning of what most would call the third intifada, checkpoints leading into the city of Ramallah, where the media students must go to complete their practical work have become extremely tightened and students are often denied access to the area or face long waits to enter.
The annexation wall surrounding the university
On the 2nd November, 2015, Israeli forces entered the campus around 4pm and began firing on students using tear gas, rubber coated steel bullets and even using live ammunition. Over two hundred students were injured and required medical care while two students were seriously injured, with access to Jerusalem hospital unavailable the students were forced to travel over an hour to the city of Ramallah for treatment.
One of the destroyed rooms
With the student elections to take place on April 19th, this attack falls into Israel’s wider policy of targeting political activity within student campuses and bodies as a means of repressing resistance to the occupation.
Four students of the university have been killed by Israeli forces since November, 2015.
Palestinian prime minister attends Friday prayer in east Jerusalem, promises residents to thwart Netanyahu government’s plan to confiscate property in Abu Dis area.
Battle over east Jerusalem lands heating up: Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad on Friday took part in a prayer held on disputed lands in the Abu Dis area, where protest tents have been set up following the Israeli demand to expropriate lands.
Fayyad participated in the prayer held by Kadi Taysir Tamami, head of the Palestinian Authority’s Sharia courts, near Area E1, which is the focus of a dispute between the Palestinians and Israel, which seeks to build the community of Keidar and connect between Jerusalem and Ma’aleh Adumim. Hundreds of Jerusalem residents attended the prayer.
The Palestinian prime minister stated that “the PA will not agree to all the Israeli plans”, and promised that they would not succeed.
Talking to Ynet, Fayyad’s advisor for Jerusalem affairs, Khatem Abdel Kader, said that the prime minister’s arrival at the area served as a message to Israel that the PA would fight the expropriation plans.
“This is also a message to the international community, that it must work to implement the principle that these are Palestinian lands which will be an inseparable part of the Palestinian state,” Abdel Kader added.
“And it is also a message to the Palestinian people, that the PA will not abandon them in the face of the plans that (Interior Minister) Eli Yishai and his friends are working to implement.”
Apart from the area near the community of Abu Dis, PA officials have also expressed their fear this week that Israel plans to confiscate dozens of acres including dozens of buildings with some 1,000 residents near the neighborhood of al-Bustan, next to Silwan, as part of what they referred to as “an extensive expropriation campaign”.
While the world watches in horror as the death toll in Gaza continues to rise, in the occupied West Bank, the Israeli army is taking the opportunity to unleash a level of deadly force, in the knowledge that, under the shadow cast by their war on Gaza, these atrocities will go unseen by the international community.
Palestinian communities in the West Bank have responded to the war on Gaza with daily demonstrations in cities and villages throughout the region. Taking the form of marches, sit-ins and candlelight vigils, as well as stone-throwing by young boys, these demonstrations have met with lethal repression from Israeli soldiers in their role as an occupying army.
In the village of Ni’lin, West of Ramallah, two young men, Arafat Al-Khawaje and Mohammad Al-Khawaje were both brutally murdered in a spray of live ammunition from Israeli soldiers during a demonstration against the war on Gaza. Arafat, aged 22, was killed immediately as a bullet cut through his back, stopping his heart. Mohammad, who was shot in the head, held-on in Ramallah hospital in a critical condition for four days, before dying on the evening of Wednesday 31st December. A third young man, Mohammad Sror, was shot in the leg. International eye-witnesses to the slaughter describe the attack as being “callous and calculated”, with Israeli soldiers feigning an invasion of the village to lure the young men into the olive groves, where they had concealed themselves, before opening fire from a distance of just 15 metres.
The attack took place with full knowledge that there was no ambulance in the village, as Israeli forces had refused to permit it to pass through the checkpoint. Once the shooting occurred, the ambulance was detained for a further five minutes at the checkpoint, before the soldiers allowed it to enter the village.
In the village of Silwad, another young man, 17 year old Mohammad Hamid, was shot by Israeli soldiers from a guard-tower whilst at a demonstration – dying in hospital from three gunshot wounds to the chest and abdomen.
On 4th January, in Qalqiliya city, another young man was assassinated by Israeli soldiers for throwing stones over the Apartheid Wall that surrounds the city. Mofed Saleh Walwil, 20 years old, was killed with a single sniper bullet to the forehead, when an Israeli jeep opened fire on the boys.
Two more young men are in a critical condition after also being shot by Israeli soldiers whilst demonstrating against Israel’s “Operation Cast Lead”. Hammam Al-Ashari, 17 years old, from Abu Dis, near Jerusalem, was shot in the head with three rubber-coated steel bullets at close range, while he was walking up a stairwell with friends. For 30 minutes, the soldiers prevented a waiting ambulance from reaching Hammam, significantly worsening his condition.
17 year old Mohammad Jaber is also in a critical condition after Israeli soldiers again opened fire on a Gaza protest in Hebron, on Sunday 28th December, shooting him in the head. In the period of two days from 28th-29th December, Israeli soldiers in Hebron wounded at least 21 demonstrators with live ammunition, according to doctors at Hebron’s al-Ahli hospital. International human rights workers living in the area, describe this as a significant “escalation in the violence used by the Israeli Occupation Forces”.
The number of Palestinian youth shot by Israeli armed forces in the West Bank continues to rise, with at least 3 more young men injured by live fire from Friday 2nd to Sunday 4th December.
Severe repression has also been leveled at Gaza demonstrations in the form of arbitrary mass arrests. In East Jerusalem 90 people were arrested for taking part in a non-violent street march. Protesters were all released upon the condition that they not enter Jerusalem’s old city for ten days, despite the fact that many of the arrestees reside there. Many Palestinians living in East Jerusalem now express fear of taking part in non-violent demonstrations, saying that the consequences for such acts are too high.
Suppression of public dissent seems to be the motivation behind many of the repressive tactics being executed by Israeli Authorities. This is exemplified by the denial of entry to Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem’s old city on Friday 2nd January for any men under the age of 50 years, under the pretext that the first Friday prayers since the air strikes on Gaza began would foment further protests. Further, Thursday 1st January saw Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak momentarily invoke of curfew across the entire West Bank for Friday 2nd; later downgraded to a closure of all checkpoints between the West Bank and Israel, including East Jerusalem.
In light of the violence and repression being leveled at Palestinians in the West Bank, claims made by Israeli military spokespeople – that they are attacking Gaza in order to put an end to rocket fire – ring hollow. As Israeli authorities protest that their massacre in the Gaza Strip is self-defensive, and that the civilian casualties are an unfortunate by-product of Hamas members “hiding” amongst the civilian population; as they proffer their occupation of the West Bank as an example of their even-handed, democratic restraint in the terrain of Palestinian Authority governance (“There are no rockets fired from the West Bank, so we don’t need to attack them”); the realities on the ground paint a very different picture.
As the Israeli government continues their brutal occupation of the West Bank – killing and injuring youths; firing tear gas in to Palestinian civilian homes (leading to a house fire in the village of Ni’lin on Thursday 1st January); continued invasions of cities and villages, involving curfews, house occupations and arbitrary arrests; the continued imprisonment of some 11000 Palestinian political prisoners – including 327 children; and continuing settlement expansion and settler violence – claims that Israel is not targeting Palestinians as a people are increasingly difficult to believe.
Amidst the barrage of rehearsed Israeli government rhetoric, Palestinian civilians are being killed by Israeli soldiers, in greater or lesser numbers, regardless of where they live, or what their political affiliations. In the occupied West Bank, Palestinian youths will continue to die under the shadow of Gaza, as Israeli forces act with impunity – immune to the international gaze and any potential censure that may accompany it.
