Tag: Aqraba

Zionist settlers poison 13 sheep near Aqraba

6th January 2015 | International Solidarity Movement, Nablus team | Aqraba, Occupied Palestine

Yesterday, ISM volunteers traveled to the area of Lifjim in East Aqraba, where shepherd Mohammed Ibrahim Abu Hamed grazes his sheep. Thirteen sheep lay dead there, foaming at the nose and mouth, one with green vomit visible – a clear case of poisoning.

Close-up of one of the poisoned sheep with frothing at the mouth and nose (photo by ISM).

Close-up of a poisoned sheep where green vomit can be seen (photo by ISM).

Abu Hamed and the Aqraba Municipality reported seeing a settler named Assaf spread an unknown substance over the land shortly before the sheep died. As the area is under illegal cultivation by settlers, this could have indicated intentional poisoning or indirect toxicity from herbicides.

Three of the thirteen sheep killed, stretched out across the land (Photo by ISM).

At the municipality office, ISM interviewed a Public Relation Officer named Gloria, who detailed the many difficulties the villages around Aqraba continually deal with. The town of Aqraba is in Area B, which is under Palestinian Authority civil control but partial Israeli security control, but many of the villages under the Aqraba municipality are in Area C, under full Israeli military and civil control.

Thus, these communities are constantly threatened by the expansion of Israeli settlements, including the Gittit settlement just south of Lifjim where the sheep were killed.

Furthermore, the Israeli military prevent people from building life-sustaining infrastructure such as water and electricity grids and new houses. In the last month and a half alone, the Aqraba municipality has repaired the electricity grid three times after soldiers cut it.

On Saturday, five shepherds were out grazing their sheep in the Area B part of Aqraba when at least seven armed settlers came down and attacked them. The settlers shot at the unarmed shepherds and two were injured. A number of people from Aqraba came out with the municipality in response to the shepherds’ call. An hour later the Israeli military showed up, deployed tear gas on the crowd and arrested four shepherds, accusing them of trying to steal from the settlement.

Aqraba residents who showed up for the shepherds are met with tear gas (photo by Aqraba Municipality).

They are still in prison as of now. This attack is emblematic of the violence experienced by Palestinians who live near the illegal Israeli settlements.

Smiling even as she finished describing the hardships of life under Israeli occupation, Gloria told us she thinks the people here are strong. They hold onto their homes and lives here while facing violence and destruction week after week. Gloria herself speaks English, French and Spanish, allowing her to communicate with many international groups about the occupation.

In Aqraba, the phrase “existence is resistance” holds true.

Mosque burnt in apparent price tag attack

15th October 2014 | International Solidarity Movement, Nablus team | Aqraba, Occupied Palestine

In the early hours of Tuesday morning, a group of Zionist settlers from the illegal settlements close to Aqraba near Nablus, set fire to a mosque in the outskirts of the village.

The investigation so far shows that the building was set on fire at approximately 02:00 when a molotov cocktail was thrown through a window on the ground floor, into the women’s prayer room. Hours later, neighbouring villagers observed the flames and managed to put the fire out. The fire caused severe damage inside the mosque.

The police arrived at approximately 06.30 AM and the collection of evidence began. However the policeman ISM spoke explained that the main responsibility for the investigation lies on the Israeli authority.

Gloria Nafiz Abu Saqer, Public Relation Officer of Aqraba Municipality explains the difficult situation, “The village of Aqraba is surrounded by no less than seven illegal settlements and the Palestinians living in Aqraba are under constant threat and facing settler harassment and violence daily.”

According to Ayman Banifadl, mayor of Aqraba, the perpetrators might be the same group of settlers who have committed several hate crimes previously in the area. The conclusion is based on the graffiti, written in Hebrew on the wall of the torched mosque, with the same signature as last time settlers burnt down a building near the village. The message refers to the so called ”price tag campaign” and is based on the notion that the Palestinians should pay for any actions that can be considered taken against the illegal settlements.

Banifadl stated, “The graffiti says pay the price but we don’t know what price that is. We are under occupation and we are already paying a price every day for something we don’t know what it is.”Word by word the graffiti says: Price tag / Tappuah / Kahane.

It might refer to the zionist extremist Meir Kahane (1932–1990) who lived in the illegal settlement Kfar Tappuah. Kahane and his son Binyamin Ze’ev Kahane (1966–2000) are known for their militant right-wing extremism and their political party, Kahane Chai (meaning Kahane Lives). Kahane Chai was banned in 1994 and is considered to be a terrorist organisation by the EU and US, Canadian and Israeli governments.

Price tag attack in Aqraba, farmer’s house attacked

2nd July 2014 | International Solidarity Movement, Nablus team | Aqraba, Occupied Palestine

Fadi Bassem is a farmer who lives in the village of Aqraba, 20 km south of Nablus, in the northern half of the West Bank. He lives with his extended family, 15 people in a single house.

At 03:30 in the early hours of the morning, Bassem was awoken by the sound of footsteps outside his house. When he went to investigate, he saw four men running away in the darkness. Turning back, he smelled smoke and realized that his barn, which was adjacent to his house, was on fire. Bassem and his family spent the next four hours dousing the flames and rescuing the sheep from the barn. There were two large water tanks nearby, and the family was able to extinguish the fire.

The next morning they saw that graffiti had been spray painted on one of his walls. “Price tag, revenge of the Jews”, it read in Hebrew.

These events occurred two days after the discovery of the bodies of three Israeli settler youths, who had allegedly been kidnapped by supporters of Hamas. The nationwide outrage at the deaths of the teenage settlers has precipitated calls for revenge from diverse elements of Israeli society, and especially from settlers.

“I don’t know whether they were settlers or soldiers who did this,” Bassem said, “but all the footprints were identical, which tells me that they were probably soldiers.”

The presence of Israeli soldiers in the village was confirmed by the fact that they arrested two young men in Aqraba that night.

Settlers attack farmer, kill sheep in Aqraba

2nd August 2013 | International Solidarity Movement, Nablus Team | Aqraba, Occupied Palestine

At 530pm on July 30^th three settlers from the illegal settlement of Itamar violently attacked a farmer from the village of Aqraba, south east of Nablus. Four farmers from the village had spent the day grazing their more than 500 sheep on land belonging to the village, near to the settler only road dividing Aqraba.

Ahmed Yousef Banijaber, one of the four farmers, was walking along a narrow dirt road with his sheep when he came face to face with three settlers in an outdoor utility vehicle. The settlers grabbed him and tried to pull him towards the vehicle at which point Ahmed pushed them away. One settler then brandished a gun and began to shoot at Ahmed as he took cover behind an olive tree.

Two of the settlers whom made the attack and the outdoor utility vehicle used to kill the sheep (Aqraba Municipality, March 2013)

The other three farmers nearby hearing the attack then ran to Ahmed’s aid. The settlers then attempted to drive away quickly from the scene and in doing so deliberately ran over some of Ahmed’s sheep, killing two and seriously injuring another.

The settlers had first driven towards the other three farmers but did not approach them and instead choose to attack Ahmed as he was on his own. The land where the attack took place and where the farmers regularly graze their sheep belongs to the village and is classed as Area B therefore under Palestinian civil control and joint Israeli-Palestinian security control. The settlers had no reason for being in this area.

The settlers that attacked Ahmed are well known to the villagers of Aqraba as they have attacked farmers on numerous occasions. When shown a photo of the settlers from the past spring Ahmed confirmed it was two of the settlers that had attacked them and said “they are the troublemakers”.

The Aqraba Municipality are making an official complaint to the Israeli Police against two of the settlers, though they remain skeptical that anything will come of this as settlers have impunity under Israeli law for crimes they commit against Palestinians. A 2012 report by Israeli human rights organization Yesh Din states that “less than nine percent of investigations of violent crimes committed by settlers against Palestinians ended in the filing of an indictment”.

Two weeks prior to this, three farmers from Aqraba were arrested by the Israeli army for working at night on land near the settlement. The farmers had been requested to work on the land by the Israeli owner and were doing so at night because of the heat and Ramadan. The Israeli army found this suspicious and arrested the three farmers and took them to the police station in the illegal settlement of Ariel. The farmers were released a few days later without charge.

Prelude to land theft: a livelihood trashed in Aqraba

21st May 2013 | International Solidarity Movement, Team Nablus | Aqraba, Occupied Palestine

Seven hundred olive trees were uprooted first thing in the morning of 16th May while a bulldozer got to work destroying the farmer’s concrete water storage facility and surrounding dry stone walls and fences in Aqraba. The Israeli army, who did some of the damage along with specially contracted workers, has since returned to check that the ground has not been replanted.

The bulldozer came in very early so as to escape attention (Photo by Aqraba municipality)

Arriving at 6am, the military came in jeeps and with a bulldozer and, along with the other workers, began to trash the wire fence enclosing the area and pull up the trees on it by hand. They came without any prior notification. When the mayor made a complaint on the scene at about 8am, saying that demolitions cannot happen without the land owner being warned and signing a confirmation as such; even citing several simple ways in which the owner or, at least, the municipality could be informed. He was told that an order had been delivered and placed “on a rock” there some “two years ago”. Just getting there had been arduous for him and other council workers, as troops had been placed to block access to the site, where in total there were approximately twenty of them plus two officers. The water tank, now little more than a pile of rubble exposed in a hole in the ground, could hold three hundred cubic metres of water before. Around it, huge boulders that formally made up short walls, were dumped in such a way on the vandalised land as to prevent easy replanting or rebuilding there.

What remains of the water store (Photo by Aqraba municipality)

The young olive trees had been planted in 2011 by the owner following a move from Dubai, with the fence once going around them meant to indicate that it is privately-owned land. The site straddles the boundary between Areas B and C; arbitrarily divided up into zones where Palestinian civil control is either nominal (B) or otherwise replaced by administration by the Israeli military (C). While huge swathes of Area C are under the threat of home and property demolition where they have Palestinian and Bedouin population, much of the rest is given over to military training. Area C is notorious for Palestinians being near-incapable of gaining any form of building permit, while work without one is liable to removed soon after discovery by the occupiers. “All land of Aqraba that can be used economically is to the east reaching to the Jordan River”, the mayor said. “If we could use these lands, Aqraba would be rich, but this is not allowed in Area C. Farmers are prohibited from the land and the Israelis bring soldiers and settlers and use the land in an economic way, which means that the military order is only a trick to use the land in an economic way”. Adding as well that, “court freezes demolitions, it does not allow for rehabilitation [of the land]”.

The army not only provided support, they did some of the work (Photo by Aqraba municipality)

The land lies in the southwest of Aqraba. Further in the same direction is the hamlet of al-Taweel. There thirty families get electricity from power lines constructed by Belgian foreign aid, along with a school and a mosque. These lines, in service since 2004, are slated for demolition and a final decision on this is pending in court. A small house and shed for a farmer’s sheep there was demolished and then the animal shelter was rebuilt in protest,with the owner taken to court in February. Families there are frequently evicted temporarily to make use of their land for military exercises.