Tag: Arrests

Israeli courts give permission for settlers to move into Palestinian home in Sheikh Jarrah

1 December 2009

For immediate release

Israeli settlers take over Palestinian home, elderly resident suffers severe medical complications

On Tuesday morning at around 9.30am, a group of settlers surrounded the al-Kurd family home in Sheikh Jarrah and took over a section of the house.

Fifteen to twenty settlers, accompanied by private armed security and Israeli police forces, entered an extension of the Palestinian house, and started clearing it of the family’s belongings. The family was not present in this section of the house in compliance with a previous court order, however local sources reported that the settlers also attempted, on several occasions, to gain entry to the inhabited part of the house.

One Palestinian resident, Khamis al-Gawi, has been arrested shortly after the settlers arrived, and is still being held at a local police station. Two international activists, American and Swedish nationals, who were filming the settlers taking over the house were also arrested by the police and their video cameras confiscated.

Later in the day, two Palestinian women suffered medical complications as a result of the take-over and had to be transported to a local hospital in an ambulance. One of them, the daughter of the owner of the house Refka al-Kurd, Nadia, was taken to the hospital with a suspected heart attack.

The take-over came minutes after an appeal, challenging an earlier court decision that deemed this section of the house illegal and gave the settlers the right to enter the property, submitted by the family’s lawyer, was rejected by the Magistrate Court this morning. The al-Kurd family only found out that their appeal was rejected when they saw the settlers approaching their home.

The first attempt of the settlers to take over the house came on 3 November 2009. In a similar scenario, settlers entered the al-Kurd property and locked themselves in, leaving only when escorted out by the Israeli police. However, the house remained occupied by armed settler security 24 hours a day since then. Further attempts followed including one on 26 November at 1am, when five settlers invaded the house, attacking the Palestinian family. An elderly woman, Refka al-Kurd (87) suffered a stroke following the incident.

The al-Kurd home was built in 1956. An addition to the house was built 10 years ago, but the family was not allowed to inhabit the section, based on an earlier agreement with the settlers (reached by the family’s former lawyer without their knowledge), which is currently still under dispute.

The al-Kurds have become the fourth Sheikh Jarrah family whose house (or a portion of the home) has been occupied by settlers in the last year. So far, 60 people have been left homeless. In total, 28 families living in the Karm Al-Ja’ouni neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah, located directly north of the Old City, face imminent eviction from their homes.

These actions are illegal under international law, which prohibits the occupying power (in this case Israel) from transferring its own population into the occupied territory. East Jerusalem, along with the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Golan Heights, is considered an occupied territory and its de-facto annexation by Israel has not been recognized by international law.

An appeal submitted by the family’s lawyer will be heard tomorrow, 2 December 2009 at noon, in the District Court in Jerusalem.

A court case, determining the ownership of the whole house, including the section built in 1956 by UNRWA, will be heard on 15 February 2010. Similarly to the Hannoun, Gawi and Kamel al-Kurd families in the past, this hearing can result in an eviction order against the al-Kurd family.

Background on Sheikh Jarrah

Approximately 475 Palestinian residents living in the Karm Al-Ja’ouni neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, located directly north of the Old City, face imminent eviction from their homes in the manner of the Hannoun and Gawi families, and the al-Kurd family before them. All 28 families are refugees from 1948, mostly from West Jerusalem and Haifa, whose houses in Sheikh Jarrah were built and given to them through a joint project between the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) and the Jordanian government in 1956.

The eviction orders are a result of claims made in 1967 by the Sephardic Community Committee and the Knesseth Yisrael Association (who since sold their claim to the area to Nahalat Shimon) – settler organizations that claim to have deeds for the land dating back to 1875. In 1972, these two settler organizations applied to have the land registered in their names with the Israel Lands Administration (ILA). Their claim to ownership was noted in the Land Registry; however, it was never made into an official registry of title. The first Palestinian property in the area was taken over at this time.

The case continued in the courts for another 37 years. Amongst other developments, the first lawyer of the Palestinian residents reached an agreement with the settler organizations in 1982 (without the knowledge or consent of the Palestinian families) in which he recognized the settlers’ ownership in return for granting the families the legal status of protected tenants. This affected 23 families and served as a basis for future court and eviction orders (including today’s take-over), despite the immediate appeal filed by the families’ new lawyer.

Furthermore, a Palestinian landowner, Suleiman Darwish Hijazi, has legally challenged the settlers’ claims. In 1994 he presented documents certifying his ownership of the land to the courts, including tax receipts from 1927. In addition, the new lawyer of the Palestinian residents located a document, proving the land in Sheikh Jarrah had never been under Jewish ownership. The Israeli courts rejected these documents.

The first eviction orders were issued in 1999 based on the (still disputed) agreement from 1982 and, as a result, two Palestinian families (Hannoun and Gawi) were evicted in February 2002. After the 2006 Israeli Supreme Court finding that the settler committees’ ownership of the lands was uncertain, and the Lands Settlement officer of the court requesting that the ILA remove their names from the Lands Registrar, the families returned back to their homes. The courts, however, failed to recognize new evidence presented to them and continued to issue eviction orders based on decisions from 1982 and 1999 respectively. Further evictions followed in November 2008 (al- Kurd family) and August 2009 (Hannoun and Gawi families for the second time). At present, settlers occupy all these houses and the whole area is patrolled by armed private security 24 hours a day.

The ultimate goal of the settler organizations is to turn the whole area into a new Jewish settlement and to create a Jewish continuum that will effectively cut off the Old City form the northern Palestinian neighborhoods.

On 28th August 2008, Nahalat Shimon International filed a plan to build a series of five and six-story apartment blocks – Town Plan Scheme (TPS) 12705 – in the Jerusalem Local Planning Commission. If TPS 12705 comes to pass, the existing Palestinian houses in this key area would be demolished, about 500 Palestinians would be evicted, and 200 new settler units would be built for a new settlement: Shimon HaTzadik.

Gate forced open in Ni’lin’s separation barrier – eight demonstrators wounded and one arrested

Popular Struggle Coordination Committee

28 November 2009

For immediate release:

This morning, a group of demonstrators in the West Bank village of Ni’lin managed to surprise the Israeli army and, using bolt cutters, cut open one of the gates in the fence built on the village’s lands. Israeli soldiers arrived at the scene and fired rubber-coated steel bullets as well as tear gas canisters at the demonstrators, followed by the use of live ammunition.

Eight people were wounded during the action. Seven demonstrators were injured by rubber-coated steel bullets, and a one and a half year-old baby was evacuated to a Ramallah hospital suffering from tear gas inhalation, caused by soldiers firing a tear gas canister into her house.

Today marks the first time Israeli soldiers invade the residential parts of Ni’lin in an attempt to suppress a demonstration, since Palestinian demonstrator Aqel Sadeq Srour was shot dead by sniper fire approximately six months ago (5 June 2009), during a protest at the village. Srour’s brother was arrested today in the village center.

Today’s response by the Israeli army illustrates the ongoing policy of escalation which the army has been implementing in Ni’ilin for the past three weeks. This policy includes reintroducing the use of 0.22 caliber live ammunition as a means of crowd dispersal – in direct contradiction to the Chief Military Attorney’s orders.

Since June 2008, five Palestinian demonstrators have been killed by soldiers’ fire during protests in Ni’ilin, including two minors – 10 year-old Ahmed Mousa and 17 year-old Yussef Amirah. A further 34 demonstrators have been injured by live ammunition, and 87 have been arrested.

As a result of the separation barrier’s construction, 3,920 dunams of Ni’lin’s lands (30% of all accessible lands) have been de-facto confiscated; this is in addition to the 1,973 dunams on which Israeli settlements have been built since 1967.

Military violence increases in Jayyous: elderly man arrested during a night invasion

27 November 2009

Israeli Occupation Forces arrested an elderly resident of Jayyous this week, a Palestinian village located in the Qalqilya region, that has maintained an active campaign against the terrorisation of its people and the annexation of its land by the illegal Apartheid Wall.

Mohammad Salim, a 63 year old resident of Jayyous was taken from his home in the middle of the night by Israeli Occupation Forces this week. Salim, an elderly man, was just a few short hours away from leaving for Mecca, Saudi Arabia, to make the holy pilgrimage of the Hajj when he was taken by the military. Residents – even his own family – are dumbfounded as to why he would be targeted.

This is not atypical of the military’s strategy in Jayyous – what appears a haphazard campaign of unpredictable – seemingly random – arrests and violent invasions is a methodical attempt of the army to sow the seeds of internal discontent and provocation within the village.

“They want to create problems inside the community,” says Jayyous activist Abu Azam. “They always give the excuse that people are throwing stones at the Wall, but really they just want to make us fight with each other.”

And the sheer brute force exhibited by the army must surely take its toll. Invasions occur any time during the day or night, accompanied by the sound of sirens, tear gas grenades, sound bombs and bullets – plastic, rubber-coated steel or live ammunition – announcing the arrival of Israeli jeeps inside the village. Curfew was imposed three days consecutively during the last month. Parts of the village now have only 2 days of running water a week after dozens of water tanks were damaged by bullets, while farmers have reported the death of 8 lambs and over 600 chickens from tear gas suffocation.

The danger of military violence is only one of Jayyous’ many problems. Construction of the Apartheid Wall began in Jayyous in 2002, prohibiting access of farmers to 8,600 dunums of their land. Demonstrations began almost immediately, and the Palestinian Land Defense Committee launched a case in the Israeli Supreme Court against the government. They succeeded in a 2006 ruling to re-route the Wall, returning a meager 750 dunums to the village. Almost 8,000 dunums stand on the other side, including 3 water wells. The Israeli government has refused requests for permission of residents of Jayyous to pump the water from these wells to their side of the wall. This affects not only the village itself but the surrounding region, such as the larger town of Azzoun that relies on Jayyous’ small supply of water as well, after the nearby settlement of Qarne Shomron annexed all but two of the towns’ supplying wells.

When it comes to accessing the land, the Israeli government employs bureaucracy itself as a weapon, in the form of a labyrinthine system of permit applications for farmers hoping to reach their fields. Although well over 600 families from Jayyous own farmland on the other side of the wall, only 300 permits farming permits were issued in October for farmers hoping to gain access to their crops for the yearly olive harvest. The permits issued rarely meet the needs of the farmers – such as only one or two family members being permitted access to the land, or access restricted to a few short days, entirely disproportionate to the necessary amount of time to collect crops. The situation is even worse during the rest of the year, as the number of permits issued shrinks to 120, for farmers hoping to plough, prune and work their land. Due to this, thousands of dunums of crops become unharvestable, and agriculture becomes an impossibility for many families.

Jayyous has been a prominent village in Palestinian resistance, as one of the first villages to begin demonstrating against the wall and the continued legal campaign for its removal. The recent imprisonment of Jayyous activist Mohammad Othman has brought the village’s struggle into focus. Othman was arrested at the Jordanian border to the West Bank by Israeli military as he returned from a trip to Norway to promote the BDS campaign. He has now been placed under administrative detention, the detention of an individual by the state without trial – in Othman’s case, for a minimum of three months with the possibility for a renewed term. This clear violation of human rights works in conjunction with Israel’s continued repression of popular resistance such as Jayyous’ fight against the illegal Apartheid Wall and the Israeli occupation.

Inside Israeli jails, the real victims of a cry for justice

Jesse Rosenfeld | The National

24 November 2009

Amid the growing media fever over a possible prisoner swap involving the release of Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier held by Hamas, another young captive has a less visible public profile – but personifies Israel’s chokehold on Palestinian self-expression.

Mohammad Othman, 33, from the West Bank town of Jayyous, and an activist with the grassroots Palestinian organisation Stop the Wall, was arrested on September 22 at the Allenby Bridge crossing on the Jordanian border. He was on his way home after a meeting in Norway with supporters of the global movement for boycott, divestment and sanctions on Israel (BDS). Adameer (Arabic for “conscience”), the Palestinian prisoners’ support and human rights organisation, contends that his arrest is a result of “his successful human rights advocacy and community activism”.

Mohammad was interrogated for two months at the Kishon detention centre in northern Israel. His lawyer told me he was repeatedly asked about his meetings, contacts and political activities in Europe. He alleges that Mohammad was kept in isolation, deprived of sleep, questioned round the clock, and threatened with death.

On Monday, Mohammad was formally placed in Israeli administrative detention for three months. He is the latest of more than 335 Palestinians held in this way, a practice based on a 1945 emergency British Mandate law and highlighted in a report last month by the Israeli human rights groups B’Tselem and HaMoked.

I first met Mohammad Othman in Jayyous a year ago, during a protest against the annexation of the towns’s farmland to build Israel’s wall. Residents had just had their permits to cross the wall to their farms revoked, and had rekindled their earlier campaign of resistance. He led me down an alley as soldiers began retaking the main street with tear gas and rubber bullets, forcing young boys to retreat from the barricades that were blocking the military jeeps from driving through the town. “We constantly worry about army raids and arrests, all the local activists do,” he told me after we were out of the line of fire.

On Sunday, almost exactly a year after that in Jayyous, I watched Mohammad stand in front of a military tribunal housed in a barracks that looked like an oversized chicken-coop inside Israel’s Ofer prison in the West Bank. His lawyers were appealing against his prolonged detention without charge.

Outside the court, family members of other detained Palestinians clung to the fence, waiting for news about their loved ones. British and German consular officials and representatives from Israeli and international NGOs filled the small courtroom. Shackled at the legs, and having only a fraction of the proceedings against him translated, Mohammad raised his fist twice to the gallery in a gesture of strength and resistance.

Across the West Bank, just as in that courtroom, Israel is trying to tighten its grip on expressions of Palestinian self-determination. The border village of Bil’in has captured the international eye with a forceful and well-documented resistance campaign against the dispossession caused by Israel’s wall. It is precisely such international calls from Palestinian society that Israel is targeting with a systematic campaign of violence and incarceration inside its controlled territory.

This summer a committee of representatives from Bil’in visited Canada to support a lawsuit against two Israeli settlement construction companies registered in Montreal. When they returned, their leader, Mohammad Khatib, was arrested by the Israeli army. And while those two companies continued to build illegal homes on the farmland of Bil’in, the military conducted systematic raids into the village for three months.

When I last spoke to Mohammad Khatib in September, he was exhausted from a combination of the Ramadan fast and constant night-time army invasions. He told me that young people arrested in Bil’in were severely beaten by the army on the way to interrogation, and then had confessions beaten out of them.

Last Thursday, pressure on the town again escalated again when undercover Israeli soldiers beat and arrested a 19-year-old village activist, Mohammed Yasin. Gaby Lasky, the lawyer for the Bil’in detainees, says she has been told by the military prosecution that the army intends to put an end to the village’s anti-wall demonstrations by using the full force of the law against protesters.

And that is the strategy of Benjamin Netanyau: hit all pressure points. On the diplomatic stage he is demanding acquiescence from the Palestinians’ official representatives, but that policy is not limited to a public-relations dance with a Palestinian Authority that a growing number of people are calling to be dissolved. The aim is to turn the Palestinians’ internationally heard call for solidarity into a cry for Israeli mercy. It is being expressed in military raids on Palestinian homes, and in political prisoners held without trial in Israeli jails and tied to chairs in interrogation rooms.

Bil’in: Undercovers arrest Palestinian youth at his workplace

Popular Struggle Coordination Committee

19 November 2009

In an escalation of the recent arrest campaign conducted by the Israeli military in attempt to crush the popular struggle against the Wall in the village, an undercover army unit invaded Bil’in this morning and arrested a local youth, 19 year old Mohammad Yassin.

In the morning hours of Thursday, 19 November 2009, a civilian Isuzu pickup with undercover soldiers dressed as Palestinians, drove into the village of Bil’in, searching for residents suspected of organizing and participating in the village’s weekly demonstrations. At around 9am, the soldiers arrived at the garage where Yassin works and arrested him. The arrest involved the beating of Yassin himself, as well as of his brother and his mother, who assumed that the disguised soldiers were just random by-passers attacking their kin.

The use of the undercover army units to capture ‘wanted’ people that are suspected of nothing else than participating in and planning of grassroots demonstrations, represent an escalation of the arrest campaign the army is conducting against the residents of the village. In addition to Yassin, another 27 Bil’in residents were arrested for their involvement in the demonstrations since the 23 June 2009. Among them is Adeeb Abu Rahma, who has been held in detention for more than four months under a charge of ‘incitement’ – a euphemism for organizing demonstrations.

Recently, attorney Gaby Lasky, who represents Bil’in’s detainees, was informed by the military prosecution that the army intends to put an end to the demonstrations through use legal procedures against demonstrators. Lasky stated today that “This is a blatant example of political persecution using legal means, because the charges and the arrests are being carried out not for legal purposes but with political motivations. It is important to remember that it is the state that is in contempt of a High Court of Justice ruling, which affirmed two years ago that it is the demonstrators who have justice on their side, and instructed to move the route of the Wall in the area – something that has not been done yet.”

The secretary of the village council and member of the Bil’in Popular Committee Against the Wall and Settlements, Mohammed Khatib, stated that “the Army is determined to crush the popular resistance but we will continue to demand our rights even if we are all forced to do so from inside military prison cells. Even the Israeli court ruled that the Wall on our land is not legal and has to be dismantled. Despite this, not only has the Wall not moved even an inch, but the Army comes to imprison us for struggling for our land, while it itself is breaking the law – its own law.