3nd March 2018 | International Solidarity Movement, al Khalil team | Occupied Palestine
Israeli soldiers invaded Bab-al-Zawiye today as young people protested the illegal occupation of Palestine. The soldiers used cameras with zoom lenses to photograph the protesters for well over an hour. Israel controls the population register of all Palestinians with a restrictive system of IDs. Protestors that are identified can be arrested from their homes at any time.
Later soldiers pursued youth through the narrow alleyways and streets of the downtown neighborhood exploding stun grenades and firing tear gas. Families with young children live in apartments in the neighborhood where clouds of tear gas frequently fill the streets. A large amount of tear gas was fired right outside an open vegetable shop, affecting their business and causing shop owners harm.
Two young people working in a shop were randomly apprehended by the soldiers when they failed to capture any of the youth protesting. Hassan abu Gezele, aged 16, and Baja abu Haluwe, aged 15, were forced into an army jeep with excessive force and driven away.
The arrests of these two boys speak volumes to the careless criminalization of youth in occupied Palestine by Israeli forces. Unfortunately, their cases are not rare and teenage boys are used to such criminal treatment on the streets of al Khalil/Hebron.
21st February 2018 | International Solidarity Movement, al Khalil team | Occupied Palestine
Yesterday a Palestinian shop owner, age 24, was arrested for selling bracelets to passersby outside Ibrahimi Mosque checkpoint.
The mosque checkpoint was bustling with young men selling bracelets and key chains to tourists as border police singled out one to detain and later arrest. The young Palestinian owns a shop close to the checkpoint; border police detained him for two hours before sending him to the police station for three hours. Eventually, he paid 500 NIS to be released and has returned to his shop today.
In addition to paying bail, he has to attend a court hearing in six months at Ofar, a military prison in Ramallah. When asked, he is completely dumbfounded as to why he must attend a court hearing in several months. He is also anxious about not receiving a receipt for his large bail, worrying the border police could charge him again.
The shop owner says his experience is far from rare in al Khalil, as the oppressive Israeli occupation has normalized unsolicited arrests of young men and boys. His cousin chimes in saying, “Being in jail inside or being in jail outside, it is the same.”
This man’s arrest coincided with a 14-year-old boy’s arrest on the same day for allegedly throwing a rock at a surveillance camera, and two 13-year-old boys’ arrest a few days prior for being attacked and provoked by settler children. All of them have since been released, however, they all remain weary towards police and settlers as the occupation continues.
photo by kbnews.eu (kbnews.eu/images/Yabad-vs-IOF.jpg)
December 25th 2017 International Solidarity Movement, Nablus Team | Occupied Palestine | Yabad | North Palestine.
Around Yabad there are two big Israeli settlements. In the last few weeks the repressive action by the Israeli army on Yabbad’s Palestinian people has escalated. Several Teenagers have been arrested, they were taken out from their homes on night raides. Raiding his house, the Israeli army arrested 18-year-old Ahaned Abubakar at night on 13 December at 1 am. The father of Ahaned told us that fifteen Israeli soldiers were crowding around the house and
occupied the roofs of neighbouring houses. After breaking through the door with a crowbar, they got into
their house and sarched all the rooms in the first floor, waking up the wife and the five kids traumatically. They took away Ahaned without giving any explanations. Until today, the Ahaned family haven’t received any information about the reason for his arrest and the length of detention in Jalami prison. Ahaned’s father told us that in the last night
he woke up startled at 1 am, exactly a week later the Israili army’s raid. The whole family
is still in shock, the mother and Ahaned’s four younger siblings are living in pain with their brother’s absence. Abdele, the 4-year-old brother didn’t understand what was going on during the house raid. So his father told him that his brother Ahaned
went to visit relatives in Jordan, but since the night of the brother’s arrest Abdele wants to sleep in his parents bedroom.
Another two fathers of Yabad told us about the recent arrest of their 15-year-old kids, by
similar night raids of the Israeli army. Just like Ahaned’s family they don’t know about the reason for their kids arrest and the length of administrative detention in the jail, that could take up to six months.
The arrests of kids and teenagers are the latest strategy of the Israeli occupation force, focused to prevent whatever protest action and targeted to get information and control over life and houses of Palestinian people. Especially in Yabad where two settlements have been set up.
The kids and teenagers arrested without an official explanation or any opportunity to collect their personal belongings. They are normally being held incommunicado, in cramped and poorly lit cells. They are subject to continous interrogations by the Israeli Army which aims at getting as much informations about their families and the people of the villageas possible. Since it’s an administrative detention, subject to military law, they cannot have legal assistance and visits by their relatives. The innocent kids and teenagers arrested are subjected to traumatic experiences, carrying out a strong and preventive repressive action.
December 2017 | International Solidarity Movement, al-Khalil team | al-Khalil, Occupied Palestine
Witness accounts and video footage confirm that the Israeli army has been and is committing war crimes in dealing with the current wave of protests against the occupation, colonization, and ethnic cleansing in Palestine.
On Friday, December 8, 2017 around 4:30 PM, ISM activists clearly witnessed and filmed a unit of of around 40 Israeli soldiers and commanders in the H1 area of Hebron – which, according to the 1997 Hebron agreement, should be fully controlled by the Palestinian Authority – intentionally injuring the backs, shoulders, and heads of two randomly arrested teens. Much of this occurred after they had been handcuffed, blindfolded, and were held in custody.
Hebron-H1 – Checkpoint 56 – Hebron-H2
The incidents took place shortly after the Israeli forces invaded Bab al-Zawiya from the military Checkpoint 56 (Shuhada Street in H2) and stormed more than 300 meters up Adel Street, as well as two other main civilian thoroughfares.
The teens were captured near the Hasona Petrol station. If previous child arrests in that area are any indication, they were likely grabbed at random from the street without having been involved in any form of protest beforehand.
The video evidence below, a combination of 3 different camera positions, shows how cruelly the teens are treated by different soldiers, while and after they were handcuffed, blindfolded, and cooperating with the soldiers in walking to Israeli controlled H2.
The almost-raw video footage of all three cameras is included and viewable with the following hyper-links:
Human Rights Watch (HRW), an NGO that is widely acknowledged for its monitoring and determination of human rights abuses, compiled a readable publication based on the 685 page ‘ICRC Customary International Humanitarian Law’ study manual.
In the HRW publication, war crimes are defined as:
“Serious violations of international humanitarian law, including the mistreatment of persons in custody and deliberate attacks on civilians and civilian property, when committed with criminal intent amount to war crimes. Criminal intent requires purposeful or reckless action. Individuals may also be held criminally liable for attempting to commit a war crime, as well as assisting in, facilitating, aiding or abetting a war crime. Responsibility may also fall on persons ordering, planning, or instigating the commission of a war crime. Commanders and civilian leaders may be prosecuted for war crimes as a matter of command responsibility when they knew or should have known about the commission of war crimes and took insufficient measures to prevent them or punish those responsible.” [emphasis added]
Based on this definition, the video depicts a war crime committed by the Israeli army, for which it’s soldiers and commanders bear responsibility.
This isn’t the 1st documented war crime committed by the Israeli state or its armed forces against the Palestinian people. Other examples include:
Extensive destruction and appropriation of property, not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully;
Willfully depriving a prisoner of war or other protected person of the rights of fair and regular trial;
Unlawful deportation or transfer or unlawful confinement;
Enforced disappearance of persons;
Persecution against any identifiable group or collectivity on political, racial, national, ethnic, cultural, religious, gender;
The crime of apartheid;
The transfer, directly or indirectly, by the occupying power of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.
It is the obligation of all states that have signed the multiple international treaties violated here to stop these Israeli war crimes, and a duty of the people to put pressure on their governments to do so.
29th September 2017 | International Solidarity Movement, al-Khalil team | Hebron, occupied Palestine
On Friday afternoon, the 29th of September, protests erupted in Al-Khalil near Bab al-Zawiya at approximately 2:00 PM. The military countered the protests with sound bombs and advanced into H1, shooting rubber-coated steel bullets, out of which at least three hit protesters, in the neck, in the stomach and respectively in the arm. During their first incursion into H1, the soldiers detained a young Palestinian.
During the rest of the afternoon, there were multiple confrontations between the Israeli Army and the protesters in intensely circulated areas of H1, lasting until approximately 7 PM.
