Tag: Arrests

Israeli soldiers detain five Palestinian Schoolboys in South Hebron Hills

21 November 2010 | Christian Peacemaker Team

At-Tuwani – Claiming that the children were throwing stones, Israeli soldiers detained five Palestinian schoolboys.

Since the beginning of 2005, the children from the village of Tuba wait every morning for an Israeli army escort to accompany them to the school in At-Tuwani, along the shortest road that goes through the Israeli settlement of Ma’on and the illegal outpost of Havat Ma’on. The escort’s task is to protect the children from the violence of the Israeli settlers of Havat Ma’on.

On the morning of November 21st, Palestinian schoolchildren had been waiting for over an hour near the settlement chicken barns when, at about 8:50 am, the soldiers arrived to escort the children to school past Havat Ma’on. Instead of escorting the children, however, the soldiers stopped and talked with the settlement security guard while the children waited on the road nearby. While the soldiers and the security guard were talking, two settlers passed the children.

After waiting for 15 minutes, two of the schoolchildren left for school on their own, unaccompanied. The other 13 children waited for another five minutes, then turned around and left to head back home. The soldiers remained with the security guard.

As the children were arriving at their villages of Tuba and Maghayir Al-Abeed, the same soldiers drove up, and, shoving away two internationals from Christian Peacemaker Teams, grabbed five boys and put them in the army vehicle. The soldiers took the boys back to the settlement barns, where, according to the children, they asked them no questions, but made them sit against a barn. After holding them for 15 minutes, the soldiers released the boys.

As the boys were leaving, the captain told the internationals “tell the children’s parents that if the boys throw stones again, it won’t be like this time. There will be problems.”

“I was waiting with the kids for over an hour, and I never saw them throw stones” said Joe Yoder, member of CPT. “Even if they were throwing stones while they were playing around, I don’t see how that’s an offense that merits soldiers coming into their home and carrying them off like criminals. If the army would just arrive on time, then there wouldn’t be a problem in the first place.”

Schoolchildren from Tuba and Maghayir al Abeed rely on the Israeli army to escort them past the settlement of Ma’on and the illegal outpost of Havat Ma’on, where Israeli settlers have committed acts of violence against the schoolchildren in the past.

These kinds of incidents are the evidence of the Israeli military escort’s failure to protect the children from settler’s violence. In the last school year, the children were attacked 19 times, they waited for the escort 53 hours and they missed almost 27 hours of classes.

Palestinian youth and five solidarity activists arrested in Beit Ommar demonstration

20 November 2010 | International Solidarity Movement

Mohammad Awad, 8 years old, being arrested

Beit Ommar, Southern West Bank, 1:30pm: One 8-year-old Palestinian boy named Mohammad Awad, two internationals volunteering with P.S.P., and three Israeli solidarity activists were arrested by Israeli Forces during a peaceful demonstration against Karmei Tsur, an illegal Israeli settlement built on Beit Ommar land.

Beit Ommar and the adjacent Saffa valley have recently witnessed a tide of suppression by Israeli soldiers. Thursday, November 18th, thirteen Palestinian, Israeli, and international activists were arrested accompanying farmers to their land in the Saffa valley, near the illegal Bat Ayn settlement. In the past month, soldiers have raided the village during the night and made arrests three times a week: 35 people were arrested in October, and several have been arrested this month.

Activists detained outside Bat Ayn settlement before arrest

The weekly demonstration started just after 1pm as 30 Palestinians, along with many International and Israeli solidarity activists, marched toward the fence surrounding the Karmei Tsur settlement.

Around two dozen Israeli soldiers and border police blocked the path of the demonstrators, who sat on the ground, chanted against the occupation, and made speeches on the injustice of denying Palestinians access to their own land.

Soldier shoots tear gas toward demonstrators

After half an hour of peaceful demonstrating, a small group of shebabs moved closer to confront the Israeli soldiers, who responded by firing sound bombs and attempting to arrest a member of the National Committee. As he evaded arrest, a young boy and five other activists were taken in his place.

Activists returned to face the soldiers and stand in solidarity with those arrested. They were then repeatedly shot with tear gas and chased up the road to the village.

Karmei Tsur, an illegal settlement according to international law, is one of five built on land belonging to Beit Ommar villagers. The demonstration is held every Saturday and organized by the National Committee Against the Wall and Settlements in Beit Ommar, and the Palestine Solidarity Project.

Wa’el al Faqeeh released from Israeli prison

UPDATE | 17 November 2010: Wa’el al-Faqeeh was released from Israeli prison today and is back in his Nablus home. The International Solidarity Movement strongly condemned his arrest, which marked an escalation in Israeli targeting of Palestinian popular resistance leaders. Wa’el has been a irreplaceable grassroots organizer in the Nablus area and we are ecstatic that he has been released. He is back in Nablus and is ready to continue his reign as Chess champion.

Please consider making a donation to help pay for his legal fees (see bottom of the post to donate) or visit the International Solidarity Movement donations page.

Wa'el Al-Faqeeh

15 January 2010

On the night of December 9th 2009, over 200 Israeli soldiers entered the northern West Bank city of Nablus. Their mission: to round up local grassroots activists, whose promotion of popular struggle Israel had no answer for. Amongst those taken was 45 year old Wa’el Al-Faqeeh. Fifty soldiers stormed his home, pointing their weapons at him and his family as though the man they had come to arrest embodied a formidable threat. But those who know Al Faqeeh know that he worked tirelessly – and on a largely voluntary basis – in defense of human rights and the promotion of the strategies and philosophy of Palestinian non-violent resistance.

Political prisoner Wa’el Al-Faqeeh has been detained without charge by Israeli authorities for over a month, and is now facing trial in a military court scheduled to begin on the 19th of January. The abduction of Al-Faqeeh from his home, along with 4 other activists in the Nablus region, marked the beginning of the recent surge in Israel’s targeting of leaders of Palestinian popular resistance.

We call on you to take effective and public action to end the arrest, detention and mistreatment of Palestinian human rights activists such as Wa’el Al-Faqeeh. Deprived of his liberty and his voice, we ask you to join us in exercising our freedom of speech where he can not by calling for the release of Wa’el Al-Faqeeh and all political prisoners inside Israel’s jails.

What you can do to help:

* Contact your representatives asking them to exert pressure on Israeli officials to release Wa’el Al-Faqeeh and to end the unlawful imprisonment of human rights defenders. Click here to send a letter to Catherine Ashton, High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy of the European Union. Click here to send a letter to the American consulate in Jerusalem, or use the sample letter here to send to your respective representative. You can find a list of embassies and their contact information here.

* Host an event, or hold a demonstration or action in your area to raise awareness, support – and even funds – for Al-Faqeeh and all political prisoners. You could organise a film night, street projection, “Free the Prisoners” party, or a demonstration outside an Israeli embassy or consulate in your country. Organisers can contact palreports@gmail.com for media support.

* Wa’el Al-Faqeeh faces military court on the January 19. His legal defence comes at a high price and contributions to his legal fund support both Al-Faqeeh and his family. You can make a donation to the Free Wa’el fund here.


You can follow updates on Al-Faqeeh’s case and get in touch with his supporters by joining the Free Wa’el Facebook group here.

This week in Silwan: clashes, raids, arrests, and demolition orders

14 November 2010 | Wadi Hilweh Information Center & ISM

On Saturday, Israeli forces erected checkpoints at the entrances to Silwan village for the second day in a row. The network of checkpoints are a notorious source of inconvenience and frustration to the people of Silwan, whose freedom of movement is obstructed by the “security” barriers.

Jerusalem munipality bulldozers remove a barn on the property of Silwan resident Mohammed Siyam, in Abbasiya district
Last week, on Monday the 8th of November, Jerusalem Municipality workers, accompanied by Israeli forces, removed the memorial to Silwan martyr Samer Sarhan. A drinking fountain and olive tree dedicated to the memory of Sarhan were also removed from the site. Municipal workers and Israeli troops completed the operation in less than ten minutes, shadowed by an Israeli military helicopter overhead.

Later Monday night clashes erupted in the Bir Ayyub district of Silwan, following an Israeli military raid on a small shop and a number of Palestinian homes in the region. Undercover forces and Israeli troops violently arrested 7 Palestinian residents of Silwan, between the ages of 17 and 21, at 9pm after forcing entry into the shop. Eyewitnesses report that the shop’s customers were beaten and sprayed in the face with pepper spray by Israeli troops.

The next day, Israeli police and special forces raided the Wadi Hilweh Information Center, accompanied by an inspector from the Jerusalem Municipality, under the pretext of investigating illegal building. The officers photographed the Center from the inside before continuing on toward Al-Bustan, where they delivered demolition orders on two buildings.

These raids of Silwan on the 9th coincided with French and British diplomats’ visits to the village. Several high-level delegations have visited the Wadi Hilweh Information Center in recent weeks, including diplomatic groups representing the European Union, United Nations and various commissions, consulates and embassies. Diplomats met with residents of Silwan, who were able to recount their impressions and experiences of the Israeli government’s policies of Judaization, settlement expansion and home demolition in the village, and the resulting poverty and suffering. The visiting delegations expressed their disapproval of the government’s policies and the escalating humanitarian situation in Silwan, and the detention of child prisoners in particular.

The Israeli Knesset will be holding a meeting on the first day of Eid al-Adha, November 16, to give the Jerusalem Municipality the green light to resume demolition of Palestinian homes in the city of Jerusalem, especially Silwan. The date was postponed from Sunday to Tuesday despite the holiday, celebrated by Arab members of the Knesset. Among the properties slated for demolition are the homes of Khalil Abbasi and Mohammed Ashour el-Razem of Silwan, and Ayman Abu Ramila of Beit Hanina.

Speaking to Silwanic.net, lawyer Sami Irsheid stated that the municipality has recently re-enacted its policy of demolition of barnyards and animal pens in various areas of East Jerusalem, including el-Thuri, Silwan and Issawiya village. The policy has since expanded to include the demolition of shops, indicative of the policy’s next phase: home demolition. Observers have commented that the municipality’s prior demolition of animal shelters betrays a strategy of “testing the waters” of the local and international community’s reaction to such practices, thereby enabling the administration to proceed only with the demolition of homes once it is assured of no diplomatic backlash.

Civil resistance to bring down the Walls

1 November 2010 | Ayed Morrar, Huffington Post

Budrus, a documentary film now debuting across the US, tells the story of a successful protest campaign by unarmed Palestinian civilians against Israel’s military occupation in my small West Bank village. Our struggle’s success and the consequent expansion of civil resistance to other West Bank communities may provide hope to viewers desperate for positive news from the Middle East, but today an Israeli crackdown on unarmed Palestinian protesters is threatening this growing movement. For our movement to thrive and serve as a true alternative to violence, we need Americans’ to demand that Israel, a close US ally, end this repression.

Budrus depicts our ten month campaign of protest marches in 2003-2004, which included participation by men, women and children, and by representatives from all Palestinian political factions, along with Israeli and international activists, to resist the construction of Israel’s Separation Barrier on our lands. Young women, led by my 15-year-old daughter Iltezam, ran past armed Israeli soldiers and jumped In front of the bulldozers that were uprooting our ancient olive trees. The soldiers regularly met us with clubs, rubber-coated bullets, curfews, arrests and even live ammunition. But we won in the end. The Israeli military rerouted the barrier in Budrus, allowing us access to almost all of our land.

The film ends with Palestinian and Israeli activists heading to the neighboring village of Ni’ilin where the struggle to save Palestinian land continues today. But following Budrus’s success and faced by a growing numbers of civilians protesting the confiscation of their lands, Israel has responded with military might, attempting to quell this new movement. Twenty Palestinians have since been killed during unarmed demonstrations against the construction of the Separation Barrier.

In Ni’ilin, in the dark of night, Israeli soldiers have staged hundreds of military raids and arrests of civilians from the village; hundreds more were injured — forty by live ammunition, and five, including a ten year old, were shot dead. Today, a horrid 25 foot concrete wall stands in Ni’ilin, behind which lie 620 acres of village lands taken for the expansion of illegal Israeli settlements.

Through a five-year protest campaign, another nearby village, Bil’in, has become an international symbol of nonviolent resistance to Israeli occupation, with world leaders from Jimmy Carter to Desmond Tutu visiting to show support. On October 11th, Abdallah Abu Rahmah, one of Bil’in’s most prominent protest organizers, was sentenced by an Israeli military court to twelve months in jail. His crime — leading demonstrations in his village that were very similar to those I led in Budrus.

During Abdallah’s trial, Israel’s military prosecution repeatedly demanded that an ‘example’ be made of him to deter others who might organize civil resistance. The EU, Britain, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have all condemned Abdallah’s incarceration, yet he remains in prison.

Palestinians’ wishes are simple — we want what is ours, our land, with true sovereignty. We want freedom, equality and civil rights — what Martin Luther King, Jr. called in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail “our constitutional and God-given rights.”

But Israel is sending a clear message — even unarmed resistance by ordinary civilians demanding basic rights will be crushed. It is little known that the second intifada began not with guns and suicide bombings against civilians, but rather with protest marches to Israeli military checkpoints inside the occupied West Bank, and with civil disobedience in the tradition of the US civil rights movement. Israel responded by firing over 1.3 million live bullets in one month into crowds of protesters. When ordinary people could no longer afford to risk protesting, small groups turned, in anger and despair, to armed resistance.

Budrus’s struggle showed that civil resistance can bring down walls, both literal and those of the heart, and set an example for a bright future for Israelis and Palestinians in this biblical land. Today Palestinian and Israeli protesters are together confronting Israel’s military occupation in other villages. But this hopeful possibility is now threatened again by Israeli bullets and arrests.

For this future to materialize, those who are outraged by the violence deployed against protesters must demand an end to the injustice. If Americans want to see the example of Budrus continue to spread, individuals, civil society groups and the US government must act to pressure Israel to end its brutal crackdown on civilian protesters.