The Israel Defense Forces consider it a crime punishable by imprisonment for a Palestinian to possess used IDF weapons, according to an indictment filed by the military prosecutor against Abdullah Abu Rahma of the West Bank town of Bil’in.
Abu Rahma, 39, is coordinator of the Bil’in Popular Committee Against the Wall, which has been holding demonstrations against construction of the separation fence on the village’s land. A teacher by profession, he was arrested by IDF troops on December 10 and indicted in a military court last Tuesday.
In addition to charges of incitement and throwing stones, Abu Rahma was charged with illegal weapons possession due to his alleged possession of M16 rifle bullets and gas and concussion grenades – which, the indictment said, “the accused and his associates used for an exhibition that showed people the means used by the security forces.”
Abu Rahma’s associates confirmed that empty concussion and gas grenades used by the IDF to disperse demonstrators were exhibited in Bil’in, adding that no one tried to conceal the nature of the exhibition. However, they said, M16 bullets were not part of the exhibit, nor were they found in a search of Abu Rahma’s home.
Activists in Bil’in speculated that the M16 allegation stemmed from misinformation given to the army by one of the many young people the army has arrested in recent months. They charge that these arrests are made in an effort to obtain incriminating material against the protest organizers.
In the case of another local protest organizer, Mohammed Khatib, a military court concluded that evidence that he had thrown stones was fabricated, after it turned out that at the time of the alleged infraction, he was abroad.
South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who met with Abu Rahma and Khatib last summer during a visit to Israel, condemned Abu Rahma’s arrest and indictment on Wednesday and urged the Israeli authorities to release him immediately. Tutu’s summer visit to the region was under the auspices of The Elders, a group of global leaders formed by former South African president Nelson Mandela.
In his statement on Wednesday, Tutu said that he and his fellow delegation members – who included former American president Jimmy Carter, former Irish president Mary Robinson and former Norwegian prime minister Gro Brundtland – were “impressed by [Abu Rahma and Khatib’s] commitment to peaceful political action, and their success in challenging the wall that unjustly separates the people of Bil’in from their land and their olive trees.” He called Abu Rahma’s arrest and indictment “part of an escalation by the Israeli military to try to break the spirit of the people of Bil’in.”
Palestinians have a long history of nonviolent resistance but Israel has continuously deployed methods to destroy it
“Why,” I have often been asked, “haven’t the Palestinians established a peace movement like the Israeli Peace Now?”
The question itself is problematic, being based on many erroneous assumptions, such as the notion that there is symmetry between the two sides and that Peace Now has been a politically effective movement. Most important, though, is the false supposition that Palestinians have indeed failed to create a pro-peace popular movement.
In September 1967 – three months after the decisive war in which the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem were occupied – Palestinian leaders decided to launch a campaign against the introduction of new Israeli textbooks in Palestinian schools. They did not initiate terrorist attacks, as the prevailing narratives about Palestinian opposition would have one believe, but rather the Palestinian dissidents adopted Mahatma Gandhi-style methods and declared a general school strike: teachers did not show up for work, children took to the streets to protest against the occupation and many shopkeepers closed shop.
Israel’s response to that first strike was immediate and severe: it issued military orders categorising all forms of resistance as insurgency – including protests and political meetings, raising flags or other national symbols, publishing or distributing articles or pictures with political connotations, and even singing or listening to nationalist songs.
Moreover, it quickly deployed security forces to suppress opposition, launching a punitive campaign in Nablus, where the strike’s leaders resided. As Major General Shlomo Gazit, the co-ordinator of activities in the occupied territories at the time, points out in his book The Carrot and the Stick, the message Israel wanted to convey was clear: any act of resistance would result in a disproportionate response, which would make the population suffer to such a degree that resistance would appear pointless.
After a few weeks of nightly curfews, cutting off telephone lines, detaining leaders, and increasing the level of harassment, Israel managed to break the strike.
While much water has passed under the bridge since that first attempt to resist using “civil disobedience” tactics, over the past five decades Palestinians have continuously deployed nonviolent forms of opposition to challenge the occupation. Israel, on the other hand, has, used violent measures to undermine all such efforts.
It is often forgotten that even the second intifada, which turned out to be extremely violent, began as a popular nonviolent uprising. Haaretz journalist Akiva Eldar revealed several years later that the top Israeli security echelons had decided to “fan the flames” during the uprising’s first weeks. He cites Amos Malka, the military general in charge of intelligence at the time, saying that during the second intifada’s first month, when it was still mostly characterised by nonviolent popular protests, the military fired 1.3m bullets in the West Bank and Gaza. The idea was to intensify the levels of violence, thinking that this would lead to a swift and decisive military victory and the successful suppression of the rebellion. And indeed the uprising and its suppression turned out to be extremely violent.
But over the past five years, Palestinians from scores of villages and towns such as Bil’in and Jayyous have developed new forms of pro-peace resistance that have attracted the attention of the international community. Even Palestinian Authority prime minister Salam Fayyad recently called on his constituents to adopt similar strategies. Israel, in turn, decided to find a way to end the protests once and for all and has begun a well-orchestrated campaign that targets the local leaders of such resistance.
One such leader is Abdallah Abu Rahmah, a high school teacher and the co-ordinator of Bil’in’s Popular Committee Against the Wall, is one of many Palestinians who was on the military’s wanted list. At 2am on 10 December (international Human Rights Day), nine military vehicles surrounded his home. Israeli soldiers broke the door down, and after allowing him to say goodbye to his wife Majida and three young children, blindfolded him and took him into custody. He is being charged with throwing stones, the possession of arms (namely gas canisters in the Bil’in museum) and inciting fellow Palestinians, which, translated, means organising demonstrations against the occupation.
The day before Abu Ramah was arrested, the Israeli military carried out a co-ordinated operation in the Nablus region, raiding houses of targeted grassroots activists who have been fighting against human rights abuses. Wa’el al-Faqeeh Abu as-Sabe, 45, is one of the nine people arrested. He was taken from his home at 1am and, like Abu Ramah, is being charged with incitement. Mayasar Itiany, who is known for her work with the Nablus Women’s Union and is a campaigner for prisoners’ rights was also taken into custody as was Mussa Salama, who is active in the Labour Committee of Medical Relief for Workers. Even Jamal Juma, the director of an NGO called Stop the Wall, is now behind bars.
Targeted night arrests of community leaders have become common practice across the West Bank, most notably in the village of Bil’in where, since June, 31 residents have been arrested for their involvement in the demonstrations against the wall. Among these is Adeeb Abu Rahmah, a prominent activist who has been held in detention for almost five months and is under threat of being imprisoned for up to 14 months.
Clearly, the strategy is to arrest all of the leaders and charge them with incitement, thus setting an extremely high “price tag” for organising protests against the subjugation of the Palestinian people. The objective is to put an end to the pro-peace popular resistance in the villages and to crush, once and for all, the Palestinian peace movement.
Thus, my answer to those who ask about a Palestinian “Peace Now” is that a peaceful grassroots movement has always existed. At Abdallah Abu Rahmah’s trial next Tuesday one will be able to witness some of the legal methods that have consistently been deployed to destroy it.
Abdallah Abu Rahmah, a school teacher and coordinator of the Bil’in Popular Committee Against the Wall, was indicted in an Israeli military court yesterday. Abu Rahmah was slapped with an arms possession charge for collecting used tear gas canisters shot at demonstrators in Bil’in by the army and showcasing them in his home.
An exhibition of spent tear gas grenades and projectiles in the village of Bil'in for which Abu Rahmah was indicted on. Picture credit: Oren ZivActiveStills*
An indictment was filed in a West Bank military court yesterday for incitement, stone throwing and arms possession charges against Bil’in Popular Committee coordinator, Abdallah Abu Rahmah. On receiving the indictment Adv. Gaby Lasky, Abu Rahmah’s lawyer said that “the army shoots at unarmed demonstrators, and when they try to show the world the violence used against them by collecting presenting the remnants – they are persecuted and prosecuted. What’s next? Charging protesters money for the bullets shot at them?”
On December 10, exactly one year after receiving the International League for Human Rights’ Carl Von Ossietzky Medal – on International Day of Human Rights – Abu Rahmah was arrested during an Israeli military night-time raid for his involvement in organizing unarmed protest against the Wall in the village of Bil’in. The indictment served yesterday also includes charges of incitement and stone throwing.
As part of a recent wave of repression against the Palestinian popular protest movement, Israel has charged numerous grassroots organizers with both stone throwing and incitement. In at least one case, that of Mohammed Khatib from Bil’in, the court found evidence presented on a stone-throwing charge to be falsified.
In the past six month, 31 residents of Bil’in have been detained by the military, and in neighboring Ni’ilin, 91 have been arrested in the past 18 months. Abdallah Abu Rahmah’s arrest and indictment, as well as that of Adeeb Abu Rahmah and the arrest of Jamal Juma’ of the Stop the Wall organization are part of a wider attempt to equate grassroots organizing with a hefty of incitement. This is part of the army’s strategy to use legal measures as a means of quashing the popular movement.
See here for an article on the subject from today’s Haaretz Newspaper.
* The above picture is for free-of charge single-use in internet publications only. Please include picture credit. For print and higher resolution please contact rnziv@yahoo.com
Imprisoned American citizen and Minnesota resident Ryan Olander to be deported to the US after being arrested in Sheikh Jarrah, Occupied East Jerusalem, whilst visiting Palestinian family whose house has been taken over by Israeli settlers.
Ryan was visiting the al-Kurds in the tent the Palestinian family built in their own backyard, after the recent setter take-over of a section of their house. At 1.15pm, 6 Israeli police walked into the tent, where Ryan was talking to the family members and drinking tea, and took him for questioning at the Russian Compound police station in west Jerusalem.
From the Givon prison in Ramle where Mr. Olander is currently awaiting his deportation hearing he reported that:
“On Friday, 18 December, I was placed under arrest illegally. A police officer forcibly removed me from the al-Kurd private residence and proceeded to file a fallacious police report stating I participated in what they claimed was an illegal demonstration and refused to disperse when ordered. In fact, I was arrested before the demonstration even took place.
I have become a target of the police for standing in solidarity with the Palestinians of Sheikh Jarrah who struggle against the unjust and illegal evictions from the places they have called their homes for nearly 60 years. Now I face illegal deportation from Israel.”
His arrest happened just before a peaceful demonstration of around 300 people, held in solidarity with the evicted Palestinian residents of Sheikh Jarrah, was violently dispersed by the Israeli police. Following a violent dispersal of a similar demonstration the previous week, the police blocked all entrances to Sheikh Jarrah in an attempt to prevent protesters from accessing the Palestinian neighbourhood and used unprecedented force against those who succeeded in reaching the al-Kurd and Gawi family houses, currently occupied by Israeli settlers. Twenty six Israeli protesters were arrested, three of them wearing clown costumes. Similarly to last week, the police used a section of the al-Kurd house, previously taken over by settlers, to detain the arrested demonstrators.
Ryan, along with other arrestees from Sheikh Jarrah reported ill-treatment by the police, who subjected them to several strip-searches, denied them food and water for prolonged periods of time and held them outside of the police station until late at night, with insufficient protection against the cold conditions. Unlike the 26 arrested Israeli citizens, who were brought in front of the judge, Ryan was released by the police before the beginning of the trial on Saturday, 19 December, only to be illegally re-arrested by immigration police right outside of the same police station that told him he was free to go.
The police have used the same tactics previously, when three foreign nationals, who were arrested at a peaceful demonstration Sheikh Jarrah on 11 December 2009, were released by the judge in a court hearing held at the Russian Compound the following day, only to be illegally arrested again and taken straight from the courtroom to a deportation facility. All three were released the following morning, over 40 hours after their initial arrest.
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.
So far, settlers took over houses of four Palestinian families, displacing around 60 residents, including 20 children. At present, settlers occupy all these houses and the whole area is patrolled by armed private security 24 hours a day. The evicted Palestinian families, some of whom have been left without suitable alternative accommodation since August, continue to protest against the unlawful eviction from the sidewalk across the street from their homes, facing regular violent attacks from the settlers and harassment from the police.
The Gawi family, for example, had their only shelter, a small tent built near their house, destroyed by the police and all their belongings stolen five times. In addition, the al-Kurd family has been forced to live in an extremely difficult situation, sharing the entrance gate and the backyard of their house with extremist settlers, who occupied a part of the al-Kurd home in December 2009. The settlers subject the Palestinian family to regular violent attacks and harassment, making their life a living hell.
The ultimate goal of the settler organizations is to evict all Palestinians from the area and turn it 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 28 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.
Implanting new Jewish settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank is illegal under many international laws, including Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention. The plight of the Gawi, al-Kurd and the Hannoun families is just a small part of Israel’s ongoing campaign of ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people from East Jerusalem.
Legal background
The eviction orders, issued by Israeli courts, 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 whose aim is to take over the whole area using falsified 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 the al-Kurd family house take-over in December 2009), 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 Palestinian 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 (Kamel al-Kurd family) and August 2009 (Hannoun and Gawi families for the second time). An uninhabited section of a house belonging to the al-Kurd family was taken over by settlers on 1 December 2009.
The Palestinian villages of Bil’in and Ni’lin have been invaded by the Israeli military in the early hours of Saturday, 19 December 2009. Soldiers entered both villages at 2.30am and raided houses of four families.
In Bil’in, 5 military jeeps carrying about 30 soldiers entered the village and invaded the house of Yassin Yassin. Family members, woken up by the armed soldiers at the dark of night, were forced to leave the house and stand outside in cold and rain. The raid was conducted in order to arrest Yassin Yassin, wanted for his participation in the village’s regular Friday demonstrations against the Wall and settlements. As Yassin was not present in the house at the time of the raid, the soldiers left a note ordering him to attend questioning at the Ofer prison. Soldiers then continued to conduct a search in a second house.
In a similar scenario, the army invaded two houses in Ni’lin, detaining all family members in one room while searching the houses, looking for a resident of the village. The only reason the military had for searching for this young man was his participation in Ni’lin’s weekly demonstrations.
Sasha Solanas, an American solidarity activist, who was sleeping in one of the invaded houses, said: “The army raided two Ni’lin homes in the middle of the night, looking for a villager suspected of participating in the demonstrations. The recent revival of night raids is part of a new campaign to quash unarmed demonstrations in both Ni’lin and Bil’in. The army has used night raids to scare the villagers into abandoning their just cause.”
Owner of second house raided in Bil’in, Wajeeh Burnat, was questioned by the soldiers about used spent tear-gas canisters and bullets, left on the village’s land by the Israeli military, who fire them at demonstrators. In a non-violent act of resistance, residents of the village collect the used munitions at the end of every demonstration, using them to create art and to showcase the violence used against them by the Israeli army. The Israeli military, however, consider such spent munitions illegal and has recently raised suspicions against a member of the Popular Committee for their possession.
Collection of tear gas and shock grenades that have been picked after a demonstration in Bil'inArt created by Bil'in residents using spent munitions
Mohmmed Khatib, member of the Bil’in Popular Committee said: “The popular struggle is gaining momentum and its growing achievements both in Palestine and world-wide put Israel in a position which makes the military desperate to de-legitimize and stop us. Tonight’s raids are a part of an escalation in Israeli military’s failed attempts to break the spirit of the people of Bil’in and Ni’lin, their popular leadership, and the popular struggle as a whole – aimed at crushing demonstrations against the Apartheid Wall and settlements built on land stolen from both villages.”
Recently, Adv. Gaby Lasky, who represents many of Bil’in’s detainees, was informed by the military prosecution that the army intends to use legal measures as a means of ending the demonstrations. As a part of this strategy, the Israeli military investigators used intimidation techniques to coerce the young boys from the village to testify against the popular leaders. So far, all three detained coordinators of the Bil’in Popular Committee were released for lack of evidence, and, in the case of another member, Mohammed Khatib, the court even found some of the presented evidence to be falsified.
31 residents of Bil’in have been arrested since 23 July 2009, during a night raid and arrest campaign conducted by the Israeli military, targeted at boys accused of throwing stones at the Wall as well as participants and organisers of the weekly demonstrations. Amongst those arrested are Adeeb Abu Rahmah, a leading activist from the village and Abdallah Abu Rahmah, coordinator of the Popular Committee. Adeeb, who has been detained for over five months, is not suspected of committing any violence, but was indicted with a blanket charge of “incitement”, which was very liberally interpreted in this case to include the organizing of grassroots demonstrations.
