Tag: At-Tuwani - Page 2 - International Solidarity Movement

ISM Call to Action: Save Masafer Yatta!

The International Solidarity Movement is calling all activists and supporters to take urgent action against Israel’s ethnic cleansing of the Masafer Yatta region in the occupied West Bank.

What is Masafer Yatta?:

Masafer Yatta is a rural region to the south of Hebron along the southern border of the occupied West Bank. It is home to 12 Palestinian villages totalling about 2,800 residents. Since 1981, the Israeli army has used the land as a military training area, ‘Firing Zone 918’ which has been used as a pretext for dispossesing, evicting and demolishing Palestinian homes, making every-day life unbearable for residents.

The current situation:

On May 4 2022, the Israeli High Court of Justice rejected appeals by residents against a series of eviction orders, giving the green light to Israeli Occupation Forces to wipe out eight villages located within the firing zone. This puts around 1,200 Palestinian residents, including 500 children, at imminent risk of eviction and arbitrary displacement, according to the UN. This process has already begun. The village of Al Mirkez has already been flattened three times and the residents are living in caves next to the rubble that was formerly their community.

From June 20, Israeli forces will begin training exercises with live ammunition in the Masafer Yatta region. Our partners on the ground view the next 3 months as a critical period, which will determine whether their communities will survive … and we need to act now!

How Masafer Yatta communities are resisting:

ISM’s friends and comrades in the region will never give up and neither should we. Masafer Yatta’s People’s Committee for Protection and Resilience, along with the Youth of Samud (whose headquarters received its own demolition order last week) have come together to use non-violent resistance to stop this ethnic cleansing. Popular resistance groups from all over Palestine and teams of activists from ‘48 [Israel] have been joining them in a united effort to save the villages. They are calling for international support and international activists to come and join the struggle on the ground.

We need volunteers to join them:

ISM is sending volunteers to Masafer Yatta this summer. We are calling on all committed supporters of Palestine to volunteer with ISM in the West Bank, in response to calls for assistance from our partners in Masafer Yatta. ISM activists would be working in solidarity with the Masafer Yatta community to provide a protective presence in villages under threat of demolition. ISM previously supported efforts to halt the demolition of Palestinian village Khan al-Ahmar in 2018. We hope to replicate the same success in Masafer Yatta. For more information about volunteering with ISM (needed this July and August), please contact: ismtraining@riseup.net.

N.B. There is an ISM training event in London scheduled for the 2nd July. We can prepare you and give you more information about what our grassroots partners need from us on the ground! To find out more and apply please contact training.ismlondon@riseup.net.

Support ISM and our Partners:

If you can’t volunteer on the ground you can still help the cause!

Donate to ISM to help us sponsor volunteers and keep us running. Alternatively you can contact us for information about grassroots groups from Masafer Yatta, who you can support with donations or in other ways.

Learn More:

Save Masafer Yatta – Save Masafer Yatta

Israel to begin live fire training in Palestinian community facing forced expulsion | Middle East Eye

Firing Zone 918 – An Exercise in War Crimes (btselem.org)

Inheriting resistance in the South Hebron Hills: “I am my father’s daughter, if he can do this, so can I… and more”

August 6 | International Solidarity Movement | South Hebron Hills, occupied Palestine

Youth activist Sameeha walks through the beautiful South Hebron Hills

“My life is occupation … all the time you have to be ready for the bad, and the most bad you can imagine,” Sameeha Huraini tells me, as she explains the reality of day-to-day life in the South Hebron Hills.

She is just 20-years-old but Sameeha has already experienced and witnessed more brutality than most people in their entire lifetime. When she was just a child, she saw her father beaten close to death by occupation forces during a peaceful protest against the construction of the apartheid wall. Her grandmother, who was 70 at the time, leapt to protect her son but was shoved to the ground by soldiers, smashing her fragile head against a rock. The impact caused her to lose sight in one eye and hearing in one ear. But this experience didn’t scare Sameeha from following in her father and grandmother’s footsteps. In fact this traumatic childhood memory has strengthened her will to fight the occupation.

“My father was beaten for the resistance, for Palestine,” she says. “My grandmother lost her eye and ear for the resistance, for Palestine, for At-Tuwani. It shouldn’t make me weak; it should make me strong.

“From there we really learnt the resistance, and how to fight for our rights and not to give up. I am my father’s daughter, if he can be in this situation, so can I… and more.”

The tree-topped settlement of Havat Ma’on looms in the distance behind a house in At-Tuwani that faces constant attacks from the settlers.

Sameeha is from At-Tuwani, a small farming village (shown in video below) of around 350 people, located in the South Hebron Hills. She is one of many youth activists in the village who have taken up their parent’s mantle in fighting against Israel’s unrelenting attempts to steal Palestinian land in the region. These attempts come in many forms, from expanding and protecting violent settler communities to preventing Palestinians accessing water and electricity. This constant onslaught is strategically carried out to make life unbearable for the people of At-Tuwani and its surrounding villages in the hope that they will leave.

“But they don’t understand,” Sameeha says. “Our connection is not with the life, it’s with the land.”

For the past two years, she has been involved with Youth of Sumud, an activist group with over 50 members, 15 of those girls, and all under the age of 25. They are constantly on call, responding to attacks from settlers, soldier harassment of shepherds and house demolitions. At the scene, they document the incident, and share it on their social media ensuring that Israel’s crimes do not go unheard. It’s dangerous work – every male member of the group has been arrested at least once.

Local activists from At-Tuwani challenge soldiers trying to move Palestinian shepherds from their land

Sameeha tells me about a time when she was planting olive trees with other Youth of Sumud activists. Israeli soldiers tried to stop them and attacked their friend who has a mental disability. Sameeha and her friends tried to prevent the soldiers beating him, but were then given arrest warrants themselves.

As well as taking part in these actions, she notes that simply going about her day-to-day life is a form of resistance. ‘It’s non-violent resistance,’ she explains. “The occupation is in every detail of our lives. Just planting trees, visiting friends in another village, for me it’s my daily life, what’s your problem with that?”

Alongside her activism work the 20 year old studies English at university, giving her the tools to spread the stories of At-Tuwani, the occupation and the South Hebron Hills across the globe.

Her village has a long history of resistance, one where women have played a crucial role. Sameeha grew up watching her mother and friend’s mothers help to build the town’s school. Building at that time was forbidden in At-Tuwani without a permit from the Israeli Civil Administration and these permits are rarely if ever given to Palestinians. The whole community worked together to make the school a reality, with the women taking over from the men in the field during the day so their husbands and sons could build the school under the cover of night to evade detection by soldiers.

Traditional dresses made by a women’s cooperative in the South Hebron Hills

Young women activists look over the village of Tuba in the South Hebron Hills

Sameeha is incredibly proud of the women’s role in fighting the occupation.

“They have this big history of resistance,” she tells ISM. “If you go back in At-Tuwani history you will find that’s the reason why At-Tuwani is like that now. They succeed to have a village in this new age, to build the school and build a clinic – that will learn and educate. They don’t want their sons and daughters to have the same life they had. They had a hard life in At-Tuwani without water and electricity and roads. They decide for us, for me, to make the life for them more easy to keep going.”

At protests, women often form the front line, creating a protective barrier against the soldiers who are more reluctant to arrest or act violently towards them. However this is not always the case, as Sameeha’s traumatic childhood memory of her grandmother painfully shows.

Part of her work with Youth of Sumud is to empower other girls and young women to join the resistance.

“I want the women of the South Hebron Hills to be more activist, to be more open about their rights. I want them to take part in the non-violent resistance.”

To do this, she visits girls in other villages, sits with them and explains the importance of uniting together as a community, men and women, to fight the occupation.

“What if there were no international people to help you when soldiers come to your house and arrest your father,” she tells me, explaining how she empowers her friends. “You are young, you are smart, you study, and you can use the cameras and you have to help yourselves, help your family, help your village.”

She uses herself as an example: “I am a young girl and I am studying and also dealing with my activism in the group so you can do that.

“We are the heart of the community, if we don’t work hand-by-hand, we will fall.”

South Hebron Hills: Settlers wielding sticks launch night attack on Palestinian home

June 17, 2019 | International Solidarity Movement | South Hebron Hills, occupied Palestine

Occupation forces attempt to arrest Palestinians outside At-Tuwani house

Settlers bearing sticks from the notorious Havat Maon illegal outpost tried to attack a Palestinian home two nights ago in the village of At-Tuwani, South Hebron Hills – the latest in a stream of attacks against the same home.

The Zionist attackers ran towards the house on June 15, which belongs to the Rabai family, bearing sticks but retreated after children playing nearby called out to their parents.

The group of around 8 settlers were seen running back into the line of trees encircling the illegal settlement, situated just 300m from the Palestinian home.

Due to the close proximity of the Rabai house to the outpost, it faces near constant assaults, with settlers often breaking the windows and even attacking members of the family.

A member of the Rabai family told ISM that he has had to replace the windows at least five times.

Occupation forces, called by the settlers, marched to the house shortly after the incident, claiming that 49 Palestinians had attacked the initial aggressors with stones.

However, not only was it clear that Palestinians had not started the assault, it was also clear that there were nowhere near 49 villagers at the scene.

Four IDF soldiers tried to enter but were prevented by the presence of other villagers, local activists and international observers.

The soldiers eventually left without making arrests. However, the Rabai family requested ISMers to stay on the roof till morning in case soldiers returned to detain anyone in the middle of the night.

The soldiers did not come back to the house but were seen making patrols until the early hours of the morning.

The family’s home is the closest house in At-Tuwani, a village of 350 people, to Havat Ma’on outpost, making it a prime target for the 40 particularly violent settlers who live there.

The Rabai family home with Havat Maon, an illegal outpost in the background

One member of the family, who prefers not to be named, told ISM that the settlers had previously thrown stones at his mother and wife while she was carrying their child.

‘My house can never be empty,’ he tells ISM. ‘My daughter is crying in the middle of the night, if she sees the gun of the soldier she will shout, ‘they will kill us, they will kill us!’

In the past, settlers would try to attack the house on a daily basis. The Rabai family have to be on constant alert. ‘I keep my clothes and shoes ready by my bed,’ he told ISM during the incident.

At-Tuwani and its surrounding villages have been terrorised by the settlers of Havat Ma’on and other illegal outposts – as well as by the soldiers that protect them – for 20 years. But despite using vicious tactics to scare the Palestinians into leaving, including poisoning their sheep and water supply and beating farmers and international observers, the villagers have held their ground.

The Battle Ground of the South Hebron Hills

28th December 2017 | International Solidarity Movement, al-Khalil team | al-Khalil, Hebron, occupied Palestine

The South Hebron Hills is one of the battle zones against the ethnic cleansing of Palestine. This area stretches along the southern border of the West Bank. The villages of At-Tuwani, At-Tuba, Mufaqarah, and Sarura are located in the South Hebron Hills. These villages lie between a line of Israeli settlements along highway 317 and an Israeli military firing zone to the east. Effectively the local villagers are caught in-between the Israeli army and Zionist settlers.

We met with Fawaz, a local community leader from At-Tuwani, at the Sumud Peace Camp site. Here local villagers have been re-establishing the village with the help of international activists.

#We are Sumud – Illegal outpost of Havat Maon in the background.

“Just living life in this area is ‘big resistance’”, Fawaz told us, “but the villagers decided they had to take further action”.

Sarura is another village in the South Hebron hills. In November 1999 all the villagers of Sarura were evicted and the village was destroyed. Since then Israeli Peace groups have assisted local villagers in the project of rebuilding Sarura. Peace Now, Rabbis for Human Rights and other organisations assisted the villagers to take their case to the Israeli courts. Their success put pressure on the Israeli government.

After this success, meetings in the villages were organised to find effective ways of resisting the occupation without the use of violence and thereby giving the Israeli military an excuse to react with excessive force. Through these meetings the villages in the area organised new initiatives, actions and activities. One of these initiatives was to make stone throwing forbidden. The meetings have been a big success and they are still held today.

These villagers were amongst the first Palestinians that did weekly demonstrations against the wall. The military administration started to cut off the area from the urban centre of Yatta. In response the villagers of the area arranged weekly demonstrations and after 18 months of protest the wall that would have cut off the south was declared illegal.The villagers paid a high price in arrests but they succeeded in preventing the extension of the wall.

In spite of the victory of having the wall along highway 317 declared illegal, a month went by without it being dismantled. Again the villagers demonstrated and blocked off the road and again the court ordered the government to remove the wall. This was a great victory to all the men, women and children that were involved. They had forced the occupation to recognise them as a village with a master plan!

A Battle for Education

In 1998 a school was built in At-Tuwani. As could be expected, a demolition order was issued soon after. The villagers ignored the order and took the fight to court. There was an attempted demolition. To prevent the demolition women stayed in the school during the day and the men at night. More demolition orders came. The school in At-Tuwani is the only one in the area. So now, the children from the surrounding villages now have to come to At-Tuwani to receive their education.

The children who live in the villages surrounding At-Tuwani have often been subjected to settler attacks on their way to school. Due to the violence against the children the route has had to be changed. Ali Awad from the village of Tuba used to be able to walk to school in twenty minutes. At one stage, the journey he had to take to avoid the threat of attack took him two hours. To avoid settler attacks Israeli soldiers have been assigned to walk with the children by a committee for Human Rights in the Knesset. However there have been many incidents where the soldiers have shown up late or left early. The inconsistency of the military presence meant that the escort was not effective in preventing the settler violence. Therefore, organisations working in the area arranged in 2004 to have international activist supervise the military’s escort of the children.

The second day the internationals started walking the children to school, the settlers attacked the children and the activists that were walking with them. One of the internationals was stabbed in their lung from the back and the other had their leg broken.

Sarura

In 1997, armed settlers attacked Sarura and the village was abandoned.

Twenty years later on May 19^th 2017 a project was launched and the Sumud Peace Camp began to rehabilitate the cave dwellings of Surura to begin to breathe life into the abandoned village again.

Activities and resistance initiatives were brought into action in order to encourage the local farmers to come back. The villagers needed Palestinian encouragement to overcome their fears or they would be afraid to return. The initiatives in Sarura led to the beginning of reconstruction in one section of Sarura. Among the tasks that have so far been accomplished in Sarura are the planting of trees, the building of a community centre, weekly workshops, a gathering place for the people of the village and the enlargement of the caves.

The villagers of Sarura face many problems from the Israeli soldiers and the settlers in the area. ”For two months they beat people, arrested people and destroyed things mainly at night. But we are bringing back life. Now we have a puppy and geese!” Fawaz says.

Among the activities that are planned in the Sumud Peace Camp in the near future is a New Years event. This was planned to celebrate the progress in Sarura. The celebration will include a daytime meeting with invited speakers, an evening concert and fireworks!

Fawaz tells us, ”This event is needed – it’s so important – 7 months holding this place in this condition has been difficult. Children have been arrested. The young people have become tired. We need to bring more and more people. This event should breathe new life into the sumud (stedfastness) against the occupation.”

“Non-violence is not an easy choice.
They are pushing you every day.
Just as a human being it is so hard.”
Fawaz

South Hebron Hills – farming under occupation

27th April 2015 | International Solidarity Movement, Team Al Khalil | South Hebron Hills, Occupied Palestine

Located in the tip of the West Bank, the South Hebron Hills are dotted with farming and shepherd communities.
We are currently in the wheat harvest season and the children are spending their last few weeks at school before the holiday break.
But just like everywhere else in Palestine, the population is threatened by the Israeli occupation and the illegal settlements that overlook, menace and harm their daily lives.
“Existence is resistance”

At-Tuwani - village in the South Hebron Hills where Operation Dove is located, helping provide an international presence in the area. — At-Tuwani – village in the South Hebron Hills where an Italian organisation, Operation Dove, is located, helping provide international presence in the area.

School children amusing themselves before taking the dangerous walk home.

Israeli jeep accompanies the children on their walk to and from school. The path is squashed between a settlement and an outpost, which make the children at risk of settler attacks.

Palestinians harvesting their land. They are at constant risk of being attacked by the illegal settler outpost overlooking them.

Donkeys are a common way of getting around in the area.

Nestled in the hills, lies the community of Tuba. — Nestled in the hills, about a 40 minute walk from At-Tuwani, lies the community of Tuba.

Like many other communities in the South Hebron Hills, people live inside caves.

Inside one of the caves. Mattresses get spread around the floor in the evening to chat, share meals, watch tv and lay their heads.

TV inside the cave. Electricity is powered by their wind turbine.

The second to youngest of Tuba, posing in front of the pile of mattresses.

Communal breakfast for the sheep of Tuba.

The family’s breakfast - composed mainly of products that came from within a radius of 50 metres from their home. Bread from their wheat, eggs from their chickens, cheese and butter from their goats. — The family’s breakfast – composed mainly of products that came from within a radius of 50 metres from their home. Bread from their wheat, eggs from their chickens, cheese and butter from their goats.

Hiding away from the view of settlers and soldiers, men and women harvest their land.

Bundles of wheat collected during the harvest season.

Donkeys are used to carry up the harvested crops. — Donkeys are used to carry the harvested crops.

Siggy and Frida.