Tag: Awarta - Page 3 - International Solidarity Movement

Settlers from illegal colony of Itamar destroy 1,500 Palestinian olive trees

12th July 2013 | International Solidarity Movement, Nablus Team | Awarta, Occupied Palestine

On the morning of Thursday 11th July, villagers from Awarta found that 1,500 of their olive trees had been cut down over the last month by settlers from the illegal settlement of Itamar. When they attempted to highlight this crime with media coverage, the mayor and several journalists were detained for several hours by the Israeli military.

Tree cut down by a chainsaw in the last month by settlers from Itamar (Photo by Awarta Municipality)

Four villagers of Awarta, including the Mayor, went to visit their occupied farm lands, accompanied by soldiers on the 11th of July. They have been denied access to this land for years, and are required by the Israeli authorities to apply for permission because the land has been annexed by the nearby illegal settlement of Itamar.

A month previously the villagers of Awarta had applied to see their lands because they could hear chainsaw noises and were concerned for their olive trees. However, they were left waiting for eight hours as no soldiers had arrived and they were concerned that they would be arrested if they went to their own land without the military.

The liaison between Palestinians and the Israeli military, the District Coordination Office (DCO), called the mayor of Awarta at 11pm on Wednesday 10th, telling the villagers they would have to meet the soldiers at 5am the next day if they wanted to visit their land. This inconvenient time, especially as it is currently Ramadan, meant that only three farmers and the mayor could attend.

When they reached the occupied farm lands, which are owned by 22 families of Awarta, they found that around 1,500 of their olive trees had been destroyed by residents of the illegal Itamar settlement. From seeing the trees the farmers could tell by the dry stumps that this violent destruction had been going on for over a month, with the most recent trees being cut only in the past few days.

The Mayor returned a few hours after this visit, accompanied by journalists who planned to report on this illegal destruction of Palestinian olive trees. Whilst the Mayor was showing them around, all of them were detained by Israeli soldiers and held for over two hours at the nearby military base in Huwara. Even though the land is legally owned by the village of Awarta the army claimed they had overstayed their visiting permit and their presence there was illegal. For more details of the land annexation of Awarta see previous ISM report here.

Villagers of Awarta also have to deal with regular attacks during settler visits to a local tomb. The tomb site is used by Muslim residents of the village as it is disputed as to who is buried there. The settlers come in the night escorted by soldiers, destroying property as they go; most recently they targeted the school, tearing down the basketball hoops.

The soldiers also raid homes without notice, destroying belongings and frightening inhabitants; the latest, Saturday 6th July, resulted in the arrest of an 18 year old boy, Murad Khaled. His current whereabouts are unknown – he is still under arrest.

Some of the 1,500 trees cut down by settlers from Itamar (Photo by Awarta municipality)

Land confiscation continues in Awarta

24th June 2013 | International Solidarity Movement, Nablus Team | Awarta, Occupied Palestine

Map of land confiscation in Palestine. (Photo by ISM)

Awarta, a small village south east of Nablus, faces constant intimidation from the Israeli army and nearby Itamar settlement.

In the past month, the Israeli Civil Administration handed out two land confiscation orders to residents of Awarta. The first one, three weeks ago, stated that 360 dunums of the village’s land will be confiscated and the second one, issued last week, confiscated 63.4 more dunums. However, residents of Awarta affirm that the actual total amount of land confiscated raises up to 1,500 dunums.

As you can see on the map, the area confiscated is located around the settlement of Itamar, where farmers own hundreds of olive trees. While the confiscation orders are valid until 2015, farmers fear that Israeli authorities will renew them so the land and thus, all olive trees are now lost to Itamar settlement.

The past ten years farmers have only had permission to visit this land once or twice a year, despite the fact that they have documents stating their ownership of the land. Three weeks ago, the 22 farmers affected from the first land confiscation order went together to visit the land but were denied access, only getting within 2km of the land before being stopped by the Israeli army. The farmers were attempting to visit the land due to the recent destruction of 300 olive trees and concerns that the 600 dunums of land was being damaged by chemical pollution from the settlement.

The olive trees are the main source of income for the farmers but due to the threat of violence and the restriction of access from Israeli authorities they would never visit their land alone.

When asked what are they going to do now, Awarta’s major said: “We have two ways of resisting, one, by appealing the order in the Israeli court and the other, by staying on our land. This is our land and we will never leave”.

Israeli army and settlers regularly bar Palestinian access to land surrounding settlements, one of the first moves in achieving land confiscation and settlement expansion. A B’tselem report, Access Denied: Israeli measures to deny Palestinians access to land around settlements, comprehensive report (September, 2008) states: “Blocking Palestinian access to land adjacent to settlements is the direct result, and an integral part, of the illegal settlement enterprise. This enterprise continuously violates the absolute prohibition specified in international humanitarian law on settlements in occupied territory.”

Located close to the Huwara checkpoint and military base, the village is designated within Area B but the surrounding farm land is Area C and therefore under Israeli civil and security control.

The illegal settlement of Itamar, constructed in 1984, has taken 30,000 dunums from the nearby Palestinian villages of Awarta, Beit Furik, Rujeib and Yannun. Awarta’s land comprises a total area of 22,00 dunums. However, Itamar has taken 12,000, leaving the residents of Awarta with only 10,000 dunums, most of it located in area C. Israeli government recently approved a plan to build 675 new housing units in the settlement of Itamar, Of the 675 housing units, 137 are existing apartments that have now been retroactively approved.

Visit to Awarta

29 April 2011 | Dr. Mazin Qumsiyeh

We finally toured the devastated village of Awarta Wednesday and were stunned at what we saw and heard. On the way, we stopped by a tiny village called Izbet Al-tabib, a village of 350 people was served with a new order by the Israeli military to take over a significant portion of their land. The wall that will be built and isolate this land behind it is supposed to “protect” the illegal highway 55, an Israeli road built already on Palestinian lands to serve the Jewish colonies built on the rich Western water aquifer of the Palestinian West Bank. Yet, instead of building the wall on the colonial road 55, it is to be built a long distance from that to the north side near the village houses with the idea of capturing the rich agricultural land between. The villagers do not know what to do beyond going to the biased Israeli courts run by Israeli judges that obviously favor Israeli colonial interests. The work on the wall is slated to start Sunday and the villagers asked if we could all go there then. Leaving this small devastated village near Qalqilia, we headed east towards Nablus and Awarta.

After a quick lunch in Nablus hosted generously by our friend Dr. Saed Abuhijleh, we drove the short distance to Awarta. We enter the rich valley from the Western side and past the Israeli military camp and notice the colonial Jewish settlements dotting the hilltops around the valley. The native village of 6000 brave souls is on the slope to north side of the valley and villagers have to face this scene of growing colonial settlements on their lands. The main colonial settlement built on stolen village lands is called by Jewish settlers Itamar. Over 12,000 dunums (4000 acres) of Awarta’s lands were already taken by this colony inhabited by the most rabid and fanatical of Jewish settlers. Two Palestinians from Awarta were killed for coming within 500 meters of the fortified fencing of this colony. This is one of the many reasons why we are very convinced that the whole story about the killing of a settler family by two teenagers from the village of Awarta is a lie. But the killing of these settlers set stage for a ransacking of the village by the colonizing army of the state of Israel. Beating people, massive destruction, torture and more was inflicted on the village of 6000 people as collective punishment. It is hard to describe what we saw and heard. The video just reveals a glimpse of it.

The village has already suffered repeated attacks from settlers in the past. Just last year, settlers and soldiers executed (shot at close range) two youths (18 and 19 year old cousins Salah and Muhamad Qawariq) who were working their agricultural field. Villagers asked us why there was no outrage and no one held accountable in any of these atrocities. We are all 100% convinced that that the settler family was not killed by the Palestinian teenagers that are claimed as culprits by the Israeli authorities. The story the colonial army gave is so full of holes that it is simply not plausible. Things that do not make sense:

-Why would two young teenagers not involved in politics, one of them a straight A student in his last year of high school and the other a westernized rapper enjoying his life decide to do such a thing? Killing children is especially not tolerated in our culture no matter what?

-How could such a pair manage to bypass one of the most heavily guarded and secured colonies in the WB. How would they cut through the electrified security fence and its other barriers in a settlement that brags that it is the most secure of Jewish colonies in the West bank. How could two strangers manage to stay in the settlement for two hours and even go back to the same house supposedly after leaving to get an M-16 gun that happened to be just sitting there in a bedroom (army story)?

-Why would two people who committed such a crime go back to studying and enjoying their lives for days even after one of them was arrested, questioned for 10 hours and released? Why not run away?

-There were reports in Israeli papers that a Thai worker who has not been paid thousands of shekels as being involved but then this suddenly disappeared from print. Why?

-What of the villagers’ contention that this whole incident is calculated to acquire 1000 more dunums of their lands?

-Why did Israeli authorities not allow media scrutiny of what was really happening?

-Why did Israeli authorities not allow independent investigation or International protection or presence to witness what was really going on?

-Why would the two young people be denied access to lawyers and family visits?

These and hundreds of other questions poured out from the villagers. I was particularly shocked to hear from Um Adam, a 77 year old grandmother (14 living children, over 75 grandchildren). She herself was arrested with hundreds of others and forced (like all of them) to take a DNA test and to put her fingerprints on a document in Hebrew that she does not read. She, like hundreds, was not allowed access to lawyers during their detention. 14 of her children and grandchildren are still kidnapped by the colonial soldiers. One of her Children still held by the Israelis is the volunteer head of the Municipal council. Another child is the only doctor in town. The homes of these two children, her home, and many other homes were ransacked and heavily damaged (the fascist soldiers had clearly come to destroy as an act of collective punishment). The doctor’s room and his medical books and supplies were not spared. While we visited nearly three weeks after the damage and after much of the houses were tidied-up with help of international volunteers, we still could see significant evidence of the damages. To punish a whole village in such a fashion reminds us of the worst regimes in history.

It is a stain on humanity that the world is silent about these practices of land theft and destruction of people’s lives. Now that Hamas and Fatah are reconciling some of their differences, I wonder if any of them (in positions of “authority”) will do something for the villages of Awarta or Izbet Al-Tabib. We are angry and sad and we ask all decent people (Israelis, Palestinians, and Internationals) to shed what is left of our collective apathy. We must insist that settlers be removed from all stolen Palestinian lands and that Palestinians be provided protection. If the Palestinians can’t be provided protection by neutral parties, then it is almost certain that, based on our history of 15 uprisings, a new uprising against this injustice will be carried forth.

“Whereas it is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law,..” preamble of the universal declaration of human rights “If we make peaceful revolution impossible, we make violent revolution inevitable.” John Fitzgerald Kennedy

Teenage girl released from prison: Awarta

15 April 2011 | International Solidarity Movement

Late on Thursday afternoon sixteen year old Julia Manzen Awwad arrived back to the village of Awarta, following her release from Israeli military prison. She had been detained for five days after being arrested by force during an army raid on her family home in the early hours of Sunday morning. Upon arrest Julia was taken blindfolded and bound by her wrists and ankles to the military base at Huwwara, where she was detained for a night. She was then transferred to a military prison.

During her detention Julia was denied basic human rights and prevented from contacting either her family or a lawyer. Instead she was confined to a dark room and intensively interrogated about the murders of the Fogel family at Itamar, the nearby illegal settlement. Julia described being woken at regular intervals and asked the same questions repeatedly. Confused and frightened she answered that she knew nothing, only to be met with aggressive retorts accusing her of lying.

Ill treatment and abuses included the refusal of her request for a doctor when experiencing stomach pains, being fed food she described as fit for animals, and being handcuffed and marched to the toilet furthest from her cell. At times she was not even allowed to use the toilet. Prior to her release Julia was coerced into signing a document she could not understand and had wires attached to various parts of her body during a lie detector test.

Whilst Julia was welcomed by her mother, Noaf, and extended family members, she spoke of the sorrow she felt returning to her house as her brothers, George (20) and Hakim (17), along with their father, Mazen, still remain in custody. Her mother, who was also detained in the raid last weekend, was released on Monday.

Earlier in the day a demonstration organized by a local Palestinian womens group marched through Awarta in protest at the barbaric treatment of the community at the hands of the Israeli army over the last month. In a show of solidarity it finished outside the homes of other members of the Awwad family, which were ransacked and destroyed by soldiers in a raid last Monday night.

Since the brutal murder of five family members in Itamar settlement at the beginning of March the villagers of Awarta have been subjected to near continuous incursions by the Israeli army. Men and women, some in their 80s, and children, some as young and 14, have been arrested. Whilst many have been released after a few days, others, mainly men, remain in detention. On these early morning raids, the army fire sound grenades through windows prior to forcing their way into homes and brutalizing the occupants – regardless of age.

Family of 20; women and children, locked up for 11 hours without food or water in latest Awarta raid

13 April 2011 | International Solidarity Movement

In the latest military raid in the village of Awarta, south of Nablus, 20 members of the Awwad family were forced to sit outside in the cold for four hours, guarded by soldiers, before they all were locked inside one room for another seven hours. During the whole time, no one was allowed to eat, drink or go to the toilet, and two women were taken to hospital as a result.

The Israeli army came to the home at 2 o’clock Monday night, waking the sleeping family by throwing sound bombs through the windows. According to family members, after the soldiers had entered the house, they forced everyone to go outside, shouting the orders through a megaphone. The extended family consists of 20 people, 14 of whom are children, one a 75 year old man, one a pregnant woman and one a young mother with a baby. They were still in their pajamas when they were forced outside and made to sit on the ground until 6 o clock in the morning. The soldiers then arrested Hassan Awwad (39), and Salah Awwad (33), and completely destroyed the homes from the inside.

Zahwa Awwad (27), is six months pregnant. After sitting outside in the cold for four hours, she felt pain in her back and womb and she started to bleed. At 8 am, she called her doctor. The doctor, who was afraid the woman was having a miscarriage came directly, but was not allowed to go inside the home until 9.30 am. Nouf Salim Hassan Awwad (37), suffers from diarrhea, caused by traumatic stress syndrome which she got after being brutally arrested together with her husband Mazen Awwad and their 16- year- old daughter Julia Mazen Awwad last Saturday. Nouf was released on Monday morning, however her husband and daughter and her two sons George and Hakeem, who were arrested on Thursday, remain in Israeli custody. When the army occupied her home on Monday, Nouf was not allowed to go to the toilet or to drink for nine hours, causing her to become dehydrated. When the doctor finally got access to the family, he was prevented from treating Nouf or giving her anything to drink. He called for an ambulance to take Nouf and Zahwa to hospital however the ambulance was prevented from reaching the women for a further hour and a half. The women were eventually allowed to leave for the hospital only after Nouf had lost consciousness.

By the time the soldiers left the family’s home at 1.30pm, the family were hungry and dehydrated. During the 11 hours that they had been captive, one woman had tried to sneak to the kitchen to get some food for her hungry son, but a soldier had pointed his gun at her and forced her to put the food back and return to the room. The crying mother of a baby who was only weeks old told international activist minutes after she was released that she had not been allowed to feed her child during the whole time the family was guarded by the soldiers. At lunchtime, the Israeli soldiers had been brought food which they ate in front of the hungry children who started to cry.

International activists who came to the house just minutes after the Israeli Army had left witnessed the devastation: “Everything there is to destroy has been destroyed, there is nothing left.” Windows, mirrors and photo frames had been smashed, as well as the TV, wardrobes and beds which were tipped over and broken. The washing machines were made useless, school books were ripped into pieces and thrown outside the window, in the garden a tree had been uprooted, there were several holes in walls, floor and ceilings and several doors had been broken and left with big holes. The floor in one of the rooms was completely covered with broken glass, dangerous for the small barefoot children.

At the same time as the Israeli Army stormed the home of the family in Awarta, they arrested Noman Awwad (40), Jasid Awwad (26) and Nooh Awwad (30) from their homes in Ramallah.

Howaa Awwad, mother and grandmother, sad and upset, said: “The problem is not that they destroy our homes, the problem is that they put our people in prison.”

During the last month, Awarta has been put under curfew no less than six times, following the murder of five members of a family in the nearby illegal Israeli settlement of Itamar. Hundreds of homes have been raided and destroyed by the Israeli soldiers, more than 600 people have been detained or arrested, including elderly, women and children. Several people have been hospitalized after being beaten and kicked by the soldiers or bitten by the dogs.

No one knows when this is going to stop, and since the Israeli courts have issued a gag order on the investigation into the murders in Itamar, the media is prevented from reporting any details of the ongoing military operation. Proof that any Awarta resident is involved in the murder of the Fogel family on 11th March has yet to be made public. ISM activists that have been present in Awarta since the first five days of curfew claim that the last month of military harassment is a clear case of collective punishment of Palestinian civil society and is not connected to investigating the Fogel murders.