Tag: Bethlehem

Thousands protesting the Siege of Gaza face repression from local authorities

31 December 2009

Hundreds of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah rally in solidarity with the Gaza Freedom March on New Year's Eve Day

Thousands of people in Egypt, the besieged Gaza Strip, Israel, and the occupied West Bank rallied on New Year’s Eve Day to call for an end to the international blockade and siege of Gaza, but the protests were marred by police brutality in Cairo and the cancellation of a solidarity action in the occupied West Bank town of Tulkarm at the behest of the Palestinian Authority.

In Cairo, Egyptian riot police brutally beat Gaza Freedom March demonstrators who were unable to enter the Gaza Strip after the Egyptian government permitted less than 100 of the 1,350 participants from crossing the Rafah border into Gaza.

“Members of the Gaza Freedom March are being forcibly detained in hotels around town, in Lotus and Liala, as well as violently forced into pens in Tahrir Square by Egyptian police and additional security forces,” Codepink said in a released statement.

“Reports of police brutality are flooding a delegate legal hotline faster than the legal support team can answer the calls. The reports span from women being kicked, beaten to the ground and dragged into pens, at least one confirmed account of broken ribs, and many left bloody.”

Lara Elborno, a Palestinian-American, University of Iowa alumni, and law student at Loyola University in Chicago confirmed the reports.

“They broke a guy’s rib,” Elborno said from Cairo. “They beat people with walkie talkies. My sister Dana got her camera taken and they stole the card with her pictures on it. Five security forces surrounded her and threw her to the ground. They pulled her hair and punched and kicked her. This is only one of many stories.”

US citizen punched with police walkie talkie during protests in Cairo
US citizen punched with police walkie talkie during protests in Cairo

In the Gaza Strip, about 100 international solidarity activists joined 500 Palestinians living in Gaza for a rally and march denouncing the blockade. About 1,000 Palestinians with Israeli citizenship and Israeli Jews demonstrated on the Israeli side of the Erez border crossing, according to Haaretz.

In the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah, more than 250 Palestinians rallied in solidarity with the Free Gaza March during an event organized by the Palestinian Popular Committees of the West Bank.

“We are calling on the people of Palestine to work together to end the occupation,” said Iyad Burnat, a community organizer with the Bil’in Popular Committee Against the Wall and Settlements. “Only by uniting the resistance can we succeed.”

But the demonstration in Ramallah was curtailed after the Palestinian Authority prohibited the rally from marching through the city. And a similar solidarity action in the West Bank city of Turkarem, near the Northwest border with Israel, was cancelled after the Palestinian Authority prohibited the demonstration from taking place.

“As you know, this rally and march was supposed to be held today in solidarity with other demonstrations to protest the siege in Gaza,” said Abdelkarim Dalbah, a community organizer with the Turkarem Popular Committee. “Unfortunately the Palestinian Authority has forbidden this demonstration.”

“The P.A. has their own point of view and it is wrong,” Dalbah continued. “They say this demonstration is supporting Hamas, and they say they don’t want to add more tension with Israel after the attacks in Nablus last week. They support Gaza in behind closed-door meetings and in public speeches, but they will not support Gaza on the streets.”

Some organizers say that the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority is actually attempting to co-opt the Gaza Freedom March movement by holding celebrations marking the 45th anniversary of its founding on the same day as the solidarity demonstrations. Although the Free Gaza protest in Ramallah was attended by most of Palestine’s largest political parties, Fatah banners were noticeably absent. Fatah held a seperate rally at a different time and location.

About 100 Palestinian Christians also attended a candle-light vigil for Gaza in Manger Square in Bethlehem.

The Gaza Freedom March and the Palestinian Popular Committees of the West Bank are demanding an immediate end to the blockade of Gaza, a form of collective punishment which has essentially turned the Gaza Strip into an open-air prison for its 1.5 million inhabitants.

The New Year’s Eve Day protests were scheduled to mark the one-year anniversary of Israel’s Operation: Cast Lead massacre in Gaza that killed more than 1,300 people and wounded more than 5,000.

This post has been originally published on From Pork to Palestine: Protective Accompaniment in the Holy Land blog.

Student expelled to Gaza Strip by force

Ben Lynfield | The Independent

30 October 2009

A Palestinian student has been handcuffed, blindfolded and forcibly expelled to the Gaza Strip by Israeli troops just two months before she was due to graduate from university.

Berlanty Azzam, 21, who was studying for a business degree at Bethlehem University, said she was coming home in a shared taxi from a job interview in Ramallah on Wednesday when soldiers at the “Container” checkpoint took her identity card and that of another passenger with a Gaza address.

After six hours of waiting, soldiers told her she would be taken to a detention centre in the southern West Bank, and she was handcuffed and blindfolded, she said.

“The driving took longer than it should have and I started to think something was wrong. I started to wonder, what are they doing to me?” After the car stopped and the blindfold was lifted, Ms Azzam saw she was at the Erez crossing to Gaza.

It was the sixth known forced return to Gaza of Palestinians stopped at the “Container” checkpoint – which is between Bethlehem and Abu Dis – in 10 days, according to the Israeli human rights group Gisha. Israel has also been preventing family reunifications in the West Bank for Palestinians with relatives living in Gaza, in effect forcing people to relocate to the Strip.

The steps are part of an Israeli policy of treating Gaza and the West Bank as two separate entities, thereby undermining the coherence of Palestinian claims for a state encompassing both territories. The 1993 Oslo agreement stipulates that the West Bank and Gaza Strip are to be treated as one territorial unit.

Major Guy Inbar, an Israeli defense ministry official, said the reason for Ms Azzam’s deportation was that she was “staying illegally” in the West Bank.

“We are talking about a Gaza citizen who requested permission to study in the area of Judea and Samaria and received a negative answer,” he said.

“In 2005, she was given a permit to visit Jerusalem for four days and she remained afterwards [in the West Bank] without any permit. Her entire period as a student was based on deceit and was against the law.”

Sari Bashi, head of the Israeli Gisha human rights group, who tried to intervene on Ms Azzam’s behalf, said she was assured by military lawyers on Wednesday that the student would not be deported to Gaza and that the rights group could seek a judicial review in the morning.

“The military misled us,” Ms Bashi said. “There is a violation here of the right to access education, the right to freedom of movement and the right to choose one’s place of residence within one’s own territory.”

The army did not respond to a request for comment.

Brother Jack Curran, vice president for development of Bethlehem University, termed the expulsion “a disgrace”. “This is not about politics. It’s about a young person finishing her degree. Since 2005 she has been studying as a good student. No one is a winner from this.”

Israel bans Palestinians from hosting pope next to West Bank fence

Ha’aretz

7 May 2009

A Palestinian official says the Palestinian Authority has scrapped plans to host Pope Benedict XVI next week on a stage near the West Bank separation fence.

Palestinian say they had hoped that receiving the pope next to a towering cement wall and military watchtower inside the Aida refugee camp would highlight their suffering under Israeli occupation.

But Palestinian lawmaker Essa Qaraqie said Thursday that the location had been changed to a United Nations school after Israeli military officials forbade them to erect the stage near the barrier. The pope’s convoy will, however, still pass close to the barrier.

The pontiff’s visit to the region will include trips to Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian territories. In Israel, he will hold mass in Nazareth and Jerusalem, as well as visiting the Western Wall, the Dome of the Rock and the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. He will also hold mass in Bethlehem, believed by Christians to be the birthplace of Jesus Christ.

Jordanian Islamist leaders condemn pope`s Mideast visit as `provocative`

Jordanian Islamist leaders on Thursday condemned Pope Benedict’s visit to the Middle East, saying it was provocative because he has not apologized for offending comments implying Islam was violent and irrational.

They said the pope, who arrives in Jordan on Friday on the first leg of his Middle East tour, still owed them an apology for making the comments in in a 2006 speech in Regensburg, Germany.

Jordan’s Roman Catholic Church urged Islamists on Wednesday to welcome the pope despite their earlier criticism of his visit. A senior Jordanian official acknowledged some discontent but said the government would warmly welcome Benedict.

“The present Vatican pope is the one who issued severe insults to Islam and did not offer any apology to the Muslims,” Zaki Bani Rusheid, head of the Islamic Action Front, the political arm of the Muslim Brotherhood, the country’s largest mainstream Islamist party, told Reuters.

“It’s the same pope who apologized to the Jews about the Holocaust and now comes to the region but says nothing about the Palestinian nakba (catastrophe),” he said.

Another Islamist figure, Jamil Abu Baker, added that “Ignoring Muslim sentiments will only block the healing of wounds his statements caused.”

Al-Ma’asara village continues demonstrations despite increased army repression

On the 8th of May, 2009, residents of the southern West Bank village of  Al-Ma’asara conducted their weekly demonstration against Israel’s annexation barrier, despite increased repression from Israeli forces.  At last week’s demonstration, five nonviolent Palestinian organizers were arrested, and they continue to be held in an Israeli prison.  This Friday, Israeli soldiers created at least three flying checkpoints on the roads leading to the village in an attempt to stop participants from reaching the demonstration.  Soldiers turned back all Palestinian cars and only allowed settler vehicles to pass.  Five military jeeps and two police cars were also stationed at the entrance to Al-Ma’asara, much further into the village than during past Friday demonstrations.  Israeli and international solidarity activists who were able to reach the village by going around the checkpoints were showed papers that declared the entire village a closed military zone.

Despite this repression, at around 1:15pm nearly fifty Palestinian demonstrators marched from the village towards the army.  The villagers stopped in front of the soldiers waving Palestinian flags and chanting against the occupation.  Approximately twenty Israeli and international solidarity activists gathered on the other side of the soldiers, but were prevented from joining the main demonstration.  Two Israeli solidarity activists were handcuffed and detained in military jeeps after sitting down and refusing to leave when ordered by the army.

After about 45 minutes the demonstration ended and the detained activists were released.  Villagers continue to demand that the five arrested Palestinian organizers be released without charge or trial.

Seven arrested during non-violent demonstration in Umm Salamouna

For Immediate Release:

1 May 2009

Residents gathered at 1.30 pm for a weekly demonstration near the village of Al-Ma’sara in protest of the Apartheid Wall that was built on Palestinian land in the villages of Al-Ma’sara, Um Salamouna, Jourat Ash-Sham’ah and Mrah Mu’ala.

Israeli forces began to throw sound and tear-gas grenades at the demonstrators, before arresting protesters at 2pm. Additionally, several of the arrested were severely assaulted by soldiers after their arrest.

The army arrested three members of the Al-Ma’sara Committee against the Wall and Settlements; Hasan Buriejieyah, Mohammad Buriejieyah and Mahmoud Sawahre. Additionally, Israeli forces arrested Mustafa Fuara; a resident of Al-Ma’sara, Azmi Ash-Shyukhi; a resident of Hebron, Haggai Matar; an Israeli solidarity activist and Tom Stocker, a British national volunteering with the Holy Land Trust.

Matar and Stocker were released on bail with conditions of not entering the West Bank for two weeks and must pay 1,500 NIS each as bail on Sunday.

The five Palestinians who were arrested remain in the Israeli prison in Gush Etzion.