At 11:30 am on Friday, July 28th, 2007, five international human rights workers joined international volunteers and Palestinians in Um Salamona for a protest against the Apartheid wall that has been going on almost every week. It was an important demonstration because two weeks earlier a member of the local popular committee had been arrested in a similar demonstration.
The demonstration itself was quiet, somber. Before we left the shade of the trees and began to march, a Palestinian man spoke about how the day before, the 27th, a young man from Tiqua had been killed. He spoke about Jihad Al Sha’er who had been on his way to Bethlehem University to enroll for the fall semester when he was provoked by a soldier. The soldier saw him walking down the side of the street and asked for his identification. Jihad had only his birth certificate on him, which is enough to satisfy the law, but not the Zionist occupying army. The soldier began to taunt and physically assault Jihad, and as the abuse grew, Jihad did what one does in that situation, he defended himself. These two young men, probably around the same age, began brawling. Four nearby Israeli soldiers saw this, jumped out of their jeep, and began beating Jihad with their batons and the butts of their rifles. He fell to the ground but the beating continued. Many more jeeps came as reinforcement. Jihad’s body was carried into a jeep to an unknown location. Hours later Red Crescent got a call to pick up a body, Jihad had been beaten to death.
It was the Apartheid wall we had come to demonstrate against, but the entire time it was a nineteen year old boy that stuck in our heads. It takes time to beat someone to death. We marched as a group towards the future location of the wall. On a normal day the soldiers would meet us and push us around. On that day they must have felt the shame that normally follows murder. There were no soldiers waiting for us. They did not leave the shade of the trees on the land they stole. They watched as we stood in a circle and kept silent for a moment, just to think about what it is to be nineteen years old, a whole life before you, to think about what you want to do at university, what direction your life could take. Then we thought about being beaten to death by four armed men with batons because you didn’t suffer appropriately.
We left without any confrontation with the soldiers. There were fears that because of this, the military presence could be harsher next week.
July 24th, 2007. We have received a call for activists to go this evening to Wadi Rahul, close to Artas in the Bethlehem region. They are expecting hundreds of Israeli Settlers from the nearby settlements of Efrata to go there tomorrow in an attempt to occupy the land. It is expected that Settlers will arrive early tomorrow morning with caravans to take over the land. It appears there is support and collusion with the army and we expect there to be a large number of soldiers tomorrow “protecting” the settlers from the Palestinians. It is also reported, that there were members of the Israeli authorities implementing a gate to restrict access to the land. The gate is designed to prevent Palestinians from accessing their own land in the interests of Settlers being able to take the place over instead.
Obviously, putting down caravans is the first step in establishing a permanent presence so it needs to be prevented. They are looking for as many internationals, Israeli’s and whoever will support them to go down, ideally tonight, to camp out as they believe the one and only road accessing the land will be closed by tomorrow, alternatively to come in the morning. However to make a serious attempt at preventing the settlers accessing the site, people need to go tonight if they are willing.
Anyone who is available, please make an effort to go there this evening so we can try and stop the Illegal expansion of settlements in the West Bank and the grotesque thieving of Palestinian land.
For more information please contact: Awad (059 890 7252) or Rose (054 224 9179).
Starting on monday July 9th, 2007, ISM volunteers joined skilled Palestinian workers and international volunteers from EAPPI (Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel) and Holy Land Trust, in coordination with ICAHD (Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions) in rebuilding a house in Al Walaja vilage that had been demolished by the Israeli Occupation Forces.
Al Walaja Village is now located 8 kilometers west of Bethlehem, and has 65 houses and one mosque slated for demolition, though the location of the village has changed over the years according to the whim of Israel. When the Israeli State formed in 1948 the village was moved from the Jerusalem hills (where it had been located for more than a hundred years) to a nearby location reduced from its original size by 90%. By 1967 half of the village had left, half remained. State harassment continued; in the 1970s, Israel limited building permits for Al Walaja villagers. In 1981 Israel issued orders to annex the village into the Jerusalem municipality, to become Israeli public land, but did not provide services or rights to the people living there that were normally accorded to Jerusalem residents; villagers received orange ID cards instead of blue as a tactic to drive them away.
This has taken its toll. Villagers now must be over 40 to obtain a work permit as a laborer in Israel, unemployment is high and many people leave to the UAE to find work. Those that stay are faced with a landscape increasingly surrounded by settlements, of which Har Gilo is the closest. The Israeli government has planned to build the apartheid wall entirely around Al Walaja, so that it is surrounded, with one entrance. A village of 2000 people surrounded by a wall and illegal settlements, with little chance to work, and houses slated for demolition. It is not a pretty picture.
When volunteers from ISM joined the building of the house of Monder and Seham Salem, what struck us was their brave face of resistance in front of all this repression, but what also struck us was their story. Their house, the house they built with their own money, was first demolished in January of 2006, they were told they didn’t have a permit. After having their house demolished without any warning they were forced to live in a tent in the winter for two months. They rebuilt their house after this with money pooled from the local villagers, and tried to get a permit, but after it was built it was demolished again in December 2006 because they were told the apartheid wall was due to cross their property. Again, they were not given any warning.
Their family had owned this property since before 1948. They were fined 100,000 NIS because of ‘illegal building’, which they refused to pay. Because of their inability to pay this fine, the father, Monder, was imprisoned for one month, also their oldest son was arrested and kept in prison but for a night but released due to his young age. To rebuild their house to half the size after the demolitions it has cost in total around $35,000. This time their house, the third to stand on the property, was paid with money from ICAHD and Holy Land Trust.
In a village of similar stories, we spoke to a nearby neighbor who has spent $76,000 dollars on court fees to Israel over 12 years for Israeli surveyors to measure his land, for Israeli workers to fly to Turkey to verify his land claims from the Ottoman empire. While we were there this neighbor happily showed various documents, some from the British mandate, showing that his family had owned this land.
Amazingly it took only two weeks for spirited volunteers and Palestinians to put foot to sand and hand to brick and put this house back together. Some days there were as many as 30 and 40 people from many different countries that only wanted to do their best to work with people that were committed to not doing the easy thing, not leaving to another country without illegal settlements and so much institutional racism, but to stay on the land that their grandfather owned, to stay and struggle for justice.
The people that live in Al Walaja will be completely isolated from other villages like Bethlehem and Bet Jalla by Bypass road 60 and the wall for the fault of Israeli policy of confiscating land and driving out the original inhabitants. One man has to keep his chickens in a van because he is not allowed to build even a chicken coop, the people are not allowed to build anything as a way to falsely prove that Israel is stealing a land without a people.
After working for a week side by side with the family, with Palestinian workers, with international volunteers, on Saturday, June 14th, there was a ceremony, a kind of ribbon cutting for the house. The family spoke of their gratitude for their new house. The volunteers spoke of their gratitude for meeting the family and the opportunity to do something. Two olive trees were planted on the property from Holy Land Trust and the local popular committee as a symbol of Palestinian commitment to their land.
But their commitment was not only symbolic, the brother of Seham Salem, who had helped her rebuild her house every time, and worked tirelessly making sure the house was built right, said he also would commit himself to helping rebuild houses demolished by the Israelis as a volunteer. ICAHD also committed themselves to rebuilding houses demolished by the Israeli occupying army. More than 18,000 homes have been demolished since 1967, more than 18,000 families have been kicked out without warning. ICAHD said they had rebuilt 40 already this summer, with the goal of 300 rebuilt by the end of the year.
Clearly the work is not over. It is easy for people with foreign passports to work some days of manual labor and leave for foreign shores. It is the people who have had their house taken from them, destroyed, that must live with it. But we are not standing idly by. The work we did was important, but far more important was meeting the family, and families of the region, listening to their stories, and repeating them to all who will listen. These families prove there is no irresistible force that can stand up to an immovable object.
Approximately 50 Palestinians, Israelis and international solidarity workers united for another Friday non-violent march in Wadi-Al-Neiss, a village south of Bethlehem which, along with nearby Um Salamuna, is among the many regions suffering from land confiscation due to the illegal Israeli Apartheid Wall.
Marchers convened and attempted to walk on stolen lands, lands illegally taken by the Israeli expansionist regime. The internationally illegal Israeli settlement of Efrat, a long and extended expanse of stolen land, designed to appropriate as much land as possible, snakes through Palestinian property, effectively dividing up the land and stealing precious water.
The march occurred just days after the 3 year anniversary of the International Court of Justice ruling denouncing the Apartheid Wall as internationally illegal and calling for the cessation of construction, along with due compensation to Palestinians affected by its construction.
One Palestinian from the Local Popular Committee of Land Defense and one of the organizers of the non-violent march, was arrested as he stood unarmed among peaceful demonstrators. Fines for such unwarranted arrests range from 3,000 to 7,000 NIS.
The attempted march lasted for approximately 1.5 hours, during which time marchers attempted numerous times to cross onto annexed agricultural lands. In between attempts to walk on the stolen land, during which armed soldiers used some force against unarmed protesters, resulting in at least 5 minor injuries, solidarity activists made numerous attempts to engage in dialog with soldiers on human rights issues, Israel’s violations of international law, the illegality of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and of the Apartheid Wall, and the need for Palestinians to be able to access their own lands, much of which are income and food-providing agricultural lands.
Marchers left as peacefully as they arrived, with renewed promises to demonstrate against the illegal land-grab and to reach the Israeli-annexed Palestinian lands.
July 13th, 2007. Approximately 40 Palestinians, Israelis, and international non-violent marchers met for another Friday attempt to access stolen Palestinian land in the village of Artas. As in previous marches, unarmed solidarity activists were met by approximately 15 armed Israeli soldiers who refused passage to the Israeli-annexed Palestinian land. Throughout the demonstration, during which the halted marchers sat to listen to Artas Popular Committee member Awad relate the history of Artas’ annexation, at least one Israeli soldier maintained targeted aim with live ammunition on the clearly un-armed crowd below.
Artas, like Um Salamuna, suffers from the devastating effects of the Israeli Apartheid Wall, annexing land and water sources, and the extended illegal Israeli settlement of Efrat. While Efrat divides Palestinian lands leading up to Artas, the villagers of Artas will lose their agricultural lands to Efrat’s sewage: the settlement has plans to empty settlement waste directly onto the olive and fruit orchards below, and further onto the vegetable gardens which provide sustenance to the 4,000 villagers.
Awad described how the valley normally would flood with water at certain times of the year. “One year from now we won’t see this valley; it will be ruined by sewage,” he predicted.
He spoke of the sentiments of Artas villagers and Palestinians throughout Palestinian areas: “We believe in peace, also. We want real peace. Although the Occupation is internationally illegal, we agreed to have Israelis as neighbors, but Zionism insists on having this land, our land, without the people, us.”
He went on to voice what is internationally felt: “The very same people who suffered so greatly under Nazi persecution are now doing the same terrible things to us Palestinians.”
While the marchers were not able to cross onto the stolen lands, their time was well-spent in showing presence against the illegal land-grab and provided an opportunity for numerous speakers to voice their thoughts. Among the speakers was a long-time American activist, who spoke of the parallels between the treatment of Native Americans by US colonialists and that of Palestinians by Israeli colonialists, directing many of his comments at the armed Israeli soldiers within earshot: “In the US, the army went through Native American communities, destroying and killing. When the Native Americans resisted, they were called ‘savages.’ They were made to seem less-than-human.
Now, over 100 years later, the average American knows this is not true. Israel is doing the same thing to Palestinians. We don’t have 100 years. There is no difference between Palestinians and Israelis; we are all human beings. The problem is the Israeli and US governments. And you end up being the tools. The real solution is: End the Occupation Now.”
The non-violent march and meeting ended with further words from the organizers and a peaceful march back to Artas village.
