Tag: Bethlehem

IOF attack South Bethlehem farmers, 3 arrested

by the ISM media team, February 27th

UDPATE March 1st – Rashid remains in detention in Etzion military detention centre. Rashid was abducted for assaulting a soldier after being beaten by the IOF.

UPDATE and CORRECTION February 28th – Mahmoud, who is the Village Council Head, was released last night but Rashid, his son, remains in detention.

UPDATE 6.30PM – Mahmoud and Adil Zaqatka have been released but Village Council Head Rashid Zaqatka remains in captivity at Gush Etzion police station.

This morning Israeli military bulldozers started razing the farmland of Umm Salamuna village south of Bethlehem for the route of the Apartheid Wall. The bulldozers uprooted hundreds of grape vines and apricot trees belonging to villagers. When the mostly elderly farmers tried to resist by blocking the bulldozers they were beaten and attacked with concussion grenades and tear gas. Two elderly farmers were injured, one of whom was taken to hospital with a broken arm.

Head of Umm Salamuna Village Council, Rashid Zaqatka, and his son Mahmoud Zaqatka were abducted and taken to an unknown destination. Another family member Adil Zaqatka was later abducted. They all remain in captivity.

After bulldozers withdrew from the area the army detained all the villagers on the land for two hours and searched everyone, claiming they had lost some binoculars. Before leaving the army threatened the villagers not to come to their land again or there would be ‘serious consequences’.

Israel plans to annex 700 dunums and confiscate 270 dunums of agricultural land for the route of the Wall in Umm Salamuna. Although the villagers are challenging the route of the Wall in the Israeli Supreme Court, a Court order freezing work was lifted last week and the bulldozers have recommenced razing the village’s agricultural land.

contact:
Mahmoud Zawahira – 0599586004, 0522591386
Popular Committee Against the Wall and Settlements, Umm Salamuna

South Bethlehem cultural festival on land annexed for Wall

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

This Friday villagers from South Bethlehem will hold a cultural festival on their land which is being confiscated for the annexation barrier. Villagers will march from Umm Salamuna village mosque after midday prayers to this confiscated agricultural land. In a celebration of Palestinian culture local children will sing, dance and recite poetry.

Last week work restarted on the annexation wall in South Bethlehem after an Israeli Court lifted an order freezing work, even though a court case about the route of the wall in this area is pending. Without giving villagers any map showing the land to be razed and annexed, part of Umm Salamuna’s agricultural land has already been razed. Last week soldiers and surveyors marked out the wall route in the village’s vineyards and olive groves, and today diggers and bulldozers started razing this land.

Israeli authorities plan to annex 700 and raze 270 dunums of agricultural land with olive trees and grape vines in Umm Salamuna. Confiscation orders have also been issued against neighbouring villages, which have already lost much of their land to the Efrat settlement, part of the ever expanding Etzion block.

The villagers have vowed to defend their land with all the strength they have and appeal for international solidarity. According to Village Council President Mahmoud Rashid, “it constitutes their only source of livelihood, and no one will accept that the Wall is on their land isolating hundreds of dunams from each farmer and outright destroying at least a 200-meter wide strip of land”.

Contacts:
Mahmoud Zawahira, Popular Committee against the Wall and Settlements, Umm Salamuna
0599586004, 0522591386

South Bethlehem village marked out for the Wall

by ISM Hebron, February 21st

Human rights workers (HRWs) in Hebron received a request for international presence in Umm Salamuna village south of Bethlehem as the IOF had invaded the village. They arrived in Umm Salamuna village around 9:30 am and joined internationals from other groups. At a Palestinian vineyard about 8 Israeli soldiers, 2 security guards, and 2 surveyors were trespassing.

The Palestinian locals asked them why they were there, because the initial plan for building the Apartheid Wall was supposed to be on top of the hill. They claimed a court order had been given to build the Wall down the hill in the vineyards and surveyors needed to measure the land. The two armed security guards who came along with the surveyors were Arabic speaking Israelis who got this job recently.

The surveyors protected by soldiers and security guards marked the rocks and land with blue spray paint and blue tape. The HRWs documented their illegal activity. Soldiers pretended not to be able to understand English when questioned. The DCO* arrived but was not able to give any convincing explanation for this action, except that it was a court order. No official document was presented. All of them eventually left the site around 12:00 pm.

It later transpired that the Israeli Supreme Court had decided to reject the village’s appeal for work on the Wall to be stopped pending a court hearing on the route of the Wall through Umm Salamuna and other South Bethlehem villages. Villagers expect demolition work to commence soon.

*District Coordination Officer – the civilian administration wing of the Israeli Military in the West Bank

***************************

In Tel Rumeida at around 4:00 pm, a group of colonists consisting of 5 women, 1 man, and about 10 children trespassed in Issa Amro’s garden on Tel Rumeida Hill. They had kept coming to his garden on and off since the morning, but stayed in the garden for about half an hour in the afternoon. Soldiers said the colonists had permission to stay there. Around 4:30 pm, as the colonists saw police on the way, they left.

At around the same time groups of women and children were walking to the Jewish cemetery on Tel Rumeida street and back. At 5.20 pm two women from the Abu Aisha family were pushed and grabbed by colonists who were part of a larger group as they walked home past the Tel Rumeida settlement. Soldiers quickly intervened and the women were able to get into their house. A crowd of colonists gathered and were shouting abuse at the Abu Aishas. Police arrived five minutes later and eventually cleared all the colonists off the street. It would seem that no arrests were made.

Ma’an: “Israeli military disrupt non-violent action in Al Khadr and attack Palestinian children”

February 3rd,

On Saturday morning around forty international peace activists, including Israelis from the group ‘Peace Now’ and local Palestinians, went to Al Khadir village, Bethlehem, in the occupied Palestinian West Bank, to plant olive trees.

Israeli forces have uprooted and demolished thousands of olive trees throughout the Palestinian territories. Peace and environmental activists replant olive trees to prevent the wastage of Palestinian land, as a form of non-violent resistance to the Israeli occupation and to assert the presence of international activists in solidarity with the Palestinians.

The activists planted trees on the borders of an illegal Israeli settlement, a small outpost on Palestinian land, in which the settlers live in caravans. It was also within an area that is soon to stolen from the Palestinians and absorbed into Israel by the construction of the apartheid wall. Al Khadir once had 22,000 dunams (22,000,000m²) of land, after the completion of the wall only 2,000 dunams (2,000,000 m²) will remain.

During the planting of the trees, angry settlers emerged from their caravans and shouted at the activists, accusing the peaceful demonstrators of, “playing games, on holy day [Shabbat].” The settlers also claimed that, through the planting of the trees, a nascent vineyard had been destroyed. But the land on which the activists planted the olive trees was unused.

Israeli soldiers were called and ordered the activists off the Palestinian land, but the activists continued to plant trees, refusing to leave. The soldiers marched the activists to a field further away from the settlement, where they resumed planting trees. The Israeli soldiers then violently manhandled the demonstrators, forcing them down the hill, provoking a fight between the unarmed activists and children, and the Israeli soldiers, who had rifles slung over their shoulders. At one point an irate soldier pointed his gun at a Palestinian child, who ran away.

The Israeli soldiers arrested one activist who was an Israeli member of ‘Peace Now.’

The non-violent demonstrators succeeded in planting in excess of a hundred trees on the soon to be annexed Palestinian land.


Israeli colony on Al Khadr village land

March against the Wall in Bethlehem Village

by the ISM media team, February 2nd

Today around 100 residents of Umm Salamuna, Wadi Annis and neighbouring villages were joined by international and Israeli supporters in a prayer and march on their bulldozed land. Following the midday prayer villagers marched up the hill to a site overlooking land where work on the Apartheid Wall was being carried out.

700 dunums will be annexed by the Wall in Umm Salamuna and 270 dunums will be taken for its footprint. In addition, the Wall will prevent easy access from the village to the main Jerusalem to Hebron road, turning a 7km trip to Bethlehem into a 20km one.

According to Khalid Al Azza, head of the Popular Committee for Land Defense in Bethlehem, villagers from the 10 south Bethlehem villages affected by the Wall have vowed to continue the weekly protests until construction of the Wall stops. They are currently appealing against the Wall in Occupation courts.

Today was the third Friday protest against the Wall on the razed land of Umm Salamuna and Wadi Annis.