Medics carry an injured protester during clashes between protesters and Israeli forces at a demonstration marking Land Day, at Qalandiya checkpoint Ramallah on March 30. (Reuters/Darren Whiteside)
BETHLEHEM (Ma’an) — The Palestinian Red Crescent treated 339 protesters on Friday at protests around the West Bank to mark Land Day, a spokesman said.
Muhammad Ayyad told Ma’an that five people were seriously injured and 55 hospitalized as protesters commemorated six Palestinians who were killed by Israeli forces in 1976 at demonstrations against Israel’s land confiscation in the Galilee.
Three people in Bethlehem were critically injured, one of whom was hit in the face by a tear gas canister. A protester in Jerusalem was hit in the jaw by a rubber bullet and in Kafr Qaddum, near Qalqiliya, a protester was hit in the pelvis by a tear gas grenade, Ayyad said.
The largest rally took place in Qalandiya, a checkpoint near Ramallah, where 249 were treated for injuries and 20 hospitalized.
Ayyad said Israeli forces injured nine medics and damaged three ambulances at the protest.
An Israeli military spokesman said forces fired rubber bullets, tear gas and foul-smelling chemical water at protesters who were throwing rocks.
Similar confrontations broke out at a checkpoint in Bethlehem, where Ayyad said medics treated 38 people including 11 who were hospitalized.
In Jerusalem, medics treated 35 people, 19 of whom were transferred to hospital. Four people were hospitalized in Iraq Burin, near Nablus and 13 were injured in Kafr Qaddum at simultaneous protests.
Click here for more photos | Photos courtesy Ahmad Mezher, 2012
Today the weekly demo of Al-Ma’sara, near Bethlehem, was underway as dozens of Palestinians and Israelis demonstrated in the heavy rain against the wall in solidarity with Hana Shalabi . Israeli Occupartion Forces first attacked Mahmoud Zawahre, the coordinator Of Al-Ma’sara Popular Committee, tearing his clothes before he managed to escape them. After that they started attacking people with their batons and arrested four Israeli activists. They were later released. They also broke the camera of journalist, Musa Alshaer. After that they broke the glass of one Palestinian car.
15 March 2012 | International Solidarity Movement, West Bank
In the outer part of Bethlehem very close to Rachel’s Tomb, Mariam (who wishes not to use her actual name) runs her small Palestinian souvenir shop. But this is not a shop in the usual touristic places of Bethlehem, and not a place you find if you don’t know about it.
Despite these facts, this small shop has become the only income for Mariam and her family since it opened two years ago.
Before 2002 her husband had an auto mechanic shop in this building, perfectly located right next to the main road to Jerusalem. The business was good back then. Palestinians as well as Israelis came here to get their car fixed or buy parts, and just next door, Mariam had a shop for home accessories. All this changed radically in 2002 when the area became a “military zone.”
Suddenly the road was closed and the family that lives on the floors above the shops became prisoners in their own home as soldiers turned their house into a military base. Sometimes they took a room or two, but other days the whole family of seven were forced to stay in one room without being able to go out.
Both shops had to close and life became hard. The next year in 2003, the Israeli government built the apartheid wall that is now surrounding the house from three sides. The land around them that is owned by her uncle was confiscated and is now on the other side of the wall, out of reach for the family that no longer can travel outside the West Bank without permission, a permission that is rarely given.
The isolated corner | Click here for more photos
The travel situation was also different before the wall. Mariam, like other Christians, has strong bonds to Jerusalem, and she used to volunteer in a church in the city that she visited almost every day. It used to take her 15 minutes to get there. Now she only gets permission to visit Jerusalem for Easter and Christmas, and how long it takes to get there depends on the mood of the soldiers at the check point.
Today ten years later, the house is not occupied anymore, but no one can access the roof. Nor are they allowed to do any repairs, and the wall that surrounds the house has cameras pointed to watch every room, making private life close to nonexistent.
The small income from the souvenir shop is also highly taxed as the family lives in what is called Area C. This means that she has to pay taxes to the Israeli government like everyone in Area C is under direct Israeli control. But since Israel is not giving anything back to Palestinians for the tax money, like insurance, she also has to pay tax to the Palestinian Authority to get this covered.
“Life is not easy here,” she said, looking out the door at the 8 meter high concrete wall that has cut her family off from their former life, forcing them to live in an isolated corner.
Axel is a volunteer with International Solidarity Movement (name has been changed).
14 February 2012 | International Solidarity Movement, West Bank
There is a place where a ground-level concrete line runs beside a country road through olive orchards, grape vines, blossoming almond trees, and homes—all Palestinian. This is the projected path of a new segment of Israeli Apartheid Wall through Al-Ma’sara, a small village 13 km south of Bethlehem in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Since 2006, protesters have held weekly demonstrations opposing the Wall’s construction—which was halted in 2009, possibly due to financial constraints. But attacks on Palestinian homes and infrastructure are on the rise, and plans have been announced to renew construction in the near future. One of the few remaining obstacles to the Wall’s extension is the Taqatqa house, a private home in the path of the wall extension, that has become the target of settler attacks and vandalism. In coming weeks the people of Al-Ma’sara, together with Palestinian, International, and Israeli solidarity activists, will converge on the house to restore it and transform it into a center for resistance against the Wall and settlement land theft.
There are many things about this house that recommend it as a site of popular resistance to the next phase of Wall construction.
Located in a fertile valley, the property remains a viable agricultural space in spite of attacks, intimidation and settlement expansion. Where apricot and olive trees were once cut, the family planted grape vines and vegetables. Neighbors said that when Khader Tayatqa, late father of the building’s current owner, suffered a fatal heart attack, it was due to the stress of attacks on his land and family. Nearby lie other properties in contention, including a hill belonging to Raed Taqatqa, who has made his continued presence also into an act of resistance, in spite of determined efforts of Israeli violence to drive him off his land.
After Raed refused to sell, Israeli soldiers removed supporting rocks from beneath his caravan to build a roadblock, damaging it irreparably “by accident.” His home destroyed, Raed built a makeshift structure of cardboard and found materials, which was leveled by settlers.
Such vigilante attacks on Palestinians who resist, on the parts of settlers and Israeli soldiers both, are common—such as an attack on the village of Burin last week.
Along with a favorable location, is the building’s history. Built in 1960, before Israel captured the West Bank and lay claim to its lands, the home is ‘legal’ even under Israel’s stringent permitting system, prejudiced such that Palestinian homes are often demolished using red herring justifications for their ‘illegality.’ As long as repairs only restore and add no additions, demolition of the building cannot be legally supported by the Israeli state. There is also already a history of resistance at this site, where years of weekly demonstrations and a Land Day demonstration have impacted the Wall planning process, such that far less land would be walled off from Al-Ma’sara than from neighboring or similar communities.
House at the Seam – Click here for more photos
The most serious threat now is from settler and soldier attacks which, like those on Raed’s property, are intended to damage the building and discourage resistance. Thus far, while settlers have stolen a door, some electrical wiring and a transformer, the house needs few repairs before it can be inhabited and used for events. As long as it is inhabited, it cannot be taken by the antiquated Ottoman land laws—another tool used to rescind Palestinians’ property rights after they are driven off their land.
“This [house] is a real strong point,” says Mahmoud Zwahre, an organizer from the Popular Struggle Coordination Committee and resident of Al-Ma’sara.“Legally, if we are able to keep this house we are able to keep the land.”
The bizarre set of circumstances that have made Al-Ma’sara, a rural village of about 900, one of the front lines in the battle against Israeli expansionism are sadly familiar to most Palestinians and their international and Israeli supporters. Although the village lies roughly 10 kilometers west of the 1948 “Green Line” (the only internationally recognized ‘border’ between Israel and Palestine) the massive “Gush Etzion block” of seven Israeli settlements (pop. 60,000) lies nearby, products of Israeli’s campaign to produce illegal “facts on the ground.”
These ‘facts,’ in turn are used to justify giving the Israeli military full control of most of the village’s lands and the annexation of thousands of dunums of land via planned Wall construction.
Not only would the wall’s route cut off 3500 dunums of Palestinian lands in Al-Ma’sara and limit access to services in larger communities, but it would also cut off the village’s water access and the primary routes between Hebron, Bethlehem, and Ramallah—three of the largest cities of the West Bank.
Any one of these developments would hit Al-Ma’sara and surrounding villages hard, but together they are intolerable and demoralizing. Even though there is no barrier or construction currently underway, some Palestinian farmers have chosen to stay off lands east of the Wall’s projected path, fearful of settler and military attacks. Others, however, have decided to resist—using the Tayatqa house as a focal point.
When asked what his vision for the house is, Zwahre describes a vibrant social and information center, with Palestinian flags flying and walls painted red, green, white and black. From terraces, he imagines people sitting to drink tea and looking across olive groves and fruit orchards. Farmers avoiding their land below the settlements for fear of attacks by settlers would feel safe working on it. But, he adds, that is just his vision, and it is for all those involved in the development of the center to create it.
The Popular Committees have issued a call for supporters to join them in making this center a reality. They can be contacted at www.popularstruggle.org. Weekly protests against Wall construction are held Fridays at noon, starting from the Al-Ma’sara city center.
Aaron is a volunteer with International Solidarity Movement (name has been changed).
Israeli forces delivered home demolition notices to two Palestinian homeowners in al-Ma’sara, a village south of Bethlehem, under the pretext that they were built without a permit in an area under full Israel control, said head of the village council Samir Zawahra on Saturday.
He said Israeli soldiers placed the notices near the two houses, which were in their final stage of construction.
Zawahra accused the Israeli authorities of plotting to empty the area of its Palestinian residents in order to take over the land for the benefit of nearby settlements.
He said the Israeli escalation comes in the wake of the weekly non-violent demonstration in the village to protest settlement expansion and the construction of the Apartheid Wall on village land.
