Tag: Bir el-Eid

Direct action around Palestine

International Solidarity Movement

1 July 2010

Al Ma’asara

The people of Al-Ma’asara’s again demonstrated peacefully last Friday, protesting against land seizures and settler harassment. Twenty villagers were joined by a handful of Israelis and internationals, marching from the village out towards the confiscated fields.

For the second week running, the group was allowed to reach the fields; Israeli army jeeps appeared as always, but this week the soldiers escorted the protest group to the fields, rather than attempting to stop them. Protestors were pushed and shouted at if they tried to move away from the main group, but otherwise there was no incident.

Perhaps the Israeli Army has finally recognised that the Al-Ma’asara protest is 100% peaceful, and the soldiers have no reason to break it up. Or this may turn out to be a temporary respite from roadblocks and harsher treatment. In any case the people of Al-Ma’asara are still not able to cultivate their land in peace, as the farmer’s have no protection from settler violence.

An Nabi Saleh

Residents of An Nabi Saleh gathered on Friday to honour the men of their village who remain as political prisoners inside Israeli jails. As one man enters his 33rd year in captivity, the village congregated for speeches, songs, and presentations to the families of those imprisoned.

After this event, villagers, joined by Israeli and international supporters, marched towards village land which has been illegally taken from them by the nearby Israeli settlement of Halamish. Soldiers blocked their route, allowing them to stand and chant for only a short period before starting to shoot tear gas. Many of the tear gas canisters shot were fired at body height, seemingly deliberately aimed at demonstrators. Several participants were injured, by canisters or by rubber-coated steel bullets, which were also fired in large numbers.

Military jeeps then came into the village, and soldiers occupied the main square. After approximately an hour, they retreated again, pursued by a large group of young children, one of whom had successfully planted a Palestinian flag on the back of a jeep. Soldiers halted the jeeps, and got out to throw sound grenades and fire tear gas at the children. Fortunately, none were hurt.

The demonstration went on until after sunset, when soldiers finally moved out of the village.

Iraq Burin

At the weekly demonstration against the illegal Israeli occupation in Iraq Burin, stone throwing protesters and international observers were teargassed by the Israeli army while trying to access their own land.

Leaving the village after the protest, two villagers and six internationals were stopped by an army jeep, had their passports confiscated and were then detained, with the soldiers claiming that it was “illegal” to be in the village. The internationals and Palestinians were taken to separate Israeli checkpoints, before being brought together again at Huwarra checkpoint 40 minutes later, where the Palestinians had been kneeling in the hot sun with their hands behind their heads.

All prisoners were then taken to a police station, where one of the Palestinians was severely beaten, first in the jeep, then in a closed room in the police station. All prisoners were later released without charge, 4 1/2 hours after their detention. The beaten Palestinian was taken to hospital in Nablus, where the doctor noted heavy bruising on his chest, back and stomach.

Bil’in

Dozens suffered from tear gas inhalation in Bil’ins weekly demonstration this Friday.

This week’s protest focused particularly on the boycott of Israeli blood diamonds. Every year, consumers the world over unwittingly spend billions of dollars on diamonds extracted by violent militias in West Africa and later processed and sold on from Tel Aviv. Protestors also carried a message of solidarity with the Palestinians of East Jerusalem, who are currently subject to a particularly violent wave of evictions, demolitions and harassment.

About 100 Palestinians, Israelis and internationals marched together this week to the gate of the Annexation Wall, facing large amounts of tear gas before the soldiers charged through the gate and chased the protesters towards the village. The solders continued firing teargas on the fleeing crowd, leaving dozens of protestors affected by gas inhalation. Hot teargas cannitsters set fire to fields on either side of the road, with Palestinian youths struggling to put out the flames while avoiding the Isralie assault. The demonstration ended after about 45 minutes.

Ni’lin

Around 20 international activists and journalists joined a group of 80-90 local villagers for the weekly protest against the Annexation Wall, continuing a tradition that has been going for over 4 years now. Starting from the olive fields, the protesters marched down the hill towards the wall, chanting slogans and waving flags. Having arrived at the wall, which annexes farmland and property from the locals and gives it to illegal settlers, there was an interlude of around 5 minutes, after which time the Israeli Army, from the other side of the wall, launched volleys of tear gas canisters at the peaceful protesters, continuing another integral part of the demonstration since its inception- unprovoked violence against peaceful demonstrators.

Following the volleys, most of the activists positioned themselves out of the direction of the wind, in order to minimize the poisonous effects of the gas. Some of the canisters were conventional rubber canisters, and others were higher velocity metal canisters, and thus the protesters had to be careful to avoid the projectiles, which have in the past caused serious and even fatal injuries to several activists. Some of the Palestinians then started throwing rocks over the wall at their aggressors, as well as using slingshots to hurl the empty gas canisters back at the soldiers.

After around 45 minutes events petered out. The protesters moved to the edge of the wall, and some of the journalists conducted interviews, while some Palestinians continued using slingshots to hurl the empty rubber gas canisters back over the wall. Suddenly, the Army burst through the gate in the wall in their jeeps, and started pursuing the peace protestors, who fled on foot over the hills, out of the reach of the jeeps. After a roughly 10 minute chase, the activists had managed to distance themselves safely from the army, who had given up the pursuit; they returned to the village in peace.

Hebron

Demonstrators gathered in Hebron on Saturday to demand an end to the illegal theft of water from the region for use in Israel and in Israeli settlements.

Protesters carried a large banner which read ‘Stop Stealing Our Water’, a reference to the theft of Palestinian water supplies by Israel. According to the Middle East Monitor, ‘The rate of water consumption of Israel citizens is 344 million cubic metres per year, while the consumption of Palestinians stands at 93 million cubic metres per year’. Israel’s disproportionately high usage and wastage of water is in large part fed by water stolen from the occupied West Bank. The Middle East Monitor goes on to write of ‘3 reserves within the West Bank area producing about 679 million cubic metres of water. According to international law, this water belongs to the Palestinians but they only get 118 million cubic metres. In other words, Palestinians get just 15% of their own water while the rest is consumed by Israelis’ [1]. Much of this stolen water comes from the Hebron region.

Local residents were joined for the protest by a large group of Israeli and international activists. After chanting and making speeches in front of one of Hebron’s many military watch-towers, the protest then moved up a nearby street, which was blocked by Israeli soldiers who violently pushed demonstrators back down the road. Protesters refused to give up, and went instead into the Old City’s covered market. Above this market is one of the illegal settlements that exist within Hebron itself, and settlers from here threw glass bottles, eggs and water down onto the protesters below.

The settlements in Hebron are, like all settlements within the West Bank and East Jerusalem, illegal under international law. Palestinian residents of the Old City and the district of Tel Rumeida suffer severe restriction of movement, frequent harassment and occasional violence at the hands of both soldiers and settlers.

[1] http://www.middleeastmonitor.org.uk/resources/briefing-papers/805-israel-is-stealing-palestinian-and-arab-water

Beit Jala

Midday Sunday, a group of Palestinians and internationals gathered in the village of Beit Jala outside Bethlehem to protest against the construction of the wall cutting off the village from its land. The protesters divided into two groups, one facing a roadblock set up by the soldiers and while another smaller group went down trough the olive groves to reach the construction site.

Israeli soldiers responded violently towards the larger group, using sound bombs and tear gas. When the smaller group reached the road leading to the construction site, soldiers quickly formed a line to stop them. After some time border police arrived and arrested three of the protesters: one Palestinian, one Israeli and one international. As a result of the ferocious violence from the soldiers, the demonstration dissipated.

Bir el-Eid

Activists working with local farmer to dredge the well

Early Saturday morning, 10 volunteers from Taayush and ISM travelled to Bir el-Eid in the South Hebron Hills, where we met with the local farmers, and were joined also by renouned activist Ezra Nawi. Activists gathered here to help the locals dredge out their well. The people Bir el-Eid only just have enough water to drink, but nothing for crops or animals. Water must be expensively brought in tanks from outside, negotiating whatever the current military conditions may be.

The more permanent and sustainable water supply here comes from two wells that capture a good part of the yearly rain, which soaks down through the chalk rocks. The people of Bir el-Eid were evicted from their land for a number of years, and when they recently returned, they found their wells in disrepair. Without anyone here to maintain the wells they filled with silt, and the problem may have been compounded by settler vandalism.

Restoring the well to usefulness is a crucial part of re-establishing a sustainable community here. Activists spent about five hours working with the farmers; one Palestinian and three Israelis went down into the cistern at the bottom of the well, and five of us at the top hauled up the bucket-loads of muck with a pulley. This was filthy, heavy work, but seeing Palestinians and Israelis working together against the Apartheid provided powerful inspiration.

Civil Administration backtracks on granting Palestinians access to Bir el-Eid

Amira Hass | Haaretz

6 January 2009

The Civil Administration ordered Palestinian residents of the West Bank this week to stop erecting tents and building animal enclosures in the Bir el-Eid area – even though the state allowed them access to the site only two months ago, after a 10-year enforced absence and a protracted legal effort.

Tomorrow, the Civil Administration’s supervisory committee is to discuss the next step, which could involve demolition of the tents and restoration of the site to its prior condition. The site, which is in the southern Hebron Hills, is in Area C, meaning that since the Oslo Accords, it remains under full Israel control.

Beginning in the 1990s, settler harassment and police inaction led the residents of the small village to flee the caves where they were living. The huts, fencing and stone structures that they used primarily to graze sheep, as well as tents which were erected in the area, were damaged during the Palestinians’ 10-year absence from the site.

Their legal battle, which they fought with the assistance of the advocacy group Rabbis for Human Rights, resulted in an injunction requiring the Israel Defense Forces to allow the residents to return to the area.

Two illegal settlement outposts, the Lucifer Farm and Mitzpeh Yair, are just a few kilometers from Bir el-Eid. Unlike the settlements and outposts, the Bir el-Eid land has been worked and settled at least since the 19th century, if not before. Also unlike the outposts, Bir el-Eid is not connected to the electricity grid and does not have an outside water supply.

Over the past two months, the residents have been involved in restoring the site for agricultural and residential use. Monday’s orders from the IDF to stop work at the site were distributed at 12 tents, most of which were being used as residences. The orders were also sent to a tin shack, a goat enclosure constructed of stone, iron and sheets of cloth, and two stone structures.

The families who have returned to the area are based in the village of Jinbah, about three kilometers to the southeast. Residential caves and wells in the region are evidence of the long-standing Palestinian presence in the area, but Israeli authorities prohibit the cave dwellers in Bir el-Eid, and throughout the southern Hebron Hills, from building permanent housing on the land.

After period of daily harassment from Israeli soldiers and settlers, residents of Bir el-Eid celebrate small victories

28 December 2009

When I arrived in Bir el-Eid on 15 November 2009, it was obvious that international accompaniment was needed. There was daily harassment from soldiers and settlers. The villagers were not allowed to use the road. They were officially restricted by the army (DCO) to 20 dunums of land around the village.

With support from internationals living in the village (usually two), and daily visits by Israeli activists, plus legal support from Rabbis for Human Rights, and larger groups of Israeli activists coming to the village on Saturdays (and sometimes other days as well), the villagers engaged in nonviolent resistance by not accepting the restrictions the Israeli military had put upon them.

The villagers grazed their sheep far from the village. They continued to use the road in spite of continual harassment from soldiers and settlers. They installed water tanks where they were forbidden. Gradually the military backed down and eventually agreed to villagers using the road. The military agreed to grazing far from the village (there needs to be more pushing of these boundaries). Recent settler harassment has been token, like stopping village tractors for 15 minutes. We can celebrate the victories the villagers have won.

Palestinians in Bir el-Eid win the right to use local road

Art (Jaber) Gish

13 December 2009

It seems that a major victory has been won regarding Palestinians using their road to get to and from town. Israeli settlers have demanded that only Jews be allowed to use the Palestinian road. For the most part, Israeli soldiers have been following setter orders, not the orders of their superiors or the Israeli courts.

The Israeli courts and the Israeli military have agreed that the Palestinians may use Palestinian roads. Another factor is that the fields the villagers have have been using have now been planted, so it is less tempting for the villagers to go through the fields to avoid conflicts with soldiers and settlers.

This is a major victory for the villagers, due to persistence on the part of the Palestinians, support from Israeli activists, and the presence of internationals in the village In addition to all this, the Palestinians have Israeli law, justice, and just plain common decency on their side.

This does not mean the struggle is over. Settlers are continuing to stop Palestinians on the road, but when confronted by even Israeli activists, they are backing down.

We received some good rain for which everyone is grateful. The hills are beginning to turn green, shepherds are grazing their flocks on the hillsides, and soon all the fields will turn green as the wheat, barley, and lentils come up. The planting is mostly finished. I spent two days accompanying the plowing. One settler watched us from above us, but there were no problems.

The people here probably think I am weird. One of the things I do is play with the little children here every chance I get. Old men here don’t play with children. I also help the women carry water. They protest, but their protests are weak. They carry five gallon buckets of water on their heads. The women have even allowed me to wash my clothes.

A major article on Bir el-Eid by Amira Hass appeared in Ha’aretz, Friday, December 11.

Twenty Israelis were arrested on December 11 for protesting the settlers stealing a Palestinian house in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in Jerusalem. The police support the thieves.

Sandy Tolen, the author of The Lemon Tree, came for a visit, and also David Shulman, author of Dark Hope.

I am having fun, basking in the sun with the sheep.

Notes from Area C / The right to return to the caves

Amira Hass | Ha’aretz

11 December 2009

This is a story of return, the return of Palestinians to their land in Area C. Just over a month ago, on November 8, two out of 15 families returned to Khirbet Bir el-Eid, in south Mount Hebron. By yesterday their number had reached eight.

“Everyone waited to see if they would kill us before they decided whether to return,” joked Ismail I’dra, 63, as he worked energetically to clean up one of the caves that serve as homes to residents the village. Indeed, less than two weeks ago, I’dra, too, was afraid to enter the area on his own, with his tractor laden with feed for his flock; he preferred to be accompanied by activist Ezra Nawi of Ta’ayush (an Arab-Jewish anti-occupation movement).

The first three weeks after residents began to return to Bir el-Eid were full of incidents in which settlers from nearby communities threw stones at the women and the flocks, and tried to enter the village to frighten people), and blocked the access road, sometimes with the help of the army. Only the submission of an urgent petition, two weeks ago, to the High Court of Justice by the inhabitants, by means of Rabbis for Human Rights, compelled the army to leave the road open.

“But, God be praised,” said I’dra on Wednesday, “during the past week it has been quiet.”

The minor incident last Saturday apparently no longer counts as a clash: About 20 members of Ta’ayush arrived to help clean up the village, which is actually a collection of caves. One settler appeared, as did Israel Defense Forces soldiers and Border Police. There was tension, and one Ta’ayush activist was arrested, which is a routine occurence. And this week, there are already more smiles on people’s faces: The constant presence of activists from abroad and daily visits by Israeli supporters add to their sense of security in Bir el-Eid.

Laundry fluttered in the breeze, chickens scuttled about and some of the sheep ventured off to chomp the first grass that sprouted after the rain, while others bleated from inside their stone enclosures. A few inquisitive children scampered around the mothers and the volunteers working to tidy the area, between the black water containers brought by Rabbis for Human Rights and the white tents protecting the caves – donations from the Red Cross.

On the agenda now are the cleaning and restoration of the village’s cisterns, which were dug by the residents’ great-great-grandfathers. A number of Ta’ayush volunteers have already acquired expertise in “this donkeys’ work,” as Nawi calls it. One noted with satisfaction that the first cistern he has been entrusted with would be a cinch; there is no need to slither down into it on a rope. The work will take two or three days, and it will be able to store enough rainwater to supply residents for a month.

Is this cleaning operation allowed, we wondered. After all, this is Area C, where every heart needs a permit to beat from the Civil Administration. The activist’s reply: Digging new cisterns for collecting and drawing rainwater is forbidden, but repairing existing cisterns is allowed.

During a tour by Haaretz in August 2007, this place looked like a lost cause – manifest proof, it seemed, that the designation of a locale as belonging to Area C is the final stage before “cleansing” the place of Palestinians and effectively annexing it. No sign of life was visible on these slopes back then. The cisterns were in ruins. The half-destroyed stone fences and structures, and partly blocked caves, looked like memorials, situated as they were between the two unauthorized outposts overlooking the area: from the south the Lucifer farm, and Magen David (also called Mitzpeh Yair) from the north.

An attack back then by two settlers on UN field researchers and on a Haaretz correspondent and photographer was added to the list of abuses suffered by the indigenous inhabitants, which spurred them to flee. The harassment was backed up by closure orders of the area by the army, and by inaction on its part, and on that of the Civil Administration and the police.

Useless complaints

The harassments began in 1999; by 2003 the last family had departed. A petition by inhabitants of Bir el-Eid in 2006 to the High Court of Justice, submitted on their behalf by Rabbis for Human Rights attorney Quamar Mishirqi-Assad, gave all the details: the killing of sheep, burning of fields, destruction of crops, damage to property, use of gunfire and dogs, building of dirt mounds to prevent access, throwing of carcasses into the cisterns. Complaining to the police was worthless.

At the end of January 2009, about five years after attorney Mishirqi-Assad began her correspondence with the authorities, climaxing in the petition to the court, the state gave its response: “In the wake of the completion of the examinations and assessments of the issue, it has been decided that the army will allow the petitioners to come to the area of Bir el-Eid for purposes of grazing and dwelling … starting from the second part of 2009 …”

On Wednesday Mussa Raba’i, one of the residents, said the real problem in the area is not with the settlers, but rather with the Israeli authorities – i.e., the central government: It allows the settlements (including unauthorized ones) to sprout up and develop, while preventing the original inhabitants from building or connecting their dwellings to the electricity and water grids. This, added Raba’i, effectively prevents adoption of a modern way of life.

The state’s response to Rabbis for Human Rights also stipulates: “Nothing in what is stated allows your clients to enter areas that have been declared state lands or to carry out construction of any sort without obtaining the requisite building permits from the responsible authorities.”

Maryam Raba’i and her daughter Abir, a student of business management at the Al-Quds Open University, smiled when asked whether they live in the caves of their own free will. Abir, who cannot study at night because there is no electricity, said of course not. Everyone wants modern and convenient housing, she added, but on their own land.

In various places in the West Bank, clusters of similar semi-nomadic dwellings (tents or caves) had by 1967 developed into villages with permanent structures, but this natural process of development was halted by the Israeli occupation.

“In the period when the central government was weak,” explained geographer and archaeologist Nazmi Ju’beh, “people left the khirbehs [rural outposts] in which they had been living and moved to larger, central villages to seek protection mainly from acts of robbery by nomadic Bedouin tribes. As the central government grew stronger, after 1830, habitation near their springs, grazing lands and cultivated fields – in accordance with the seasons – became more permanent. A mosque was built here, a school and a shop went up there. Jordan encouraged this process. Now the situation is reversed: The government is causing the insecurity and selective non-development.”

Why didn’t you build stone houses before 1967, we asked the inhabitants of Bir el-Eid. They immediately corrected us: Some 40 roughly hewn stone houses had been built during the period of the British Mandate in the village of Jinba, in a valley about three kilometers to the southeast. Bir el-Eid is an integral part of Jinba, in terms of the families living there, the land and the history. However, in the 1980s, without anyone being aware of it, the IDF demolished most of the houses because they stood on land that was declared a “military training zone.”

The determination to return, the legal battle, and close support of Israeli and international activists have rendered the expulsion only temporary. Neither the massive demolition or the training grounds designation; nor the building prohibitions that Israel imposed in the early 1970s; nor the restrictions of “Area C” are what has impelled people to abandon their lands. The official Israeli limitations only force people to live in harsh, traditional conditions that do not accord with the younger generation’s aspirations and expectations.

In reply to a query from Haaretz regarding measures being taken to protect the safety of the inhabitants of BBir el-Eid, the IDF spokesman and the spokesman of the coordinator of activities in the territories replied: “The IDF takes seriously the claims regarding friction between Palestinians and the settlers, and carries out various activities at known points of confrontation in the sector with the aim of preventing and limiting occurrences that disrupt public order. Recently the brigade command has also carried out a tour of the site, in cooperation with people from the Civil Administration and the prosecution, to assess the situation.

“In the wake of incidents that occurred there, and after carrying out a security assessment of the situation, the army determined that, provisionally, entering the Bir el-Eid area can be done by means of an access route that is different from the one that initially served the inhabitants.

“Indeed, the inhabitants submitted a request for an urgent discussion in the High Court of Justice, but prior to deliberation (and with no connection to it), an additional assessment of the situation was conducted, and it was decided to allow the inhabitants free access also along the original route, if there is no concrete security impediment, in the future. On November 28, there was friction between Palestinians and settlers, in the aftermath of which the area was declared a closed military zone, with respect to Israeli civilians. The settlers were evacuated in order to prevent a conflagration.

“The IDF is continuing to take all measures to ensure public order in the area within existing limitations, with the aim of reducing the incidents as much as possible.”