December 10th, 2015 | International Solidarity Movement, al Khalil team | al Khalil, occupied Palestine
Soldiers blocked the way to the Cordoba school in al Khalil
Today, onInternational Human Rights Day, school children as well as teachers were denied access to the Cordoba school in Al-Khalil (Hebron). The mixed primary school is located in the neighborhood of Tel Rumeida at the end of the small strip of Shuhada Street that Palestinians are still able to access.
Students and teachers waited for two hours
Since the declaration of the ‘closed military zone’, effective since the 1st of November in Tel Rumeida and Shuhada Street, the children and teachers have been registered as numbers in order to pass checkpoint 56 and checkpoint 55 on their way to school. On Monday the 7th of December 2015, the checkpoint 56 has been closed for an indefinite period of time. The children and teachers that need to cross checkpoint 56 – which marks the border between the H2 area of Al-Khalil, under full Israeli control, and the H1 area, supposedly under full Palestinian control – have had to argue with the Israeli forces every morning since then, in order to pass the checkpoint and reach the school.
Settler came to harass children and teachers while they were waiting
After a Palestinian was killed on Wednesday, 9th of December at checkpoint 55 on Shuhada Street, the children and teachers found the access to the school blocked by barbed wire and countless Israeli soldiers. The Israeli forces have completely locked the way to the school for the majority of children and teachers. The only other way to the school is through a cemetery on the other side of Al-Khalil. The Israeli forces simply ignore the pleas from both school children and teachers to let them pass and get to the school, and don’t give any indication as to when the barbed wire will be removed.
While school children and teachers were waiting in hopes of passing, infamous illegal settler Anat Cohen arrived at the scene and openly, without any apprehension, verbally and physically harassed them. The Israeli forces failed to prevent her from doing so, yet again turning a blind eye on increasing settler violence. Two hours after school was supposed to begin, the children and teachers gave up and the school was forced to remain closed for the day, the childrens’ right to education being simply denied to them.
Watch these two videos of Anat Cohen attacking and intimidating the school-children.
6th of December 2015 | International Solidarity Movement, al-Khalil team | Hebron, occupied Palestine
Israeli forces take over streets of Wadi Al-Hurriya, stop and search cars (ISM archives)
Palestinians living in the Israeli militarily occupied West Bank face discrimination, racism and humiliation at the hands of Israeli forces on an everyday basis. Humiliation is entrenched in every aspect of daily life under the Israeli occupation. The message is clear: as a Palestinian you are always perceived as a threat, a possible terrorist or a menace – but never as a human being.
As a Palestinian citizen of the West Bank, freedom of movement is severely restricted and rather resembles trying to navigate a maze of road-blocks, permanent checkpoints and temporary ‘flying checkpoints’ that can suddenly pop up anywhere. All of these restrictions share one commonality: they are clearly intended to target only Palestinians – while Israeli settlers from the illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank are using roads that might not even be allowed for Palestinians to drive on.
In occupied al-Khalil (Hebron), the Israeli bus collecting passengers from the illegal settlements is not allowed for Palestinians to ride on, and thus passes Bethlehem checkpoint on the way to Jerusalem without even stopping – all the passengers are Israeli settlers anyways. On the Palestinian bus going through the same checkpoint, everyone, with the exception of tourists and elderly, are forced to get off the bus and wait for their IDs to be checked outside in any weather, and often their bags inspected by heavily-armed soldiers.
Israeli soldiers and the flying checkpoint outside the village
Right during rush hour on Thursday afternoon, Israeli forces set up checkpoints at all the entrances of occupied al-Khalil, resulting in endless queues of cars, on their way to visit family over the weekend on Friday and Saturday. As two soldiers thoroughly checked every passenger’s ID and car going in both directions, the queues grew longer and even ambulances with emergencies were denied passage and held up for at least ten minutes while being checked – ten minutes that hopefully weren’t critical for the emergency the ambulance was attempting to quickly get to. As Israeli forces strategically blocked every possible way to leave or enter al-Khalil either by permanent road-blocks completely blocking any sort of traffic except pedestrians or temporary checkpoints; there was no possible alternative than to either turn around and stay inside the city or to endure at least two hours of waiting to eventually be allowed to pass this checkpoint.
Finally passing one checkpoint successfully, though, in militarily occupied Palestine basically doesn’t mean anything: just a few hundred meters down the street might be another checkpoint. Palestinians try to avoid Gush Etzion junction on the way to Bethlehem, as settlers often attack Palestinians cars there, and soldiers stop and search cars with Palestinian license plates only; they take a detour through Palestinian villages. But in order to make the near-lockdown of al-Khalil ‘perfect’, Israeli forces set up checkpoints at entrances and exits of Sa’ir village. Thus, after an hour-long wait to leave al-Khalil city itself, Palestinian cars were stuck in yet another checkpoint just a twenty minutes drive away.
Waiting in the dark for seemingly endless hours to move ahead just one or two more meters in the line as a car was allowed to pass – or turned around, giving up the hope of ever crossing that night at all; Israeli settler cars speed past on a nearby road without any hurdles or hassles, just ‘normaly’ driving down a road at night. When finally slowly approaching the make-shift checkpoint with traffic spikes on the street, cars have to switch off their lights, so people next in line will only hazily see what’s going on. Once it’s their turn, everyone inside the car has to get out and stand a few meters away from the soldiers, while they inspect the IDs and cars. Depending on the soldiers mood, some people, mainly young adult males, will have to lift up their shirts and trouser-legs; while others will have to answer questions about their destinations and the reason of travels, and even about their families and private life. The only thing that is for sure is that you can never tell what will happen. The power dynamics is clear, the heavily armed soldiers have the ‘authority’ to decide over everything, the Palestinian passengers will have to obey whatever is asked of them. That none of this has to do with ‘security’ but everything with control and humiliation is obvious. This is the face of just a tiny little aspect of the everyday humiliation defining this military occupation.
Humiliation doesn’t even stop with death – the Israeli forces are still withholding the bodies of Palestinians they claim attacked Israeli soldiers – refusing an appropriate funeral and mourning for their families, relatives and friends. Denying even a last peaceful rest and a person’s family to mourn the death of a loved one is the last possible way to humiliate. Not even in death, does the humiliation stop or are Palestinians treated like human beings.
22nd September 2015 | International Solidarity Movement, Al-Khalil team | Hebron, occupied Palestine
A Witness Recounts the Final Moments of 18-year-old Hadil Salah Hashlamoun’s Life.
This morning in the Tel Rumeida section of al-Khalil (Hebron) the sound of multiple rounds of live ammunition screamed out from the Shuhada Street checkpoint 56.
Standing at the checkpoint around 7:40 this morning, 34 year old Fawaz abu Aisheh ushered a few children from the scene where Israeli forces screamed in Hebrew at the terrified Hadil who was on her way to school. “They were screaming at her, ´Move back! Move Back!´ I knew she couldn´t understand so I intervened in Arabic and she listened to me immediately and I took her from the entrance to the exit of the checkpoint.”
In the photo, Hadil, in burqa, stands with Fawaz just off the foreground. “I tried to talk with her, she was terrified. She knew nothing.” Fawaz pleaded with the soldiers, who were multiplying quickly, to allow him to take her away from the checkpoint, to explain to her what was happening, to de-escalate the situation. “She listened to me immediately when first I spoke with her, but they moved me away and continued to scream at her in Hebrew which she obviously didn´t understand.”
18-year old Palestinian student moments before being shot to death by Israeli forces Photo credit: Youth Against Settlement
The scene, plainly described by Fawaz, seemingly had any number of alternatives to close-range, rapid fire, kill shots into a Palestinian female teenager´s body. After the fact, Israeli forces claimed the woman had a knife on her person. Fawaz challenges this contention. “She was covered completely, there was no knife showing at any time. Even if she did have a knife he could have arrested her so easily. I was there… I could have talked to her, she cooperated with me in that very first moment. I asked her to move and she moved but after that I begged him to let me talk to her but they took me away from her and started pointing their weapons at me. After they shot her more and more soldiers arrived. There were still 3 or 4 kids a few meters from the checkpoint so I moved the kids away. ”
As if the incident weren´t wholly disturbing in itself, beyond the shooting, Israeli soldiers were seen laughing, smiling and talking casually with one another as Hadil clung to life while rapidly losing blood to the concrete. Israeli settlers similarly stood in circles photographing Hadil. Fawaz noted that the Palestinian ambulance had arrived within five minutes to rush the dying girl to the hospital, yet Israeli forces blocked them from getting to her, choosing rather to let her bleed openly for forty minutes in the street until an Israeli ambulance arrived. In that agonizing period of time, an Israeli soldier was seen dragging the dying young woman by her feet.
18-year-old Hadil Salah Hashlamoun died of her wounds only after arriving at a hospital in Jerusalem. The question of whether she would have lived had she been permitted the right to be treated immediately by the quickly arriving Palestinian ambulance rather than left to bleed out for an eternity of forty minutes may never be answered.
If humanity, in any measure, exists within the occupying entity, it was shockingly absent today at the Shuhada Street checkpoint.
14th January 2015 | International Solidarity Movement, Khalil team | Hebron, Occupied Palestine
Checkpoints are numerous and inescapable in the H2 area of al-Khalil (Hebron), where thousands of soldiers guard around 600 Israeli zionist settlers occupying heavily militarised settlement enclaves in the heart of the most populous Palestinian city in the West Bank. The Israeli military imposes numerous restrictions on the freedom of movement of Palestinians in the neighbourhoods of H2, affecting people as they attempt to live, work, study, and travel through their city. Shuhada checkpoint, leading from the H2 neighbourhood of Tel Rumeida into Palestinian-administered H1, is one of the larger and more heavily manned checkpoints.
Photo by ISM
One Israeli soldier looked through the purse of a young Palestinian woman as her daughter looked on. Even Palestinian children too young to carry bags for a soldier to search are subjected to the everyday sight of their older relatives being stopped, searched, questioned and detained by Israeli forces. Over a period of a couple of hours on Tuesday afternoon, an ISM activist witnessed Israeli soldiers stop and search around fifty Palestinian children, women, and men.
Photo by ISM
Barbed wire and fences frame the entry way into Shuhada checkpoint, as Israeli soldiers patrol the heavily militarised passage between the Palestinian neighbourhoods of Tel Rumeida and Bab el-Zawiye.
Photo by ISM
A very young Palestinian girl took a moment to look up at the heavily armed Israeli soldiers standing in her path. Armed with enormous rifles, chests strapped with body armour complete with pockets full of stun grenades and tear gas, the soldiers looked incongruous on the otherwise quiet, sunny street.
Photo by ISM
“I don’t understand why people think we want war, we just want peace,” one Israeli soldier told an ISM activist. The absurdity of his statement, as he stood with his rifle beside the checkpoint, seemed entirely lost on him. Deploying eighteen-year-olds with M16s to search kids’ shopping bags and their mothers’ purses, giving them control over the lives of Palestinians trying to keep surviving in the neighbourhoods of H2 in al-Khalil, creates a situation which, though it may sometimes seem quiet, is anything but peaceful.The soldiers stop whole families at the checkpoint: mothers, grandfathers, sisters laden with shopping bags. This young girl stood waiting off to the side as the Israeli military checked to make sure her relatives did not pose a “threat.”
17th December 2014 | International Solidarity Movement, Khalil team | Hebron, Occupied Palestine
Mohammad Saleh, a sixty-six-year-old Palestinian resident of Tel Rumeida, al-Khalil (Hebron), waited with his mule outside Shuhada checkpoint for nine hours over the course of two days. He spent four hours waiting before being allowed through on Monday (15/12/14) evening.
He then spent five hours Tuesday (16/12/14) attempting to cross in the opposite direction before eventually turning back, after being denied repeatedly by Israeli forces claiming that donkeys, mules, horses, and carts are not permitted to pass through the checkpoint.
Shuhada checkpoint serves as the only clear passage between the H2 (Israeli-controlled) neighbourhood of Tel Rumeida and the H1 (Palestinian Authority-administered) neighbourhood of Bab Al-Zawiye, a route many Palestinians must traverse regularly in the course of their work and daily routines.
Mohammad arrived at the Bab Al-Zawiye side of the checkpoint at 13:40 on Mondayafternoon, his mule laden with empty milk jugs and saddlebags packed with various provisions. Israeli forces refused to let him through, claiming no animals were allowed past the checkpoint – a claim no one, including other international organisations at the scene as well as the Palestinian District Coordination Office for al-Khalil, had ever heard before.
Mohammad explained that he had been allowed pass the checkpoint on Monday morning, with the promise that he would be let back through later in the day. When he returned, he found a new shift of soldiers and no one willing let him pass. The soldier manning the checkpoint claimed he needed permission from his commander to open the gate, which would allow Mohammad to pass with his mule.
An ISM volunteer at the scene later received a call explaining that the Israeli military’s new rule stated that horses, donkeys and mules were not permitted to pass through the checkpoint. No one, however, was able to explain why Mohammad had been allowed through that morning, but denied on his way home. “Look at my ID,” he told the soldier at one point, “I’m in your computer. I go through here all the time.”
He stayed waiting, sitting beside his mule on the cold concrete base of the fence, even as the afternoon turned into evening. The sky grew dark, though the lights from the checkpoint still illuminated the fences,
turnstiles, and barbed wire. Even the soldier seemed concerned, telling him to please go home, as it was cold and late and staying would not help him. But Mohammad had already made it clear he would not leave. About ten minutes later the soldier finally opened the gate, saying it was the “last time” the he would be allowed through. Although Mohammad heard the soldier’s message, it was clear he would not heed it. He intended to continue to resist, no matter what anyone told him.
Sure enough, the following morning he was once again standing outside the checkpoint, this time on the Tel Rumeida side, with full milk jugs tied to the back of his patient mule. The soldiers presented multiple reasons from denying him passage, from a prohibition on taking anything through the checkpoint too large to be carried through the turnstile, to the new rule against allowing donkeys, horses and mules through. ISM volunteers attempted to find a solution, offering to carry the milk jugs around the checkpoint and meet Mohammad and his mule on the other side. The Israeli soldiers manning the checkpoint rejected all suggestions.
“Is the donkey the problem or the milk the problem?” One ISM activist eventually inquired.
“The donkey’s the problem,” a soldier replied.
The animal could have easily passed through the metal detector; only last night ISM activists had witnessed the ludicrous sight of Mohammad’s mule strolling through the concrete structure, empty milk jugs banging against the corners of the gateway. The turnstile served as the only obstacle to the his passage – an obstacle the soldier could easily remove by opening the gate on the other side of the metal detector and letting the mule pass around the turnstile and into Bab Al-Zawiye.
After five hours of waiting, Mohammad’s comment seemed by far the most accurate. “The soldiers are the problem,” he had responded in Arabic.
Barring donkeys, mules, and horses and carts is only the latest in a string of frustrating, humiliating regulations imposed on the people living near the checkpoint, who must pass through to work, study, and shop for essentials such as fresh food. Just a few days earlier a group of elderly Palestinians, ill people, young children, and teachers at a local school had also been forced to wait, some for up to three hours, before being allowed through.
When Israeli forces shut down the checkpoint after it was burnt nearly a month ago , barring most people from passing through for over three weeks, the Palestinians were forced to adapt. Local people know ways around the checkpoint; several paths lead through local families’ yards and over the walls and rubble between Tel Rumeida and Bab Al-Zawiye. These “rabbit runs,” however, are entirely unsuited to traveling through with a mule – as well as for anyone sick, elderly, or carrying large heavy objects.
Since the attempted burning of the checkpoint, the Israeli military rebuilt it larger and with more obstacles for anyone traveling through. One side now has a metal detector, and both sides are equipped with vertical metal turnstiles which are a major impediment to anyone trying to move through with large baggage. Soldiers continue to use the burning of the checkpoint to justify collective punishment imposed on the entire Palestinian population – young and old, men and women, healthy and ill – who live or work near the Shuhada checkpoint.
Any Palestinian might be stopped while attempting pass through. Even with the checkpoint officially open, far too many are. Soldiers regularly search bags and make people remove their belts and empty their pockets before being allowed through. These everyday humiliations accompany frequent ID checks and detentions, serving as an inescapable reminder of the illegal Israeli occupation. Soldiers present at checkpoints routinely cite newly imposed rules and orders from superior officers as reasons for denying people passage, but whether someone passes easily through a checkpoint or must wait for hours often seems to be determined by nothing more than the soldiers’ caprice.
Many Palestinians must pass through Shuhada checkpoint multiple times in a day, carrying items as diverse as fresh vegetables, tubs of oil, and gas for cooking and heating their homes. During the hours ISM volunteers stood waiting with Mohammed, they witnessed multiple people struggle with the cumbersome design of the rebuilt checkpoint. One woman was carrying too many grocery bags to be able to fit into the turnstile. Someone on the other side of the turnstile had to reach a hand between the metal bars and move one bag through, returning it to the woman once she had passed. Another Palestinian, this time a young boy, needed the help of multiple passers-by over several minutes to figure out how to get two tubs of oil
and a metal trolley through the turnstiles. Soldiers denied passage outright to boys who wanted to walk through the checkpoint with their bicycles.
At one point on Monday night, a group of off-duty soldiers ran up Shuhada street and stopped near the checkpoint to rest, stretching and laughing, their easy freedom of movement a stark contrast to experiences of Palestinians struggling through Shuhada checkpoint. Almost all of Shuhada street has been closed off to Palestinians, reserved instead for the settlers and soldiers occupying H2. Even Palestinians who manage to get through the checkpoint must pursue long, circuitous routes between the surrounding areas of al-Khalil. Many, especially the elderly or disabled, are effectively barred from traveling to significant portions of the city their families have lived in for generations.
“I want to resist,” Mohammad told the ISM activists the first day they waited with him. He made sure the man translating said it twice, to make sure the ISM volunteers understood. “I want to resist,” he said, after
over three long hours of waiting to be allowed through.
