Tag: CNN

CNN: West Bank wall still triggers weekly protests in village

12 February 2010

Tear gas, stun grenades, rubber bullets and rocks: It must be Friday afternoon in the West Bank village of Bil’in.

It’s billed as a nonviolent protest against what Israel calls its security barrier, what the Palestinians call the apartheid separation wall.

The barrier separates the villagers from their farmlands. Protesters come from all over the world to support the Palestinian cause.

A few Palestinian youths covering their faces with scarves throw stones at a couple dozen Israeli soldiers in full riot gear and armed with tear gas, stun grenades and bullets.

The protest soon degenerates into chaos as it has nearly every week for the past five years. Six protesters have been killed in Bil’in and the neighboring village of Na’alin since July 2008, according to the Palestinian group, Popular Struggle, one of several organizers of the weekly protests. Several hundred have been injured by tear gas canisters and Israeli bullets. One hundred Israeli soldiers have been injured from stone throwing, according to the Israeli military.

The organizers say they have little control over the youths who prefer to throw stones at the rallies. They insist that non-violence is the best weapon they have to fight against Israel’s wall and occupation.

Israel has increased its nighttime raids into the West Bank in recent months, arresting those it believes have acted violently or those who are suspected of organizing the protests.

“They cannot be above the law, and that’s what we’re dealing with,” Israel Defense Forces spokesman, Peter Lerner said, referring to the protest organizers.

Critics say Israel is simply arresting those who oppose its policies towards the Palestinians. Mohamed Othman, one of the organizers of Stop the Wall campaign, was detained in September upon his return from Norway where he was lobbying the government for support.

He said he was held for four months — three in solitary confinement — then released without charge. Israel does not comment on these cases.

“We can see that Israel is starting to be afraid of the popular resistance because it’s coming from inside the people and the people decide,” Othman said.

Israel has arrested at least 150 protesters from the two villages’ demonstrations over the past two years, according to Popular Struggle. More than 30 are still locked up, the organization said. The Israeli military told CNN it was checking those figures.

One coordinator of the Bil’in Popular Committee Against the Wall, Abdallah Abu Rahmah, also a teacher, was arrested in December. One of the charges against him was arms possession for collecting tear gas canisters used by the Israeli military against demonstrators and showcasing them.

The anti-wall demonstrators say this is a grass-roots movement. The Israeli military accuses those it has arrested of incitement.

The IDF denies it has changed its tactics in dealing with the anti-wall protesters, even though the number being arrested has risen sharply. The IDF on the ground now considers Bil’in a closed military zone on Fridays.

CNN was refused access by Israeli military forces stationed outside the village, who said only those who lived in the neighborhood could enter. But IDF spokesman Peter Lerner said the closure was meant only for protesters.

A few hours later, in Bil’in, the Israeli soldiers withdrew from the village under cover of tear gas. Some Palestinian youths followed them with stones, while the vast majority of nonviolent protesters head home.

Same time, same place, next Friday.

CNN: In Gaza, living with anger and fear

By Ashley Fantz | CNN

(CNN) “Listen, listen to this!” shouts Fida Qishta as the crackling of rockets is heard over her phone receiver.

“It’s difficult for anybody to imagine that in a second, maybe when I am talking to you on the phone, maybe something [will] happen to me or to my family,” the Palestinian blogger told CNN from her home in Gaza.

She has gotten little sleep during the past 10 days as Israel continues its attacks on her homeland, attacks the Jewish state says are designed to stop months of rocket strikes on southern Israel by Hamas militants in Gaza.

Qishta writes furiously, hoping to convey the horror she sees. “The Israeli army are cannibals. They don’t look for civilians, for children or women. Most attacks happen on families, on their houses,” she said, her voice rising in anger.

For what Qishta cannot put into words, there are agonizing photographs: Bloody Palestinian children, their skin burned, lie limp in their helpless parents’ arms. Hospitals, filled to capacity, redefine chaos as much-needed medical supplies are stalled a short distance away at the blocked border with Egypt.

At one hospital, a man bows his head and cries. He rests his hand over the bellies of his two toddler relatives. They look uninjured; their eyes are shut. They were both killed Monday.

They are the faces of a Palestinian death toll that has surpassed 500.

“There’s always two sides to every story,” said Dov Hartuv, who lives close to the southern border in Israel’s Kibbutz Nahal Oz, which he says has been hit by Hamas rockets in the past. Israel has said its campaign is aimed at stopping Hamas rockets from terrorizing its own civilians.

Asked about Fida Qishta’s strong comments, Hartuv said it’s hard not to react.

“But I am not going to argue with her,” he said. “We are in the eye of the storm just as she is.”

At the Egyptian border, Antar Mahmood stands and waits. At his feet are drums of cooking oil, food and a heavy bag of supplies he is trying to take to his family. He says his house was flattened by the Israeli airstrikes.

But Israeli and Egyptian guards aren’t letting anything or anyone get through this part of the Gaza border.

“I just called home and asked what happened, and they said your son Mohammed has been wounded,” he said. “He’s alive, but he’s wounded.”

In Israel, where four civilians and one soldier have been killed since the attack on Gaza began, Israelis have been gathering every morning on a southern hilltop to watch Apache helicopters. Nearby, reporters who have been banned from entering Gaza set up tripods and position their long lenses.

“It is somewhat surreal to be standing on grassy hillsides with Israeli civilians sitting in chairs, watching the ongoing Israeli military offensive,” Dion Nissenbaum, a McClatchy Newspapers Middle East correspondent, said in an e-mail to CNN.

“They don’t seem to be bothered by the occasional Qassam rockets and mortar rounds that explode in the surrounding fields,” Nissenbaum wrote in his blog, Checkpoint Jerusalem. “They have come to watch the war.”

Dov Hartuv, who describes himself as a fatalist, said he has a fortified safe room in his home.

“I’m not really afraid for myself. What will happen will happen,” he said. “But it certainly is very frightening and nerve-wracking to live under these conditions, and I’m sure everyone is affected by it. … We think about people on our side and on the other side who are suffering and hope that it will end as quickly as possible.”

From her part-time home in Durham, North Carolina, Palestinian mother and blogger Laila El-Haddad is constantly talking to her father in Gaza. Cell phone coverage is spotty, but the two manage to video conference using Skype.

“I’m thinking about my family all the time,” she said. “I have lived through Israeli bombardments in the past, but this is much fiercer than anything ever before.”

A few years ago, during air raids by Israeli jets over northern Gaza, she was living with her son in Gaza City.

She tried to tell the 2-year-old that it was just popcorn popping outside. He replied, “I don’t like that kind of popcorn.”

Even today, in the quiet of an American suburb, the boy still cannot sleep through the night.

“He remembers the shelling and gets up and crawls into bed with me,” she said.

Her father, Moussa El-Haddad, is a physician who volunteered Monday at Gaza’s Shifa Hospital. On Sunday, a Norwegian doctor at Shifa told reporters that the facility was overwhelmed with so many “patients lying everywhere” that they were dying before doctors had a chance to get to them.

Moussa El-Haddad says that after dealing with death at work, he comes home to robo-calls: “Urgent message: Warning to the citizens of Gaza. Hamas is using you as human shields. Do not listen to them. Hamas has abandoned you and are hiding in their shelters. Give up now.”

His daughter said he hangs up in disgust every time.

To ease the dark mood, Laila El-Haddad asked her father how his exotic pet bird is faring through the airstrikes.

“My dad has got a sense of humor,” she said. “He told me that it used to go ‘chirp, chirp,’ but now it goes ‘boom, boom.’ “

CNN: Israeli bulldozer kills American protester

RAFAH, Gaza (CNN) — An Israeli bulldozer killed an American woman Sunday who had been protesting its use to destroy Palestinian houses in Rafah.

The woman, Rachel Corrie, 23, of Olympia, Washington, was taken to a hospital, where she died of her injuries. She was a senior at Evergreen State College in Olympia but was not enrolled this quarter, the school said.

Since January, she had been working with the Palestinian-led International Solidarity Movement to protest Israeli actions in the occupied territories, said Huwaida Arraf, co-founder of the group.

Corrie had recently appeared in a televised mock trial in Gaza in which President Bush was accused of war crimes for his alleged support of Israel’s actions in Gaza.

“This morning, when she was killed, she was attempting to prevent the Israeli military from destroying Palestinian civilian homes,” Arraf said.

“She was raising her hands and yelling at the bulldozer driver to stop,” Arraf said. “The bulldozer driver paid no attention. … He buried Rachel with dirt, which ended up, obviously, knocking her down. Then he ran over her, and then reversed and ran over her again.”

Other witnesses, however, reported that Corrie had scaled a pile of dirt but then lost her footing and fell backward behind it, out of sight of the bulldozer operator. The bulldozer continued moving forward, covering Corrie with dirt and then crushing her.

It was not clear whether the bulldozer operator could hear protesters’ yells over the sound of the machine.

A member of the solidarity group, who identified herself as Alice from London, said she and Corrie had sat for about three hours in front of houses belonging to their friends. The driver of the bulldozer must have seen them, she said, but drove over Corrie anyway.

She emerged from under the bulldozer saying, “My back is broken, my back is broken,” Alice told CNN.

Tom Dale, who said he was about 10 yards from Corrie, said she was in plain view and was wearing an orange jacket. As the bulldozer lifted a pile of earth, it moved forward and caught Corrie under its blade, he said.

Israel: ‘Very regrettable incident’

“This is a very regrettable incident,” an Israeli military source said. “This is a group of protesters who are acting very irresponsibly. They are putting everyone in danger, the Palestinians, themselves, our forces, by intentionally placing themselves in a combat zone. We are checking the details of the incident and believe it to be a very regrettable incident.”

Arraf said the activists use only nonviolent tactics. “We definitely don’t believe that this was an accident,” she said.

Corrie’s parents, who live in Charlotte, North Carolina, said their daughter felt an obligation to help others.

“I’ve raised my children to be independent and to make their own choices, and I knew that I couldn’t tell her not to go,” said her mother, Cindy Corrie.

“We were very proud of her,” said Craig Corrie, her father. “We’re very proud of her courage and what she stood for, and we’re very proud of Rachel. She’s 23 years old, and while that seems young to me, it’s old enough for her to make up her own mind about what she wants to do. There’s no holding her back.”

The U.S. State Department said it was in contact with Corrie’s family.

“The United States deeply regrets this tragic death of an American citizen,” spokesman Lou Fintor said. “We offer our sincere condolences to Ms. Corrie’s family.”

Fintor said the United States urged Israel and the Israel Defense Forces to conduct “an immediate and full investigation into the circumstances of this death.”

The United States also repeated its call for the IDF to take all possible measures to avoid harming civilians, Fintor said.