Tag: Demolition - Page 3 - International Solidarity Movement

Nothing is simple in Palestine

17th November 2016 | International Solidarity Movement, al-Khalil team | Umm al-Kheir, occupied south Hebron Hills

Almost nothing in Palestine is what you expect for the most part. And, this is so true of the negative things you see. No matter how bad you think things are or expect them to be, you are almost always guaranteed that they will be worse (usually much worse) when you actually see them. And if you tell people the truth you may be thought to be making things up. But, this is Palestine and things are this unbelievable and this bad. This was true today for me (to put it mildly). Part of our team was invited by an “inspector” from the United Nations office based here in Al Khalil to go to a Bedouin village in the South Hebron Hills where a demolition took place yesterday.

The two demolished structures - with the illegal settlement in the background — The two demolished structures – with the illegal settlement in the background

Throughout my multiple trips here I’ve been to numerous house demolitions and even sat with families throughout the night waiting for the Israeli Occupation Forces to arrive to demolish a home. I was not ready for what I saw today. On our way to the village our U.N. inspector told us a bit of the history/story of the village. But, when we arrived I just wanted to vomit and I still have a knot in my stomach as I write this. The village of Umm Al Khair was established in 1952 on land the villagers purchased. They have the deed to prove ownership. The village is currently made up of approximately 140 Bedouin (registered) refugees, (approximately 28 families) who are mostly goat herders and farmers. They came here to the West Bank from “the 48” (Israel proper) after their home village was destroyed along with over 500 other Palestinian villages by Israeli Zionists, during the Nakba which created over 700,000 Palestinian refugees.
In 1982 the illegal colonial Zionist settlement of Carmel was established right next to them (less than 50 yards away) on land they stole from the village. Even though we couldn’t see inside the illegal settlement we were informed by the individual from the U.N. that the homes in the settlement were spacious, modern, had green grass lawns and gardens and even a small goldfish pond or two and all of the modern luxuries. In contrast, the village is made up of makeshift tents, crude metal and wood structures with dirt floors. There is no running water, no electricity, and a few crude toilet facilities.
Given that the villagers own the land, according to Israeli law, they cannot be legally evicted. However, the Zionists can make life so miserable that the villagers will give up and leave. This (in all probability) will never happen. They are strong, hopeful, and determined to stay here. This is their home. They will not leave. Even the children who have grown up here and gone off and got university degrees return here to their homes.

Israel uses the excuse that the villagers don’t have building permits. But Israel doesn’t grant but a few building permits per year (if any) to Palestinians.
Drones routinely fly over the village photographing , looking for any sign of new construction or rebuilding and the soldiers will return and demolish again and again. And if a demolition order is given for a particular home or building, it is permanent and nothing can be built on that spot again.
There have been 5 demolitions in the past year: October 27, 2015; 1 in April 2016; 2 this past August; and the most recent one yesterday where two structures were demolished. Their Community Center which housed the kindergarten, a computer center, an after school program to help kids with homework, and a library has been demolished several times. There are some international aid programs such as the International Red Cross, several U.N. programs, and from the European Union that have helped with building materials and /or small structures for living. None of these programs, however, can help with the Community Center because it does not provide shelter for people or animals. So it is the children who suffer the brunt of these losses.

Rubble from the demolition, with the luxurious houses in the illegal settlement in the background

While one of our team members was conducting a video interview I went outside and was swarmed by young children. All smiling, laughing and excited by my presence and attention to them. All eager to show me around the village. Show me their goat herds, their small playground and push them on the swings, take their photographs with their goats. They all appeared to be happy and none the worse for ware. But what I am describing is and has been their life. They know nothing else. It doesn’t make it any less excusable for how these villagers are treated. And this is only one observation from one person visiting one of the scores of similar villages throughout the West Bank. An older woman whose home was demolished in August of this year stated before we left, “We just need the demolitions to stop. We are getting sick and tired of it.” Our U.N. person then said, everyone including most of the aid programs are feeling the same way as this woman and little by little pay a bit less attention as time goes on. Even the government, The Palestinian Authority was called this morning about yesterdays demolition and they stated they couldn’t come to look they had other things to do today.

Residential dwelling of some of the families

I’ve always thought (and said) that somewhere inside the Israeli Zionist must still have some small bit of humanity left in them. After what I witnessed today I cannot believe that there is even a shred of humanity left in any of them. Today was by far the most overwhelming and depressing day I’ve had in all of my trips here to Palestine, and I’ve seen quite a few depressing and overwhelming things during these trips.
What can you do? Join the Boycott movement in your country. Write to your elected government officials to stop funding the various degrees of genocide that Israel is committing here in Palestine. Write letters to the editor of your newspapers. Talk to your families, friends, neighbors and let them know the truth. Speak up. As long as our country continues to support the behavior of Israel with our tax dollars we are all responsible!

Israeli military demolishes two houses, injures five Palestinians with live ammunition in Qalandia Refugee Camp

7th July 2016 | International Solidarity Movement, al-Khalil team | Qalandia Refugee Camp, occupied Palestine

The holy month of Ramadan has come to an end. But in Palestine, as in Iraq, Syria, Turkey and too many other places, Muslim families are not able to enjoy this special time of the year in peace and comfort. On Sunday night at 11pm, more than 1000 Israeli soldiers, according to locals’ estimations, entered Qalandia Refugee Camp in the Occupied West Bank. The huge military incursion sparked clashes in which 15 Palestinians were shot. Occupation Forces used live ammunition and rubber coated steel bullets on civilians while firing tear gas and stun grenades at approaching ambulances, preventing Palestinian Red Crescent medics from reaching the wounded.

13598979_10208235400097380_874105967_n — Red Crescent ambulance damaged by Israeli forces

Among the injured was a 19 year old girl and a 15 year old boy, each shot with live ammunition and brought to the hospital in serious condition. The army entered the camp to demolish the homes of the families of two young men, Anan Habsah and Issa Asaaf, both 21, who carried out knife attacks and killed one soldier in East Jerusalem on December 23rd last year. Both were killed by soldiers while carrying out the attacks, so the demolition of the homes comes only as a form of collective punishment to terrorize the families and the people in Qalandia, who repeatedly suffer from night raids and house demolitions as well as beatings and arrests by the Israeli occupation forces.

Anan’s family first evacuated their home in January when the Israeli high court announced their decision to demolish the houses. The displaced family members lived spread across the area, staying at friends’ and family’s homes in Ramallah and elsewhere in Qalandia for two months until the lawyer suggested they could move back in in March. The father, Abu Saleh, refused to leave his home during the two month period however, staying in a tent outside the building. Three weeks ago the two families were yet again told to evacuate their homes and were informed that the demolition would take place within five days. However, the exact date of the demolition was not disclosed. Sunday night it finally happened without advance notice, and only two days before the end of Ramadan and the beginning of Eid celebrations.

13576761_1008462312537077_8096730517731939773_o (1) — In the ruins of his family home

Issa and his family have experienced severe trauma at the hands of occupation forces before, when he and his two younger sisters were brutally assaulted by Israeli soldiers at a checkpoint near East Jerusalem. The incident left one of Issa’s sisters unable to speak for three months, and caused the Assaf family significant distress and anguish.

Both Issa and Anan were imprisoned for significant periods of time; Anan at age fifteen for a period of eight months, and Issa for seven months in the year before his death.The families’ suffering did not end there, however. In the week following Issa’s release from prison, he was again assaulted at his home in Qalandia when soldiers dragged him from his home in the middle of the night and beat him in the street without justification.

The Habsah family also bears the long lasting scars of pain and trauma. Anan’s imprisonment as a child devastated the family, and they say their boy was never the same afterwards. “I know he did not want to die … but when a boy is put in jail, deprived of sleep, and deprived of his childhood, something in him changes,” said Anan’s uncle.

13600192_1008462409203734_4393730134126912464_n — Inside the Asaaf family home

When we arrived on Monday morning, neighbors and relatives had already begun to gather in support of the families. Anan’s aunt explained to us that this is the third time her family had been forcibly displaced; first in 1948, when the family was expelled from their home in West Jerusalem, and later again in 1975 when their modest home in the refugee camp was destroyed for the first time.

UNRWA spokesman Chris Gunness condemned the demolitions on Monday, stating that punitive home demolitions “inflict distress and suffering on those who have not committed the action which led to the demolition, and they often endanger people and property in the vicinity.” A 2005 study by the Israeli army itself concluded that home demolitions are not effective as a deterrent or punitive measure, but the practice still continues. According to the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, about fifty thousand residential structures have been destroyed by Israel since 1967.

“This is psychological warfare. In the whole camp of more than ten thousand people, no one slept [last night], and they did not go to work today,” Adnan Habsah, the uncle of Anan said. Qalandia Refugee Camp has long been subjected to various forms of collective punishment by Israeli forces, and is severely affected by all aspects of the Illegal Occupation. The camp is located within area “C” and greater (East) Jerusalem, near the main checkpoint between Ramallah and Jerusalem and beside the apartheid wall. According to the UNRWA, the construction and expansion of the Wall in the early 2000s has drastically affected the economic situation in the camp by isolating it from the Israeli job market and Jerusalem. According to the most recent data, Qalandia’s unemployment rate is as high as 40 percent, compared to Occupied Palestine’s overall rate of 26.6 percent.

The Camp was originally established to house some 5,000 Palestinians who were displaced by the 1948 Nakba. Today, according to Afaq Environmental Magazine, the population of Qalandia Refugee Camp has reached about 14,000. Under the 1993 Oslo Agreement, the whole territory of Qalandia Refugee Camp is classified as area “C,” where Israel retains full control over security and administration related to the territory; however, Qalandia camp, like other Palestinian refugee camps, is under the administrative control of UNRWA.

As the uncle of Anan said when we spoke to him on Monday, “This is a UN refugee camp. The whole world owns this place. You cannot destroy it.”

13606950_1008462755870366_2186377381835131627_n — Abu Saleh, father of Anan Habsah

Demolitions in Khirbet Jenba, South Hebron Hills

23rd March 2016 | B’Tselem | South Hebron Hills, occupied Palestine

This morning, the Israeli Civil Administration demolished a home, shed and an animal enclosure in Khirbet Jenbah, in the Masafer Yatta area of the southern Hebron Hills. The authorities also confiscated solar panels donated by an international aid agency.

Photos from Today’s demolition. Credit: Nasser Nawaj’a, B’Tselem

Residents view this move as a message from the state ahead of a High Court hearing tomorrow, 23 March 2016, at 11:30am, when Israel’s High Court of Justice will hold a hearing on a petition filed by the residents of Masafer Yatta against the Israeli Authorities’ intention to expel them from their homes due to the establishment of “Firing Zone 918.”

The hearing will be the first held in the case since the two-year mediation process between the parties failed. Immediately after the mediation attempts ended, Israel destroyed 22 homes in the communities of Khirbet Jenbah and Khirbet al-Halawah.

Please note B’Tselem is not part of the proceedings but we will be able to assist visitors with interpretation. Please contact me by SMS for further details.

Photo blog: Visit to Masafer Yatta, as the efforts to expel its residents escalate

The 13th anniversary of Rachel Corrie’s death

15th March 2016 | International Solidarity Movement, al-Khalil team | Gaza, occupied Palestine

Today marks the thirteenth anniversary since the passing of fellow ISM activist Rachel Corrie (April 10, 1979 – March 16, 2003). Rachel was tragically crushed to death under the front blade of an Israeli military, American funded, Caterpillar D9R bulldozer near Rafah, in the southern part of the Gaza Strip. Rachel died whilst placing herself in the path of the military bulldozer to protect the family and their home that the bulldozer was on route for and due to be demolished. Rachel’s death created a global outcry towards the Israeli military’s actions and prompted an international investigation under the contested circumstances in which she died during the height of the second intifada.

Rachel had come to Gaza during part of her senior-year college assignment that connected her home town with Rafah in a sister cities project. Whilst in Palestine, Rachel had engaged with other International Solidarity Movement (ISM) activists in efforts to prevent the Israeli army’s continued demolition of Palestinian homes in operations that the Israeli military claims were aimed at eliminating weapons smuggling tunnels.

Less than two months after Rachel had arrived into Palestine, on March 16, 2003, Corrie was killed. Her death came during an Israeli military operation after a three-hour peaceful demonstration between occupying Israeli forces operating two armoured bulldozers and eight ISM activists.

The exact nature of her death and the culpability of the bulldozer operator have since been disputed largely through extended judicial proceedings, with fellow ISM protestors that were at the scene saying that the Israeli soldier operating the bulldozer deliberately ran over Corrie, and Israeli eyewitnesses saying that it was an accident since the bulldozer operator could not see her.

Joe Carr, an American ISM activist who used the assumed name of Joseph Smith during his time in Gaza, gave the following account: “Still wearing her fluorescent jacket, she knelt down at least 15 meters in front of the bulldozer, and began waving her arms and shouting, just as activists had successfully done dozens of times that day…. When it got so close that it was moving the earth beneath her, she climbed onto the pile of rubble being pushed by the bulldozer…. Her head and upper torso were above the bulldozer’s blade, and the bulldozer operator and co-operator could clearly see her. Despite this, the operator continued forward, which caused her to fall back, out of view of the driver. He continued forward, and she tried to scoot back, but was quickly pulled underneath the bulldozer. We ran towards him, and waved our arms and shouted; one activist with the megaphone. But the bulldozer operator continued forward, until Corrie was all the way underneath the central section of the bulldozer. “

Corrie’s father, Craig Corrie has said “I know there’s stuff you can’t see out of the double glass windows.” But he has denied that as a valid excuse, saying “you’re responsible for knowing what’s in front of your blade… It’s a no brainer that this was gross negligence”. He added that “they had three months to figure out how to deal with the activists that were there.”

The report on the autopsy findings that were initially denied to the public by Israel were later revealed by the Human Rights Watch, who say a copy was provided to them by Craig Corrie, along with a translation provided by the U.S. Department of State. In the report they quote Professor Yehuda Hiss, who performed the autopsy, as concluding, “Her death was caused by pressure on the chest (mechanical asphyxiation) with fractures of the ribs and vertebrae of the dorsal spinal column and scapulas, and tear wounds in the right lung with haemorrhaging of the pleural cavities.”

The Israeli army conducted an investigation into Corrie’s death, which concluded that her death was an accident, and that the driver of the bulldozer could not see Corrie due to limited visibility from his cab. Many have criticised the investigation as bogus and are outraged at the level of direct negligence displayed by the driver and the impunity that the Israeli army receives under Israeli law.

Corrie’s family has been involved in ongoing legal battles through the Israeli supreme court in an attempt to attain justice for Rachel.

Following extended trials in an attempt to attain justice for their daughter, the Corrie family lost their latest appeal in the Israeli Supreme Court on the twelfth of February, 2015, exempting the Israeli defense ministry from liability for actions by its forces that it deemed to be “wartime activity,” but wrongly refused to assess whether those actions violated applicable laws of armed conflict, Human Rights Watch said.

A statement from the Corrie family on the twelfth of February, 2015 read, “Today we received word from our attorneys that the Supreme Court of Israel dismissed our appeal in the wrongful death case of our daughter and sister Rachel Corrie. Our family is disappointed but not surprised. We had hoped for a different outcome, though we have come to see through this experience how deeply all of Israel’s institutions are implicated in the impunity enjoyed by the Israeli military.”

Human Rights Watch documented that in the primary stages of Rachel’s trial, Israeli investigators failed to call any Palestinian witnesses, threatened to indict other foreign volunteers who witnessed Corrie’s death while questioning them about the incident, and failed even to ask witnesses to draw a map of the area at the time of the incident. The initial military inquiry into her death even concluded that “no signs substantiate [the] assertion that Ms. Corrie was run over by a bulldozer,” a conclusion that the military later reversed.

Rachel’s death is an extremely sad and timely reminder of the callus acts of negligence and the immunity that the Israeli military receives under Israeli law. However, Corrie’s death is no way in vein nor is it forgotten. The spirit she displayed in her actions along with her will to take up the fight against injustice to those whom it is imposed upon by the zionist regime will forever be remembered.

At the time of her death, Yaser Arafat, the first President of the Palestinian Authority, offered his condolences and gave the “blessings of the Palestinian people” to Corrie. The municipality of Ramallah in the West Bank dedicated a street to Rachel Corrie whilst a cafe in Al-Khalil/Hebron bears her name. Yearly demonstrations are held in the name of Rachel by Palestinians and by activists for human rights alike. The memory and the fight for justice displayed by Rachel will not be forgotten and will continue to be remembered by those fighting the war of injustice and human rights abuses that plague the Palestinian people to this day and onwards, until occupation is non existent and there is peace.

Jerusalem family threatened with demolition order

8th February 2016 | International Solidarity Movement, al-Quds team | Jerusalem, occupied Palestine

Israeli authorities on 2nd February 2016 issued a demolition order for the fence and gate surrounding the Amro family’s home in Wadi al-Joz in occupied East Jerusalem. The family was given 48 hours to remove the fence and gate before an imminent demolition.

The house is home to Nureddin and Sharif Amro, two blind brothers living with their elderly mother, their wives and their seven children, all of whom have lived in this house for their whole lives. A part of the home was demolished on March 31, 2015 when Jerusalem municipal authorities and police surrounded the house at 5:30 am, locked the Amros in one room, and demolished part of the house around them and much of the yard, trees and the wall that protected them from the busy street. During this demolition, Israeli forces attacked Nureddin’s brother as well as his children and wife, and buried their belongings in the demolished rooms under rubble. This demolition was completely illegal even under Israeli law, as the family never received a demolition order.

All the Palestinian homes in the neighbourhood adjacent to the old city in Wadi al-Joz are under threat of demolition by Israeli authorities as the land has been zoned by the municipality as a national park. Israeli authorities have long used this strategy of land zoning and confiscation across occupied East Jerusalem in their campaign of ethnic cleansing against Palestinians, while continuing to promote settlement building, which is illegal in the occupied territory including East Jerusalem under article 49 of the 4th Geneva convention.

This demolition order comes at a time when Israeli forces are stepping up demolitions of Palestinian homes, leaving many families homeless. The Amro family’s only hope now is that the Israeli courts will actually consider their appeal against the demolition of the fence.

Additional Resources:

Read an interview with Nureddin Amro about the house demolition: http://thisweekinpalestine.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/February-214-2016.pdf (page 24 f.)

Nureddin’s article about his home demolition in The Washington Post: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/israel-wrecked-my-home-now-it-wants-my-land/2015/07/31/79808fca-36cf-11e5-9d0f-7865a67390ee_story.html?tid=pm_opinions_pop_b

Report on demolition of the Amro family house in March 2015: https://palsolidarity.org/2015/04/home-demolition-in-jerusalem-they-want-our-land-we-need-help-to-protect-it/