The village of Iraq Burin in the the southern region of Nablus will re-commence its weekly demonstrations this Friday, the 25th of September after a hiatus to observe the holy month of Ramadan. Over 100 dunums (100,000 sq metres) of farmers’ land has been annexed by the illegal settlement of Bracha and the village is subject to constant attacks from settlers and soldiers alike. Demonstrators will meet at 12:30 after the midday prayer, when international activists will march with residents to the edge of the village for a public prayer on the contested land.
West Bank villages such as Bil’in and Nil’in have proved what success peaceful protest can achieve to capture both public and media interest and draw attention to the detrimental effects of the Israeli occupation on rural life in Palestine. Iraq Burin is determined to follow their example and hopes its demonstrations can continue to host a growing presence of international activists.
Iraq Burin held three demonstrations in August, despite attacks from armed settlers and heavy-handed “crowd dispersal” techniques by the Israeli army: the ubiquitous use of sound bombs, tear gas, rubber-coated bullets and live ammunition. A journalist from Al-Jazeera was beaten by a settler and a local man sustained stomach injuries when hit by a tear gas canister. Over the month of Ramadan, the village has been holding workshops in place of protests, exploring philosophies and methods of non-violent resistance in history.
Come and give your support to the villagers of Iraq Burin, and show them they are not alone in their struggle!
Around 150 protesters gathered in Ni’lin to protest against the Apartheid Wall. A month ago, the concrete Wall was put up in Ni’lin and this Friday was the first time the demonstrators managed to displace a part of it.
The Friday prayer during Ramadan took place in the olive groves of Ni’lin. The residents of Ni’lin were joined by international and Israeli solidarity activist in the demonstration against the Wall Israeli authorities have built on the village land. The protesters walked carrying Palestinian flags and chanting against the Occupation. Tires were lit on fire and places next to the illegal Wall, whilst a Palestinian flag was placed on top of the Wall.
The Israeli armed forces used a severe amount of tear gas against the protesters and many of them had to receive help from the medical team due to respiratory problems. On several occasions, the soldiers aimed directly at the demonstrations and one international activist and two Palestinians were hit by the tear gas canisters. The army also brought a tanker truck spraying people with stinky chemical water. Some local boys responded to the military violence by throwing stones.
Another group of demonstrators tried to tear down a part of the Wall. With a small pulley system, that was tied to an olive tree. A strong action showing that the Wall can be moved and hopefully one day will not be on the land of Ni’lin or anywhere in Palestine.
Around 3.30pm the Israeli army entered through the Wall, shooting tear gas and chasing some of the protesters back towards the village. The demonstration concluded at 4pm.
The concrete Wall, deemed illegal by international law, being pulled down in Ni’lin
Protesters use a pulley system to move the Wall
Demonstrators pull down the Wall
Israeli forces commonly use tear-gas canisters, rubber coated steel bullets and live ammunition against demonstrators.
5 June 2009: Yousef Akil Srour (36) was shot in the chest with 0.22 caliber live ammunition and pronounced dead upon arrival at a Ramallah hospital.
13 March 2009: Tristan Anderson (37), an American citizen, was shot in the head with a high velocity tear gas projectile. He is currently at Tel Hashomer hospital near Tel Aviv with uncertain prospects for his recovery.
28 December 2008: Mohammed Khawaje (20) was shot in the head with 5.56mm caliber live ammunition. He died in a Ramallah hospital 3 days later on 31 December 2008.
28 December 2008: Arafat Rateb Khawaje (22) was shot in the back with 5.56mm caliber live ammunition and pronounced dead upon arrival at a Ramallah hospital.
30 July 2008: Yousef Amira (17) was shot in the head with two rubber coated steel bullets. He died in a Ramallah hospital 5 days later on 4 August 2008.
29 July 2008: Ahmed Mousa (10) was shot in the forehead with 5.56mm caliber live ammunition and pronounced dead upon arrival at a Ramallah hospital.
In total, 40 people have been shot by Israeli forces with live ammunition in Ni’lin: 11 were shot with 5.56mm caliber live ammunition and 29 were shot with 0.22 caliber live ammunition.
Additionally, Israeli arrest and intimidation campaigns on West Bank villages that demonstrate against the Wall, have led to the arrests of over 76 Palestinians in Ni’lin alone as of June 2009.
Since May 2008, residents of Ni’lin have been organizing and participating in unarmed demonstrations against construction of the Apartheid Wall. Despite being deemed illegal by the International Court of Justice in 2004, the Occupation continues to build the Wall, further annexing Palestinian land.
The current entrance to the village will be closed and replaced by a tunnel to be built under Road 446. This tunnel will allow for the closure of the road to Palestinian vehicles, turning road 446 into a segregated settler-only road . Ni’lin will be effectively split into 2 parts (upper Ni’lin and lower Ni’lin), as road 446 runs between the village. The tunnel is designed to give Israeli occupation forces control of movement over Ni’lin residents, as it can be blocked with a single military vehicle.
On 15 September, we join farmers and residents, including a contingent of women, youths and men, in a non-violent walk to the border region east of Beit Hanoun in the north of Gaza, singing and chanting as they march past Israeli army razed fields and destroyed water tanks and cisterns. The march is in the tradition of popular resistance in Palestine, more widely known worldwide in the villages of Bil’in and Ni’lin, but equally practised all over occupied Palestine, including Gaza, in the simplest of acts: farming and accessing land which the Israeli authorities’ policies continue to attempt to render barren and void of Palestinian life.
[In the two well-known occupied West Bank regions, Bil’in and Ni’lin, the Israeli occupation army has ramped things up to such a violent suppression of non-violent voices that the April 17th killing of Bil’in villager, Basem Abu Rahme (29, strong, gentle, slain by an Israeli-soldier-shot, high-velocity tear gas canister to the chest from a close distance) , was the 18th murder of non-violent protesters against the separation Wall (11 of these murdered were under 18 years; 7 were 15 years old or under).]
The Beit Hanoun protesters’ message: for Israeli soldiers to stop targeting farmers, for Israeli authorities to end the (intentional) practice of driving Palestinian farmers off of their land. They call also for access to water, highlighting that in that region all but a single water source have been destroyed. This tank serves 40 dunams (1 dunam is 1,000 square metres) of farmland.
What has led these citizens to take up flags and placards? An on-going series of Israeli army targeted-shootings, tank and bulldozer invasions, destruction of farmland, and kidnapping of Palestinian civilians, rendering even the simple act of tending trees on farmland impossible or highly dangerous, risking injury or death from Israeli gunfire.
An exaggeration?
Since the end of Israel’s 23 day winter massacre of Gaza, another eight Palestinian civilians have been killed in the Strip’s border regions, including four minors (3 boys and 1 girl) and one mentally disabled adult. Another 28 Palestinians, including eight minors (7 boys, 1 girl) and 2 women, have been injured by Israeli shooting and shelling, including by the use of ‘flechette’ dart-bombs on civilian areas.
It’s an apt name and a struggle that goes back months, years, but gets almost no recognition in the international corporate media. Neither civilian deaths while farming, nor the steady non-violent resistance to Israeli land annexation seem to be sensational enough.
But while these Beit Hanoun civilians are unarmed, they are not naïve, not passive.
“Buhrrrah, wa dam, nafdiq ya Falasteen: Our soul and blood, we sacrifice for you Palestine,” they chant.
They tell us their first choice is to live and farm peacefully in their region near the border to Israel. But if it comes to it, they will die on their land, for their land, for their families, while farming.
They have little-to-no choice.
With Gaza’s borders firmly sealed shut under the internationally-complicit, Israeli-led and Egyptian-backed siege on Gaza, there is no option for emigration, no option for work in Israel or Egypt, no option to start up new businesses importing goods…
When considering these civilians and farmers, it is imperative to recognize that 95% of Gaza’s industry has been shut down by Israeli attacks and the siege. That roughly one third of Gaza’s farmland has been swallowed by a no-go, Israeli-imposed ‘buffer zone’ in which Israeli soldiers reserve the right to shoot-to-kill.
Roughly a decade ago, Israeli authorities unilaterally established an off-limits ‘buffer zone’ on the 150 metres of land extending along the Green Line border between Gaza and Israel. Since inception, the ‘buffer zone’ has swollen to over 1 km in the east and 2 km in the north (during and immediately after Israel’s 23 day massacre of Gaza in winter 2008/2009), to the present 300 metre off-limits area (heralded in May 2009 by the dropping of leaflets which stated:
“The Israeli Defence Forces repeat their alert forbidding the coming close to the border fence at a distance less than 300 metres. Who gets close will subject himself to danger whererby the IDF will take necessary procedures to drive him away which will include shooting when necessary.”
The ‘buffer zone’ swallows prime, fertile agricultural land, cutting off another means of self-sustenance in a Strip that has been under siege since after Hamas’ election in 2006.
International bodies, including the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), the World Food Program (WFP), and the World Health Organization (WHO) note that between 35% to 60% of Gaza’s agricultural industry has been destroyed and rendered useless [from the winter Israeli massacre of Gaza and from various Israeli invasions, attacks, burning of crops, and the impact of the siege].
Whereas formerly Gaza production met half the Strip’s agricultural needs, the effects of attacks and siege on Gaza has devolved the agricultural sector to what the Gaza-based Agricultural Development Association of Gaza aptly cited as a “destruction of all means of life.”
We pass farmers on a donkey cart loaded with plastic jugs filled with water. They ask how they are supposed to water, let alone reach, the paltry few trees on their land near the ‘buffer zone’.
We continue walking, getting a close look at the heaps of rubble which were water tanks and wells. The march reaches a larger well, it’s covering now at a wounded 45 degree slant, the sweet water within off-limits to farmers and their trees.
While speeches are made, pledging to continue to farm, continue to non-violently resist this flagrant Israeli bullying and land-grab policy, some of the weathered farmers in the area approach, keen to share their miseries to those who would listen.
Salem As Saed is 59, has 4.5 dunams of land which once held orange and olive trees until occupational bulldozers ground them to the earth. He has 17 children who he is unable to support; they are all dependent on food-aid handouts.
Awad, (55) has 17 in family and no means of income. His land has been razed, water sources destroyed. Of the 93 dunams of trees he once had, the vast majority have been destroyed. Awad has planted new trees, but these are scant in number and failing from want of water.
He has a further 30 dunams closer to the border, which he cannot access, has not accessed in years. Two years ago, Awad was shot by Israeli soldiers in the area of the Israeli watch tower at the border. He says that he was working with his son some 500 metres from the fence when the Israeli soldiers began shooting without warning. He was hit by a bullet to his inner thigh; his son was abducted and imprisoned for 28 days.
The speeches end and demonstrators kneel, beginning to pray on their land.
The demonstration ends without incident, though the daily dangers remain once the cameras are gone.
As we walk back towards Beit Hanoun, we discuss some those recently assassinated and injured in the buffer zones at the hands of Israeli soldiers.
On the morning of 9 September, and also in the Beit Hanoun border region, Maysara al Kafarna, a 24 year old from Beit Hanoun, was shot in the foot by Israeli soldiers at the Green Line border between Gaza and Israel. The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) notes that the youth was 350 metres from the border fence when targeted.
PCHR reports that a few hours later, at 10 am, Israeli soldiers invaded as deeply as 700 metres into areas north of Beit Hanoun, firing at homes and farmland.
Five days prior, Israeli soldiers shot dead a 14 year old boy, targeting him with a bullet to the head. PCHR reports that in the afternoon of 4 September Ghazi Al Zaneen and family were walking in the northeastern Beit Hanoun region to agricultural land they owned 500 metres from the border when –with no warning messages or warning shots –Israeli soldiers opened sustained fire at the family, the last bullets hitting the boy and the family car as the father evacuated his son. Critically injured, Ghazi died the following day.
On 2 September, according to PCHR, when Israeli occupation forces invaded 150 metres into northern Beit Hanoun, Palestinian resistance confronted the invasion, defending themselves against the occupiers’ invasion. In the firing that ensued, a 17 year old, ‘Abdul ‘Aziz al-Masri, living in the region was shot in the foot. Not farming, the youth was subject to danger due to the Israeli invasion.
A week prior to that, on 23 August, PCHR reports Israeli soldiers opened fire on areas to the east of Beit Hanoun, shooting 63 year old Fawzi Ali Wassem in the thigh. The farmer was on agricultural land 1,800 metres from the border.
The morbid list of ‘buffer zone’ fatalities and injuries continues in Beit Hanoun regions (and throughout the Gaza Strip):
-Saleh Mohammed al-Zummara, 66, injured by a gunshot to the left hand and ‘Ali Mohammed al-Zummara, 65, injured by shrapnel in the back from Israeli soldiers’ firing on 3 June, according to PCHR.
– Ziad Salem abu Hadayid, 23, is shot in the legs when Israeli soldiers shoot on Palestinian farmers on 20 May, according to the Al Mezan centre for Human Rights.
-We find Ahmed Abu Hashish’s decomposed body, missing since 21 April, is found shot dead, presumably by Israeli soldiers, in the eastern Beit Hanoun border region on 14 June. As we and Local Initiative volunteers search for then remove the body, we come under close and intense fire from the Israeli soldiers at the border. We are clearly, visibly unarmed; the shooting intesifies when the soldiers see that we have located the body. It is pure spite.
And this is without mentioning the equally brutal assaults on other regions along the ‘buffer zone’. Nor Israeli soldiers’ intentional arson of Palestinian crops. Nor mentioning the abductions of civilians –the latest, 5 minors from Beit Lahiya’s bedouin village region. Abducted on 6 September as they herded their sheep and goats, they are:
1. Mohammed ‘Arafat Abu Khousa, 17;
2. Sameh ‘Abdul Qader Abu Hashish, 15;
3. Fraih Qassem Abu Hashish, 12;
4. ‘Aa’ed Hazzaa’ Abu Hashish, 16; and
5. Ibrahim Shihda Abu Jarad, 17.
Look carefully at the faces in the above photos: these are the civilians facing the world’s fourth most powerful military. These are the people eeking a living or living in a region which has been arbitrarily cut off and assaulted by the state which purports to ‘defend itself’. Look carefully, and hope that they are not among the next to be martyred by Israeli assaults.
Dozens were suffocated with tear gas canisters at the weekly demonstration in Bil’in. As the people of Bil’in with international and Israeli peace activists participated in Bil’in’s weekly demonstration after Friday prayers today, although they have raised Palestinian flags and banners to mark the twenty-seventh anniversary of the massacre at Sabra and Shatila and they have raised other banners condemning the policy of incursions, arrests, land confiscation and settlement construction.
The demonstrators walked in the village streets, chanting slogans and calling for national unity and rejection of the occupation. When the demonstrators approached the closed gate in the barrier, they tried to open it and access to their land, but Israeli soldiers who were hiding behind concrete blocks, started throwing gas and sound bombs on them, causing tens of cases of suffocation.
On the other hand the popular committee condemned the Israeli soldiers’ raids to the village houses, and destroying its contents, as recently these raids, was against the Coordinator of the popular committee house Mr. Abdullah Abu Rahma. As the committee considered these raids, as a violation of human rights, and especially against children who watched the violence and brutality of the occupation soldiers who were masked screaming and beating anyone they find in their face. Although the popular committee has demanded human rights organizations to intervene immediately to stop this attack.
A little over four years ago, when Kadima’s Ze’ev Boim was deputy defense minister in the Likud government, he launched a huge attack on Col. (res.) Shaul Arieli and his colleagues from the council for peace and security.
These people, he said, make the saying “Those who destroy you will come from within,” come true, he said.
Boim’s ire stemmed from the fact that the members of the council had dared to propose to the High Court of Justice an alternative route for one of the sections of the separation fence. Their proposal was more economical and less invasive; it could be completed faster and was less harmful from a political point of view.
However, contrary to the route that had been planned in Boim’s bureau, this one was not drawn up with the settlers’ wishes in mind.
Last week, the justices of the high court, headed by the court president Dorit Beinisch, adopted the alternative proposed by these “destroyers” for the fence’s route in the area of Tul Karm and Qalqilyah. The fence in this area was completed as far back as 2003. The court’s ruling noted that events have shown that “from the start the fence was put up in a way that seriously harmed the rights of the local residents and their access to their agricultural lands … This was caused by including large stretches of agricultural land in the seam area and was aimed at making it possible for the Tsofin North plan to go into effect as well as the extension of the settlement of Tsofin in the future.”
The ruling ordered that 5,400 dunams trapped on the western (Israeli) side of the fence be returned to Palestinian villagers.
The key words, “from the start,” appear in the ruling also with reference to the opinion submitted by the council. Beinisch notes that the council presented an alternative that was “significantly” different from the existing route and that after the state changed its position, “the route it is proposing today came closer to the route that was proposed from the start by the council.”
Justices Edmond Levy and Ayala Procaccia also agreed with Beinisch that the route proposed by Arieli and his colleagues provides a solution to the security needs of the state’s citizens.
The court ruled that the state must pay NIS 20,000 in court costs from the villagers who had petitioned it. That is a paltry sum when compared with the cost to the taxpayer of what is hidden behind the words “from the start.”
Had the senior political echelons opened their minds to Arieli instead of obeying the settlers, the state coffers could saved tens of millions of shekels on this section of the fence alone.
The mathematics are simple: Putting up a fence along 6.6 kilometers according to the Defense Ministry’s route – NIS 80 million; dismantling the fence – NIS 8 million. When you add to that the hours of work spent by the state prosecution and the costs of rehabilitating the areas that were damaged by putting up the original fence and dismantling it, you get close to NIS 100 million.
Apropos to “those who destroy” – every weekend the media report “violent incidents” between demonstrators against the fence and the army near the village of Bil’in. For some reason, no one bothers to mention the fact that the High Court of Justice ruled that those who planned the fence expropriated the villagers’ lands in order to accommodate the expansion of neighboring Modi’in Ilit.
They also do not mention that it stated that the present route suffers from topographical inferiority and that this endangers the security forces.
It is now two years since the high court ruled that this section of the fence must be dismantled and built along a less invasive and more secure route.
The Israel Defense Forces spokesman responded on July 22 that, “The IDF is ready for the change of route in the fence in that area, according to the High Court of Justice’s ruling, and is now awaiting the criticisms that are expected to be presented on behalf of the villagers.”
The criticisms were submitted a month earlier.
Bully pulpits
Three months ago, Defense Minister Ehud Barak took time from his busy day to meet with South Korean preacher Dr. Jaerock Lee. Last week, foreign correspondents received an invitation to cover a festival that the evangelical guru had organized in Jerusalem with the participation of Tourism Minister Stas Misezhnikov and Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat.
They were assured that Lee would conclude the rally for the 3,000 pilgrims from 36 countries who came to receive his blessing with a special prayer for the health and blessing of Israel and its people.
Lee, who claims he is immortal, free of sin and able to perform miracles to heal the sick, did not disappoint and promised that the prayers he recited in the Holy City would keep it free of swine flu.
The organizers pointed out that the decision by Lee to hold the festival in Jerusalem was an expression of solidarity with and faith in the state of Israel and its leaders.
A few days before the thousands of believers of the South Korean preacher arrived in Jerusalem, the central committee of the World Council of Churches in Geneva signed a resolution stating that the “some 200 settlements with more than 450,000 settlers in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem … make the peace efforts by the international community more vulnerable and virtually impossible.”
The organization, which represents 349 churches with 560 million believers, pointed out that while the whole world supports Israel’s right to live in security, its settlement and annexation policies give rise to feelings of hostility. It therefore called on all the churches that it represents to encourage non-violent opposition to the expropriation of lands, destruction of houses and banishment of Palestinians from their homes.
Moreover, the council reiterated its instruction to boycott goods and services that originate from the settlements and the believers were called on to refrain from investing in businesses that are connected with Israel’s settlement activity.
