Tag: Demonstration

Kufr Qaddoum: two boys arrested and beaten before weekly demonstration

By Tete Telsen

17 June 2012 | International Solidarity Movement, West Bank

Prior to the weekly demonstration in Kufr Qaddoum last Friday, June 15, two young Palestinian boys were detained and beaten by Israeli soldiers. At least three others were injured by tear gas canisters during the peaceful protest that ensued.

Shortly after noon on Friday, Israeli soldiers kidnapped two 10 year old Palestinian boys. While being held by the Israeli military, the two boys were repeatedly kicked in their backs by soldiers. They were then released and taken home by adults from the village.

The weekly occurring demonstration began following the Friday noon prayer with speeches and music. The Israeli military immediately began shooting sound bombs and tear gas. Some protesters replied with stone-throwing. At around 2:30 p.m., Israeli soldiers began illegally shooting tear gas canisters at head level and lower. Three men were shot by the canisters. The military evacuated Kufr Qaddoum around 3 p.m..

Prior to the protest some 20 children were playing near the area were the demonstration is held. They were throwing stones in trees and playing. Israeli soldiers arrived a half hour before the demonstration began and abducted two of the boys, aged 11 and 9 years old.

The other children ran back to the village to ask for help. When Palestinians and International Solidarity Movement volunteers arrived on scene, the boys had already been released. The two young boys related that they had been kicked in their backs by the soldiers.

The weekly demonstration began as usual around 1 p.m.. The people of Kufr Qaddoum spoke to the Israeli army through a loudspeaker, stating that they were holding a peaceful demonstration and that the soldiers should go away. The military replied with tear gas and sound bombs.

Before ending the protest, Israeli soldiers shot tear gas canister at head level and into the ground to make the canisters bounce. Ashraf Shtaiwi was hit in his stomach, Mojahid Barham in his shoulder, and Bashar Shtaiwi in his arm. All were treated in an ambulance by medics. Several others suffered tear gas suffocation and were also treated in ambulance.

Kufr Qaddoum is a village 12 kilometres west of Nablus home to almost 3 thousand people. Since 2003, the road which connects the village to Nablus was blocked to Palestinian access by Israel. The inhabitants are thus obliged to take an indirect and much lengthier route. The annexed road prompted the weekly demonstrations but Kufr Qaddoum is also protesting the ongoing land theft by the adjacent Jewish-only illegal settlement of Qedummim. The Friday demonstrations began in July 2011 and continue to today.

Tete Telsen is a volunteer with the International Solidarity Movement (name has been changed).

Nakba Day: Palestinian group attempts to return to 1948 territories, one arrested

By Ling Lewis

19 May 2012 | International Solidarity Movement, West Bank

 A Palestinian man was arrested at Ni’lin checkpoint on Tuesday, April 15 during a Nakba Day demonstration. The procession successfully crossed the checkpoint which separates the West Bank from Palestinian territories seized in 1948. They were violently forced back by occupation soldiers and police. A Palestinian woman and an international woman were also detained but released that same afternoon.

 During the morning rush hour, several dozen Palestinians and solidarity activists took the Israeli army by surprise and walked through Ni’lin checkpoint. The procession stated their intention to return to their homes in the territories occupied by Israel in 1948 and each presented a placard reading, “permission to enter Palestine: inevitable return,” and bearing the names of Palestinian villages depopulated in 1948.

 Additional Israeli soldiers and police quickly arrived and began attacking the group, shoving and kicking them backwards. Some soldiers used the body of their M16 rifles to hit the procession. During this time soldiers detained three people. Two women were quickly released, but Nabi Saleh resident Naji al Tamimi remains held by Israeli authorities. Israeli soldiers arbitrarily targeted Tamimi, who was peacefully chanting at the time of his arrest. There is a likelihood he was targeted due to his long history of involvement in the peaceful popular struggle against the Israeli occupation.

 The approximately 4 million Palestinians living in the occupied Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip are barred from entering 1948 Palestine, including the holy city of Jerusalem, without rarely-granted permits from Israel. The Ni’lin checkpoint is one of 26 checkpoints which separate the West Bank from the territory which Israel officially considers its own. Of these twenty-six checkpoints, only nine are located on the 1948 “green line”, which is internationally recognized as the basis for the western border of a future Palestinian state. The remaining checkpoints, including the Ni’lin checkpoint, are located at gaps in the Apartheid Wall at places where the wall appropriates Palestinian land. Ni’lin village has achieved international recognition for the tenacity of its nonviolent resistance against the Apartheid Wall in the face of tremendous violence on the part of the Israeli occupation authorities.

 The May 15thdemonstration was called by grassroots organizers to commemorate the 64th anniversary of the Nakba, or Catastrophe. In 1948, over 700,000 Palestinians were forcibly expelled from their homes and villages following the declaration of the state of Israel. The right of return for the current 4.25 million refugees worldwide is an internationally recognized right and one of the demands of the international Boycotts, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel.

Ling Lewis is a volunteer with the International Solidarity Movement (name has been changed).

Activists seal off settlement in solidarity with hunger strikers

Protesters blocked the entrance to the Ma’ale Adumim settlement, meters away from one of Israel’s main interrogation centers in the West Bank. Two protesters were arrested.

50 Palestinian, Israeli and international activists blocked the entrance of the Ma’ale Adumim settlement today, in support of the Palestinian prisoners’ massive hunger strike, now on its 27th days.

The protesters managed to halt traffic at  the entrance to the settlement for about 20 minutes, before Israeli forces managed to remove them from the road and onto the pavement. Two of the Palestinian protesters were detained and taken to the adjacent police station.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=66jn–Wmt28

The Ma’ale Adumim Jewish-only settlement is located 7 km east of Jerusalem, and is the third largest in the West Bank, with about 35,000 residents. The entrance that was blocked, leads to the Israeli police’s Judea and Samaria Central Unit’s interrogation center, one of the biggest in the West Bank.

Background

More than three weeks ago, some 2,000 Palestinian prisoners have launched an open-ended hunger strike and their life is in danger. Their demands are simple and the strike’s slogan, echoing through the prison walls, is just as plain- freedom or death. The lives of all prisoners on strike are currently under danger, but among them is a smaller group, which has been striking for a longer period and whose lives are under immediate threat.

Thaer Halahleh and Bilal Diab have not eaten for more than 70 days – since the 29th of February. Israeli courts have rejected their appeals and refused to free them from administrative detention where they remain without charge or trial, subject to secret evidence and secret allegations. They are in critical condition.

Hassan Safadi has been refusing food since the 2nd of March, Omar Abu Shalal, 54, since the 4th of March, Mahmoud Sarsak, the only Gazan to have been incarcerated under Israel’s Illegal Combatants Law, since the 24th of March, Mohammed al-Taj, 40, also since the 24th of March and Ja’afar Ezzadeen, 41, since the 27th of march.

The Prisoners’ key demands include:

  • Ending the policy of solitary confinement and isolation;
  • End to the use of administrative detentions;
  • The restoration of visitation rights to families of prisoners from the Gaza Strip, a right that has been denied to all families for more than 6 years;
  • Canceling ‘Shalit’ law, which restricts prisoners’ access to educational materials as punitive measure. The law remains intact despite a prisoner swap deal last October.
  • Ending systematic humiliation, including arbitrary strip searches, nightly raids and collective punishment.

Palestinian prisoners on hunger strike have been hit hard with retaliation from Israel Prison Services, including beatings, transferring from one prison to another, confiscation of salt (an act that could have severe health consequences for hunger strikers), denial of family and lawyer visits, and isolation and solitary confinement of hunger strikers.

In response, Human Rights Watch issued a statement chiding Israel’s over its administrative detention policy; it said, “It shouldn’t take the self-starvation of Palestinian prisoners for Israel to realize it is violating their due process rights.” Amnesty International also issued a call for urgent action from individuals around the world to contact Israeli authorities about Bilal Diab and Thaer Halahleh.

Israel’s 64th Colonial Day answered by Nabi Saleh’s peaceful resistance

by Sam 

28 April 2012 | International Solidarity Movement, West Bank

Last Friday, April 27, around 100 Palestinians and their supporters gathered in the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh to protest the nearby illegal Israeli settlement and the unjust conditions of life under occupation. The protest comes just a day after Israeli ‘independence day’ celebrations. This week’s demonstration painted a stark picture of the harsh reality still faced by Palestinians 64 years after what they know as the Catastrophe, or Nakba.

Following the midday prayer on Friday, demonstrators assembled in the center of the small village of Nabi Saleh and marched down the main road towards the neighbouring Israeli settlement of Halamish. The non-violent procession of residents, solidarity activists, volunteer medics, and journalists were only halfway down the hillside when they were met by the waiting Israeli army, who had blocked the road at the village’s entrance.

Upon sight of the chanting marchers, the military deployed the infamous “skunk truck.” Protesters were sent in a panicked sprint back in the direction they had come to avoid being drenched by the long-reaching streams of foul-smelling skunk water. After finding safety behind makeshift roadblocks of rocks strewn across the road, the Palestinian youth, or shabab, equipped only with homemade slings, countered with stones and paint balloons.

The crowd let out a cheer when a boy landed one such balloon on the skunk truck, splattering white paint across the windshield. Celebration of the small victory was cut short when soldiers responded by unleashing a barrage of tear gas and rubber-coated steel bullets that sent the unarmed demonstrators running for cover.

From this point on, the young Palestinian stone throwers and Israel’s modern army engaged in a familiar call and response that lasted for hours.

The march for an independent and free Palestine - Click here for more photos

During a moment of relative calm, one Israeli activist narrowly avoided being struck by a surprise tear gas canister, but did not escape the terrible effects of the noxious fumes that billowed around her. Other canisters started small fires in the dry grass of the hillside, and some were hurled back in the direction of the army.

Friday’s demonstration comes one week after the release of Bassem Tamimi, a prominent community organizer and resident of Nabi Saleh who spent a year in prison on charges of “incitement” of such protests. Despite the fact that Israel’s settlements in occupied Palestine are a violation of international law, and resisting the occupation is widely considered to be a moral and legal right of the occupied, Palestinians who exercise these rights face constant arrests, house raids, and violence at the hands of the Israeli forces. Tamimi, who Amnesty International has named a prisoner of conscience, was unable to attend the day’s demonstration as he remains under house arrest in Ramallah until further notice.

The weekly demonstration in Nabi Saleh began in 2009 when the encroaching Israeli settlement of Halamish illegally annexed additional Palestinian land, including the village’s fresh water springs. Since then, the Israeli army has regularly denied the town its right to demonstrate and suppressed the protests with excessive force. In December, protester Mustafa Tamimi was killed at a demonstration when he was shot in the head with a tear gas canister at short range.

Despite the real dangers that come with resisting the occupation, the residents of Nabi Saleh show no sign of giving up. The growing Halamish settlement is a daily sight and reminder of what has been taken from them. So while the settlers hoist the Star of David in celebration of the independence of the “Jewish State,” the residents of Nabi Saleh continue to struggle because for them, the creation of Israel has been nothing short of a castastrophe.

Sam is a volunteer with International Solidarity Movement (name has been  changed).