26th June 2017 | International Solidarity Movement, al-Khalil team | Hebron, occupied Palestine
A fourteen year old Palestinian boy was shot at by settlers and soldiers before being arrested on the 25th June at 4:00 pm outside Bab al-Baladiya, the military base overlooking the old city in occupied al-Khalil (Hebron). Sources are unclear as to why he was arrested however it is known that the Israeli forces have been looking for him for a long period of time.
The settlers that reportedly shot at Mohammad
Eyewitnesses claim that Muhammad was outside of the gate of Bab al-Baladiya when a group of settlers and soldiers shot three rounds of live ammunition as well as reportedly throwing sound bombs. After that, they came out from the gate and took him inside the base.
Muhammad’s brother Mahmoud (18) was arrested in a similar fashion on May 17th and has yet to be released. After arresting Mahmoud, the Israeli forces called their family to demand that Muhammad be turned over in exchange for Mahmoud. This praxis is clearly against any human rights standards and is intended to exert pressure on the family to basically exchange one son for the other, clearly disregarding any kind of legal standards in the proceeding.
This took place on the first day of Eid al-Fitr “the feast of breaking the fast”, the most important religious holiday celebrated by Muslims worldwide, marking the end of Ramadan, the holy month of fasting. This feast, normally, is a family feast, where everyone would go and visit their families, which in occupied al-Khalil is impeded to a large degree by Israeli forces. Both Mohammad and Mahmoud though, will not be able to celebrate this feast with their families.
26th June 2017 | International Solidarity Movement, al-Khalil team | Hebron, occupied Palestine
As anywhere all over the world, Palestinian Muslims are celebrating the end of the fasting-month Ramadan with the 3-day feast of Eid. Eid usually is a joyous occasion, everyone dresses up nicely and the most important activity is visiting family. For Palestinians under Israeli military occupation though, it is a little more difficult. Countless daily movement-restrictions, navigating the maze of permanent and sudden, so-called ‘flying’ checkpoints is just one part of the methods of slow ethnic cleansing enforced on the Palestinian civilian population by the Israeli forces.
In the Tel Rumeida and Shuhada Street area in occupied al-Khalil (Hebron), receiving visits from family must sound something like a distant dream. A dream that will never come true. Since the area was declared a ‘closed military zone’ by Israeli forces in November 2015, any Palestinian that is not registered at the checkpoint, is not allowed to come into the area. The residents have been assigned numbers that are used to identify by the Israeli forces whether or not they are (theoretically) allowed to pass the checkpoint and reach their homes.
Surprisingly, on the first day of Eid on Sunday, Israeli forces actually allowed family members to cross the checkpoint and visit their family-members imprisoned in this ‘closed military zone’. Whereas the joy about the unexpected visits has been enormous – it is dimmed by knowing that this will be the only visit for at least a year. The unexpected visitors though, had to report of long queues, they had to give the name and the sure-name of the registered residents they are visiting at the checkpoint, and very strict ‘checks’ at the checkpoint. It has not been announced that any non-residents would be allowed to pass, instead of turned back just like it happens so often. Many that didn’t know, didn’t try.
Long queues outside Shuhada checkpoint on Eid
For Palestinians who had their lives incarcerated in this ‘closed military zone’, even the joy of suddenly and finally having family come for a visit, is still always strictly linked to the knowledge that the Israeli forces restrictions are only meant to drive them out of the area, to make life so hard and unbearable for them, that they would just use. It’s always connected to the simple fact that their fault is simply: being Palestinian.
6th April 2017 | International Solidarity Movement, al-Khalil team | Hebron, occupied Palestine
On April 20th, Tel Rumeida’s Palestinian residents will face the acceleration of its near total isolation in the H-2, Israeli military controlled section of occupied al-Khalil (Hebron). Upon military order, Israeli forces announced the fortification of checkpoints and further land seizure, leading to a worsening of the ghettoization of the residential area which has been under incremental incursion by illegal Israeli settlement activity beginning in 1984.
Shuhada checkpoint was the late September, 2015 site of the brutal murder of a young Palestinian woman, Hadeel Hashlamoun, who was shot ten times by Israeli forces while exiting Tel Rumeida. She was left bleeding to death for 45 minutes before Israeli police dragged her away by her feet. The observation of this murder helped to spark an uprising against the illegal occupation. Months later the Shuhada checkpoint was expanded to create a process in which Palestinians who pass through the checkpoint are forced to enter one at a time through a locked turn style, followed by a small fenced path, and then into an enclosure completely guarded from observation. With the new military order, the additional checkpoints around Tel Rumeida are planned to be similarly inaccessible to public view.
A page of the military order declaring the scheduled closure of Tel Rumeida
On April 5th 2017, ISM volunteers discovered a crowd of settlers and Israeli occupation forces surveying Tel Rumeida and announcing the new plans for the neighborhood which is scheduled to be enacted within 2 weeks. The new plans would make it even more difficult for Palestinian residents of H2 to access basic services like ambulances and would bar their family members and any Palestinians without a special i.d. number from visiting the Palestinian residents of Tel Rumeida.
The ramifications that Tel Rumeida’s Palestinian residents will face echo the late 2015 declaration by Israeli forces of Tel Rumeida as a closed military zone during a time of extreme escalation in violence during which dozens of Palestinian youth were murdered across the occupied West Bank. Shuhada street was closed to Palestinians. A similar fate is now scheduled for the whole neighborhood.
Map of planned military closure of Tel Rumeida
Prominent Palestinian activist, Hashem al Azzeh lived a full life devoted to nonviolent opposition and popular resistance before he was killed by an H2 checkpoint’s denial of medical services. More recently, an infant was harassed while crossing an H2 checkpoint, and in another incident, sleeping soldiers left Palestinians unable to pass through the checkpoint. These and many other human rights abuses may become more common and less able to be documented if the announced changes are not stopped.
An organizer with Hebron Defense Committee, Sami Natsheh, and his colleagues have initiated a legal counter to the military order which was filed by their lawyer today in the Israeli courts, although military orders are notoriously difficult to overturn. “It’s a military order, but it’s also anti-human rights,” Natsheh noted. Highlighting the need for a strategic and ongoing response, Sami further stated that, “We don’t just want reaction. We want something stable because on April 20th they will close Tel Rumeida. You won’t even be able to see through the checkpoints, only wire and fencing.”
Updates on this and other campaigns initiated by the Hebron Defense Committee can be seen here.
5th April 2017 | International Solidarity Movement, al-Khalil team | Hebron, occupied Palestine
Residents from the West Bank village of Jayyous, east of Qalqilya, endured nightly raids by Israeli forces for a week straight in early April. Israeli occupation forces fired tear gas at resident’s homes, causing some villagers to be taken for treatment to Darwish Nazzal hospital for tear gas inhalation.
Frustration has been rising among Palestinian farmers in the area as the Israeli military has arbitrarily denied farmers work permits during the loquat season. For over a decade, Palestinian farmers have been given agricultural permits to cross the apartheid wall to access their farm land.
Abu Azzam making his way to agricultural gate military check in Jayyous. (Photo Credit: www.rightsni.org)
Years ago, Jayyous villagers won this concession as well as a re-routing of the wall through popular resistance. These victories are threatened, however, as just last month a military order came to further attempt annexation of Palestinian lands both in Jayyous as well as the village Falamya.
During the past week, numerous Palestinian family homes, including that of Jayyous’ mayor, have been raided in the night following the provocation by Israeli forces of firing tear gas into the village. Village youth responded with impromptu demonstrations.
One week ahead of a meeting of the villagers, the Mayor, and the Minister of Agriculture with the Israeli occupation’s District Coordination Office, Jayyous villagers, joined by Palestinian police, held a large planting of lemon and other fruit trees. The fruit trees are being planted on reclaimed lands. Israeli forces, years ago, bulldozed the area to prepare for new construction on the apartheid wall. Palestinians successfully reclaimed the land on Wednesday, April 5th without incident.
Prominent Palestinian activist and Jayyous resident Abu Azem
Jayyous villagers are cautiously optimistic about next week’s meeting. Prominent Palestinian activist Abu Azem, in a statement to the ISM, noted that the meeting was to seek solutions to the permit denials so Palestinian farmers can be granted permits to cross the apartheid wall in order to access their ancestral lands. “We are optimistic that next week, we will have good answers,” Abu Azem says, “I expect if there are no solutions, there will be small battles.”
5th April 2017 | International Solidarity Movement, al-Khalil team | Hebron, occupied Palestine
Just days after Palestinians commemorated Land Day, a day which marks the struggle against the Israeli government’s expropriation of Palestinian land, farmers of Wadi Qana endured another mass uprooting and theft of their trees.
Speaking from his home in the Salfit district village of Deir Istiya, Palestinian activist Rezeq Abu Nasser cited the frustrating chronology, “This is the third time they took my trees. They stole them in 2013 and 2015 as well.” He then handed ISM volunteers the Arabic/Hebrew notice that he found posted on a fence he erected at a cost of over 1,000 NIS to protect his trees. Abu Nasser’s fence was also dismantled and seized along with 25 of his trees.
Palestinian farmers received warrants stating their trees were threatened.
The notice received by four Palestinian farmers demands that they uproot their own trees or face arrest and/or fines to cover the cost of Israeli occupation forces uprooting the trees for them. Soon after, 135 trees were uprooted and stolen during the small hours of morning after several bulldozers entered the valley, hauled large stones into the road to block the entryway and rammed through part of a 40 meter stone wall to access the trees.
Citing environmental justifications for these aggressive acts of theft, an Israeli government spokesperson for the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territory was quoted as saying that the trees were uprooted due to their “damaging the natural view and value of the nature resort.” Claiming the act to be one of protection of the view of a lush valley from the sight of trees is even more absurd, given that the Israeli forces left a partially demolished stone wall and broken tree limbs scattered atop a small field of holes where the trees once took root.
While speaking to the Mayor of Deir Istiya, his office produced copies of the issued warrants for the threatened trees and the generations old British land deeds affirming the farmers’ rights to their ancestral land. The Mayor of Deir Istiya described arriving at the Wadi Qana immediately after being alerted to the uprootings in progress, only to find the road blockage Israeli forces left to keep farmers and residents from defending their land. As for the stone wall, he claimed,”This is a new experience for us that they demolished the stones.”
The farmers who lost their trees, tantamount to their livelihood, plan to continue their struggle against these incursions by furthering their cases with the local municipality. As for Abu Nasser, “I’m going to replant them again.”
