1. Thirty Days Against Borders – Children of Nablus against the Occupation
by the Palestinian Body for Peace, Dialogue and Equality (HASM)
Sunday 14th of January
School children from Nablus dressed up like Native Americans will gather in a peaceful demonstration at Huwarra checkpoint. On the other side of the checkpoint, Israeli peace activists will be gathered to support their demonstration.
We are not demonstrating to end the Occupation together as no Israeli civilians are allowed to enter Nablus, and the children from Nablus will have great difficulties getting out through Huwarra Checkpoint.
Over four weekends in January and February, Palestinian, Israeli and international peace organizations will gather at both sides of Huwarra Checkpoint to protest against the regime of barriers which severely restricts movement in the West Bank. They will sing and play, have a photo exhibition and in other ways demonstrate for peace.
Nablus under siege
We are doing this as Nablus is the most imprisoned city in the West Bank. Since 2002 it has only been possible to enter through six checkpoints. It is even more difficult to exit. Men between 16 and 45 (it varies from day to day) can only exit their city with a special permit that can be obtained only outside Nablus. Almost nightly its citizens are the victims of violent military
raids and their lives have not been peaceful, or normal for years.
The people of Nablus are regarded as terrorists by the Occupying Forces who deny them their human rights and subject them to collective punishment.
Internal Palestinian political conflicts have resulted in large numbers of Palestinians refraining from participation in collective resistance against the Israeli Occupation. We support non-violent methods of resistance and cooperation between different Palestinian, Israeli and international groups. Until now there has not been a clear strategy to coordinate various peace activities to achieve justice for all.
The lack of progress towards peace has made the new generation of Palestinians disillusioned and made them lose faith in their abilities to improve their situation.
• This project expresses the will of most Palestinians and represents their rejection of the Occupation without sacrificing their children or themselves.
• We designed these activities to express our resistance to the Occupation in general and the closures around Nablus in particular
• We hope that people from all countries and organizations will support the children of Nablus in these peaceful demonstrations at Huwarra Checkpoint .
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2. Human Rights Defenders targetted in Hebron again
by ISM Hebron, December 31st
An international Human Rights Worker (HRW) was arrested by the IDF in the Hebron district of Tel Rumeida at 1:40 p.m today. He was accompanying five Palestinian men along Shuhada Street in their attempt to exercise their right to walk past the Beit Hadassah setlement as stipulated in a recent Israeli High Court ruling. Three Palestinian men succesfully crossed this boundary on Friday 29 December which has been off-limits to Palestinians for the last six years. To travel from the Bab Al Zawiye market district in the north of the city to the south, Hebronites have to either drive around, taking 15 minutes, or walk, which takes over an hour. The roads on this circuitous route are often clogged with traffic. Walking from Bab Al Zawiye down Shuhada street to the other side of the Old City takes around 10 minutes.
As the five men and the HRW reached the settlement, the soldier on duty stated that they were to wait to be “escorted” by his commander even though this condition is nowhere in the ruling which was shown to the soldiers. The commander was however in a meeting and only arrived 50 minutes later. By this time three of the five men had already left as it was raining heavily. The commander escorted the remaining two men down Shuhada Street as far as Gross Square, but stated that the HRW was not allowed to use this road. The HRW obeyed and followed the group from a pathway above the road, which is perfectly permissable.
The HRW reached the end of the pathway and was observing the Palestinian men who had passed through Shuhada Street succesfully with a IOF escort. A bypassing Jewish settler colonist who noticed the HRW stopped his car, rolled down his window and began shouting at the HRW in Hebrew. The HRW did not react to this in any way. The settler then put his car indicator on and began making a U-turn in order to approach the HRW. Being trapped, and fearing attack, the HRW ran onto Shuhada Street in the direction of the soldiers in the hope that this would deter the settler.
Upon reaching the group of soldiers the HRW immediately apologised to the commander and told him that he had only run down Shuhada Street because he was being threatened by a settler and sought protection from the soldiers. The commander refused to listen and ordered the HRW to stand and place his hands against the wall. The HRW was searched and his hands then tied together behind his back. He was then put into the back of an IOF Jeep and blindfolded. These actions of the IOF are illegal as they are not allowed to arrest internationals – according to Israeli law this has to be done by the border police.
After being driven around and waiting in the Jeep the HRW was taken to a police station where the blindfold was removed and plastic tie-wire cut from his wrists. He was then charged with “disobeying a soldier’s orders” and finally released at 4:00 p.m on condition that he not enter Shuhada Street again, or would be liable to pay a fine of NIS 2000.
After this HRW was arrested another nine Palestinians adults and four children waited for almost one hour in the rain to be allowed to walk down Shuhada Street. In this time they were all extensively searched. Whilst walking along the street two settler girls started throwing stones and hitting them. The police approached but didn’t do anythng and the Palestinians continued walking.
One Palestinian who had already had his ID checked and been searched, was being detained again on Shuhada street. Mary Baxter, the HRW who was arrested two weeks ago, asked the soldiers why he was being detained again. She was shouted at to move away and asked to show her passport. On doing this the soldiers snatched her passport from her hands and refused to return it. They also refused to let her shelter from the rain and cold for over half an hour. The police arrived to take Mary away in a police jeep to the police station where she was told she was charged with assaulting a police officer. She was however also told that she hadn’t been arrested but would be summoned to appear in court. Mary was released an hour later.
HRWs who spend an extended period of time in Tel Rumeida are regularly targetted by the police. This involves being detained and taken to the police station on trumped up charges before being released after a few hours.
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3. Bil’in Demo Cancelled by IOF Violence
by the ISM media team and IMEMC,
Officials and supporters of the Palestinian Fateh movement joined together with residents of Bil’in, as well as international and Israeli activists for the commemoration of the forty-second anniversary of the founding of the Fateh movement and a demonstration against Israel’s Annexation Wall.
Jabril Rajoub, of Fateh, commended the unanimity amongst Palestinians fostered within Bil’in, and cited the death of Yasser Arafat as significant catalyst toward the curent political crisis. The void left by Arafat, he said, combined with an absence of unified leadership, has led to endemic problems such as a lack of security, employment and such basic necessessities as food and education. Kais abu Leyla, also of Fateh, echoed the call for unity between Islamic and nationalist parties, to put an end to factionalism and restore a cohesive Palestinian resistance to the Occupation.
Muhammad Baraka, member of Knesset, condemed ongoing Palestinian infighting and called for an immediate cessation of factional violence, commending the village of Bil’in for the example it has shown.
Before commencing the march toward the Wall, featured speakers extended their thanks to
international and Israeli activists who have worked alongside the residents of Bil’in in their efforts against the Annexation Wall. The village has lost approximately 60% of its land, primarily agricultural, to the construction of the barrier and the illegal expansion of the Modin Illit settlement directly adjacent. Residents of Bil’in and their supporters have demonstrated and conducted non-violent direct action against the Wall every Friday for nearly two years.
Following the rally in the village center, over five hundred demonstrators marched toward an access gate to the Wall where Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) awaited them. A much bolstered force accompanied the soldiers typically stationed in the area, possibly in advanced preparation of the well-publicized march and in the aftermath of Thursday’s Israeli invasion into Ramallah that claimed four Palestinian lives and left twenty wounded, several critically. A large contingent of Israeli Border Police indicated a preparedness to conduct mass arrests.
Israeli soldiers took positions at several locations along the expanse of the primary fence and almost immediately attacked the peaceful demonstration, though the majority of marchers had not yet arrived at the barrier. The IOF fired a vehicle-mounted water and tear gas cannon which some of the youth responded to by throwing stones.
The soldiers then began firing tear gas canisters indiscriminately into the crowd spread out over a large area as well as rubber-coated metal bullets and percussion grenades.
After the crowd had dispersed due to the massive amounts of tear gas used, the IOF pursued villagers well into a residential area of the village, firing continuously at the youth who were resisting with stones, with the water cannon and rubber-coated bullets.
Several Bil’in residents were injured, including at least one who was taken to the hospital for treatment and some other marchers with breathing difficulties suffered the effects of tear gas inhalation. An Israeli activist also received first aid after suffering burns from a tear gas canister.
For more information on the injured, please contact Abdullah at 054-725-8210:
Suleilman Khalid Khatub (17) shot with rubber-coated bullet in back
Wael Fahmi Nasser (29) shot with rubber-coated bullet in leg
Farahat Ibrahim Hashem (26) shot with rubber-coated bullet in leg
Hiyam Abed al Al (15) tear gas inhalation
Khaled Showkat al Khatib (20) shot with rubber-coated bullet in hand
Ashraf Muhammad Jamal al Khatib (26) shot with rubber-coated bullet in leg
Jonathan Pollak, Israel (25) tear gas canister burns to hand
Ahmad Issa Yasin (50) tear gas inhalation
For photos visit: https://www.palsolidarity.org/main/2007/01/05/bilin-05-01-07/
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4. IOF block access to Shuhada Street, defying court order
by ISM Hebron, January 9th
Local Palestinian residents were yesterday prevented from walking down Shuhada Street, which cuts through the centre of Hebron. This is despite a recent High Court Order ruling that the closure of Shuhada Street to Palestinians for the past six years was a ‘mistake’ and their recent access to this street.
At 10am four local Palestinians accompanied by Israeli activists and an Israeli Channel 1 TV crew walked down Shuhada Street with copies of the High Court Order. They were stopped outside the Beit Hadassah colony by a large group of soldiers and some border police officers. An IOF Commander claimed the existence of a new military order forbidding access to Shuhada Street for Palestinians, but refused to show the new order. On Channel 1 later, an IOF spokesperson denied the existence of this new order and said it would be ‘investigated’. The Commander threatened to arrest the Palestinians if they didn’t leave within five minutes but failed to carry out this threat as the local residents negotiated unsuccessfully for over half an hour for access to Shuhada Street.
During this time settler colonists came out of Beit Hadassah and started to call the Palestinians names. A settler representative rejected the pleas of the Palestinians for them to live in peace and walk together down Shuhada Street, claiming that Shuhada Street was exclusively for Jews.
International observers from different groups had gathered on the path that leads to the Palestinian Qurtuba girls school overlooking Shuhada Street to document the events. Three soldiers approached them and asked them to move on but failed to take action when they stayed.
For photos visit: https://www.palsolidarity.org/main/2007/01/09/shuhada-08-01-07/
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5. Apartheid Road on Bil’in Land Laundered by High Court
by the ISM media team, December 9th
The Israeli High Court of ‘Justice’ today gave its decision concerning the request of construction companies “Heftsiba” and the Canadian-registered Green Park to overturn the temporary injunction forbidding building in the Matityahu East colony, and to legitimize a planning process that would launder an illegal road built by the construction companies. The case was heard at a hearing on January 7th.
Judges Prokachya, Rivlin and Na’or decided to allow “Heftsiba” to retrospectively change the new scheme for the colony (scheme 210/8/1) and to mark the road already built as a temporary road. At the same time, the judges decided to order Green Park and Heftsiba to pay expenses of 100,000 shekels for contempt and violating the temporary injunction issued by Court.
This is yet another example of the theft of Palestinian land being sanctioned at the highest level by Israeli authorities. The whole of the Matityahu East colonist block was built on Bil’in village land and the whole of the colony of Mod’in Ilit was built on the land of Bil’in and neighbouring villages. Mod’in Ilit is now the largest colony in the West Bank with a population of 35,000 after 4,000 new colonists moved there in 2006.
Click here for YNet coverage: http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3351279,00.html
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6. IOF beat peaceful demonstrators in Bil’in
by the ISM media team
Today in Bil’in one hundred internationals and local villagers gathered to protest the apartheid wall running through the village. The theme of today’s demo was solidarity with Maan photographer Fadi Arouri who was shot in the stomach with live ammo during a recent invasion into Ramallah.
As soon as the march reached the gate in the Wall the IOF fired tear gas at the peaceful demonstrators. After about ten minutes of chanting slogans opposing military violence, some of the local children started throwing stones but were quickly stopped by village adults. This was met quickly with tear gas and concussion grenades by the IOF. As the IOF began to open the gate in the wall and move forward, many internationals and locals attempted to block the entrance of IOF jeeps. They were beaten with clubs, shoved, tripped and generally roughed up by the IOF.
At least five people were injured including one old man, who needed treatment from a medic, and an AP journalist who was injured in the leg with shrapnel from a concussion grenade. Villager Wael Nasser was hospitalised after being beaten in the head with a baton. The jeeps invaded the village firing rubber bullets and tear gas at children and returning groups of protesters.
Click here for photos: https://www.palsolidarity.org/main/2007/01/12/bilin-12-01-07/
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For more reports, journals and action alerts visit the ISM website at www.palsolidarity.org
Please consider supporting the International Solidarity Movement’s work with a financial contribution. You may donate securely through our website at: www.palsolidarity.org/main/donations/
1. Breakthrough for Palestinian Human Rights in Tel Rumeida
2. Announcements of Israeli Change of Policy Unfounded in Reality
3. Villagers Unite Against Apartheid Road
4. “Are you Fateh or Hamas?’ – “I am neither”
5. Transcript of BBC World Servce interview with Mary Baxter
6. IOF illegally detain international volunteers for four hours
7. Anarchists Against the Wall block Central Tel Aviv
8. Popular Committee Member shot in Bil’in
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1. Breakthrough for Palestinian Human Rights in Tel Rumeida
by Sam, December 29th
This morning at 10 a.m, three Palestinian residents of the Tel Rumeida District in Hebron accompanied by a handful of Israeli activists and media personnel as well as international volunteers successfully crossed an area off limits to Palestinians for the last six years.
Tel Rumeida falls in the Occupation controlled H2 military zone of Hebron City and is illegally barricaded by the IOF even though there are many Palestinian residents within the area. Access is only available via a checkpoint and Palestinians are not allowed to drive their cars in the zone. The illegal Jewish settlers however, enjoy total freedom of movement and are infamous for their constant harassment and attacks on Palestinians.
A recent Israeli High Court ruling stipulates that the restriction of Palestinian movement in Shuhada street has been mistakenly enforced for the last six years and that Palestinians in fact have the right to use this road. Armed with the court ruling the three men peacefully approached the area and were immediately stopped by an Israeli soldier outside the Beit Hadassah settlement who refused to look at the paper and physically attempted to restrain the Palestinians from bypassing. Five more soldiers then came running up from the checkpoint, soon followed by an army jeep with a few more soldiers. They read the court ruling and then telephoned the Border Police who arrived shortly thereafter.
The soldiers then made the 3 men face and put their hands up against a wall and searched them while the police were on the phone. After approximately 30 minutes the soldiers and police allowed and escorted the Palestinian men as well as the activists through the area to the end of Shuhada Street and agreed that Palestinians shall henceforth be allowed to use this route unhindered by the IOF or settlers.
The three men walked through a street in their own neighbourhood for the first time in six years and the happiness was evident on their faces. This represents a significant breakthrough in the human rights of the local Palestinians and a buzz was soon evident amongst residents in the area as the news spread. All that remains to be seen is if the IOF adhere to the High Court Ruling, and allow the Palestinians the freedom of movement which is now legally theirs.
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2. Announcements of Israeli Change of Policy Unfounded in Reality
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
by the campaign for the Right of Entry
Despite assurances relayed by American and European diplomats, foreign passport holders trying to join their families in the Israeli occupied Palestinian territory (oPt), including Bethlehem, for the holidays are being denied entry and expelled by Israel.
On Friday the 15th edition of the English newspaper, Palestine Times, reported that a senior American diplomat announced that Israel had annulled a previous decision banning entry to foreign passport holders who have family residing in the Palestinian areas and was resuming its earlier practice of issuing three month renewable visas that would allow them to visit and live together with their families. Attempts to understand from US officials more details surrounding this announcement have been unsuccessful, to date.
In stark contrast to that announcement, at least three foreign nationals attempting to join their families in the Israeli occupied Palestinian territory were expelled last week. Kamal, an eighteen-year old US college student who had come to visit his grandfather and family in Ramallah over the holidays was denied entry at Ben Gurion airport on Saturday December 16th. Another Palestinian American from Cleveland, Ohio, Linda Ali Mahmmud, who is deaf and dumb like her brother Shukri, had traveled in the hopes of spending the holidays with her cancer stricken aunt but was denied entry at Ben Gurion airport on Thursday December 14th, allegedly because Shukri had overstayed his permit. Shukri had requested a routine permit renewal in October, however, the Israeli Ministry of Interior liaison at the Israeli Civil Administration suddenly stopped processing renewals for foreigners married to Palestinian ID-holders and refuses to accept Shukri’s application.
Abdullah, a German national, who works for the International Peace & Cooperation Center in Jerusalem, had hopes of reuniting with his wife, who carries a Palestinian ID and their newborn child following statements made last week by European diplomats regarding Israel’s policy change. He was denied entry for the fourth time at the Allenby Bridge on Wednesday the 20th of December.
“Arbitrary denials of entry and expulsions have not stopped. No transparent rules or mechanisms are in place so far. Palestinian families, vital service providers and businesses remain vulnerable to arbitrary denial of entry and residency. This is especially hard to accept at a time of major Christian and Muslim traditional festivities when families want to be together more then ever,” said Anita Abdullah speaking for the Campaign for the Right of Entry to the oPt .
The U.S. government estimates that there are about 35,000 Palestinian Americans living in the West Bank at any one time, and an additional 10,000 Palestinians with other foreign passports. All these people and their families remain separated or at risk, and Palestinian educational and social service institutions, humanitarian agencies and businesses remain vulnerable to the loss of critical personnel, until applications for entry and residency in the oPt are decided in accordance with a clear, transparent and internationally lawful policy.
Contact: Basil Ayish Coordinator, Media Committee
(c) +970-(0)59-817-3953 (email) info@righttoenter.ps
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3. Villagers Unite Against Apartheid Road
by Sam, December 23rd
This afternoon over 200 Palestinian, Israeli and international activists participated in a protest against the proposed new settler-only, apartheid road which will run from the Gush Etzion settlement block to the south and illegally annex Palestinian farmland, affect homes and destroy significant heritage sites including a cemetery in the Halhul and Beit Ommar villages near Hebron in the West Bank. 800 dunums of agricultural land from Beit Ommar and 240 dunums from Halhul is being confiscated for the construction of this road, and four large greenhouses belonging to the agricultural college will be demolished. Part of the road will form a viaduct over the existing “route 60″.
At around 12:30 the crowd marched peacefully from a parking lot outside of Beit Ommar along route “60″ ntowards a nearby agricultural college in Al ‘Arrub Refugee Camp carrying placards and chanting anti occupation slogans. Palestinians as well as Israelis and internationals walked in unity against the illegal plan in the pouring, but long-awaited rain. A small group of Israeli policemen and soldiers were present at the starting and half-way points, but did not interfere in any way.
The crowd then packed into the auditorium upon arrival at the college and were addressed by the mayor of Beit Ommar, a farmer from Halhul and a spokesperson from the Israeli contingent who voiced the support from the Israeli side in favour of the Palestinians who would be affected by the planned road. The locals were highly appreciative of all who supported and stated that it was the largest protest in the area to date.
After listening to the mayor of Beit Ommar, a farmer and spokesman of Halhul and viewing some powerpoint images of the devastating effects of the planned road the crowd peacefully left the college. No soldiers or police were present at the conference and the protest ended without incident. Now all that remains to be seen is if the Israeli authorities heed and respect the non-violent message that was strongly conveyed to them today and change their plans which are illegal even by Israeli Law.
This report was amended on December 24th. For photos visit:
https://www.palsolidarity.org/main/2006/12/23/route60-march/
For Haaretz coverage click here: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/804600.html
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4. “Are you Fateh or Hamas?’ – “I am neither”
by the ISM media team, December 23rd
Last night Israeli forces invaded Ramallah Old City around midnight, occupied a family home, blindfolded the twenty-year old son, banged his head against a door and refused to allow the grandmother suffering from diabetes to use the bathroom.
Several jeeps, a hummer and an APC invaded Hizbe Al Qadim Street in Ramallah Tahta around midnight and demanded entry into a family home by banging with rifle butts on the front door. Forced with complying or having their front door blown open, the family opened and several soldiers were seen entering with large bags. Once inside the soldiers imprisoned the family in one room, blindfolded the son and started interrogating him about his political affiliations as well as banging his head against the door. Soldiers also damaged the walls with rifle butts.
Whilst this was happening other military vehicles continuously shone their searchlights on the windows of neighbouring houses, focusing particularly on one flat. After around an hour the military vehicles left with the soldiers still in the house. Intermittent shooting including automatic gunfire was heard and about an hour later the IOF returned to pick up the occupying soldiers. No one was kidnapped.
In the morning some neighbours identified blood on the walls. This event doesn’t seem to have received any local media coverage, as scenes like these are played out several times nightly across the West Bank.
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5. Transcript of BBC World Servce interview with Mary Baxter
This BBC interview relates to Mary’s arrest in Tel Rumeida on December 17th:
http://switchboard.real.com/player/email.html?PV=6.0.12&&title=Mary%5FBaxter%
https://www.palsolidarity.org/main/2006/12/17/mary-arrest/
Mary: On this occasion some children who were going up at the very top of Tel Rumeida were being stopped from going home from school. For some reason at the top of the hill on private Palestinian land there were a whole lot of settlers having a picnic, a lot of them children. They were being guarded by a number of soldiers. The Palestinian children who were forced to use that way because they are not allowed to go up the street past the Tel Rumeida settlement, and have been told by the army that is the way they’re to go, were not being allowed past to their homes. Now this is against the Israeli law. They rang me because I’ve been there so long and understand the situation and the law to some extent although I’m not a lawyer. The officers are not very keen to talk to me, they expect me to respond to barked orders as though I was some sort of a dog at times but they will not discuss anything with me.
Interviewer: So you protested, you tried time after time to get some official response to what you saw as a breach of Israeli law by stopping these children. What happened eventually?
Mary: The police came. Now the police over the telephone to someone else had already admitted that it was their job to protect the Palestinian children but the police had not come to do so, so I told the police that they were breaking Israeli law if they did not help these Palestinian children get home. They refused to do that. Instead they said I must get in their jeep and they would take me to the police station and when I protested they said they would take me to the police station and come back to look after the Palestinian children but they did not go back and help out in this situation at all, they stayed at the police station.
Interviewer: Mary, you are 75. Why would you, a widower of a former Anglican priest, want to put yourself through this, why would you want to be in that conflict zone.?
Mary: I think it’s a call from God, but in Australia we don’t talk about God much, but that’s what I think it is. The thing that really keeps me there is that Palestinians tell me time and time again that my being there makes a difference to their lives. I do take risks and I go further with the children than either the army or the settlers want me to go.
Interviewer: Have settlers ever attacked you?
Mary: O yes, lots of times. They attack me outside my house. I don’t have to go up near their settlement to be attacked.
Interviewer: And what kind of attack?
Mary: I’ve been knocked over when I’ve been trying to protect children. Just on the 18th November three different settler women punched me when I was trying to stand between them and Palestinian children.
Interviewer: Can you ever get any sense from those settlers who are so angry with you, why they think that there shouldn’t be Palestinians there?
Mary: No, no, what they do if they talk at all rather than scream, is to rant at you. The men rant, very often with a finger right in my face, that I’m not objective but they are free to attack Palestinian children and they are somehow objective. It just makes absolutely no sense.
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6. IOF illegally detain international volunteers for four hours
by ISM Hebron, December 26th
Two international volunteers were illegally detained for over four hours this morning. They were performing a routine visit to Qurtuba School to accompany Palestinian schoolchildren, who face physical violence and harrassment from settler-colonists.
The two volunteers, from South Africa and Spain, were accused of entering a house that was a Closed Military Zone according to the soldiers, although they failed to produce the necessary documentation. The home, now deserted, was once occupied by a Palestinian family that has since left due to the constant and unbearable harassment and abuse by settlers.
The home had been heavily defaced and marked with graffiti. This home is Palestinian property and the volunteers had no idea that this home was ‘out of bounds’.
The soldier that detained them at first, radioed for his superior who arrived almost an hour later and released the volunteers. He did this after inspecting their camera and advising the volunteers not to wander into the abandoned homes.
A few minutes later, the volunteers were detained individually at two separate checkpoints. The reason given for the subsequent detention was, “we were ordered to hold you until our superiors arrive to interrogate you!” It is highly unusual for IOF soldiers to detain foreign nationals as this is usually the responsibility of the police. In this case the police drove past but showed no interest in the incident.
After three hours, a senior army official arrived on the scene but quickly dismissed what was clearly an illegal detention by soldiers. However, the soldiers at the scene only released them an hour later. The volunteers felt that this was just a tactic by the soldiers to discourage them from coming to assist Palestinians living in the area. The cold today made the ordeal even worse for them. But as they said, “This was a lousy experience, but what the Palestinians go through day after day is really awful and much worse.”
Today’s illegal detention is merely the latest example of harrassment by Israeli forces of human rights defenders (HRDs) in Tel Rumeida, stretching back nearly two years when an international presence was first established in Tel Rumeida. On December 17th an Australian HRD was held for four hours whilst settlers trespassed Palestinian land, and a month ago Amnesty International highlighted the risks HRDs face from attack by settlers and the lack of action by Israeli forces.
For photos visit: https://www.palsolidarity.org/main/2006/12/27/tr-illegal-detention/
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7. Anarchists Against the Wall block Central Tel Aviv
Israeli activists have blocked central Tel Aviv with razor wire from the Apartheid Wall. The activists stretched the razor wire across Basel Street with a sign from the Wall that reads in Arabic, Hebrew and English: “Mortal Danger-Military Zone. Any person who passes or damages the fence endangers his life”.
The twenty activists from Anarchists Against the Wall, who attend the weekly Friday demonstrations against the Apartheid Wall in Bil’in, set up the blockade at around 2pm and started handing out flyers to passers by explaining the action.
The action was taken to protest the Apartheid Wall being built through the West Bank, as well as severe travel restrictions on Palestinians. The leaflets remind Israelis that they bear responsibility for the suffering of Palestinians as a result of their government’s apartheid
policies.
For details contact Yonaton Pollack: 0546327736
For photos contact Oren: 0523767272
For photos visit: https://www.palsolidarity.org/main/2006/12/28/telaviv-blockade/
For YNet coverage click here: http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3345850,00.html
For Haaretz coverage click here: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/807023.html
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8. Popular Committee Member shot in Bil’in
by the ISM media team, December 29th
The IOF shot rubber-coated steel bullets at Bil’in Popular Committee Member Abdullah Abu Rahme, wounding him twice in different parts of the leg. The soldier took aim and fired the bullets from less than 50 metres away at Abu Rahme’s leg after today’s peaceful demo against the Apartheid Wall in Bil’in.
A larger than usual number of villagers participated in today’s protest on the eve of the Eid Al Adha feast. After marching to the gate in the wall, marchers passed between the gate and razor wire, which forms the first barrier in the wall. Soldiers clambered over the gate, a task made more difficult by the razor wire across the gate put there by the IOF, and tried to close off the opening.
By this time the many protesters who had passed through, started walking along the ridge between the razor wire and the next obstacle in the wall formed by a three-meter high fence. Some looked for ways of scaling the illegal structure.
Those left on the other side of the razor wire managed to find openings in it, and some reached the group protesting on the ridge despite the multiple rounds of sound bombs fired by the IOF.
As the protesters reached the outskirts of the village they noticed soldiers in two empty houses and urged them to leave. The soldiers vacated one house but remained in the other despite requests from the villagers to leave.
When the villagers entered the house the soldiers started lashing out at them with their batons causing cuts and bruises to arms and legs. Popular Committeee member Mohammed Katib and Farhad Burnat were among those beaten by the soldiers. Snipers occupying a nearby roof fired teargas at those in the vicinity of the house. Instead of leaving, the IOF invaded with several jeeps and soldiers started firing rubber bullets at protesters. Abu Rahme was shot as he was sitting on the ground by the house occupied by soldiers.
Today’s demo was characterized by an escalation in IOF violence compared to recent weeks.
For photos visit: https://www.palsolidarity.org/main/2006/12/29/bilin-29-12-06/
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For more reports, journals and action alerts visit the ISM website at www.palsolidarity.org
Please consider supporting the International Solidarity Movement’s work with a financial contribution. You may donate securely through our website at: www.palsolidarity.org/main/donations/
1. Forty settlers freely trespass Palestinian property, Australian human rights volunteer arrested
2. Testimony from Detained Human Rights Defender
3. Israel has the right to defend herself
4. Action Alert: Ask Veolia advisors to take a stand for Justice in Palestine!
5. Action Alert – Hope Flowers School
6. Israeli denial of entry policy continues despite promises made to the EU
7. Checkpoint Humiliation
8. Olive branches in Bil’in fail to quell IOF aggression
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1. Forty settlers freely trespass Palestinian property, Australian human rights volunteer arrested
by ISM Hebron, December 17th
At 11am, human rights workers in the Tel Rumeida district of Hebron were alerted that 40 Israeli settlers, one of whom was armed, had invaded the Abu Haikal’s property and were having a picnic and campfire in their olive groves. The settlers were accompanied by 15 soldiers. The settlers and soldiers refused to let Palestinian schoolchildren enter their houses after school although this is against even Israeli law.
When contacted the police confirmed that the Palestinian children were allowed through their land to reach their homes but when the police turned up they refused to allow this. Temporary International Presence in Hebron (TIPH) was called to the scene and the DCO (District Coordination Office – the civil administration wing of the Israeli military int he West Bank) promised to ’sort it out’ when contacted but never showed up.
Mary Baxter, a 75-year old human rights worker who frequently defends the rights of Palestinian residents in the community, began making inquiries first to the soldiers and then to the police. After speaking to the police for approximately half an hour, they detained her and she was taken away in the back of a police jeep. Baxter was arrested at the police station for obstructing the police jeep and made to sign conditions which forbid her from standing opposite her front door for two weeks. She is also banned from visiting friends and the community
centre in Tel Rumeida
Baxter was released after being being held for four hours, including one hour in the cold outside Kiryat Arba police station despite her sick condition. She has a cold and bandaged hand from a fall, and only came out today because of the mass settler trespass on Palestinian land.
Baxter has significantly contributed to the support of Palestinian rights in the Tel Rumeida district of Hebron by drawing international attention to the plight of Palestinian residents who are denied basic rights like the ability to drive cars, walk on certain streets, and receive emergency services. Recently the Secretary General of Amnesty International visited Tel Rumeida and condemned Israeli human rights violations.
Settlers remained on the property for approximately 3 hours. None of the Israeli trespassers were arrested.
Earlier in the day settlers had hit a teacher with a rock on her way to the Al Qutuba school in Tel Rumeida. The teacher was hospitalised.
After school as the Palestinian schoolchildren were being accompanied home, settlers bombarded them with rocks, apples and eggs.
One Palestinian man was detained for 40 minutes at a Tel Rumeida checkpoint. When a HRW asked the soldiers why he was being detained they replied it was because the man ‘wanted to be there’.
The settler children are on holiday for the Jewish festival of Hanukkah.
Mary Baxter: 0545316328
ISM media office: 02 2971824, 0599943157
For photos visit: https://www.palsolidarity.org/main/2006/12/17/mary-arrest/
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2. Testimony from Detained Human Rights Defender
by Mary, December 18th
There have been four occasions in the last two and a half months when the Israeli army and police have helped and encouraged Israeli settlers to trespass on Palestinian land. This is against Israeli law. The aim is probably to help Israeli settlers establish a bridgehead on Palestinian land so that in the future they can insist that they have been using the land.
Yesterday, at 12.30pm, I was ill and asleep when I had a call from an international human rights defender (HRD). She said that Palestinian children were being stopped returning home from school. Israeli settlers were on Palestinian land, being protected by soldiers, who said that Palestinians would not be able to pass for 5 hours. This was a particularly serious offense for a number of reasons. Three of the reasons are as follows. Firstly, there has been an Israeli court order that Palestinians must be allowed go to their homes. Secondly, the police (who admitted the first reason) would not come and help. And thirdly because the Israeli army insists that Palestinian families, who live near their base, may not use the road but must pass this way. The trespass on Palestinian land is also an offense.
So I got out of bed and went out. I asked the soldier at the crossing what was happening. He said that I knew what he thought about this but that he could do nothing. So wheezing loudly, I went up the very steep hill to Abu Hekel land where there was an army jeep and many other soldiers. The officer in the jeep was a captain and seemed of high enough rank to be some help. I said that they were breaking Israeli law and threatening the safety of Palestinian children and that it was the army who insisted that the Palestinians pass this way. It made no difference. I stood by his jeep to stop him from leaving and rang the District Coordinating Office (DCO-the Civil Administration wing of the Israeli military in the West Bank). I do not have my telephone, which was lost and found in West Jerusalem and, being deaf, could not hear well on the substitute.
Israeli settler children were being allowed on to Palestinian land but Palestinian children were being turned away. Then two young women with babies were turned back by the soldiers. I rang the DCO again. She said to call back at 2pm. I looked at my watch. It was 1pm and all the children were out of school. So, this was totally unacceptable. I tried again to get the officer to let the children through and to protect them. But to no avail. One soldier told another HRD that he would be too frightened to try to escort Palestinian children past these violent settlers!
Then the police arrived. I said that they should be protecting the Palestinian children and complying with Israeli law. Instead they decided to detain me. I said that they had a responsibility to the children. They said that they would take me to the police station and then go back. But they lied. They stayed at the police station. After four hours, I was let out into the cold even though they knew I was ill. I had to promise that for two weeks, I would not stand outside my house, go to my rubbish skip, visit neighbours across the road or up the street, go to the community centre or go to the only local shop. How petty can you get? I can scurry round the corner, where I can stand and talk to Palestinians or sympathetic soldiers or go down to the checkpoint.
The Palestinian children waited for another half hour and were finally led away by soldiers to go another way that was very rough and would take them at least twenty minutes. I do not know what happened to the mothers with babies.
On Sunday October 8th, the Israeli army invaded H1, Palestinian administered Hebron. That is, most of Hebron. They forced shops to close. Then the checkpoint for Palestinians was closed. This meant that people could not come home from work or shop for food. After much telephoning, it was opened spasmodically. Israeli settlers arrived at the checkpoint and blocked the way for Palestinians. At 3.30pm, about thirty soldiers escorted the settlers through the Palestinian only checkpoint and it was closed – until 7pm we were told. This was very bad because in Ramadan Palestinians eat at sunset. They needed to cook their food for a meal at 5.45pm. And workers needed to get home to eat it. There is another way, which is a ten minute taxi ride, which many can’t afford. The reason for the invasion was to take the Israeli settlers into a Palestinian house without permission. They wanted to see the Cave of Otneil Ben-Knaz. This was both trespass and invasion.
On Friday November 17th, about 100 Israeli settlers and their visitors went onto Abu Hekel land right next to their house. They were accompanied by two Israeli policemen, while three soldiers watched from behind a fence. They stayed for ninety minutes saying prayers and having a speaker. The family was naturally very frightened. They have been attacked by settlers on many occasions and also by soldiers. The following Friday this was repeated with forty settlers and police.
This pattern of behaviour must stop.
The first part of this testimony relates to the settler trespass in Tel Rumeida on December 17th.
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3. Israel has the right to defend herself
by John, December 18th
I had a tour of Hebron today going a bit further than the Tel Rumeida settlement. But we did pass through this area – it turns out that the soldiers often ban the residents from repairing their houses, hence the fact that many have moved out. Many more moved out after the massacre in 1994 by Baruch Goldstein and the Israeli government imposed a curfew for their own ’safety’. This curfew stopped them going outside for days at a time or visiting shops.
The settlers have also invaded a number of Palestinian homes. The most ‘amusing’ story I heard from one activist is when a group of Palestinians saw an Israeli leave a satchel in a field nearby. The police investigated and found it contained food – it transpired that the Israeli Jews had decided that they would come and throw rocks and stones in the village but because of Shabbat cannot carry food. Locally they have also burnt down olive trees that date from the Roman or even Byzantium era.
A local house has also been turned into a closed military zone but local Jews are often observed going here for illicit affairs and for drinking alcohol. But when the locals return they are often harassed by the soldiers.
The most shocking thing I think I saw today was the sign pictured above, which is written all over the place in Hebrew and as pictured in English. The fact that some Jews want to perpetrate a Holocaust is awful, especially as the fact is the state of Israel was largely created due to the Holocaust.
Although there were no egg throwing incidents (we quite blatantly kept a camera trained on the window that they have been coming from) two settler children did attack some Palestinian boys with sticks. The soldiers intervened, but told the Palestinians off.
Another interesting thing is the fact that for a long time there has been a Palestinian Jewish presence in Hebron and we were shown the old Jewish cemetery and for years they lived peacefully with the Muslims. Again I heard I don’t want all the Israelis to leave Israel but I want the settlers to leave my land. And also the fact that although people don’t condone suicide bombing they are not surprised when it happens. One email I had from a friend asked if they don’t condone it why don’t they stop it. But its not that easy, as on can see in my home country, a large majority was against the Iraq invasion with many demonstrating against it but even in this democratic country we couldn’t stop thousands of soldiers going. So why should we blame the majority of the Palestinians for the actions of very few.
I’m starting to feel quite angry and helpless here and can fully understand the motives behind attacking the Israelis. Palestinians say they have all served in the army (OK not quite true but a large percentage have) and so they are all complicit in the crimes of the settlers – we were told of numerous court rulings that allow them to go to various places or use various roads that they cannot get enforced. Whilst the settlers break various rules but they cannot get them prosecuted – if they try and film they are often harassed and attacked by the settlers and soldiers.
As I’m finishing this off there are some settler kids wandering the streets with music blaring out, they just walked past two soldiers who did absolutely nothing. I’m now going to go looking for quotes from the Bush administration that state the Palestinians, and their democratically elected government, have the right to defend themselves from terror. If anyone can provide me with one I’d be most grateful.
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4. Action Alert: Ask Veolia advisors to take a stand for Justice in Palestine!
from the Grassroots Palestinian Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign
http://stopthewall.org/factsheets/1047.shtml
Connex / Veolia and Alstom are the international investors in the Citypass consortium that will build and run a light rail project in Jerusalem that incorporates a number of Jewish settlements around East Jerusalem, built on stolen Palestinian land. It ensures the contiguity of these colonies with the central areas of the city and plays a key role in sustaining the settlements and ensuring they become a permanent fixture upon Palestinian land.
Veolia’s involvement in the tramline makes the company complicit in Israel’s violations of international law reaping significant profits over a 30 year period, money stained with the blood and misery of Palestinians under Occupation and currently being expelled from Jerusalem.
Veolia has rejected to heed the calls from Palestine and international organizations.
Thus international pressure is mounting on the corporation to stop their involvement in the Judaization of Jerusalem.
* Connex shuttles have been blockaded in Geneva.
* Following protests by trade unions and IPSC in August 2006, Veolia Transport Ireland had called off plans to train Israeli personnel to operate the tramline in Jerusalem.
* In November the Dutch ASN Bank decided to divest from Veolia until the company respects the relevant UN resolutions.
Support us in putting further pressure on Veolia!
Address the advisors of the Institut Veolia Environnement, the group’s prestige institute aiming to “propose a forum for dialogue and interchange with academia, institutions and the different actors in society.”
Ask the intellectuals associated with the institute to re-consider their support of Veolia as long as Veolia supports violations of Palestinian rights!
To:
Foresight committee Institut Veolia Environnement:
Amartya Sen: ree23@cam.ac.uk (cc weiner@fas.harvard.edu )
Philippe Kourilsky: caput@pasteur.fr
Pierre Marc Johnson: pjohnson@heenan.ca
Harvey Fineberg: fineberg@nas.edu
Mamphela Ramphele: aesmar@bremner.uct.ac.za
Helene Ahrweiler: (no email available)
cc: Georges Valentis: georges.valentis@institut.veolia.org
(Managing Director of Institut Veolia Environnement)
Open letter to the Foresight Committee members of the Institut Veolia Environnement
Dear Foresight Committee members,
We are addressing you in your capacity as experts supporting the efforts of Institut Veolia Environnement.
We know that all of you have dedicated a great part of your life and expertise to the promotion of human rights and social, economic, cultural and political rights of people all over the world. We appreciate your commitment and are writing you now to urge you to continue your support for human rights for all.
We would like to inform you about the implications of your association with the Institut Veolia in terms of its’ violations of international law, UN resolutions, and Palestinian human rights and cultural heritage.
As you may know, Veolia, together with Alstom, are the international investors in the Citypass consortium that won a 2002 tender put out by Israeli authorities for a light rail transportation project in Jerusalem amounting to around 500 million euros. Citypass will be responsible for operation and maintenance of the system for the next thirty years.*
The path of the light rail incorporates a number of Jewish settlements around East Jerusalem, built on stolen Palestinian land. It ensures the contiguity of these colonies with the central areas of the city and provides them with a vital transport link. The project boasts that the “Ammunition Hill” station of the network will operate as the feeder station for settler traffic from Ma’aleh Adumim, a large Israeli settlement in the West Bank, and from settlements in the West Bank’s Jordan Valley. The light rail project plays a key role in sustaining the settlements and ensuring they become a permanent fixture upon Palestinian land.
In August 2005, the project got the go ahead from War Criminal Ariel Sharon who stated at a signing ceremony: “I believe that this should be done, and in any event, anything that can be done to strengthen Jerusalem, construct it, expand it and sustain it for eternity as the capital of the Jewish people and the united capital of the State of Israel, should be done.” The Occupation’s Mayor Uri Lupolianski described the light rail to be “the fulfillment of Psalm 122.” The tramline is clearly part of a larger plan to substitute Jerusalem’s historical and unique social fabric and its cultural heritage with a new brand of a “Judaized” version of Jerusalem.
According to international law, an occupying power is not allowed to annex or drastically change the infrastructure in the territories it occupies. The advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice in July 2004 confirmed that Israel is an occupying power and that building the Wall and Jewish settlements in occupied Palestinian territories is illegal. However, the tramline project runs through the occupied Palestinian territories. Veolia’s involvement in the tramline will make the company complicit in Israel’s violations of international law.
The project, a private-public partnership (PPP) between the Israeli Occupation government and the consortium, is hinged upon the willingness of international business groupings to provide a huge injection of capital. In turn Veolia and Alstom will reap significant profits and dividends over a thirty-year period, money stained with the blood and misery of Palestinians under Occupation and currently being expelled from Jerusalem.
Veolia has received a lot of criticism since it first announced its intentions to become involved in the illegal project. Stop the Wall and other Palestinian civil society organizations have launched appeals against its participation in the tramway. President of the Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas and French President Jacques Chirac already discussed Veolia’s partnership in the tramline project in the summer of 2005. Amnesty International France highlighted the unlawfulness of the construction of the tramline in East Jerusalem in a public statement on 1 March 2006.
The Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign (IPSC) revealed in August 2006 that Veolia Transport Ireland had called off plans to train Israeli personnel to operate a similar tramline in East Jerusalem, following trade union protests inspired by the IPSC.
Then in November the Dutch ASN Bank ended its relationship with Veolia and wrote to Veolia:
“….We believe that Veolia’s involvement in the light rail project is not in line with the UN’s demand to stop all support for Israel’s settlement activities, and is therefore not in line with ASN Banks’ social criteria. Due to the direct nature of Veolia’s involvement (through a 5% stake in the consortium and as future operator), we are of the opinion that Veolia’s activities in Jerusalem are in conflict with UN Resolutions. Therefore, on this current information Veolia will be removed from our investment universe.”
In the light of the above, we urge you to take a stand for justice and international law and to join the international efforts to convince the Veolia group to consider the role human rights should play in investments.
We ask you to re-consider your support of Veolia as long as Veolia supports violations of our rights and international legality.
As Veolia has not heeded the calls from Palestine and various international organizations, ending your relationship with Veolia—just as the ASN Bank did—will allow you to truly “participate in defining the overall direction and contribute to the discussions led by the Institut Veolia Environnement.”
Regards,
Signature
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5. Action Alert – Hope Flowers School
An Urgent Request to Keep Hope Alive
http://www.hope-flowers.org/demolition.html
As many of you know, the Israeli authorities started to build a wall around the Palestinian cities and villages a few years ago. In 2003, the Hope Flowers School received a demolition order for the school cafeteria, because the cafeteria is located 120 meters away from the proposed route of the wall.
Now the Israeli authorities have started to build the last segment of the wall near the school. Bulldozers and stone crushing machines are working daily to crush thousands of years of beautiful rocks at the front of the school in preparation for either laying the 8 meters high cement wall segments or to build a fence.
The proposed route of the barrier will isolate the Hope Flowers School and will not allow Israelis to come to visit the school. The school has been well known for many years as a home for peace education in the Middle East. Our bridge-building programs have reached out to thousands of Palestinians and Israelis.
We encourage peace and coexistence based on our belief that the Palestinian-Israeli conflict cannot be solved in a violent way. With our joint programs we create an opportunity for dialogue and understanding. The mutual meetings are very helpful to minimize fear and prevent stereotyping. They form a tool for both Palestinians and Israelis to find their common humanity.
The problem is that, when the wall (barrier) is built, Israelis and Palestinians will not be able to meet each other anymore. The Hope Flowers School will not be accessible to Israelis. This means more fear and more stereotyping of ‘the other’, which would end any chance for creating peace and dialogue. The wall is not only physical: it will be a barrier in the minds and hearts of future Palestinian and Israeli generations, preventing them from living together. The wall will not bring peace. It may bring a cease-fire, but a cease-fire is never peace. (The current cease-fire in late 2006 applies to Gaza only).
To all our friends, your help is needed now!
The Israelis will not stop building the wall for sure! But let’s all together ask them to create a gate in the wall near the school to allow Israelis to reach the Hope Flowers School. This gate will be a Gate for Hope to keep hope alive and to keep Hope Flowering for the next generation.
How to help?
Please apply pressure to the contacts below by letter, fax, e-mail or phone. Ask them to do whatever they can to pressure the Israelis to overturn the demolition order of the cafeteria and to create a gate in the wall to allow Israelis to reach the school. Emphasize the unique operating principles and ethos of the Hope Flowers School – it is the only school in the Palestinian West Bank and Gaza areas focusing on peace and democracy education, teaching our students to look for non-violent solutions to the ongoing situation.
Here is is an example of a letter that you can re-work (if you wish), sign and send to one of the contacts below.
Click here to download (MSWord document). Please write pleasant and constructive letters and e-mails!
a) Commander, Israeli Civil Administration
(Sub Committee for Supervision of Building Activity in Beth El),
Fax: (Israel) +972-2-997-7326
b) Mr. Ehud Olmert, Prime Minister of Israel
E-mail: pm_eng@pmo.gov.il
Fax: (Israel) +972-2-566-4838 or +972-2-267-5475
Tel: +972-2-670-5555
UK residents please write to:
Rt Hon Margaret Beckett MP
Foreign and Commonwealth Office
King Charles Street
London SW1A 2AH, UK
www.fco.gov.uk (click ‘Feedback’)
c) The Israeli Embassy / Consulate in your home country.
d) Dr Condoleezza Rice, US Secretary of State
Address: US Department of State, 2210 C Street N.W, Washington D.C 20520, USA.
Tel: (USA) 202 647 5291 (Dr. Rice’s office) or 202 647 4000 (State Dept. main number)
Email: contact-us.state.gov
By sending your letter to one or more of the above officials, you are helping us to keep hope alive.
If you can draw attention to this situation in your local and wider communities, through various methods, therefore resulting in greater awareness of our situation, it would further help our cause.
For further information specifically relating to this issue, please contact us at the school.
In peace,
Ibrahim Issa
Co-director, Hope Flowers School
Some background information
To find Hope Flowers on this map: follow the red main road SW from Bethlehem to Al Khader – this used to be the old Jerusalem-Hebron main road, but now it has been blocked off. Hope Flowers is below Al Khader in the corner, just where the wall turns, opposite the new Israeli settlement at Efrata.
Most of you may well know that the school is at Al Khader, in the part of the West Bank still designated as Area C, where there is exclusive Israeli control and administration of most aspects of organized life. The categories of Areas A, B and C, which came into existence with the Oslo Accords, resulted in Areas A being designated as areas under full Palestinian control whilst Areas B came under joint Israeli and Palestinian control. Because the school area has been traditionally Palestinian for generations, and because it is within 2 kilometers of portions of Area B and Area A, it had seemed likely that this area would be reclassified as an Area A. However, as a result of the latest Intifada, and other factors, this has not happened, and we remain fully under the control of the Israeli military and civil authorities.
This directly affects the school buildings in the following way. Although all of the school buildings have Palestinian building permits, the permits are not recognized by the Israeli authorities. As we are in an Area C, we need to be in possession of an Israeli building permit.
In 1999, when we were first issued with a demolition notification, the Hope Flowers School was in the same predicament. After submitting reports, attending meetings of the Civil Administration (the Israeli body that administers the Occupied Palestinian Territories), attending the hearing of our case in an Israeli military court, and continuous international pressure, the order to demolish was rescinded. We applied in 1999 for an Israeli building permit and were successful in our application. However, the fee that the Israeli Authorities were charging for the issue and validation of the permit was deliberately beyond the financial capabilities of the school, hence we were unable to proceed and obtain the permit.
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6. Israeli denial of entry policy continues despite promises made to the EU
by the Right to Entry Campaign, December 17th
Despite assurances given to the EU presidency by Israeli authorities, foreigners continue to be barred from passing through Israeli-controlled access points when their destination is the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt). “Arbitrary denials of entry and expulsions have not stopped. No transparent rules or mechanisms are in place so far. Palestinian families, vital service providers and businesses remain vulnerable to arbitrary denials of entry and residency. This is especially hard to accept at a time of major Christian and Muslim traditional festivities when families want to be together more then ever”, said Anita Abdullah, speaking for the Campaign for the Right of Entry to the oPt.
One example is Linda Ali Mahmood, a Palestinian American from Cleveland/Ohio who was refused entry at Ben Gurion airport on Thursday December 14th. Linda, who is deaf and dumb like her brother Shukri, had traveled in the hopes of spending time with her cancer stricken aunt but was denied entry allegedly because Shukri had overstayed his permit. Shukri had requested a routine permit renewal in October. However, the Israeli Ministry of Interior liaison at the Israeli Civil Administration suddenly stopped processing renewals for foreigners married to Palestinian ID-holders and refuses to accept Shukri’s application.
On December 13th, the EU Presidency met with Israeli Major General Yosef Mishlav, Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), to discuss Israel’s policy on issuing visitor permits to foreign nationals residing with family or working in the oPt. Several EU Member States have since informed their nationals that responsibility for issuing Israeli visitor permits for foreign passport holders entering the oPt has been transferred from the Ministry of Interior to COGAT, which is a part of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) command in the oPt. The EU Presidency also reported receiving the following assurances from General Mishlav:
• the policy changes and systems introduced by the Israeli Ministry of Interior three months ago have been cancelled;
• new rules have been adopted permitting foreign nationals seeking entry into the oPt to apply for three-month visitor permit and permit renewals;
• EU spouses of Palestinians should apply for 3 month permits while COGAT considers longer term alternatives;
• a COGAT liaison is now in place at Allenby Bridge crossing and a liaison will be in place at Ben Gurion Airport ‘within weeks,’ to prevent problems at crossing points.
The EU Member States have promised their nationals to monitor the implementation of the new procedures closely and have stated that they ‘shall continue to ensure that the issue of entry to the oPt for foreign nationals is continuously raised at the highest levels’. The Campaign welcomes the efforts of foreign governments to resolve this urgent issue. However, tens of thousands of Palestinian families will remain separated or at risk, and Palestinian educational and social service institutions, humanitarian agencies and businesses will remain unable to prevent the loss of critical personnel until applications for entry and residency in the oPt are decided in accordance with a clear, transparent and internationally lawful policy.
Contact: Basil Ayish Coordinator, Media Committee
(c) +970-(0)59-817-3953 (email) info@righttoenter.ps
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7. Checkpoint Humiliation
The other day as we were travelling through Zatara checkpoint between Ramallah and Nablus, I witnessed a particularly disgusting display of power by the Israeli army. An extremely public humiliation of a woman, who was taken out of a shared taxi and had her ID and phone removed. She was fighting back the tears, trying to retain her dignity, but was clearly distressed. Everything about the soldiers interaction exuded contempt for her. One in particular was clearly getting something from “punishing” her. We were prevented from speaking to her, which made our ability to intervene somewhat limited. What we were able to do was remain present until she was released. Most of the time I do not feel very effective; the most I can do is be present.
Apparently her ID did not “allow” her to travel to another part of the West Bank. Apart from being extremely punitive, excessively controlling and frankly wrong by any book, it is also arbitary. The rules of the game change. I have been in shared taxis with people who have been turned back…. ‘last week’ they could make that journey, ‘yesterday’ they could make that journey, ‘next week’ they ‘may’ be able to make it, but today “NO”. After a while I feel like I can never hear the word “LO” again (Hebrew for “no”), it is barked and shouted countless times a day, controlling so much of day to day life for Palestinians.
After an hour, on this bitterly cold day, the soldier returned the woman’s ID. He simply took it out of his pocket and gave it to her. Clearly she was not a “security threat”. Detaining her, frightening her, and publically humiliating her, were blatantly intended to make sure she would not attempt this journey again. I was enraged. The soldiers are boys with guns and egos. They have so much power in a situation that is impossible for them to understand with their conditioning and youth.
At this same checkpoint, in this same period of time, another situation was unfolding. It was hidden away and not for public view. I became suspicious and approached a soldier and border policeman; it was then that I saw a boy of around 15 years, sat hunched behind a concrete bollard, hidden from view, his face wet with tears. He looked petrified. He has good reason to be.
Every single person in Palestine will know someone who has been arrested or detained. Ill treatment is commonplace, and torture is far from being eradicated. I have no idea how long the boy had been held for. He was in tears as the soldiers were speaking to him, but fortunately he was “allowed” to go.
Recently I was travelling through Nablus to a nearby village, the taxi driver pointed out a street where, just half an hour before, the army shot dead a man. Apparently a targetted assasination. Five other people were injured, one seriously. “Normal life” (whatever ‘that’ is living under
Occupation) continues just a few streets away.
My time here is coming to a close, I am in a quiet, reflective mood. From all the conversations I have had, with countless people, two things are screaming out for attention. One is the overriding sense that things are getting worse. And worse. And worse. I was not here during the bloody years of the Intifada, but I think it is absolutely vital to understand that although the bloodshed and violence is less, the situation is worse. The oppressive control, which works on every level, mental and physical, is steadily going to new levels. One of the women I am working with grew up under Apartheid in South Africa. Along with several other South African activists who are here in the West Bank, she says that Apartheid here is ‘even worse’ than it was in South Africa. This has not been said lightly. The other thing I am forever requested, “tell people what is happening”.
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8. Olive branches in Bil’in fail to quell IOF aggression
by the ISM media team, December 22nd
Today’s weekly demo against the Apartheid Wall in Bilin saw some rare but welcome wet and overcast weather. Instead of the usual midday sun, clouds and drizzle accompanied the marchers on their route from the village mosque to the wall.
The wet weather had the opposite effect of keeping people away as the numbers were higher than recent weeks. The demo had the usual international flavour with villagers supported by international and Israeli activists. Polish and Spanish solidarity groups stood out today.
As usual units of soldiers occupied a rooftop and lurked on the edge of the village.
Marchers chanted slogans urging Palestinian leaders to end internal conflict and unite against the Israeli occupation. On reaching the gate in the wall the marchers, many of them waving olive branches, found their route blocked by soldiers lined up in front of the gate.
As some villagers went under a railing they were grabbed and dragged away by soldiers.
The protesters then walked downhill alongside the razor wire which some pulled at and others trampled with olive branches. More units of soldiers were immediately dispatched to this area and a sound bomb was fired.
Many protesters were grabbed and shoved roughly by the soldiers, sustaining cuts and bruises.
One protester managed to climb through the fence in an act of defiance but he quickly returned to the other side for fear of repercussions – many Bil’in villagers have had to spend days in prison after demos when they have tried to access their land on the other side of the wall.
As the demo was continuing the soldiers in the villages were firing tear gas and shooting rubber bullets at children. Four children suffered serious enough injuries to need hospital treatment in Ramallah.
For photos visit: https://www.palsolidarity.org/main/2006/12/22/bilin-dec-22/
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For more reports, journals and action alerts visit the ISM website at www.palsolidarity.org
Please consider supporting the International Solidarity Movement’s work with a financial contribution. You may donate securely through our website at: www.palsolidarity.org/main/donations/
1. Two Jerusalem House Demolitions
2. Destroyed Homes in Walaja: “It’s always the same picture for us…”
3. Bil’in village land out of bounds for internationals
4. Amnesty International Calls For Human Rights Monitors in Palestine
5. Travel Warning – Bethlehem & Jerusalem, Occupied Palestine
6. Olive Harvest Reflections
7. Postcards from the Edge
8. “Welcome to Israel” – a trip down the Jordan Valley
9. Anti-Wall Protesters Sit their Ground in Bil’in
10. Letter from Raed Sharif
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1. Two Jerusalem House Demolitions
by John, December 11th
Last night human rights workers learned that there were going to be demolitions of houses in the Jerusalem district today so we travelled to Al ‘Isawiya. When we arrived we found that the house had already been destroyed and that the bulldozer had come at 5am. The father of the family was there but the children and mother were all ’sick’ – stressed by the events of the day. This is the second time the house has been knocked down – they were told if they paid $10,000-20,000 it may be saved but of course they do not have that money. They had rebuilt it after the last demolition simply because they had nowhere else to go.
This family will now move into another house next door which other members of their extended family live in – the reason they had moved out is because there were too many to fit in this house – now 6 people will have to move into a house with a similar number. The space available to them is pretty small as it was, so this is going to make the situation even worse. Luckily they had enough time to retrieve almost all their belongings before the house was knocked down.
HRWs were also present later at a house on the Mount of Olives while the demolition took place, but police would not let internationals anywhere near because of ‘orders’. When questioned, one of the soldiers pushed a journalist for no real reason, only a small push, but still it is unacceptable as he was not trying to pass the soldier at the time, simply trying to ascertain why he was not allowed past. One police officer said that before this house, they demolished a Jewish house and were going onto another Jewish house, in fact a lot of the houses they knock down are Jewish. Of course she was vague on details and we replied we had never heard of this – one person in the group has researched this extensively, but she said see had seen different research. They then said we can take pictures from where we were, although the house could not be seen from this position.
Eventually some got onto the roofs of other properties but most of it was over. The soldiers and police who were there were all patting each other on the back and shaking hands – job done. The children were there and some of the grown men had tears in their eyes.
Other houses in this area have been bulldozed recently as well, and some residents seem worried that still more houses might be next. This month has seen a large number of properties bulldozed in the West Bank, and with many other properties threatened, more are likely in the near future. Since the start of 2004 234, and so far this year 36 Palestinian houses have been demolished in Jerusalem alone.
A family home in Walaja, west of Bethlehem, was destroyed for the third time today.
For photos visit: https://www.palsolidarity.org/main/2006/12/12/two-house-demolitions/
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2. Destroyed Homes in Walaja: “It’s always the same picture for us…”
In the space of two weeks, the Israeli occupying army has come to the village of Walaja at least three times. The first time was to demolish an outbuilding that housed animal feed. The second, last week, was to arrest a father of five during the night for apparent links to political party Hamas (he works for a Bethlehem orphanage supported by the social services part of Hamas). The third was this morning when they came to demolish the home of Monder Abed Hamad and his family, for the second time.
The family have the misfortune to live in the Ein Jwzeh neighbourhood of Walaja, part of the village that was unilaterally taken into the borders of Israel after the 1967 war. About one year ago their home was demolished as it did not have an Israel building permit, the fact that it had a Palestinian permit makes no difference- this part of the village is now deemed to be “Israel”. 20 other homes have so far been demolished for the same reason, and a further 50 have demolition orders on them. As the family own this piece of land, and could not afford the Israeli permits even if the courts would grant them one (which is highly unlikely) they rebuilt their home with help from the rest of the village. The rebuild was completed around 5 months ago, today, in around two hours the home was again reduced to rubble and a pile of belongings. Today the family will move into rented accommodation, whether they will once again try to rebuild their home is unsure: their land lies along the route of the Israeli apartheid (security) wall that is set to completely surround the village.
None of this is new for Walaja just the latest chapter in a long story of injustice, as one of the residents of Walaja commented “…it’s always the same picture for us”. All of the inhabitants of this village are classed as refugees: they were forced from their homes after the 1949 ceasefire between Israel and Jordan. Unfortunately under this agreement, the village of Al Walaja lay in the area under Israeli control and they were “encouraged” to leave. All of the inhabitants left their homes and the village moved just a few hundred metres south, still on Al Walaja land, into the area now known as “the West Bank”. The Israeli colony of Aminadav and a park was built over the original village. Not all of the villagers were able to rebuild their homes at this time, many moved into the refugee camps that surround Bethlehem, or over the river into Jordan. Those that were able to rebuild their homes and lives did so on the slopes south of the original village.
After the 1967 war Israel expanded its borders, taking more Palestinian land and Al Walaja fell back into the area controlled by the Israelis, an area now known as “Greater Jerusalem”. This doesn’t mean that the villagers got any of the perks of being an Israeli citizen like the ID cards that allow them to travel around their own country relatively easily. What it does mean is that one third of the new village’s land was taken and the Gilo colony built there, in the rest of the village 70 houses have demolition orders on them, 20 so far have been destroyed- they had Palestinian building permits, not Israeli ones. It also means that the village is now surrounded by the Israeli colonies that are cutting the city of Jerusalem off from the rest of the West Bank (i.e. making Jerusalem an entirely Israeli city). As such, they have lost much of their land, and are destined to lose much more. It also means that as the villagers are now living in “Israeli Greater Jerusalem” but have Palestinian ID cards, they are subject to frequent harassment and arrest by the Israeli army.
As Walaja is surrounded by Israeli colonies the so called “security-wall” is set to completely surround the village, cutting it off from Bethlehem and confiscating yet more of the village land. The land lost by Walaja and neighbouring Battir village will be used to build the colony of Giv’at Ya’il. This huge colony will house around 50,000 Israelis and will link the colonies deep in Palestinian territories with those immediately outside of Jerusalem. Could it be a coincidence that this land confiscation has allowed the separation of strategically and spiritually important Jerusalem from Palestine?
So what does the future hold for Walaja? When the wall is finished the villagers will have to pass through an Israeli controlled gate to get in or out of the village. To get into the city of Bethlehem where many of the villagers work, attend school or university and buy supplies, the villagers will have to pass through two checkpoints. The route of the wall passes through many economically important olive groves, already three hundred trees have been destroyed. This in itself is an infuriating story. The villagers had gone to court to try and prevent the destruction of their trees. The Israeli court had ruled in their favour, saying that the trees could not be “up-rooted”. In an act of barbarism and disrespect that typifies the army’s response to the rare court orders granted in favour of Palestinians, they came with chainsaws and cut down the trees instead of digging them up, thus complying with the order to not up-root the trees.
And so life here goes on…as the democratic state of Israel, whilst demanding that groups like Hamas agree to its right to exist, quietly makes life for Palestinians in what little they have left of their country, unbearable and next to impossible.
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3. Bil’in village land out of bounds for internationals
by the ISM media team, December 9th
Internationals have been banned by the IOF from visiting the land of Bil’in village that lies on the other side of the illegal apartheid wall. In recent days internationals have been told by soldiers stationed at the checkpoint at the wall cutting through the village, that orders have been given forbidding access to this land. For the past year internationals have been able to cross the wall to visit and stay at the outpost built on village land and to help work the agricultural land. Settler-colonists from the illegal colony of Matityahu East have in the past set fire to the outpost, making the need for a permanent presence at the outpost essential.
In the past year the outpost has served as a meeting place for villagers and friends, has been a focus for the enjoyment of the World Cup and internationals helped with the olive harvest on the other side of the wall. All these displays of friendship and international solidarity have now been brought to an end in this latest attempt to ghettoize the village. Half of the village land has been annexed by the Israeli colony of Matityahu East and now the village is being denied their right to use the remaining land across the wall as they wish.
In a rare piece of ‘good news’ for the village, Emad Burnat, the Reuters cameraman fitted up, assaulted by soldiers, denied medical treatment and slung in jail for 3 weeks has been released from house arrest and can now return home to his family in Bil’in.
Press watchdog Reporters without Borders drew attention to Emad’s arrest and the trumped-up charges brought against him for his role in documenting IOF violence and intimidation in Bil’in.
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4. Amnesty International Calls For Human Rights Monitors in Palestine
by Amnesty International, December 10th
http://news.amnesty.org/index/ENGMDE150962006
Open Letter from Amnesty International’s Secretary General to European Union leaders on human rights crisis in Israel and the Occupied Territories
Amnesty International’s Secretary General Irene Khan today called on European Union Heads of State and Government to urgently address the downward spiral of human rights abuses in Israel and the Occupied Territories.
In an open letter published on International Human Rights Day and ahead of next week’s meeting of the European Council (15 December), Irene Khan made a series of concrete recomendations including the deployment of international human rights monitors to the region.
Irene Khan is currently leading an Amnesty International mission to Israel and the Occupied Territories during which she has discussed human rights concerns with government officials and members of civil society. The letter’s recommendations are elaborated on in a briefing also published today, Israel and the Occupied Territories – Road to nowhere.
Amnesty International’s recommendations include:
* Deployment of an effective international human rights monitoring mechanism;
* The investigation and and prosecution through the excercise of universal jurisdiction of those responsible for crimes under international law;
* Immediate halting of the sale or transfer of weapons to all parties in the conflict;
* Concrete provisions to ensure the removal of Israeli settlements from the Occupied Territories, the dismantling of the fence/wall inside the West Bank, ending the closures and in the long term a fair solution to the refugee question.
For further information or to arrange an interview with Irene Khan, please call:
In Israel and the Occupied Territories: Eliane Drakopoulos on mobile +44 7778 472 109 or mobile: +972 (0)547 781 691 or Judit Arenas on mobile + 44 7778 472 188
Israeli media representatives please contact: Udi Gilad on mobile +972 54 4660300
In London, James Dyson on + 44 207 413 5831 or mobile + 44 7795 628 367
Further information :
For the latest blogs from the Amnesty International mission, please see: blogs.amnesty.org/blogs/israelot_dec06
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Click here for AP press coverage:
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/3ED44417-3E31-423D-A52E-FBD32F493F72.htm
Two weeks ago Amnesty issued an action alert about the risks facing human rights defenders in Palestine following the assault on Swedish HRD Tove Johansson in Hebron:
http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGMDE150922006?open&of=ENG-346
https://www.palsolidarity.org/main/2006/11/18/hebron-day-06/
This Travel Warning is being issued to update information on the general security environment in Israel, Jerusalem, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip, and to reiterate threats to foreign nationals, especially American citizens. Although the situation in Israel is seemingly calm, the fact of the matter remains that Israel continues to aggressively violate International Humanitarian and Human Rights Laws daily. A disconcerting development is the Israeli practice of denying entry of Palestinian Christians and Muslims to the Holy Land; embodying religious discrimination during the high holy season. As Palestinians, we have always looked forward to your being with us during Christmas, Easter and other holiday feasts. In the past, it has been a time to welcome you into our land, our churches, our mosques, and our homes, despite the troubled times we have witnessed throughout the decades.
In order to visit any of the Holy sites you must pass through an Israeli-controlled point of entry (airport or bridge), since Israel controls all access to the Israeli occupied Palestinian territory,
where Bethlehem and Jerusalem, the Church of the Nativity and Holy Sepulcher are located. Since March of this year, an extraordinary number of foreigners have been denied entry through Israeli ports. Many of these foreign nationals have been turned away at the airport or
bridges and sent back to their country of residence or to Jordan. The Israeli authorities seldom give a reason for barring foreign tourists, so people find themselves spending money to fly into the Israeli airport or come to the Israeli-controlled border crossings not knowing that they may be turned away without having the opportunity to visit the Holy Land or visit their friends and families.
If this Israeli policy is allowed to continue it can literally empty Palestine of another half a million Palestinians. Given that four decades of Israeli occupation have already successfully reduced the Christian population in Bethlehem from 15% to less than 2%, it becomes clear that Israel’s goal is to reduce the entire Palestinian population to insignificant numbers.
We would like to welcome you to Bethlehem in occupied Palestine this Christmas season. However, to avoid spending money unnecessarily and facing a humiliating experience, we recommend that you call the Israeli Embassy or Consulate nearest you before embarking on your trip this Christmas season. Please ask the Embassy or Consulate if you will be able to pass through the airport or via one of the bridges from Jordan in order to reach Bethlehem, particularly given the fact that thousands who are trying to reach the Israeli occupied Palestinian territory are being turned back.
While speaking to the Israeli Embassy officials, confirm that Palestinians – Muslims and Christians – have not been allowed to worship in their holy places for many years. In fact, no Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza have been allowed to enter Jerusalem without Israeli military permission since 1993 and very few are granted permits to enter Jerusalem, whether for worship during Lent, Advent or Ramadan.
The building of the illegal Israeli Separation Wall (which is mostly built on Palestinian lands acquired by force 1967) has made it even more difficult for Palestinians and internationals to travel to Jerusalem and Bethlehem. The Separation Wall has not been built for security reasons, but rather to separate people from one another, from their livelihood, from their places of worship, and from their future. Walls do not create the conditions for peace with justice.
Historically, walls separate and divide and bring widespread despair, which we are witnessing now.
Although the U.S. State Department’s Travel Advisory for this same area “urges U.S. citizens to defer travel to the West Bank and to avoid all travel to the Gaza Strip,” we would ask that you rather not despair and actively attempt to join us in Bethlehem and Jerusalem this Christmas.
If we acknowledge the international community’s concurrence to allow Israel to get away with denying the world’s citizens the right to worship and blatant, daily violations of human rights, then we would all be accomplices to the war crimes being committed against Palestinians.
Thus, we hope to see you all this Christmas season. Please contact us when you are here so we visit and worship with you. You may contact us either via email at info@righttoenter.ps or mobile at 059-817-3953.
If you cannot be with us, then please keep Bethlehem, Jerusalem and
Palestinians in your prayers and actions this holiday season.
Campaign for the Right of Entry/Re- Entry to the Occupied Palestinian
Territory(oPt)
Media Contact:
Mr. Basil Ayish
Coordinator, Media Committee
(c) +970-(0)59-817-3953
(e)i…@righttoenter.ps
(w) www.righttoenter.ps
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6. Olive Harvest Reflections
by Jane Smith, December 10th
I have been back in Palestine for a week. Although the violence and tension is less than in the early years of the Intifada, the oppressive control of Palestinian life is worse than ever. People are losing hope.
Despite this, I feel so fortunate to be here during the olive harvest and have been welcomed with incredible generosity and open heartedness. I have climbed olive trees and experienced the beauty of harvesting; feeling ripe olives running through my fingers, and hearing them fall like huge drops of rain on the tarpaulin below. Resting in the shade of the olive groves I have shared much laughter and amazing picnics with Palestinian families, who despite hardship, danger and suffering retain their humanity and infectious sparkle.
The olive harvest is a crucial time of year and is part of the very fabric of Palestinian society. Many farmers have suffered huge land loss and with this, mounting poverty. Land has been confiscated to build the Apartheid Wall, to expand Israeli settlements (whose very existence is illegal under International Law) and to construct “settler only” roads. Many farmers have land which is virtually inaccessible, falling behind the Wall, and have to negotiate a punitive system of permits and locked agricultural gates. Internationals offer accompaniment to farmers who are in danger, from both the Israeli Army and armed Israeli settlers. We stand in solidarity in the struggle to preserve land and livelihood.
I have been working in the village of Aw Zawiya, in Salfit district, central West Bank . The Apartheid Wall is already complete on one side of the village, resulting in massive land loss. Over the coming months Az Zawiya will be imprisoned on a further two sides. Many Palestinian villages are being strangled by “Ariel finger” which cuts deep into the West Bank, forming a “land corridor” between Ariel settlement and Tel Aviv.
The village of Aw Zawiya will become isolated into an enclave, along with the villages of Rafat and Deir Ballut, inaccessible to currently neighbouring villages. The army can easily control the one road into the village – a tunnel running under a “settler only” road. Anyone who has any doubts about whether Apartheid is really happening need only take a look at the segregated road system.
The main problems the farmers from Aw Zawiya face are from Israeli settlers. Although the settlements in that area are not particularly radical, the gun is commonplace. Whilst accompanying one family we were forced to walk for 100 meters through a dark, claustrophobic drain which ran under the “settler only” road. Shortly after emerging from the drain we met the army, controlling a small break in the Wall. An elderly man, alone and trying to reach a hospital appointment, was turned away. He did not have the “right” ID. In fact he was trying to save time and money, taking a short cut along a route that would have been possible before the Wall was built. Internationals negotiated for 2 hours with the army to be able to join the Palestinian family we were accompanying, whose land was dangerously close to a settlement.
Another family we accompanied have land which now lies within an Israeli settlement. They had to pass through the agricultural gate at Mas’ha village in order to harvest their olives. Permits to reach this land are only given during limited periods during the year, and only to older people. The gate is opened and closed once a day, and does not allow for a full days work. Palestinians have no choice or control over when they go to their land.
We also harvested with a family from the village of Haris. Their land was overgrown and the trees had not been pruned, a result of the farmer being unable to safely access his fields. Revava settlement was built on their land, and their remaining trees (from the 500 which were cut down) are very close to the settlement. Revava is becoming increasingly radicalised, and there are growing numbers of attacks, intimidation and threats made towards Palestinian farmers. The first morning we were met by armed settlement “security”, who made veiled threats to shoot if we did not leave. They were joined by the Israeli army. Throughout the 2 days we had many more visits from both the army and “security”, but the harvesting continued. More than in other places we could feel our international presence making a difference. This, of course, is only possible because of deep seated racism.
In a village near Nablus, another group of Internationals accompanied a family to their land which now has an Israeli watchtower built on it. They had not stepped foot in these groves for 6 years, for fear of being shot. International accompaniment not only increases the feeling of safety for the farmers, but can make a concrete difference in negotiations with the army.
Recently I accompanied a family to their land in the village of Orif, near Nablus. The day before they had been stoned by settlers; one man needed medical treatment. In Occupied Palestine the parameters change. I feel relief that it was rocks and not bullets. There have been many times when Palestinians have been threatened by armed settlers, and occasions when this has resulted in serious injury or death.
The Israeli High Court of Justice ruled in June this year that Palestinians have a right to property, and a right to enter and work their land. The army and police are legally obligated to take action to protect Palestinian farmers and their property from attack. This ruling is a victory for the recognition of Palestinian rights. What remains to be seen is its effects on the ground. There have been several occasions this year when it has made a difference, when adequate army protection was given to farmers to protect them from settler attacks. There is still a long, long way to go before farmers have free and safe access to their land. In the meantime internationals continue to offer accompaniment, armed with our international privilege, our cameras, our phones and a copy of the High Court decision.
Buying Palestinian olive oil is a concrete act of solidarity www.zaytoun.org
To join the olive harvest next autumn go to www.iwps-pal.org, www.palsolidarity.org www.zaytoun.org, www.rhr.israel.net
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7. Postcards from the Edge
by Victoria Macchi, Skin Magazine
http://www.skin-online.com/home.html
Katie Miranda’s “postcards” create visual dispatches to the American people of life, death, and innocence demolished in Palestine
Two young men, backs turned, wrists bound, heads hanging – paired with anger, a mouth stretched wide open in rage and spewing hate. “You are disgusting Arabs and you should be beaten like animals and stay in jail”.
You don’t look at Katie Miranda’s work. You feel it, a punch in the gut that sucks the wind out, replaces it with incredulity, then knocks you down again as you struggle to get up. Yet her pieces, reflections of life in occupied Palestine, are anything but hyperbolic. Both an artist living
in the West Bank city of Hebron and a volunteer in the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), Katie Miranda has walked the streets of the West Bank alongside Palestinians, drank the same water, protected their children, broken bread with their families – and her paintings reflect it. Her “Postcards from Palestine” series is an eternal testimony to a wounded people. The ongoing collection of paintings of people she has met comes with a message to the American people, exactly like a postcard – although instead of margaritas, sunsets and dolphins, the paintings reflect the violence committed against Palestinians by the IOF and settlers in the territories.
“I wanted to use my artistic ability to tell the story about what’s happening here,” says Katie, a 31-year-old San Francisco native. “I’m an illustrator by trade, so creating pictures that tell a story is what I was trained in… I just decided to interview people about their life and paint about individuals and about situations I witnessed.” As a human rights worker in the West Bank, she has a deep reservoir of stories; most burst with acts of hatred, moments of irony, wisps of humour. “A good deal of the violence is perpetuated by children because of an Israeli law that allows them to be free from arrest and prosecution if they are under the age of 12,” explains Katie.
In one postcard, the innocence of children is portrayed in the hopeless eyes of a girl holding a stuffed rabbit, her father killed by IOF soldiers and her house demolished, which are juxtaposed with a carefree boy playing with a ball, a cigarette dangling from his mouth. It’s difficult to imagine humans so jaded so young. But again, they have never known an unoccupied Palestine, freedom of movement, or simple justice for their friends and family slain during four decades of war.
Katie recalls an incident when life and art collided. It was the day after she arrived in Palestine, back in May. The ISM was called to the Balata refugee camp because the IOF had invaded and, the reports said, were killing people randomly. “ISM helps with medical evacuations in these situations,” Katie explains. “Sometimes when a person is shot or injured, the soldiers refuse to let the ambulance leave, so we try to negotiate with them to allow the ambulance pass. Right before we got there these two kids were killed.” Best friends Ibrahim Issa and Mohammad Natoor, both 17, were drinking tea on the roof of their apartment when they were shot by a sniper. Katie documented their funeral in one of her postcards, and in her message to the American people noted what they loved and how they smiled – and just how young they were. She transcribed the words of Ibrahim’s brother:
“Anywhere you see him, you will see Mohammad Natoor with him and anywhere you see Ibrahim and Mohammad, you will see them smile at you and say ‘hello, how can we help you?’” Mohammad was killed by Israeli forces on his 17th birthday.
The pair are immortalised on one of Katie’s postcards. “It was such an emotional experience because they were just kids, you know, they hadn’t done anything wrong,” says the artist. “And no one will be held responsible. It was a meaningless death. I couldn’t get the image of those kids’ faces out of my head for weeks. So I dealt with that and the trauma of being in a place under siege by painting the picture of Ibrahim during his funeral procession that wouldn’t leave my head.” She later painted a picture of him from a photo studio portrait. “When I gave it to the family it was really emotional. I could tell they were really touched and really liked it – but of course it also reminded them that their son or brother was dead. It was hard for me to look at his brother’s face when I gave him the portrait.”
In another postcard, a fairly innocuous image, a young boy is shown with his mouth gaping open and a few teeth missing. But it is rendered appalling by the explanation – a settler woman had filled his mouth with rocks and slammed his jaw shut, shattering his teeth. Another postcard elevates a Palestinian man, now paraplegic after a shot to the neck by an Israeli sniper in 2000, by painting him at a sharp angle, facing upwards, with the colours of the Palestinian flag bursting behind his head. Katie hopes this empowers the wheelchair-bound former karate champion.
The “Postcards”, though, are only her latest artistic project in Palestine. Katie, who estimates she has been attacked by settlers and soldiers around 50 times since arriving to Hebron in May, originally wanted to paint over the settlers’ anti-Arab graffiti. In one case, she covered up the words “Die Arab sand-niggers” with a mural of children playing in the sun. “When I first saw that graffiti it really disgusted me,” she says. “I wanted to get rid of it and I thought a nice cheerful mural of kids playing would be a good solution. It’s the idea of fighting hate with love.” “The mural is still there, but it has been defaced by the settlers, which I knew would happen. But it doesn’t really bother me because I was expecting it and it’s just another example of how hateful these people are.” She also wanted to obscure another spray-painted slogan, spread over two metal doors, that read “Gas the Arabs.” The Palestinian residents opposed the idea, explaining that the racist graffiti should stay precisely because it is so shocking. “When tourists, journalists and NGOs come into the area they are so shocked and horrified that they write and talk about it,” says Katie. “It’s also a great opportunity to see visual evidence of the disgusting nature of these people who live [in the settlements].”
While in Palestine, Katie also painted on what is becoming the largest canvas in the world – the West Bank wall. Her politically relevant reinterpretation of Michelangelo’s Pieta remains on the grey concrete near the Qalandia checkpoint. Eyes shut, palm upturned – in resignation, desperation – a woman holds a dead husband/brother/father/son who is slumped on her lap. “When I got the idea [in 2004], I knew that it had to be painted on the apartheid wall,” she says. “But I never imagined I’d actually be able to get it together to go to Palestine and do it.” She also painted a Soviet-esque angular figure of a man in black and white swinging a sledge-hammer into the wall – denting it but not yet breaking it down. “I hope [the murals] are destroyed when the wall comes down, inshallah,” says Katie. Her creativity enhances her non-violent resistance to the Israeli occupation. Along with an ISM colleague, Katie performed “fire circuses” in Hebron. “No one had ever seen anything like it before and it was a big hit, especially the kids… We’d start performing when we’d see soldiers detaining and harassing Palestinians. It’s just such an absurd situation to see a bunch of teenage punks with guns start acting disrespectfully and physically aggressive towards women and old men for no reason at all. We dealt with that absurdity by adding to it… it had the effect of drawing the soldier’s attention away from the Palestinians and also entertaining the Palestinians while they were being detained.”
One of the greatest challenges of living in Palestine, says Katie, is having to accepting that my tax dollars as an American go towards funding the Occupation and the violence. “Americans grow up learning the values that everyone is equal and everyone, in theory, has the same rights. “To see that this is neither true in theory nor in practice in Palestine turned my world upside down – it’s like all of a sudden someone tells you 1 + 1 = 3 and you just have to accept it.” As Katie asks in her blog, also entitled Postcards from Palestine “Is this apartheid yet?”
More of Katie’s artwork can be seen on her website: www.theopticnerve.com
She also maintains a blog at: moomin13.livejournal.com
Occupation Hazards
Katie shares with Skin her top altercations with the IDF:
1. Water supplies being poisoned by Israeli soldiers
Our water is kept in tanks on the roof of our apartment building. The IDF soldiers occasionally use our roof as one of their outposts. One day we discovered some creepy-crawly things in the water coming out of the kitchen sink faucet. We went up on the roof to investigate and discovered that our water tanks had been turned into an IDF garbage dump. The garbage included forks, spoons, knives, army netting, unexploded bullets, paper, plastic, glass, bricks, broken pipes, pudding containers, an extremely outdated, unopened yoghurt package, and plastic trays on which soldiers’ meals are served. The water on the bottom of the tank was completely black but the water on the top was clear. When I smelled it I felt like I was going to throw up. Since we get the water on the top of the tank first, we didn’t notice a problem until we noticed wriggly things in our water. After we made the discovery I went to the doctor who found that I had some kind of gnarly amoebas living in my stomach. One volunteer was diagnosed with tapeworm.
2. Being trampled by a police horse
There were some Israeli mounted police who were allowing the horses to s**t all over this area in Jerusalem where Palestinians frequently pray… I went up to one of them, asked them if they had any intention of cleaning up after their horses and the cop jerked the reins of the horse so the horse’s head knocked my head and then the cop ran the horse into me, causing me to fall over. I wound up under the horse that then trampled on my foot. When my friend came to my assistance and started screaming at the cops, he was beaten. We were really lucky in that neither of us were hurt badly.
3. False accusations of assault on a settler
I was taken to the Israeli Hebron police station on suspicion of assault after a settler accused me of scratching her as I escorted a woman past a group of settlers who had been taunting, harassing and throwing rocks at Palestinians. The Israeli police present did nothing to rein in the settlers and did not see me assault anyone because of course I didn’t. But nevertheless I was taken into custody and interrogated.
For images visit: https://www.palsolidarity.org/main/2006/12/13/postcards-from-edge/
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8. “Welcome to Israel” – a trip down the Jordan Valley
by John, December 14th
Today we had a trip down the Jordan valley which didn’t start too auspiciously for our Palestinian contact – he had just been delayed for two hours at a checkpoint. A soldier on the way through a checkpoint had drawn a star of david in the dust of the car. When they returned the soldier wanted to know who had wiped it off and held them for two hours demanding to know.
We started at a farm near the Bisan checkpoint in the north where Palestinians now find it very difficult to take their produce through to the markets they once used, and therefore now have to go to markets elsewhere. However with problems at checkpoints this is often problematic and adds huge costs to their journey making their products less competitive as Israeli trucks are allowed to use settler-only roads and bypass the checkpoints.
Despite the fact that this is the Jordan valley the Israelis do have farms out here, which occupy almost all the agricultural land, and many Palestinians are angry at the amount of land that they have taken off them. Israeli settler-colonists who want to move here are given 70 dunnums of land, a house and long term loan of 70,000 USD.
Companies providing electricity, telephone and water services are obliged to give them discounts of up to 75% . This obviously makes their lives much easier out here despite the fact that this is well into the West Bank. Many soldiers seem to ignore this little fact – when checking our passports one soldier said “Welcome to Israel – I hope you enjoy it here”.
However it is not the case that although these settlers pay 75% less than the Palestinians, in fact the Palestinians pay nothing for these utilities. Why? Because they are not available to them – we passed a large number of houses often next to huge water tanks and electricity wires that they are not allowed to connect up to. Many Palestinians only build plastic houses or corrugated metal houses as otherwise the Israelis knock them down.
In fact even these can be knocked down. Last year 22 houses were demolished in one day while around half the land in the Jordan valley is no longer available to Palestinians – it is close to Israeli colonies, environmental reserves and military training areas. Now, as an environmentalist I would normally applaud the opening of environmental reserves but actually these people live very sustainable lives and there is no reason why these areas should be, in particular, protected. This has led to the population to drop from 300,000 pre -1967 to 52,000 last year, including the Jericho urban area.
Planning permission for new houses for Palestinians is impossible to get, a new school built in Al Jiftlik village is threatened with demolition, attempts to generate power are stopped.
Bardala has been waiting years for permission for a water tank but the nearby Israeli colony, built without planning permission, has services described in the paragraph above. A clinic in a tent has also been deemed illegal in the past and knocked down – despite electricity lines going right by it and some more ‘permament’ buildings they are not electrified.
But it isn’t in just these respects that the Israelis control the local area, they even try and control the sun, one Palestinian joked. A community project with NGO support enabled a few households to purchase solar panels to generate electricity. One man was arrested and put in prison for three days for ’stealing’ this off the Israelis, despite the fact he had documentation to demonstrate how he had come to acquire it. He was fined 300 NIS and put in prison for three days without even being able to call relatives to help out while he was away. Israeli colonists then came and looked around the house while he was still in prison.
When visiting another farmer we saw the electrified fence, where the English reads, danger electric fence, but the Arabic says warning: potential death. The farmer’s daughter touched it and received a shock.
The land that is fenced off was once his but was taken in around 1970. The Israelis steal this by saying that land not used in three years can be taken and redistributed, the fact that many of these people were unable to return home or were prevented from accessing their land is not important. He finds it difficult to get water all year around as the Israeli settlers get the water from the Valley, in fact he has to drink bottled water.
Again the message I got was all these people want is their rights to be respected his family had lived in this area since 1920. The farmer accepted that the Jewish must live here (in Israel) but they did not have the right to take his land. He can’t see an end to this situation as both peaceful and non-peaceful means have both failed. The more time I spend here the less likely I think there is going to be peace anytime soon. Certainly if any peace deal does not remove the Israelis from most of this land and if the wall is at least not rerouted out of the West Bank then it certainly won’t be possible.
At checkpoints where we were stopped we often just handed our passports to them and they handed them back a few minutes later without checking them. Often however Palestinians are forced to wait much longer than we are.
For photos visit: https://www.palsolidarity.org/main/2006/12/15/jordan-valley-trip/
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9. Anti-Wall Protesters Sit their Ground in Bil’in
by the ISM Media team, December 15th
Today’s demonstration in Bil’in was relatively peaceful, with less violence from the soldiers than there has been in the past. However, they still used rubber bullets and tear gas to attack Palestinian youth who threw stones in defense of their village.
Accompanied by around 15 international supporters and the stalwarts of the Israeli anti-occupation movement, the villagers of Bil’in, led by the popular committee, marched against the wall. Chanting Arabic slogans against the wall, and telling the soldiers to go home in Hebrew, the demonstrators were stopped at the wall by a unit of Israeli soldiers.
As usual, the gate in the wall was blocked by the Israeli forces, who had tightly wrapped razor-wire around it to prevent its removal. The demonstrators intended to pass to the annexed village land. Palestinians and their international supporters are often allowed to pass this gate during the week. However, this is changing more recently as the wall in Bil’in is now all but complete.
On demonstration days (every Friday) no one is allowed to pass, however. The popular committee decided to try and find another way through the large coils of razor wire on the near side of the wall. Some of the demonstrators tried to remove the wire by pulling at this. These attempts were soon stopped by some soldiers who had followed them along the route of the wall.
The area between the razor wire and the wall was held by a handful of the protesters for about 20 minutes.
The soldiers prevented more from joining them. Eventually, the popular committee decided to wrap up the demonstration and called on the demonstrators to follow them back into the village as one group.
On the way back, Israeli border police who had taken up aggressive positions in and near houses on the outskirts of the village began to attack Bil’in youth who had enough of them and had started to throw stones at them.
The soldiers shot rubber-coated steel bullets at them, causing some minor injuries. There was also a failed attempt to use tear gas which was dispersed by the wind. When the demonstration had made it back to the village, the distinct sound of live fire was heard from the direction of the soldiers.
For photos visit: https://www.palsolidarity.org/main/2006/12/15/bilin-dec-15/
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10. Letter from Raed Sharif
Dear Colleagues and Friends,
Early this morning, I received the sad news that my mother (54 years old) passed away after serious health complications last night.
I am sending this message to you and many other people around the world because I promised my mother before she died to let everybody know that it wasn’t cancer that killed her, it was the occupation.
Yes, the Israeli occupation killed my mother, but this time not using missiles and tank rockets, this time using collective punishment and humiliation. Most of cancer (and other serious diseases) patients from Gaza go to Egypt for treatment because we don’t have the health infrastructure and latest technologies to do so in Gaza which is a result of the continues siege and control imposed by the Israelis over the Palestinian cities, especially Gaza . My mother was one of those patients who was diagnosed, at very early stages, with bone cancer and was supposed to go to Egypt for treatment early June 2006.
Because of the collective punishment policies that Israel uses, nobody from Gaza was able to travel (in or out) to any place in the world for three months, because the Israelis control the borders. It was until August 25th that my mother was able to make it to Egypt. During these three months, I and many other people inside and outside Palestine tried to talk to International and Human Rights Organizations and ask them to intervene and help in this humanitarian situation, unfortunately, all our and their appeals failed to change the situation or to make any special arrangements. All these requests were rejected by the occupiers. By the time my mother made it to Egypt , it was unfortunately a bit late because the cancer was rapidly growing in her body and at that stage; doctors didn’t have much to do but to try the chemotherapy and to see if it can help. Unfortunately, this didn’t help much and she peacefully passed away last night. My mother is not the only case, she is just one the cases that someone could talk about. In addition to the tens of people being killed by the Israelis everyday using traditional weapons, tens, if not hundreds, others die everyday because of lack of access to health services, because of movement restrictions imposed by the Israelis and the restrictions on entering medicine and health equipment to Gaza and other Palestinian cities.
Siege and movement restrictions don’t only separate patients from health services and facilities (even form local hospitals. Many women gave birth on the checkpoints and many others died before making it to the nearest hospital); they also separate students from schools and universities, believers and worshipers from mosques and churches, and families from seeing each others for many years. There are currently more than 500 checkpoints in the West Bank in an area that is probably smaller than most of the cities in the U.S., its size is around 2000 sq miles and this area is currently surrounded by the new apartheid wall. These checkpoints separate villages, cities, refugee camps and sometimes neighborhoods in the same city. These are the same restrictions that made me unable to see my family in Gaza (when I was living in the West Bank) for more than 5 years, and even when I was here in the U.S. and wanted to go back and see my mother during the last 2 months, I also wasn’t able to go because the borders were still closed (Rafah border with Egypt, which is the only gate for Gazans to the world, was open only 6 days during the last 6 months).
What really breaks my heart is not the fact that she died because it’s something that everybody will experience one day and I really have great faith in God that this may be better for her, what really makes me feel very sad is that, again, because of the occupation, I haven’t seen her for more than six years and that I wasn’t even able to see her for the last time and say goodbye. It also makes me feel very sad because one of the main motives for me to do the Ph.D. was my great mother. When I was six years old my cousin got his Ph.D. and when we were coming back from visiting him my mother asked me this question (probably she was joking at that time especially that I was very little and probably wouldn’t even know what the Ph.D. is, but I know she meant it), she asked me “would you do it for me one day and get your Ph.D.?” I kept this in my mind and heart all the time and I was always encouraged by her and her high spirit to succeed and to make it to Syracuse University to get my Ph.D. Unfortunately, she will not be able to see this day and to know that yes, I did it for her.
Goodbye my great mother, you were all the time the source of my inspiration and you will always be, even in your physical absence. May God have mercy on you and bless your soul mother.
Friends and colleagues, unfortunately, our world is full of similar sad and unjustified cases of unfairness and humiliation, BUT always remember, we can always make a difference if we want. Think of it and see what you can do to make others live the same way you and your children live. Even a little change can make a difference.
Please don’t reply to this message, if you want to do me and my mother a favor, just forward it to anybody who wants to make a difference.
RS
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For more reports, journals and action alerts visit the ISM website at www.palsolidarity.org
Please consider supporting the International Solidarity Movement’s work with a financial contribution. You may donate securely through our website at: www.palsolidarity.org/main/donations/
1. IOF target Bilin non-violent activist
2. Nablus village schoolchildren terrorized by IOF
3. Police Target Tel Aviv Anti-Occupation Rally
4. Witness to checkpoint abuse “punished” by IOF
5. Israel refuses visa extensions for foreign passport holders
6. Sabatash checkpoint closed indefinitely
7. Settler attack in Urif – Israeli police do nothing
8. Azzun ‘Atma Farmer Resists Land Annexation
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1. IOF target Bilin non-violent activist
by the ISM media team, December 8th
UPDATE 7pm Ahmed has been taken from the police station to Ofer military detention centre. He has been accused of damaging the illegal apartheid wall, resisting arrest and being in a Closed Military Zone.
At today’s peaceful demo against the illegal apartheid wall in Bil’in the IOF assaulted and abducted Bil’in peace activist Ahmed Abu Hasssan, 34. Ahmed was attacked by 10 soldiers as he pulled at a razor wire fence that forms part of the illegal wall regime in Bil’in. Female activists who came to his aid were beaten and had their hair pulled by the soldiers. Ahmed was dragged away by soldiers holding him by the scruff of the neck and was then blindfolded. Bil’in residents are targeted every week for arrest due to their role in highlighting the apartheid Israeli occupation.
As protesters marched to the gate in the wall soldiers were occupying the house of a Bilin resident and standing on the roof. After singing and chanting at the gate, some demonstrators protested with banners and flags along the route of the wall whilst others pulled on the razor wire. This led to an immediate display of military force and Ahmed’s arrest.
UN observers and the director of Amnesty International Irene Khan were present in the village during the demonstration and did interviews with villagers and non-violent activists about the Occupation land theft in Bil’in and repression of local residents. Ahmed is only the latest in a long line of Bil’in residents to be abducted and held by the IOF.
For photos see: https://www.palsolidarity.org/main/2006/12/08/bilin-08-12/
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2. Nablus village schoolchildren terrorized by IOF
by aspiringnomad, December 3rd
On Tuesday a group of six human rights activists travelled to the small vallage of Sarra, west of Nablus, in response to a plea from a local school headmaster about Israeli army harassment of schoolchildren. According to countless eyewitness reports, during the last week an Israeli military Humvee would arrive in front of the school as the children were coming out, and proceed to let off sound bombs, tear gas and fire rubber bullets. However, the previous day the Humvee had arrived earlier and stayed for 4 hours between 10am and 2pm.
During the documentation of these harrowing witness statements a message arrived that the Humvee had just appeared at the gates of the girls school across the street. The six activists immediately went to the scene in order to ascertain the Israeli army’s motives and also to document any further harassment.
On seeing the approaching activists the soldiers quickly jumped into their Humvee and sped towards the centre of town at high speed. Three activists pursued the vehicle whilst the others stayed back at the entrance to the school.
As the activists caught up with the Humvee it proceeded to double back towards the school. It then stopped beside two activists and an Israeli soldier asked the reason for our presence. When the same question was asked of the soldier it was met with a cynical smile before he slammed the door, and the humvee drove into town, stopping only to throw a tear gas canister at some schoolchildren and fire a volley of bullets into the air before driving away.
After the Humvee’s departure, a call was made to the DCO (District Coordination Office – the civil administration wing of the Israeli military in the occupied West Bank) making them aware of what was happening, after which the activists remained for a further two hours.
Sarra is a typical small village that relies on agriculture for its income. Therefore the Israeli army’s military presence, and their subsequent behaviour can only be seen as a means to harass, humiliate and terrorize the residents.
The following day the activists returned to Sarra, but fortunately the Humvee didn’t return. More data was collected on Israeli army harassment that had occurred over the previous month, which included several late night visits by the army, who raided homes.
Almost a week after the initial presence of the activists at the scene, the military has yet to return to sarra.
For photo see: https://www.palsolidarity.org/main/2006/12/03/sarra-school-terror/
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3. Police Target Tel Aviv Anti-Occupation Rally
by aspiringnomad, December 4th
In Tel Aviv on Saturday, a peaceful rally of several hundred people demonstrating at the ongoing Israeli occupation of Palestine and the recent Beit Hanoun massacre was marred by the arrest of a 20-year old Israeli peace activist.
The rally began peacefully with the predominantly Israeli contingent creating a convivial atmosphere with drums and whistles as they marched to Rabin Square. Apart from a few missiles thrown by occupants of overlooking apartments and the odd heckle from angry passers-by, the rally demonstrated none of the hostility common to similar such rallies in the occupied territories due to the absence of a confrontational Israeli military presence.
The arrest occurred when a demonstrator attempted to attach an anti-war bumper sticker to the window of a McDonald’s restaurant. The police reacted to this by flinging the female demonstrator to the ground. Another demonstrator who came to her aid was subsequently beaten and apprehended by upwards of a dozen police.
Police at the scene alleged the protester had tried to break a glass window of the MacDonald’s branch and had assaulted an officer with a flag pole he was holding.
However, eye witnesses refute these grounds for arrest, backed up by video footage disproving the police’s version of events and furthermore showing excessive police violence during the protester’s arrest.
The arrested activist from Nahariya, sustained a black eye and head injuries in the course of his arrest. Onlookers and marchers alike were shocked at this display of police force, unused as they are to the daily violence meted out by the IOF in the occupied West Bank and Gaza.
For photos see: https://www.palsolidarity.org/main/2006/12/04/telaviv-02-12/
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4. Witness to checkpoint abuse “punished” by IOF
by aspiringnomad December 5th
On Saturday at 4pm a human rights worker based in Nablus received a call from some fellow HRWs at Huwwara checkpoint, that hundreds of Palestinians including a mother with a sick child weren’t being allowed through after the checkpoint had been closed.
When the HRW arrived there were hundreds of people waiting to pass through the illegal Israeli checkpoint. A middle aged woman was pleading with soldiers to be able to pass as she was cradling a sick child who required treatment.
The HRWs attempted to ask the Israeli soldiers the reason for the closure and whether it would be possible for the women and child to pass through, but his pleas were met with stony silence. After further inquiries, the soldiers informed the HRW that if he didn’t go away he would be “punished”. The woman continued to remonstrate with the soldiers in the presence the HRW, at which point the soldiers wrestled him to the ground and handcuffed him.
During the arrest the HRW was lighly injured and his camera was damaged. He was then detained in a small holding cell for an hour before being taken to Ariel settlement police station where he was questioned and detained for a further 4 hours.
Police claimed that the HRW had struck one of the soldiers and asked him to sign a document promising never to visit Nablus again. The aggrieved HRW refused, pleading wrongful arrest and physical abuse. He was then asked to sign a document promising not to argue with Israeli soldiers at Huwwara checkpoint for a period of 15 days, before being released without charge at approximately 10pm.
Huwwara checkpoint is notorious for long unexplained closures, which have become more common of late. In the last few weeks Palestinians have had to spend up to 2 hours waiting to pass through. As well as Huwwara checkpoint, Palestinians have to travel through other permanent and temporary checkpoints on their way to Ramallah, resulting in journey times of up to 5 hours for a journey of 20 miles, if they are allowed through them.
There are currently 72 permanent military checkpoints throughout the West Bank along with at least 25 temporary and flying checkpoints set up randomly by Israeli occupying forces.
Checkpoints can be a major deterrent for Palestinians on any road because of the extensive delays, security searches, as well as physical and psychological abuse by Israeli soldiers.
The checkpoints and Israel’s closure policy are often used as a means of enforcing collective punishment on the inhabitants of a certain area, or even the entire population of the Occupied Palestinian Territories .Collective punishment is illegal under international law.
The system of Israeli checkpoints in the Occupied Palestinian Territories violates international humanitarian law as codified in the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949.
For photos see : https://www.palsolidarity.org/main/2006/12/05/witness-to-checkpoint-abuse-punished-by-iof/
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5. Israel refuses visa extensions for foreign passport holders
Right to Entry, December 5th
In a new escalation of Israel’s policy of denying Palestinians and their families access to the Israeli occupied Palestinian territory (oPt), the Israeli Civil Administration at Beit El is refusing to accept at least 140 passports for visa extensions. The passport holders are mostly spouses and children of Palestinian I.D.-holders and are residing in the oPt. Many of them have been forced to become “illegal” since their visitor visas have expired while waiting to be renewed by Israel.
Twenty-seven year old Subha G is one of these cases. Her mother, brothers and her husband all have Palestinian IDs, but her request for family reunification has been frozen since 1997. “I am seven months pregnant and I am afraid of leaving to renew my visa and becoming stranded outside the country. My whole family is here.” Subha said.
Palestinian I.D.s can only be issued by Israel. Since Israel is refusing to process an estimated 120,000 family unification residency applications of spouses and children of Palestinians, foreign family members must renew their visa every three months. All foreign spouses and children of Palestinians who requested visa extensions in October had their passports returned from Beit El on November 19th stamped “Last permit.” The passport holders are required to leave the country before their visas expire, which in some cases occurred during Israel’s processing of the visa extension application. Israeli authorities are regularly denying entry to family members of
Palestinians when they attempt to cross the Israeli controlled borders to the Israeli oPt.
Soha N., French citizen, lives in Beit Jala with her Palestinian husband and their two children, ages six and eight years old. The Israeli authorities refuse to issue residency to Soha and her children. Therefore, they have been renewing their visas every three months. After applying in October for another visa extension, they received their passports back marked “last permit.” Soha’s final extension lasts until December 25th. Israeli authorities required her two children to leave by December 4th. The family may now be forced to relocate abroad, as their children are now considered “illegal” after overstaying their visas.
Shlomo Dror, spokesperson for the Israeli Civil Administration states that those foreign passport holders with family in the oPt who stay illegally in the country, should expect “tough consequences”. “Israel is working overtime to create a demographic change in the oPt by targeting the most vulnerable segment of Palestinian society, denying them residency and forcing them to leave,” said Basil Ayish, a spokesperson from the Campaign for the Right of Entry/Re-Entry to the oPt. “Palestinian residency holders are likely to follow their spouses and children to another country in order to stay together,”Ayish explained.
Contact: Basil Ayish Coordinator, Media Committee
(c) +970-(0)59-817-3953 (email) info@righttoenter.ps
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6. Sabatash checkpoint closed indefinitely
by ISM Nablus, December 5th
The checkpoint commonly known as “Sabatash”, named after the Palestinian security forces that used to maintain a presence there, has been closed indefinitely for all civilian traffic bar humanitarian transportation such as ambulances and medical supply deliveries. This turn of events was suddenly announced a little more than two weeks ago to the residents of Asira Ash-Shamalia, located on the far side of the checkpoint from Nablus city.
The checkpoint is located in a sharp bend in the main road to Nablus; a thoroughfare used daily by- and crucial to university students and workers. It has developed from a makeshift checkpoint consisting of a muddy trench and a few cement blocks to a permanent terminal with a watchtower, walls and two vehicle lanes. Palestinians have been humiliated, stripsearched, made to stand in a meter of cold ditch-water, beaten and shot here every day since the beginning of the Al-Aqsa intifada. Although notorious for its extremely violent soldiers, the checkpoint has still been the preferred route for most Palestinians, as walking around over the mountains is even more treacherous. If spotted by Israeli soldiers, one runs the risk of being shot or detained for many hours.
One villager was detained by soldiers a rainy winter day a couple of years ago. He can hardly hold back his tears as he tells the story of how he ventured over the mountains in order to buy warm winter clothes for his son. On his way back, soldiers ambushed him from behind some bushes, very nearly shooting him dead. After making sure that he was not carrying any explosives, the soldiers calmed down and their commander started talking politics for over three hours, all the time in a civil manner. All of a sudden, the commander’s attitude changed and he ordered the man to be handcuffed. The soldiers then proceeded to beat, spit and pee on the man as he lay defenceless on the ground. The commander ordered the Palestinian man to undress, produced a video camera and told the man that he would be let go if he said on tape that he is a dirty Palestinian who does not deserve to live, to breathe oxygen or to drink water.
The man agreed to testify on tape and, shivering in the cold, proclaimed that “I am proud to be Palestinian and to be walking home to my family in my village breathing my air. I was under the impression that you were a civil man, commander, but I am afraid I was mistaken for you have lost your humanity and therefore lost everything.” The commander then attacked him, thrusting the butt of his rifle into the man’s naked stomach. The man was then forced to lie down on the ground with his head ten centimeters away from the chains of the tank. Revving the motor, the commander explained to the man that they will now run him over. The Palestinian man asked for one last favour before he was to be killed – for the soldiers to deliver the warm clothes to his son and wife. The soldiers then took the clothes and burned them in front of the man as he lay naked on the ground.
After more than 12 hours of humiliation, the soldiers pushed the handcuffed man down a steep slope, cutting his skin on thorns and rocks. Nearby villagers rushed out to take care of him as the soldiers left and he eventually returned home, with both arms broken. This is but one horrific story out of many experienced by the citizens of Asira Ash-Shamalia. About one month ago, 25-year old Haithem was shot with live ammunition at close range for daring to protest against the soldiers’ treatment of a group of young women at the checkpoint – forcing them to run their hands tight along their own bodies. He is still in hospital being treated for the wounds sustained that night.
Now, the checkpoint has been closed indefinitely. Instead, the villagers are forced to travel in a 40km arc around the checkpoint to get to Nablus. Flying checkpoints are set up by Israeli military along this road, meaning the journey can take anything from 40 minutes to several hours. Despite contacting various human rights organizations, legal experts and military commanders, the villagers have not been able to find out why the road has been closed.
It could be an incidence of collective punishment due to the village’s successful olive harvest campaign. A committee of ten dedicated villagers spent the autumn months encouraging villagers to tend to their lands, even those close to the nearby military base and to stand their ground in case of confrontation with the military – “just try to have a calm logical conversation with the soldiers. The words will come naturally to you. After all, it is your land!” They also organized the removal of close to one hundred roadblocks scattered within and around the village, so as to allow for the passage of tractors and other heavy equipment needed during the harvest.
Greatly empowered by the committee’s work, the people of Asira Ash-Shamalia have this year harvested olives from land that has lain idle since the beginning of the first intifada. Furthermore, there has been a revival of old harvesting traditions, with young and old congregating in the fields to work, sing and eat together. In the past, a couple of adults from each family used to sneak to their fields and hurriedly pick as many olives as they dare before rushing home – almost as if “stealing” their own olives. This year, the harvest has been an open, joyous event, despite repression in the form of teargas and gunfire from soldiers manning the military base on the mountain Ebal.
The Israeli military have tried all sorts of measures to control the village’s newfound sense of self-determination. In the evenings, they would come and try to grab individual villagers from the olive press factories. After wrestling men to the ground and dragging them out of the building, the soldiers were forced to see themselves defeated as villager after villager struggled to get free and returned to the press. Whatever the reason for the sudden and unexplained closure of Sabatash checkpoint, this will not quench the spirit of resistance and invention in Asira Ash-Shamalia.
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7. Settler attack in Urif – Israeli police do nothing
by ISM Nablus, December 5th
On Sunday the 4th of December, a group of Israeli residents of Yitzhar colony attacked farmers from Urif, a small village south of Nablus, while they were harvesting their olives on land adjacent to the village itself. This area is not normally considered to be a high-risk area due to its close proximity to Palestinian houses but this did not deter the colonists who, brandishing rocks and sticks, proceeded to yell insults and chase the olive pickers down the hill. Fortunately, no injuries were sustained.
Israeli police were not present as the area is, as mentioned, not considered a security priority. On Monday, there were also no police in the area despite the recent attack but two solidarity workers – one international from ISM and the Palestinian coordinator for Rabbis for Human Rights – accompanied the families to their fields. Visibly frightened, the farmers flinched and started rolling up their tarpaulins at the slightest sight of the Israeli colonists patrolling the perimeter of Yitzhar at the top of the hill. Luckily, the day’s work proceeded without incident and the villagers estimate that they will have finished harvesting in a few days.
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8. Azzun ‘Atma Farmer Resists Land Annexation
by the ISM media team, December 6th
Azzun ‘Atma farmer Sameh Yousef scored a small victory in his struggle against the theft of his land today when the IOF pledged to erect a fence on the edge of his field rather than 15 metres inside it. The IOF is constructing a second wall around the village of Azzun ‘Atma, 2 kms from the Green Line between the Israeli colonies of Sha’are Tikva and Oranit.
The IOF originally intended to ghettoize Sameh’s land by building a fence on its edge beside a colonialist road, but yesterday construction workers accompanied by soldiers appeared and began digging up his field 15 metres from the road. Sameh grows potatoes and corn on this land. Sameh protested as he had been previously assured the destruction would take place on the edge of his land. When 2 local human rights workers arrived they were threatened with arrest and the confiscation of their photographic equipment. Despite a 100-metre strip of topsoil and crops having been excavated and dumped beside the road Sameh was determined not to accept the loss of 27 dunums of his land and asked HRWs to accompany him the following day to non-violently resist this land theft.
Early this morning Sameh arrived at the scene with his two children and 8 HRWs, shortly before the arrival of the construction workers accompanied by the IOF. Once it was clear Sameh was not going to allow the annexation of his land, the DCO was contacted in order to clarify the original illegal order for the construction of the fence. After 6 hours of remonstrating, the DCO arrived to concede defeat in their attempts to annex Sameh’s land and vowed to construct the illegal fence beside the road on the edge of his land. The excavated topsoil and crops were transfered back to their original location.
Despite a fruitful day of steadfast resistance, it remains to be seen whether the soldiers will keep their word.
For photos see: https://www.palsolidarity.org/main/2006/12/06/azzun-atma-06-12/
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For more reports, journals and action alerts visit the ISM website at www.palsolidarity.org
Please consider supporting the International Solidarity Movement’s work with a financial contribution. You may donate securely through our website at www.palsolidarity.org/main/donations/
