12 February 2012 | International Solidarity Movement, West Bank
A newly released report submitted to the United Nations by international organizations working in Al Khalil documents a sharp increase in serious human rights violations against Palestinian civilians, particularly youth and children, living in the Old City and Tel Rumeida.
Internationals working in Al-Khalil have called for an immediate withdrawal of the Golani Brigade, citing fears that the abuses will continue to escalate and make life unbearable for Palestinians should the soldiers remain another two to five months as expected.
Since their arrival on December 27 of 2011, the Israeli Golani Brigade has shown signs of deliberate harassment and targeting of the Palestinian population of Al-Khalil. The report documents an increase in arrests and detentions of adults and children, serious physical injuries sustained while in military custody, home invasions, and an increase in the number and duration of arbitrary detentions of civilians at checkpoints. It also documents harassment of and attempts to silence international observers attempting to document these abuses.
Contrary to military justifications, these human rights violations have occurred without any observed provocation on the part of Palestinians. These eye-witness accounts, either reported to or witnessed by Internationals working in the city, are believed to represent only a small portion of the total number of abuses.
For example:
On Thursday, January 12th: Golani beat a developmentally disabled young man when he knocked on the checkpoint door after they closed it in front of him. That evening, they attacked his mother and severely beat the teenager’s younger brother, cracking his skull, and then arrested the two young men.
On Tuesday, January 17th: Golani entered a man’s home at night, pushed the family out of their house, including their 1½ year old son, and beat the father, for which he required medical treatment.
On Friday, January 20th: Golani held a 10 and 12 year-old boy behind the gate of the Beit Romano settlement. A witness said the boys had been wearing ski masks because of the cold weather, but had not been throwing rocks, as the soldiers claimed. The soldiers gave the boys’ parents a list containing the names of five other boys from the Old City, saying that if the parents brought those boys to the gate, the soldiers would release the other two.
11 February 2012 | International Solidarity Movement, West Bank
The extreme Golani Unit of the Israeli military is escalating its arrests of Palestinian children in Al Khalil (Hebron), targeting boys between the ages of 12 to15 years old with at least 10 reported cases of child arrests made just in the span of one week.
The arrest of Dwaik and Sultan
On February 2, 2012, 12-year old Islam Dwaik and 13-year old Ahsan Sultan were walking near Tel Rumeida. According to the two children, they were on their way to register for English courses. During their walk Israeli military accused the youth of throwing a stone at Israeli soldiers patrolling the area, with 12 soldiers arresting the two boys and walking them through Shuhada Street and into the illegal settlement of Abraham Avino.
Dwaik and Sultan stated that as they were walking, they noticed military was following and “running near them” until they were arrested.
The youth were detained for a total of three hours, which included them being escorted by military to their homes. Once they arrived at their respective households, soldiers threatened that if their children were arrested in the future, that the parents would also be arrested as well.
A local Palestinian stated that as the military paraded the youth into Shuhada street, it was “as if they were making an example of them and their families.”
In another incident on Saturday, February 4th, during a settler tour in the old city of Al Khalil , Israeli military alleged a single stone was thrown towards the heavily armed soldiers while the illegal Israeli settlers and Zionists were returning to their illegal colony. The settler tour is a weekly activity of the Israeli settlers and Zionists, where they take a tour of the Palestinian old city with armed soldiers as escorts, in an attempt to claim heritage, taunt locals, stifle local businesses, and invoke their presence as occupiers.
Volunteers from International Solidarity Movement, Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT), and The Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI) were on the scene when six Israeli soldiers claimed the stone was thrown, who then sought out Palestinian youth who were in the area. The soldiers found three boys between the ages of 12 to 15 years old, threatening them and their families with arbitrary arrests. International activists and observers were barred from getting near the detained youth, who were later released.
Another incident was reported by an international volunteer on Monday, February 6th. Volunteers from Temporary International Presence in Hebron witnessed the arrest of two boys near Qordoba school, while soldiers threatened their school principal.
Two 11 year old boys from Qordoba school, detained by Israeli military
The female, international volunteer described the event:
Two 11 year old boys were detained at Qordoba school. Towards the end of our monitoring period this afternoon, as we were leaving the area, the TIPH (Temporary International Presence in Hebron) and I saw 6 soldiers armed with M-16’s run urgently up the hill towards the school. We then heard 6 soldiers shouting violently at the children and heard children screaming and crying.
The three of us ran up the stairs to find the soldiers pulling the boys by their clothes to take them to the police station. The teachers from the school were still on the school grounds and surrounded the children to protect them and attempted to talk to the soldiers. The soldiers yelled at the teachers several times to “go away.” Finally, the principal came out and intervened. The soldiers made the teachers leave and allowed the principal to stay and talk to them on the boys behalf, since she told him the parents were at home and not near the school.
The soldiers were accusing the boys of throwing stones at the Israeli settlement (Beit Hadassah Settlement) across the street and down the steep hill from the school. The principal explained that the boys were playing and started to fight with each other and did not intentionally throw stones at anyone. TIPH said while they had been standing near the school, they only saw the boys playing. They did not see anyone throw a stone. The principal pleaded that the boys not be arrested.
The captain for these soldiers, who was negotiating with the principal of the school, threatened her by saying, “Next time if stones are thrown at the Jewish people, I will take the nice little children to the police and I will make a big (something inaudible stated in Hebrew or Arabic) at your school.”
He then told the principal and the students they were free to go.
After the incident, TIPH and I talked to the principal. The children who were involved and another student who had been playing with them were crying hysterically and were visibly traumatized by this incident.
In October 2011 Qordoba school was the scene of Israeli violence against school children, as soldiers obstructed access to the school and assaulted male and female students as they demonstrated for their right to education.
Arrests were also made on February 9th after violent incursions by the Israeli military. The soldiers arrested three youth, whose ages range between 14 and 15 years old. According to WAFA News Agency, the arrests were made following the use of tear gas and sound bombs to raid Palestinian homes.
Palestinian youth have been manipulated through military arrests, according to the Defense for Children International, which launched its current campaign against such treatment in 2001. According to DCI children are arrested and used to incriminate other Palestinians through typically illegal or forged testifying, applying pressure to the communities of arrested youth to create subservience and fear, and to set an example out of those politically active, enticing entire communities to become fearful of exercising freedom of speech and assembly. And in some cases, youth are arrested and subdued into becoming informants for the Israeli military.
According to the Palestinian Information Center, a total of 3,200 Palestinians were arrested by Israel in 2011 alone, 383 of those being children. Approximately 350 Palestinian youth are currently imprisoned by Israel. The issue of administrative detention is under fire as Khader Adnan continues to withhold food consumption in an act of civil disobedience against Israeli arbitrary arrests and extensions of its illegal administrative detentions. Yet to further Israel’s lack of regard for international law, the rights of defenseless children are being violated to continue Israel’s illegal and violent occupation as the Golani unit continues to target youth in Al Khalil.
By manipulating arbitrary child arrests as a means to pressure the Palestinian community, Israel stands in violation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, to which it is a signatory.
Satu Gustfasson is a volunteer with International Solidarity Movement (name has been changed).
7 January 2012 | International Solidarity Movement, West Bank
Friday night, Israeli soldiers at Checkpoints 56 and Gilbert in the town of Al Khalil (Hebron) detained Palestinian and International Solidarity Movement activists for a total of five hours for unexplained reasons. The detainees, a mix of activists and community members, were held for hours out on a cold night while groups of settlers and military squads arrived to heckle, shout, curse and point their guns. The soldiers of the recently arrived Golani Brigade, one of whom, a checkpoint commander, said their reasons where because “because [he] said so.”
The detentions occurred one after another and involved activists and community members being sent back and forth between checkpoints. Each time they thought themselves free to go they were again detained a short walk away. In each round of detentions, the problems started with arbitrary detention of a Palestinian, after which ISM and Youth Against Settlements activist observers were asked to show passports and detained by Israeli soldiers without any pretense of justification.
Commander with international passports
The first person held, a man returning home to the Palestinian-controlled “H1” zone of Khalil, had been in military custody two and a half hours prior to the arrival of solidarity activists. According to the soldiers, this was because the man lacked identification, but they were unwilling to accept his personal information (including passport number) and did not offer any other options. The man was finally released when the soldiers’ superiors arrived and ordered him released.
Activists were stopped again a mere 300 meters away, where passports/IDs were again checked and more soldiers were called. A number of illegal settlers arrived to offer soldiers tea and treats and shout insults at ISM and Palestinian activists. One settler returned again and again to make threats, attempted to block or take cameras, and at one point persuaded soldiers to give him the activists’ passports. When all but one of the detainees (Izzat of Youth Against Settlements) had their identification returned, the rest remained in solidarity and as a group returned to the checkpoint to demand the last activist be released. This yielded yet another round of ID inspections and a police visit before all were finally allowed to head home.
First detention at the checkpoint
In the last two weeks since the Golani Brigade were shifted to checkpoint duty in the Israeli-administered H2 quarter of Hebron, military aggression and human rights abuses have increased, according to ISM activists and Palestinian residents of the area. While checkpoint stops and attacks on Palestinians have been historically commonplace in the divided city, Sami of Youth Against Settlements says that when the Golani Brigade is assigned the number of human rights abuses goes up many times over. Additionally with the Golani deployment in Hebron, military harassment of international activists has also increased, as witnessed by the repeat detentions of Friday night.
According to the Israeli news source Haaretz.com, the Golani Brigade has a ‘complex’ and special reputation for at once being particularly ‘tough,’ and routinely sent to front line combat “as a brigade that struggles with no small number of disciplinary problems and scandals, caused by bad behavior ranging from revolts against commanders to abuse of Palestinians.”
According to ISM and Youth Against Settlements activists this ‘bad behavior’ has been more than evident with the last few weeks’ upsurge in arbitrary detentions and harrasment.
On the following morning, one of the ISM activists detained Friday night was stopped yet again, her passport taken, threatened with arrest, and surrounded at her apartment. Another ISM volunteer asked, “Why do you keep breaking international and Israeli law?” The commander’s response, also present the night before, summed up his answer in four words: “I am the law.”
Aaron is a volunteer with International Solidarity Movement (name has been changed).
