4 December 2012 | International Solidarity Movement, West Bank
There are 38 military orders issued on homes in Tel Rumeida and Hebron. On Sunday 3rd December the District Coordination Office (D.C.O.) and the lawyers representing the families who have military orders put on their homes were supposed to be visiting the sites that the orders refer to. The purpose of the tour of these sites was to ascertain exactly what the meaning of these military orders are. The tour of the sites has been delayed. This delay leaves the families concerned still wondering what will happen to their homes and lands.
The D.C.O. and the lawyers from the Hebron Rehabilitation Center (H.R.C.) representing the families will take the tour around the sites within the next twenty days. After the tour is taken the families will again have five days in which to make their legal objections to the military orders.
This delay will add to the anxiety suffered by the families involved. Many of these families already have military watchtowers on the roofs of their houses and have faced having military orders put on them before. The scale of the 38 military orders goes beyond simple harassment. The Israeli Occupation forces obviously have some kind of large plan for the area, to increase the already intolerable oppression on the residents of Tel Rumeida. All the families however have organized a collective response to this threat. The Palestinian community of Tel Rumeida will face this in solidarity with each other.
18th Novemeber 2012 | International Solidarity Movement, West Bank
Soldiers in Hebron
Update: Hamdi Alfalah, 22, shot and killed today in Hebron.
Ibrahim Abu Eisheh, a Palestinian youth was hit in the head by a tear gas canister at around six in the afternoon. He is in critical condition at a hospital and is currently undergoing surgery.
For the third consecutive day in Hebron there has been a large amount of Palestinian resistance in the old city against the Israeli occupying forces. Two streets in particular were hardest hit by the conflict.
One being one of the main streets in the souq where most of the fresh produce is sold in the city. The other road intersects the market street and runs north of the military gate that is used for entry during Saturday settler tours. This area is known as Bab Baladia and was the main fighting ground for the shabab; which is the name for young Palestinian males.
Today not only were multiple tires burned but a couch was set aflame. Firecrackers are also a favorite for these demonstrations, which briefly give the tiring struggle a whimsical edge.
Though rocks are obviously dangerous when used as projectiles it’s extremely rare that one gets close enough to the soldiers to be considered dangerous, plus they have armor and padding.
The Israeli army responds to the relatively symbolic acts with rubber coated steel bullets and tear gas canisters that are shot at high speeds from their machine guns. Yet apparently this isn’t enough to combat untrained civilians that are predominantly in their teens. A skunk water truck came out of the Israeli installation and went into H1, which according to the Oslo accords is supposed to be in full Palestinian control.
The disgusting material was sprayed into the food market and the Palestinian homes that reside above it. Israeli army personnel have also been trying to break into private residences so as to gain access to the roof for tactical advantage. At one point six border police raided a building, as they shut the front entrance door other border on the outside broke off the handle so nobody else could enter. There have also been several detainments of Palestinian youth that are given no reason as to why they are held while they are blindfolded and cuffed.
All of this activity inevitably ends up in injuries, today was certainly no exception.
11th November 2012 | International Solidarity Movement, West Bank
Thousands of fundamentalist Israeli tourists from around the world arrived into Al Khalil (Hebron) on Friday, camping overnight in the centre of the city for a Jewish religious holiday. One Palestinian was punched and kicked and hundreds were denied access to daily life as settlers invaded the old city for five hours.
The thousands of Israeli tourists, who gathered in al-Khalil for two days, were gathered for the Zionist holiday, Abraham Day.
For the duration of the zionist visit, movement was even more restricted than usual for Palestinians – considering that in Al-Khalil there are already 113 checkpoints, roadblocks and closures. In the hilltop Palestinian neighborhood of Tel Rumeida, Palestinians were not allowed to walk their regular route down a gradual slope, as a Jewish cemetery is situated there. Residents, including one pregnant woman, were ordered by Israeli soldiers to walk down a dangerously steep hill.
Palestinians and international activists were not permitted to enter the vicinity of the Ibrahimi Mosque. When asked if this meant that only Jewish people had rights in the area, an Israeli policeman blocking the route replied “yes”, confirming the apartheid agenda of the Israeli authorities. The only two remaining Palestinian shops in the area were forced to close down for the two days of the zionist visit, and a checkpoint at the entrance to the Palestinian souq was completely shut down, making access very difficult.
The zionist visitors on the other hand were accommodated fully in their movement during their time in Al-Khalil and were in fact facilitated on tours of the souq. On Saturday morning, the souq was invaded by groups of over twenty soldiers on several occasions in preparation for these tours. Heavily-armed soldiers pointed guns through doorways and down alleyways in the market, intimidating shopping Palestinian families and children. Soldiers were then stationed in doorways and alleyways along the main path of the souq and remained there for many hours, blocking Palestinian access and once again, restricting movement.
After these preparations had been completed, the tours commenced. A tour for Israeli settlers happens every Saturday in the souq, on a much smaller scale – these are ostensibly regular guided tours, providing information about the area. The majority of the groups this Saturday however, seemed to aim only to be as loud and obnoxious as possible, obstructing Palestinian life and claiming that the souq should be a Jewish area.
Between the hours of one and five, hundreds of settlers were led repeatedly through the market, accompanied by over 30 soldiers each time. The groups were highly disorderly, shouting and chanting pro-Israel slogans and often threatening and yelling abuse at Palestinian shopkeepers and international observers as they passed. Several observers, Palestinian and international, were attacked for recording the disrespectful behavior of the crowd – cameras were grabbed, knocked to the ground and damaged. One Palestinian man was punched and kicked for trying to film as the group passed by him in the souq.
Merchandise and fresh produce were purposefully damaged and Palestinians were stopped from walking past the tour groups, or were forced to squeeze through the narrow gap between the wall and the crowds of sometimes aggressive zionists. One group’s guide pointed at a Palestinian flag in the souq and stated that it was “a flag of foreign anarchists and outside forces.”
There is a history of settler violence and restriction of movement for Palestinians in Al-Khalil, a city which is divided into Palestinian zone H1 and Israeli controlled H2, which includes the old city. The latter still has a majority Palestinian population of around 30,000, with around 700 Israeli settlers. The huge Israeli army presence within the city is justified by the presence of these settlers, whose residency is illegal under the Geneva Convention which states that “transfers of the civilian population of the occupying power into the occupied territory, regardless whether forcible or voluntary, are prohibited.”
An ex-Israeli soldier who was stationed in Al-Khalil claimed to Breaking the Silence that the mission statement of his unit was “to disrupt the routine of the inhabitants of the neighborhood”. This aim is being continually fulfilled by settlers, zionist visitors and the Israeli army. Despite this, the Palestinian population remain steadfast in their homes and continue to resist the occupation. While zionist tourists paraded through the souq one shopkeeper responded by waving her keffiyeh and blowing a trumpet in response to the harassment.
Checkpoint from the souq to the Ibrahimi Mosque closed down, severely restricting Palestinian movementPalestinian shopkeepers look on as soldiers and Zionist tourists pass byPalestinian boys look down on Zionist tour groupSoldiers and Zionist tourists invade the Palestinian souq
Ellie Marton is a volunteer with the International Solidarity Movement (name has been changed)
9th November 2012 | International Solidarity Movement, West Bank
Police take photographs of injuries at Checkpoint 56 in HebronA group of soldiers and international activists surround Imad after the settler attack
On Thursday in Hebron, Palestinian activist Imad Al Atrash was beaten by an illegal Israeli settler whilst two soldiers watched, without intervening.
Imad reports that he was walking through an olive grove in Tel Rumeida when a man from a nearby illegal settlement shouted abuse at him. Imad called for a nearby Israeli soldier to witness the abuse, but two soldiers merely watched as the settler began attacking Imad, at one point using a stone as a weapon. Imad suffered blows to the head, back and leg. Following this, his attacker fled the scene.
A group of soldiers who then arrived at the scene denied that it was possible for CCTV footage of the attack to be reviewed. The two soldiers who had witnessed the attack would not provide their names or military identification numbers, to ensure that they could be called to provide evidence against the settler. Impunity for settler violence is compounded by soldiers refusing to testify against the Israeli attackers, or testifying falsely. According to the Geneva Convention of 1949 and the Hague Convention of 1907, ‘in any area under military occupation, responsibility for the welfare of the population falls on the occupying power’, an obligation which Israel is clearly neglecting.
Imad required medical attention and was taken to a hospital in Hebron, where he was monitored for three hours. There has been a long history of settler attacks on Palestinians in Tel Rumeida, where some of the most extreme Zionist settlers in Hebron are based. The violence is often random and extreme – for example, in the last month alone, there were attacks by settlers and soldiers in Tel Rumeida during the olive harvest. See:
November 7th 2012 | International Solidarity Movement, West Bank
Several olive trees and one apricot tree were destroyed on the morning of November 5th in a section of Khalil (Hebron) called Jales Mount, which is near the illegal settlement of Kiryat Arba.
Rashed Zaroo showed the damage to internationals that afternoon. He explained that the land is owned by his father and uncle Fayez, before that his grandfather acquired the land in the early twentieth century. The trees were planted forty years prior and were some of the strongest in a large grove that produced olives and fruit. Five months ago Shakel Zaroo was attacked and gassed by settlers that he caught damaging his property. In addition five hundred square meters of the Zaroo family land was confiscated to build the Route 60 settlers highway.
The neighboring families’ land has seen even more devastation, the Abu Rmela and Abo Sunina families had approximately 400 olive trees burned by settlers last year. The land was so unsightly that the Israeli government brought heavy equipment to remove the debris and then redistribute the uneven ground caused by the massive uprooting.
These practices come under the protection of the Israeli army. The illegal settlers who live in Hebron are of the most dangerous fanatics in all of the West Bank.
There is a spiritual link between these trees and the Palestinians and the right to live with dignity on their land has been violated by the occupying forces. The trees are rooted in this land both physically and culturally.
