Tag: Hebron

Fathers speak on the mass arrests in Hebron

15 September 2011 | International Solidarity Movement, West Bank

On Sunday the 21st of August the Israeli army carried out arrests in al Khalil (Hebron) on a scale not seen since 2003.  Around 120-200 people were kidnapped from their homes in pre-dawn raids and following the release of some, the final number in Israeli custody stands at 50. Interviews with local residents and families of those arrested indicate that the arrests were carried out for political reasons and were not based on new evidence or any security threat. Though the scale of the operation is unusual, Israel’s mode of operation with complete disregard for human rights and fair judicial process is institutional and routine.

We spoke with the father of Ali Natsheh, a 22-year-old law student who was arrested during the raid. At approximately 1:30 am Ali Natsheh’s 8 year old sister awoke to the sound of the Israeli army smashing the windows of her family home. She woke her father as the Israeli army surrounded and entered the house. His son was not home at the time of the raid so the army separated Ali’s father from his daughter and took them away from the house he was made to contact his son, who immediately returned home. Ali’s father explained.

“He knew that if he did not give himself up they would make problems for the family or even shoot him as a fugitive,” he said.

Smashed windows by Israeli military at the Natsheh home

Upon returning to his home, where the army were waiting, neighbors witnessed the army stripping and beating Ali Natseh before handcuffing him and taking him away in a jeep. Natseh’s father told us that his son had been arrested almost 3 years ago for involvement with Palestinian resistance groups but had since become a law student at Al Quds University and had no affiliation with any political groups. He was extremely worried about his son’s treatment. The last time Ali was detained, he became ill as a result of being kept for days in isolation in a freezing cold cell without medical treatment. He has suffered from long-term health problems since.

The arrest of Amer Abu Arafe is quite similar in that he too had been imprisoned in 2007 for involvement in resistance groups but had since completed a degree in media and became a journalist, his father Abdel Halim said. He said Amer was no longer involved with any political or resistance groups and was certainly not a security threat. Though he could think of no reason for his son’s arrest he was not particularly surprised as arbitrary arrests are a disturbingly routine feature of Palestinian life. 40% of the male Palestinian population have been detained by the Israeli army at some point in their life, and there are around 6,000 Palestinian political prisoners currently in Israeli custody.

Badran Jaber, a lecturer at Hebron University and friend of many of the families of those arrested, was highly skeptical that the arrests were for security reasons or based on new evidence. He argued these arrests constituted collective punishment of Palestinians for the attack in Eilat on August the 18th.

“Israeli authorities wanted large numbers to be arrested for political reasons: it does not matter to them whether they are innocent or guilty.”

A lack of evidence to support these arrests is inconsequential when you have a judicial system where military officers serve as judges and operate in collusion with military prosecutors without a jury or adequate provision.

The result of this system is a conviction rate of 96.7% mostly based on signed confessions written in Hebrew. A recent report by Israeli human rights organization B’tselem acknowledges that torture such as stress positions, sleep depravation, exposure to extreme temperatures, painful handcuffing and long periods of solitary confinement are used routinely and systematically to obtain these confessions and more violent forms of torture such as beatings still occur though are less common.

As of July 2011 Israel was holding 243 Palestinian prisoners under administrative detention, which allows for them to be held indefinitely without trial or even any knowledge of why they are being detained.

Despite the fact that it is widely acknowledged that Hamas was not behind the attacks that occurred in Eilat, Israel exploited the events to carry out air strikes on Gaza. The escalation of violence in Gaza and the mass arrests in Al Khalil are emblematic of Israel’s recurring policy of collective punishment, in which the only necessary criteria for being found guilty is being Palestinian.

Broken wrists and arrests by Israeli military as farmers cultivate Beit Ummar

10 September 2011 | International Solidarity Movement, West Bank

Supporting Palestinian farmers in Beit Ummar, international activists joined the weekly Saturday activities–clearing the land for cultivation despite the harrassment of Israeli military and illegal settlers, which resulted in the injury of a Palestinian man and the arrest of a British national, Jude Wells.

At 9 AM the solidarity march to protect the farmland of Beit Ummar began from the local mosque to the main gate of the illegal Israeli settlement, Karmi Tzur. Dozens of citizens, Israeli and foreign activists participated in the march. Volunteeres removed the brush and thorns as well as the irrigation networks that the settlers put in to desecrate the farmland. Participants started chanting slogans in support of the creation of a Palestinian state.

Israeli soldiers arrived in the lane next to the field and began entering the field to prevent the farmers working. When work began again soldiers and border police briefly showed a military closure order to one of the Palestinian farmers. It was not possible to check the legality of the order and a request to photograph the order was refused.

But with the insistence of the participants in the march, a significant amount of the participants were able to access the land intended to be controlled. Flags were held up and the Israeli army violently reacted by brutally beating activists. A large number of settlers were gathered and started screaming and insulting the Palestinians, offending Muslims, as  the army stood by.

Two participants in the action were arrested including  27 year old  Jude Wells of Britain,  and 45 year old Ali Abad, a member of the local Popular Committee who sustained injuries to his right hand. For a video of the arrests, visit this link.

Abad who was originally handcuffed to be arrested was transported by the Red Crescent to Alya hospital to treat his broken wrist. Wells was released from detainment after ten hours.

Riyad Abuayyash, a farmer who was present and witnessed the aggression said, “I want to live in peace with my neighbors, with mutual respect, my dream is to have my own house here and grow grapes on my land.”

After the second Inifada farmers of Beit Ummar were driven from the land which borders the illegal Israeli settlement. Without support and presence of internationals, the risk of farming their own land would be potentially fatal.

 

 

Wasteland in al Walajeh: Israeli military destruction of farmland

7 September 2011 | International Solidarity Movement, West Bank

On Tuesday September  6th local Palestinians from the village of Al Walajeh gathered with international activists to protest the building of the illegal separation barrier as well as the destruction of ancient olive trees. The demonstrators succeeded in halting the razing of Palestinian land for approximately one hour before soldiers violently broke up the protest arresting one Palestinian and one Israeli activist.

On September 5th bulldozers protected by dozens of soldiers arrived at 4 AM and uprooted 50 olive trees that date back at least 100 years. The bulldozers also destroyed 18 almond trees, 27 pine trees, and 8 fruit trees. The destruction took place in an area of over 1 square mile and was declared a closed military zone, prohibiting media coverage of the devastating operation.

Mohammed Al-Atrash (Abu Wajih), the elderly farmer who owned the trees, will receive no compensation for his loss.

In the aftermath residents of Al Walajeh called for a presence of media and activists to highlight this illegal destruction carried out by the Israeli government. At approximately 10am on Tuesday several residents from the village, joined by ISM and other activists, walked down to the site of the olive grove, which is now a wasteland. Upon arriving they stood in front of the construction machines and forced them to halt their work.

Soldiers declared the area a closed military zone and disbanded the protest by force within an hour. Yousif Shakawi, a local resident in his 50’s was arrested along with one Israeli activist. The remaining protesters were held at distance so that the work could resume.

The trees were destroyed in preparation for the building of the illegal Israeli apartheid wall which is planned to run several hundred metres inside the 1967 green line, effectively seizing hundreds of dunnums of land from around Al Walajeh. If the Israeli government succeeds in completing the wall along the planned route the village will be surrounded on three sides with the army controlling entrance and exit to the village.

Sheerin Alaraj, who has lived in Al Walajeh all her life, explained to us that construction of the wall was continuing in spite of an on going appeal process in the Israeli high court with a ruling expected September 27th .  However Sheerin has little confidence in the process as she explained to us “the court is just an extension of the military arm of Israel.”

In 2004 the International Court of Justice declared that the apartheid wall is illegal and Israel should tear it down immediately and compensate the victims. In spite of this ruling Israel has continued construction of the wall which annexes 8.5% of the entire West Bank territory. Since 2000 Israel has destroyed approximately 330,000 olive trees in the West Bank and Gaza. There is currently a campaign to boycott Caterpillar Inc. for its role in supplying the Israeli government with equipment used to enforce the occupation.

As the time for harvesting olives nears and Israeli military and settlers continue to destroy the main agricultural pillar of Palestinian culture and livelihood, International Solidarity Movement will be actively working throughout the harvesting season to safeguard Palestinians and assist in harvesting despite this and other events that have threatened security and access to Palestinian farmland. For more information on ISMs Olive Harvest Campaign, visit our website.

 

Grazing on tragedy and the promises of scripture in South Hebron Hills

1 September 2011 | International Solidarity Movement, West Bank

The army is establishing two virtual lines for each of the settlements that are near a Palestinian village. The first line, if crossed by Palestinian demonstrators, will be met with tear gas and other means for dispersing crowds.

The second line is a “red line,” and if this one is crossed, the soldiers will be allowed to open fire at the legs of the demonstrators, as is also standard practice if the northern border is crossed.

Each map was approved by the regional brigade commander, and the IDF force that is deployed to the area will be ready to respond on the basis of the lines determined.—Haaretz

 

Shortly after dawn on August 29th, with the soft light spreading across the hills, eight armed soldiers climb out of their military vehicle to watch sheep.

Na’il is unperturbed. He makes a clicking noise with his tongue and drives his flock a little further up the slope. The soldiers are on the opposite hill, visible against the brightening sky. They guard an illegal settlement from us – two Palestinian shepherds, two international activists, and a small battalion of sheep and goats.

In these hills, sheep farming is political. Rights to this land are re-enacted daily by grazing flocks. The sheep kick back the dusty earth to find short grasses and sparse roots; goats strip the sharp thorns from the scrub. Some days, the shepherds will hang back in the low fields. Others, they will push a little higher, a little further, a little closer towards the boundary.

The sheep do not look up as they scour the earth. The grass is no different here from there; no wall stops their wandering. It matters little to the sheep that up there, the land is claimed by Zionist settlers, who guard it with sticks and stones and guns; nor that the Zionist settlers say this land will one day all be theirs, promised to them by God. As the sheep search onwards for fresh pasture, they do not notice the soldiers on the hilltop; they do not sense the cautious glances of the shepherds; they know nothing of the Oslo Agreement or UN resolutions or international law. They chew the earth, swallowing it in sandy mouthfuls with the roots and the shrubs. It is fine, dry, powdery, physical. But the boundary – that is entirely imagined.

The boundary is not a place; it is a ritual. It cannot be seen in itself, but only in the behaviour it creates. Stray too close to the settlement, and the shepherds know they will meet a response. Today, the army is here – an alien force in an occupied land, frightened young men who came to fight terrorists and find themselves supervising shepherds. They watch, but they do not intervene. The shepherds are permitted to come this far, but no further.

But it is not the army that Na’il and Khaled are worried about. Soldiers can be brutal, but they are by and large ordered, pragmatic, predictable. The illegal settlers, by contrast, are zealous, fanatical. They follow no commands, only Commandments; they recognize no law, only the Law, the Torah, the eternal and unalterable word of God. An army sergeant who used to serve in these hills describes it as the Wild West: ‘the Arabs can be beaten up, the settlers are untouchable.’

Like the original Wild West, the settlers – the cowboys – are violent, lawless, appropriating the land of the native inhabitants through theft and assault. And like the original Wild West, mythologized by Hollywood, their story is retold in the Zionist press, the illegal settlers as bold pioneers and the Palestinians as irrational savages.

The shepherds’ gaze oscillates between the sheep and the settlement, alert to any approach from the self-appointed sheriffs. We are right on the boundary now; the ritual has begun. For about an hour, nothing happens. The soldiers watch us, we watch the soldiers. The only sound is the grinding of ovine teeth and Na’il quietly reciting verses from the Qur’an. With the sun now high in the eastern sky, the shepherds start to drive their sheep back to the fold. As we turn to leave, we see the soldiers climb back into their jeep and disappear over the horizon.

But we have crossed the boundary, and that is enough. With the soldiers gone, we see a lone figure coming down the hill from the settlement. He is moving quickly; in his left hand he is carrying a stick. He moves with purpose, following the contours around the valley. He is some way out of the settlement now.

He is coming towards us. Na’il points: ‘Mustawtan.‘ Settler.

We are now half a kilometer away from the settlement, but the illegal settler continues to follow us. We lose sight of him for a moment, then suddenly he appears over the brow of a hill. He approaches Abu, an Italian activist, shouting with rage. I thought for a moment he might hit Abu with the stick, but instead he pushes him, hard, and screams

“Nazi, Nazi, go!” Abu walks backwards slowly, and responds that he is Italian.

“Italia, Mussolini, fascist” shouts the settler, continuing to push him, shouting now right into his face. For these illegal settlers, anyone who denies their right to this land is a fascist, an anti-Semite, supporting the Arabs who they say stole this land from the Jews two thousand years ago.

“Fascist, go, now, now!”

And so the promises of scripture and the tragedies of twentieth century Europe are thrown together in a sense of entitlement, of indignation, of rage, in this dusty field in Palestine.

A few meters away, I film what happens; Na’il films too, on a video camera provided by the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem. This is the only protection that these shepherds have – observation, recording, and the meticulous chronicling of truth. Rarely is justice served. But the knowledge that their actions may be known elsewhere sometimes gives the  illegal settlers pause. The worst violence takes place when cameras are not there. Today, the settler goes no further. Perhaps the presence of cameras makes a difference. After a few minutes he turns and storms off, marching in long strides across the stony ground. He shouts insults at the shepherds as he leaves, which they shout back in turn.

Back in Khaled’s tent we stretch out on thin mattresses and rest. He speaks no English and I only understand a few words of Arabic; we talk with our hands and our faces, in gestures. He pulls up his shirt to show a scar from a bullet wound on his belly – this is what can happen, sometimes, this is why the settlers are feared, this is why he brings cameras and foreigners to help him graze his sheep. Usually, he says, six illegal settlers come down, threatening and sometimes attacking the shepherds, guarding the land that is not theirs to guard. This is how the land is stolen; not in a grand historical moment, but in increments, dunam by dunam, hilltop by hilltop, the imagined boundary moving a little further each day.

Olive branches strike against the car window as we take the bumpy track back to Yatta. We take this detour through the olive groves because the main track has been blocked, a giant rock pushed across the route by illegal settlers. The straight, smooth illegal settler road bisects the landscape; it, too, is a kind of boundary. Palestinians near the settler road attract attention, Musa tells us, as he maneuvers his car across a stony field. The tarmac stretches away into the distance, a sign in Hebrew and English pointing the way to the Israeli town of Be’er Sheva. Cars and trucks with Israeli plates speed up this road in Palestine. The Promised Land turns beneath their wheels.

The rumble of the trucks can be heard from the tents, where the shepherds wait out the hot noon hours until it is time to take the sheep out again. As the sun drops in the West, and the women begin to prepare the iftar meal to break their Ramadan fasts, they will drive their sheep up the hill once more, towards the boundary. They will keep going back, because it is the only way to live like this, on their land, all of it their land. Like connoisseurs of the absurd, they wait for the invisible boundary to disappear, as Khaled mutters:

“Kul yom. Kul yom. Kul yom.”

Everyday, everyday, everyday.

 

Interview sheds light on Israeli prison-colonial complex

29 August 2011 | International Solidarity Movement, West Bank

Conversations are strange over here. When you are told a horrible story by somebody, or you hear yet another example of the brutality Palestinians experience as part of their daily lives, you find yourself eerily laughing along with them. It’s as if the spectrum of human emotions has buckled under strain and flipped back on itself, making up become downward and left turn into right. Perhaps this was just a coping mechanism.

Such was the atmosphere when we interviewed Bardran Jabbal , a geography and sociology lecturer at Hebron Polytechnic University. We went to interview him following the arrest of four people on his street, along with roughly 120 others from Hebron that same night of Saturday 20th of August in one of the biggest mass arrests the area has seen in years.

We ended up chatting with him for two hours, along with one of his sons, and the topic trailed far away from the arrests into interesting territories–or what was left of them.

We were keen to know about what kind of treatment the recent detainees could expect, and he seemed to be the perfect person to speak to, considering he has spent 20 years in Israeli prisons over the course of his life as have each of his sons., under the British mandate laws that allow people to be arrested without any evidence or charge for up to six months, a sentence which can be renewed at any time.

When one of his sons was 11, he was walking down the road with his pet bird between his hands. Israeli soldiers ran after him, causing him to let the bird out of his grip. They imprisoned him for two weeks for “throwing stones.”

Each of his sons have spent sentences (ranging from 3 months to seven years) for either being members of a Palestinian political party or nothing at all . These prisoners are held separately from the likes of rapists and drug dealers who are held in “civil prisons,” all political prisoners are detained in “security prisons.”

Badran himself has spent 20 years in Israeli security prisons over the course of his life, in separate sentences between 1967 and 2007. Three of his children were born while he was in prison. He never saw one of his sons until he was five years old, who refused to believe for sometime that he was his actual father, and tried to attack him to get him out of the house considering the only father he knew was a picture on the wall.

Discussing what conditions the prisoners could expect to face, he told us that human rights organizations pressuring since the 80s, the torture has shifted more to psychological methods.

One example he provided was when they produced a fake document from the International Red Cross Society saying that his wife had died and that his five children were now living on their own. They wanted him to sign it to “hand custody over to their grandparents.” Second-guessing them, he told them that his wife had died willingly as he had met another woman three months previously, and she had sacrificed herself to make way for their relationship.

Later when he was being driven to court in a police vehicle, he saw his wife walking down the street through a tiny window in the armed car.

However a shift to psychological torture in no means should suggest that the prisoners are treated well, he warned. Where in the West we are arrested by means of a warrant, the army here uses sound bombs, teargas and live ammo in the houses they raid, whether they soldiers are met with resistance or not. Once arrested, their eyes are blindfolded and their hands are cuffed to their legs, and they can expect to stay in this position in the transit van for up to four days without food or water before even reaching prison.

Badran estimates that he spent roughly 100 days in the course of his 20 years as an inmate in this position staring at a wall for days on end without food or water. In prison, inmates are expected to pay for their own food at Israeli market prices, and if they don’t ,they don’t get enough to survive. Another way that inmates are tested physiologically is by being held in “fake prisons” full of Israeli informants. This is particularly difficult considering the sense of solidarity Badran tells us that the inmates have with one another in order to survive.

On top of jail sentences, Badran told us that he feels that arrests are run like a business. If somebody is released without charge (which is more often than not the case) they still have to pay a fine at the officer’s discretion. All of his sons have paid up to 15,000 shekels along with their prison sentences. Soldiers routinely loot the houses of the people they are about to arrest or simply destroy them.

One of his friends managed to get his stolen goods back from a soldier, as he managed to take a picture of him in the act. This is a rare case however, considering the soldiers wear face masks, and obviously don’t give away their identities willingly.

Badran was even sceptical about the amount that of influence that the Israeli government has over the IDF. He says that settlement plans, ruled out as illegal by the High courts, are often carried out in spite of this. Another example he gave, was when the High Court ordered his release from prison. He was released and re-arrested on the doorstep for another year.

Palestinians also need to get permission from military officers to plant their crops.

We asked him about the attack on an Israeli coach last Thursday in Eilat , and asked him what the connection this had to the arrests made in Hebron. He was aware that there was no connection, and the shootings were just an excuse to arrest anybody they could.

We proposed the idea that it may have been Israel themselves who carried out the shootings, considering nobody, including Hamas had claimed responsibility for them. He said he wouldn’t put it past them, and used the example of Ben Gurion bombing a ship full of Jews in the 40’s in the Mediterranean, to gain sympathy for the state of Israel.

“Generally when a resistance group carries out such attacks, they are keen to claim responsibility. They have served as an excuse to bomb Gaza from the air without mercy ever since,” he said.

He also drew a connection between the recent protests from within Israel against their governments economic policies, which seemed apt considering many marches in the likes of Tel Aviv  were called off in light of the attacks.

The conversation ended with Badran comparing the sentences of Nelson Mandela, who spent 27 years in prison for resisting the apartheid system under which he and his people lived. He compared it to the Palestinian political prisoners (including two of his brothers) who have spent 34 years in jail.

Over 400 political prisoners have spent over 25 years in prison without release.