Tag: Hebron

Settler youth spray burning liquid at Palestinian man in Hebron

On the morning of the 24th December, a settler youth attacked a Palestinian man outside the Beit Hadassah settlement in Hebron.

The man, who works as a caretaker at the Palestinian Qurtuba School, was running an errand in to the city centre. On returning he saw a settler boy around 12 years old chatting with the soldier on duty at the checkpoint. When he passed them the kid sprayed him with some liquid from a syringe. He protected himself with a piece of paper. Despite his efforts some of it hit his face, burning it.

When we asked the soldier why he didn’t interfere, he replied, “I didn’t notice it”.

Qurtuba School in the Tel Rumeida neighbourhood is constantly subjected to violent attacks of settlers. The settlers are known for using their minor kids who don’t risk any penalties, when they attack the school, the staff and pupils. This attack occurred during the Jewish Hanukkah when the settler kids don’t go to school and therefore have more time to harass the Palestinians.

The Israeli army has declared a closed military zone around Qurtuba school, which effectively prevents international human rights observers from entering it. The activists from ISM whom keep a presence around the school work under a constant threat of being arrested.

Settlers torch Palestinian property as violence continues in Hebron

On the night between the 11th and the 12th of December, settlers burnt and damaged Palestinian cars and attempted to torch a Palestinian house in the city of Hebron.

The Tel Rumeida neighbourhood was attacked by settlers from 11.30pm until 3am in the morning. The settlers burnt and damaged at least two Palestinian cars, and also tried to burn down the house of the Adeis family, setting trees situated next to the house on fire. During their attack the settlers shot at the Palestinians, their houses and other Palestinian property.

The Palestinians in Hebron are being harassed, attacked and shot at by settlers on a daily basis. The aggression from settlers has become worse than usual during the last couple of weeks since the settler-occupied house, “Beit Rajabi”, was evicted on the 4th of December. Since then, settlers all over Hebron have been engaging in a ‘price-tag’ campaign. As usual, Palestinians are paying the price and while the settlers almost every night are attacking Palestinians residents and property, the Israeli army in Hebron are merely watching or just being not present when settlers attack.

Fourteen year old boy shot in the head by Israeli forces in Hebron

A fourteen year old boy was shot in the head by the Israeli military, in the city of Hebron, on Friday the 12th of December.

At around 3pm, Jacob Yahia Alqasrawi was leaving a store, where he had gone to get bread for his family, near the centre of Hebron, when soldiers from on top of a building near by called on him to stop walking. They then proceeded to shoot the twelve year old boy in the head with a rubber-coated steel bullet.

The Palestinian ambulance that tried to take the wounded boy to the hospital was refused to do so by the Israeli army. Instead the boy was taken by the Israeli army. He was taken to the Israeli hospital in the Beer Sheva, south of Hebron. He was later transferred to a hospital in Jerusalem where he is still being treated.

This is yet another example of the daily, brutal violence from the Israeli army in Hebron towards the Palestinian civilian population of the city. Unprovoked shootings, tear gas and sound bombs, general harassment and curfews are a part of the every day life for the Palestinians of Hebron.

The Daily Star: Israeli court frees Jewish settler filmed shooting Palestinians

By AFP

To view original article, published by The Daily Star on the 11th December, click here

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM: An Occupied Jerusalem court Wednesday freed a Jewish settler who shot at Palestinians from point-blank range in the Occupied West Bank city of Hebron.

Zeev Braudeh from the settlement of Kiryat Arba on the city’s outskirts turned himself in to police on Saturday after video footage released by a human-rights group showed him firing at a group of Palestinians.

Two Palestinians were wounded by the gunfire and Braudeh was lightly injured after a Palestinian crowd threw stones at him after the colonist shot at them.

The judge ordered the immediate release of Braudeh and criticized Israeli police for failing to arrest any of the Palestinians defending themselves from the gunfire.

“Police are treating Palestinian behavior in this incident extremely light-handedly,” the ruling said. “We can not take part in this blatant discrimination.”

However the state prosecution also filed an indictment against Braudeh on charges of aggravated assault in connection with the shooting incident.

Last Thursday, a mob of Jewish militants went on the rampage in Hebron and across the Israeli-occupied West Bank in retaliation for the eviction by police in line with a High Court order of some 250 settlers from an occupied Hebron house.

During the Israeli riots following the eviction, the colonists – who had for weeks after the ruling thrown stones at and harassed local Palestinians, often in front of Israeli soldiers and police – set fire to Palestinian homes and fields, fired weapons at them, damaged cars and other property as well as desecrating Mosques and Muslim graves.

Braudeh was one of the few arrested by Israeli authorities.

Human-rights organizations have long decried the discriminatory double standards employed by Israel while dealing with Jews on the one hand and Muslims and Christians on the other. Israeli violence is dealt with kids’ gloves by the authorities, who physically restrain perpetrators or, in some cases, use tear gas or batons. Meanwhile, Palestinian protesters – even those demonstrating peacefully – face live ammunition, rubber-coated bullets, stun grenades and armored bulldozers, among other methods.

Also Thursday, Israel adamantly rejected accusations by the UN monitor of human rights in the Palestinian territories that the Jewish state is committing a “crime against humanity.”

UN expert on human rights Richard Falk had discredited himself by the accusations, which were related to Israel’s nearly 18-month blockade of the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, the Israeli Foreign Ministry said.

“The credibility of this expert has suffered a major blow with this announcement, which consists more of anti-Israel propaganda than truth,” spokesman Yigal Palmor told AFP.

Israel began a crippling blockade of the Gaza Strip, where roughly half of its 1.5 million residents depend on international aid for survival, after Hamas won legislative elections deemed fair and democratic by international observers in 2006. Following the Islamists ousting of Fatah from the territory in what many have described as a pre-empting by Hamas of an impending US-backed Fatah offensive aimed at clearing Gaza of their rivals, Israel further tightened the noose.

Various UN and EU officials, along with scores of humanitarian and human-rights workers, have described the siege as “collective punishment of a civilian population,” an act illegal under international law that the Fourth Geneva Convention defines as a war crime.

According to the terms of an Egyptian mediated cease-fire in June, Israel was to lift the blockade if Hamas reigned in militants retaliating for Israeli attacks. However, while Hamas virtually halted rocket fire emanating from Gaza, the Jewish state did not honor its commitment.

However, the truce was honored by Hamas until Israel invaded the territory on November 4 with troops and tanks in an offensive that killed seven Palestinians. The shattering of the agreement by Israel prompted Gazan fighters to resume attacks on the Jewish state.

Israel has used the return of violence to completely seal off the enclave, including from international humanitarian aid, except for a handful of exceptions. UN officials have dismissed as a pretext the Israeli reasoning that rocket fire forces the crossings to be closed, noting that in past times of far worse violence, humanitarian aid was always allowed in.

Falk had earlier called on the UN to make an “urgent effort” to “protect a civilian population being collectively punished by policies that amount to a crime against humanity.”

He also suggested the International Criminal Court investigate the situation and consider prosecuting Israeli civilian and military leaders.

“Such a flurry of denunciations by normally cautious United Nations officials has not occurred on a global level since the heyday of South African apartheid,” Falk said.

“And still Israel maintains its Gaza siege in its full fury, allowing only barely enough food and fuel to enter to stave off mass famine and disease.”

Israel on Tuesday allowed some 70 trucks filled with humanitarian aid and fuel supplies to enter the territory of 1.5 million people, an action immediately dismissed by United Nations officials as woefully inadequate.

Meanwhile, Israel allowed on Wednesday the transfer of $25 million into Gaza to pay wages of civil servants amid warnings that the imposed liquidity crisis resulting from the blockade could bring down the besieged territory’s banks.

But the sum fell short of the $63 million that Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad said were necessary to pay Palestinian Authority employees.

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak authorized the transfer of 100 million shekels ($25 million) from banks in the Occupied West Bank to the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, his office said.

The transfer was to come following a “personal request” by Fayyad and Stanley Fischer, the head of Israel’s central bank, “in view of the severe cash crisis in Gaza.”

A Palestinian treasury official told AFP on condition of anonymity that the transfer has not yet been made but that it should take place on Thursday.

Palestinian Economy Minister Kamal Hassuneh said that the $25 million was insufficient to pay the salaries of government employees.

“We need $70 to $75 million for salaries. And we need to transfer this amount every month, not just one time,” he told AFP.

The Palestinian Authority headed by President Mahmoud Abbas continues to pay the salaries of some 70,000 civil servants in the impoverished Gaza Strip. – AFP, with The Daily Star

Demonstration in Hebron after two members of the Jabari family arrested following settler attacks on their house

At around 3 o’clock on Monday afternoon, the first day of Eid al-Adha, Israeli forces seized two members of the Jabari family from their home under charges of stone throwing.

The soldiers brought security camera tapes from the nearby the illegal Quiryat Arba settlement supposedly showing the two throwing stones along with two members of the settlement as “witnesses”. Fadi Jabari, 20 and Mohammed Jabari, 22, live directly across from the recently evicted Rajabi occupied house and over the past months have suffered tremendously from settler attacks on their home and families. In recent attacks they have had part of their home torched, their windows completely smashed and have each been injured by both rocks and assault.

Settlers attacking the Jabari family house

The police and army present during the multiple settler attacks did nothing to help the family protect themselves, in fact they often shot tear gas into and around their home. Both men have been treated for the effects of extreme exposure to the toxic gas. Mohammed has two small children, each under the age of two, to protect. None of this information was taken into account when apprehending the two Palestinians.

Local outrage in response to the arrests pushed the community around the Jabari house to hold a demonstration on Tuesday afternoon at the police station where the two are being held. The peaceful demonstration of 50 Palestinians and internationals was quickly dispersed by the authorities within the station, who violently attacked and detained three Swedish demonstrators from the International Solidarity Movement.

The demonstrators held signs proclaiming that the real criminals were the violent settlers who injured dozens of Palestinians in the days leading up to and following the eviction of the illegally occupied Rajibi house, not the two Jabari men who were only protecting their homes and children from the rampage that left large parts of their land torched and their house damaged.

Members from all of the Palestinian families in the neighbourhood around the Jabari home came to the demonstration today to show their solidarity with the two men and their family. The members of the community have banded together in many situations to protect one another from their violent settler neighbors.

The goal of today’s demonstration was to ensure that the arrests of these two men did not happen silently, that while all of the world was still watching they would see that illegal and arbitrary arrests of Palestinians by the Israeli authorities are commonplace in the West Bank and that the mass settler attacks on Palestinians that were seen on Thursday afternoon still has not ended.

The two men are currently still being held with no word of a trial or release date.