29th June 2017 | International Solidarity Movement, al-Khalil team | Hebron, occupied Palestine
On Tuesday the founders of the Tel Rumeida Garden next to the Gilbert checkpoint in occupied al-Khalil (Hebron) organised an Eid celebration for the children from the community.
Children in the Tel Rumeida garden
The event started at 9:30 am with a running game and about 60 children took part in the following games: competitions, who can fill up waterbuckets the fastest, rope pulling and a blue smurf showed up to entertain the kids and danced with them. While listening to music the children also used the footballfield in the garden to play a ballgame. Finally, presents were handed out by the organisers for every single child.
Blue smurf entertains the Tel Rumeida children
Because of the heat and the disappearing shade the event ended at noon, but there was water available for the children and the mothers all the time and also pizza and orange juice were served to ensure energy supply to all participants in the heat.
Children engaged in games
This event is a small respite for the children from Tel Rumeida, the majority of who live in an area that the Israeli forces have declared a ‘closed military zone’ since November 2015.
Who can fill up the bucket fastest? Team-building gamesChildren enjoying the shade during Eid celebration
26th June 2017 | International Solidarity Movement, al-Khalil team | Hebron, occupied Palestine
Israeli forces at Shuhada checkpoint in occupied al-Khalil (Hebron) have put up yet another sign ‘instructing’ the Palestinian residents on their behavior at the checkpoint. The bright-red sign clearly with pictures prohibits any kind of supposedly ‘dangerous’ materials like guns, knives and scissors. Just like when you attempt to cross security in any airport. Whereas those objects have long been prohibited and most Palestinians wouldn’t dare bring any of those to any checkpoint, as they’d have to fear for their lives, the signs also illustrate something else: live for the Palestinians living in this area is immensely restricted.
At an airport, most people can at least attempt to grasp why those objects aren’t allowed. But now consider this checkpoint is on your daily way to your house. Your own home. Not an airport, you have to cross this checkpoint all the time. That’s what it is like for Palestinians living in the Israeli forces declared ‘closed military zone’ in Tel Rumeida and on Shuhada Street. Those restrictions, newly illustrated with little images, restrict daily tasks such as cooking and studying, doing arts, and even such mundane things as cutting your nails. No Palestinian is allowed to bring any kind of knife, so unless you have a big stack of sharp knifes – you won’t be cutting neither your fruit, nor meat, nor vegetables. If you break a pair of scissors, your children will not be doing arts anymore, and no matter how often they ask for new one’s, the parents are prohibited to bring scissors, even non-sharp childrens-scissors, into this area.
Newly installed sign illustrating the daily restrictions enforced solely for Palestinians
Doing so against the warning, you’d most likely pay with your life. A sentence on the sign says that a ‘permit’ can be applied for to bring any of the mentioned items. But even if that would be successful – assuming a Palestinian wouldn’t just be arrested for just applying for such a permit – or refused like so many Palestinians applying for building permits, it would cost a lot of bravery to actually show up at the checkpoint with any of those items. Bringing ‘banned items’ to the checkpoint, and then telling the heavily-armed soldier: “I’m bringing a knife”. It’s debatable whether that conversation would ever go beyond that point, or rather be cut short by gunshots from a heavily-armed occupation force.
In stark contrast to airports, where the measures are for security, in this context they are merely and deliberately solely for humiliation. In international law, a praxis like this is called ‘creating a coercive environment’ in order to facilitate ‘forced displacement’. And that’s what it is about: in an area that so conveniently connects all the illegal settlements within the city center of al-Khalil and on its outskirts, Palestinians are merely considered a nuisance. The attempts to drive them out are thus ever more enforced by the occupying army.
26th June 2017 | International Solidarity Movement, al-Khalil team | Hebron, occupied Palestine
A fourteen year old Palestinian boy was shot at by settlers and soldiers before being arrested on the 25th June at 4:00 pm outside Bab al-Baladiya, the military base overlooking the old city in occupied al-Khalil (Hebron). Sources are unclear as to why he was arrested however it is known that the Israeli forces have been looking for him for a long period of time.
The settlers that reportedly shot at Mohammad
Eyewitnesses claim that Muhammad was outside of the gate of Bab al-Baladiya when a group of settlers and soldiers shot three rounds of live ammunition as well as reportedly throwing sound bombs. After that, they came out from the gate and took him inside the base.
Muhammad’s brother Mahmoud (18) was arrested in a similar fashion on May 17th and has yet to be released. After arresting Mahmoud, the Israeli forces called their family to demand that Muhammad be turned over in exchange for Mahmoud. This praxis is clearly against any human rights standards and is intended to exert pressure on the family to basically exchange one son for the other, clearly disregarding any kind of legal standards in the proceeding.
This took place on the first day of Eid al-Fitr “the feast of breaking the fast”, the most important religious holiday celebrated by Muslims worldwide, marking the end of Ramadan, the holy month of fasting. This feast, normally, is a family feast, where everyone would go and visit their families, which in occupied al-Khalil is impeded to a large degree by Israeli forces. Both Mohammad and Mahmoud though, will not be able to celebrate this feast with their families.
26th June 2017 | International Solidarity Movement, al-Khalil team | Hebron, occupied Palestine
As anywhere all over the world, Palestinian Muslims are celebrating the end of the fasting-month Ramadan with the 3-day feast of Eid. Eid usually is a joyous occasion, everyone dresses up nicely and the most important activity is visiting family. For Palestinians under Israeli military occupation though, it is a little more difficult. Countless daily movement-restrictions, navigating the maze of permanent and sudden, so-called ‘flying’ checkpoints is just one part of the methods of slow ethnic cleansing enforced on the Palestinian civilian population by the Israeli forces.
In the Tel Rumeida and Shuhada Street area in occupied al-Khalil (Hebron), receiving visits from family must sound something like a distant dream. A dream that will never come true. Since the area was declared a ‘closed military zone’ by Israeli forces in November 2015, any Palestinian that is not registered at the checkpoint, is not allowed to come into the area. The residents have been assigned numbers that are used to identify by the Israeli forces whether or not they are (theoretically) allowed to pass the checkpoint and reach their homes.
Surprisingly, on the first day of Eid on Sunday, Israeli forces actually allowed family members to cross the checkpoint and visit their family-members imprisoned in this ‘closed military zone’. Whereas the joy about the unexpected visits has been enormous – it is dimmed by knowing that this will be the only visit for at least a year. The unexpected visitors though, had to report of long queues, they had to give the name and the sure-name of the registered residents they are visiting at the checkpoint, and very strict ‘checks’ at the checkpoint. It has not been announced that any non-residents would be allowed to pass, instead of turned back just like it happens so often. Many that didn’t know, didn’t try.
Long queues outside Shuhada checkpoint on Eid
For Palestinians who had their lives incarcerated in this ‘closed military zone’, even the joy of suddenly and finally having family come for a visit, is still always strictly linked to the knowledge that the Israeli forces restrictions are only meant to drive them out of the area, to make life so hard and unbearable for them, that they would just use. It’s always connected to the simple fact that their fault is simply: being Palestinian.
A 22 year old Palestinian activist was detained in al-Khalil this morning. He was held and interrogated for thirty minutes, before being escorted through the Shuhada Street checkpoint. He was released after another half hour with no charge, but was told that Israeli forces would raid his house if they found he was linked to the Palestinian Authority.
Eiman Faroukh was detained and questioned while walking in the Old Soukh. Once they saw that international activists were documenting the incident, soldiers took him into an alley out of sight before demanding that he hand over his wallet and phone. When he attempted to give them to a friend, the friend was also threatened with detention unless the items were handed over.
They then proceeded to escort him to the Shuhada Street checkpoint, where he was interrogated further. Border Police were called in to harass activists taking photos, threatening them with arrest. When the activists refused to leave, Israeli forces escorted the man into Shuhada Street, where Palestinian activists could not go.
