Yesterday June 12, at approximately 3:00pm in the West Bank village of Beit Ummar, Isreal Occupation Forces shot tear gas cannisters at two human rights workers (HRW) that were sitting and eating plums in a backyard. As the activists attempted to cover the fume-spewing cannisters, three Palestinain children, the apparent targets of the noxious projectiles, ran by and another cannister landed at the feet of the HRWs.
Six other HRWs were 5minutes away meeting and gathering information with the family of Yusef Abu-Maria, who has been incarcerated by the Israel Occupation Forces for 15 days. These HRWs were called and informed of the situation back at the house. The HRWs proceeded to run back to their home.
The tear-making, breath-shortening projectiles were the sign of a mini-incursion into Beit Ummar by the IOF. This has become a routine occurence since villagers started protesting the wall that is being built around the nearest settlement that will destroy and annex villagers’ land. When the six HRWs arrived back at the house, the fumes were still radiating from the home and family members were cleaning the floors and mattresses to expel the undulating fumes.
Meanwhile, approximately twenty armed Israeli soldiers entered the village in armored hummers. The soldiers began to canvas the streets and some homes. Two or three Israeli police cars also arrived. The kids and teens began throwing rocks and approximately seven HRWs were present and filming. The soldiers responded to the rocks with disproportionate force, firing rubber bullets and sound bombs at the children in the street, lasting for over an hour.
Additionally, the car window of Mahmoud, a Palestinian taxi driver, was smashed by an IOF Hummer, with the front end of the car badly damaged. Mahmoud was transferred by the soldiers to the DCO. Four HRWs and Mahmoud’s brother drove to the DCO to seek information.
After about 90 minutes of waiting oustide, Mahmoud was released.
The back entrance to the Abu Haykal family’s home. The Israeli military is now confining them to this rather than the front of the their home.
by ISM Hebron and Tel Rumeida Project
The Hani Abu Haykal family, which lives directly opposite the Tel Rumeida settlement in the Tel Rumeida neighborhood of Al-Khalil (Hebron), has received a written military order declaring the street in front of their house a closed military zone until November 3rd, Abu Haykal told human rights workers today. The order prevents Abu Haykal and the nine other members of his household from using the main gate to their home, forcing them instead to use a rough, roundabout path through olive groves to reach their jobs, shopping, or anything else.
The order is in direct contradiction with an order previously issued by the Israeli High Court allowing Hani Abu Haykal and his family to use the street. The family’s lawyer has gone to court in an effort to have the recent order lifted. Hani said he has also asked the ICRC (International Committee of the Red Cross) for help with the problem, and monitors from TIPH (Temporary International Presence in Hebron) claim their group is also trying to get the order lifted. For now, though, the family is complying with it.
According to Hani Abu Haykal, the order, in Hebrew and Arabic, with an accompanying map, was delivered at around 6 p.m. on Thursday, July 6th by an officer from the Israeli civil administration who identified himself as Hamoudeh. The order applies only to Palestinians, not to people with Israeli IDs. When Abu Haykal asked why the order had been issued, Hamoudeh said it was because the military anticipates that there could be problems in the area in the coming months. When Abu Haykal objected that the back way in and out of his home wasn’t suitable for everyday use by the family, which includes an elderly woman and another woman with heart problems as well as several children, the officer looked at the pathway and pronounced it “not bad,” according to Abu Haykal.
The issuing of the order closing the street to Hani Abu Haykal and his family follows by roughly three weeks an incident in which Hani and his son Jamil, 13, were attacked and beaten by a solider and approximately 20 settlers as they tried to enter their front gate on their return from the family’s shop in the nominaly Palestinian-controlled part of Al-Khalil (H1). The pair had already passed three Israeli checkpoints, but the soldier stationed in front of their house demanded to see his ID and then declared that he was not permitted to enter his own gate. Hani explained that he had an order from the Israeli High Court guaranteeing him the right to use the street to reach his house, but the soldier refused to listen, pointed his gun at the pair, and cocked it. Meanwhile, settlers gathered in the street and began throwing stones. Abu Haykal and his son were forced by the soldier to turn around and travel back down the street through the crowd of stone-throwing settlers and walk approximately a quarter mile around the Tel Rumeida hill to the path leading to the back entrance of their home.
Human rights workers live just down the street from the Abu Haykal house but are not permitted to use the road either. Instead, they must use the same roundabout way to visit the family.
Abu Haykal also reported that the family has been trying to get a new phone line installed in their home, but has been unable to to get permission for a worker from the phone company to visit the house to do the installation.
In another ominous development Hani Abu Haykal said that soldiers recently visited shopkeepers in the Baab al-Zawiyye business district, in H1 near the Checkpoint 56 entrance to Tel Rumeida district. After checking their IDs, the soldiers reportedly told the shopkeepers that their shops might be shut down and the area declared a closed military zone in the future.
Abu Haykal’s mother has a heart condition and was seriously ill recently. As Palestinian vehicles, including ambulances, are not allowed into Tel Rumeida, Abu Haykal had to negotiate for two days with the Red Cross and the DCO (District Command Office of the military) to allow an ambulance into Tel Rumeida to pick up his sick mother. When permission was finally given, the ambulance was held up at a checkpoint near the Beit Romano settlement for seven hours because soldiers insisted that the ambulance must wait until an army Jeep could escort it into Tel Rumeida.
When the ambulance finally arrived at the Abu Haykal house, soldiers insisted that they needed to examine it. They removed all of the equipment from the ambulance and checked under the hood. This took half an hour. As Abu Haykal’s mother was carried from the house into the ambulance, settlers began throwing rocks. Soldiers did nothing to stop them.
Abu Haykal’s mother was so ill at this point that she was kept in the intensive care unit for five days and ten days total in the hospital.
After she was released from the hospital, the ambulance waited for five hours at the roadblock leading into Tel Rumeida for soldiers to let it in.
The family complains of isolation because their friends and family are too afraid to visit them. This is especially distressing for the children when it is their birthday.
When school is in session, Abu Haykal leaves work to walk his kids home in order to protect them from settler attacks. On Saturday, the Jewish sabbath, when many settlers are out on the street, the Abu Haykal children go directly from their school to their father’s work and wait to go home until he is done because it is too dangerous to go home during the day.
Recently Abu Haykal’s car was set on fire by settlers. Witnesses said soldiers were present and did nothing to stop the torching of the car.
In the past, soldiers have told Abu Haykal that they are here only to protect settlers. This means they will not intervene if they see settlers attacking Palestinians. However, if they see Palestinians attacking settlers, they will shoot the Palestinians. In addition, soldiers have reported that soldiers and police do not have permission to shoot at or harm settlers, even if they are shooting at Palestinians.
July 5th: A fire apparently set by Israeli settlers destroyed a large and obviously ancient olive tree in the Tel Rumeida section of Al-Khalil (Hebron) today. The tree, located about 100 meters west of “Abraham’s Well,” belonged to the Abu Ghalyoun family, according to a Palestinian fire fighter quoted by the International Middle East Media Center. The fire was reported in mid-morning to the municipal fire brigade, which dispatched a truck to the area, but the fire fighters were unable to get equipment directly to the burning tree [Palestinian vehicles are not allowed on the road in the Israeli-controlled H2 area under which Tel Rumeida falls]. They used pails of water to put out the flames in the grass surrounding the tree, preventing damage to other trees, but their efforts to extinguish the fire in the tree itself were not successful. Twenty four hours later, the fire continues to smoulder, and the targeted tree is almost completely destroyed.
While there is no conclusive proof that Israeli settlers started the fire, they have in the past set many other fires in the area – including one that burned two dunams last month – as part of their decades-long campaign to drive Palestinians out of the Tel Rumeida neighborhood.
Today, Friday July 7th, 2006, at noon, over 300 farmers and residents of the Palestinian villages of Beit Ummar and Halhoul held Friday prayers together on their land that has been ravaged by Israeli bulldozers in the past week. International and Israeli supporters accompanied them in a non-violent march to the land in order to observe the activities of the military and the settlers, and support their struggle against the illegal expansion of the settlement Karme Tzur.
They demonstrators marched around the settlement on the land where trees and grape vines have been uprooted because of the construction of a new wall that will enclose the settlement, illegally annexing Palestinian land to it. The residents, mostly men and children, carried signs that said, “No to the Policy of Damaging Land and Human Beings” and other things. The Israeli soldiers attempted to stop the demonstration but eventually they passed.
The march and prayer were beautiful and non-violent, however armed settlers descended on the group and waved their rifles in the air as they called in reinforcements from the military. More military arrived and they lined the hill above the demonstrators as prayer services ended.
While the majority turned back to the village after prayers, the army prevented those who wanted to stay from being on their land. They were told that they were too close to the settlement.
Young kids threw stones at a light pole and then the soldiers began to shoot rubber bullets at the young kids. Eventually the soldiers shot many rubber bullets and tear gas grenades. One young man named Saqir Sadiq Abu Mariya, 35, was shot by a rubber bulet in the torso and taken away by an ambulance. Many people fled the scene because the gas was becoming unbearable.
At 7pm this evening, three jeeps entered the village shooting tear gas, rubber bullets, and sound grenades at people in the streets for about an hour. Keefeh Kamael Bahar, 20, was taken from his home and arrested during the raid of the village.
Non violent activist and organizer Musa Abu Mariya, 28, is still imprisoned by the Israeli military after being arrested when he lay down in front of an Israeli bulldozer tearing up Beit Omar lands on July 4th. Palestinians can be held without, any charges or access to a lawyer for eight days before being brought in front of a military judge who can prolong the period. According to a report by the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI), “Each month, hundreds of Palestinians were subjected to one degree or another of torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment (ill-treatment), at the hands of the GSS (General Security Services) and bodies working on its behalf. ”
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Tomorrow, Friday July 7th, at noon, the people from the villages of Beit Ummar and Halhul will gather together to pray on the land that has been destroyed by bulldozers in the last few days. They will be joined by internationals who support the people’s recent struggle against the illegal confiscation of their land that is being done in the name of the security of the nearby settlement, Karme Tzur.
In the last few days farmers, people of both villages, and internationals have held demonstrations on the land and tried to stop the bulldozers. The army has protected the bulldozers to allow the settlement to build a wall and annex land without going through legal channels of acquiring the land. A lawyer representing the villages has succeeded in getting a work stoppage order of the bulldozers until the Israeli Supreme Court rules on the lawsuit he has filed against the confiscation.
For more information:
Yousef: 052 245 1256
Bekah: 054 638 7039
