Tag: Hebron

Sumud: Palestinian for endurance

22nd February 2017 | International Solidarity Movement, al-Khalil team | Hebron, occupied Palestine 

As a second time ISMer I write a blog for friends and supporters back home (at salamfrombetty.tumblr.com if you would like to follow).  I asked for questions from my readership and I got this from my friend Rachel:

How are you coping with living with this huge sense of injustice? How do the Palestinians manage it day in day out?

Weirdly I don’t find it hard coping with the injustice here. I don’t know why. The last time I came I was really scared beforehand that I would, but I don’t. I don’t really get angry much anywhere in my life, and I guess this cutting off is what might make a good nurse too.

I have no idea how Palestinians manage. Living under occupation comes at great psychological cost. Children in Tel Rumeida can’t sleep without the light on because they have been night raided so often by soldiers; they often wet the bed until their teens. Women are attacked by settlers and lose pregnancies. Families lose sons to prison and bullets. Everybody inside the ghetto which is H2 has to go through the daily humiliation of not having any control of how they will be treated at checkpoints, and of facing soldiers who attempted to humiliate them yesterday or last week.

Of course this is the old centre of Hebron that I am talking about. Most Hebronites from the city at large do not go there much. They live lives of occupation certainly, but not of this daily hardship. I taught a class of young and ambitious Hebronite students last week and they have studied in Jordan, Amman, Germany, travelled to China for business; they take driving lessons, they drink Italian coffee, and have dreams of running businesses, taking PhDs in physics, transforming the Hebron fire service. Great dreams. But they are still under occupation and they still know it. They are stunted in their hopes and opportunities and feel the injustice of Palestinian powerlessness. Many have not seen the sea only thirty miles away.

And then of course, many of the people I talk to in the old city have children who have ‘escaped’, who are engineers in Saudi, professors in Oxford, they have educations themselves and choose to stay. They are resisting by choice, not trapped by circumstance.

This is the front line: when the houses of Hebron are taken by settlers; when the villages in the Naqab (the Negev) are demolished and the Bedouin moved off; when the villagers of the fertile Jordan valley are put to work as labourers on their own land: then the Israeli occupying machinery will come and swallow up the next bit of Palestine and the next and the next…

My friend Talal thinks that it has taken all the years of occupation to bring Palestinians to this degree of strength and endurance: this sumud (steadfast perseverance). 69 years since the Naqba of 1948; 50 years since the occupation of 1967. That is a lot of time to develop endurance.

2017 Open Shuhada Street Hebron Schedule

Against Settlements will use culture, creativity, and resistance for its annual Open Shuhada Street campaign February 19-25.

Campaign schedule:

February 19 Start of the open shuhada street campaign in Hebron

18:00 Candle lighting by children from Hebron’s old city.

February 20

16:00 Campaign participants will visit Shuhada Street families living under the most extreme conditions.

February 21

15:00 Raising the Palestinian flag in Tel Rumieda .

February 22

14:00 Tour of Hebron’s old city for diplomats, journalists, and a Veterans For Peace delegation from the US, including former CIA analyst, Ray McGovern.

February 23

12:00 Official visit to Shuhada Street from Israeli parliament member Dove Hanin. Mr. Hanin is a parliament member of Israel’s Arab party.
17:00 Film screening in Cinema Hebron

February 24

11:30 Open Shuhada Street protest in Hebron – Thousands of will gather to protest the closure of Shuhada Street. They will attempt to enter Shuhada Street.

February 25

11:00 Press conference and commemoration of Ibrahimi mosque massacre. After the press conference we will have a memorial candle lighting ceremony for the victims.

2017 marks 50 years of Israeli occupation and 23 year since the Ibrahimi mosque massacre in Hebron. On February 25, 1994 Israeli settler Baruch Goldstein opened fire in the Ibrahimi mosque killing 29 Palestinians in worship. Since then, Shuahda Street, once the main street and marketplace, has remained almost entirely closed to Palestinians. There are 20 checkpoints and front doors to Palestinian shops and homes are sealed shut.

Youth Against Settlements Open Shuhada Street campaign, held annually since 2010, aims to reopen Shuhada street and end the closures and inequality in Hebron and throughout Palestine and Israel. The following events below will be held in Hebron between February 19-25. International solidarity actions and educational events will be held throughout Europe and the US during the week.

Numerous Youth Against Settlements activists will be traveling from Hebron to Europe to participate in activities and give talks on Open Shuhada Street. Activists, Ayat Jaabari and Sondos Azzih will travel to Germany; Nour Abu Aisheh and Sohiab Zahdeh to Italy; Ahmad amro , Mohanned Qafisheh to the Netherland and Brussels; Anas Amro and Izzat Karaki to Sweden, Murad amro to France and Switzerland, Hijazi Ebido to Denmark: and Abed Salaymeh to the UK.

European partners for the campaign include: European partners for the campaign include: AsopashaPalestinia, Friends of Al Aqsa, Friends of Palestine, Internationalt Forum, Kurve Wustrow, London Palestine Action, Netherlands Palestine Committee, Palæstina Aktion, Palæstina Fredsvagter (International Solidarity Movement), Palestine Solidarity Campaign, and the Palestine Solidarity Association of Sweden.

Source: Youth Against Settelments

Khalil children: a candlelit vigil for the 1994 massacre

20th February 2017 | International Solidarity Movement, al Khalil team | Hebron, occupied Palestine 

On February 19th children from al Khalil came together at dusk in the old city to light candles to commemorate the 29 Palestinian men who died in the massacre at the Ibrahimi mosque here in al Khalil in 1994.  They sang and chanted their hopes for a free Palestine, the end of occupation, settlements, and an end to the ghetto conditions in which they live at the heart of al Khalil.  At the same time, Israeli soldiers with machine guns stood over them on the rooftops watching and pacing, their shadows projecting giant armed figures onto the wall opposite.

The event was organised by Youth Against Settlements and was attended by internationals, press and filmmakers.  It is part of the annual campaign to Open Shuhada Street and to end the ghetto conditions suffered by those who live within the checkpoints around the old city.  A week of events is planned, in the streets, schools and houses of the city, with a demonstration planned for Friday 24th.

Photograph courtesy of Youth Against Settlements 

Israeli forces are solidifying their grip on Hebron

17th February 2017 | International Solidarity Movement, al-Khalil team | Hebron, occupied Palestine

On February the 3rd 2017, a new permanent stone checkpoint in front of the Ibrahimi mosque in occupied Hebron, was brought into use.

The checkpoint, which has been under construction since July 2016, was thus inaugurated just one month before the 23rd anniversary of the Ibrahimi mosque massacre, where 29 praying Palestinian Muslims lost their lives in a terrorist attack by Jewish settler Baruch Goldstein. It was this attack which caused the mosque to fall under the tight control of Israeli military and surveillance in the first place.

Before the opening of the new checkpoint on 3rd February Israeli forces had already installed checkpoints at all the main roads leading into the mosque. The presence of military and police at the entrance to the mosque therefore, has been a continuous fact since 1994. What is new however is the permanent nature of this new construction. For this new stone and steel construction is directly built into the mosque wall clearly signaling that Israel has no intentions of retreating from the scene.

 

The new checkpoint at the al-Ibrahimi mosque
The new checkpoint at the al-Ibrahimi mosque

 

And the expansion at the Ibrahimi mosque checkpoint is just one among many expansions recently. As noted in an earlier ISM report [https://palsolidarity.org/2016/12/%C2%ADnew-checkpoints-access-control-buildings-and-street-signs-in-the-historical-center-of-hebron/], the Israeli forces in Hebron have been remarkably active in replacing temporary checkpoints by more extended permanent ones, along with “installing military streetlights, security cameras on all streets, raising more gates, concrete walls, barbed-wire and other barriers, and putting new Hebrew-English street signs in the ethnically cleaned streets and in Palestinian neighborhoods, as if they are in fact Israeli neighborhoods with some remaining Palestinian residents.”

One might have thought that the new checkpoint at the mosque was simply a replacement for previous ones. But since its opening, Palestinians are in fact forced to pass through two checkpoints only few metres apart, with further delays for Palestinians seeking to practice their religion, which you can see in the photo below, taken at Friday prayers.

 

Palestinians are waiting to pass through the new checkpoint at al-Ibrahimi mosque
Palestinians are waiting to pass through the new checkpoint at al-Ibrahimi mosque

 

And while you might think that two security checks would suffice to determine whether an individual is a security threat or not, Israeli forces continued the practice of detaining men and confiscating IDs for the duration of Friday prayer.

But this did not hinder the male population from praying, so this Friday, a long line of men prayed outside in the sunshine, while military personnel chattered in the background.

 

Palestinian men and boys, praying outside al-Ibrahimi mosque
Palestinian men and boys, praying outside al-Ibrahimi mosque

In commemoration of the Ibrahimi Mosque Massacre: #DismantleTheGhetto take the settlers out of of Hebron

14th February 2017 | The National Campaign to Lift the Closure of Hebron “Dismantle the Ghetto” | Hebron, occupied Palestine

February 25th marks the 23rd commemoration of the Ibrahim Mosque Massacre in Hebron. This year’s commemoration coincides with Israel’s unprecedented escalation in seizing Palestinian land in the West Bank for settlement expansion. This has been accompanied with ideas from Israeli ministers to construct settlements and annex most of the C areas in the West Bank. The commemoration also coincides with Israel’s increasing campaigns to Judaize the Naqab, similar to what has happened in Um Al-Hiran recently, with a general rise in the policy of demolishing Palestinian houses whether in the occupied territories or within the Green Line.

Following the Ibrahimi Mosque massacre, the Israeli Occupation closed the Mosque for six months. Palestinians were punished by an imposed 40-day curfew and movement restrictions within the city. The Occupation also divided the Mosque into two parts whereby one part was converted into a synagogue. The Israeli government also increased settlement expansion within the heart of the City which further restricted the presence of Palestinians there, turning the city center into a ghost town.

The Israeli escalation continues in the heart of Hebron until the present day. The closure of Shuhada Street to Palestinian vehicles following the massacre, and then closing it for the Palestinian pedestrians and residents after the Al Aqsa Intifada was followed by the closure of Tel Rumeida neighborhood and whatever was left accessible of Shuhada Street in November 2015. They also continue to kill Palestinians on checkpoints and in restricted areas in Hebron. As of today, the number of those killed by the Israelis since October of 2015 within the closed area and surrounding it has risen to 22 people. The Israeli occupation’s practices against Palestinians amount to the level of ethnic cleansing, given the increasing checkpoints, restriction of movement, and the numbering system implemented to enter the closed areas in the Old City. This creates a Ghetto-system.

In light of the bleak reality, and given our belief that the best way to end the occupation and its discriminatory policies is by resisting it, the national parties, popular committees and civil society organizations in Hebron announce the launch of the “National Campaign to End the Closure of Hebron” through a series of different events. In commemoration of the Ibrahimi Mosque massacre we call on our supporters and allies in the struggle, as well as members of our community, to participate in the campaign events, rejecting the Occupation’s practices in the City, and to demand the dismantling of checkpoints and barriers in the City, as well as the removal of settlers in Hebron.

These events will happen as part of the larger struggle to resist the Judaization policies within the Green Line and in an effort to bring greater awareness of the increasing campaigns from our friends and allies around the world that demand the dismantling of the Ghetto and removal of restrictions so that Palestinian citizens have freedom of movement inside Hebron. These events will also happen as part of the larger Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS).

Our campaign is based on principles and rights sustained in international humanitarian law and the United Nations’ resolutions that consider Israeli Settlements and collective punishment as forms of war crimes. As such, UN Security Council decision 2334 calls on the Israeli government to stop all forms of Settlement activities in Occupied Palestinian territories, including East Jerusalem.

Let the struggle to lift the restrictions and the removal of settlers in the Heart of Hebron continue.

The National Campaign to Lift the Closure of Hebron “dismantle the ghetto”