Tag: Hebron

Human Rights Abuses in Hebron

Tel Rumeida Report, June 6th to June 10th 2006

Settler women sitting in an occupied Palestinian clothing shop; the clothes are ransacked in a pile on the left (Photos by Sunbula)

Raids:

7th June 2006

A Palestinian family related that at around 10:30pm on the 7th, six soldiers entered their home, confiscated their mobile phones, and turned them out of doors, except for one of the brothers, who they locked in a room downstairs. When they were asked why they did this, one of the soldiers replied: “because I want to fuck him”.

They went through all the wardrobes and cupboards of the house, the computer and digital camera. When asked what they where looking for they refused to answer.

One of the soldiers took photos of everyone, with his mobile phone camera.

The mother told them they where “like Hitler’s soldiers”, one of the soldiers agreed in a proud tone saying “Yes. we are like Hitler’s soldiers.”

At midnight the soldiers left, saying that they would return, and it is at this point that the family called a Human Rights Worker (HRW), who relayed the message to us.


Chicken wire erected by Old City shopkeepers above their stores to stop garbarge thrown by settlers

7th June 2006 10:00pm, HRW Apartment

Six soldiers turned up at the apartment, banging on the door and asking to be let in. They said they where bored and lonely and wanted to come in for tea and coffee, giggling and calling to us in falsetto voices. They continued this for about half an hour, before they left, singing and laughing.

An independent researcher was outside while this was going on, having been caught outside smoking a cigarette. While the others where banging on the door, three surrounded her, asking her if she was smoking hash and where she was from.

When she told them they where “hillul hashem” (a disgrace to God), one asked her if she spoke Hebrew; she told them she did not, he then spoke to her in that language in a tone suggesting she was being insulted, then repeated the routine with Arabic.

She asked a different soldier who had seemed more sympathetic, why they where doing this, to which he replied they “sometimes have to do bad things”.

She told him that when they behaved in this way, they disgraced themselves and their country.

Seeing she was shaking, he then asked her if she was cold, to which she said she was, and it was at that point that he lead them away.

10th June 2006, 7:50pm, HRW Apartment Apartment

It was noticed that a dozen soldiers and two jeeps, where gathered in the street outside the apartment.

At 8:15pm, at least four soldiers came to the door of the apartment, the first of them saying: “Let us in. I’m asking nicely this time.”

When they where refused one of them went down on his knees and begged to be let in.

A HRW asked if they had a warrant, they replied that they did not, and after about ten minutes they left.

Stonings

6th June 2006 4:30, Checkpoint 56 (corner of Shuhadda st and Tel Rumeida st)

An American HRW was sitting across from the HRW’s apartment, when two settler children, about 8 to 10 years of age, where let out of a car in front of him.

They walked past, towards the Tel Rumeida settlement, stopping at the first skip, and picking up stones, which they threw at the HRW, hitting him in the neck and collarbone.

The soldier on guard was alerted by a passing local, and came to intervene, at which point the children left, running up the hill to the Tel Rumeida settlement.


This is what happens when settlers manage to enter a Palestinian home

Continue reading Human Rights Abuses in Hebron

Hebron Villagers Continue Non-violent Action Against Road Wall

by Sunbula

The villagers of at-Tuwani village in South Hebron were joined on Friday June 9th by Israeli and international peace activists in a successful non-violent demonstration to try and prevent the continuing construction of a one-metre high wall by the army along a settler-only road that separates at-Tuwani and other villages near it from the rest of Hebron district. Activists from the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) marched with Palestinians from the area and Hebron city towards the road from the north while activists from the Christian Peacemakers (CPT) and the Israeli group Ta’ayush (Coexistence) marched simultaneously with at-Tuwani villagers from the opposite side.

Palestinians, young and old, men and women, turned out in large numbers to protest yet another apartheid-style attempt to divide up Palestinian land into isolated bantustans. At first, the military tried to prevent us from even reaching the road by intimidation; they put a couple of jeeps on the road in the hope of scaring Palestinians away from participating, but no one was deterred.

The protest was largely peaceful and lively. We were met at the settler road by the Border Police and regular police, who attempted to stop us from going on to the road, ostensibly to let traffic move. However, every settler car that passed was given a resounding “welcome” by the Palestinians, who chanted in Arabic “See our flag, we want to see our flag, we don’t want to see settlers”. The Israeli forces also tried to keep people on both sides of the road apart from each other, but they seemed to be overwhelmed a little by being “attacked” from both sides as it were. No one – international, Israeli or Palestinian gave them even the slightest excuse to resort to violence. Also memorable was an old woman from at-Tuwani who gave a resounding speech to the demonstrators against the building of this wall, as well as three young Palestinian women who spiritedly chanted slogans about the unity of the Arab people “from at-Tuwani to al-Jowlan [Golan]” and “from Yatta to Beirut”, defying stereotypes about submissive and silenced Arab women that the Western and Israeli media often love to propagate to justify this occupation and other imperial adventures.

After the protest was peacefully declared over, internationals and Palestinians went to at-Tuwani to evaluate the action, rest and drink tea. The Border Police, known as the “pride of Israel” for its brutality towards Palestinians, tried to prevent internationals from the Northern (Yatta) side from crossing the road in order to go to at-Tuwani. They obviously didn’t want us to get too friendly with members of the “enemy state”. As I was crossing the road with my video camera in hand, one Border Policeman said something to me in Hebrew and grabbed me by shirt and started pulling me back towards the road. There were several internationals right next to me, and a co-ISMer pulled me out of the Policeman’s grip back in the opposite direction. Eventually all the internationals were able to get through, but the Israeli activists were forbidden from passing. At the village, Hafez, a resident of at-Tuwani and its activist superstar (for his resistance against the occupation) thanked everyone for their participation. He talked about how the military and Shabak would often raid villages and try to intimidate Palestinians into not participating in demonstrations. But along with others he expressed his hope that nonviolent resistance in this region would continue to grow and that protests such as this would become bigger, more effective and regular.

Khaleej Times: ” ‘You will be killed for this’ “

by Grera Berlin. Khaleej Times, 8 June 2006

The little girl clung to my hand, her backpack falling down one arm as she tried to climb the steep stairs on her way to school. She was dressed in a checked uniform with a grey hijab pushed to the back of her head, her shiny black hair peaking out the front. She was scared. At the bottom of the steps were two Israeli police vans, a jeep and several soldiers standing around watching.

On a good day when we escort the children, we are met with just swear words as the settler children march down to their school across the road from the Palestinian girl’s school. Their parents walk them to school with Uzis strapped across their chests, a civilian terrorist squad whose presence has made many of the original owners, the Palestinians, leave.

In September 2005, I was part of a human rights group that stays in the Tel Rumeida district of Hebron to make sure Israeli settlers don’t injure and kill Palestinians. Since Israel refuses to allow UN peacekeepers in to monitor settler behaviour, we are it. We mostly are a part of organisations such as Christian Peacekeeping Team (CPT), and the International Solidarity Movement (ISM).

About 450 illegal settlers live in this small area of Hebron, guarded by 3,000 soldiers and police, and surrounded by 130,000 Palestinians. They come from a fanatic orthodox sect in Brooklyn, and have made the lives of Palestinians miserable. The once-bustling market on Shuhada street is a ghost town. Raw sewage seeps from the settler apartments above into the streets. The smell as we walk through the winding streets is overwhelmingly vile, yet Palestinian merchants try their best to open their few remaining shops. Settlers have spray-painted huge stars of David on many of the doors and windows along with epithets in Hebrew and English.

Over the tops of our heads stretches wire netting filled with used baby diapers, food wrappings and broken furniture that these settlers have thrown from their windows. The merchants shrug their shoulders and whisper, “What can we do? Inshallah! No one cares.” The first day I arrived was Saturday, September 2, the day most settlers run rampant over everyone; we were told to immediately go to the top of the hill that separates settlers from Palestinians.

Within a half hour, settler boys between 10-17 came strutting down the road toward the small Palestinian children playing in front of us. We turned on our cameras as they advanced. The older boys encouraged the younger ones to pick up stones and throw them at us. Stones came flying through the air, hitting me in the hand and thigh. Two soldiers — who had been standing there watching — finally called the police.

I started up the hill after them, only to be pulled back by the soldier who said, “I’m sorry, but they get very upset when they see a camera. You need to put it away.”

“Put it away? Not on your life. You think I’m going to let them get away with throwing stones at two women who were sitting there doing nothing?”

“I know, I know, but there’s nothing we can do about it. They’re under 12 years old.”

These kids began a full-on riot, throwing stones at the police and army, throwing pipes off the top of their settler apartment at homes beneath them, screaming obscenities, throwing garbage and flashing mirrors in the faces of the soldiers. Little settler girls started to come down and throw stones. As I stood watching, an old woman marched up to me and spit, “God will get even with you. You will be killed for this. This is our land, it doesn’t belong to these Arabs.” I clinched my teeth and didn’t respond, because the Israeli military is just looking for a reason to drive us out.

The next day, a Palestinian teacher called us and asked us to come to his home. The settlers had come in a month before, and had cut through every grapevine that he had, vines that were over 100 years old, thick as my thigh. When he called the army, they had come in and said, “Go back in your house or we’ll kill you.” He had no choice, and every single vine was cut in half. He took us out and pointed at one in the back of his house. “Look. That one has a shoot growing already. They’ll come back someday.”

My God, what could any of us say? We bear witness to the ongoing destruction of Palestinian society, and no one cares. Palestinians look at us with despair, asking us why the Western governments do nothing as Israel commits slow-motion genocide against them. What can I say or do except continue to bear witness and continue to write.

Unwelcome Visitors in the Night

by F.

Tonight at about 10pm seven Israeli soldiers came to our apartment and knocked on the door. They wanted to come in, and I told them no, they couldn’t. They asked why, I told them that we do not allow guns in our home and that if they wanted to come in, they’d have to leave their guns outside.

One of them said something smelled bad outside. Usually it’s the plumbing here… it’s not quite as good as Israelis are used to. I suggested to him that maybe he farted? This caused the soldiers to laugh, and the soldier denied it. They asked me again to let them in, and, again, I told them no. Then I closed the window on the door. They banged on it for maybe about five more minutes and then left.

About an hour later I got a call from someone saying they ransacked a neighbors house. I called the neighbor and she said the soldiers destroyed a lot of things in their home and took their mobile phones. I asked her if she wanted us to come over. She said if they came back, she would call us over.

So I think I am going to go to bed now. They door is bolted and so far no calls…

Tomorrow I will go over to the Abu Haykle home and see what happened over there.

ICAHD: Don’t say, “We Didn’t Know”#7


Settler Grafiti on the streets of Hebron

It happens almost every day in Hebron. Human Rights Workers (HRWs) from different countries come to do what the Israeli security forces refuse to do. They provide security in a nonviolent manner for Palestinian schoolchildren on their way to school and back. They attempt to protect them from attacks by settler children and teenagers.

For example, on the 27th May 2006 it was reported that “youngsters from the settlement in Tel Rumeida spat on, hit and threw stones at HRWs from Canada, Denmark and Sweden on three separate occasions, as the HRWs were accompanying Palestinian children.

Adult settlers encouraged the youngsters in their criminal acts. Soldiers and policemen who were present at these events refused to intervene to stop the violence on the part of the settlers.

On Saturdays, the attacks are the heaviest, and a number of HRWs have been injured and sent to hospital as a result of the attacks by young settlers.