Tag: Hebron - Page 3 - International Solidarity Movement

Education under occupation

August 11 | International Solidarity Movement | Hebron, occupied Palestine

Whilst continuing my work with ISM this year, I spent four weeks working at the Hebron/al-Khalil office of Defence for Children International focussing on the way that the occupation has compromised the access to education in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza.

It is believed that Abraham of the Bible/Ibrahim of the Quran is buried in this city. Thus, Hebron is entwined with the relgions of Islam, Christianity and Judaism. The tombs of Sarah, Isaac, Rebecca, Jacon and Leah, who are deeply revered in all religions are also believed to be buried there. Due to its religious significance, Hebron has become a stronghold for Jewish extremists and is the only city in the occupied West Bank with internal illegal Jewish settlements. Red-roofed have been built in and around the Old City, which traditionally served as the commercial centre for the entire southern West Bank, on private Palestinian land. Hebron’s fundamentalist settlers are united in their belief that the whole of Palestine is Jewish by divine right. They are united in their objective of expanding Israel through establishing settlements. These are illegal according to Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which states that, ‘the Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies’. These settlers are united in their wish to expel Palestinians by demolishing their homes. Article 53 provides that ‘any destruction by the Occupying Power of real or personal property belonging individually or collectively to private persons… is prohibited, except where such destruction is rendered absolutely necessary by military operations.’ Hebron is a stark symbol of how Palestinians are affected by the creeping policies of Israeli occupation.

Freedom of movement does not exist in this city that has 59 checkpoints, sporadic and endless barriers, closures, military zones and Jewish-only streets. A policy of separation is in place between Palestinians and Jewish settlers. Hebron is emblematic of the structural inequality of a land where one ethnic group lives under oppressive military rule, and another under democratic, civilian authority. Shuhada Street is one of the most stark examples of this apatheid system in Hebron. It was once among the busiest streets in this ancient city. In 1994, the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) welded shut the street-facing doors of all the shops and the homes of the merchants who typically lived upstairs. By the time of the Second Intifada in 2000, no Palestinian was permitted to set foot on the once teeming market street. What compelled the IOF to close Shuhada Street was a tragedy that took place in 1994. Unarmed Palestinians at the nearby Ibrahimi Mosque were massacred as they prayed. This mass murder was carried out by Baruch Goldstein, an American-born Jewish zealot with Israeli military training and an assault rifle, who stopped firing only when he was killed by survivors of his attack. Shuhada Street, and the vibrant urban life it once sustained and symbolised, can be added to the list of Goldstein’s victims. Today, Goldstein is memorialised in his settlement of Kiryat Arba, where his shrine is revered. The few Palestinians who remain living on Shuhada Street have been barred from the street where they live. If they want to enter their homes, they must do so through back doors, which in many cases involves clambering over rooftops. Their homes are often vandalised; their water tanks are often poisoned. Continuing to live there peacefully is the ultimate form of nonviolent resistance.

In 2018, the UN documented 111 different cases of interference to education in the West Bank affecting more than 19,000 children. Movement restrictions such as the checkpoints and the apartheid wall limit access to education as the army or border police are likely to conduct ID checks, body searches, bag checks, and restrict children and teachers’ ability to get to school. Education is disrupted by Israeli Occupation Forces lobbing stun grenades, firing tear gas, rubber-coated steel bullets, and live ammunition into schools. In less than a month (between the 4th and 27th of November 2018), Christian Peacemaking Team Palestine documented 228 rounds of tear gas canisters and 51 rounds of sound grenades fired by the Israeli military when Palestinian children were leaving school. As well as their safe passage being restricted by the military, Palestinian school children’s access to education is also at risk from settler violence. A particularly malicious attack by 12 masked settlers in the South Hebron Hills against a group of children and international volunteers in 2004 precipitated implementation of a military escort. Lax execution of the military escort still leaves children vulnerable to harassment, intimidation and violence. The negative psychosocial impact of the occupation on the children affect their well-being, performance and completion rates. In one workshop, we collected data on how the students felt when they were at school. The overwhelming response was ‘scared’. It is not just the children who are endangered but the school buildings themselves. The shortage of physical infrastructure because of building restrictions and demolition orders often render schools unusable. Moreover, access to education is undermined by the unrelenting detention of children.

More than half of the children arrested by Israeli forces whose cases DCIP documented reported experiencing verbal abuse, threats, humiliation or intimidation. The vast majority, over 75 percent, said they were physically abused during the course of their detention. While under pre-trial detention, Israeli forces placed 22 children in isolation for a period of 48 hours or more. The longest period of isolation of a child that DCIP documented in 2018 was 30 days. Since 1967, Israel has operated two separate legal systems in the same territory. In the occupied West Bank, Jewish settlers are subject to the civilian and criminal legal system whereas Palestinians live under military law. No Israeli child comes into contact with the military courts. Israel has the dubious distinction of being the only country in the world that systematically prosecutes approximately 700 children each year in military courts lacking fundamental fair trial rights. So far, in 2019, there have been 210 child ‘security’ detainees, 14 of whom were or are currently subject to solitary confinement.

Palestinian children’s right to life is consistently undermined by the occupation. In 2018, more than one child was killed per week. At the bitter close of 52 weeks, 57 Palestinian children had been martyred by Israeli forces. So far in 2019, there have been 19 child fatalities. Abdul Rahman Shteiwi, 10, is currently fighting for his life after having been shot in the head by a sniper in Kafr Qadum while he was playing at the entrance of a home, posing no danger to anybody. Israel has denied using any live ammunition despite doctors finding an expanding live bullet that had exploded into more than 100 fragments after it lodged in his head.

Military fixtures such as checkpoints and watchtowers in the West Bank and the heavily surveilled ‘buffer zone’ along the border of Gaza represent significant risks of death, injury and arrest to children who live or pass near them frequently. Since 2014, DCIP documentation and analysis show that Israeli forces have increasingly targetted Palestinian children with intentional lethal force. Under international law, lethal force such as live ammunition may only be used as a last resort and when a direct threat to life or of serious injury exists. The latest child fatality occurred when occupation forces opened fire against 15-year-old Abdallah Ghaith near a Bethlehem checkpoint. Abdallah and his cousin were attempting to get over Israel’s apartheid wall to reach East Jerusalem for the last Friday prayers of Ramadan. He was posing no imminent threat. They killed him with a bullet in his chest that penetrated his heart. This killing is just the latest in an ever-lengthening list of child fatalities at the hands of the Israeli forces which the state has failed to fully and impartially investigate. On July 16, Tariq Zebania, a 7-year-old Palestinian child was riding his bicycle near Adhoura settlement in Hebron. He was struck by a car driven by a Jewish settler who headed into the settlement after hitting the boy. Eyewitnesses called the Israeli security forces. Tariq was pronounced dead upon reaching the hospital. No efforts were made by the Israeli authorities to apprehend the driver who killed the boy. The people responsible for these unlawful and deliberate killings of children should be prosecuted.

Israeli settlers attack Palestinians and harass internationals, IOF arrest observers

August 11 | International Solidarity Movement | Hebron, occupied Palestine

Yesterday in Tel Rumeida, the afternoon before Eid, settlers attacked an elderly Palestinian couple as they walked home. International activists in the area attempted to document the abuse. The soldiers were not protecting the Palestinians. They were allowing the actions of the violent settlers.

The soldiers instructed the activists to step away and stop filming. As the five international activists walked away, a settler pushed his young son into a 20-year-old British man, who was immediately pushed from behind to the ground and handcuffed by Israeli soldiers. When asked about his treatment, he stated that he had been placed in a chokehold whilst being dragged up the street, with his cable-tie being too tight for IOF soldiers to remove easily, causing his hands to swell and leaving red marks on his wrists that lasted for the rest of the day. Settlers were encouraging the aggression. They snatched the phones of two of the activists, when they asked for them back, the two 25-year-old British women were detained by border police and taken to Kiryat Arba police station. A fourth American activist had her phone stolen by Israeli settlers and thrown over a wall, and was also arrested at the scene. These four international activists were detained for four hours.

As you can see in the video, a Palestinian man was also handcuffed and taken away, despite not engaging illegally or provocatively.

A fifth international activist was stalked by a settler who verbally abused her along with Badee, founder of Human Rights Defenders. She called them terrorists whilst again, the army did nothing to help the situation. The soldiers ignored violations of Palestinians’ and activists’ fundamental human rights, made to stand in the sweltering heat being verbally and physically abused as some sort of collective punishment for simply trying to walk to their homes in the occupied Hebron. Soldiers threatened to arrest Badee if he didn’t stand at a particular point on the pavement that they arbitrarily had designated him.

The house that you see at the end of the video was vandalised. Hebrew signs were left overnight threatening Abu Awani. He visited the police station to make a complaint this morning but was turned away. Tensions remain high in Tel Rumeida with Palestinians’ freedom of movement restricted and right to life threatened.

The HRDA have released a statement regarding the threat:

“The activist Badee Dwaik said that Imad Abu Shamsya noticed the presence of slogans on cartons on the roof of Imad’s house on Friday morning threatening him with death and a group of Palestinian and foreign activists went to Imad Abu Shamsia’s house to declare their solidarity with him and to denounce the policy of threats against Imad and many activists Human Rights Defenders as a group of settlers returned at 3 am on the roof of Abu Shamsiya and we went to the occupation police station to file a complaint about the issue at 1:30 am, but the Israeli police asked to leave the place and remove it after 4 pm. This is the termination period.

The Defenders’ Association held the Israeli occupation authorities fully responsible for the incident, since the activist Imad lives in the area under full Israeli security responsibility. The Defenders’ Association appealed to international and local institutions to provide protection for the activist Imad Abu Shamsieh and all activists of the Human Rights Coalition. It discourages activists from stopping by their duty to protect their people and expose the crimes of the occupation by documenting the camera.

It should be recalled that Imad Abu Shamsiah documented the assassination of martyr Abdel Fattah al-Sharif in March 2016 by the criminal soldier Alor Azzaro in Hebron.”

Water Series: IOF destroy farmland east of Hebron – ISM speaks to owner Ghassan Jaber

July 30 2019 | International Solidarity Movement | Bit Arawa, occupied Palestine

This is the first of a series of reports documenting the control and devastation of water sources by Israel as a tool of oppression.

On Thursday 18th July Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) came to the Al Baqa’a area, east of Hebron, and destroyed an irrigation system that carried water to two agricultural fields, growing around 10,000 tomato plants each.

Ghassan Jaber, 40, is the son of the owner of one of the fields. His family have been farming this land for generations. He told ISM that about thirty IOF arrived in five military jeeps at 7am. Jaber asked the IOF to show him a military order or permission form from Israeli authorities but they would not speak to him, instead forcefully evacuating him and his family away from the tomato fields. The soldiers cut the majority of the pipes that make up the irrigation system, crushing tomato plants in the process. They confiscated three of Jaber’s pesticide machines, each costing around 4000 NIS (1,100 USD). The family are currently watering the plants and administering pesticide by hand, which has greatly increased their workload. Since the incident, many of the tomato plants have died. This week, Jaber and his family are replacing the cut pipes. He estimates that this will cost about 40,000 NIS (11,000 USD), not including the additional labour costs. Jaber and his sons told ISM that they would be working for the next 24 hours to replace the pipes in time to save the crops.

Water pipes in the tomato fields destroyed by IOF

The IOF claim that Jaber’s farm is diverting water from the nearby illegal Israeli settlement Kiryat Arba. The farm has traditionally taken its water from a well owned by the Jaber family, situated on their land. In 2009, the IOF blocked the well with rubble rendering it unusable. It cost Jaber about 30,000 NIS (8,500 USD) to replace this well, and last winter the IOF blocked it again. Jaber decided to build a hidden groundwater well so that the IOF would not be able to find and destroy it. This cost Jaber about 150,000 NIS (42,500 USD). It is this groundwater well that now supplies the irrigation system. On Thursday, Jaber told the soldiers that he is using his own groundwater but they went ahead with the destruction regardless.

Jaber told ISM he is concerned that once he replaces the irrigation system, the soldiers will return and destroy it again. The extended Jaber family own and farm a lot of the land around Al Baqa’a, which is the most fertile land in Hebron. It falls in area C, under Israeli control. Kiryat Arba is very close by, making this highly contested land. The Palestinian population in this area is small, but they own most of the land. The IOF have banned the construction of new homes on this land and have previously demolished houses here, most recently in 2010. A month ago, the IOF confiscated 24 dunams of Palestinian owned land in this area.

Jaber says that this incident is not just about his family, farming and water but is linked to bigger political tensions. The IOF, he says, are targeting the Palestinian people’s sources of income and self-sustainability. They are damaging the local food supply: he predicts that as a result of the incident the price of tomatoes in Hebron will rise. This systematic assault on the everyday lives of Palestinian people is part of the Israeli government’s comprehensive warfare against Palestine.

Settler tour exemplifies the difficult reality of occupation in the Old City of Hebron – a photo essay

July 7 | International Solidarity Movement | Hebron, occupied Palestine

Every Saturday, illegal Jewish settlers from around the West Bank take a “tour” of the busy souq (market) in Old City of Hebron, the busiest market street in the area since the closure of Shuhada Street. Local Palestinians believe that the Israeli authorities facilitate the tour as a deliberate method of intimidation, making life intolerable and unsustainable for them in order to prompt displacement.

On the tour, current and prospective settlers are given a skewed history of Hebron which disregards and contradicts the documented history of peaceful coexistence between Arabs and Jews in the city before 1948. Instead, it identifies the land’s heritage as solely Jewish. As shown, the settlers are escorted by numerous Israeli soldiers and Border Police officers, who randomly detain Palestinians for ID checks and prevent free movement in the souq during the duration of the tour.

Military and police can also be seen on the rooftops of Palestinian homes, many of which are now empty as a result of forced evictions for surveillance purposes. Palestinians living in the Old City are under constant threat of home invasions by the Israeli military and Jewish settlers, further contributing to displacement and the theft of Palestinian property.

A personal account of detention, racism and broken rules

May 8, 2019 | International Solidarity Movement, Al-Khalil team | Al-Khalil (Hebron), occupied Palestine

The neighborhood of Salaymeh next to Salaymeh checkpoint (160) has been the center of tensions between Palestinians and the Israelis in the city of Al-Khalil (Hebron). This checkpoint cuts off an already poor and struggling neighborhood from the rest of the city. At these checkpoints that are throughout Hebron, Palestinians are stopped, delayed, searched, asked for ID and sometimes denied passage. The checkpoints are a daily humiliation and intimidation of the local people by the occupying Israeli army.

The checkpoint at Salaymeh is also used every day by children on their way to and from school who are subject to the same treatment by the soldiers. From the moment the children start looking like teenagers, they go from being treated like children to being treated as criminals. In order to cope with this the children, have to learn to handle themselves as adults from a very early age, and as a result they are forced to grow up far too quickly.

There is a massive tension at the checkpoints because the children are angry and frustrated, and the soldiers are hostile and confrontational. There are frequent clashes between the children and the soldiers. The soldiers will throw tear gas and stun grenades and sometimes even shoot rubber bullets at the children for throwing rocks at the checkpoint. This response, which happens on an almost daily basis, is completely disproportionate – adults using military weapons against children on their way to school.

In the past week 2 children have been abducted and illegally detained by soldiers in Salaymeh. Both of them were 14 years old from Jerusalem and were visiting their cousin in Al-Khalil. The children were dragged from school, frisked, forced on their knees and handcuffed by the soldiers. One of them was let go after 2 hours, the other was taken to a military base, where he was interrogated without his lawyer or parents present.

https://youtu.be/IGjbJuP88Js

An international activist who was documenting this incident was also detained by the soldiers, she describes her detention as follows:

I’ve been at Salaymeh checkpoint every other day for a month and a half just trying to document the soldier’s harassment of the children, keeping in contact with the UN, so they can hopefully help if children are arrested. I am always mindful not to antagonize the soldiers and try to interact with them as little as possible. My hope is that an international presence will result in less violence because the soldiers will know they are being watched and may be held accountable.

On the day that I was detained I was filming a soldier as normal, who threatened to arrest another activist who I was with. Because I’d witnessed a lot of broken rules and violence by the army during my time at Salaymeh checkpoint, I knew it was important to keep filming. The commander asked me to move away, and when I kept filming, she told me that she would have another soldier move me with force. When I didn’t stop filming, she told me to come with her and that she had the authority to make arrests. I was very unsure of what to do in this situation – I had been told before that soldiers could not make arrests, but I was confused, and I was afraid of what might happen so I complied and went with her. I later found out that what the commander had said was in fact a lie and that she had absolutely no legal authority to detain me.

I was kept at Salaymeh checkpoint for an hour and a half, being told that the police would come but they never did. I was then put into a military van without being told where I was being taken. They then drove me around the city back and forth for half an hour which was very confusing. I still don’t know why they did this but I believe now that they were trying to shake off the UN who were trying to find out where I was being held in order to assist me. Eventually I was taken to a military base where they were also holding the Palestinian child who had been arrested. We were both held there for over 5 hours. During this time I was marshalled around, sporadically questioned, never given any food or water and never having anything explained to me. I was told that I would never be able to return to the country and that I would be deported that day. The whole time I was denied access to my lawyer and I was never given any reason for why I was being held.

What struck me the most about being detained with the Palestinian child was that as an international I was treated far better. I, an adult, was not handcuffed, and I was allowed to keep my things. He however, a child, was handcuffed, restrained, frisked, and they took his phone and his things. It was shocking and angering to me that this child was treated so much worse than me – it made it very obvious to me that the treatment of Palestinians undoubtedly has its roots in racism.