5th October 2015 | International Solidarity Movement, Al-Khalil team | West Bank, occupied Palestine
Abed al-Rahman Shadi Obeidallah, 12 was still in his school uniform when he was rushed in a civilian car to Beit Jala hospital from Aida refugee camp in Bethlehem today. The boy, from from a Al Kahder village, was shot in the heart during confrontations at Aida camp as violence explodes across the West Bank prompting the Red Crescent to declare a level 3 state of emergency across the occupied Palestinian territories. Another boy was shot in leg with live ammunition during the attack.
Abed al-Rahman Shadi Obeidallah, 12, just before being shot to death by Israeli forces in Bethlehem
Denouncing Israeli violations against humanitarian international law, the Palestine Red Crescent Society staff have endured 14 attacks on their emergency vehicles as Israeli forces and settler violence has sharply surged in a bloody three days. Attacks on PRCS have included medics being beaten by soldiers in Jerusalem, Israeli forces beating an ambulance crew with batons in the old city of Jerusalem and after one attack on an emergency crew in Jabal Al Taweel (Al-Bireh), two medics were injured. Israeli forces attacked an ambulance in al-Issawiya village in occupied East Jerusalem, before arresting an injured Palestinian who was being treated inside the ambulance. An ambulance windshield was also shattered by settlers in Burin village in Nablus. Burin underwent a frightening attack by settlers which left much of it in flames.
Reportedly 465 Palestinians have been injured thus far, including 28 shot with live ammunition and 68 injured with rubber coated steel bullets. Hundreds of others have been overcome by teargas that Israeli forces have been showering over villages and in cities where Palestinians have gathered to demonstrate against their murdering of several Palestinian youths since this past Saturday.
Young Palestinians martyrs recently murdered by Israeli forces.
Fadi Samir Mustafa Alloun, 19, from the East Jerusalem village of al-Issawiya, was shot to death by Israeli forces after allegedly attempting to stab a group of Israelis. 18-year-old Huthayfa Othman Suleiman was shot in the chest during clashes and died in the operating room. In a particularly heinous attack, Yousef Bayan al-Tabib, just six years old, was standing on the side of the road when a settler reportedly stopped his car, shot the child in the stomach, and fled the scene.
Across the occupied Palestinian territories, there have been reports of settlers slaughtering Palestinian’s sheep, attacking Palestinian cars with stones on roads and carrying out violent attacks on villages. As for Israeli forces, soldiers disguised as Palestinians assisting an injured Palestinian into a hospital in Ramallah, disabled security cameras and proceeded to arrest a Palestinian undergoing medical treatment. This is similar to other hospital raids in recent days where a variation of this tactic was repeated.
As for the Israeli government, Netanyahu today made an inflammatory statement to wage a “harsh offensive” against Palestinians; Zionist opportunism at its most typical. Collective punishment is the usual expectation when it comes to the illegally occupying force dealing with the civilian population whose land they are occupying. Israel launched three air strikes in the besieged Gaza strip targeting alleged Hamas ‘terror’ sites after two rockets were fired from Gaza, hitting nothing and injuring no one.
News reports of shootings, injuries, murders, arrests and raids continue to flood in as the situation unfolds at a lightning quick pace. For Palestinians enduring the brunt of Israeli incited race hatred and promoted retribution for the shooting of two Israeli settlers last week, the cavalierly imposed restrictions on al Aqsa Mosque, which have sparked outrage and violent confrontations- and the ensuing chaos, are yet another violent incursion into their lives.
Editor’s note: This is the testimony of a 23 year old woman who survived the land invasion of Khuzaa, Gaza, in the summer of 2014. This is the original version of her writings and no edits have been made.
We were in Khuzaa in our grandfather’s house when the war started. We thought Khuzaa was the safest area. But the 23rd July Khuzaa was a surrounded by tanks, drones and we started hearing many bombs.
We went to the basement to hide from the shooting but my grandfather stayed in the first floor with the other men…
Four days passed by very slowly and with a lot of difficulty, in the last day someone came to tell us that we had to leave Khuzaa.
We accepted and hurried up to the street, we were frightened, the planes were upon us, we were surprised because we thought there was nobody left in Khuzaa, but we saw many people crying, shouting, men injured by gunshot, they were walking covered in blood.
All was very sad.
While we were walking we saw the smoke from the bombs. Everyone was crying, men, women, old people and children.
The trepidation got into our hearts.
Some bombs felled in front of our eyes.
The streets were full of people running.
At some point we had to return back because we found in the street a big hole made by a rocket that prevented us to continue.
When we returned back we found many families in the ground floor.
At night Apache helicopters started hitting the homes with the families inside.
We heard the footsteps of the occupation soldiers; the children were very quiet, they were afraid that the soldiers would hear them.
We heard many people getting killed in their homes.
In the morning somebody came and told us we must leave Khuzaa because Israel was killing everyone, they were shooting at everything, moving or not…
We forced ourselves to go out, but my grandfather refused to leave “I want to die in my home, not in the street like the people from Shijaia”.
We went out thinking that we would be killed by the zionist occupiers, but still with a few hope in our hearts.
I left with my mother, my sister and some other people; we saw rubble, glass and corpses in the street.
I saw a child in the street with his stomach and bowels out. I started shouting what was that, where was the world, where were the Arab countries… and kept crying while going on.
We couldn’t do anything because we were afraid we would get killed by an helicopter or by any kind of weapon, we didn’t know where were the zionist soldiers.
We kept running and running. When we arrived to the entrance of the village we saw many tanks and many soldiers, I was crying so much, and the soldiers started laughing at me.
I’m so sorry I couldn’t stop crying!
When we arrived to Khan Younis we received the bad news, my grandfather had been killed by the occupation. My uncle, who also stayed in Khuzaa, explained me what happened: “grandfather went out from the basement to tell the soldiers that there were just men, women and children in those homes, who had no weapons to defend themselves. But the soldiers killed him putting two bullets in his heart. Everybody was crying then, we were frightened. After that they took us out and took the men to the homes that they were using as base and put them in front of the windows, as human shields. Later they started hitting the men with sticks. Then ordered Alaa Qudaih (the nephew of my grandfather)to take off the clothes of my grandfather. Alaa couldn’t stop crying while doing it. After he covered him with a red blanket. Finally the occupation ordered us to leave Khuzaa and go to Khan Younes.
After three days the occupation allowed us to finally take the corpses to the Hospital.
There were many corpses in the streets, in their homes and under the rubble.
11th May 2015 | Operation Dove | At Tuwani, South Hebron Hills, Occupied Palestine
POPULAR STRUGGLE COORDINATION COMMITTEE AND POPULAR STRUGGLE COMMITTEE OF SOUTH HEBRON HILLS CALLS FOR INTERNATIONAL PRESENCE IN SUSIYA VILLAGE
Susiya village, South Hebron Hills
Where: Susiya Village, South Hebron Hills
When: From now, permanently
What: Popular Struggle Coordination Committee and Popular Struggle committee of South Hebron Hills has just opened the “Solidarity tent” and invites you all to bring your solidarity and your support in order to save Susiya village from the eviction plan. Internationals are also invited to document and to spread the information about the situation in Susiya.
Why: In 1986 the village of Susiya was declared archeological site, its land expropriated and inhabitants were evicted and forced to move in their nearby agricultural land where on 2012, Israel’s Civil Administration distributed demolition orders to over 50 temporary structures. In 2014 the residents of Susiya, represented by Rabbis for Human Rights, sued for a request to freeze the demolition order’s implementation. In 2015, on May 5, the Israeli High Court rejected that request, allowing the demolition of the village.
Now the threat to be evicted and deported again, becomes more imminent for the inhabitants of Susiya. Please come to participate at the initiative.
The entire Palestinian village of Susya is in danger of demolition and expulsion. By refusing to issue an interim order preventing preemptive demolitions before their case is heard, the Israeli High Court is allowing for the demolition of the entire Palestinian village of Susya and subsequent expulsion of its 340 residents. The refusal of the State to commit to not demolishing before the conclusion of proceedings suggests it has plans to destroy the village in the near future.
On one hand, the High Court of Justice is willing to hear the village’s petition to legitimize its status, but on the other hand, the court allows the village to be destroyed before even deciding on the case.
On May 5 2015, High Court Judge Noam Solberg rejected the request for an interim order by the Palestinian village of Susya, represented by Rabbis for Human Rights, in a petition against the Civil Administration’s decision to reject the master plan prepared by the village and subsequent demolition of the entire village.
The village argued that their plan was rejected for non-professional reasons and that the village should be legalized due to its unique history. The residents sought an interim order to freeze the implementation of the demolitions until the petition is heard, as is standard practice in these sort of cases.It was against this request for an interim order that Justice Solberg, without even conducting a hearing on the request, made the unusual move of granting the state’s request not to freeze the orders. This decision means that the Civil Administration can now destroy Susya at any time. The demolition of the village will lead to hundreds of residents living in the desert with no roof over their heads and may result in their displacement. The state’s refusal to commit to waiting for a conclusion to the court proceedings raises great alarm that it intends to implement the demolition order in the near future; tragically, it seems the villagers are in real danger.
In the petition, Susya’s residents claimed that the army is obliged to legalize their village as it was the one to confiscate their land and their caves in 1986, leaving them without a housing solution and forcing them to move to their adjacent agricultural lands. As evidence to the life in the village prior to the expropriation, various testimonials and photographs of life in caves were presented to the judge. Among other things, there were documented photos of a visit by the US Consulate to the village at the beginning of 1986. The photos and testimony clearly shows that the Palestinian village of Susya is an old village formed prior to the Israeli occupation and the declaration of the area as an archaeological site.
Among the evidence was the opinion of the late governmental legal adviser Plia Albeck (considered to be very pro-settlement and who wrote in her memoirs that she tried to find legal ways to declare Palestinian land as State land), indicating the existence of a Palestinian village in 1982 where today the archaeological site stands.
Despite the evidence presented before him, revealing the many injustices done to the villagers – from the expropriation and dispossession of their lands, to the refusal by the state to recognize the status of the village in its new location – Judge Sohlberg did not agree to hear the case before allowing the demolishment the village and setting the fate of its inhabitants.
Attached to the petition, inter alia, was an expert opinion by Prof. Eyal Benvenisti, a renowned expert in international law, stipulating that the demolition of the village of Susya constitutes a war crime.
This week, a report by radical right-wing NGO “Regavim” (which has close ties to the settlement enterprise) was exposed indicating that in the nearby Jewish settlement, also called Susia, there are 23 illegal homes built on private Palestinian land. We have no indication of any attempt by the state to demolish these illegal structures in the settlement Sussia or in its nearby outposts. We see in this current situation that this Jewish settlement, whose very existence is prohibited by international law, and where some of its homes are sitting on private Palestinian land, is prosperous, while the Palestinian village of Susya, whose inhabitants are on their own private land, is at risk of displacement and loss of their entire village.
Background:
In 1986 the village of Susya was declared an archaeological site, its land expropriated, and its inhabitants, who lived in caves, were deported. While the Palestinians were told that they could not reside in an archeological site, Israeli settlers live in an illegal outpost located inside the archeological site.
After the expulsion, villagers were forced to move to their neighboring agricultural plots. Because there was no willingness to grant a zoning plan, they involuntarily became illegal builders. Dozens of villagers followed procedures in attempts to obtain building permits, but those attempts were rejected. In 2012 the villagers raised funds and submitted a proposed master plan, drawn up by Professor Rassem Khamaiseh, for the Civil Administration for review. The plan would authorize construction in the village according to accepted standards of professional planning.
The plan was rejected in 2013 on very questionable grounds, indicating a double standard in planning, and blatant discrimination against the Palestinian population. For example, it was argued that the number of residents in the village, which is a few hundred people, is not substantial enough to grant it independent planning as its own entity. On the other hand, dozens of unauthorized outposts which are built housing only a handful of residents are approved by the Civil Administration’s planning body. In addition, it was argued that the plan will prevent the population from properly developing and moving out of poverty, and therefore, they should be moved to an adjacent city. It should be noted that the city is, of course, in Area A, and what actually prevents the progress of Susya is the lack of infrastructure which they are prevented from building. Also important to note is that Israelis are permitted to choose their preferred way of life – be it urban or rural, and are not forced by the state into one or the other.
In 2014, Rabbis for Human Rights petitioned the High Court on behalf of the Susya village council and its residents against the decision to reject the village master plan (HCJ 1420/14). As mentioned, on May 5th the court rejected the request for an interim injunction, leaving the whole village vulnerable to imminent demolition.
The big picture:
The danger of demolishing and expropriating the village of Susya reflects the systemic problem of planning for Palestinian villages located in Area C; in these villages, planning is done by military planning committees, without representation of Palestinians, with the intent of preventing residents from building on their own land based on reasonable and professional planning standards. A recent High Court petition, submitted by the village council Dirat, Rabbis for Human Rights, Jerusalem Legal Aid and Human Rights Society, the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, and St. Yves – Catholic Human Rights Center, demands planning authority be returned to Palestinian villages for their own communities in order to prevent the tragic demolitions of hundreds of homes every year due to the impossibility of obtaining building permits.
