Tag: Invasion - Page 7 - International Solidarity Movement

Die on my Palestine land

16 December 2009

Fatima Mohammed Yassen, aged 49, is a farmer from Bil’in. Despite the crippling Israeli occupation of her village, she continues to work her land, along with her husband, on a daily basis. Jody McIntyre spoke to Im Khamis, as she is known to local villagers, in her home in Bil’in:

Did you have land behind the Wall?
Yes! BeforeIsrael started construction of the Wall in Bil’in, my family had 45 dunams (1 dunam = 1000 square metres) of land, all of them filled with olive trees. My husband’s family had 50 dunams, which were a mixture of olive groves and vegetable patches, as well as another 50 dunams of land which was stolen after 1967 (after the war of this year, Israel began it’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza). When the Israeli army were building the Wall on our land, they stole land from many people, but only on my husband’s land did they steal his olive trees as well… We still go to our land, every day, to plant vegetables and look after the soil, because we will not allow the Israeli government or the settlers to claim that our land is unused. If we don’t go to our land, they will say it is unneeded and confiscate it so that they can expand the settlements, which are already illegally built on our land.

Do the Israeli army make problems when you try to go to your land?
Yes… sometimes they don’t allow us to enter, but me and husband will wait at the gate for one hour, two hours etc. If they don’t let us through we will stay there from the morning until the evening. We won’t go home until they let us go to our land.

The soldiers once told us that it was illegal for us to go to our land and that we should go back home, but I simply replied, “I don’t want to go home, I want to go to look after my land.” Sometimes when our sons come to help us on the land the soldiers beat them or try to arrest them. We’ve had these problems many, many times, but despite this, we will not stop resisting this occupation. We are not afraid.

Do the settlers make problems when you are on your land?
Yes. They came and set fire to a small room the people from Bil’in had built behind the Wall, four times. One of the times, I had just gone to make coffee for my husband – they were watching me and when I left went they went in and made a fire. But every time they damaged the room, we went to fix it again.

How did you feel when you first heard Israel wanted to build the Wall in Bil’in?
Everyone was angry when they heard the news, and sad because we knew it was a ploy to steal our land, so we started to protest against the construction of the Wall. The first time we heard that it was being built, all the people from the village went to our land and said that we would fight against it’s confiscation by the Israeli army. We could see the bulldozers uprooting our trees. For the last five years we have been fighting against the Wall, and for justice, and we will always continue.

Do you attend the weekly demonstrations against the Wall in Bil’in?
Yes, of course. All my family go to the demonstrations, me and my husband, our five daughters and our five sons. These demonstrations are our way of non-violently resisting against the Wall, the settlements, and the confiscation of our land. We are not going out there to kill people, we are going to return to work on our land – to take back what they have stolen from us.

Have any of your family been injured at the demonstrations?
All my sons have been injured. The first one to be injured was Helme – he was injured at the very first demonstration we had in Bil’in; they shot him with a tear gas canister in the neck. After a few weeks, he was injured in the leg with the same weapon. A couple of months later he was arrested, becoming the first person to be arrested for our village’s campaign of non-violent resistance. But even whilst in jail they couldn’t crush the rebellious spirit in Helme’s heart – they started a protest against the terrible conditions in the prison, and the soldiers shot Helme in the leg with a rubber-coated steel bullet.

Next, my son Hamde was shot with in the leg, also with a rubber-coated steel bullet, and then Mostafa was shot with a tear gas canister. My youngest son, Mohammed, was just 14 years old at the time, and he was injured three times by rubber-coated steel bullets, twice in the legs and once in buttocks. The last one to be injured was Khamis, my eldest son. He was shot in the head with a high-velocity tear gas canister, a new weapon at the time, and left in a coma. I was very sad when they shot Khamis. So all my sons have been shot in the demonstrations, but we will not stop until we return to our land.

Tell me about the night raids in Bil’in; have they ever invaded your house?
The first night raid was at our house, when they arrested Helme. Our house is very close to the Wall, so if there are any problems at the Wall the army immediately come to our home. Once they came in the day when I out working on my land, broke the doors to my house, beat my daughters and arrested my ten year old nephew. He wasn’t wanted for anything, they just presumed he was. The next time they came was to arrest my eldest son Khamis. As always, it was because he’d dared to non-violently resist against the confiscation of his family’s land. Sometimes they come and don’t arrest anyone, just to harass us, to wake us up in the middle of the night and to intimidate us. My son Hamde goes to photograph the night raids, to show the world what is happening here in Bil’in. Of course I am proud of what he is doing, but it makes me worry about him and I cannot sleep. I’m afraid that a soldier will shoot him or arrest him… I know that he has been beaten many times whilst photographing.

The soldiers are very violent during the night raids, so I worry about him. Another time, whilst Hamde was away, they invaded in the night and stayed in our home for three hours. When I saw all my sons lined up outside, and the soldiers trying to beat them and joking together about when they had shot Khamis in the head, laughing about how he had nearly died in the hospital… when I heard them say this I passed out. When I woke up, I was lying in hospital myself. Because Hamde was abroad, I was scared that they were looking for him and would arrest him at a checkpoint on the way back into the country. Once they invaded the house in the day, and the army commander came over to me and said, “One day, I am going to come here with a bulldozer and destroy your house.” They came two days later and started searching the house, but they didn’t find anything – because we don’t have anything to find! It’s like we can’t sleep in the day or the night now, because of the invasions. All we can do is sit awake.

After all the oppression the people of Bil’in have suffered at the hands of the Israeli Occupation Forces, do you think your campaign of non-violent resistance can continue?
Yes, we will certainly continue. Me and my husband will continue to go to our land every day. We will go until the last moment… I hope that I die on my land.

Do you think you will ever reach the peace you are fighting for?
The Israeli Government don’t believe in this thing called peace. I want there to be peace so that I know my children are safe. We are not violent people, but the Israeli Government steals our land, kills our brothers and arrests our children. Is that their way of making peace?

Photos: Hamde Abu Rahme.

Israeli forces arrest four prominent grassroots activists during Nablus night raid

9 December 2009

The Israeli military kidnapped nine Palestinians from the Nablus region in the early hours of Tuesday, 9 December 2009, including four leading civil society activists.

The Israeli army in the force of 200 armed soldiers invaded several districts of Nablus city, refugee camps and a nearby village in a coordinated operation last night, raiding houses of targeted grassroots activists and arrested nine. Eight of them are currently held at the Huwara military detention center, another one has been detained at the Hasharon prison.

Amongst the arrested are four leading grass roots organizers from Nablus, a fifth activist from Awarta village and four children from Al-Ein Refugee Camp. Their families remain in the dark as why these activists have been taken from their homes, though the targeting of active members of civil society is immediately apparent.

Wa’el Al Faqeeh Abu As Sabe, 45 years old, was taken from his home at 1am last night when 50 Israeli soldiers entered his house in the north of Nablus, aiming their weapons at Al Faqeeh and his family. He is renowned for his championing of non-violent struggle, and years of work in grassroots community activism, reaching out to all Palestinians across the political spectrum. The Israeli military District Co-ordination Office threatened Wa’el a month ago that if he continued organising protests over land theft by settlers in Iraq Burin village, he would be imprisoned.

Mayasar Itiany, 45, and her brother Abdul-Nasser Itiany, 38, were taken Tuesday night when their home was stormed by 20 Israeli soldiers and a further 100 surrounding the house. Mayasar is known for her work with the Nablus women’s union and campaigning for prisoners’ rights. Her brother is a well-known grassroots activist in the Nablus region.

Mussa Salama, 47 years old, who is active in the Labour Committee of Medical Relief for Workers was seized from his home in Nablus and Nabih Abdul-Aziz Awwas, 47 years, was taken from his home in Awarta village. Four young boys were also arrested in a raid on Al-Ein Refugee Camp outside Nablus: Mahmud Huleiman, Muhammad Ibrahim Dahbour, Yousef Raja, Rubi Abu Khalifa.

Military violence increases in Jayyous: elderly man arrested during a night invasion

27 November 2009

Israeli Occupation Forces arrested an elderly resident of Jayyous this week, a Palestinian village located in the Qalqilya region, that has maintained an active campaign against the terrorisation of its people and the annexation of its land by the illegal Apartheid Wall.

Mohammad Salim, a 63 year old resident of Jayyous was taken from his home in the middle of the night by Israeli Occupation Forces this week. Salim, an elderly man, was just a few short hours away from leaving for Mecca, Saudi Arabia, to make the holy pilgrimage of the Hajj when he was taken by the military. Residents – even his own family – are dumbfounded as to why he would be targeted.

This is not atypical of the military’s strategy in Jayyous – what appears a haphazard campaign of unpredictable – seemingly random – arrests and violent invasions is a methodical attempt of the army to sow the seeds of internal discontent and provocation within the village.

“They want to create problems inside the community,” says Jayyous activist Abu Azam. “They always give the excuse that people are throwing stones at the Wall, but really they just want to make us fight with each other.”

And the sheer brute force exhibited by the army must surely take its toll. Invasions occur any time during the day or night, accompanied by the sound of sirens, tear gas grenades, sound bombs and bullets – plastic, rubber-coated steel or live ammunition – announcing the arrival of Israeli jeeps inside the village. Curfew was imposed three days consecutively during the last month. Parts of the village now have only 2 days of running water a week after dozens of water tanks were damaged by bullets, while farmers have reported the death of 8 lambs and over 600 chickens from tear gas suffocation.

The danger of military violence is only one of Jayyous’ many problems. Construction of the Apartheid Wall began in Jayyous in 2002, prohibiting access of farmers to 8,600 dunums of their land. Demonstrations began almost immediately, and the Palestinian Land Defense Committee launched a case in the Israeli Supreme Court against the government. They succeeded in a 2006 ruling to re-route the Wall, returning a meager 750 dunums to the village. Almost 8,000 dunums stand on the other side, including 3 water wells. The Israeli government has refused requests for permission of residents of Jayyous to pump the water from these wells to their side of the wall. This affects not only the village itself but the surrounding region, such as the larger town of Azzoun that relies on Jayyous’ small supply of water as well, after the nearby settlement of Qarne Shomron annexed all but two of the towns’ supplying wells.

When it comes to accessing the land, the Israeli government employs bureaucracy itself as a weapon, in the form of a labyrinthine system of permit applications for farmers hoping to reach their fields. Although well over 600 families from Jayyous own farmland on the other side of the wall, only 300 permits farming permits were issued in October for farmers hoping to gain access to their crops for the yearly olive harvest. The permits issued rarely meet the needs of the farmers – such as only one or two family members being permitted access to the land, or access restricted to a few short days, entirely disproportionate to the necessary amount of time to collect crops. The situation is even worse during the rest of the year, as the number of permits issued shrinks to 120, for farmers hoping to plough, prune and work their land. Due to this, thousands of dunums of crops become unharvestable, and agriculture becomes an impossibility for many families.

Jayyous has been a prominent village in Palestinian resistance, as one of the first villages to begin demonstrating against the wall and the continued legal campaign for its removal. The recent imprisonment of Jayyous activist Mohammad Othman has brought the village’s struggle into focus. Othman was arrested at the Jordanian border to the West Bank by Israeli military as he returned from a trip to Norway to promote the BDS campaign. He has now been placed under administrative detention, the detention of an individual by the state without trial – in Othman’s case, for a minimum of three months with the possibility for a renewed term. This clear violation of human rights works in conjunction with Israel’s continued repression of popular resistance such as Jayyous’ fight against the illegal Apartheid Wall and the Israeli occupation.

Israeli army use live ammunition during invasion of Iraq Burin

7 November 2009

On Saturday 7 November the residents of Iraq Burin, a small village outside Nablus, once again had their weekend disrupted by settlers and the Israeli army. During the day settlers from the nearby illegal settlement came down close to the village in a provocative act. The scenario that followed was the same as the previous two Saturdays – settler attack followed by an army invasion. During the invasion that lasted about one hour, the army shot teargas and live ammunition inside the village.

Because of similar events of settler and army violence in the last two weekends, the Palestinians have called for international activists to be present in the village on Saturday morning. At around 2.30pm, five settlers from the illegal settlement Bracha appeared close to the village, scaring and provoking the villagers. Three young men from the village approached the settlers in an attempt to make them leave the land. After the settlers refused to leave, the two groups started throwing stones at each other. At this point, nine Israeli soldiers who were posted nearby intervened. While the Palestinians returned to the village as soon as the army appeared, instead of making the settlers leave or just keeping watch from a distance, which would have lead to less violence, the army chose to invade the village. Young men from the village responded with stones, after which the army started shooting teargas canisters and live ammunition, moving further and further inside the village.

At one point some of the soldiers went up to a house inside the village and violently smashed a window when the owners did not open the door. The frightened family, including three young children, then opened and were forced to evacuate from the house and stand on the street while the soldiers stayed in the house.

Seven Palestinians arrested during Nablus military raids

5 November 2009

In the dead of night, at 2am, Thursday 4 November, the Israeli Occupation Force made a series of military raids on civilian home in Nablus, arresting 7 young men.

Al-Ein camp was brutally attacked by a force of some 100 Israeli soldiers, encircling a large part of the camp while firing sound bombs. A large number of houses were invaded, their occupants awoken and forced to stand outside in the freezing cold, while soldiers with dogs wrecked havoc upon their personal belongings. One woman saw two young Palestinians with their hands tied behind their backs, while the soldiers had placed toy guns, partisan scarfs and knives at their side and were taking pictures of this (apparently a ploy to prove that they were ‘dangerous militants’, thereby justifying their arrest). Among the arrested were Mustafa Kasem Al-Mabruk, 21 years old, and Ahmed Khalid Abdo Bohe, his cousin, who is 18 years old. Mustafa’s brother, Abdul Rahman, who is 28 years old, was arrested two weeks ago and is being held in Mashido prison, in Israel.

In the old city of Nablus, a neighbourhood was surrounded by upwards 70 soldiers, who proceeded to throw sound bombs and invade several houses.

The Al-Satar family was also awakened by an invasion of their house. The soldiers had come for the 21 year old Abed Al-Satar Saleem Abo Seres. The young man made a run for freedom, but he was trapped between the soldiers, and when they caught him they hit in the face and chest before arresting him. The women, who were now alone in the house, could only stand and watch as the soldiers called them derogatory and disrespectful names, threw their glasses to the floor, broke a wardrobe (pulling out clothes and personal belongings in the process) and spilled all of the family’s flour and sugar. The house has been raided before and another son has so far spent a year and a half in Mashido prison, in Israel.

Both invasions ended at around 4:30. This type of unprovoked action is usual for many Palestinians, as the Israeli Army tends to suspect all young men of being a danger to them, and prefers to see them confined for years at a time in prisons, although the charges against them are hazy if not non-existent.

Thursday’s invasion of the Al-Satar family’s home struck deep in the heart of a city where presence Israeli Occupation Forces has become an extreme rarity. The entirety of Nablus, with the exception of its main street (which is still subject to Israeli military patrol between the hours of midnight and 6am) lies in Area A, under Palestinian civilian and military control. Nablus’ three refugee camps – Al-Ein, Askar and Balata, are located just on the city’s periphery and in a far more precipitous state. Their location in Area C (full Israeli control) not only prohibit them from expanding to accommodate their rapidly growing population, but also, under the Oslo Accords zoning agreements legalises presence of the Israeli army. This presence is manifested on an almost nightly basis in Balata, Nablus’ largest camp. 13 boys were arrested in a night raid on Al-Ein camp last Wednesday, making this one the second attack in as many weeks.