22nd November 2015 | International Solidarity Movement, al-Khalil team| Hebron, occupied Palestine
After being allowed back to their legally owned apartment in Tel Rumeida in occupied al-Khalil (Hebron) on Thursday, international human rights defenders were kicked out from their home for the third time by Israeli forces the following day.
Internationals kicked out from their home Photo credit: Human Rights Defenders
The draconian restrictions of the ‘closed military zone’ orders had been slightly lifted on Thursday with no new order issued.
Israeli forces preparing the paper to kick out internationals from their home
The lifting of the closed military zone orders gave the impression that Palestinian residents could, for the first time since weeks, be able to pass the street without being detained while Israeli forces would check their IDs and names on a list of ‘residents’. The international solidarity activists returned to their legally rented house on Thursday afternoon. After only one day, police and soldiers came into the house on Friday afternoon ordering them to leave immediately. The order Israeli forces showed to the internationals was clearly only a photocopy without an official stamp or signature. When the internationals showed their rental contract, the police officer started yelling at them and threatened them saying if they ‘don’t leave within ten minutes, [he] will use force’. Due to the threat of physical violence – that was used on internationals before when they were illegally evicted from this apartment – they decided to leave.
Photocopy of a military order with handwritten dates
Two days later, on Sunday, when attempting to go back to their house, Israeli forces showed the internationals an order dated to the end of the week. When internationals then requested to be allowed to go to their apartment, as this order was not in place at that particular time, they were ordered to wait for no reason. A few minutes later, a jeep with more soldiers drove up and one of them was clearly seen holding a pile of papers, writing something on one of them. He then handed the paper to a soldier that presented it to the internationals as a new closed military zone ‘order’ for that day. It was obvious that soldiers are now having blank copies of ‘closed military zone’ orders that they can fill in arbitrarily with any dates.
Closed military zone order for the end of the week
Since 1st November, the Israeli forces have been bringing new ‘closed military zone’ orders, renewing them every day. Virtually every Palestinian passing in any direction has to undergo humiliating, degrading and violent bag- and body-searches at gunpoint as well as ID-checks. The area covered by that order was deliberately designed to encompass only Palestinian residents and international human rights defenders while excluding the neighbouring illegal Israeli settlement, thus entirely exempting Israeli settlers from these tactics.
19th January 2015 | International Solidarity Movement, Khalil team | Hebron, Occupied Palestine
This afternoon in occupied al-Khalil (Hebron), Israeli forces gathered on Shuhada street, surrounding the doorways to the two houses belonging to Aamal Hashem Dundes, an elderly Palestinian woman, and her family. A soldier, wielding a torch and various other equipment, welded shut the doors. Soldiers and police kept international and Palestinian observers away as the houses were sealed up.
Photo by ISM
Soldiers claimed that Molotov cocktails had been thrown from the roof of one of the houses into the Israeli Zionist settlement. No one, however, could explain why this led soldiers to punish Aamal and her family, who had done nothing wrong, by welding shut their doors. “Isn’t that collective punishment?” asked one member of Christian Peacemaker Teams present at the scene along with ISM. Israeli forces could give no satisfactory answer.
Photo by ISM
Aamal’s family were not living in the houses at the time the soldiers came to seal up the doors – they rent an apartment across the street – but she and her daughter explained to international volunteers that the family had owned the houses for hundreds of years. Aamal sat near where the soldiers were working, sometimes weeping, sometimes speaking with journalists and local activists.
Photo by ISM
As the incident progressed Israeli soldiers and police forced Palestinian and international observers back away from where the soldiers were sealing up the doors, and from where Aamal sat with her daughter arguing ineffectually with the soldiers and police. By contrast, Israeli settlers who had come up Shuhada street from the nearby settlement to observe were allowed to stay near and continue filming even as the rest of the people present were shoved first onto the sidewalk across from the houses, then to either side of the street, where they could no longer clearly see what was happening. Settlers joked and laughed with the soldiers, seeming quite pleased with the situation.
Soldiers aggressively shoved journalists, international solidarity activists, and local Palestinian activists who were attempting document the behavior and actions of the Israeli forces. When international activists attempted to ask why they were being kept back from the scene, soldiers typically responded: “because I say so.”
Photo by CPT-Palestine https://www.facebook.com/cptpalestine
By the time Israeli forces had finished welding her doors shut, Aamal, who suffers from high blood pressure and diabetes, was understandably overwhelmed. Not only had she witnessed the houses her family had owned for generations sealed up by gun-toting Israeli soldiers, she had also been pushed by soldiers when she tried to protest. She had to be taken to an ambulance, which drove her away to the hospital. As she was moving towards the ambulance she asked, as she had multiple times previously, for an international to accompany her. Then, as before, Israeli forces let no one through.
Photo by ISM
Aamal and her family live on the short portion of Shuhada street where Palestinians are still allowed to walk. Most of the street has been entirely closed off to Palestinians, as part of Israel’s campaign of repression against those living in and around the area which once served as a thriving hub of Palestinian life in al-Khalil. Shuhada street, where once markets and shops flourished, is now a ghost town. Many Palestinians have already left the area; those who remain must bar their doors and windows against violence from local settlers. The sealed off doors are just one more demonstration of the Israeli military’s repression of those Palestinians who dare to continue to live on al-Khalil’s apartheid streets.
13th August 2014 | Operation Dove | at-Tuwani, Occupied Palestine
On August 12th, at approximately 9.45 a.m., near the South Hebron hills area village of at-Tuwani, Israeli Police beat a Palestinian and confiscated his tractor.
The 20-year-old man was driving his tractor, carrying a water tank, from the village of at-Tuwani to Yatta City when the Israeli police stopped him. Palestinian witnesses reported that policemen beat him and sprayed pepper spray into his eyes.
When international volunteers and medical relief arrived on the scene, they witnessed the man lying on the ground and shouting from the pain as two policemen surrounded him.
At 10.00 a.m. the Palestinian was accompanied to the hospital by Palestinian medical relief. After that, the police confiscated the tractor, leaving the water tank in the middle of the road. The police refused to give any explanation about the incident and prohibited the Palestinian man from speaking with his lawyer.
According to B’tselem, “the exercise of illegal force by police officers is a phenomenon characteristic of regimes that are abhorrent, and undemocratic, of the kind that trample on human rights.”
The policy of restriction, checkpoints, closures, arrests and confiscations carried out by the Israeli army and police, combined with the continuous settler’s harassment, denies the Palestinians’ rights of movement, basic sources and rights access and prevents the development of the South Hebron hills area communities.aa
Operation Dove has maintained an international presence in At-Tuwani and South Hebron Hills since 2004.
9th June 2014 | International Solidarity Movement, Khalil team | Iqrit, Occupied Palestine
(Photo by ISM)
Yesterday morning on the 8th June, Israeli police forces raided the village of Iqrit (located on the northern tip of Israel, within eyesight of Lebanon). The police uprooted trees, destroyed and confiscated all the personal belongings of Palestinian activists present in the village. Furthermore they beat and violently arrested 3 Palestinian men who were present in the village at the time. The 3 arrested are: Walla Sbait, Nidal Khoury and Jeries Khiatt. They were taken to the police station in Nahariyya, where they were kept in detention over night.
Confiscated belongings loaded into an Israeli truck. (Photo by Iqrit activists)
Today at 8:30 AM the three detainees were brought before the Kiryat Gat Magistrates’ Court, following a police request for an extension of their detention. The police have charged the detainees with trespassing the land owned by the ILA, obstructing the work of public officials, assaulting a public employee and endangering public order.
(Photo by Iqrit activists)
The court ruled that Nidal Khoury is kept in detention until Wednesday 11th of June. Walaa Sbeit and Jeries Khiatt was sentenced house arrest until Sunday 15th of June and they are not allowed to go back to Iqrit for 60 days.
In 1948, the village was home to 600 Christian Palestinians. (Photo of archive picture by Jonathan Cook/Al Jazeera)
As the season of Advent approached in November 1948, the Israeli military forced residents of Iqrit and the neighboring village of Kufr Bir’im —all citizens of the newly created state of Israel— to leave their homes near the northern border with Lebanon because of military operations in the area. The Israeli forces made a promise to the inhabitants, that they could return to their homes after 15 days. The people of Iqrit are still waiting. In July 1951, the Israeli High Court ruled that the people of Iqrit and Kufr Bir’im had the right to return to their homes. The military refused to comply, and on Christmas Eve 1951 blew up all houses in both villages.
Only the churches and cemeteries were left intact. (Photo by ISM)
Shortly thereafter, all village lands were confiscated by the state and has been rented out to the nearby Kibbutz for their cows to graze until this day. Since then, decades of demonstrations and legal appeals for the villagers’ right to return have seen a string of favorable decisions by courts and commissions that have resulted only in more broken promises and unenforced rulings.In the 1970s, the government had granted use of the cemetery —allowing only the dead to return to Iqrit after they lived and died in exile at Kufr Yasif, Rameh, Haifa or other places. The original villagers and their descendants —now around 1,500 people scattered across northern Israel— are allowed only to hold services in the church and bury their dead in the cemetery. Every first Saturday of the month there has been a mass held at the village church and every year a summer camp has been organised on the hillside. In August 2012 the third generation reclaimed their village.
One of the returned youth, standing on the ruins of his grandparents house. (Photo by ISM)
Around 20 descendants from Iqrit took the initiative to begin resurrecting the village despite the village’s legal limbo. The activists make sure that the village is constantly inhabited, sleeping in tents, under the stars or in rooms attached to the church. The group consists of university students, factory and restaurant workers, and teachers.
Tin shacks serving as a toilet and shower. (Photo by ISM)
Their attempts to construct or plant anything in the village have been met with immediate demolition by the Israeli authorities. But over time, they’ve been able to add a few amenities, including solar panels on the church roof, determined to bring back life to Iqrit.
(Photo by ISM)
Iqrit’s 80 homes are long gone, but the activists goal is to rebuild Iqrit for the villagers-in-exile, refusing only to return to their home in coffins, but alive. The activists have returned to the area and are discussing on how to proceed with their campaign, determined not to be intimidated by Israeli forces and their harassment
2nd August 2013 | International Solidarity Movement, Ramallah Team | Palestine
Update 2nd August:The Palestinian activist arrested at the protest near Hizma checkpoint has been released after paying 3000NIS. All arrestees at the demonstration in Wadi Ara have also been released but will have to be under house arrest for three days.
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On August 1st, ‘day of rage’, thousands of people took to the streets to denounce the ethnic cleansing of a conservative estimate of 40000 Bedouins from the Naqab; the so called Prawer Plan.
The demonstration organized in the Naqab itself took place in the South Rahat Junction “Lehavim”. The start of the protest, which was scheduled for 4pm was delayed, after police blocked several roads leading to the demonstration and alternative routes had to be found. In the end over 1500 people from all over historic Palestine and international activists managed to assemble and voice their anger against the ethnic cleansing and forced displacement of over 35 villages in the Naqab region. Strong slogans asking for a stop to the ethnic cleansing, a change to the Prawer Plan and freedom for the Naqab and Palestine were chanted.
Protest chanting at the demonstration in the Naqab (Photo by ISM)
The protest was heavily policed, with over 200 police officers, several of them on horseback. Even though the protest was conducted peacefully, two minors, Hisham A’mor and Khaled Nasasra, were arrested and released this morning.
In Wadi A’ra, Haifa District, the demonstration took place at the A’ra-A’ra’ra intersection with around 1500 participants. Israeli forces beat protesters and used teargas against them. Eleven people were arrested and will probably have the court hearing today in Haifa.
The ‘day of rage’ not only spread throughout historic Palestine. Solidarity actions with the Palestinian Bedouins crossed the Green line as dozens of people protested near Hizma Checkpoint in the occupied West Bank.
At around 3pm, several buses departed from Ramallah towards the Naqab to join the protests against the Prawer Plan. As expected, Israeli forces stopped the buses from continuing their way near Hizma checkpoint.
Demonstrators went off the buses and protested on the road leading to Hizma checkpoint. Over twenty special unit police officers and several soldiers threw several sound bombs, violently pushed protesters and beat several people with batons. One female protester was kicked by a police officer in the back and another activist was arrested. Standing on the sidewalk of the road and chanting slogans against the ethnic cleansing of the Naqab, demonstrators were surrounded from all sides by Israeli forces until the buses arrived and everyone left. It is worth mentioning that the bus drivers were fined by Israeli police with 750NIS fine each.
Protester being arrested by Police special unit at Hizma demonstration (Photo by ISM)
Late at 9:30pm, more than 300 people gathered at Damascus gate in East Jerusalem. Protesters chanted slogans in solidarity with the Bedouins communities in the Naqab and marched into East Jerusalem towards Sheik Jarrah. The demonstration turned back towards the Damascus gate again, after it was blocked by a large number of mounted police. Israeli police repeatedly charged the demonstration and threw sound bombs at people. They also deliberately threw sound bombs into the crowded area outside the gate, and into restaurants and market stalls. This caused a huge stampede of people running away from the police, and caused one middle aged woman to feint from shock.
These protests come after July 15th first ‘day of rage’ in which a general strike in historic Palestine was called and numerous demonstrations against the Prawer Plan organised.
The Prawer Plan making its way through the Israeli Knesset aims to destroy 35 villages that it does not recognise. The destruction of these ‘unrecognised’ villages will forcibly displace a conservative estimate of 40 000 indigenous Palestinian Bedouin for already pre approved Jewish only settlements in the Naqab (Negev).
Historic Palestine’s Bedouin population are the indigenous population of the Naqab. Their cultural and historical link to the land is clear, given that since settling in the Naqab in the seventh century, they have been the only inhabitants of the desert up until the mid twentieth century. Before the creation of Israel in 1948 over 100000 Bedouin lived in the Naqab and made up over 99% of the inhabitants. The establishment of Israel as a state with a Jewish majority needed the ‘Nakba,’ or catastrophe that meant the ethnic cleansing of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians including 90000 Bedouin in the Naqab, who were forced to leave their historic land to become refugees in the West Bank, Gaza strip and other countries in the world. After the Nakba the 10 000 Bedouin who managed to survive the ethnic cleansing were put under the authority of an oppresive military regime that forcibly removed the remaining Bedouin into an area of land called the ‘syaj’ or (fenced) in a triangle marked by the towns of Beersheba, Arad and Dimona.
Demonstration in the Naqab (Photo by ISM)
In 1965 Israeli authorities passed the ‘Planning and Building Law.’ One aspect of that law was to map out all the existing communities that fell under the state and although many of the villages had existed before the creation of Israel, or had been created by the Israeli army as part of the population transfer to the Syaj zone, they were left of the map and so became ‘unrecognised’ villages and illegal by law.
Over 40 000 Bedouin currently stay in these ‘unrecognised’ villages, that because of the nature of their illegality under Israeli law, have no access to infrastructure like roads, water, sewage, electricity, education and healthcare although they became citizens of Israel. The other 105 000 Bedouins live in urban townships, or concentration townships that have some of the highest poverty and crime rates in the country, created in 1969 to encourage the Bedouins to relinquish their land rights. The Bedouin who accepted were internally displaced refugees who were not allowed to return to their ancestral lands outside the Syaj zone.
Israel uses a manipulation of an old Ottoman law that declares non cultivated land as dead land and so transfers land to the ownership of the state. The land outside the Syaj area became dead land due to people unable to return and so passed to control of the Israeli state without consultation with the Bedouins. In the 1970s the public were allowed to file ownership claims over the land and so the Bedouin filed 3221 claims for a total of 242 750 acres. The process was then frozen and never offered again. Those lands claimed are subject to be lost under the Prawer plan but only those that were allowed to be registered for a short time in the 1970s are able to be compensated though the Prawer Plan. This compensation however is only to the maximum of 50% of worth that reasonable estimates believe will only amount to 16% in real terms. This is on the condition that they relinquish all rights of their ancestral land and move to the townships or the 10 ‘recognised’ villages.
The current situation of the Prawer Plan represents the largest single ethnic cleansing of Palestinians since the Nakba and highlights the plight of the indigenous peoples of Historic Palestine who remained in the 1948 borders with the creation of Israel. The situation of the Bedouin in the Naqab have long been subject to hardships in spite of formally existing as Israeli citizens, but have still lived in similar circumstances to their kin in the West Bank and Gaza. In 2011, 1000 houses were demolished and since the 1970s the Bedouin have been harassed and attacked by ‘Green Patrols’, a miltary unit set up by Ariel Sharon as part of the Agricultural ministry to specifically target Bedouin, and in recent times these duties have been taken over by by settlers from Kibutzes in the Naqab who often attack and intimidate the population. The Prawer Plan and the discriminatory laws and tactics used against non-Jewish citizens of Israel highlight the concerns of Israel’s demand to be recognised as a Jewish State in the ‘peace’ talks. Non-Jewish citizens are already being internally displaced through pogroms and discriminatory laws. Recognising Israel as a Jewish State will confirm that they are unequal and do not belong, regardless of their indigenous status and history of the land.
