Tag: Jenin

JPost: State to compensate wounded activist

By Dan Izenberg

To view original article, published by The Jerusalem Post on the 19th November, click here

The state will pay human rights activist Brian Avery NIS 600,000 in damages in an out-of-court settlement reached Wednesday with his Israeli lawyer, Shlomo Lecker.

Avery, a member of the pro-Palestinian International Solidarity Movement (ISM), was shot in Jenin on April 5, 2003 and suffered severe facial wounds. He has undergone at least six operations so far and has more to go.

“The sum does not reflect the injuries Avery suffered,” Lecker told The Jerusalem Post. “On the other hand, it’s one of the very few times the state has awarded damages to anyone hurt by the IDF during the Second Intifada.”

According to the description of events given by Avery and ISM volunteers who were with him, Avery and his flatmate, Jan Tobias Karrson, heard shooting near the apartment where they lived. They called other volunteers and went out to see if anyone needed medical help. By that time, it was dark and a curfew was in force.

According to their testimony, an IDF armored personnel carrier and a tank turned into the street and headed towards them. Avery was standing under a street light, wearing a red fluorescent jacket with the word “doctor” in English and Arabic on the front and back. He raised his hands to show the soldiers he was unarmed.

The vehicles continued to approach the group and the APC opened fire at a distance of a few dozen meters. Avery was hit in the face, his cheek was torn and his eye socket and jaw bones were smashed.

The army refused to order a military police investigation of the incident, claiming that a field probe had revealed that no soldiers on patrol in Jenin that night had reported an incident that resembled Avery’s description.

Avery petitioned the High Court to order the army to conduct a military police investigation. Before the court handed down a final decision, the army changed its mind and agreed to do so. The investigation began 15 months ago.

In the meantime, Avery also decided to sue the state for damages in a civil action in Jerusalem District Court. He and three other ISM volunteers who witnessed the incident came to testify at the first hearing in September 2007.

The out-of-court agreement reached Wednesday between the plaintiff and the state has put an end to the lawsuit. Lecker told the Post his client had agreed to accept the settlement because the military police investigation had already been underway for 15 months with no sign of an end. Furthermore, the courts, including the Supreme Court, routinely ruled in favor of the state in similar lawsuits involving Palestinians or foreigners so that “the chances of an appropriate decision were small.”

Lecker said Avery didn’t have full medical insurance coverage in the US and that the money the state was willing to pay would help defray some of the costs of the operations he must still undergo.

Resident of Ni’lin shot twice by rubber-coated steel bullets during demonstration in Ni’lin

Friday, October 17, 2008

On Friday 17th October, the village of Ni’lin held a peaceful prayer on their land followed by a demonstration over property that has been annexed by the Israeli government to build the Apartheid Wall. At 11.30, Ni’lin residents held a prayer for the return of their land. Immediately after, around 150 Palestinians along with Israeli and international activists, were shot at with tear gas, sound grenades and rubber bullets.

The Israeli army began shooting at demonstrators around noon and continued to shoot while moving throughout the olive groves until 13.30. The soldiers withdrew to the construction site near a current checkpoint where over 100 settlers where waving Israeli flags and chanting insults on a loudspeaker.

The Israeli army had five jeeps and around 30 soldiers close to the site where three bulldozers were working to build the Apartheid Wall. While the settlers remained at the site, soldiers continued to shoot rubber-coated steel bullets and tear gas from both the construction area and from the olive groves to the side of the demonstrators.

At around 14.00 the bulldozers ceased their construction for the day and the settlers left the site, followed shortly by most of the soldiers. The Popular Committee of Ni’lin then declared the end of the demonstration and demonstrators proceeded to head back towards the village. While most of the 150 demonstrators suffered from tear gas inhalation, it is reported that a total of ten people where injured by rubber bullets. Mohammad Hussain Srour, 22 years old, was shot on his knee by two rubber bullets and taken to the Ramallah hospital.

Interview: Boycotting Israel at the Arab American University in Jenin

Aaron Lakoff is an independent journalist from Montreal, Canada. He is currently volunteering with the International Middle East Media Center, www.imemc.org, in Beit Sahour, Palestine. He previous reports can be found on his blog

Ashraf is from Tulkarem, Palestine. He graduated from the Arab American University in Jenin (www.aauj.edu) in the summer of 2007 with a degree in computer information technology. With the student group Green Resistance at his university, he organized a successful boycott campaign which saw Israeli products banned from the campus.

In this interview, Ashraf talks about boycotts as a highly effective tool of non-violent resistance against the occupation, and also reflects on the campaign as part of an international campaign of Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) against Israeli apartheid.

—————–
Interview conducted by Aaron Lakoff in Ramallah, Palestine on April 19, 2008.

Aaron: I wanted to talk about the boycott campaign at your school. Can you start from the beginning and tell me what kind of Israeli products were being sold there, and why you and other students decided to start a boycott campaign.

Asrhaf: Well first of all, in general, Israeli products are almost everywhere, inside every single Palestinian shop inside the West Bank and Gaza. In our situation at the Arab American University, we had almost no Palestinian products. It was only Israeli juice and Israeli water. So first we started by studying how many students buy Israeli juice and water. At the beginning we thought of focusing on one product which has an alternative, like water or juice, so that this would be more effective. And also for students to understand and buy the other alternative.

So we found out that everyday, 5-6 thousand shekels ($1580 US) goes to Israel only by buying only Israeli juice, which is called Tapuzina. And so if you take the sales taxes, you come up with around 360 shekels which goes directly to the Israeli army. Basically half of the Israeli government’s budget goes to the army, so we did a lot of research and tried to find out how to come up with exactly how many shekels goes to the Israeli army so that we could create an awareness amongst students.

So by gathering information and statistics from 2005-2006 on how much Palestinian buy Israeli liquids like water and juice, and we used these figures in our campaign.

Aaron: And when did the AAUJ decide to stop selling Israeli products?

Ashraf: They stopped about a year ago.

Aaron: What were some of the tactics for this campaign? How did you convince other students to get involved?

Ashraf: One of the big powerful ways to create awareness amongst students is statistics and figures on the ground, because most Palestinians are not aware of how much money we’re giving Israel through buying their products. And we don’t know how much that can really change things, when we know that the first market for Israel is the Palestinians, we can use that as a powerful weapon to change the policy of Israel against Palestinians as a part of the non-violent resistance. And it actually has been used in places like South Africa and India, and it worked. And definitely, 100%,
it can work here.

Aaron: What were some of the names of Palestinian companies whose products you could find at your school?

Ashraf: You could find the Israeli juice, Tapuzina. You could find the Israeli water, Ein Gedi. You could find some other products like ice cream, citruses, but we mostly focused on juice or water.

Aaron: I know with some of these Israeli products, sometimes they are manufactured in settlements, or using Palestinian “cheap labour”. Was that the case with any of these products?

Ashraf: Definitely with Tapuzina, on the label of the product, it doesn’t say exactly where it comes from. It just says “Israel”. And there has been a court hearing, and at the court they wanted to say exactly where it comes from, because it does come from a settlement. So far it still says Israel, but it doesn’t say where it comes from. The same thing with Ein
Gedi.

Aaron: What was the outcome of the campaign? How was it won in the end?

Ashraf: Well, our main focus was on the students. Our future plan or goal was of course to make the university stop brining Tapuzina and Israeli products on campus.

But at the same time, you can have only Palestinian products on campus, but the students can buy Israeli products outside. So basically we were focusing on students and trying to educate them with statistics and numbers – trying to make them see that we are actually supporting our occupier, supporting the Israeli army by giving them our money. And
according to Palestinian statistics in 2005, Palestinians spend around 800 million dollars only on liquids – juice and water. 800 million dollars goes directly to Israel. So focusing on this number, if we can stop giving Israel 800 million dollars every year just from their water… it’s actually water from settlements which has been confiscated and stolen from
Palestinian villages… so by stopping giving this amount of money, 100% it will change something.

Aaron: How many students are at the AAUJ?

Ashraf: This year there were around 4 000.

Aaron: And what are the conditions for people going to school there? What are some of the obstacles that the Israeli occupation has put in place for students?

Ashraf: At the beginning of the first uprising, the first Intifada, most universities were closed. For example, Birzeit University was closed for 6 years. Hebron University was closed as well. This is why I chose to study at the AAUJ. Because when I finished high school, that was the only university that was sort of available, or easy to access. Other
universities I would have had to go through checkpoints, or find an apartment. Even at our university we had curfews. The army comes to the universities and sets up checkpoints in front of the gate and stops students from getting their education. So yes, the education system in Palestine has been widely affected by the occupation.

Aaron: So now that Israeli juices and water aren’t sold at your university, are their Palestinian products which are being sold in their place? What are the alternatives?

Ashraf: Well, now they are selling Egyptian and Palestinian juice.

Aaron: This boycott campaign at your school is in a wider context of a very large movement here in Palestine for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (against Israel). Can you talk a bit about how you see the campaign at your school, and how it fits in with this larger, worldwide campaign to boycott Israeli apartheid?

Ashraf: Our university was not the only example. At Birzeit University they had a boycott campaign. At some other universities, like An-Najah University, they started a boycott campaign recently. And also in villages like Beit Sahour in the 1980’s they had a boycott campaign as well.

I personally feel it’s a very powerful way to resist the occupation in a very non-violent way. Obviously everything is about the economy. If the Israeli economy is down, they have to think about that before they do anything else. And if we are the main market for Israel, that’s something we can use to resist the occupation.

And the same thing abroad, in other countries in Europe or America or Canada, definitely the boycott and divestment definitely can create some pressure.

For more information on the global BDS campaign against Israeli apartheid, see:
www.pacbi.org
www.stopthewall.org
www.caiaweb.org

Harassment and murder during invasions in Qabatiya, near Jenin

The West Bank town of Qabatiya, just south of Jenin, is home to over 20,000 people. According to local residents the Israeli army invade the town every night from their base in Salem. As they invade, usually very early in the morning, they throw sound bombs and fire live ammunition to alert the residents to their presence. Sometimes they set up sniper positions, usually in empty houses or rooftops but often inside people’s homes, ransacking the properties during the occupation. The size and scope of the invasions varies from a few jeeps and foot patrols to full scale invasions of the town with, up to 30 jeeps and Armored Personnel Carriers (APCs). Sometimes they make arrests, and in the last month three people have been killed and another seriously wounded during the incursions.

During an incursion on the morning of February 4th, three fighters were shot. The soldiers denied a local ambulance access to one man who had been shot until he had died of his injuries two hours later. Another man was killed immediately, the other was injured but managed to escape.

Tayseer Nazzal was shot during a large scale invasion on the morning of February 7th. 20 jeeps had invaded, with a bulldozer and a helicopter hovering above. Tayseer, who has mental health problems, was on the streets. According to local sources, the soldiers were looking for a wanted man also named Tayseer, a common name in Palestine. When the soldiers asked Mr Nazzal who he was he replied Tayseer. Despite the fact that Mr Nazzal is 50 years old, much older than the fighter who shares his name, the soldiers mistook him for the wanted man. They proceeded to fire over 20 bullets into his legs. He was taken to the local hospital where one of his legs was amputated in an attempt to save his life, but he died of his wounds a week later.

Ha’aretz: Twilight Zone – The children of 5767

By: Gideon Levy

September 28th, 2007

It was a pretty quiet year, relatively speaking. Only 457 Palestinians and 10 Israelis were killed, according to the B’Tselem human rights organization, including the victims of Qassam rockets. Fewer casualties than in many previous years. However, it was still a terrible year: 92 Palestinian children were killed (fortunately, not a single Israeli child was killed by Palestinians, despite the Qassams). One-fifth of the Palestinians killed were children and teens – a disproportionate, almost unprecedented number. The Jewish year of 5767. Almost 100 children, who were alive and playing last New Year, didn’t survive to see this one.

One year. Close to 8,000 kilometers were covered in the newspaper’s small, armored Rover – not including the hundreds of kilometers in the old yellow Mercedes taxi belonging to Munir and Sa’id, our dedicated drivers in Gaza. This is how we celebrated the 40th anniversary of the occupation. No one can argue anymore that it’s only a temporary, passing phenomenon. Israel is the occupation. The occupation is Israel.

We set out each week in the footsteps of the fighters, in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, trying to document the deeds of Israel Defense Forces soldiers, Border Police officers, Shin Bet security service investigators and Civil Administration personnel – the mighty occupation army that leaves behind in its wake horrific killing and destruction, this year as every year, for four decades.

And this was the year of the children that were killed. We didn’t get to all of their homes, only to some; homes of bereavement where parents weep bitterly over their children, who were climbing a fig tree in the yard, or sitting on a bench in the street, or preparing for an exam, or on their way home from school, or sleeping peacefully in the false security of their homes.

A few of them also threw a rock at an armored vehicle or touched a forbidden fence. All came under live fire, some of which was deliberately aimed at them, cutting them down in their youth. From Mohammed (al-Zakh) to Mahmoud (al-Qarinawi), from the boy who was buried twice in Gaza to the boy who was buried in Israel. These are the stories of the children of 5767.

The first of them was buried twice. Abdullah al-Zakh identified half of the body of his son Mahmoud, in the morgue refrigerator of Shifa Hospital in Gaza, by the boy’s belt and the socks on his feet. This was shortly before last Rosh Hashanah. The next day, when the Israel Defense Forces “successfully” completed Operation Locked Kindergarten, as it was called, leaving behind 22 dead and a razed neighborhood, and left Sajiyeh in Gaza, the bereaved father found the remaining parts of the body and brought them for a belated burial.

Mahmoud was 14 when he died. He was killed three days before the start of the school year. Thus we ushered in Rosh Hashanah 5767. In Shifa we saw children whose legs were amputated, who were paralyzed or on respirators. Families were killed in their sleep, or while riding on donkeys, or working in the fields. Operation Locked Kindergarten and Operation Summer Rains. Remember? Five children were killed in the first operation, with the dreadful name. For a week, the people of Sajiyeh lived in fear the likes of which Sderot residents have never experienced – not to belittle their anxiety, that is.

The day after Rosh Hashanah we traveled to Rafah. Dam Hamad, 14, had been killed in her sleep, in her mother’s arms, by an Israeli rocket strike that sent a concrete pillar crashing down on her head. She was the only daughter of her paralyzed mother, her whole world. In the family’s impoverished home in the Brazil neighborhood, at the edge of Rafah, we met the mother who lay in a heap in bed; everything she had in the world was gone. Outside, I remarked to the reporter from French television who accompanied me that this was one of those moments when I felt ashamed to be an Israeli. The next day he called and said: “They didn’t broadcast what you said, for fear of the Jewish viewers in France.”

Soon afterward we went back to Jerusalem to visit Maria Aman, the amazing little girl from Gaza, who lost nearly everyone in her life to a missile strike gone awry that wiped out her innocent family, including her mother, while riding in their car. Her devoted father Hamdi remains by her side. For a year and a half, she has been cared for at the wonderful Alyn Hospital, where she has learned to feed a parrot with her mouth and to operate her wheelchair using her chin. All the rest of her limbs are paralyzed. She is connected day and night to a respirator. Still, she is a cheerful and neatly groomed child whose father fears the day they might be sent back to Gaza.

For now, they remain in Israel. Many Israelis have devoted themselves to Maria and come to visit her regularly. A few weeks ago, broadcast journalist Leah Lior took her in her car to see the sea in Tel Aviv. It was a Saturday night, and the area was crowded with people out for a good time, but the girl in the wheelchair attracted attention. Some people recognized her and stopped to say hello and wish her well. Who knows? Maybe the pilot who fired the missile at her car happened to be passing by, too.

Not everyone has been fortunate enough to receive the treatment that Maria has had. In mid- November, a few days after the bombardment of Beit Hanoun – remember that? – we arrived in the battered and bleeding town: 22 killed in a moment, 11 shells dropped on a densely packed town. Islam, 14, sat there dressed in black, grieving for her eight relatives that had been killed, including her mother and grandmother. Those disabled by this bombardment didn’t get to go to Alyn.

Two days before the shelling of Beit Hanoun, our forces also fired a missile that hit the minibus transporting children to the Indira Gandhi kindergarten in Beit Lahia. Two kids, passersby, were killed on the spot. The teacher, Najwa Khalif, died a few days later. She was wounded in clear view of her 20 small pupils, who were sitting in the minibus. After her death, the children drew a picture: a row of children lying bleeding, their teacher in the front, and an Israeli plane bombing them. At the Indira Gandhi kindergarten, we had to bid good-bye to Gaza, too: Since then, we haven’t been able to cross into the Strip.

But the children have come to us. In November, 31 children were killed in Gaza. One of them, Ayman al-Mahdi, died in Sheba Medical Center at Tel Hashomer, where he had been rushed in grave condition. Only his uncle was permitted to stay with him during his final days. A fifth-grader, Ayman had been sitting with friends on a bench on a street in Jabalya, right by his school. A bullet fired from a tank struck him. He was just 10 years old.

IDF troops killed children in the West Bank, too. Jamil Jabaji, a boy who tended horses in the new Askar refugee camp, was shot in the head. He was 14 when he was killed, last December. He and his friends were throwing rocks at the armored vehicle that passed by the camp, located near Nablus. The driver provoked the children, slowing down and speeding up, slowing down and speeding up, until finally a soldier got out, aimed at the boy’s head and fired. Jamil’s horses were left in their stable, and his family was left to mourn.

And what did 16-year-old Taha al-Jawi do to get himself killed? The IDF claimed that he tried to sabotage the barbed-wire fence surrounding the abandoned Atarot airport; his friends said he was just playing soccer and had gone to chase after the ball. Whatever the circumstances, the response from the soldiers was quick and decisive: a bullet in the leg that caused him to bleed to death, lying in a muddy ditch by the side of the road. Not a word of regret, not a word of condemnation from the IDF spokesman, when we asked for a comment. Live fire directed at unarmed children who weren’t endangering anyone, with no prior warning.

Abir Aramin was even younger; she was just 11. The daughter of an activist in the Combatants for Peace organization, in January she left her school in Anata and was on the way to buy candy in a little shop. She was fired upon from a Border Police vehicle. Bassam, her father, told us back then with bloodshot eyes and in a strangled voice: “I told myself that I don’t want to take revenge. Revenge will be for this ‘hero,’ who was so ‘threatened’ by my daughter that he shot and killed her, to stand trial for it.” But just a few days ago the authorities announced that the case was being closed: The Border Police apparently acted appropriately.

“I’m not going to exploit my daughter’s blood for political purposes. This is a human outcry. I’m not going to lose my mind just because I lost my heart,” the grieving father, who has many Israeli friends, also told us.

In Nablus, we documented the use of children as human shields – the use of the so-called “neighbor procedure” – involving an 11-year-old girl, a 12-year-old boy and a 15-year-old boy. So what if the High Court of Justice has outlawed it? We also recorded the story of the death of baby Khaled, whose parents, Sana and Daoud Fakih, tried to rush him to the hospital in the middle of the night, a time when Palestinian babies apparently mustn’t get sick: The baby died at the checkpoint.

In Kafr al-Shuhada (the “martyrs’ village”) south of Jenin, in March, 15-year-old Ahmed Asasa was fleeing from soldiers who had entered the village. A sniper’s bullet caught him in the neck.

Bushra Bargis hadn’t even left her home. In late April she was studying for a big test, notebooks in hand, pacing around her room in the Jenin refugee camp in the early evening, when a sniper shot her in the forehead from quite far away. Her bloodstained notebooks bore witness to her final moments.

And what about the unborn babies? They weren’t safe either. A bullet in the back of Maha Qatuni, a woman who was seven months pregnant and got up during the night to protect her children in their home, struck her fetus in the womb, shattering its head. The wounded mother lay in the Rafidiya Hospital in Nablus, hooked up to numerous tubes. She was going to name the baby Daoud. Does killing a fetus count as murder? And how “old” was the deceased? He was certainly the youngest of the many children Israel killed in the past year.

Happy New Year.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/907708.html