Tag: Jenin

Israeli forces extra-judicially execute man in Jenin area

Ala Ad-Din Abu Ar-Roub, killed by Israeli forces
Ala Ad-Din Abu Ar-Roub, killed by Israeli forces

A 21 year old man, Ala Ad-Din Abu Ar-Roub, from Qabatiya village near Jenin was killed early Thursday morning after his home was surrounded and entered by a large number of Israeli forces.

According to family members, Ala was working on his computer in his room at 4:30am when the soldiers attacked the house, blowing open the front door and entering without warning. Ala was killed by multiple gunshots to the head and chest while his brother Muhammed lay sleeping on a mattress next to him.

The Israeli forces then forced all of the family members outside after violently subduing Ala’s mother who had attempted to come to his aid. The family members including children were not even permitted to put on outdoor clothing or shoes before exiting the house.

After the family was evacuated, the Israeli forces laid explosive charges inside the house, blowing open a large hole in one wall and damaging much of the internal structure of the house. The family was prevented from attending to Ala during this time and had no knowledge of his condition.

Family members claimed that they had been given no indication by Israeli forces that Ala was wanted on any charges although he had been imprisoned more than a year previously. They stated that he had not been involved recently in any political activity and would not have been living unprotected at the family home if he had believed he was a target of Israeli security forces.

Abu Ar-Roub was shot multiple times while his brother lay on a matress next to him
Abu Ar-Roub was shot multiple times while his brother lay on a matress next to him

Ala was the oldest child of the Abu Ar-Roub family, and is survived by his parents and brother Muhammed and seven sisters. He had previously studied electrical engineering and intended to continue his studies. He also enjoyed various athletic activities.

According to village sources, this is the first targeted assassination in the Jenin area in over a year, although arrests have been common by Israeli forces. Such extra-judicial executions by the occupying forces are flagrant violations of international and humanitarian law.

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.