Tag: Jenin

Ha’aretz: IDF brings peace activist back to Jenin

By Meron Rapaport

Early Wednesday morning, a convoy of armored personnel carriers and four Israel Defense Forces jeeps entered Jenin – not an unusual event, but one of the armored jeeps had four very unusual passengers. The four foreigners had previously spent time in Jenin as volunteer aid workers and remember Israeli soldiers mostly as the ones pointing guns at them. This time, however, they came with the army to reenact their version of how IDF soldiers shot one of them in the face, seriously wounding him.

In April 2003, Brian Avery, a 24-year-old American volunteering with the International Solidarity Movement, went outside with other group members to assist Palestinian medics in Jenin. The aid workers came under fire, apparently from an Israeli APC. Avery was hit in the face and spent several weeks in Haifa’s Rambam Medical Center undergoing a series of operations to reconstruct his face.

Avery and his friends claimed the IDF soldiers fired on them despite clear evidence that they were unarmed civilians. The IDF denied this. In late 2006, however, following a petition to the High Court of Justice, the army agreed to launch a criminal investigation to determine if Avery’s shooting was unlawful. As part of the probe, the IDF agreed to the unusual measure of bringing Avery and three other volunteers to Israel at army expense.

Avery and the other three – Jens Sandvek of Sweden, Ewa Jasiewicz of Britain and Danish national Lasse Schmidt – were interrogated by the military police and then rode APCs into Jenin to re-enact the incident. The four also testified yesterday in a damages suit Avery has filed against the state. Avery’s lawyer, Shlomo Lecker, said the four testified that Avery was intentionally shot from an APC 15 meters away under good visibility conditions. They also said the APC left without offering medical assistance.

“It was unreal, like nothing I have ever been through,” Avery said during an interview in a Jerusalem hotel after the trip to Jenin. In contrast to what they were told in advance, the re-enactment did not take place on the actual street. Instead, the four pointed through the jeep’s bulletproof windows to where each of them was standing at the time of the shooting, and military police photographed the spots.

Avery said the atmosphere in the jeep was tense, and he felt that not all the soldiers were happy about the mission. But he called the investigators themselves “very professional and businesslike.” He said the military policemen told him that the soldiers who shot at him were in another jeep, but he was not told which.

All four of the former ISM volunteers have had unpleasant experiences with official Israel. Some of them have trouble entering the country, so being here as the army’s guests was odd. So was the ride through Jenin in an IDF jeep, afraid their Palestinian friends would recognize them and believe they had become collaborators with Israel.

The ISM volunteers said the jeep ride was the first time they saw IDF soldiers looking scared. “They see everything through the bulletproof glass; it’s a kind of prison,” Jasiewicz said. Schmidt added: “You can understand how the soldiers are disconnected from reality, why they see everything in black and white.”

But the jeep ride did not change the foreigners’ belief that Avery was shot intentionally. The shooting occurred shortly after the deaths of two other ISM volunteers – American Rachel Corrie and Briton Tom Hurndall – and Schmidt is convinced this was no coincidence.

Avery said he met the “other” Israeli after the shooting: Many Israelis visited him in the hospital.

However, he felt deserted by his own government. “They offered me no help and did not demand that Israel investigate. It’s night and day compared to what the British did for Tom Hurndall.”

A legal source said that British pressure contributed greatly to the start of a probe into Hurndall’s death, which eventually landed one soldier with an eight-year prison term. The U.S. embassy declined to comment on Avery’s allegations.

“It is not so important to me that the soldiers go to jail,” Avery said. “It is important to me that they be held responsible for what they did.”

Army sources said this is not the first time witnesses have been brought from abroad to testify in a Military Police probe. They said the soldiers who were in Jenin at the time of the shooting were also interrogated, and stressed that they know of no connection between Avery’s injury and the deaths of other international volunteers.

“We do not plan to give details of the measures taken in the probe before conclusions have been reached,” added one.

Peace Activist Wounded by IOF Fire Returns to Sue

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

On the night of April 5th, 2003, in the west bank city of Jenin, Brian Avery from North Carolina was shot in the face by machine-gun fire from an approaching Israeli Army APC. He did not die, the bullet penetrated his nose, broke the bones in his nose, hit his eye and exited from the other cheek. He has since needed to go through six operations and there are still more to go.

Brian Avery has now come back to the country, alongside friends and witnesses, and is suing the State of Israel. The trial, under Judge Kanafi Steinmetz, will open in East Jerusalem, at the District Court on Salah al-Din Street (opposite the Ministry of Justice) on Thursday, September 20th, 2007, at 9 am. Brian Avery will be legally represented by attorney Shlomo Lecker.

For further information:

Attorney Shlomo Lecker: 02 – 623 3695
Bilha Golan: 050 – 763 8568

Archive articles:

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/792477.html

http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/jpost/access/1131529421.html?dids=1131529421:1131529421&FMT=ABS&FMTS=ABS:FT&date=Sep+21%2C+2006&author=DAN+IZENBERG&pub=Jerusalem+Post&edition=&startpage=03&desc=Court+agrees+to+hear+petition+demanding+Military+Police+probe+shootin

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/1,7340,3052141,00.html

http://www.freepalestinecampaig n.org/brian_avery.htm

Almost Another Massacre in Jenin

Jenin, September 11th

In the early morning hours one of the biggest Israeli invasions since weeks occurred in the refugee camp of Jenin. It was also close to becoming one of the biggest massacres.

At around 7:30am this morning, nine Palestinian boys were injured by Israeli gunfire in the refugee camp of Jenin.

Locals reported that at approximately 3am numerous IOF jeeps entered the camp, coming from several directions. While the governorate officially confirmed the presence of at least 11 Israeli military vehicles, many eyewitnesses reported more then thirty.

The army besieged the house of a local male in the east of the camp, causing resistance by Palestinian freedom fighters. Several explosions could be heard during the night. While some locals reported that they were caused by grenades thrown by Islamic Jihad at Israeli soldiers, others reported that the army caused the explosions themselves.

While during these clashes no casualties could be reported, Israeli soldiers almost created a massacre among local schoolchildren. Between 7:15 and 7:30am dozens of young kids left their houses for school. When some of them started to throw bottles and stones at the IOF jeeps, soldiers began randomly shooting at the children without giving any warning.

9 young boys aged between 13 and 16 were left wounded. Some of them were hit by live bullets in legs and torso. They were brought to hospitals in Jenin and Nablus. At the time being it’s still uncertain if one of the boys, who received a shot into his stomach, is going to survive.

Potentially coinciding with this invasion the IOF conducted several other actions during this night in Jenin area.

Security sources reported that from 9pm to 4am the IOF entered numerous Palestinian villages, like Al-Araqa and Maithalun. At 9pm IOF jeeps were also seen blocking Haifa road in the northwest of Jenin, as well as Nablus road later that evening. Furthermore a number of flying checkpoints were placed around Jenin during the night. Witnesses reported that soldiers were searching cars with the help of dogs. Checkpoints were placed at Arraba, Hadad, Kafr Ra’i and al-Jarba.

Meanwhile a Palestinian child from Jenin died of injuries he received, when last Thursday an Israeli soldier shot a rubber coated steel bullet into his head

Salamat Sahbi Akram

It was meant to become one of those reports about these surrealities, you probably only can find in Palestine. About the tension of a nightly visit to an internet cafe, which ended up surrounded by security forces. A story about the absurdity of a night, where every passing Jeep spit more disguised men on an extinct street, who wished a friendly as-salem alaikum with pointed Kalashnikovs. About the humor of a night, where inspite of fighting lasting for hours, nine year old children could be seen passing by on pink bicycles. And it was meant to become a report about the tragedy of an evening, where once again Palestinians fought against each other.

But on the next morning nothing is left but tragedy. My friend Akram is dead, he died last night.

It was Thursday about 10 pm, when members of the Palestinian security forces in Jenin routinely stopped a car in order to check its registration papers. The people inside were members of Islamic Jihad and they don’t like to be checked so easily, even less so by the disdainful security forces. Just some few dozen meters lie between them and Jenin refugee camp. The place where they have the power, the place where security forces are not admitted. Clashes break out, verbally, when Akram joins the scene to arbitrate. Seconds later he lies on the street with two bullets in his chest.

Akram Ibrahim Abu as-Sba’, the man who I always took for two when I became acquainted with him, cause I didn’t recognize him in his uniform, was brought to Jenin’s government hospital and died there a little later. Killed by fighters of Islamic Jihad. Murdered because of a stolen car.

Barely 24 hours before we were sitting comfortably in his little store, lounging in two blue plastic chairs. This small DVD store in the center of Jenin, where he probably never sold a single movie, but where you could always find him after 12. Where we so often spent time together in aimless conversation. About the confusion of Palestinian policy, about alcohol and our work. About the invasion last night, about girls and stolen cameras.

But much more then our conversations, his person stays in my memory. How he, always grinning, lingered behind his desk, nothing ever on top except an ashtray and a pack of cigarettes. How he didn’t understand my questions, because he had had one glass of Arak too much. Or how this man who spoke English fluently, always questioning himself after every second sentence, if his chosen words really had the intended meaning. How, when I moaned that I needed to meet this leader or that chairman, he simply, without promises lasting for weeks, looked up the suitable number in his mobile and placed the desired person next to me minutes later.

Always when the daily life in the camp, the hospitality, became too much, when the people became too pushy for me, I came to visit him. To get away for a while from what is so special here, but often also hardly bearable in this city. That is not to say that Akram wasn’t a typical inhabitant of Jenin, a typical Mucheiemi, but he was never too extreme. He was faithful to Fatah, but did not hate Hamas. He was a member of Abu Mazen’s Force 17, but he respected the militias. He had this typical Arabic hospitality, but you didn’t have to beg him to refuse a coffee. Some years ago the Israelis destroyed his house, but he didn’t hate those who once again turned his family into refugees.

If they give me Mucheiem I am happy, he said once while looking at the prospective shape of a Palestinian state. And if you know him, you know that this was probably not far from the truth. Akram was a happy man. He was happy as a husband, happy as a father of four children and just happy sitting behind his big desk in his small DVD store.

Now some more dozen posters are added to the thousands on the house walls of Jenin. Now also Akram lies here besides all the others in the martyr graveyard of the refugee camp of Jenin. The occupation is not exciting. The occupation is not an accumulation of bizarre everyday situations. And even if it seems to be absurd, it is never comic. Not even if it lasts 60 years. Occupation means suffering and dying – everyday.

But of the few things that are left under this occupation, we at least have friendship. In Mucheiem Jenin there is hardly a guy to find, who can be called such a one by so many people. He was a great friend. Salamat sahbi Akram.

ISM-Member Akram killed during clashes in Jenin

6th September 2007

Akram Ibrahim Abu Sba’, member of the ISM regional committee Jenin and co-founder of one of ISM’s first permanent presences was killed by members of Islamic Jihad in the north Palestinian city of Jenin.

Akram was killed on duty, when he tried to smooth tensions between members of Palestinian security forces and members of Islamic Jihad.

Palestinian police officers and members of the security forces reported the following:

At approximately 10 pm Palestinian security forces stopped a car on Mustashfa street, near Jenin’s governmental hospital. The car driver, member of Islamic Jihads Al-Quds Brigade couldn’t show any valid registration papers for the car and so verbal clashes erupted between the people in the car and the security forces. When Akram, also member of the security forces joined the scene in order to smooth the clashes, he was shot twice in the chest by one of the men, sitting in the car. He was brought to Jenin’s governmental hospital and passed away as a consequence of his injuries.

Akram was buried on the graveyard of Jenin refugee camp at 3.30 pm.