Israeli plan for the renewed confiscation of lands around Alei Zahav illegal settlement.
The Israeli Occupation Forces have recently announced a new sequence of land seizures in eleven villages in Salfeet (Salfit) District and three in the Qalqilya area of Occupied Palestine. The total amount of land being confiscated, for “military/security” reasons, is the equivalent of nearly one million square metres. 850,000 of this is for the compulsory renewal of notices of land confiscation that had already been issued, the rest is made up of new illegal acquisitions.
Plan for the renewed confiscation of lands around Ari’el illegal settlement.
Residents in the fourteen villages – which include Bruqeen, Iskaka, Deir Istiya and Zawiya – were given notice of the seizures within the last two weeks. They were allowed just seven days to register appeals with the Israeli court. Many were unable to do so within the tight deadline, which required producing notarised copies of land title deeds, and the additional expense of hiring a lawyer to represent them. Based on bitter past experience the majority of residents, however, chose not to register appeals, as the Israeli courts have proven themselves to be completely unwilling previously to overturn any order raised by the military that cite ‘security concerns’.
A view of Marda village, overwhelmed by the Ari’el illegal settlement.
Despite some appeals having been lodged with the court, the Israeli Army has nonetheless continued to occupy the confiscated land in question, and erected fences and other barriers on the disputed new land. Residents can now only gain access to tend crops or pick olives if they apply to the Israeli Army for a permit to enter their own land. This still means they have to pass through checkpoints and face humiliating delays, ID checks, bag searches and body searches.
5th of March 2016 | International Solidarity Movement, Ramallah team | East Jerusalem, occupied Palestine
In the early hours of Tuesday, 5th April, around 3am, an armed group of Israeli soldiers stormed the campus of Al Quds university in the area of Abu Dis, part of East Jerusalem. The soldiers terrorised security guards on duty and forcefully entered four rooms belonging to student political parties and confiscated equipment while completely destroying the rest of the rooms.
Destroyed items from the Tuesday morning raid gathered outside the rooms
During the early hours of the morning the only people present at the university campus were the campus security, they were rounded up and locked together in a room, they were given no reason from the soldiers as to why they were being locked in a room nor as to why the soldiers were entering the campus grounds. The soldiers proceeded to forcefully enter four rooms belonging to various political parties run by students of the university, cutting the locks and smashing their way in, completely destroying the doors. This is the fourth time in 2016 alone that soldiers have entered the campus, destroying and confiscating material while giving no reason for their actions.
One of the computers amongst other items destroyed in the raid
The rooms entered belong to varying student bodies who’s students work within the university and the local community. Among the varied groups they advocate student rights, create activities within the campus and surrounding neighbourhoods, hold discussions on the state of the middle east, volunteer within the community, offer services for students, hold workshops and meetings about young prisoners and host an array of solidarity activities for the Palestinian community.
Students cleaning up debris from Tuesday’s raid
During the raid the army took personal computers, laptops and cameras belonging to the Islamic party. Around one hundred and seventy flags were confiscated from the union party room and all of their stationary equipment for creative activities. Whatever was not taken was destroyed during the raid by the occupying forces.
Damaged items from the raid
The activities room for the ladies Islamic movement which works mainly with disadvantaged youths and students had the majority of their belongings destroyed, posters ripped from walls and electronic equipment confiscated.
The activities room for the ladies Islamic movement
The area of Abu Dis were the university is located was around thirty thousand hectares prior to 2002 and is now around four thousand hectares with 75% of the area now falling under area C and 25% under area B. This malicious land grab by the Israeli government has left students facing huge difficulties with their education. Many students within the faculty of medicine can’t reach Jerusalem where the main hospital for training is located and have been forced to go elsewhere for their practical while the media faculty faces new difficulties also. Since the beginning of what most would call the third intifada, checkpoints leading into the city of Ramallah, where the media students must go to complete their practical work have become extremely tightened and students are often denied access to the area or face long waits to enter.
The annexation wall surrounding the university
On the 2nd November, 2015, Israeli forces entered the campus around 4pm and began firing on students using tear gas, rubber coated steel bullets and even using live ammunition. Over two hundred students were injured and required medical care while two students were seriously injured, with access to Jerusalem hospital unavailable the students were forced to travel over an hour to the city of Ramallah for treatment.
One of the destroyed rooms
With the student elections to take place on April 19th, this attack falls into Israel’s wider policy of targeting political activity within student campuses and bodies as a means of repressing resistance to the occupation.
Four students of the university have been killed by Israeli forces since November, 2015.
29th March 2016 | International Solidarity Movement, al-Khalil team | Gaza Strip, occupied Palestine
A new report from Corporate Watch outlines exactly how the food grown in the illegal settlements of Palestine gets to our plates in Britain, and what we (in Britain) can do about it. The situations in Gaza and the West Bank are quite different so our summary here for ISM will look at it in three parts. Today:
The Israelis evacuated direct occupation of Gaza in 2005 but its control over that tiny strip of land remains almost total. Israel controls borders and with it all imports and exports. The effect on the Gazan economy has been calamitous. A buffer zone agreed in the 1990s under the Oslo accords has expanded until it covers over a third of all agricultural land, and exactly where that zone lies is unclear and changeable. Closest to the border farmers risk being shot at and further away land and crops may be destroyed. Over fifty farmers have been killed in the buffer zone, thousands of farms, nearly a thousand houses, mosques, schools and water wells have been destroyed. But farmers must continue to farm to make a living and to hold on to the land.
What cannot be sold in Gaza is largely waste: Israel only allows a tiny proportion of Gazan food produce to be exported, and that through Israeli companies.
Gazan farmers are calling for a boycott of all produce exported through Israeli companies although they know it will initially harm their livelihoods even more: ‘The Israeli occupation allows us to export a small quantity of produce, just to show the world that they are nice to the Palestinians, but they are using us. Everything they do is controlled by them,’ says Sa’ad Ziada from the Gazan agricultural union, UAWC.
