Tag: Live Ammunition - Page 59 - International Solidarity Movement

Eight year old boy shot in his head by rubber-coated steel bullet, two arrested during Ni’lin’s weekly protest

1 January 2010

During today’s demonstration in Ni’lin – marking the anniversary of the Fatah movement – one eight year old boy was injured in the head with a rubber-coated steel bullet and two teenage boys (15 and 17 years old) arrested.

Around 500 people, including international and Israeli activists attended today’s weekly Friday protest against the Apartheid Wall in Ni’lin. Ni’lin celebrated the anniversary of the Fatah movement, hereby attracting a large number of people for this week’s demonstration, including high profile Fatah members such as dr. Sabri Saydam, Tawfiq Terawi, Ra’ed Radwan and Mahmoud Aloul. The Israeli army had closed the entrance of the village, but many people managed to get into the village to attend the event.

After the Friday prayer and a speech by Mahmoud Aloul, participants marched towards the Apartheid Wall, chanting slogans and calling for national unity in order to overcome the occupation.

After the Friday prayer on the land, demonstrators marched towards one of the gates, chanting slogans against the confiscation of Palestinian land and called for an end to Israeli military occupation and justice for the Palestinian people.

When the demonstrators reached the Wall site, soldiers were awaiting them on the other side. After a group of youth had climbed the concrete blocks and planted flags on the Wall, the army came through the gates. Soldiers started launching large amounts of teargas canisters into the crowd, as well as firing rounds of rubber coated steel bullets and live ammunition. Many people experienced breathing problems.

The demonstration pulled back towards the village and soldiers tried to arrest demonstrators. Towards the end of the demonstration, soldiers arrested two youth (residents of Shuqba, a neighboring village) aged 15 and 17 years. When the soldiers started beating up these youngsters, other participants and Red Crescent volunteers tried to come to their rescue. Soldiers then assaulted one medical volunteer – Juma’a Khawaja, he was beaten with a gun. Israeli soldiers also fired live ammunition and rubber coated steel bullets, injuring an eight year old boy – who was shot in the head. The boy was immediately taken to Ramallah hospital where he received treatment. He was sent home later that night with six stitches in the back of his head. No further injuries were reported.

Later in the night, two jeeps entered the village and started shooting live ammunition and tear gas towards anybody who was walking outside. After twenty minutes, they left again.

Background

Recently, Israel has increased its attempts to bring the weekly demonstrations against the Wall to a forced end. In addition to a coordinated arrests campaign of the leadership and participants of these demonstrations, in the village of Ni’lin, the army has illegally reintroduced the use of 0.22” caliber live ammunition for crowd dispersal purposes. The 0.22” munitions, often colloquially referred to as “twotwo” were classified as live ammunition and banned as crowd-control measures already in 2001, by the then military Judge Advocate General, Menachem Finkelstein.

Despite this fact, the Israeli military resumed using the 0.22” munitions to disperse demonstrations in the West Bank in the wake of Operation Cast Lead. Since then at least two Palestinian demonstrators were killed by 0.22” fire:

on 13 February 2009, Az a-Din al-Jamal, age 14, was killed in Hebron
on 5 June 2009, Aqel Srour, age 35 in Ni’lin
28 other than Srour were injured by 0.22” bullets in Ni’lin alone

Following the death of Aqel Srour, JAG Brig. Gen. Avichai Mandelblit reasserted that the use of the 0.22” munitions “are not classified by the IDF as means for dispersing demonstrations or public disturbances”. Despite this clarification by the JAG, on 13 November 2009, the army resumed using the 0.22” munitions against demonstrators in Ni’lin, already injuring four demonstrators, in conditions very far removed from life-threatening situations (under which the shooting of live ammunition is permitted).

Three Palestinian men executed by Israeli military during Nablus night invasion, several wounded

26 December 2009

The Israeli army invaded the Palestinian city of Nablus shortly after midnight, Saturday 26 December, raided three houses and executed three men. Several family members have been injured and houses, where families of the three killed men lived, have been left completely destroyed. The army used live ammunition against the men, at least two of whom were unarmed and fired rockets at the houses, while their residents were still inside.

The Israeli military claims the men were wanted for their involvement in the recent West Bank killing of an Israeli settler near Tulkarem, for which a group associated with the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade claimed responsibility. The killings are, however, in flagrant breach of international law and represent assassinations without trial.

The human rights organization B’Tselem, who collected testimonies from family members of the three killed men, issued a statement condemning these killings. According to B’tselem, evidence gathered in the houses suggests that the Israeli military acted as if they were carrying out executions, rather than arrests. Eyewitnesses and relatives told the organization that at least two of the three men were unarmed and did not attempt to escape. This was confirmed by a senior IDF official, who told Israel Radio that the three men had not fired at the Israeli soldiers and that two of them were unarmed. B’Tselem also stated that, according to eyewitnesses, the soldiers did not try to stop or arrest the men, but simply shot them from a close range after discovering their identities.

First house the Israeli army invaded was the house of Gassan Abu Sharkh in the Old City of Nablus. Just after midnight, the military forced open the entrance door and ordered twenty members of Ghassan’s extended family to leave the house. Ghassan, who remained in the hallway, was shot several times from a short distance in his head. Ghassan’s family reported to ISM activists, who visited the scene in the morning, that the army fire was so intense that his head was split in half as result and the room was covered in blood and remains of his brain. Windows, doors, furniture were all destroyed by the soldiers. Ghassan (38), who worked as an electrician, left behind a wife, three sons and one daughter.

Second invaded house was also in the Old City and belonged to the family of Raed Sarakji. Israeli soldiers blew the door open with explosives at about 2.30am, entered the house and forced the entire family of twenty out of their home. They then opened fire on Raed as he was coming down the stairs. He was left to bleed to death in front of his family. His pregnant wife was shot in her foot. The military destroyed furniture in the house and broke many windows and doors.

The third house was raided at 3am, when the Israeli military in the force of approximately 180 soldiers (30 army jeeps) entered the Ras Al-Ain neighbourhood, close to the Old City, and occupied several houses surrounding the Subih family house. From the roofs of an adjacent house soldiers then fired several rockets at upper levels of the Subih house, leaving huge cavities in the walls and blowing a hole between the third and fourth levels of the house. The soldiers on the ground then blew open the door and entered the whole house, forcing the families one by one out into the street and firing live ammunition inside the house. The soldiers found and executed Anan Subih inside of the house, while members of his family were all detained outside. Anan was married and left behind five daughters and two sons. ISM activists reported bullet holes everywhere in the house, which was left ransacked and partially flooded after the army shot at the water tanks on its roof.

After the killings children gathered in the streets of Nablus throwing rocks at jeeps, to which the army responded by firing sound bombs and live ammunition. They left the city at 8am. Residents say Israeli spotter planes had been flying low over Nablus for the last two days, conducting reconnaissance missions.

Background

According to B’Tselem, during the second intifada, Israel formally adopted a policy of assassinating Palestinians suspected of membership in armed organizations. At least seventeen of the eighty-nine Palestinians killed by Israeli forces between 2004 and 2005, during arrest operations, were not wanted by Israel and were not suspected by Israel of having committed any offense. In addition, at least forty-three of those killed were unarmed, or were not attempting to use their arms against Israeli security forces at the time they were killed.

B’Tselem has documented cases in which Israeli soldiers besieged a house in which they claimed a wanted person was present, and then fired at another occupant of the house when he opened the door, without prior warning and without offering them a chance to surrender. In other cases, the security forces disarmed the wanted persons, but then shot and killed them. In all these cases, the security forces acted as if they were carrying out an assassination and not an arrest, in flagrant breach of international humanitarian law.

Based on the report’s findings, there is a grave suspicion that execution of Palestinians has become a norm among the Israeli forces. Since the beginning of the second intifada, only a few cases in which Palestinians were shot and killed by soldiers have been investigated and members of the security forces were not held accountable for their actions.

War on protest

Editorial | Haaretz

25 December 2009

The war the police and the Israel Defense Forces are openly waging against protests by left-wing and human rights activists has heated up in recent weeks. As a result, concern is growing over Israel’s image as a free and democratic country, one that accords equal and tolerant treatment to all its citizens and residents.

Nonviolent protests in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah against the expulsion of Palestinians from their homes by extreme right-wingers have met with a violent and disproportionate police response. The IDF has responded with insufferable harshness to protests against the separation fence in the Palestinian villages of Bil’in and Na’alin.

In Sheikh Jarrah, police are fielding unnecessarily large forces armed with tear gas and pepper spray. Over the past two weeks, no less than 50 demonstrators have been arrested at these protests.

In Bil’in and Na’alin, IDF soldiers are firing live rounds at unarmed protesters who do not endanger the soldiers’ lives, in violation of the military advocate general’s orders. Major arrest sweeps are also taking place in these two villages, of protest organizers and members of the popular committees. Some of those arrested have been brought before a military court, charged with incitement and sentenced to lengthy prison terms.

In terms of violence, this represents an escalation. In terms of tolerance, it represents a deterioration – of attitudes toward legitimate protest. Two Israeli lecturers, Prof. Galit Hasan-Rokem and Prof. Daphna Golan, recently described the harsh police response in Sheikh Jarrah in Haaretz. Protests were also dealt with harshly during Operation Cast Lead a year ago: About 800 Israeli citizens, most of them Arab, were arrested, and criminal proceedings were begun against 685 of them. This was an evil omen regarding the state’s attitude toward protesters.

And all this is happening at a time when the same law enforcement agencies are showing much more leniency and consideration to right-wingers protesting against the construction freeze in the settlements. There, no massive arrests have been made, and there has been less police violence.

Citizens, whether from the right or the left, have both the right and the duty to protest, within the bounds of the law, against things that upset them. Tolerance toward such protests is the breath of life for any democratic regime.

Photographs of soldiers shooting live fire at demonstrators, in contrast, are familiar from the darkest regimes. If drummers are arrested in Sheikh Jarrah, and Palestinians are arrested in Bil’in for collecting and displaying ammunition shot by the IDF – this is a regime that is not acting with the required tolerance toward legitimate protest.

The pictures from Sheikh Jarrah and the scenes from Bil’in and Na’alin, which repeat themselves weekly, will remain hidden in the darkness of public disinterest and lack of media coverage. But what the police are doing in Sheikh Jarrah and what the IDF is doing in Bil’in and Na’alin should disturb every Israeli, whether right-wing or left-wing – because this is about the very nature of the regime of the country in which we live.

Danger: Popular struggle

Amira Hass | Haaretz

23 December 2009

There is an internal document that has not been leaked, or perhaps has not even been written, but all the forces are acting according to its inspiration: the Shin Bet, Israel Defense Forces, Border Police, police, and civil and military judges. They have found the true enemy who refuses to whither away: The popular struggle against the occupation.

Over the past few months, the efforts to suppress the struggle have increased. The target: Palestinians and Jewish Israelis unwilling to give up their right to resist reign of demographic separation and Jewish supremacy. The means: Dispersing demonstrations with live ammunition, late-night army raids and mass arrests. Since the beginning of the year, 29 Palestinians have been wounded by IDF snipers while demonstrating against the separation fence. The snipers fired expanding bullets, despite an explicit 2001 order from the Military Adjutant General not to use such ammunition to break up demonstrations. After soldiers killed A’kel Srour in June, the shooting stopped, but then resumed in November.

Since June, dozens of demonstrators have been arrested in a series of nighttime military raids. Most are from Na’alin and Bil’in, whose land has been stolen by the fence, and some are from the Nablus area, which is stricken by settlers’ abuse. Military judges have handed down short prison terms for incitement, throwing stones and endangering security. One union activist from Nablus was sent to administrative detention – imprisonment without a trial – while another activist is still being interrogated.

For a few weeks now, the police have refused to approve demonstrations against the settlement in Sheikh Jarrah, an abomination approved by the courts. On each of the last two Fridays, police arrested more than 20 protesters for 24 hours. Ten were held for half an hour in a cell filled with vomit and diarrhea in the Russian Compound in Jerusalem.

Israel also recently arrested two main activists from the Palestinian organization Stop the Wall, which is involved in research and international activity which calls for the boycott of Israel and companies profiting from the occupation. Mohammad Othman was arrested three months ago. After two months of interrogation did not yield any information, he was sent to administrative detention. The organization’s coordinator, Jamal Juma’a, a 47-year-old resident of Jerusalem, was arrested on December 15. His detention was extended two days ago for another four days, and not the 14 requested by the prosecutor.

The purpose of the coordinated oppression: To wear down the activists and deter others from joining the popular struggle, which has proven its efficacy in other countries at other times. What is dangerous about a popular struggle is that it is impossible to label it as terror and then use that as an excuse to strengthen the regime of privileges, as Israel has done for the past 20 years.

The popular struggle, even if it is limited, shows that the Palestinian public is learning from its past mistakes and from the use of arms, and is offering alternatives that even senior officials in the Palestinian Authority have been forced to support – at least on the level of public statements.

Yuval Diskin and Amos Yadlin, the respective heads of the Shin Bet security service and Military Intelligence, already have exposed their fears. During an intelligence briefing to the cabinet they said: “The Palestinians want to continue and build a state from the bottom up … and force an agreement on Israel from above … The quiet security [situation] in the West Bank and the fact that the [Palestinian] Authority is acting against terror in an efficient manner has caused the international community to turn to Israel and demand progress.”

The brutal repression of the first intifada, and the suppression of the first unarmed demonstrations of the second intifada with live fire, have proved to Palestinians that the Israelis do not listen. The repression left a vacuum that was filled by those who sanctified the use of arms.

Is that what the security establishment and its political superiors are trying to achieve today, too, in order to relieve us of the burden of a popular uprising?

One injured by live ammunition at weekly demonstration in Ni’lin

11 December 2009

More than 150 residents of Ni’lin, international and Israeli activists attended today’s weekly Friday protest against the Wall.

After the Friday prayer, which was held on the village’s land, demonstrators marched towards one of the gates, chanting slogans against the confiscation of Palestinian land and called for an end to Israeli military occupation and justice for the Palestinian people.

When the demonstrators reached the gate and started climbing the Wall, a small number of soldiers arrived in a jeep and started shooting large quantities of tear gas canisters into the crowd. After the crowd dispersed, clashes erupted between the soldiers and the village youth, with soldiers using live ammunition against the demonstrators.

Simultaneously, the main entrance to the village was blocked by Israeli forces, preventing everybody from both entering and leaving the village.

After about one hour, a large number of soldiers entered the village’s land from two sides and started chasing the demonstrators towards the village, using large quantities of live ammunition.

One protester (27 years old) was shot just above the knee and was taken to Ramallah hospital immediately. He is currently undergoing treatment and his situation is stable. The demonstration ended half hour after this incident.

Coordinator of the Ni’lin Popular Committee, Ibrahim Ameera, stated: “Preventing people from entering our village and the use of live ammunition will not discourage our people to attend our peaceful struggle and claim our legitimate rights. Ni’lin will serve as a model for the Palestinian struggle and it will duplicated all around Palestine in order to resist the occupation and its racist, violent policies.”

Ni’lin background

Israel began construction of the Wall on Ni’lin’s land in 2004, but stopped after an injunction order issued by the Israeli Supreme Court (ISC). Despite the previous order and a 2004 ruling from the International Court of Justice declaring the Wall illegal, construction of the Wall began again in May 2008. Following the return of Israeli bulldozers to their lands, residents of Ni’lin have launched a grassroots campaign to protest the massive land theft, including demonstrations and direct actions.

The original route of the Wall, which Israel began constructing in 2004, was ruled illegal by the ISC, as was a second, marginally less obtrusive proposed route. The most recent path, now completed, still cuts deep into Ni’lin’s land. The Wall has been built to include plans, not yet approved by the Army’s planning authority, for a cemetery and an industrial zone for the illegal settlement Modi’in Ilit.

Since the Wall was built to annex more land to the nearby settlements rather than in a militarily strategic manner, demonstrators have been able to repeatedly dismantle parts of the electronic fence and razor-wire surrounding it. Consequently, the army has erected a 15-25 feet tall concrete wall, in addition to the electronic fence. The section of the Wall in Ni’lin is the only part of the route where a concrete wall has been erected in response to civilian, unarmed protest.

As a result of the Wall construction, Ni’lin has lost 3,920 dunams, roughly 30% of its remaining lands. Originally, Ni’lin consisted of 15,898 dunams (3928 acres). Post 1948, Ni’lin was left with 14,794 dunams (3656 acres). After the occupation of the West Bank in 1967, the illegal settlements and infrastructure of Modi’in Ilit, Mattityahu and Hashmonaim were built on village lands, and Ni’lin lost another 1,973 dunams. With the completion of the Wall, Ni’lin has a remaining 8911 dunams (2201 acres), 56% of it’s original size.

Ni’lin is effectively split into 2 parts (upper and lower) by Road 446, which was built directly through the village. According to the publicized plan of the Israeli government, a tunnel will be built under road 446 to connect the upper and lower parts of Ni’lin, allowing Israel to turn Road 446 into a segregated-setter only road. Subsequently, access for Palestinian vehicles to this road and to the main entrances of upper and lower Ni’lin will be closed. Additionally, since the tunnel will be the only entryway to Ni’lin, Israel will have control over the movement of Palestinian residents.

Israel commonly uses tear-gas projectiles, rubber coated steel bullets and live ammunition against demonstrators.

Since May, 2008, five of Ni’lin’s residents were killed and one American solidarity activist was critically injured from Israeli fire during grassroots demonstrations in Ni’lin.

5 June 2009: Yousef Akil Srour (36) was shot in the chest with 0.22 caliber live ammunition and pronounced dead upon arrival at a Ramallah hospital.

13 March 2009: Tristan Anderson (37), an American citizen, was shot in the head with a high velocity tear gas projectile. He is currently at Tel Hashomer hospital near Tel Aviv with uncertain prospects for his recovery.

28 December 2008: Mohammed Khawaje (20) was shot in the head with 5.56mm caliber live ammunition. He died in a Ramallah hospital 3 days later on 31 December 2008.

28 December 2008: Arafat Rateb Khawaje (22) was shot in the back with 5.56mm caliber live ammunition and pronounced dead upon arrival at a Ramallah hospital.

30 July 2008: Yousef Amira (17) was shot in the head with two rubber coated steel bullets. He died in a Ramallah hospital 5 days later on 4 August 2008.

29 July 2008: Ahmed Mousa (10) was shot in the forehead with 5.56mm caliber live ammunition and pronounced dead upon arrival at a Ramallah hospital.

In total, 19 people have been killed during demonstrations against the Wall.

Israeli armed forces have shot 40 demonstrators with live ammunition in Ni’lin. Of them, 11 were shot with 5.56mm caliber live ammunition and 26 were shot with 0.22 caliber live ammunition.

Since May 2008, 87 arrests of Ni’lin residents have been made in relation to anti-Wall demonstrations in the village. The protesters seized by the army constitute around 7% of the village’s males aged between 12 and 55. The arrests are part of a broad Israeli intimidation campaign to suppress all demonstrations against the apartheid infrastructure in the West Bank.