Tag: Nablus

by ISM Nablus, 5th November

Yesterday, the checkpoint known to Nablusians as “Sabatash” was closed to everyone trying to pass it in both directions. Located at a narrow bend in the road, flanked by a steep mountainous slope and a watchtower overlooking an olive grove valley running beside a military road, this checkpoint is notorious for its violent and trigger-happy soldiers. Every day, this checkpoint denies people living north of Nablus city their freedom of movement, as well as preventing the transport of such diverse but equally essential goods as sewage pipes and olive oil to the villages of Asira Ash-Shamalia, An-Naqura and Sebastiya.

By midday, the line of buses, trucks and private cars was already several hundred meters long. The Israeli soldiers at the checkpoint were forcing the young men to get out of their vehicles and lift up their shirts so as to prove that they were not wearing explosive belts around their waists. According to eyewitness reports, 24-year old Haythem Yaseen refused to submit to this humiliating procedure and began to argue with one of the soldiers. In front of the line of waiting students, farmers and workers, the soldier then shot Haythem in the leg with live ammunition as punishment.

“He is a beautiful, gentle man”, said one of Haythem’s fellow students, 22-year old Yusef Hashaka. “He was only standing up for himself and for us. And then they shot him.” Shortly after sustaining his injury, Haythem was abducted by Israeli forces and taken to an Israeli hospital for treatment.

At half past eight, the line of stationary vehicles had grown even longer and most of the male passengers were standing on the verge of the road smoking or jumping up and down in an attempt to keep warm. The soldiers at the checkpoint were saying that their only job was to make sure that the checkpoint would close at eight o’clock and that any people who were still waiting on the Nablus side would have to return to the city, despite the fact that the checkpoint had in practice been closed since two o’clock in the afternoon.

The people, furious at the situation and without money for taxis or anywhere to sleep over in the city, refused to move and stood behind the razor-wire rolled over both car lanes, waiting for a second decision. By this time, most of them had been waiting for over six hours in the cold and rain. After some negotiation on the part of international human rights workers, women, elderly men and children were allowed to pass.

By ten o’clock in the evening, there were about 150 young men left on the Nablus side of the checkpoint. The soldiers were unusually nervous and jumpy throughout the evening, pointing their guns at and scanning their strobe light across the crowd. After further negotiation, they finally agreed to let the young men through in two buses. As the men finally, after eight hours of delay, got into the buses and waved goodbye, Palestinian sources reported that there were large numbers of Israeli special forces and soldiers in the city which would have made it impossible for the men to return to Nablus.

Denied passage through the checkpoint to Asira Ash-Shamalia, the group of human rights workers took refuge on the porch of a nearby mosque until able to return to the city safely. Clashes between Israeli forces and Palestinian resistance fighters took place throughout the Old City for several hours but no one was injured. Two Palestinian men were abducted and are currently being held in an unknown location.

For more information contact ISM Nablus: 059 907 6568

by ISM Nablus, 4th of November 2006

Today, Palestinian farmers from Azmut village north of Nablus city were attacked on their land by a gang of Israeli settlers, who were accompanied by two soldiers. The settlers ran after the families, shouted and threw stones at them. At one point they kicked and hit international volunteers, who had come to help the farmers pick olives. The group of settlers, aged from around eight to twenty, came from the settlement of Elon Moreh two kilometres away from the village.

This year’s olive harvest has been difficult for the people of Azmut. This is the third time this week that farmers from the village were forced off their land. Five days ago an armed settler stopped nearby and used a megaphone to threaten families picking olives, intimidating them into leaving. Yesterday, a group of settlers chased the farmers off their land. The farmers, knowing the violence that has come from these settlers in the past and the extreme views of those in the Elon Moreh settlement, didn’t want to risk any injuries and subsequently left.

This morning the farmers had to begin their work by picking up all the olives that settlers had thrown across the ground the previous night. They had only harvested for about forty minutes, when two soldiers approached and told them that “there is no coordination today, come back tomorrow”.

The international volunteers attempted to negotiate with the soldiers about the families’ legal right to access their land at any time, but after a couple of minutes a gang of around 25 settler children and young people suddenly descended down the hill towards the groves. The families had no time to collect their tools and olive sacks as they were forced to flee.

As the settlers approached the families and international volunteers, they stopped by the soldiers to pick up and throw stones. As they got closer one volunteer was kicked by a settler. Other volunteers were hit with rocks, one volunteer seemingly because he was recording the attack with a video camera. All of this happened with soldiers standing by and making no attempt to stop the settlers or to protect the families and the international volunteers, in spite of their legal obligations under Israeli law to stop settler attacks.

Elon Moreh is one of the oldest settlements in the northern West Bank and has explicitly expressed its purpose: to block the creation of a Palestinian state. The 1200 or so inhabitants are infamous for their religious and violent extremism. They have been involved in a number of serious attacks on Palestinian villages, where they have burnt down trees, attacked Palestinians and in some cases killed them.

This settler attack is just another example of the harassment that Palestinians face. Checkpoints, settler-only roads and military harassment all serve to keep them away from their land and livelihoods. The villagers of Azmut are afraid. But they are also determined to go back to their land, even in the face of such violence, to continue their harvest and to keep their land.

For more information on Elon Moreh, see this entry on the Peace Now website.

by ISM Nablus, 3rd November

In a shockingly common scenario, the Israeli occupation forces shot a Palestinian child dead in Nablus’ Balata Refugee Camp early this morning and wounded two other Palestinian civilians. Fifteen year-old Brahmin Smakreh was shot and killed as he tried to help his brother Ahmed who was lying in the street after being wounded by the Israeli military.

The unsurprising tragedy began last night at 9:30pm when a small Israeli force entered the Balata refugee camp, reportedly looking for two wanted men. The soldiers fired a number of shots but did not injure anyone and left after about an hour. Balata residents, who are subjected to frequent military operations, returned to the streets.

Then at 1:30am this morning, a much larger force of soldiers invaded Balata in a numerous jeeps, humvees and tanks and laid virtual siege to the camp. The Israeli army occupied a Palestinian house to set up sniper positions, blindfolding the family and forcing them to huddle in one room. The soldiers fired heavy caliber weapons into the main street of Balata and engaged in many clashes with resistance fighters.

Palestinian paramedics were called to the camp after Israeli soldiers severely beat a Palestinian man, 30 year-old Nazem Qatawi, while searching for the wanted men. The Israeli military refused to allow the ambulance or medical teams into the camp, so the ambulance waited nearby.

After Ahmed Smakreh was wounded on the street in front of his house, his younger brother Brahim tried to cross the street and drag him to safety. But before Brahim could reach his brother, he was shot by an Israeli sniper.

Palestinian paramedics received the report of additional casualties and again requested permission to enter the camp to evacuate the wounded. According to the paramedics, the Israeli army responded by firing live ammunition directly at the uniformed paramedics and their Red Crescent ambulance.

Around 4:30am there was a series of explosions followed by a much larger blast as the Israeli army blew up a car on the main street of Balata. The massive explosion knocked out electricity to the entire refugee camp, blew out windows of the neighboring houses, and started a fire that threatened the nearest house. The paramedics called in the Nablus fire department but the Israeli military would not allow any fire trucks to enter the camp.

By 5:30am the Israeli soldiers left Balata camp without arresting anyone. Palestinian paramedics and firemen immediately entered the camp to put out the fire and attend to the civilian casualties. Once the fire was extinguished and the wounded evacuated, electricity crews began to fixeding the electrical wiring to restore power as quickly as possible to the beleaguered citizens of Balata.

The funeral for the murdered boy, Brahim was held at 10:30 this morning. His brother Ahmed and Nazem Qatawi are recovering from their injuries in hospital.

by ISM Nablus, Wednesday 1st November

At one o’clock this afternoon, the Israeli checkpoint of Beit Iba, just west of Nablus City was closed for all vehicles and pedestrians attempting to pass it. Located at a junction between the villages of Beit Iba, Quusin and Deir Sharaf, this is a central thoroughfare to and from Nablus, especially for students and workers from Jenin and its surrounding villages.

At five o’clock in the afternoon, buses and trucks were queued up in two lines which were at least 500 meters long on each side of the checkpoint. Hundreds of men, women and children, subject to orders barked out by Israeli soldiers, were continuously forced to move from behind the turnstiles into the car lane and then back again. A group of students from Tubas had been waiting for at least three hours to go to their homes. Tension was rising as finally the soldiers started to open the checkpoint, allowing a slow trickle of women and children to go through. One hummer and three soldiers blocked the entrance to the pedestrian passageway on the west side of the checkpoint, forcing people to wait in the way of the traffic which created chaos.

Three jeeps were also stationed in the middle of the junction, blocking the road for ambulances, trucks and buses that were -with difficulty- squeezing past them. At least twenty soldiers milled about, pointing their machine-guns into the crowd to enforce their conflicting orders. At one point, an international human rights worker approached an officer from the “Humanitarian Division” of the Israeli occupation forces, standing to the side seemingly observing what was going on. When asked what he thought of the situation, the soldier answered “very bad”. As the human rights worker expressed a concern that someone could be shot at any moment, the soldier nodded in agreement but said “there is nothing I can do. I am not from here”.

At about six o’clock, the checkpoint opened up completely and the men, some of whom had been waiting to pass since two o’clock, were finally allowed to pass. Three men who had been detained a few hours earlier were released and the line of vehicles started to move. As a large coach full of al-Najah students were forced to step off their bus while it was being searched, one of the girls remarked that “this gives us no time to study, or to spend time with our families. I ate here today, at the checkpoint! It will take me another hour to get home and then I must go straight to bed. And tomorrow I have to go through here again. This is not a life.”

Fortunately, no one was hurt today. Similar closures frequently take place at the more than 518 checkpoints, guarded gates and other forms of road blocks located throughout the West Bank, and often lead to injuries or even death. These restrictions on freedom of movement cripple the economy and prevent people from being able to plan their daily lives – yet another aspect of the slow genocide orchestrated by the Israeli government and sanctioned by the international community’s silence.