Israeli forces extra-judicially kill pardoned Palestinian

At approximately 9:30pm on Monday 1st December, Israeli Special Forces entered Balata refugee camp in Nablus and arrested 28 year old Mohammad Kamal Abu Thraa – an ex-freedom fighter who had been granted amnesty by Israeli authorities in exchange for serving time in Palestinian prison. Two hours later he was pronounced dead from gunshot wounds.

Friends and residents of Balata report that Mohammad had been eating dinner with his family before he received a phone call from Palestinian police advising him to wait in front of a convenience store on Al Aqsa street, for a police car to pick him up and take him to the police station to sleep for the night. This was a routine call, as Mohammad had been sleeping in a Nablus police station every night for the past year, forsaking armed struggle in order to take advantage of an amnesty scheme organised between Palestinian and Israeli authorities. This agreement supposedly offers Palestinian freedom-fighters amnesty in return for time spent in Palestinian prisons.


No blood was found at the scene of the arrest

Mohammad, however, was not on the street for even one minute before he was arrested by six Israeli special forces officers, four of whom were dressed in typical Palestinian-style clothing, speaking Arabic “better than me” claims one Balata resident. Witnesses report that Mohammad was alive at the time of his arrest on the busy street, and the scene itself bears no sign of blood or struggle. It is believed that Mohammad was then taken to the Huwarra military base and detention facility,and that it was there that he was murdered.

Two hours after his arrest, Mohammad’s body was returned to Rafidia hospital in Nablus, from where, at 10am on Tuesday morning, his family collected it for the funeral march through the streets of Nablus before burying him in Balata cemetary. Friends who saw the body advise that Mohammad was killed by three bullet holes to the chest and abdomen, but that his face and body were also badly bruised; eyes swollen, with all of his front teeth broken and his face bloodied.

This is but the most recent in a long-history of Israeli forces extra-judicially killing Palestinians to whom they claimed to have granted amnesty. It coincides with hunger strikes by Palestinian prisoners in Nablus who, upon taking part in the amnesty agreement, have found themselves imprisoned indefinitely as the three-month sentence to which most of them agreed has long since passed, with no pardon in sight.

Friends and neighbours say that Mohammad was beloved by his whole community. “Everyone here loved him”, said one resident, “But the Israeli soldiers will shoot anyone”. Mohammad is survived by his parents and five siblings.

Candle-light vigil held in Nablus in solidarity with Gaza

On the evening of November 30th, Palestinians from the West Bank city of Nablus assembled in the city centre to show support for the people of Gaza, who have been denied access to food, water, medicine and electricity as a result of the complete closure of the Gaza Strip by Israeli authorities.

To commemorate the International Day of Solidarity with Palestinian People, over 100 Nablus residents, together with international activists, lit candles and held signs saying “Long Live Gaza,” and “Stop Ethnic Cleansing in Palestine”, referring to the systematic Israeli attempt to further expel Palestinians from their homelands and diminish Palestinian national identity.

The demonstration, organized by a coalition of different Palestinian political parties and organisations, called for unity against the Israeli occupation, chanting, “One flag, one homeland”. Many speakers pointed out that although it does not match the totality of the siege on Gaza, Nablus too is under siege from Israeli checkpoints and closures.

Solidarity was also expressed between the refugee camps in Nablus and those in Gaza, with the crowd chanting “From Nablus to Gaza, we will live with dignity!”.

In a clear act of collective punishment and violation of international law, the Gaza Strip has been almost completely sealed, making de-facto prisoners out of the region’s 1.5 million people. These policies have already cost hundreds of lives, and destroyed the livelihood of hundreds of thousands, leaving over 80% of the population below the poverty line, and facing imminent starvation as much needed food supplies are denied.

Soldiers invade Burqa demanding fingerprints on unknown Hebrew documents

On 8th November 2008, at 1:15am, more than 20 Israeli soldiers invaded the village of Burqa, near Nablus, throwing over 100 sound bombs throughout the area. The soldiers entered fifteen houses in the village, forcing villagers at gunpoint to fingerprint mysterious documents written in Hebrew.

Gharib Saif stands in front of his house, looking slightly embarrassed as he recalls the night almost one week ago when Israeli soldiers invaded his home, dragging all of his family out into the cold night, with a gun to his wife’s head. At 2am the soldiers woke the family with sound bombs, before entering the house through the small convenience store the family run underneath. Gharib had been out harvesting olives for many days, and explains that he was very, very tired. Initially, explains his wife, Nihaya, four soldiers entered the house, screaming that they wanted to make the house into a “nuktah” – a military command post set up inside a Palestinian house when a village or city is invaded. Instead, after they were joined by a further eight soldiers, the soldiers targeted her husband. Putting a gun to both his and his wife’s heads, soldiers told him to fingerprint the a piece of paper, blank but for a few words in Hebrew at the top. “They didn’t say why”, recalls Nihaya, “they just kept saying ‘Sign! Sign!”.

When Gharib refused, he was carried out to the Israeli jeeps waiting in front of the house, where he was beaten by the soldiers. He was then returned to one of the front rooms of the house, where he was further beaten, and where Israeli soldiers forcibly took his hands, and inked and fingerprinted him.

The family were left to wonder what it was that had just been done to them in the 45 minutes during which the operation had taken place; and why it was that they were then instructed to keep the front door of their home open for the next two and a half hours.

This same process took place in home after home, most of them along the main street of the village. Next in line was the home of Hussam and Tharwat Saif, across the road from Gharib’s house, where soldiers again woke the family with sound bombs before invading the house. There four soldiers ransacked the house, turning over all of the furniture, breaking some of it, as they had done in Gharib’s house.

Tharwat and her five children were forced to stand by and watch as the soldiers demanded Hussam produce his identification, taking a photo of him holding it next to his head. Tharwat recalls that the soldiers then took Hussam outside and beat him, before taking him back inside and forcibly fingerprinting him.

At yet another house across the street, belonging to Ahmad Zeki, the soldiers stole 1000 shekels while undertaking the same operation there.

No one in the village has any notion as to why the men were fingerprinted that night. “We search, we search”, says Mohammad Masoud of the village municipality. “We want to know exactly what was written on the paper, but no one in those houses can read Hebrew”.

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While being forced to fingerprint documents they do not comprehend is new for villagers in Burqa, home invasions are not. Seemingly every family in the village has a story about Israeli soldiers invading their homes.

Abu Sami tells about how four years ago his house would be invaded and occupied by Israeli soldiers with great regularity – up to three times each month. One night his wife gave birth to one of their children, Kais, soldiers invaded the house, forcing all of the family, including the mother and the five hours old baby into the street, where the temperature was close to zero degrees. After this incident the baby became so sick that he had to be taken to hospital for treatment everyday for six months. “That’s what happens here”, he says. “That’s what happens to everyone”.

While many Palestinian villages are subject to regular invasions, Burqa’s woes seem to be the result of their proximity to the now evacuated settlement of Homesh. Just as the evacuation has not meant an end to the settler attacks villagers endure, it has also not meant an end to the military incursions the village faces. .

Um Eyad, mother to a large family, suffers regular home invasions by Israeli soldiers. “Every time they enter the village they come to my house”, she says. “And every time they break something. Now they have broken two wardrobes; the washing machine and the refrigerator”.

Another young student from the village, Mohammad, tells about how four months ago, Israeli soldiers invaded and occupied his house for two hours, keeping the family locked in the kitchen.

It seems that until the land of Homesh is returned to the villagers, as they have begun demanding in weekly demonstrations, there will be no peace for the residents of Burqa.

Three people injured as Israeli forces attack demonstration against Homesh settlement

Three people were injured near Homesh settlement on Friday 21st November, when Israeli military force fired tear gas and rubber bullets into a non-violent demonstration.

For the second week in a row, approximately 100 Palestinians from the villages of Burqa, Sebastiya, Beit Imreen, Talluza, Deir Sharaf and Silat adh Dhahr, as well as international activists, were stopped by more than 40 Israeli soldiers and police as they marched towards the evacuated settlement. Israeli military forces had blocked the road with coils of razor wire, behind which soldiers and police lined up with weapons readied, despite the clearly non-violent nature of the demonstration.

Prevented from entering their lands by the Israeli forces, the Palestinian villagers held Friday prayers by the razor wire, before they were viciously attacked with tear gas and rubber bullets in response to a single rock thrown from far back in the crowd that fell well short of the assembled Israeli military forces. Firing from a distance of just 20 metres (illegal under Israeli law which states these weapons are to be used only from a minimum distance of 40 metres), soldiers and police fired into the departing crowd, aiming at head-height, which again contravenes Israeli military laws. Three people were injured, including 19 year old Munqeth Ragheb, who, in what appears to be a deliberate targeting, was shot in his face; the back of his head; his back; and his hand with rubber bullets, as well as shot in the shoulder with a gun-fired tear-gas canister.

Emad Saif, aged 48 years old; and Thaer Machmoud, 14 years, were also injured by rubber-coated steel bullets and tear-gas canisters. Many more were treated for gas inhalation as Israeli armed forces fired volley after volley into the crowd, with approximately 50 canisters fired in total.

Demonstrators had aimed to get to the evacuated settlement to reclaim the lands upon which it stood – lands which legally belong to Palestinian villagers. “These lands belong to private Palestinian land-owners”, said Burqa municipality member, Mohammad Masoud. “They [Palestinian villagers] have papers to prove that they own the land”. While the settlement was evacuated in August 2005, the lands have not yet been returned to the legal owners, under the flimsy pretext that the land is demarcated as Area C under the Oslo agreement.

This goal of land reclamation is not just borne of the legitimate desire for vital lands to be returned to their legal owners, but also out of a real fear of the resettlement of the lands by ideological Israeli settlers. This fear is informed by the regular return of Israeli settlers to the evacuated lands – part of an ongoing campaign by the settler movement called “Homesh First” which demands the resettlement of Homesh. Burqa villagers claim that there are currently settlers occupying the lands, suggesting that this is part of the reason why their demonstrations are so forcefully prevented from accessing their lands by the Israeli authorities.

This spectre of the resettlement of Homesh is evidenced in placards carried by demonstrators: “We will not allow the nightmare of Homesh back again”. This “nightmare” refers to the regular attacks carried out by the settlers, who would especially target farmers and shepherds with lands adjacent to the settlement, beating farmers and killing livestock. These attacks have not abated since the evacuation of the settlement, with visiting Israelis continuing to attack farmers and shepherds, and burn olive trees. The very presence of the settlement in the area also leads to regular attacks on nearby villages by Israeli soldiers, especially in Burqa through which the main road to the settlement passes. Houses along this road are regularly invaded by Israeli soldiers, with those closest to the settlement having been forcibly evicted and destroyed by Israeli forces.

Palestinian villagers have vowed to continue their struggle against the continuing nightmare of Homesh with weekly demonstrations.

Israeli army stands by while settlers attack in Burin

In the village of Burin on Tuesday November 18th, armed settlers from the nearby illegal Israeli settlement of Yizhar attacked Palestinian villagers, throwing rocks and shooting in the air.

At 8:40 pm, the houses of Khalib Kasam and his extended family, near Route 60, were assaulted by approximately twenty settlers. Shortly after, the mayor of Burin called the DCO (District Coordination Office) who sent the Israeli army. The army set up a checkpoint, stopping Israeli and Palestinian cars, then telling the drivers to keep going. Meanwhile, according to eyewitnesses, settlers hid in the bushes and trees 50 meters away and threw rocks at several Palestinian cars, which as a result of the checkpoint, were easy, slow-moving targets. Although the army was present during the violence, no settlers were held accountable.

As a military occupying power, Israeli forces are required under international law to provide security in the Occupied Territories. But rather than fulfilling its legal and moral obligations, the Israeli military not only fails to provide for the safety of the Palestinian population, but in many instances, as is exemplified here, facilitates violence towards Palestinians.

The Kasam family, due to their proximity to the road and settlement, face frequent harassment and attacks, causing them to live in a constant state of anxiety and fear. As the mother of the family says, “Whenever we sit down to eat, one person is always looking out the window.”