Tag: Nablus

J-Post: Shin Bet probes ‘settler rocket fire’ near Nablus

By Yaakov Katz and Tovah Lazaroff

To view original article, published by the Jerusalem Post on 22nd July, click here

The Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) was looking into Palestinian claims on Monday that settlers from Har Bracha and Yitzhar in the West Bank fired two rockets into fields near Nablus.

This burnt cylinder, which Palestinians claim is a homemade rocket, was found in a field near Nablus on Sunday.

A picture of the “rocket” provided by a left-wing activist and obtained by The Jerusalem Post shows a burning metallic cylinder lying in a field near Nablus.

The Shin Bet said it could not confirm what the cylinder was and raised the possibility that settlers had fired a homemade rocket or that Palestinians had discovered an old military shell and set it on fire.

One of the two projectiles landed in a field near the villages of Awarta and Odala, Hani Dalrashi of Awarta told the Post. He said it was the fourth time that settlers had fired rockets at Palestinian villages south of Nablus.

Last week, the police arrested a settler from Yitzhar for allegedly participating in a failed rocket attack against the Palestinian village of Burin in June. Settlers from Yitzhar and Har Bracha rejected the claim that members of their community were firing homemade rockets at the Palestinians.

But Dalrashi said he had been standing at an auto mechanic’s garage in the village when someone came to say that a rocket had fallen just outside the village. He went to explore and found a 45-centimeter cylinder that was smoking on one end. Although he and others in the village called the army, he said, they did not arrive until 4:30 p.m.

Dalrashi’s story was confirmed by Israeli volunteer Nur Bar-On of Machsom Watch, which monitors IDF activity at the checkpoints. She said she had arrived at the Hawara checkpoint at about 1:20 p.m. Palestinian taxi drivers told her about the rockets, and she asked one of them to take her to the one outside Awarta.

Bar-On found the metal cylinder lying in a field, with smoke coming out of it.

“It looked dangerous,” she said.

Bar-On discounted the IDF claim that it was an old military shell, saying there was no Hebrew writing on it and typically such shells have some kind of a mark that identifies it as belonging to the IDF.

She believed it was a homemade device. A similar rocket also fell Monday in Burin, she added.

To view ISM report on the incident click here

Settlers launch another rocket attack in Nablus region

Settlers fired a rocket at Awarta village on Monday afternoon. Local people say that this is the second such attack this year, while it is the fourth attack involving rockets from settlements in the Nablus region.

The homemade device, measuring around twenty five centre meters in length, struck an olive grove near to the village but failed to detonate. The attack was launched at around one o’clock in the afternoon.

The Israeli army closed roads close to the area for five and a half hours and used a remote controlled robot to approach the device. At half past six a controlled explosion of the rocket was carried out. People from Awarta are frequently harassed by the local settlers and army. Israeli soldiers also arrested one local man for apparently failing to comply with their orders.

Israeli army arrests 27 people in Nablus

The Israeli army invaded Nablus on Sunday night and arrested around 27 people including Mona Mansour, a member of the Palestinian legislative council.

Her family describe how the army arrived outside their home at two o’clock in the morning and ordered them to leave their apartment. Soldiers then entered their home and forced the family of six into a single room, forbidding them from speaking. Israeli soldiers removed the oxygen mask from her youngest son who suffers from serious health difficulties.

Fifteen soldiers searched the family home and removed a computer, files, papers and four telephones and destroyed possessions in the process. Soldiers then arrested Mansour and prevented her from collecting clothes to take with her. The family believe she has been taken to Telmund prison. Mansour’s husband, Jamal Mansour was assassinated by Israeli forces seven years ago and the family were preparing to mark the anniversary of his death.

With Mona Mansour’s arrest, their children have been left without parents. This is the first time that Mona Mansour has been arrested by Israeli forces, but according to the family she has received death threats and attempts on her life. A friend of the family spoke of how they had recently celebrated the exam success of Mona’s daughter. ‘They want to kill every minute of happiness’ she said.

Farmers of Kafr Qallil, Nablus, refused access to their land

July 13th and 14th a family from the village of Kafr Qallil, south of Nablus, tried to harvest almonds on their land near Huwwara checkpoint. After two days of harassment from settlers and soldiers the family was forbidden to continue the harvest indefinitely.

The family owns 49 dunums of land between Huwwara check point and the illegal settlement of Bracha. The land, which is now crossed by a settler road, has been owned by the family for many generations. Due to resent harassments from settlers and soldiers the family was accompanied by international solidarity activists.

On both days the farmers were told to leave their land by armed settlers, soldiers and Israeli police claiming random reasons. Finally, on the 14th, in spite of earlier promises of permission, the army declared the area a closed military zone. The army also informed the family that they had to prove their ownership of the land to receive permission to continue the harvest.

Haaretz: The general of onions and garlic

By Gideon Levy

To view original article, published by Haaretz on the 13th July, click here

Here is the “next thing” in the war against terror: the war against hairdressers. After Hamas took over half the Palestinian people, in no small measure because of Israel’s policies, after we tried to fight Hamas with weapons and siege, destruction and killing, mass arrests and deportations, the Israel Defense Forces and Shin Bet security service have invented something new: a war on shopping malls, bakeries, schools and orphanages. First in Hebron, now in Nablus. The IDF is closing beauty salons, clothing stores and clinics, and even one dairy farm, all on the pretext that they are connected to Hamas, or the rent they pay is given to a terror organization.

These bizarre pictures of a closure order issued by the general of command, stuck on the window of a cosmetics store or a physiotherapy center, of a confiscation order stuck to a pita oven, show that the Israeli occupation has gone crazy. A few months ago I visited the charity institutions and commercial centers the IDF has begun closing in Hebron; I saw infuriatingly absurd scenes. A modern school, intended for 1,200 students, standing closed on orders of the GOC, and a library for young people about to shut.

Thus the occupation proves once again that there is no place in Palestinians’ lives that it cannot reach, and that it has no boundaries: An army that closes a school, library, bakery and boarding school; soldiers who raid a licensed commercial television station, confiscating its equipment and threatening its closure, as happened recently at the Afaq TV station in Nablus.

In Israel no voices were raised in protest, of course, either against the closing of the school or the closing of the TV station. According to the Israeli train of thought, if we close a bakery making bagels for orphans, Hamas’ power will weaken; if we throw hundreds of needy children into the streets from their boarding school, they and their relatives will become sympathetic to Israel; if we close a crowded shopping mall, its irate owners and customers will become Fatah supporters.

The Israeli occupation has not been seen for a long time in such a ludicrous and inhumane light as in these closure and confiscation operations ordered by GOC Central Command Gadi Shamni, the general of onions and garlic, to judge by the produce his soldiers confiscated from the Hebron food warehouses. Illegal, certainly immoral, but no less shortsighted, these operations broadcast a message loud and clear: The occupation has lost all moral inhibitions and any shred of wisdom. How wretched is an army that empties storerooms of food and clothing for the needy, how ridiculous that the GOC signs orders to close hairdressing salons, how pathetic is a military raid on bakeries and how cruel is an occupation that shuts down clinics on any pretext.

Hamas has entered the vacuum created in the West Bank and Gaza. Like any religious movement, it sprouted in the soil of distress and poverty. Now Israel comes along and says let’s make the poverty and distress even worse. Why? To fight Hamas. There is nothing more absurd. Tens of thousands of poor children in the West Bank have nowhere to turn to aside from the Islamic charities that Israel suspects of being linked to Hamas, although many were established long before the organization was born. Israel stopped seeing to the population’s welfare under the occupation, despite its obligation under international law, and the Palestinian Authority is also not showing any special interest in social and economic needs. Fatah has always devoted more resources to military camps, guns and official cars than to orphanages, hospital beds and dialysis machines.

This is the vacuum the Islamic Movement is filling, offering an impressive level of services. The orphanage I visited in Hebron is one of the most beautiful and well-cared for I have seen. It takes quite a bit of cruelty to threaten its closure, quite a bit of audacity to argue that doing so will serve the war on terror, and quite a bit of stupidity to think that such a measure will help. The closing of stores and malls will only land another blow on the Palestinian economy, which even now is struggling to hold up under conditions of quarantine. Has Israel learned nothing from the failure of the siege on Gaza?

Anyone who visits the charity institutions would see that not all the money flowing to these organizations is earmarked for buying suicide belts and explosives. The West Bank’s residents cannot be simultaneously imprisoned, prohibited from earning a living and offered no social-welfare assistance while we strike at those who are trying to do so, whatever their motives. If Israel wants to fight the charitable associations, it must at least offer alternative services. On whose back are we fighting terror? Widows? Orphans? It’s shameful.