Tag: Nablus

On Thursday, 19th June approximately two hundred residents of Nablus took to the streets demanding the Palestinian Authority (PA) take action to ease the suffering of the poor people in Nablus. Organised by the leftist parties – PPP; PFLP; and DFLP – residents marched through the city, chanting “Abbas and Fayyad: people want bread and peace!”.

The protesters called on the Palestinian Authority to initiate subsidies on basic foodstuffs such as bread and oil for poor people in Nablus, where, according to the local government, there is over 70 percent unemployment, and 70 percent of families live under the poverty line. Demonstrators also called on the PA to subsidise the high cost of petrol in the West Bank, which, at six shekels per litre, is unaffordable for many; as well as the cost of water.

While the focus of the demonstration was on the responsibility of the PA to care for the people in the West Bank, it is clear that the primary cause of the widespread poverty and unemployment in Nablus is the occupation itself. Nablus, which was once the economic hub of Palestine, has now spiralled into an economic recession. Surrounded by checkpoints and roadblocks, businesses have fled the once booming city due to the difficulty of trade in the besieged city. Palestinian farmers regularly complain of the impossibility of getting their produce to markets in Nablus because of the checkpoints – by the time their loads have been cleared to enter, the produce is already unsalable. While there are extremely limited employment opportunities within the city itself, the cost for workers to reach other cities, such as Ramallah, in search of employment is also prohibitive, with a round trip costing a minimum of 26 shekels each day, largely due to the price of petrol – which is kept artificially high because of the taxes levied on it by the Israeli government.

Nablus residents are not alone in their suffering – it is estimated that throughout the West Bank and Gaza, the average daily income is just $0.2. While the seige on Gaza has highlighted the plight the Palestinians there face, without access to clean water, fuel, basic foodstuffs, this situation is being replicated throughout the West Bank as well, but to a lesser extent. Countless villages face high unemployment; lack of access to water – or water prices that are hyper-inflated by Israeli authorities; regular curfews that cripple their economies as businesses are forced to close and residents stay in their homes. In the case of Hebron, the entire old city, the once-thriving hub of commerce in the south’s largest city, has become a ghost town due to the presence of belligerent Israeli settlers who have, through brutal intimidation and the support of Israeli military, forced the vast majority of businesses to close down. Shahuda street, once a main shopping thoroughfare, is now just a row of shuttered, empty shops.

Regardless of fundamental causes, however, Nablus residents have vowed to keep protesting, demanding support from the Palestinian Authority to help ease their suffering.

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The International Women’s Peace Service were notified on the morning of 19 June that Israeli setters from the illegal colony of Yitzhar had carried out a series of attacks on the village of Asira al Qabiliya in the Nablus district. According to villagers, the settlers burnt fields, threw stones and attack villagers, while also putting graffiti on houses. Residents of the village, however, were able to drive the settlers off.

As IWPS volunteers made their way to the village to document the attacks, they were again notified that the Yitzhar settlers were carrying out a new attack against the village of Burin, less then five kilometres from Asira al Qabiliya According to a journalist in the village at the time, up to 50 settlers began throwing stones at Palestinian cars and homes, but were initially driven off by the residents of Burin. The illegal settlers, however, then set fire to the village’s fields. According to the journalist more than 100 dunums of Palestinian land to the south of the village are currently burning. IWPS volunteers speaking with the journalist on the telephone could hear clashes in the background between the Israeli military, Palestinian farmers and settlers, as the illegal settlers once again attempted to attack the village.

On Wednesday 18th June, approximately forty farmers from the villages of Tammoun and Khirbet Atuf, near Nablus, along with internationals, made a symbolic protest at the Israeli-imposed barrier that prevents them from entering their lands, in the first of what is to be series of protests against the discrimination they face.

Looking out over the fields to the illegal Israeli settlements of Beqa’ot and Roi (known by local Palestinians as Al Hadidiya, after the Palestinian village it abuts), as well as the Israeli military base, villagers held up a banner proclaiming “This is Apartheid!”, as they stood on the earthmound that demarcates the area in which Palestinians are forbidden to enter. They advise that if they attempt to cross this artificial boundary, they will be shot at. Or they will be arrested and held in the checkpoint of Al Hamra for anywhere between four and twenty-four hours.

More than seventy percent of the villages’ lands have been stolen by the settlements and military base. Now, the lands they have left (less than thirty thousand dounums) are inaccessible from the villages directly – farmers must make a trip back towards Nablus and around through the Al Hamra checkpoint – a trip that can take up to two hours, instead of the five minute journey that they used to make. Even then, many farmers are not permitted to enter their lands at all, requiring permission from Israeli authorities that is rarely given – and when it is, is only for sporadic times.

The Israeli authorities also prohibit the farmers from accessing water to irrigate their lands. Whilst Israeli settlers have access to limitless water supplies, Tammoun has access now to just one well, which they are not allowed to dig deeper than 400 metres, useless because a well of at least 800 metres in depth is required to properly function for agricultural use. The effect of this apartheid agricultural system is startling – in a wide swathes of land that is now barren and dry, where farmers can only grow in the rainy season, the settlements stand out for their remarkable greenery. The oasis has indeed been created in the desert, at the expense of Palestinian farmers.

The long-suffering farmers of the Tammoun district received a final blow two days ago, when they received written notification from the Israeli military that a further 356 dounums will be confiscated to create a military training ground, unless the farmers can prove ownership by 2012. While all affected farmers have documentation dating back to the Turkish occupation of the area, many fear that this proof will not be accepted by the Israeli authorities – as in the village of Al Aqaba near Tubas which is scheduled for demolition, where Israeli authorities refuse to acknowledge the validity of their title deeds because they are from the Turkish era.

Motivated by this further injustice, farmers are taking decisive steps, not just to save their lands from this new threat, but to demand their rights to enter their lands from their villages; to irrigate their crops; to graze their animals. With the belief that the Israeli authorities and settlers are trying to drive them from their lands, villagers have vowed to fight – to enter their lands without taking permission from Israelis; and there to hold non-violent demonstrations until they achieve their freedom of movement and livelihood.

At 12:30am on Tuesday 17th June, hundreds of Israeli soldiers invaded the village of Beit Furiq, near Nablus, and imposed curfew for ten hours while they invaded and occupied approximately five hundred Palestinian homes.

At 12am, the newly-installed Palestinian Authority(PA) police station was contacted by Israeli forces, with police there informed to close the station and for all PA police to stay inside. Villagers report that Israeli soldiers initially entered the village on foot, and with faces painted black, in groups of ten, knocked on doors of homes throughout all parts of the village, breaking them down if they were not answered, or not answered quickly enough. Families were then forced either out of their homes into the street, or all into one room as the soldiers brought in dogs and mysterious machines – searching and ransacking homes. Most houses were searched and vacated within half an hour, but some families report soldiers sleeping in their homes for many hours. Others report that the Israeli soldiers carried big maps and papers, and would tick off a house when they were finished there. Many families were questioned as to how many rooms there were in their houses; how many people lived there; whether they had any guns. Soldiers were also seen taking photos inside some houses. Throughout the operation, helicopters hovered over the village, and when residents attempted to leave the village in the morning they reported the checkpoint was closed and surrounded by tanks and bulldozers.

Also invaded was the Palestinian Progressive Youth Union office, which had the door broken in and was occupied for two hours. Organisers in the morning found all doors inside the office smashed, and all files and furniture strewn throughout. Soldiers also broke into the Amjad Child Activity Centre, destroying the doors for the internet cafe there and the classroom that offers free tutorials in mathematics and English for school children.

Strangely, throughout the entire ten-hour operation, no one from the village was arrested; nor did Israeli soldiers fire sound bombs, tear gas or shoot ammunition in the streets – part of the usual modus operandi of an Israeli military invasion. While Beit Furiq is invaded regularly, usually the Israeli soldiers enter the village in two or three jeeps, invade and occupy a few houses, and make some arrests – usually of boys and young men between the ages of 15-25 years – explains a member of the Beit Furiq council, Abu Tayer. On Tuesday morning however, even when young boys threw stones at the departing soldiers, an act usually sufficient to result in arrest and jail time, there was no response from the invading army.

The strangeness of this operation has led many in the village to conclude that it was a training operation. “Some people think they were making training here because these villages are like those in the south of Lebanon. Maybe we will see an invasion there soon,” speculated Abu Tayer. Abu Hakim, mayor of the village is also convinced that their village was invaded and terrified for training purposes, declaring that in the past month he has heard of two other similar operations in nearby villages of Beita and Aqraba.

On 5th June, at 11am, approximately 50 demonstrators attempted to march to Beit Eba checkpoint to commemorate the 41st anniversary of the occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza and as part of the 3-day, Palestine-wide, launch of the ‘Summer Against Apartheid’ campaign.

Organised by the Nablus Committee Against the Siege; the Women’s Union; the Committee of Political Parties; and the Workers’ Unions, in conjunction with villages around Nablus, the demonstration commemorated the 41st anniversary of when Israel first began their occupation of Gaza, East Jerusalem and the West Bank, which has since continued unabated.

The demonstration was part of a series of actions throughout Palestine to launch the ‘Summer Against Apartheid’ campaign of 2008, with further actions planned across the West Bank throughout the summer. Similar actions are taking place on Thursday in the village of Qaffin, where residents have erected an activist camp against the Apartheid wall there; as well as on Friday in Bil’in, Ni’lin, Al Masara’a and Al Khader

The non-violent demonstrators in Nablus were prevented from reaching Beit Eba checkpoint by an intense Israeli army presence, who were positioned approximately 100m inside the checkpoint, with razor wire and guns pointed threateningly. Organisers had hoped to open the checkpoint, which is a major part of the systematic seven-year siege on the city of Nablus, preventing freedom of movement in and out of the city.

Residents vow to continue to demonstrate against the checkpoints which form the backbone of the system of apartheid that exists throughout the West Bank.