Early in the morning Friday, July 20, 2007, the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) arrested three Palestinian men and injured three others during an invasion in ‘Ein Beit Al Ma’ refugee camp located in the north of the West Bank city of Nablus.
According to several men living in ‘Ein Beit Al Ma’ the IOF entered the camp, shortly past midnight, raiding more than nine homes, terrorizing the women, children, and families as well as the community at large.
At 9:30 am nine international activists approached the refugee camp. The roads were blocked; the IOF soldiers yelled from their jeeps that they could not enter the area. The activists continued to walk the streets of the camp undeterred by their threats. The nine walked to the main road at the edge of the camp where two IOF jeeps were blocking traffic on either side.
Palestinian boys were victimized by the IOF fanatical anger and lack of control as they were shot at with rubber bullets and live ammunition from inside the IOF’s monstrous steel jeeps.
At this time several international activists positioned themselves in between the gun sticking out of the IOF jeep and the Palestinian boys. The activists shouted questions at the soldiers about the necessity of shooting young teenagers as well as their illegal and unwanted presence in Nablus. Several activists took video footage of the event.
After approximately 20 minutes, the soldiers in their fleet of jeeps left the city, not without first throwing a sound bomb out the door of their vehicle in close proximity to the medics and international activists.
After the Israeli withdrawal, two internationals left the camp for Rafidia Hospital where the three injured teenagers saught emergency medical treatment. Mohammed Salim Askr, 17, was hit in the stomach/abdomen by a rubber bullet and underwent emergency investigative laparotomy. Edres Abdul Agfro Kama, 18, was hit in his right leg by a rubber bullet. He received surgery last year on the same leg for another rubber bullet injury. This time, he received IV antibiotics and discharged himself. Ali Esa Ramadan, 12, took a rubber bullet in his left hand. He did not have a fracture and was discharged.
The Israeli siege on Zawata, a village near Nablus, continued around noon on Thursday, July 19, 2007 as Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) demolished the exterior wall of a second home. The home itself was saved due to the extreme pressure placed on the IOF by international human rights activists present on the ground. The house belonged to Asad Natour’s three brothers. Faris Natour, 21, was interrogated inside his family’s half demolished home for almost six hours before he was arrested and taken away by the IOF.
“I had been sleeping. We turned on the television and we heard that they had entered the house of my brother and law. We were worried,” said Om Faris in a video interview with an international activist present at the demolition. “We went out on the street when there was an announcement that the army had pulled back. We wanted to walk up to check on our family members up in the village. And that’s when we realized that the army was standing just outside of our door. This was at 10:00 am.”
The IOF surrounded the house and they called the families out on the street. “They made them take off their clothes, all of their clothes one by one,” said Om Faris. The families were then strip-searched and forced to sit in the sun for two hours.
“They tried to call out Faris and when he did not response they called out for his mother—me,” said Om Faris. “They told him to surrender with ‘his bomb’ or they would blow up the house.”
The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions’ website cites a 2004 B’tselem Summary as reporting that more than 628 Palestinian homes were demolished during the second Intifada. These demolitions were used as specific tactic of collective punishment which affected the families of people known or suspected to be “terrorists.”
Om Faris continued lamenting the events that transpired at her home that day. “I told them 18 people live in this house. We are still paying off the debts of this house. I started crying hysterically. Faris calmed me down and said I should leave. He told me: a house can be demolished and a house can be rebuilt,” she said. “Then they took the women up on the street. I refused to go. I told them if they are going to demolish my house they are going to do it with me in it.
The house behind Om Faris’ home also fell prey to the IOF who had encircled the vicinity. Though the house was empty every window was shot in and shattered glass hemmed its interior.
Osama Zawati, 50, was returning home from work in Nablus at 2:00 pm when he realized his neighbor’s home was under siege. He held two grocery bags of fruits and vegetables and was told by an IOF soldier to walk swiftly with them by his side straight to his home or he would be shot. Later, he tried to look at the damage to the windows of his neighbor’s home, however, the IOF did not permit him to do so.
Around the same time, the IOF shot rubber bullets at an ambulance parked a quarter kilometer from the home still being occupied. The ambulance was parked outside a home where medics and internationals waited, after being denied access to the home, for Faris to be released and the army to leave the village.
At 5:00 pm, less than three hours later, the Israeli army occupied the house of Nowaf Abu Amsha, 35, in which the internationals and medics had been waiting, and the family was dragged out into the street. The army then demolished the family’s nearby garage with their car inside. “They didn’t ask me even to open it,” said Abu Amsha.
At 6:00pm the IOF left the village, two young men from Zawata still in their custody. Their mothers left to wonder when, if ever, they would see their sons again.
“On average 12 innocent people lose their home for every person ‘punished’ for a security offense – and in half of the cases the occupants had nothing whatsoever to do with the acts in question,” reads the ICHAD website. “To add to the Kafkaesque nature of this policy, the Israeli government insists it is pursued to ‘deter’ potential terrorists, although 79% of the suspected offenders were either dead or in detention at the time of the demolition.” (B’tselem Summary 2004:1,3).
Thursday, July 19, 2007 at 6:50 am approximately 50 Israeli Occupation Force (IOF) soldiers and border police, accompanied by a bulldozer, came to the village of Zawata, located by the West Bank city of Nablus. At 9:30 am they demolished one home despite attempts by international human rights activists at the scene to stop the demolition. Later the IOF caused severe damage to several other houses in the area. (For more information on the second part of the Israeli siege, please look at the second report.) Asad Natour, 47, his wife, Saeda, 39, and seven children are homeless now due to the egregious acts of the IOF.
“When the kids saw them do all of this—they wet their pants,” Asad told an international activist during a video interview. “First they shot at the house. After that they called on us using the megaphones. We exited. We had our hands up and went out on the street. They said take off your clothes.” The family was made to stand in the sun on the street adjacent to their home during which time they stripped completely for a full-body search even his youngest daughter Laura, who is six, was subjected to this brutal Israeli tactic of deprivation and humiliation.
“If they want to search our house, don’t take us out of our house as if we are terrorists. None of us have ever been in prison or done anything wrong to another human being, but they are not human,” Asad said. “They are used to killing. We are from Jaffa, we came to Camp No. 1 [Ein Beit Al Ma] and later we bought these 250 square meters here to build a house. But they don’t want this.”
Asad’s eldest son, Jihad, 20, was taken to a building across from his home, detained and interrogated. When the IOF was finished with their “interrogation,” they arrested him and took him away. No reason was given to his family for the arrest. “No, no one told me nothing!” said Asad. “I have never been in prison and neither has he. So there is no reason…They don’t want our young men to grow up.”
The IOF never entered the home; they never presented a military order or a permit for the destruction of the home. While demolishing first home, the IOF also demolished a neighbor’s car. In addition, when the bulldozer backed up from bulldozing Asad’s home, the back of the bulldozer hit his neighbor’s home where a month old infant was sleeping in its bed. Pieces of concrete from the wall fell on the baby and slashed its head. The baby was taken to hospital. X-rays were performed; luckily no fractures or permanent damage was sustained to the infant’s head.
“We are a people who love peace, but they don’t,” Asad said. “If they [Israel] are so democratic they would knock on the door. And we would open.” Israel’s policy of house demolitions is illegal under international law. Article 53 of the Fourth Geneva Convention reads: “Any destruction by the Occupying Power of real or personal property belonging individually or collectively to private persons…is prohibited.”
Thus as an occupying force within Palestine, the IOF acts illegally and completely of their own volition. Soldiers assaulted activists attempting to view the home demolition. When asked to present documents authorizing the home destruction, soldiers admitted they had none. A soldier on the scene declared, “I understand where you’re coming from, but you’re not going to see an order.” Yet another soldier when asked, “So you’re doing this without a military order?” answered, “I am.” Furthermore, activists at the scene applied due diligence toward contacting the District Command Office (DCO). However, despite promises by the DCO representative to return calls, repeated requests went unanswered. A representative from B’tselem told an international activist over the phone that the Israeli civil authorities knew nothing about the situation on the ground.
“Whatever they want—they can do. If they want to kill—they can. The only thing they want is to destroy, they destroy the house and then that’s it—they leave,” said Asad. “And we hope that all of the people in the world can stand with the Palestinian people because we’re repressed on our own land. Most don’t have work, and have nothing to eat. And all of the Palestinian people live off of aid. That’s it.”
Assad is employed by the United Nations as a Modern Standard Arabic teacher at Camp No.1 Basic Boy’s School. To date he has not paid off the loans he took out to build his home.
According to the website of the Israel Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD), 18,000 Palestinian homes were demolished in the Occupied Territories, including Occupied East Jerusalem, since 1967.
Between September 2000 the first year of the second Intifada and October 2004, approximately 50,000 Palestinians were left homeless (Human Rights Watch, Razing Rafah, October 2004).
July 12th, 2007. Nablus in the West Bank is home to approximately 250.000 people, and with its university and central location as a major commercial and educational focal point, it has also been a place which attracts workers and students from other villages and cities in the area. Nablus is surrounded by 35 villages in addition to illegal Israeli settlements such as Itamar, Berakha,and Alon Moreh, and Yitzhar.
The roads in and out of Nablus are controlled by the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF), and they control the thorough-fares in and out of the city, thus stopping the entry and exit of every one of the West
Bank residents approaching the city. The Checkpoints of Huwwarra leading southward, Beit Iba to the
northeast, and Badan to the east are all used as means of collective punishment. The Badan checkpoint especially, has made itself famous for the arrogance and harsh behavior with which the IOF meet the Palestinian population. Long delays, often for hours on end in excruciatingly hot temperatures, without any possibility of getting away, turning back, or finding shade.
On the 12th of July, two ISM-teams approached the checkpoints of Huwwarra and Badan to monitor the actions of the soldiers, report any violations of human rights, and assist Palestinians approaching the
checkpoints. At 7.30 the Badan checkpoint was in reality completely closed, and 10 minutes later the checkpoint suddenly opened up, thus slowly allowing Palestinian cars to go through the checkpoints manned by the IOF. The ISM-team observed and intervened when the IOF forced 4 of the Palestinian men waiting by the checkpoint to carry large boulders in order to further fortify the checkpoint, and prevent cars from approaching the soldiers from more than one lane.
The soldiers did not allow for anyone to pass the checkpoint by foot which created a lot of trouble for the people that came by foot and for workers and students that had to wait next to cars already filled with people. Women and children had to stay under the hot sun for hours and many had to wait more than 3 hours to pass. One of the Palestinian women, Huda, waited in the sun with her five children, the oldest being 9 years old and the youngest girl, an infant of 7 months. Around 08.00 am approximately 50 cars were waiting on each side of the checkpoint and many more Palestinians were standing beside the cars,
hoping to get the chance to lay out their reasons for passing to the arrogant and dazed soldiers. At around 08.30 am a bus arrived and all the men, around 20 had to get out and line up beside the bus, facing the valley below, with their backs to the road. A while later women and children were forced out as well, and all of their luggage was searched. Two of the men in the line were taken aside and had to sit down in the scorching sun. The detained men were handcuffed and blindfolded, one of them had to put his own T-shirt over his head, while the other young man was blindfolded with a piece of cloth. The plastic handcuffs that the soldiers used were very tight, and the soldiers refused to loosen up, even after complaints and requests. After fifteen minutes one of the two detainees was released and could
return to the bus. After standing outside in the heat for 40 minutes, the remaining men could get back to the bus. However one exhausted man was taken to a metal booth and was made to sit on a boulder in a very uncomfortable position.
The ISM-team managed to approach the man, and had him whisper his name and ID-number so that steps could be taken to secure his identity and prevent him from “dissapearing” into the Occupation Forces administration. We also made sure to get the phone number of his parents, and put Machsom Watch and Hamoked in touch with the DCO. It was now clear that the young man would not be released within the near future. The soldiers claimed his was one of the wanted men on their list containing 167 numbers. Each number is the last four numbers in a Palestinian ID-number and everyone on that list is wanted and to be arrested.
Time passed and the heat and position weakened the man and he was barely conscious at some points. The activists were allowed to give him water, but no food and absolutely not talk to him. After nearly 2 and a half hour in detention his condition was just getting worse, but the soldiers kept repeating that this was a dangerous man and not the 18 year old student that he really is, and refused to do something about the situation. When almost 4 hours had passed and the soldiers started to become disturbed by the international presence and the repeated reminders of what human rights violations they committed, the internationals had to leave in order not to escalate the violence. An hour after that, the man was taken away, still under arrest.
