Tag: Nablus

After a standoff in ‘Ein Beit Al Ma’ refugee camp, Friday morning, July 20, 2007, in which six international human rights activists forced three jeeps of the Israeli Occupation Force to retreat, denying them further access to the camp, the international activists achieved a second success. At 11:30am several Israeli snipers were forced out of the home they had occupied since 3:00 am that morning. The internationals entered the house after the withdrawal of the snipers and found 35 civilians inside, 20 of which were children.

International activists combed the main thoroughfare of ‘Ein Beit Al Ma’ refugee camp, Friday morning after the standoff, to ensure the army had vacated the area completely. Several Palestinian boys approached the activists to point out Israeli snipers in a building on the hill above the camp.

The activists proceeded toward the building where they found the door of the gate kicked in. From the outside of the door they negotiated with the soldiers. “Your position is know you need to leave now,” one international activist shouted at the door. Several other activists echoed his sentiment. A soldier opened the door. “We are here to let you know that its time to leave,” said an activist as the soldier raise his gun to the activists’ chest. “There is absolutely no reason to point that gun at us and you know that.” At this time the activists could see several of the people being held prisoner in their own home. The soldier quickly shut the door when he realized everything was being caught on film.

They shouted from the door to the soldiers that their location was known and that it was pointless to continue occupying the building. They implore the soldiers to leave and think of the families inside who they had endangered.

“Your position depends on the fact that you think it’s a secret that you are in there. You and I both know that that is not the case, so its time to pull out,” said an activist. “This is a war crime. You cannot use civilians as human shields, which is what you are doing. You cannot take up place in an occupied residence and use it as a sniper position. It’s time for you to leave.”

The negotiations continued between the international activists and the occupying soldiers who whispered on the other side of the door.

“I know you have orders that make sense to you right now, but what you need to understand if that you are breaking the law. And you still have a decision to make about what is right. Its time to leave and you know that,” said an activist. “You cannot hold a family prisoner while you use their home as a sniper position. And it doesn’t make sense anyway. Everyone knows you are in here, how do you think we found you—other than the door blown off the gate, its not very subtle. We know you are here. So it is time to leave. Call your boys, get your jeeps, and get out…This is not a strategic forward position for you anymore. It’s time to relocate. Call the jeeps and leave.”

After about 20 minutes, the Israeli snipers did call the jeeps to return for them. Seven Israeli snipers exited the building. When the soldiers and jeeps left, the people trapped inside flooded out onto the street.

They entered the house at 3:00 am, about 12-15 soldiers, and occupied the top floor, one man who had been held captive in his own home told the international activists. He continued saying that they made all the families stay downstairs. They separated the children from the adults. Two soldiers guarded the door to the building as well as the door to the room where they had forced the families to stay. The rest of the soldiers, he said, stayed upstairs.

“My children were very afraid—they cried,” said one woman who was alone in her flat with her children because her husband, forced by the Israeli occupation and apartheid regime, sought employment abroad.

“The Israeli occupation controls the whole country, what’s another house to them,” said another man about being held prisoner in his own home for 8 and half hours.

One of the families inside the occupied house was visiting from Jordan for a wedding next week; they just arrived the day before. A woman in this family expressed deep sadness and shock over how quickly and drastically life changes in Palestine.

No one was physically hurt during the house occupation nor were any of the families’ personal affects destroyed. One man told the international activists at the scene that he did not hear any gunfire coming from the third floor.

The invasion of ‘Ein Beit Al Ma’ refugee camp by the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) continued on Friday, July 20, 2007 at 10:20 am when several jeeps returned to the main street of Nablus and entered the camp. International human rights activists present created a human roadblock on the main thoroughfare of the camp to stop any other jeeps from entering the camp and continuing their siege on the camp’s inhabitants. Three internationals were shot with rubber bullets during the blockade. They were just three of the several victims of the IOF’s aggressive and excessive use of force that morning, on what could have otherwise been a quiet, peaceful and sunny Friday holiday.

For approximately 40 minutes the activists stood and sat in the road denying the IOF access to the camp from that route. During the standoff between the jeeps and the non-violent activists, several sound bombs were thrown out of the jeep’s windows, tear gas was shot up into the air, and rubber bullets and sound bombs were fired at extremely close ranges.

“They are not going through,” the activists echoed to each other making it clear that they were committed to staying in the road despite the IOF’s attempts to scare them away.

The activists shouted to the jeeps, “Who are you shooting at?” The IOF continued to fire rubber bullets in the direction of the activists as well as at the Palestinian boys that lined the right-hand side of the road. “The ammunition in that gun will kill if you shoot it at this range. That is an M16 it will kill at this range. Do you understand, you will murder somebody if you shoot it. You will kill!” an international activist screamed at the jeep as it continued to fire its ammunition at the non-violent activists.

Three jeeps were blocked from entering the camp by the activists, one on the offensive with two stacked behind it the second on the same road, and the third at the bottom on the main road perpendicular to the main thoroughfare of the camp.

As the first jeep retreated and quickly approached, revving its engine each time it came within a half meter from the activists. “Does it look like we are moving? Back off! Back off!” said one of the international activists. They were undeterred, unintimidated, and unwilling to allow this vehicle as arm of the occupation apparatus access to the camp and its innocent inhabitants—the activists sat down together in the road. The jeep quickly sped up, stopping mere centimeters from the activists’ heads, which were then parallel to the bumper of the jeep, to rev its engine creating a dust cloud in their faces.

The IOF soldiers pointed their weapons at the activists from small holes in the steel jeeps they hid behind. “Do you know what will happen if you shoot?” asked one international activists. As the word “shoot” crossed her lips, a rubber bullet came flying out of the jeep. “Do you know what will happen if you shoot? she repeated. “You are shooting at children. You are shooting children. You have brothers their age. This is your younger brother. You are shooting at your younger brother.”

The jeep continued its offensive hoping to scare the activists with its bullets, sound bombs, quick advances and loud engine. Many of the activists seized this opportunity to have a smoke while they sat in the sun showing the soldiers they were unimpressed with how they spent the United States’ Foreign Aid this year.

“Look at me! You can see me. We are not doing this to harm you; we are doing this so you can’t harm them,” said an activist pointing at the streets behind her that made up ‘Ein Beit Al Ma’ refugee camp. “Are you going to murder me because I am standing in your jeep’s way?”

After 40 minutes the IOF was forced to drive away. The international activists successfully warded off the threat of three more jeeps to the refugee camp. Not one soldier exited the jeep during the whole entire exercise. It was machine versus man on the streets of Nablus. Man, the human spirit, won that morning.

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).