On Monday, April 2, Palestinians will be joined by international solidarity activists in the West Bank city of Nablus for a non-violent demonstration at the Israeli checkpoint, Beit Furik. Activists will be demonstrating against Israeli Apartheid and Israel’s restriction of freedom of movement in Nablus.
Since 2002 it has only been possible to enter Nablus through six checkpoints on foot. It is even more difficult to exit. Men between 16 and 45 (it varies from day to day) can only exit their city with a special permit that can be obtained only outside Nablus. The city is often sealed off during Jewish holidays. Almost nightly the residents of Nablus are the victims of violent military raids and their lives have not been peaceful or normal for years Demonstrators are planning to meet in Nablus at 10am. From there, the crowd will board buses and head toward the Beit Furik checkpoint.
There will be a demonstration and representatives will give speeches regarding the effects of the Israeli Occupation on Nablus and Palestine as a whole.
For more info, contact:
Sameh, 059-910-6533
Myasser, 059-932-4672
Mohammad Ayesh, 052-222-3374
ISM Media Office: 02-297-1824, 059-994-3157
Border Guard policemen filmed beating Palestinian youth by Ali Waked
(VIDEO) Israeli policemen caught on camera abusing 17-year-old Hawara teen who was on his way home from school. Local residents say life in village has become nightmare due to Border Guard violence. Border Guard chief says incident will be investigated
VIDEO – Border Guard policemen were caught on camera beating a 17-year-old Palestinian youth at the West Bank village of Hawara, near Nablus Wednesday. The incident was documented by one of the local residents.
Border Guard Commander Hassein Fares said in response, “I view such behavior as extremely severe. The matter will be probed by the Police Investigation Unit.
“Border Guard fighters work to protect the citizens of Israel and are responsible for thwarting hostile terrorist acts, while dealing with numerous acts of violence carried out against them,” he added.
The commander also said that there had been a drop of 64 percent in investigations launched against Border Guard officers for excessive use of force in 2006.
Border Guard police beat Palestinian youth
The head of the investigation team, Avi Peretz, said that the investigation would not take long as the evidence was solid and “one picture is worth a thousand words.”
The Police Investigation Unit decided to launch the investigation immediately after watching the film. Peretz estimated that the investigation would last a week or two and its findings would then be handed over to the State Prosecutor’s Office.
“We still have to listen to the suspects’ version. In similar cases in the past, soldiers were tried and even went to jail,” he said.
The youth, Hindawi Qawarik, told Ynet that at about 12:30 pm Wednesday, he and his friends were leaving school when they noticed a Border Guard jeep not far from them.
“I told my friends that if we pass near them, they’ll hit us like they did a few weeks ago,” he said.
The policemen approached the youths and questioned them regarding a stone-throwing incident that took place earlier. They then decided to detain three of the teens for further questioning.
Hindawi was one of those three. “I pretended not to hear them and kept walking, because I could still remember the beating I got last week. But one cop chased me. When I saw that he was after me I halted. He dragged me back to the direction of the jeep, and when we got there he pushed me and pinned me to the wall, so that no one will be able to see what they were doing to me.”
At this point, according to Hindawi, the violence began. “Two of the policemen started hitting me in the legs with a rifle, punching me, slamming my head against the door of a nearby container, pushing me to the floor and hitting me in the head.
“I kept screaming: I haven’t done anything, you can check my ID.” Hindawi said that one of the policemen tried to persuade the others to stop, “but they just ignored him and kept on hitting me.”
According to the teen, one of the policemen also took books out of his school bag and tore some of them apart. Then they released him, not before “a few more slaps and punches.” Hindawi’s account has been verified by an eyewitness.
‘Our lives have become a nightmare’
Hindawi told Ynet that the police violence has already become a daily routine in the village. “We already got used to the beatings, but it makes it very hard for us to study… very often we miss the first two classes of the day because they detain us, humiliate and hit us.
Other Hawara residents told Ynet that soldiers and policemen, mostly Border Guard policemen, have turned their lives into a nightmare. “Once every few days the policemen and the soldiers declare a curfew in the village, claiming that Border Guard jeeps have been stoned,” they said.
One of the residents said that in addition to the violence, the policemen harass the village girls, a thing that causes “severe social problems within the Palestinian families and social and psychological problems for the girls, who are forced to handle curses that are unacceptable in our society.”
Sources at the village council claimed that complaints filed with the Coordination and Liaison Authority have yielded no results.
Meretz MK: This is the cruelty of occupation
Left-wing Knesset members responded angrily to the affair. Meretz faction chairwoman, MK Zahava Gal-On, called on the Police Investigation Unit to launch an immediate investigation against the officers involved in the incident.
“It is unthinkable that Border Guard policemen should use violence against Palestinians because they think that no one is watching and that they won’t be punished. These images show the brutality of occupation in the territories,” she told Ynet.
MK Danny Yatom (Labor) urged the internal security minister, the police commissioner and the Border Guard commander “to launch an immediate investigation and publish its findings. If the Border Guard officers are found guilty, they should be punished severely, and if not – it is important for the Israeli public to know this.
“The investigation is aimed at revealing the truth and punishing the guilty officers, or alternatively, preventing further damage to the State of Israel’s reputation,” he said.
MK Avshalom Vilan (Meretz) said that “it is clear to all that the occupation corrupts the best of soldiers. The incident must be investigated and we must make sure that norms of inappropriate behavior will not be allowed among IDF soldiers and Border Guard police officers.”
Hadash faction chairman, MK Mohammad Barakeh, said that “members of the Border Guard and the security forces draw their cruelty from the prevailing atmosphere in the Israeli street.”
One week after I left Nablus I found myself again looking out across the city’s majestic sunlit hills, this time from one of the highest mountains in the West Bank. In all my reporting on Israel’s invasion and human rights violations, I never mentioned how beautiful the ancient city is, from the surrounding mountains to the enchanting Old City, so easy to get lost in. Both remind me of Damascus (one pessimistic Palestinian pointed out the comparison early during my stay, claiming that the Nablus invasion was practice for an attack against Syria). My last day in Nablus I got to discover another one of the city’s gems: Al Najaa University. I immediately took to the old architecture mixed with modern sculptures on the main campus, but what inspired me most was watching thousands of students return to the frantic bustle of daily university life so soon after soldiers had released the city from hostage. Resilience is a defining character of Palestinian identity in my experience, and I was more impressed than surprised to see Palestinians asserting their determination to get an education even in the most difficult circumstances. Just another example of the ever-pervasive Palestinian nonviolent resistance.
The night before visiting I had passed by the empty campus–abandoned since the Army took over and classes were cancelled–in a taxi driving home with the family that was hosting me. I had grown quite close to the warm family with Leninist communist leanings, and felt happy and comfortable in their home covered with posters of Che Guevara, David Beckham, Shakira, and others idolized by the three teenage daughters. As we were driving and chatting after having visited some friends, we were suddenly surrounded with jeeps driving through the city to and from seemingly every direction. We panicked. Was there curfew? Would we be shot for being outside? Screeching to a halt, we tried to back up to the neighborhood we’d come from, but jeeps were swarming in that direction as well. Where were we supposed to go?
The jeeps left as quickly as they had come. Apparently they were doing a practice invasion, presumably to train new soldiers, as they’ve been doing a lot recently in a village called Beit Lid near Tulkarem (even though nobody in the village has been accused of threatening Israel’s security). I will never forget that feeling of being suddenly surrounded, the confusion and panic, the helplessness. There was something about sitting together to a cheerful family breakfast the next morning that felt like a kind of nonviolent resistance too: the insistence on ordinary life and pleasures no matter what havoc Occupation Forces are wreaking just outside.
I returned to the Nablus region a week later to accompany a teacher named Addawiya and her family to plow land they haven’t been able to work for six years due to soldier harassment. The next plot over hasn’t been plowed in 26 years for the same reason. There are Israeli military posts on all the highest West Bank peaks, among them the mountain where Addawiya’s land lies. As we cleared away stones that had overrun the land over the last half dozen years, Addawiya told me about the day she was picking olives with her brother when the soldiers came and threatened to shoot her brother if he didn’t leave the land immediately. He persisted in picking olives until the soldiers began shooting into the air to show that they were serious, at which point he ran off terrified. Addawiya was left alone, and on her hands and knees pleaded for her life, all along sure she was going to die. Her fear was not unjustified. Three years ago, Addawiya’s sister was taking a walk on the family’s land near the village with her husband when a group of soldiers popped out from the foliage and open-fired on him. The 33-year-old teacher died instantly
The Israeli Army came and apologized to Addawiya’s family. Apparently they were intending to assassinate a wanted man and shot the wrong guy. Addawiya’s sister, who was 23 and pregnant at the time, is now a 26-year-old going on 60. With nobody to support her and two young children to raise, she had to move back in with her mother. Incidentally, the mother invited me to move in too when we returned from plowing (as an unmarried, childless 27-year-old woman, I’m practically an old maid around here). I declined politely, and we began the journey back to Haris.
Our first stop along the way was Huwwara, the southern checkpoint out of Nablus city, where as usual hundreds of students from Al Najaa and other universities were waiting unhappily, squished together like cattle as it began to rain and everyone squeezed under the roof to wait behind metal detectors and turnstiles to leave the city.
I remembered passing through Huwwara a few days earlier on a trip accompanying other farmers in the area. Since the solidarity effort was organized by the Israeli group Rabbis for Human Rights, we were driving in an Israeli car with yellow license plates, so we didn’t even slow down as we breezed through on the Israeli-only road parallel to the one where Palestinians had been waiting for hours if not days.
On the way back from Addawiya’s land, a colleague and I decided to stay at Huwarra to do Checkpoint Watch, i.e. witness and document any human rights violations. There was already one sick man whom the Army had refused to let pass and we took his story. At first the soldiers didn’t seem to mind our presence, but after some time one soldier told us we weren’t allowed to stand where we were. He pointed to a line drawn on the floor nearby and said we could stand behind it. We began to protest, but quickly realized a fight would translate into longer waiting time for the Palestinians being processed by the same soldier, so we walked a few paces to the other side of the line. Ten minutes later, a different soldier informed us it was illegal to be observing the checkpoint at all, so we would have to leave immediately. We didn’t even dignify his absurd claim with a response. He stood next to us awkwardly repeating himself a few times and then eventually went away.
We were approached by a third soldier, speaking only Hebrew. When we said we couldn’t understand, he told us in broken English that it was illegal to be there if you didn’t speak Hebrew. This was a new one. Another soldier showed up to translate the soldier’s original message, namely that in fact we could look but not take pictures. The soldier regretted to inform us that he would have to delete my photographs. At that point we decided we preferred to leave rather than lose the photos, so we began to walk away. As expected, the soldier didn’t chase after the supposedly “illegal”� pictures. Just before we left, we saw the sick man previously denied passage try his luck with a different soldier at a different machine and get through.
Israel claims that its checkpoints are for the security and safety of its citizens. What makes this claim so difficult to believe for those observing the institutions is how inconsistent and seemingly arbitrary the Army’s actions and “laws”� so frequently are. The sick man got through on his second try. Had that failed, he could have sprung for an expensive taxi ride to an alternative checkpoint 10 miles north that is scarcely monitored at all (when we passed through on the way to Addawiya’s land there were no soldiers in sight). The whole trip north and then around again would cost him several hours and paychecks, but he could exit his city with relative certainty. Anyone who’s spent time in the West Bank knows that if you’re desperate, you can get anywhere. There is always an alternative road, even into Israel, even with the Wall, which is full of holes so as not to disturb settlers commuting to Israel. Israel is not stupid. It knows that Palestinians can get around the Army’s blockades if they just drain enough energy and resources to do so. So why does Israel do it?
As our shared taxi from Huwwara to Haris left the checkpoint, the driver pulled up next to several drivers to ask how Zatara was. Zatara is a permanent checkpoint between Huwwara and Haris, but there’s an alternative road through Jama’iin village, which drivers take when the checkpoint line is too long or slow. The ride takes much longer, and is painfully bumpy and curvy. When our driver chose the detour, the woman next to me grimaced and took out some plastic bags, which she spent the ride vomiting into. I rubbed her back, not knowing what else to do, thinking about the short, straight, paved road that could have eased her suffering if it were not rendered so endless for non-Jews.
The taxi eventually dropped us off near the Haris bus stop, which soldiers have surrounded with large concrete cubes leftover from the roadblock that used to block our village. The blocks mean that waiting Palestinians cannot easily get from the sheltered bus stop to the road, so at least one traveler must wait always wait on the road to spot and flag down cars, even when it’s raining. Each time I’m forced to drench my backpack and jeans waiting to start a day’s journey, I think about what Israel has to gain by making even a bus stop inaccessible without struggle, by rendering what could be a smooth drive home into a nauseating miserable ride. I think about why the roadblocks were set up to begin with outside Haris, when villagers either had to drive their cars to the entrance, park, walk around, and take a taxi the rest of the way to work or university, or they had to take their cars along a strenuous unpaved detour through the countryside to reach the same outside road. What’s the point of making life so frustrating that people reconsider even going to work or school? What happens when daily life in Palestine becomes just too unbearable?
My questions are answered almost every day when strangers call or approach us desperate for help getting a visa to Europe or North America. They say they can’t take it anymore: First Israel took their land, then their sons, and now their dignity. What Israel wants more than anything isn’t to harm Palestinians; it wants for Palestinians to leave. Israel is the first to admit that the “demographic problem”� of too many Palestinians in an exclusively Jewish state threatens Israel more than any suicide bomber ever could.
Addawiya told me she wanted to leave as we were walking back from her groves. I asked her where, and she told me it didnt matter–she wasn’t going anywhere. “Because no country will give you a visa?”� I asked, and she shook her head. “Because that’s what they want us to do. They want us to flee as we did in 1948, so that the Jewish National Fund can again expropriate our land and reserve it for Jews only. But I won’t leave. I will stay here because it’s my right and it’s my duty, to myself and to my children.”� For Addawiya, even staying in her village and working her land is nonviolent resistance, the kind almost every Palestinian partakes in. It’s not the type of resistance that will make it onto headlines or the six o’clock news, but it is there, it is strong, and it is not going away.
The Criminal Investigations Division of the Israeli military police are opening an investigation into charges that Israeli soldiers used Palestinian civilians as human shields during an operation in Nablus two weeks ago.
The inquiry was launched upon the orders of IDF Judge Advocate General Brig.-Gen. Avi Mandelblit.
Palestinians residents of Nablus in the West Bank claimed that during an IDF raid in the city, soldiers illegally threatened civilians at gunpoint. Israel’s Supreme Court has ruled out use of Palestinian civilians in military operations, and specifically banned taking Palestinian civilians on arrest raids.
On February 25, the Associated Press filmed a video in which a Palestinian man is shown accompanying heavily armed soldiers as they conduct house-to-house arrest sweeps.
After the operation, the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem published a report in which Palestinian witnesses reported seeing soldiers use a Palestinian girl, 11, and boy, 15, as human shields.
Walking on ‘tiptoe’?
According to witnesses’ testimonies, on the first day of the operation soldiers arrived at a Palestinian family’s Nablus home and instructed the family’s 15-year-old boy to accompany them on searches of three other homes.
The boy said the soldiers pushed him with their rifle barrels and forced him to enter the rooms of the homes ahead of them, to open closets and empty their contents, and open windows.
Contrary to the allegations, at the end of the operation the IDF claimed to have “walked on tip-toe” in its treatment of the city’s civilian population. According to IDF sources, the army performed a widespread military operation in Nablus but within strict constraints.
“We were asked by all ranks to do everything in order not to hurt innocent Palestinians, because it is clear that such an incident would be extremely significant, beyond the level of the division and brigade here,” a senior officer said.
The army noted that nine fugitives were arrested during the raids and multiple weapons caches and explosives laboratories were discovered. One Palestinian was killed, one IDF soldier was moderately wounded and three were lightly wounded.
Crowd-control devices like stun grenades and tear gas have injured a number of journalists in recent weeks, including two television crewmen covering a women’s protest Thursday — and reporters are charging they’ve been targeted by Israeli security forces.
Over the last three months, at least five journalists were injured — including an AP photographer whose leg was broken by a stun grenade — while covering protests or Israeli military operations. In one incident, an AP photographer said a stun grenade was thrown at reporters as they talked to soldiers.
The army denied any targeting of journalists, and said it would investigate the incidents.
The military “does not intentionally harm journalists, and any such claims on this matter are baseless,” a military statement said, adding that there are “inherent risks to journalists” covering combat operations.
The casualties were caused by non-lethal means the Israelis use to break up demonstrations and riots. However, stun grenades, which make a loud noise can cause serious injuries when their canisters fly through the air, and tear gas can also cause injury in high concentrations.
On Thursday, paramilitary border police fired stun grenades from a distance of about 10 meters to break up a demonstration of women at the Qalandia checkpoint between the West Bank and Jerusalem.
Associated Press Television cameraman Eyad Moghrabi was hit on the leg by a flying piece of metal. TV footage showed a stun grenade exploding among the reporters, who were several meters away from the demonstrators. The pictures show the reporters scattering, with one clutching her leg.
“This was not the first time they fire where the journalists are located,” Moghrabi said.
Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said the officers warned everyone, including journalists, that their presence was illegal, before firing the stun grenades, denying that reporters were targeted.
In its statement, the military said it “strives to ensure that the press is not hindered,” but said that when soldiers declare an area closed, reporters are expected to leave.
While agreeing that the military did not have a deliberate policy, Daniel Blumenthal, vice chairman of the Foreign Press Association, said there are numerous complaints. “We assume some soldiers act on their own initiative because of their idea about where a journalist should be (during) an event.”
Thursday’s casualties were only the most recent.
On Wednesday, Al-Jazeera technician Maamoun Othman was wounded when Israeli soldiers fired stun grenades during the arrest of a radical Islamic leader.
“A stun grenade was fired at me directly. It landed on my stomach,” Othman said.
On Feb. 27, journalists say they were hit as they talked to soldiers about covering an army operation in Nablus.
AP photographer Emilio Morenatti said soldiers approached them in jeeps, asking them to leave.
As they were talking with the soldiers “one hand appeared from the (army) car, and threw a stun grenade at us,” he said. No one was hurt.
The FPA protested the Nablus incident, calling it “obstruction and ill treatment of journalists.” Morenatti suffered a broken leg from a fragment of a stun grenade, thrown from a distance of about two meters while he was covering a protest in the West Bank village of Bilin in January.
On Feb. 16, AP photographer Nasser Shiyoukhi was hurt when soldiers fired a tear gas grenade that exploded next to a group of reporters near Hebron.
