Tag: Ni’lin

Israeli forces arrest Palestinian on his return from testifying to the UN in Geneva

Update: According to his legal representation, Mohammad Srour will be released on bail.

For Immediate Release:

22 July 2009: Israeli forces arrest Palestinian on his return from testifying to the United Nations in Geneva.

Mohammad Srour was arrested on 20 July 2009 while crossing the Allenby Bridge from Jordan.

Srour and Jonathan Pollack, an Israeli solidarity activist, testified to the United Nations in Geneva on 6 July 2009 about the murder of 2 young men by Israeli forces during a demonstration in Ni’lin.

(Video available: http://www.un.org/webcast/unhrc/archive.asp?go=090706, download the video: http://webcast.un.org/ramgen/ondemand/conferences/unhrc/gaza/gaza090706pm1-eng.rm?start=00:35:37&end=01:41:24)

Srour, a member of the Ni’lin Popular Committee Against the Wall, participates in demonstrations that take place against the theft of Ni’lin’s land. He and Pollack were witness to the shooting of 2 Ni’lin residents (Arafat Rateb Khawaje and Mohammed Khawaje) on 28 December 2009, during a demonstration in solidarity with Gaza.

“I know full well that I will pay the price for this testimony when I return at Israeli crossing points in my journey of return after this hearing.” –Mohammad Srour stated at minute 4 of his testimony to the United Nations

Srour was arrested at the border crossing of the Allenby Bridge and taken to Ofer prison. On Wednesday, he was interrogated by Israeli forces and his lawyer has requested an urgent hearing for Thursday. He will likely be taken to court on Thursday, 23 July 2009 to hear the charges against him.

Background

The West Bank village of Ni’lin has been demonstrating since the Israeli government began for a second time to construct the Wall on village lands in May 2008. To date, Israeli forces have killed 5 residents of Ni’lin and critically injured 1 American solidarity activist. According to local medics who volunteer with the Palestinian Red Crescent, over 450 people have been injured during demonstrations as of April 2009.

Visibly, the violence from Israeli forces dramatically increased during and after the 22-day assault on Gaza that began on 27 December 2008. Israeli forces have killed 3 demonstrators since the beginning of the Gaza assault in Ni’lin. Additionally, the Israeli army has introduced new weapons against demonstrators; using the high-velocity tear gas projectile and a 0.22 calibre live ammunition shot by sniper fire as a means of crowd dispersal.

Additionally, Israeli arrest and intimidation campaigns on the villages that demonstrate against the Wall, have led to the arrests of over 76 Palestinians in Ni’lin alone.

  • 5 June 2009: Yousef Akil Srour (36) was shot in the chest with 0.22 caliber live ammunition and pronounced dead upon arrival at a Ramallah hospital.
  • 13 March 2009: Tristan Anderson (37), an American citizen, was shot in the head with a high velocity tear gas projectile. He is currently at Tel Hashomer hospital with uncertain prospects for his recovery.
  • 28 December 2008: Mohammed Khawaje (20) was shot in the head with 5.56mm caliber live ammunition. He died in a Ramallah hospital 3 days later on 31 December 2008.
  • 28 December 2008: Arafat Rateb Khawaje (22) was shot in the back with 5.56mm caliber live ammunition and pronounced dead upon arrival at a Ramallah hospital.
  • 30 July 2008: Yousef Amira (17) was shot in the head with two rubber coated steel bullets. He died in a Ramallah hospital 5 days later on 4 August 2008.
  • 29 July 2008: Ahmed Mousa (10) was shot in the forehead with 5.56mm caliber live ammunition and pronounced dead upon arrival at a Ramallah hospital.

In total, 19 people have been killed during demonstrations against the Wall.

In total, 38 people have been shot by Israeli forces with live ammunition in Ni’lin: 9 were shot with 5.56mm caliber live ammunition and 29 were shot with 0.22 caliber live ammunition.

Since May 2008, residents of Ni’lin have been organizing and participating in unarmed demonstrations against construction of the Apartheid Wall. Despite being deemed illegal by the International Court of Justice in 2004, the Occupation continues to build the Wall, further annexing Palestinian land.

Ni’lin will lose approximately 2,500 dunums of agricultural land when construction of the Wall is completed. Israel annexed 40,000 of Ni’lin’s 58,000 dunums in 1948. After the occupation of the West Bank in 1967, the illegal settlements and infrastructure of Kiryat Sefer, Mattityahu and Maccabim were built on village lands and Ni’lin lost another 8,000 dunums. Of the remaining 10,000 dunums, the Occupation will confiscate 2,500 for the Wall and 200 for a tunnel to be built under the segregated settler-only road 446. Ni’lin will be left with 7,300 dunums.

‘Charges toughened against IDF officer in shooting of bound Palestinian’

Ha’aretz

21 July 2009

Israel’s Military Advocate General, Brig. Gen. Avichai Mandelblit, on Tuesday ordered tougher charges against an Israel Defense Forces officer who presided over the shooting of a bound and blindfolded Palestinian detainee.

Lt. Col. Omri Borberg and his soldier, known as Staff Sgt. L., were formally charged with “improper conduct” over the incident, which took place in the West Bank village of Na’alin last September.

But in early July, the High Court ordered Mandelblit to reconsider the indictment against the pair. The advocate general subsequently decided to charge Borberg with intimidation, and the soldier with having made unlawful use of a weapon.

“Following the High Court decision, the Military Advocate General conducted extensive consultations regarding the matter with the Attorney General of Israel and the State Attorney,” the IDF said in a statement.

“After the consultations, a decision was made on the basis of the the opinions of the Attorney General and State Attorney, and today, the modified indictment was served.”

Following the amendment to the indictment, legal proceedings against the pair will have to begin anew.

The victim, Ashraf Abu Rahmeh, 27, was not seriously hurt in the incident, in which he was shot in the foot with a rubber bullet.

He was detained during a protest against the construction of Israel’s security fence in the West Bank.

The soldier and officer said they had intended only to frighten him.

Ni’lin demonstrates against the Apartheid Wall

demonstrators escape tear-gas canisters in Ni'lin
demonstrators escape tear-gas canisters in Ni'lin

17 July 2009

The village of Ni’lin once again assembled for its weekly demonstration against the Israeli Apartheid Wall, which continues to cut residents off from their land and the surrounding areas.

Roughly 100 Palestinians and solidarity activists joined each other and marched towards the Wall, in the direction of the Hashmon’im settlement. The demonstrators chanted and sung but before long the main body of the protest was fired upon with large amounts of tear gas, dispersing the crowds across the adjacent fields. The Israeli armed forces entered the Palestinian land and continued with excessive amounts of tear gas, sound grenades and rubber coated steel bullets. A truck was readied to spray people with a foul smelling chemical mixture, but was not used as no one was close enough for the canons to be effective.

At various points soldiers advanced from different directions, often at speed, breaking up the protesters only for them to reconvene and begin flying flags and chanting once again.

The demonstration finished at around 3.30pm, with no serious injuries reported but with many treated for gas inhalation and one man receiving aid for a head injury after being hit with a tear gas canister.

Israeli forces commonly use tear-gas canisters, rubber coated steel bullets and live ammunition against demonstrators.

To date, Israeli occupation forces have murdered 5 Palestinian residents and critically injured 1 international solidarity activist during unarmed demonstrations in Ni’lin. In total, 19 people have been killed during demonstrations against the Wall.

  • 5 June 2009: Yousef Akil Srour (36) was shot in the chest with 0.22 caliber live ammunition and pronounced dead upon arrival at a Ramallah hospital.
  • 13 March 2009: Tristan Anderson (37), an American citizen, was shot in the head with a high velocity tear gas projectile. He is currently at Tel Hashomer hospital with an unknown
  • 28 December 2008: Mohammed Khawaje (20) was shot in the head with 5.56mm caliber live ammunition. He died in a Ramallah hospital 3 days later on 31 December 2008.
  • 28 December 2008: Arafat Rateb Khawaje (22) was shot in the back with 5.56mm caliber live ammunition and pronounced dead upon arrival at a Ramallah hospital.
  • 30 July 2008: Yousef Amira (17) was shot in the head with two rubber coated steel bullets. He died in a Ramallah hospital 5 days later on 4 August 2008.
  • 29 July 2008: Ahmed Mousa (10) was shot in the forehead with 5.56mm caliber live ammunition and pronounced dead upon arrival at a Ramallah hospital.

In total, 38 people have been shot by Israeli forces with live ammunition in Ni’lin: 9 were shot with 5.56mm caliber live ammunition and 29 were shot with 0.22 caliber live ammunition.

Since May 2008, residents of Ni’lin have been organizing and participating in unarmed demonstrations against construction of the Apartheid Wall. Despite being deemed illegal by the International Court of Justice in 2004, the Occupation continues to build the Wall, further annexing Palestinian land.

Ni’lin will lose approximately 2,500 dunums of agricultural land when construction of the Wall is completed. Israel annexed 40,000 of Ni’lin’s 58,000 dunums in 1948. After the occupation of the West Bank in 1967, the illegal settlements and infrastructure of Kiryat Sefer, Mattityahu and Maccabim were built on village lands and Ni’lin lost another 8,000 dunums. Of the remaining 10,000 dunums, the Occupation will confiscate 2,500 for the Wall and 200 for a tunnel to be built under the segregated settler-only road 446. Ni’lin will be left with 7,300 dunums.

The current entrance to the village will be closed and replaced by a tunnel to be built under Road 446. This tunnel will allow for the closure of the road to Palestinian vehicles, turning road 446 into a segregated settler-only road . Ni’lin will be effectively split into 2 parts (upper Ni’lin and lower Ni’lin), as road 446 runs between the village. The tunnel is designed to give Israeli occupation forces control of movement over Ni’lin residents, as it can be blocked with a single military vehicle.

‘Israeli ad makes light of separation barrier’

Robert Mackey| New York Times News Blog

14 July 2009

According to Noam Sheizaf, who writes the blog Promised Land from Tel Aviv, “the Israeli blogosphere is boiling” this week with discussion of this new television commercial for Israel’s largest cellphone company, Cellcom, which seems to make the “good fences make good neighbors” argument in favor of the controversial separation barrier being built in and around the West Bank:

In Mr. Sheizaf’s first post on the ad, which depicts Israeli soldiers and unseen Palestinians playing a game with a soccer ball across the barrier, he explained the Hebrew tag line and added his own interpretation of its deeper meaning:

The voice-over in the end goes: “What do we all want? Some fun, that’s all.” And what’s more fun than not seeing the Palestinians around anymore, thanks to the 10 meters high wall?

Mr. Sheizaf, writing that the ad “breaks some records in bad taste, even by Israeli standards,” also pointed to this comment from another Israeli blogger, Dimi Reider, who argued that this kind of fiction matters:

Ads aimed at the general market, like this one, are invaluable time capsules, representing public mood much more faithfully than any art. They can’t afford to affront and lose a single customer – and thus they document not just what a society really is, but what it really thinks itself to be, which can be just as decisive as facts and figures.

Mr. Reider also suggested that “this one minute ad says a lot about how mainstream Israel likes to see itself and the Palestinians,” noting, for instance:

The invisible, too-terrible-to-show-on-prime-time Palestinians, are perfectly happy to play with the people who locked them up (note how the wall bends, creating the impression of a tiny pen instead of a gargantuan project choking up an entire country). We so much so believe they should be happy to play with us that when they don’t return the ball (their ball), we are in every right to indignantly shout, “Nu?!” (”Well?!”)

Reuters reported on Sunday that “Ahmed Tibi, an Arab member of Israel’s Parliament, said he had written to Cellcom demanding it pull the ad.” Mr. Tibi told the news agency: “The advertisement presents the barrier as though it were just a garden fence in Tel Aviv.”

Taking a different view, a blogger at the American Web site Jewlicious calls the ad “cute,” while a reader of that Web site made a convincing case that this effort runs a poor second to this one, for the Israeli satellite company Yes, in the “Most Offensive Israeli Ad Ever” sweepstakes.

On another American blog, Mondoweiss, Adam Horowitz argues that video shot last Friday, documenting a protest against the barrier by Palestinians near the West Bank village of Nilin, shows “how this encounter usually plays out in reality.” This video, produced by the pro-Palestinian International Solidarity Movement — shot by two Israeli activists and a foreign volunteer — shows Palestinians who had cut a section of the barrier in protest being arrested by Israeli security forces:

In an interview with The Lede, one of the three people who shot this video, Sarit Michaeli, who works for the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, explained that she was allowed to shoot this video of one of the arrests being made just a few feet in front of her because she informed the security forces, in Hebrew, of her identity.

The second Israeli cameraman to document the clash at the barrier last Friday, an artist named David Reeb, posted more of his video in this edit on his YouTube channel:

Mr. Reeb’s video focuses on another aspect of Israeli-Palestinian relations near the separation barrier — the fact that two members of the Israeli security forces initially took part in the demonstration disguised as protesters.

Protests against the construction of the barrier in Nilin have been going on every Friday for about a year, as my colleague Isabel Kershner reported from the West Bank in March.

At one of those protests an American volunteer with the International Solidarity Movement, Tristan Anderson, from Oakland, Calif., was badly wounded when he was hit in the head by a tear-gas canister fired by an Israeli soldier. The activist group posted this graphic, disturbing video of Mr. Anderson being attended to by medics immediately after being hit during what it said had been “a peaceful demonstration.” As my colleague Ethan Bronner reported in March, a spokeswoman for the Israeli military took issue with that characterization of the protest:

The army spokeswoman said there were about 400 violent demonstrators at the village of Nilin, west of Ramallah, many of them throwing rocks at the troops. The forces shot back, she said, but not with live fire.

Still, no matter who you think is responsible for the violent clashes near the separation barrier in Nilin, the complex reality there, when Israelis and Palestinians actually meet, is very different from the simple fiction Cellcom is selling.

Disguised Israeli forces arrest two Palestinians during Ni’lin demonstration

10 July 2009

Around 80 Palestinian residents, alongside Israeli and international solidarity activists, gathered to demonstrate against construction of the Apartheid Wall in Ni’lin on Friday. After the weekly prayer, demonstrators marched to the Wall, chanting slogans against the Occupation and theft of their land. Upon arriving at the site, protesters cut the illegal fence with cutters.

Israeli forces shot tear-gas canisters at the protest, but individuals continued to destroy the fence. In response to the military violence, young Palestinian men threw stones and paint at the military vehicles driving below the Wall. Demonstrators managed to cut through the fence and placed boulders and a burning tire on the road to prevent military vehicles from driving close by and attacking.

The demonstration ended abruptly when approximately 10 members of Israeli special forces, disguised as participants with masked faces pulled out pistols and telescopic batons. Soldiers armed with guns and riot shields then entered through the fence and shot large amounts of tear gas, smoke grenades, percussion grenades and live ammunition from their handguns.

Two Palestinian young men were arrested and led away in handcuffs with their heads forced downwards and arms pulled upwards.

Israeli forces commonly use tear-gas canisters, rubber coated steel bullets and live ammunition against demonstrators.

To date, Israeli occupation forces have murdered five Palestinian residents and critically injured 1 international solidarity activist during unarmed demonstrations in Ni’lin.

  • 29 July 2008: Ahmed Mousa (10) was shot in the forehead with 5.56mm caliber live ammunition and pronounced dead upon arrival at a Ramallah hospital.
  • 30 July 2008: Yousef Amira (17) was shot in the head with two rubber coated steel bullets. He died in a Ramallah hospital 5 days later on 4 August 2008.
  • 28 December 2008: Arafat Rateb Khawaje (22) was shot in the back with 5.56mm caliber live ammunition and pronounced dead upon arrival at a Ramallah hospital.
  • 28 December 2008: Mohammed Khawaje (20) was shot in the head with 5.56mm caliber live ammunition. He died in a Ramallah hospital 3 days later on 31 December 2008.
  • 13 March 2009: Tristan Anderson (37), an American citizen, was shot in the head with a high velocity tear gas projectile. He is currently at Tel Hashomer hospital with an unknown
  • 5 June 2009: Yousef Akil Srour (36) was shot in the chest with 0.22 caliber live ammunition and pronounced dead upon arrival at a Ramallah hospital.

In total, 35 people have been shot by Israeli forces with live ammunition in Ni’lin: 7 were shot with 5.56mm caliber live ammunition and 28 were shot with 0.22 caliber live ammunition.

Since May 2008, residents of Ni’lin have been organizing and participating in unarmed demonstrations against construction of the Apartheid Wall. Despite being deemed illegal by the International Court of Justice in 2004, the Occupation continues to build the Wall, further annexing Palestinian land.

Ni’lin will lose approximately 2,500 dunums of agricultural land when construction of the Wall is completed. Israel annexed 40,000 of Ni’lin’s 58,000 dunums in 1948. After the occupation of the West Bank in 1967, the illegal settlements and infrastructure of Kiryat Sefer, Mattityahu and Maccabim were built on village lands and Ni’lin lost another 8,000 dunums. Of the remaining 10,000 dunums, the Occupation will confiscate 2,500 for the Wall and 200 for a tunnel to be built under the segregated settler-only road 446. Ni’lin will be left with 7,300 dunums.

The current entrance to the village will be closed and replaced by a tunnel to be built under Road 446. This tunnel will allow for the closure of the road to Palestinian vehicles, turning road 446 into a segregated settler-only road . Ni’lin will be effectively split into 2 parts (upper Ni’lin and lower Ni’lin), as road 446 runs between the village. The tunnel is designed to give Israeli occupation forces control of movement over Ni’lin residents, as it can be blocked with a single military vehicle.