Tag: Ramallah

Palestinian boy shot dead east of Ramallah

Popular Struggle Coordination Committee
15 May 2010

Aysar Yasser alZaben, 16 years old, was shot in his back yesterday evening in his family’s lands in Mazra’a alSharqia, east of Ramallah, apparently by a settler.

Aysar alZaben’s body was found in his plot by family members only hours after he was shot. He was found lying dead on the ground, face down, with a bullet hole in his back after being missing since the evening.

According to initial information, alZaben was shot by a settler when tending in his lands between 4:30 and 6:00 pm. At the time, a group of youth from the village scuffled with a settler near the adjacent Route 60. According to the testimonies of some of these youth, they were throwing stones towards Route 60, near a roadblock preventing Palestinian access to the road. At some point, a settler stopped his car and exited it, beginning to shoot live ammunition towards them, which caused them to run away back to the village. Escaping the shots, they were not aware that alZaben, who wasn’t with them and did not participate in the stone throwing, was hit.

As hours passed and alZaben did not return home, his family began looking for him. Having heard the shots earlier in the day, they began calling the Israeli Army, police and Civil Administration trying to locate him, thinking he may have been detained. Eventually, they set out to look for him in their fields, where they knew he had worked in the afternoon. According to his uncle, his lifeless body was found lying face down on the ground with a bullet hole in his back.

Mazra’a alSharqia is an agrarian village of about 5,000, located 15 kilometers Northeast of Ramallah. Despite the village’s location next to Route 60, which runs across the West Bank from north to south and was, in part, built on the Mazra’a’s lands, residents have no access to the road, as all the paths leading to and from it have been blocked by Israel.

After being disconnected from Route 60 in recent years, the only road from the area’s villages to Ramallah is a dangerous old agrarian road, which due to the mountainous terrain is often flooded in winters, completely disconnecting the region from the rest of the world.

Last Tuesday, a group of settlers from a nearby settlement have amassed in the Mazra’a alSharqia’s lands and attempted to enter the village after the Israeli government announced it will demolish illegal houses in a number of West Bank Jewish-only settlements. Residents, who suspected the settlers intend on holding a “price-tag” action in the village, confronted them, and manged to ward off the invasion.

They were then attacked by a force of soldiers who shot dozens of rounds of live ammunition and eventually also invaded the village.

Palestinian Youth Shot Dead East of Ramallah

Popular Struggle Coordination Committee
14 May 2010

Aysar Yasser alZaben, 16 years old, was shot in his back yesterday evening in his family’s lands in Mazra’a alSharqia, east of Ramallah, apparently by a settler.

Aysar alZaben’s body was found in his plot by family members only hours after he was shot. He was found lying dead on the ground, face down, with a bullet hole in his back after being missing since the evening.

According to initial information, alZaben was shot by a settler when tending in his lands between 4:30 and 6:00 pm. At the time, a group of youth from the village scuffled with a settler near the adjacent Route 60. According to the testimonies of some of these youth, they were throwing stones towards Route 60, near a roadblock preventing Palestinian access to the road. At some point, a settler stopped his car and exited it, beginning to shoot live ammunition towards them, which caused them to run away back to the village. Escaping the shots, they were not aware that alZaben, who wasn’t with them and did not participate in the stone throwing, was hit.

As hours passed and alZaben did not return home, his family began looking for him. Having heard the shots earlier in the day, they began calling the Israeli Army, police and Civil Administration trying to locate him, thinking he may have been detained. Eventually, they set out to look for him in their fields, where they knew he had worked in the afternoon. According to his uncle, his lifeless body was found lying face down on the ground with a bullet hole in his back.

Mazra’a alSharqia is an agrarian village of about 5,000, located 15 kilometers Northeast of Ramallah. Despite the village’s location next to Route 60, which runs across the West Bank from north to south and was, in part, built on the Mazra’a’s lands, residents have no access to the road, as all the paths leading to and from it have been blocked by Israel.

After being disconnected from Route 60 in recent years, the only road from the area’s villages to Ramallah is a dangerous old agrarian road, which due to the mountainous terrain is often flooded in winters, completely disconnecting the region from the rest of the world.

Last Tuesday, a group of settlers from a nearby settlement have amassed in the Mazra’a alSharqia’s lands and attempted to enter the village after the Israeli government announced it will demolish illegal houses in a number of West Bank Jewish-only settlements. Residents, who suspected the settlers intend on holding a “price-tag” action in the village, confronted them, and manged to ward off the invasion.

They were then attacked by a force of soldiers who shot dozens of rounds of live ammunition and eventually also invaded the village.

Israel admits use of Shin Bet to watch international activist

International Solidarity Movement

4 May 2010

For immediate release:

Ramallah, Occupied Palestinian Territories, PM – Israel has exposed the extent of its crackdown on resistance in an affidavit submitted to the Supreme Court on April 29, claiming that the Shin Bet intelligence agency has been conducting surveillance on ISM activist and Australian citizen Bridget Chappell in Area A of the West Bank. The affidavit claims that her arrest and continuing surveillance of her movements is justified on account of various Israeli military orders, highlighting its overall authority in its implementation of apartheid in the Occupied Territories and its total disregard for the sovereignty of the Palestinian Authority and the Oslo Accords.

“My arrest from Ramallah in February and the Shin Bet’s new claim that I am under surveillance in Area A of the West Bank serves to further abolish the myth of Palestinian control in the West Bank,” says Chappell. “It’s clear that Israel is the authority in the Territories and that this is apartheid. Israel’s matrix of control in the occupied territories extends not only to the entire Palestinian population, but international activists involved in the popular resistance here, which is very dangerous grounds for them as their attempts to crack down on our participation in the struggle focuses the eyes of the world on what Israel has hoped to execute as a very stealthy and systematic bantustanization of Palestine.”

The state’s affidavit submitted to the Supreme Court on April 29 claimed that the arrest of Chappell was based on her violation of a 1970 military order stating that non-residents of the West Bank are prohibited from staying in the area longer than 48 hours without written permission from the military commander of the region. This is in-keeping with what may become Israel’s strategy of removing internationals from the Palestinian territories via the system of martial law enforced in the West Bank since the military occupation in 1967. Attempted implementation of these military laws on internationals in Palestine will spell the exposure of one of Israel’s most veiled weapons – the system of martial law that has enabled the imprisonment of over 650,000 Palestinians since 1967, mass annexation of land and the network of checkpoints and apartheid roads.

Omer Shatz, attorney for Chappell and Marti, states: “We are pleased that the state has finally admitted that it is the authority in Area A, as if the Oslo Accords have disappeared, and that the ‘bantustan’ known as the Palestinian Authority has no significance. This straightforward position will certainly interest the U.S. secretary of state, in light of the start of proximity talks”.

The gathering momentum of non-violent popular resistance has been met with extreme measures by Israeli forces targeting Palestinian, international and Israeli activists. In the cases of Chappell and Ariadna Jove Marti, Eva Novakova, and Ryan Olander, Israeli authorities used the ‘Oz’ Immigration Unit in an attempt to deport foreigners for their political activities. In the case of Chappell and Marti, the Supreme Court ruled that the use of the ‘Oz’ and the Israeli Defense Forces to implement arrests of internationals residing in the West Bank is illegal.

These arrests are part of a wider crackdown on the growing movement of popular struggle in Palestine, that has seen the arrest and imprisonment of many members of the popular committees of Al-Ma’asara, Ni’lin, Bil’in, Nablus and Nabi Salih. The latest codified measures of arrest are a sign that Israel is intensifying its resources against the grassroots Palestinian struggle. Targeting international supporters is just part of a multi-tiered campaign to quash a quickly spreading model of non-violent resistance.

Demonstrators Demand Prisoners’ Release

Popular Struggle Coordination Committee

31 March 2010

Hundreds of people gathered at the Bitunya checkpoint near Ofer Military prison to demand the release of ten demonstrators arrested in Bethlehem last Sunday, among them Abbas Zaki of the PLO Executive Committee. Two demonstrators were arrested.

Hundreds of demonstrators, among them Jubril Rajoub, Jamal Muhsein and Mahmoud alAloul of Fatah’s Central Committee, gathered today in front of the Bituntya military checkpoint leading to Ofer Prison, where the ten demonstrators who were arrested in Bethlehem last Sunday are held. The demonstrators demanded the immediate release of those arrested in Bethlehem and of all the prisoners of the popular struggle. They also denounced the racial discrimination the ten were subjected to in their arrest, as the Israeli activists arrested with them were released with a slap on the wrist that very same day.

After a few short speeches, the demonstrators intended to continue to the Ofer military court, where the ten’s hearings were scheduled to be heard. Once refused passage, protesters tried to topple the fence near the checkpoint in order to get to the court. Border Police officers responded with concussion grenades, tear-gas and rubber-coated bullets. Clashes between officers and local youth continued for about two hours before the demonstration was dispersed.

Two Palestinian protesters were arrested during the demonstration. One of them, a 16 year old, was nabbed from within his father’s car, through the window, after Border Police officers broke it using a rifle butt.

The Bethlehem Ten’s remand hearing, which was supposed to be held today, did not take place, and was postponed to tomorrow.

Today’s demonstration, which was organized jointly by West Bank popular committees and the Fatah movement, follows a press conference held yesterday in Ramallah, in which Fatah announced an escalation in the movement’s use of popular struggle strategies.

For more details:
Jonathan Pollak +972.546.327.736

Background:

Fifteen demonstrators were arrested by Israeli forces during a peaceful demonstration near Rachel’s Tomb last Sunday, protesting Israeli violations of Palestinian freedom of religion and lack of access to Jerusalem. The demonstrators marked Palm Sunday and demanded to exercise the centuries old Christian tradition of pilgrimage to Jerusalem on that day. In a clear act of racial discrimination, the Israelis and international were released with a slap on the wrist that same night, while the police extended the arrest of all ten Palestinians by 96 hours.

After soldiers tried to stop the procession at a checkpoint between Bethlehem and Jerusalem near Rachel’s Tomb, demonstrators overwhelmed the few soldiers positioned there with their numbers, and peacefully continued to march towards Jerusalem. They were, however, stopped by a large contingent of Israeli Police officers a few hundred meters into Jerusalem. When the crowed could not advance farther, a number of Palestinian dignitaries held speeches, after which the protesters began retreating back towards Bethlehem.

It was at that point, that the police began its unprovoked assault at the demonstrators, making fifteen arrests, including those of Abbas Zaki of the PLO Executive Committee, four members of local popular committees and an AP photographer. Abbas Zaki is one of the most prominent Palestinian leaders to have been arrested in grassroots demonstrations in recent years. His arrest has stirred vocal protest by PA officials in this already tense period.

All demonstrators were arrested under the exact same circumstances, and on the same suspicions. The four Israelis and one international detained during the incident, were released that same evening. The Palestinians, however, were subjected to much harsher treatment. The police extended the arrest of all ten of them by 96 hours, which are likely to be extended by another 96 hours even before they will be brought before a judge.

While Israelis and internationals are, as a matter of policy, subject to Israeli law, which only allows for a 24 hours detention by the police, Palestinians are subject to Israeli Military Law, which allows for their detention for a period of eight days before being brought in front of a judge. This blunt policy of racial discrimination is applied even in cases where Palestinians and Israelis are arrested together and under the same circumstances, and despite the fact that both Palestinians and Israelis are, in theory, subject to the Israeli Military Law when in the Occupied Territories.

Tulkarem and Ramallah mark the seventh anniversary of the death of Rachel Corrie

16 March 2010

Newly dedicated Rachel Corrie Street in Ramallah.
Newly dedicated Rachel Corrie Street in Ramallah.
On March 16th 2003, an Israeli bulldozer killed the American activist Rachel Corrie in Rafah, Gaza. Today, in Kafr Sur, near Tulkarem, and in Ramallah, family, friends and supporters gathered together to commemorate the anniversary of her murder.

Students of Kafr Sur Secondary School, who have been working on a research project about Rachel’s life and death, today marked the anniversary with a march to a memorial stone at the entrance to the village. The students were joined by children from the nearby primary school, as the stone was unveiled and speeches were delivered by the headmaster, one of the students, and an ISM activist.

A boy in Tulkarem smiles and holds photos of Rachel.
A boy in Tulkarem smiles and holds photos of Rachel.
Approximately fifty Palestinians, Internationals and media then joined Craig and Cindy Corrie, Rachel’s parents, for the inauguration ceremony of Rachel Corrie Street in Ramallah. Speeches were delivered by both the Mayor and Governor of Ramallah, the Minister of State, National Parties’ Coordinator, an ISM activist and Rachel’s parents.

At both events, speakers talked of the lasting impact left by Rachel, as an inspiration to those involved with the non-violent resistance in Palestine and across the world. Rachel’s mother spoke about how her daughter has become a symbol for the anti-Occupation movement, and of how grateful she and her family are to the Palestinians they have come to know and love over the past seven years for their unfailing support, despite the suffering they themselves continue to experience.

The coming weeks also mark the seventh anniversaries of the shootings of the British activist Thomas Hurndall, who was shot in the head whilst shielding children in Rafah from Israeli sniper fire, and who died in hospital nine months later, and Brian Avery, an American who was shot in the face in Jenin, but who mercifully survived. Last weekend saw the one year anniversary of Tristan Anderson being hit in the head with a high velocity tear gas canister in Nilin. Tristan is still recovering in an Israeli hospital.