Tag: Ramallah

IOF willfully kill a Palestinian child in al-Jalazoun refugee camp, north of Ramallah

The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR)

1 September 2009

The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) strongly condemns the willful killing of a 15-year-old Palestinian child by Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF). The attack occurred yesterday, 31 August 2009, near the entrance of al-Jalazoun refugee camp, north of Ramallah.

According to investigations conduced by PCHR, at approximately 21:30 on Monday, 31 August 2009, IOF troops stationed at a military observation tower inside “Beit Eil” settlement, north of Ramallah, opened fire at five Palestinian children who were near al-Jalazon UNRWA School, located near the southeastern entrance of al-Jalazoun refugee camp. One of the children, 15-year-old Mohammed Riad Nayef ‘Elayan, was wounded by three bullets to the chest. An ambulance from Sheikh Zayed Hospital in Ramallah attempted to reach the area. However, the ambulance was stopped by at least 30 soldiers who prevented the medical crew from attending to the wounded child. Meanwhile, dozens of Palestinian civilians gathered on the spot and attempted to help the wounded child, but Israeli soldiers fired tear gas canisters at the crowd. The ambulance driver, Usama Hassan Ibrahim al-Najjar, 37, was hit by a tear gas canister to the left leg. ‘Ali Ahmed Mohammed Nakhla, 29, also sustained similar injuries.

Mohammed was left bleeding for approximately an hour. At approximately 22:30, IOF transferred the child to Beit Eil settlement where he was evacuated by a helicopter to Hadasa ‘Ein Karem Hospital in West Jerusalem. In the early morning, Israeli sources declared that the child had succumbed to his wounds. IOF have continued to hold the child’s body. IOF arrested the four children who were with ‘Elayan and kept them detained in Beit Eil settlement untill 03:00 on Tuesday, 1 September 2009. One of the released children informed PCHR that the children were walking normally in the street where the attack took place and that they suddenly found themselves under Israeli gunfire. The boy said that when Israeli soldiers saw the wounded child falling onto the ground, they rushed to the scene and arrested his companions. The soldiers left the boy bleeding without offering him any medical aid.

PCHR strongly condemns the murder of a child by IOF, and:

  1. Reiterates condemnation of this latest crime, which is part of a series of crimes committed by IOF in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT).
  2. Calls upon the international community to promptly and urgently take action in order to stop such crimes, and renews its call for the High Contracting Parties to the Fourth Geneva Convention to fulfill their obligations and provide protection to Palestinian civilians in the OPT.

Breaking the Israeli water siege

7 of August, 2009.

International human rights activists together with Israelis and Palestinians escorted a convoy of water tankers, breaking the Israeli water siege of the village Qarawat Bani Zaid and delivering water to residents.

At 12 pm ISM activists and other Internationals set off from Al Manara, Ramallah, to join the water convoy. After departure, passing checkpoints and settlements, the convoy could, without further delay, cross the border into the Palestinian Authority controlled Qarawat Bani Zaid, arriving at 15.00 pm.

Upon arriving to the village center, the local residents gathered to welcome the water aid. The water convoy was celebrated throughout the village with music, dancing and speeches by villagers and activists. Banners proclaiming ”End the water siege” and ”No More Thirst” in Arabic, Hebrew and English were exchanged and held up by Palestinian, Israeli and Internationals throughout the water delivery.

A local representative asked the Israeli activists to return home with a message of peace:

”We want peace and water. We are the only people in the world who have to buy water from our occupiers. Now, we are welcoming you because you come as friends, not as attackers, soldiers or occupiers. Please tell your government, we do not want your water, we want our own water.”

Since the middle of March the taps in Qarawat Bani Zaid have been running dry – no water for drinking, for washing, for livestock or agriculture. In the surrounding villages of Kafr Ein, Beit Rima, Dayr Ghasana and Nabi Saleh the water supply is failing too. Living in this area, north-west of Ramallah, are around 15,000 people, who at the height of the scorching summer season receive a ration of water amounting to 48 liters per person per day – approximately one fifth of the average consumed by Jewish settlers in the Occupied Territories and residents of Israel (235 liters) and less than half of the WHO’s measure of ‘water deficiency’ (100 liters a day).

In previous years the households of Qarawat Bani Zaid and the surrounding villages received water from the Aboud spring. However, since 2000 the Israeli water company Mekorot has controlled the area’s supply of spring water, only 20% of which is now fed to the Palestinian water distribution network. Around 100 cubic meters per hour would be needed to supply all the families in the region through the network of pipes. Currently the pipes supply a maximum of only 70 cubic meters per-hour, and in the summer this remains as low as 30 cubic meters per-hour.

The village Qarawat Bani Zaid is furthest from the spring, and therefore suffers most from water shortages: 90% of residents have not received water from the pipes for over four months. To compensate, they have been forced to buy water at high prices from tankers – one cubic meter (1000 liters) costs around 40 Shekels, $10 US; approximately ten times the cost from the pipes. The poorest families struggle to afford enough water to drink.

“If the situation doesn’t change, many people will have to leave the region” says Sabri Arah, a member of the municipality, “this is central to the project of the Israeli occupation.”

Since the occupation of the West Bank in 1967 the Israeli government has controlled local water resources and diverted them to meet the needs of Israel and Jewish settlements in the Occupied Territories. Israel and Palestine rely on two common water systems: the Mountain Aquifer and the Jordan Basin which also belongs Syria, Lebanon and Jordan. Around 67% of the water from the Mountain Aquifer is claimed by Israel. Large parts of the Jordan Basin fall within the West Bank, but while Israeli companies control 31% of the basin’s water, Palestinian companies have no access to this water at all.

Around 30% of Palestinian villages are not connected to the water network, and are therefore dependent on wells and the collection of rainwater in cisterns. Ground water is considered property of the Israeli state and the construction of wells and cisterns without written permission is a criminal offence. Permits for these structures entail a long and complex application process and permission is rarely granted. In many cases, Palestinians are denied access to their village’s wells because they are on land confiscated by illegal settlements, military bases or closed off by the apartheid wall.

As long as Israel continues to occupy Palestinian land, the provision of water for domestic, public, agricultural and industrial needs should not be a favor granted by the Israeli government, but is its legal obligation as an occupying power. To fail to meet this obligation is a serious violation of international law.

The purpose of today’s action was to raise public awareness of this vital issue. The organizers call for an ongoing protest campaign in Israel and continued international solidarity.

Israeli barrier bites into Palestinian village

Ivan Karakashian | Reuters

18 May 2009

Israel’s land barrier is slowly destroying the fabric of this Palestinian village of Christians and Muslims in the West Bank, setting a prime example of why the United States wants settlements to stop.

One third of Aboud’s open space has been turned into a buffer zone. Hundreds of olive trees have been uprooted to make way for a dirt road closed off with barbed wire and patrolled by the Israeli army.

The land seized lies beyond Israel’s barrier along the 1948 Green Line that was once the Jewish state’s western border. The bulge encroaches six kilometres (4 miles) inside occupied Palestinian territory to safeguard the Jewish settlements of Beit Arye and Ofarim.

Palestinians hope U.S. President Barack Obama will press Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at talks in Washington on Monday on their demand to remove settlements, checkpoints, walls and fences, and establish a state in return for peace.

Aboud’s parish priest Father Firas Aridah blames the Israeli barrier for decimating the income of Aboud’s Christian community and forcing 34 families since 2000 to leave in search of more stability and security.

“The biggest problem is the loss of their land. Their olive trees have been cut down, and this in turn has cut them off from their source of livelihood,” said Aridah.

The Fawadleh brothers, George, Francis and Khalil, watched 117 trees owned by their family for generations being uprooted early last year. They now have only 26 left and worry those will be destroyed as well.

“It felt like having a stroke,” said George Fawadleh, a Catholic. “It’s our land. When they uprooted the trees, it was a catastrophe for us.” Nearly 70 Christian families own land in the buffer zone, said Aridah. While they currently are able to reach their land through open gaps along the road, to tend their trees or graze livestock, they fear one day being completely cut off.

APPEAL FAILED

Aboud lies north of Jerusalem in the Ramallah governorate. About half of its 2,200 residents are Christians. The parish runs a school up to ninth-grade, and most pupils are Muslim.

“We live together in every respect, as a united town, as Palestinians, we live with each other in harmony,” said Father Aridah, 34, who also serves as headmaster.

Across a small courtyard lies a building housing the church and Aridah’s office and residence. The church is beautifully decorated and well kept, in stark contrast to his hectic office.

“In Aboud, the priest is for everyone, no exceptions,” Aridah said. “Not just for Christians, but also for Muslims.”

But the Christian presence in Aboud is dwindling, as it is across the West Bank. The main reason they cite is the Israeli occupation and the security restrictions it imposes, stifling the economy and limiting opportunity.

Palestinians say the 720-km (450-mile) barrier Israel began constructing in 2002 is a naked land grab. Israel says it is a temporary security measure which radically reduced Palestinian suicide attacks and has kept its cities safe.

Aboud petitioned against the road before the Israel Supreme Court in 2006 but its plea was rejected. The Israeli army says the security fence tries to balance security needs “with Israel’s desire to reduce, to the greatest extent possible, any disruptions to Palestinian residents’ quality of life”.

It notes the court’s conclusion that “the path of the Security Fence (at Aboud) was built to the greatest possible extent on Israeli state land and close to Israeli communities”.

Father Aridah has raised the issue with the Vatican and testified before a United States congressional subcommittee.

Several U.S. senators, including Patrick Leahy, have visited Aboud, so far without producing any change on the ground.

But the priest intends to carry on fighting for the rights of his people, Muslim as well as Christian. “The voice of the church must defend the victimized,” he says.

The Palestinian Authority says the Christian population of the West Bank — about 50,000 — has shrunk over the last 30 years due to emigration. Christians tend to be better educated and richer than the average Palestinian and have opportunities to vote with their feet and seek a new life abroad.

During his pilgrimage to the holy land last week, Pope Benedict lamented the departure of Christians and the artificial divisions disrupting normal life for Palestinians.

“One of the saddest sights for me during my visit to these lands was the wall,” the pontiff said after confronting the towering barrier between Jerusalem and Bethlehem.

“As I passed alongside it, I prayed for a future in which the peoples of the Holy Land can live together in peace and harmony without the need for such instruments of security and separation.”

Palestinians mark the Nakba

AFP

14 May 2009

Thousands of Palestinians on Thursday marked the 61st anniversary of the Naqba, the “catastrophe” that sparked an exodus of hundreds of thousands of refugees after Israel was created in 1948.

Holding Palestinian flags and photos of Arab villages razed by Israeli forces six decades ago, demonstrators marched in the centre of Ramallah in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

“The right of return is sacred”, “No peace without the right of return”, read the banners held by the marchers.

The ceremonies took place a day early because the May 15 anniversary of the Naqba falls this year on a Friday, a day off in the mostly Muslim Palestinian territories.

The demonstration was headed by political figures and religious leaders and began at the tomb of legendary Palestinian chief Yasser Arafat at the headquarters of the Palestinian Authority, today run by his successor, president Mahmud Abbas.

In the northern West Bank town of Nablus, about 2,000 people participated in a march, holding Palestinian flags tied with black ribbons as a sign of mourning.

In Aqabet Jaber refugee camp, in the oasis town of Jericho, participants unveiled a statue featuring a six-metre (20-foot) metallic key, symbolising the refugees’ attachment to the houses from which they fled or were forced out in 1948.

Around 700,000 people were exiled in this way in 1948, with the United Nations estimating that today they and their decendants number 4.6 million.

The Israeli army said in a statement that it was sealing off the occupied West Bank from midnight on Thursday until Saturday evening for the Naqba.

Beit Liqya commemorates Land Day by planting trees near martyr’s graves

On the 31st of March, at 10:30am, villagers in Beit Liqya marked Land Day by planting trees near the graves of two villagers killed by Israeli forces during demonstrations against the Apartheid Wall in 2005.  Beit Liqya is located in the Ramallah district of the central West Bank.  Around 200 villagers, supported by Israeli and international solidarity activists, moved towards the Apartheid Wall, which is built on village land.

Around 50 boys from the local youth committee beat drums and marched in procession to the graves of two boys killed by Israeli forces.  Jamal Jaber, 15 years old, and Uday Mofeed, 14 years old, were shot with live ammunition during nonviolent demonstrations against the construction of the Apartheid Wall in 2005.  Villagers planted trees near their graves, connecting the martyrs’ deaths to the continued brutality of the Israeli occupation and remembering the murder of six Palestinian demonstrators in 1976, which is commemorated every year on Land Day.

After the trees were planted, three Israeli soldiers standing nearby began shooting tear gas and rubber bullets at the crowd and firing live ammunition into the air.  Some of the village youth responded to the soldiers by throwing stones.  One Israeli solidarity activist was hit in his back with a rubber bullet.