Tag: Ramallah

Palestinians in Qaryut reassert their right to visit their spring, despite IOF violence

Villagers march to their spring in Qaryout

On Friday 15th of September the people of Qaryut – a village between Nablus and Ramallah – held a demonstration reasserting their rights over the village spring.

The village is close to the illegal settlements of Eli and Shilo, and every Friday settlers come to wash in the spring. This is a clear act of provocation, aimed at staking a claim on even more of the surrounding land.

There are often clashes between village youth and the settlers at the spring, and the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) protecting them. This week, however, the community had called on other communities to join them in reasserting their rights to the spring. The protest was also over the closure of the main road into the village by the occupation forces. The demonstration began after Friday prayers and marched down from the village toward the spring.

The IOF blocked the road, firing tear gas and rubber coated steel bullets. One man was shot in the face and injured with a rubber coated bullet. Several people were treated by the Red Crescent medical services after inhaling gas.

Settlers could be seen on the hillside watching the army’s repression of the demonstration

A tear gas canister was fired through the window of a building in Qaryout

The photo above shows the moment a tear gas canister was fired through the window of a building in Qaryut, you can see the gas billowing from inside.

The whole village of Qaryut was flooded with gas fired by the IOF. Canisters rained down onto residents – threatening to cause serious injury

Demonstrators persisted – however – and were eventually able to march to the spring. This video shows them dancing in celebration.

Palestinians from many communities in the West Bank had come to support the people of Qaryut in their demonstration.

Water Series: Hail of tear gas on peaceful villagers protesting settler theft of water supply in Kafr Malik

August 16 | International Solidarity Movement | Kafr Malik, Ramallah, occupied Palestine

 

This is the third of a series of reports documenting the control and devastation of water sources by Israel as a tool of oppression.

 

The residents of Kafr Malik, a town northeast of Ramallah, marched towards the Ain Samia area today to protest Israel’s theft of the village’s water supply, which has been diverted to a new illegal settlement. 

Protesters told ISM that 20 hectares of land had also been stolen from the village, where almost 3,000 Palestinians live, and handed to just five settler families. 

Hundreds attended the march and prayer – organised jointly by Fatah and the National and Islamic Parties – including the head of the Roman Catholic monastery in Palestine Abdullah Yolio.

The peaceful protest was immediately bombarded with rounds of tear gas (seen in video below) fired by occupation forces as well as hundreds of rubber-coated steel bullets and sound bombs. 

 

Israeli soldiers also tried to confiscate Palestinian flags from protesters and targeted journalists, interrupting their filming and forcing them to move if they refused to comply with what appeared to be entirely arbitrary orders. The Red Crescent treated several people for tear gas inhalation including an ISMer who had to be carried to an ambulance.

He said that Israeli soldiers: “…came up the hill behind us, and fired directly at journalists filming on the hill above the protest.” The ISMer did not suffer any serious injuries. 

Protesters including the Roman Catholic monastery suffer from tear gas inhalation
Tear gas sets dry hill on fire in Kafr Malik protest

Being cut off from the local water supply has severe implications for local Palestinian communities and is used as a means of oppression across the West Bank, from the Jordan Valley to the South Hebron Hills. 

The cutting of Palestinian water resources is not just a matter of preferential treatment, or discrimination. It is an active effort to force Palestinians out of their homes by applying psychological and economic pressure to the communities there. The cumulative effect of settler attacks and vandalism, military harassment, and economic deprivation are all part of an attempt to break the Palestinian resistance movement. The aim is to force people into being too preoccupied with constant fears, as well as by making day to day existence so difficult, that they cease to resist.

There is no reason why people should be denied the basic human rights and means to live, and this is made all the worse when the means to do so are within reach, and are taken away from them. Control of water by the Israeli apartheid state is an essential aspect of oppression of Palestinians, and is one of the most pressing issues in Palestinians regaining their rights and autonomy.

Protesters pray beside Israeli police and soldiers at Kafr Malik protest

Protesters break through replica of Apartheid Wall in Bethlehem symbolic run

Protesters gather for symbolic marathon near Apartheid Wall in Bethlehem

 

June 19 2019 | International Solidarity Movement | Bethlehem, occupied Palestine

Hundreds of people gathered in cities across the Palestinian Territories and England on Sunday June 15, to participate in a symbolic marathon in honour of the international right to freedom of movement. 

The project, called “Small Park Big Run’, takes place every year thanks to the cooperation between solidarity groups in Sheffield and the Palestinian regions of Gaza, Nablus, Ramallah and Bethlehem. Two ISMers joined the run in Bethlehem, organised by Aida refugee camp community centre Aida Youth Centre, where the event was happening for the first time.

The purpose of the race was to raise awareness about Palestinian oppression focusing on Israel’s flagrant violation of the Palestinian people’s human right to freedom of movement, to raise money for local groups and to condemn the “Deal of the Century,” – the US’s new Middle East ‘peace’ deal devised by Trump’s radical Zionist son-in-law Jared Kushner. 

In Bethlehem, the race kicked off near the infamous “300 checkpoint” where thousands of Palestinians are forced to queue as early as 3am every morning to make it to their jobs in Israel on time. According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, it is just one of the 700 road obstacles which controls Palestinian movement within the West Bank and one of its 140 checkpoints. Protesters ran past another important symbol of the control and the oppression that the Palestinian Territories face everyday – the 708km Israeli West Bank Barrier.

Protesters finished the race by breaking through a replica of the Division Wall – a symbolic finish line – at the entrance to Aida Refugee Camp.

 

People walk over the broken pieces of a replica of the separation wall, used as a symbolic finish line

 

Freedom of movement is guaranteed under international human rights law, which fundamentally stipulates that everyone shall be free to leave any country, including his or her own, and that no one shall be “arbitrarily deprived of the right to enter his or her own country”. The importance of this right results from the fact that this is a prerequisite to the exercise of other human rights, such as the rights to family, health and education.

Israel’s restrictions on the freedom of movement in the West Bank includes checkpoints, roadblocks and permit restrictions, as well as the Division Wall it has constructed along the West Bank side of the pre-1967 border. The Society of St. Yves, a legal centre based in Jerusalem, reports that: “Combined, the application of military law and control of the issuance of permits have the effect of segregating and oppressing Palestinian nationals and relegating them to second-class citizens in their native homeland”.

Other threats that reduce the right of movement is the presence of settlements officially established by the Israeli government after 1967, which is considered illegal by the international community, and the building of new outposts without government approval and so considered illegal even for Israeli law.

 

Palestinians hold pictures of Trump to condemning his ‘”Deal of the Century” in Bethlehem

Prayers end with tear gas in Ras Karkar

March 8, 2019 | International Solidarity Movement, Al-Khalil team | Ras Karkar, occupied Palestine

This Friday, the inhabitants of the villages around Mount al-Risan–where an outpost has been established by illegal settlers on Palestinian land–gathered for a day of peaceful protest and prayer.

Palestinian demonstrators are kneeling down in prayer on a rocky hill

As soon as the religious ritual ended, the military ritual began. Before the villagers finished rolling-up their prayer mat, the Israeli military launched a large number of tear gas canisters upon the crowd.

cloud of tear gas rise from the olive-tree valley

These events are positive by comparison to the past week. Last Friday, the peaceful protesters were met with tear gas before prayers began. After prayers, the Palestinians were chased out and shot with rubber-coated steel bullets.