Tag: Ramallah

Demonstration against Apartheid Roads

On Sunday, November 3, 2007 , Palestinians delivered a message to Condoleezza Rice on the Israeli-only 443 highway: The segregation that Condoleezza’s parents suffered from and struggled against did not die in Alabama, but lives today in Palestine. The demonstration took place on the side of road 443, above the bridge near Beit Ur that runs above the Palestinian only tunnel that runs underneath the highway.

“We aren’t allowed on the front or the backs of busses, we aren’t even allowed on the roads of our own country.” explained Ahmed of the Popular Mobilization against Apartheid.

Around fifty activists, Palestinian, Israeli, and international supporters, were present, standing up to segregation and discrimination. Villagers wore masks of Condoleezza Rice’s face, and a banner which stated: “Condi: What would Rosa Parks do?” They wore signs which said ‘Apartheid Lives’ in an attempt to show the similarities drawn between the American civil rights movement and South African anti-apartheid movement.

The Israeli army declared the area a closed military zone, blocking attempts by both Palestinian and Israeli activists to join the demonstration.

In the version of the two state solutions being advocated by Dr. Rice in her trips throughout the Middle East, road 443 will remain in Israeli control. Despite the fact that all Israeli settlements are illegal under international law, the Bush administration promised Israel in 2004 that the border of Israel with the future Palestinian state would be adjusted to allow Israel to retain its “already existing major Israeli population centers”. Since this promise in 2004 Israel has increased creation and building of the settlements and settlement infrastructure that make up these major population centers. According to this vision already existing settler roads will run throughout the so called Palestinian state, with bridges for Israelis and tunnels underneath for Palestinians. These segregated roads divide any possible Palestinian state into separate enclaves.

Ahmed, a speaker for the Popular Mobilization against Apartheid said, “the two state solution promoted by Bush and Dr. Rice is not actually two states nor is it a solution. It is Apartheid.”

For more information:
Ahmed Darwish 0545927352

and visit www.apartheidmasked.org for detailed information, and pictures of the event.

Anti-Apartheid Demonstration this Sunday near Beit Ur

On Sunday, at 10 am, November 4th a demonstration against the apartheid road system will take place on the Israeli-only 443 highway. The demonstration will take place at the bridge near Beit Ur that runs above the Palestinian only tunnel that runs beneath the highway.

For seven years now, Highway 443 has been accessible to Israelis only. Palestinians are forbidden to travel on the highway, even on the 9.5 kilometer-long segment which passes through occupied West Bank territory and is built on land that has been confiscated from Palestinians whose olive trees have been cut down “for the benefit of the local population.”

Palestinians are forbidden to travel even along the segment that is nine and a half kilometers long and passes through West Bank territory. The road was widened in the 1990s using land confiscated from the local Palestinians under the pretense that the road would be open to Palestinians as well as Israelis, many ancient olive trees were destroyed during the road expansion.

The policy of prohibiting Palestinian movement on this road is not an isolated case. On 312 kilometers of main roads in the West Bank, vehicles bearing Palestinian license plates are forbidden or restricted access. According to OCHA (UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs) Of the 539 physical obstacles and check point that restrict Palestinian movement, only fourteen separate the territories occupied in 1967 from Israel proper. Nearly all of the physical obstacles and checkpoints that make up the closure regime are located along the roads for Israeli use. These roads, in addition to the segregation wall, carve up Palestinian areas into isolated enclaves. This fragmentation is at the root of the West Bank’s declining economy.

Thursday October 24th Palestinian Israeli and international protesters blocked the highway for over fifteen minutes by organizing a sit down in the road. Palestinians distributed a message to the drivers in Hebrew (see: http://www.apartheidmasked.org/?p=118) on the highway: “We know what it feels like to be blocked. We experience it daily.”

Journalists can meet at the demonstration itself at 10 am, at the bridge near beit Ur that runs above the Palestinian only tunnel that runs beneath the highway.

From Tel Aviv, meet at the central bus station at 8:30, and contact Ilan Shalif beforehand as early as you can if a ride is needed. Email is best, ilan@shalif.com and include your mobile phone, or call him at 036482749 or 0524655520 but do not send a text message.

From Ramallah, meet at the Manara at 9 am.

For more information:
Yousef Karaje 02-2488113
or Mohammad 0545573285

and visit www.apartheidmasked.org

Bedouin Village facing demolition near Bir Nabala


*A villager looks toward the Apartheid Wall that has separated the village members. 18 members of the village are behind the Wall, which now takes 2 hours driving to reach.*

In September this year, a village north of Jerusalem was divided in two when the Israeli government completed another section of the Apartheid Wall. The Israeli government intends to destroy the greater part of the village, which lies to the east of the wall in territory officially recognized by Israel as part of the Jerusalem municipality, to build housing, industry and transport facilities. The Apartheid Wall has separated the village members, leaving 45 people on land claimed by Israel and 18 on the other side in Palestinian territory near the village of Bir Nabala.

The villagers to the east of the Wall no longer have direct access to water and electricity. Their only source of water is a plastic hose that runs under the Wall, and they must call family members on the other side of the wall to turn the water supply on and off. Villagers have also lost access to grazing land for their livestock and pay 300 shekels for transport to retrieve feed from the land they once farmed. The completion of the wall has also prevented villagers from taking livestock to markets in the West Bank and the Ministry of Agriculture consistently denies permits allowing villagers’ access to the West Bank.

The 14 children in the village who used to walk to school must now travel approximately two hours each day to and from school. The children pass through Qalandyia checkpoint to Ramallah and then take another bus to Bir Nabala. This journey is expensive, costing 15 shekels per child, which the villagers struggle to pay. Due to the expense, ten children from east of the wall are living with members of the village on the other side near Bir Nabala.

As the final sections of the wall were being put in place in September, the movement of villagers was restricted by army for ten days. During this period children were unable to attend school and villagers had limited access to food and other necessities. On the 16th of September, members of the village separated by the wall attempted to bring livestock feed to fellow villagers east of the wall via the remaining small gap. The soldiers guarding this opening prevented the animal feed from being brought across and called four army jeeps to the scene to punish villagers.

Twenty soldiers entered the houses of the village members east of the wall, who were to receive the livestock feed, and attacked the villagers. A nineteen year old man and his uncle were taken to hospital once villagers had negotiated for an hour with authorities to allow an ambulance to arrive.

On the 25th of November a lawyer will defend the villagers before a civil court in Jerusalem. Meanwhile, they struggle both to maintain their daily routine as well as to prepare themselves for the legal battle ahead. Members of the village make daily phone calls to NGO’s such as B’Tselem to help them deal with issues such as soldiers at Qalandia checkpoint. They have also made numerous calls to the Palestinian Authority for assistance, but their requests can’t be fulfilled due to the PA’s inability to operate on land claimed by the Israeli authorities.

When asked what the Israeli government intended to do with the villagers after demolition of their homes, the villagers’ spokesman did not have a clear idea. “If we go now, I do not know where we will go,” he told us. “In ’48 we lived in Beir Sheba. As a result of the Nakbah we were forced to move. In 1962 we came to this area and have lived here ever since. I was a 1 year old boy then and have lived on this land ever since. This land belongs to East Jerusalem, we are on Arab land” he added.

13 Palestinians arrested in Al-Mazra’a Al-Qibliya

** Update **
On October 31st, the Israeli army invaded Al-Mazra’a Al-Qibliya and arrested eight more people. It seems they are to be charged with exactly the same crimes the three British women formerly imprisoned were charged with. Those allegations proved to be false and the women released. More information will come as it is known.

October 27th 2007

Last night between 1am and 3am the Israeli army raided the West bank towns of Abu Shukheidim and Al-Mazra’a Al-Qibliya arresting 13 Palestinians on allegations of criminal damage and being at an illegal demonstration, they are now in Binyamin police station. In what is clearly collective punishment, the arrested include the head of the Al-Mazra’a Al-Qibliya council, a village council member and three minors. The raids follow a demonstration on Friday against the illegal annexation of agricultural lands by settlers.

The villages are surrounded by a group of settlements collectively known as Talmund B, who have illegally confiscated 14,000 dunums of Palestinian land for agricultural purposes, including 500 dunums in the last three months. Despite local Palestinians contesting the confiscation in court, the settlers have been planting grape trees in a bid to claim the land through facts on the ground.

An armed settler disturbed a protest against the land confiscation in August and settler harassment continued at Friday’s protest. Live ammunition was used by settlers against the non-violent demonstration. Two nights ago 30 to 40 adult settlers threw rocks at the village for about an hour, breaking a solar panel in the process. Last night’s arrests show how the army has chosen to ignore settler violence while collectively punishing local Palestinians for exercising their right to protest the confiscation of their property.

The arrests come the day after the release of three female British peace activists, aged 45, 60 and 62, who were held by the Israeli police on false charges of criminal damage after being present at the demonstrations on Friday . Israeli police attempted to deport them, and sent all three to the Ministry of the Interior where their case was thrown out.

While the three British women were released due to the false nature of the allegations, it is feared the prejudice inherent in the Israeli court system will ensure the Palestinians face jail time and fines, even if the allegations prove to be false.

Brighton-Tubas Fellowship: Life in the women’s prison

Two days ago I attended a peaceful demonstration of villagers against the theft of their land by villagers. I found my self assaulted and ‘arrested’ by a settler with the acquiescence of the Isreali army, lied to by the Israeli police, dumped in the punishment block of the women’s prison, driven for miles to the Ministry of the Interior deportation centre, and eventually released because I had done nothing wrong. What would they have done to me if I was Palestinian?

Over the last week I have seen the heartache on the faces of the families of many Palestinian prisoners and the hollow looks in the eyes of those who have been incarcerated, as they have told me their stories of humiliation and degradation. Sitting in a prison cell, with no way of contacting the outside world, I began to grasp the enormity of what they had been telling me.

I know without a doubt that the Police and prison guards were being a little careful with us as internationals who had insisted on our right to contact our Consulate, to have legal representation, and to not sign the endless documents they put before us in Hebrew. But I still experienced the fear of sitting in a filthy dirty cell, not knowing how long I was going to be there. Then a young Palestinian woman in the cell next to us struck up a conversation. She had been sitting in cells for the last 2 years. Her youngest brother was shot by Israeli soldiers when he was 12, and all her other brothers were in prison. We knew our friends on the outside would be constantly worrying about us. What must her mother be going through? Her friend further down the block, and graduate of Beir Zeit University, had been there for 7 years. How had they survived this ordeal, and still had the energy to welcome us, and reassure us?

We thought it would be reasonable to expect such things as water, exercise, medical help, sleep and a phone call to the outside world. How wrong could we be? By the time we had gone 18 hours without water, having asked many, many times, we were given ‘water’ that was in fact orange squash that looked more like a urine sample sitting in our water bottle in the cell. When we questioned this the guards told us that there is no cold water supply in the prison and the prisoners never, ever get water. Soon afterwards we were told that we should be ready to ‘go out’ when it was our turn for the 1 hour of exercise we were entitled to in every 24 hours. We were quite excited at the prospect at leaving our cell until we saw that we would spend our precious hour in a hot concrete yard 20 x 25ft. We tried some stretches and walking around in circles, but found our motivation was quickly waning after a day of enforced sitting around doing nothing and not being able to sleep.

As we were in the ‘punishment’ block all the women around us were in solitary confinement. An Israeli woman nearby was clearly distressed by her situation. She must have used every ounce of energy she had to shout, scream, bang on her door with whatever she could find and cry endlessly. I was really worried that she would hurt herself, but the prison guards felt that ambling up to her cell and shouting at her intermittently was the appropriate response to this. As a result we had only 2 hrs respite when i assume she slept in the early hours of the morning. All the other prisoners were tired and stressed and shouting at her and each other through their cell doors. In the middle of all this racket the young women in the cell next to us sat at her cell door and sang the most beautiful song imaginable and I strained to listen to her and cut out all the noise around me to claim a few minutes of sanity. For this I have to thank her. When we hadn’t heard from our friend from Beir Zeit for some time we asked if she had left and were told that she was sleeping. Had she really had to get used to these torturous conditions to such an extent that she could now sleep through this constant noise?

As I had been told that we were arrested for 24 hours from 1.30pm on Friday I assumed that by 1.30pm on Saturday I would have to be released or go to court. Nothing is so simple. We were given different information by each prison guard that came along and felt a call to our solicitor was needed, so we asked for this. The reply: Yes, we were entitled to make a phone call but we needed a card. Could we buy a card with the money they had taken off us? No, they do not sell them.

Eventually they came to collect us at 7pm. They gave us our bags, then out came the handcuffs and shackles to be locked around our ankles. Did they really think we would try to run surrounded by police men and women with two guns each?

Throughout our time there the prison guards were nasty, uncooperative and sadistic without exception. I assume they will have developed their skill at treating people like animals in the two years they will have served in the army, and have been honing them ever since.