2nd November 2016 | International Solidarity Movement, al-Khalil team | Hebron, occupied Palestine
A Palestinian female was arrested on the 1st of November near Qeitun checkpoint accused of carrying a knife. Eyewitnesses described her being ordered to kneel on the ground, open her dress and loosen her hijab in public, before being handcuffed and escorted behind the gate at Qeitun checkpoint. However, none present saw any sign of the knife she was accused of carrying. The Palestinian woman was initially attended to by around seven armed soldiers, who were joined shortly afterwards by two jeeps each carrying several more, including female officers who presumably conducted a more vigorous physical search. Internationals present were forced back and ordered not to photograph or film the ensuing incident.
Woman detained at Qeitun checkpoint
Her four children, aged 10, 8, 4 and 1, lingered ominously at the checkpoint gate, hoping to see their mother emerge unscathed. Unfortunately this was not to be as she was later walked to the nearby police station were she may be detained indefinitely. As explanation for her arrest and the time frame of her detention, an Israeli officer claimed, “we are not above the law”, implying that they would conduct themselves in a lawful manner whilst carrying out their investigation against her.
Arrested womans children wait at the checkpoint gate hoping to see their mother return
Such statements as this offer little comfort to her children or the Palestinian residents of Hebron, who are far too aware of Israeli policy against Palestinian arrestees and the stark double standard between the laws that exist for Palestinians and the laws that exist for Israelis. Putting to one side the humiliating way in which this woman was treated and the total disregard for cultural sensitivities as regards the removal of her hijab in public (in which concealment of a knife is almost inconceivable), in the eyes of the law, Palestinians’ rights are hugely diminished relative to the Israeli settlers that occupy the same space. In fact, they are subject to two entirely different legal systems.
Palestinians arrested in the West Bank area are, after intensive interrogation, sentenced and trialled in Israeli military courts. However, an Israeli arrested for an identical offense, within the same jurisdiction, is sentenced and trialled in Israeli civil courts. The differences between military and civil law are vast and are designed to legitimize discriminatory and oppressive policies implemented against Palestinians in the name of maintaining Israeli “security”. In 2010 it was revealed that a whopping 97.4% of Palestinians trialled in Israeli military courts are convicted of the crimes of which they are accused. Bearing the brunt of this prejudiced system are Palestinian youths, who, under military law, can be detained initially for up to 6 months for otherwise minor offenses. The most common of these is stone throwing, which carries with it a potential 20 years in prison. Any West Bank Palestinian, under the military law, is immediately presumed guilty – unless he or she can manage to prove otherwise – whereas at the same time settlers from the illegal settlements in the West Bank are presumed innocent until proven otherwise.
The only distinction between these two peoples is ethnicity. Therefore, differential treatment of Palestinians by law enforcement and judicial systems is fundamentally racist. These are facts from which Israel cannot escape, and for which the international community must hold Israel to account.
30th October 2016 | International Solidarity Movement, al-Khalil team | Hebron, occupied Palestine
It’s like living in a prison. That’s how residents describe what Israeli forces are doing to their lives in the Tel Rumeida neighborhood and Shuhada Street in occupied al-Khalil (Hebron). The area was first declared a ‘closed military zone’ on 30th October 2015 – solely and deliberately affecting the Palestinian residents. One year of collective punishment, open discrimination, racism, apartheid policies and rampant attempts at ethnic cleansing in this area, commonplace tactics of an illegal occupying force in an obvious attempt to rid the area of any Palestinian presence and instead, create a continous ‘sterile’ strip of illegal settlements.
The ‘closed military zone’ has several times been extended within this year of collective punishment of the Palestinian population, adding even more areas and ‘re-inforcing’ and creating more checkpoints, exclusively for the Palestinian civilian population. Only the Palestinian civilian residents, who must register to pass through a checkpoint to gain access to their family home, have been degraded to a mere number on a list by the Israeli forces. Only ‘registered’ residents are allowed to reach their homes. The lists of Palestinian residents have been changed repeatedly lately, arbitrarily dropping various names from the list. Apparently registering with the occupying force as a resident in one’s own home just once often isn’t sufficient. This dehumanization of the Palestinian civilians who at the checkpoint are reduced to a number, is a deliberate tactic to create a forcible environment directly furthering ethnic cleansing. For some time Palestinian residents were assigned numbers that were marked on their IDs, completely ridding these civilians of their human aspect, instead making them a mere number on a list. Now, with those numbers temporarily not in use, Palestinians are reffered to by their ID-number. The Palestinian civilian trying to live in their own home is just that for the Israeli forces, a number, void of any humanity.
During the Jewish holiday of Sukkot, Israeli forces basically declared a curfew on the whole area, closing Shuhada checkpoint, denying Palestinians passage while allowing exclusive access tor settlers at the same time. The prison this area is becoming for the Palestinian civilian population is further exacerbated by the fact that, if there’s a large number of Israeli forces or settlers from the nearby illegal settlements on the street, leaving the house is not an option. One year of collective punishment – a sad anniversary that proves that the Israeli state does not need to fear an outcry by the international community when implementing their racist, apartheid measures, ethnically cleansing an entire neighborhood. During a year in which the residents have not been allowed to receive visitors like family or friends, workers of any sort have been denied entry and even medical personnel will be turned away at the checkpoint.
26th October 2016 | ISM & IWPS | Urif, occupied Palestine
Last Tuesday both the IWPS team and ISM team were harvesting olives in separate areas when we received a phone call telling us that there had been trouble with settlers from the illegal settlement Yitzhar and Israeli occupation forces near the high school for boys in Urif, south of Nablus. Urif is located 2km away from Yitzhar, which is known for its especially violent settlers, and the school is situated at the highest point of the village, nearest to the illegal settlement. This is not the first time the school has experienced problems of this kind and we quickly left the fields to make our way to Urif.
By the time we arrived, the settlers and Israeli occupation forces had left and the children and teachers had managed to leave the school. We were able to speak with an eye witness, Mr A. Amer, who works in Urif’s municipality and who had been the first person to reach the boys’ school. He showed us the footage he had captured and informed us that around 12pm the infamous settler responsible for security in Yitzhar, known as Jacob, approached the school with two younger settlers by foot carrying an M16 along with another gun. Shortly after, around twelve Israeli occupation soldiers also arrived at the school, meaning that students and teachers were trapped inside. The eye witness told the settler to leave because he worked for Yitzhar security and not in Urif, and was far away from the illegal settlement. The reason given for the intrusion was a false accusation that some boys had set fire to land closer to Yitzhar. We were informed that anyone from the village approaching those lands, would face an immediate response from the army and not settler security. The army demanded to see his ID, which they retained for one hour for no apparent reason. The army also never gave any reason why they were there in the first place, but they did make their way into the village below the school under the pretext of preventing children throwing stones; this possibly as all soldiers have small cameras attached to their uniforms. At 2pm the settlers and army left the area, and the children and teachers were able to leave the school grounds.
This is the second time in the last two months that the settler security has come close to the village. In August he harassed local olive farmers and demanded they leave their fields. Villages in the area often have problems from Yitzhar settlers during the olive harvest, with trees burned or uprooted and villagers attacked, and this was clearly an attempt to terrorise the local community. IWPS and ISM continue to support farmers and villages during this time, and hope to seek further support from the international community to highlight the ongoing plight.
27th October 2016 | International Solidarity Movement, al-Khalil team | Hebron, occupied Palestine
Acts of injustice done
between the setting and the rising sun
In history lie like bones,
each one. – W. H. Auden, from “The Ascent of F6″
Today marks one year since the murder of a young man outside the ISM apartment in Tel Rumeida, occupied al-Khalil (Hebron).
The shooting of the 23-year-old at 10:30 at night was followed less than 24 hours later by another blast of gun fire, when a young man was shot by Israeli army personnel beneath our lounge room windows, in full sight of my colleague. The two men, it was identified in the following hours, were Hummam Adnan al-Saeed and Islam Rafiq Hammad Ibeido.
At the time, I was among the nine or so internationals working with ISM in the face of increasingly targeted restrictions on our solidarity work in the H2 areas of al-Khalil (under full Israeli control). This was to be exacerbated just days after the murders by the declaration of the Closed Military Zone across Tel Rumeida and the surrounding district, which culminated in our eviction from the neighbourhood and a series of impossible, arbitrarily renewed military orders upon the Palestinian residents, which have continued to this day.
—A historical irony of numbered identities
The deaths of these two young men were among 70 extrajudicial executions of Palestinians across the occupied territories and 1948 historical Palestine which occurred during my short two months’ stay, the overwhelming majority of which were of men and women in their late teens or early twenties, and in circumstances where the evidence against their alleged attacks were so insurmountable, it would be laughable if it weren’t so tragic.
Since leaving the West Bank, I have watched the occurrences of these executions only sky-rocket. In the customary fashion of geopolitics with regard to Palestine, this has been met with: persistent outrage, suffering and at once steadfast and tired resistance by Palestinians; ongoing condemnation by rights organisations across the world; meagre intermittent mention by the UN; and velvet-gloved, rare, tokenistic slap-on-the-wrist rhetoric by the USA, followed by a fistful of $38bn in support. The situation hasn’t changed.
The current estimates of Palestinians to be killed in this way now number over 200, with more than 230 Palestinians being killed in total and at least 18, 000 injured in the past year. Meanwhile, the “Third Intifada” outpouring of frustration and rage through mass demonstrations and actual stabbing and car attacks, taking the lives of 34 Israelis – the supposed excuse for such blatant disregard for due process of law – are decreasing.
What remains are socialised, cultural and new legal precedents of emboldening Israeli military, civilian and illegal settler populations to act as judge, jury and executioner, with the horrifying consequence of both hysterical and calculated instances of murder with complete impunity. On the rare occasions when there has been a Palestinian witness able and willing to face the very real danger of publicly disputing the discourse of a “pre-emptive” “neutralisation” of a “terrorist,” [from an Israeli police spokesperson in regard to the murder of 17-year-old Dania Irsheid] their voices very rarely make it into the mass media.
This is what foreign conflicts look like:
Remote.
When the terms ethnic cleansing and genocide are used by ISM to relay internationals’ interpretation of Israeli policy and the tenets of popular Zionism, it is often met with criticism, abuse, and scepticism, even amongst supporters of Palestine. I’ve found a distance between my interpretations and many would-be supporters, finding it near impossible to capture the ubiquitousness of the occupation and the dynamics of apartheid, shy of having actually being there or in a comparable situation. To use a word so historically associated with the holocaust, in which millions of Jewish people were murdered, is considered inappropriate, disproportionate and insensitive. Yet, the brazen murders of Hummam and Islam stand out to me as an iceberg tip symptom of contemporary Israeli state-sanctioned racism, and the extent to which the lived experience of ethnic cleansing has come to be normalised if not expected of the region.
They were part of a generation who have grown up entirely under the gunpoint of Zionism and their deaths are treated like history’s collateral.
On the ground, what one comes to both expect and desensitise to is a rigorous psychological warfare of oppression, humiliation and state-sanctioned terrorism. This predominantly presents itself in the physicality of checkpoints, the vast concrete wall and settlers with M-16’s. However, more insidiously and equally damaging is also the stop-and-spread body searches, the crippling bureaucracy of arbitrary permits to access food crops, night raids where children viscerally learn the meaning of insecurity, and superhero fathers are emasculated by teenage soldiers emboldened with righteousness and immunity. And then what of the psychology of the kindergartners who anticipate tear gas en route to school and are excluded from streets where metres away, settler children live illegally in stolen houses backed up by the full weight of an internationally supported state? These things which are happening in Palestine, when “nothing is happening” (From a speech by Steven Salaita at the Israeli Apartheid Week opening event, London, 2016): ethnic cleansing and genocide in slow motion.
This period of “increased tensions,” beginning around the stabbing attacks by Muhannad Halabi and the shooting of unarmed 18 year old Hadeel al-Hashlamon, only a few hundred meters from where Islam and Hummam would perish a month later, marks but moments where these policies become visible. Moments where the applicability of the 2nd Article of the United Nations Convention on Genocide: “(a) Killing…with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group” cannot be denied. Islam and Hummam’s deaths were among five days of executions in a row that we reached in the H2 suburbs of Hebron. For the other three, Dania Irsheid, 17, murdered at the Ibrahimi mosque checkpoint, Saad Youssef al-Atrash, 19, murdered many metres from a checkpoint, searching for his Identity Card, and Mahdi Ramadan al-Muhtasib, 23, shot from close range whilst incapacitated near Salaymeh Checkpoint, whilst Palestinian voices testified to their innocence, Israeli forces wrote a historical record of benign, thinly defended silences and double-speak. All medical treatment was denied.
These deaths make visible the current expansionist Zionist agenda – to follow with the UN definition: “(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part…” Where perhaps for a minute the international community pays attention to the fact that a modern colonial state feels emboldened enough to shoot at ambulances and beat medical staff in the full light of day.
When these realities were brought to a place we had slept in and worked from, the soldiers, the same men who checked our passports and performed countless body searches in front of us, we tasted the sharp edge of genocide up close: ugly. Terrifying. A science-fiction like erasure of lives followed by settlers playing festive music on the site. Maybe you won’t believe me. It happened. I haven’t found a place for it.
These are the bones of history. They have names and dates of birth, and classmates who keep an empty seat for them.
It is not lost on me that the death of a man named Islam did not make it onto the news in my home country. It is not lost on me that Islam and Hummam have been written into the dominant record as terrorists while the men who murdered them have returned to their families. It is not lost that the streets of al-Khalil have the words “Gas the Arabs” graffitied on its walls, or that the Convention on Genocide was written in 1948 in the dying spectre of WWII, and only became accessible for accession by Palestine in 2014, along with Palestinians’ first official, theoretical access to the protections of international law.
“Gas the Arabs” spray-painted by settlers from the illegal settlements
“I am 100% sure he was unarmed. I saw the two soldiers creeping slowly along the road outside our apartment window with their guns cocked, so I looked down the street to see why. I saw an unarmed man walking normally towards the soldiers and suddenly they shot.” – Orion, the ISM activist who witnessed Islam’s shooting.
And for the families of these victims, people I never got to meet, people who were not able to bury their children until 2 months later, when their bodies were “released” by Israeli authorities amid 21 others bodies, they are still there. And I cannot imagine the insurmountable suffering of their past year, or their compounded grief of life under occupation.
May their lives be remembered for who they really were, and their deaths be called for what they were.
